'SÜrôd OÎ Divinity Library
St. Louis, Missouri 63108
THE

PRECIOUS BLOOD:
OK,
ÎLIn lOriee of (Our Selbata.
BY FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D.
AUTHOR OF

“ AU for Jestu” “The Blessed Sacrament;' “ Growth in Holiness," “Greater
and Creature,” “ Spiritual Conferences;' de. dr.

Habet magnam vocem Christi Sanguis in term, enm eo accepto eb omnibus
gentibus respondetur Amen. Hrec est clara vox Sanguinis, quam Sanguis ipe·
exprimit, ex ore iidelium eodem Sanguine redemptorum.
S. Aüousti». contra Faustum. I. xii. c. 10.

^Rcpublis^cb from §Utrana Sjjetfs,
WITH THE ΛΕΡΚΟΒΑΤΙΟΝ OF THE

Published

by

John Mubphy A

183 BALTIMORE STREET.

SOLD BY

BOOKSELLERS.

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Lib.
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE MYSTERY OP THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.................................

,M,
9

...

CHAPTER II.
THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.......................................

CHAPTER III.
θ®

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD .............................................

CHAPTER IV.
THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD...........................................

1®^

CHAPTER V.
THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD................................

242

CHAPTER VI.
THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD............................................

306

TO THE MEMBERS

©f t|je Confraternité of the $tost precious Slooù
IN THE CHURCH OF THE LONDON ORATORT.

My

dear

Friends :—

I have written this little Book for you, and
now dedicate it to you with feelings of the
warmest affection. It is ten years next August
since the Holy Father set up our Confraternity.
Since then we have enrolled upwards of thirty­
eight thousand Members, and a hundred and
four Religious Communities. Besides this,
several other Confraternities of the Precious
Blood have been set up and affiliated with
ours; and their members are also very nume­
rous. Some others have been erected in imita­
tion of ours, and independently of it, and are
successfully propagating our favorite devo­
tion.
The meetings at the Oratory on Sunday
nights testify to the abundant blessing which
our Lord has given to this apostolate of prayer.
Letter s are arriving daily, and from the remotest
quarters of the world, either asking otrr prayers,
or returning thanks for unexpected answers to

6

ΤΟ ΤΠΕ MEMBERS OF THE CONFRATERNITY.

prayer, or recounting signal conversions, ob­
tained through the intercession of the Con­
fraternity. Of late these divine favors have
greatly increased; and, while this is a fresh
motive for the love of God and for confidence
in prayer, it also deepens our feeling of our
own unworthiness, and greatly humbles us.
The Confraternity is now so extended that
the correspondence includes letters from Ireland
and Scotland, from France and Germany, from
Canada and N vfoundland, from the United
States and Central America, from California
and Brazil, from Australia and New Zealand,
from the East Indies and the Chinese Missions,
from the Cape of Good Hope and other British
Dependencies. When we think of all this,
we must prize more and more the privileges of
this grand union of intercessory prayer. The
success of the Confraternity is naturally an
object of lively interest both to you and me.
To you, because it is connected now with so
many secret joys and sorrows of your lives,
and so many bidden mercies and sweet answers
to prayer, which are known only to yourselves :
to me, because it is the realizing of my hopes
beyond what I ever could have dreamed : and
to both of us, because it is an humble increase
of the glory of our dearest Lord.

OF THF. MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD.

I have watched the growth of the Confrater­
nity with a pleased surprise; and the tokens
of God's blessing upon it have overwhelmed
me with gratitude and confusion: and 1 have
thought what I could do. Though many of
you are present at the London Oratory every
Sunday evening by your letters, comparatively
few of you can be there in person. Yet I have
felt that we belong to each other, ami that 1
should satisfy my own feelings, while I should
be gratifying yours, if I could make some
affectionate offering to the whole of my dear
Confraternity.
Therefore I have written this little Book. I
have tried to tell you all I know about the Pre­
cious Blood, all that many years of hard study
and much thought have enabled me to learn ;
and I have tried to tell it you as easily and as
simply as I could. I thought I could not please
you better than by this. I thought I could not
show my gratitude to our Blessed Redeemer
better than by striving to increase a devotion
which he himself, by his blessing on the
Confraternity, has shown to be so pleasing to
him. I believed we could not repay the
paternal kindness of the Sovereign Pontiff,
our Father and Founder, who has enriched
us with Indulgences, in a manner more wel­

b

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CONFRATERNITY, ETO.

come to himself than by an effort to propagato
the devotion to the Precious Blood, in whose
honor he has established a new feast in the
Church of God. I know that I could not
please myself better, than by magnifying the
Precious Blood, which of all the glorious ob­
jects of Catholic devotion has been for years
the dearest to my heart.
Accept, then, this little but loving gift. Let
it stand as a memorial of my love of you, of
your love of Jesus, of the filial devotion of
both of us to the Holy Father, and of our
united thanksgivings to our Blessed Savior
for his goodness to our Confraternity, and for
our salvation through his Blood.
Your affectionate Servant and Father,
Frederick William Faber,
Priest of the Oratory.
The London Oratory,
Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul
18C0.

r

r

THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Salvation ! What music is there in that word,
—music that never tires but is always new, that
always rouses yet always rests us! It bolds in
itself all that our hearts would say. It is sweet
vigor to us in the morning, and in the evening it
is contented peace. It is a song that is always
singing itself deep down in the delighted soul.
Angelic ears are ravished by it up in heaven ; and
our Eternal Father himself listens to it with adora­
ble complacency. It is sweet even to Him out of
whose mind is the music of a thousand worlds.
To be saved ! What is it to be saved ? Who can
tell ? Eye has not seen, nor ear heard. It is a
rescue, and from such a shipwreck·. It is a rest,
and in such an unimaginable home. It is to lie
down forever in the bosom of God in an endless
rapture of insatiable contentment.
“ Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save
his people from their sins.” Who else but Jesus
can do this, and what else even from him do we
require but this ? for in this lie all things which
we can desire. Of all miseries the bondage of sin
»

10

THE MYSTERY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

is the most miserable. It is worse than sorrow
worse than pain. It is such a ruin that no other
ruin is like unto it. It troubles all the peace of
life. It turns sunshine into darkness. It embit­
ters all pleasant fountains, and poisons the very
blessings of God which should have been for our
healing. It doubles the burdens of life, which are
heavy enough already. It makes death a terror
and a torture, and the eternity beyond the grave
an infinite and intolerable blackness. Alas! we
have felt the weightiness of sin, and know that
there is nothing like it. Life has brought many
sorrows to us, and many fears. Our hearts have
ached a thousand times. Tears have flowed. Sleep
has fled. Food has been nauseous to us, even
when our weakness craved for it. But never
have we felt any thing like the dead weight of a
mortal sin. What then must a life of such sins
be? What must be a death in sin 1 What the
irrevocable eternity of unretracted sin ?
From all this horror whither shall we look for
deliverance? Not to ourselves ; for we know the
practical infinity of our weakness, and the incor­
rigible vitality of our corruption. Not to any
earthly power; for it has no jurisdiction here.
Not to philosophy, literature, or science; for in
this case they are but sorry and unhelpful mat­
ters. Not to any saint, however holy, nor to any
angel, however mighty ; for the least sin is a
bigger mountain than they have faculties to
move. Not to the crowned queen of God’s crea­
tion, the glorious and the sinless Mary; for even
her holiness cannot satisfy for sin, nor the white­
ness of her purity take out its deadly stain

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BWOD.

11

Neither may we look for deliverance direct from
the patience and compassion of God himself; for
in the abysses of his wisdom it has been decreed,
that without shedding of blood there shall be no
remission of sin. It is from the Precious Blood of
Jesus Christ alone that our salvation comes. Ont
of the immensity of its merits, out of the inex­
haustible treasures of its satisfactions, because of
the resistless power of its beauty over the justice
and the wrath of God, because of that dear com­
bination of its priceless worth and its benignant
prodigality, we miserable sinners are raised out
of the depths of our wretchedness, and restored to
the peace and favor of our Heavenly Father.
Is hope sweet where despair had almost begun
to reign ? Is it a joy to be emancipated from a
shameful slavery, or set free from a noxious dun­
geon ? Is it gladness to be raised as if by miracle
from a bed of feebleness and suffering, to sudden
health and instantaneous vigor? Then what a
gladness must salvation be ! For, as there is no
earthly misery like sin, so is there no deliverance
like that with which Jesus makes us free. Words
will not tell it. Thought only can think it, and
it must be thought out of an enlightened mind
and a burning heart, dwelt on for a long, long
while. The first moment after death is a moment
which must infallibly come to every one of us.
Earth lies behind us, silently wheeling its obedient
way through the black-tinted space. The mea­
sureless spaces of eternity lie outstretched before
us. The words of our sentence have scarcely
floated away into silence. It is a sentence of sal­
vation. Th0 great risk has been run, and we are

ns MYSTEUY OF ΤΠΕ FIIECIOVS m.oon.

saved. God's power is holding oar soul lest it
should die of gladness. It cannot take in the
whole of its eternity. The least accidental joy is
e world of beatitude in itself The blaze of the
vision is overwhelming. Then the truth that
eternity is eternal,—this is so hard to master.
Tet all this is only what wo mean when wo
pronounce the word salvation. How hideous the
difference of that first moment after death, if we
had not been saved ! It turns us cold to think
of it. But oh, joy of joys ! we have seen the face
of Jesus; and the light in his eyes, and the smile
upon his face, and the words upon his lips, were
salvation.
But there are some who do not feel that sin
is such a horror or captivity. They say it lays
no weight upon their hearts. They say their
lives are full of sunshine, and that time flows with
them as the merry rivulet runs in summer with
a soothing brawl over its colored stones, and its
waters glancing in the sun. They say it is so
with them; and truly they should know best.
ΎβΙ I hardly believe them. If they are happy,
it is only by fits and starts; and then not with a
complete happiness. There is ever an upbraiding
voice within. An habitual sinner always 1ms the
look ot a jaded and disappointed man. There is
weariness in the very light of bis eyes, vexation
in the very sound of bis voice. tVhy is he so
cross with others, if Ire is so happy with himself ?
Then are there not also dreadful times, private
tunes when no one but God sees him, when ilu ls
chilled throng and through with fear, when h
Weary of life because ho is so miserable, who "cp”

THE MYSTERY OF THE PREFJOUH BLOOP.

1Λ

past weighs upon him like a nightman·, and the
future terrifies him like a coming wild beast?
When death springs upon him, how will lie die 7
When judgment comes, what will he answer?
Yet even if the sinner could fro through lil'·· with
the gay indifference to which he pretends, he is
not to be envied. It is only a sleep, a lethargv,
or a madness,—one or other of these according to
his natural disposition. For there must be an
awakening at last; and when and where will it
be ? They that walk in their sleep are sometime
*
wakened if they put their foot into cold water.
What if the sinner’s awakening should be from
the first touch of the fire that burns beyond the
grave ?
But we claim no share in any foolish happiness
of sin. We are on God’s side. We belong to
Jesus. Sin is our great enemy, as well as our
great evil. We desire to break with it altogether.
We are ashamed of our past subjection to it. We
are uneasy under our present imperfect separa­
tion from it. Our uppermost thought—no! not
merely our uppermost thought, our only thought
—is our salvation. We care for no science, but
the science of redeeming grace. The cross of
Christ is our single wisdom. Once we wished foi
many things, and aimed at many things. But we
are changed now. Our lives are amazingly sim­
plified, simplified by the fear of sin and by the
love of God. Our anxiety now is, that all this
may remain. We fear another change, especially
a change back again. We can think calmly of no
change except from little love to much love, and
from much love to more love. The right of Jesus
2

I

14

ΤΠΕ MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

to our love, to our best love, to all our love, is
becoming plainer and plainer to ns. His ex­
ceeding loveliness is growing more and more
attractive, because it is revealing itself to us
every day like a new revelation. What depths
there are in Jesus, and how wonderfully he lights
them up with the splendors of bis eternal love !
Do we not feel everyday more and more strongly,
that we must he more for Jesus than wo are, that
of all growing things divine love is the most
growing, that all idea of a limit to oui· love of
Jesus, or of moderation in our service of him, is a
folly as well as a disloyalty? He was the bright­
ness of innumerable lives and the sweetness of
innumerable sorrows, when he was but the ex­
pectation of longing Israel. What must he be
now, when he has come, when he has lived, and
shed his Blood, and died, and risen, and ascended,
and then come back again in all the unutterable
endearments of the Blessed Sacrament? Why
are our hearts so cold ? Why is our love so faith­
less, and our faith so unloving? We try, and still
we do not love as we wish to love. We try again,
and love more ; and yet it is sadly short of the
love we ought to have. We strive and strive, and
still we only languish when we ought to burn.
He longs for our love, sweet, covetous lover of
souls as he is. He longs for our love; and welong for nothing so much as to love him. Surely
there must be a time and a place, when both he
and we shall be satisfied ; but the place will be
heaven, and the time nothing else than the great
timeless eternity.
Salvation is through the Precious Blood. We

I
THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

15

will take that for our study of Jesus this time.
When love is humble, it prays with David to be
washed more and more from its iniquity. But
there is no washing away of iniquity, except in
the Precious Blood of our most dear Redeemer.
AV hen love is bold, it prays to be set on fire with
the flames which Jesus came to kindle. But it is
only the Precious Blood which makes our heart
beat hotly with the love of him. So let us take
the Precious Blood for our study now : and let us
study it in a simple, loving way, not so much to
become deep theologians, though deep theology
is near of kin to heroic sanctity, but that our
hearts may be more effectually set on fire with
the love of Jesus Christ. There is so much to be
said, that we cannot say it all, because we do not
know it all. We must make a choice; and we
will choose these six things, the Mystery of the
Precious Blood, the Necessity of it, its Empire,
its History, its Prodigality, and, last of all, the
Devotion to it in the Church.
We must take a saint to guide us on our way.
Let it be that grand lover of Jesus, the Apostle St.
Paul. His conversion was one of the chief glories
of the Precious Blood. Redeeming grace was his
favorite theme. He was forever magnifying and
praising the Blood of Jesus. His heart was filled
•with it, and was enlarged by grace that it might
hold yet more. After the Heart of Jesus, never
was there a human heart like that of Paul, in
which all other human hearts might beat as if it
were their own, unless it be that other universal
heart, the heart of King David, which has poured
itself out for all mankind, in those varying strains

16

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BI.OOI).

of every changeful fooling, by means of its sweet
psalms. St. Paul’s heart feels for every one, makes
every one's case its own, sorrows and rejoices with
those who sorrow or rejoice, and becomes all things
to all men that it may save them all. Among the
wonders of creation there are few to compare with
that glorious apostolic heart. The vastness of its
sympathies, the breadth of its charity, the un
wearied hopefulness of its zeal, the delicacy of its
considerateness, the irresistible attraction of its
imperious love—all this was the work of the Pre­
cious Blood; and that heart is still alive even upon
earth, still beating in his marvellous Epistles as
part of the unquenchable life of the Church. It is
impossible to help connecting these characteristics
of St. Paul’s heart with the manifest devotion to
the Precious Blood. Let us take him then as our
guide amidst the unsearchable riches of Christ and
the superabounding graces of his redeeming Blood.
As it was with the disciples as they walked to
Emmaus with Jesus, so will it be with us as we go
along with his servant Paul. Our hearts will burn
within us by the way; and we ourselves shall grow
hot from the beat of that magnificent heart of him
who guides us.
We are then to consider, first of all, the Mystery
of the Precious Blood. It was one of God’s eternal
thoughts. It was part of his wisdom, part of bis
glory, part of his own blessedness from all eternity.
You know that creation, although exceedingly
ancient, perhaps so ancient as to be beyond our
calculations, is nevertheless not eternal. It could
not be so. To be eternal is to be without begin­
ning; and to be without beginning is to bo inde-

\

k

t

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

17

pendent of any cause or power. This is a true
description of God. But creation had a time at
which it began, and it was the independent act of
God’s most holy, most condescending will. Thut
there was an eternity before creation, a vast, un
imaginable, adorable life, not broken up into cen
turies and ages, not lapsing but always still, not
passing but always stationary, a life which had nc
past and no future, because its whole self was
always present to itself. This was the life of God
before any creation, an unspeakably glorious lite,
which we can think of with love and adoration,
but which it is quite impossible for us to under­
stand. We shall say more of it in the third chapter.
Some holy persons, like Mother Anne Seraphine
Boulier of the Visitation at Dijon, have had such
an exceeding devotion to this life of God prior to
creation, that they have by God’s order shaped
their spirituality wholly upon it. Very often, when
the troubles of life vex and ruffle us, or when we
are downcast and distrustful, it would do us good
to think of that ancient life of God. It would fill
us with quiet awe. We should feel our own little­
ness more sensibly, and we should care less about
the judgments of the world. The thought of it
would be like a bed to lie down upon, when we
are weary with work or fatigued with disappoint­
ment.
Nevertheless there is a sense in which creation
was eternal. It was eternally in the mind of God.
It was one of his eternal ideas, always before him;
so that he never existed without this idea of crea­
tion in his all-wise mind and in his all-powerful
intention. Moreover, it was always part of his
B
2*

IS

TUB MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

intention that the Creator should become as it
were part of his own creation, and that an Un­
created Person should really and truly assume a
created nature and be born of a created mother.
This is what we call the mystery of the Incarna­
tion. It is this which makes creation so magnifi­
cent. It was not merely a beautiful thing which
God made as an artificer, and which he set outside
of himself, and kept at a distance from himself to
look at, to admire, to pity, and to love. He always
intended to be part of it himself in a very wonder­
ful way. So that there would have been Jesus and
Mary, even if there had never been any sin : only
Jesus would not have been crucified, and Mary
would not have had any dolors. But the sight
of sin was also with God from the beginning, that
is, through all his unbeginning eternity; and thus
the Precious Blood also, as the ransom for sin, was
with him from the beginning. It was one of his
eternal thoughts. If we may dare to say so, it
was an idea which made him more glorious, a
thought which rendered him more blessed. That
same dear Blood, the thought of which makes us
so happy now, has been part of God’s happiness
forever.
He created the angels and the stars. How
ancient the angels are we do not know. In all
ways they are wonderful to think of, because they
are so strong, so wise, so various, so beautiful, so
innumerable. But they do not lie in our way just
now; because, although they owe all their graces
to the Precious Blood, they were not redeemed by
the Precious Blood. Those angels, who did not
fall, did not sin, and so needed no redemption; and

ΤΠΕ MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BT.OOD

M

God would not allow those who fell to be red emed
at all. Thia makes ns sometimes think that God
was more severe with his world of angels than
with his world of men. But this is not really the
case. It only shows us how we owe more to Jesus
than we often think of. The angels could not
make any satisfaction to the justice of God for
their sins. If all the angels, good and bad together,
had suffered willingly the most excruciating tor­
ments for millions upon millions of ages, those
willing torments could not have made up to God
for the sin of the least sinful of those angels who
are now devils. If our dearest Saviour had taken
upon himself the nature of angels, the case would
have been different. But he became man, not
angel; and so his Passion, as man, satisfied for ah
possible sins of men The sufferings of his Pas­
sion were greater and of more price than all the
torments of countless angels. The severity of God
exacted more from him upon the Cross than it
ever exacted, or is exacting now, from the tortured
angels. Thus you see God has not been more
severe with them than with us : only that Jesus
made himself one of us, and took all our share of
God’s severity upon himself, leaving us the easy
happiness of faith, and hope, and love. You see
we come upon the kindness of Jesus everywhere.
There is not even a difficulty in religion, but some­
how the greatness of his love is at the bottom of
it, and is the explanation of it. Wonderful Jesus!
that was the name the prophet Isaias gave him.
“He shall be called Wonderful.” How sweet it is
to be so hemmed in by’ the tokens of bis love, that
we cannot turn to any side without meeting them!

20

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Yet his love would bo sweeter to us if we could
only repay it with more love ourselves.
God made the angels and the stars. The starry
world is an overwhelming thing to think of. Its
distances arc so vast that they frighten us. The
lumber of its separate worlds is so enormous that
t bewilders us. Imagine a ray of light, which
travels one hundred and ninety-two thousand
miles in a second; and yet there are stars whoso
light would take a million of years to roach the
earth. We know of two hundred thousand stars
down to the ninth magnitude. In one single cluster
of stars, eighteen millions of stars have boon dis­
covered between the tenth and eleventh magni­
tudes. Of these clusters men have already dis­
covered more than four thousand. Each of these
stars is not a planet, like the earth ; but a sun, like
our sun, and perhaps with planets round it, like
ourselves. Of these suns we know of some which
are one hundred and forty-six times brighter than
our sun. What an idea all this gives us of the
grandeur and magnificence of God ! Yet we know
that all these stars were created for Jesus and be­
cause of Jesus. lie is the head and first-born of
all creation. Mary's Son is the King of the stars.
His Precious Blood has something to do with all
of them. Just as it merited graces for the angels,
so does it merit blessings for the stars. If they
have been inhabited before we were, or are inha­
bited now, or will at some future time begin to be
inhabited, their inhabitants, whether fallen and
redeemed, or unfallen and so not needing to be
redeemed, will owe immense things to the Precious
Blood Yet earth, our little, humble earth, will

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

/

21

always have the right to treat the Precious Blood
with special endearments, because it is its native
place. When the angels, as they range through
space, see our little globe twinkling with its speck
of colored light, it is to them as the little Holy
House in the hollow glen of Nazareth, more sacred
and more glorious than the amplest palaces in
starry space.
God made the stars; and, whether the earth was
made by itself from the first, or was once part of
the sun, and thrown off from it like a ring, God
made the earth also, and shaped it? and adorned
it, and filled it with trees and animals; and then
looked upon his work, and it shone forth so beauti­
fully with the light of his own perfections, that he
blessed it, and, glorying in it, declared that it was
very good. We know what an intense pleasure
men take in looking at beautiful scenery. When
we feel this pleasure, we ought to feel that we are
looking at a little revelation of God, a very true
one although a little one, and we ought to think
of God’s complacency when he beheld the scenery
of the primeval earth and rejoiced in what he
saw. There was no sin then. To God’s eye earth
was all the more beautiful because it was innocent,
and the dwelling-place of innocence. Then sin
came. Why God let it come we do not know. We
shall probably know in heaven. We are certain,
however, that in some way or other it was more
glorious for him, and better for us, that evil should
be permitted. Some people trouble themselves
about this. It does not trouble me at all. What­
ever God does must of course be most right. My
understanding it would not make it more right;

22

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

neither conld I do any thing to mend matters, if I
understood it ever so well. Every one should keep
in his own place : it is the creature’s place to be­
lieve, adore, and love.
Sin came. With sin came many fearful conse­
quences. This beautiful earth was completely
wrecked. It went on through space in the sun­
shine as before; but in God’s sight, and in the
destiny of its inhabitants, it was all changed.
Jesus could no longer come in a glorious and un­
suffering incarnation. Mary would have to die;
and, though she was sinless, she would need to be
redeemed with a single and peculiar redemption,
a redemption of prevention, not of rescue. She
also, the immaculate Mother and Queen of crea­
tion, must be bought by the Precious Blood.
Had it not been for Jesus, the case of earth would
have been hopeless, now that sin had come. God
would have let it go, as he let the angels go. It
would have been all hateful and dark in his sight,
as the home of the fallen spirits is. But it was
not so. Earth was dimmed, but it was not dark­
ened, disfigured, but not blackened. God saw it
through the Precious Blood, as through a haze ;
and there it lay with a dusky glory over it, like a
red sunset, up to the day of Christ. No sooner'
had man sinned, than the influence of the Precious
Blood began to be felt. There was no adorable
abruptness on the part of God, as with the angels.
His very upbraiding of Adam was full of paternal
gentleness. With his punishment he mingled
promises. He spoke of Mary, Eve’s descendant,
and illumined the penance of our first parents by
the prophecy of Jesus. As the poor offending

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

23

earth lay then before the sight of God, so does
it lie now ; only that the haze is more resplendent,
since the Sacrifice on Calvary was offered. The
Precious Blood covers it all over, like a sea or like
an atmosphere. It lies in a beautiful crimson
light forever, a light softening the very shades,
beautifying the very gloom. God does not see us
as we sec ourselves, but in a brighter, softer light.
We are fairer in his sight than we are in our own,
notwithstanding his exceeding sanctity, because he
sees us in the Blood of his dear Son. This is a
consolation, the balm of which is not easily ex­
hausted. We learn a lesson from it also. Our
view of creation should be like God’s view. We
should see it, with all its countless souls, through
the illuminated mist of the Precious Blood. Its
spiritual scenery should be before us, every thing,
everywhere, goldenly red.
This is the shape, then, which our Father’s
love takes to us his creatures. It is an invitation
of all of us to the worship and the freedom of the
Precious Blood. It is through this Blood that he
communicates to us his perfections. It is in this
Blood that ho has laid up his blessings for us, as
in a storehouse. This is true, not only of spiritual
blessings, but of all blessings whatsoever. That
the elements still wait upon us sinners, that
things around us are so bright and beautiful, that
pain has so many balms, that sorrow has so many
alleviations, that the common course of daily pro­
vidence is so kindly and so patient, that the
weight, the frequency, and the bitterness of evils
are so much lightened,—is all owing to the Pre­
cious Blood. It is by this Blood that he has

24

i

THF, MV8TKRV OF Till·', PRECIOUS BLOOD.

created over again his frustrated creation. It is
out of this Blood that all graces come, whether
those of Mary, or those of tho angels, or those
if men. It is this Blood which merits all good
things for every one. The unhappy would ho
more unhappy, wore it not for this Blood. Tho
wicked would he more wicked, were it not for this
Blood. The flames of hell would burn many times
more furiously, if the shedding of this Blood had
not allayed their fury. There is not a corner of
God’s creation, which is not more or less under
the benignant control of the Precious Blood.
Our Heavenly Father, then, may well call his
creatures to gather round these marvellous foun­
tains, and adore his wisdom and his love. Who
could have dreamed of such an invention, an
invention which grows more astonishing the more
we penetrate its mystery ? The angels wonder
more than men, because they better understand
it. Their superior intelligence ministers more
abundant matter to their love. From the very
first he invited the angels to adore it. He made
their adoration a double exorcise of humility,—of
humility toward himself, and of humility toward
us their inferior fellow-creatures. It was the test
to which he put their loyalty. Ho showed them
his beloved Son, the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity, in his Sacred Humanity, united to a
lower nature than their own, and in that lower
nature crowned their King and Hoad, to be wor­
shipped by them with absolute and unconditional
adoration. The Son of a human mother was to be
their Head, and that daughter of Eve to be herself
their queen. He showed them in that Blood the

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

25

source of all their graces. Each angel perhaps
had thousands of beautiful graces. To many of
them we on earth could give no name, if we
beheld them. But they were all wonderful, all
instinct with supernatural holiness and spiritual
magnificence. Yet there was not a single grace
in any angel which was not merited for him by
the Blood of Jesus, and which had not also its
type and counterpart in that Precious Blood.
The Precious Blood—man’s Blood—was as the dew
of the whole kingdom of the angels. It would
have redeemed them, had they needed to be re­
deemed or were allowed to be redeemed. But, as
it was not so, it merited for them, and was the
source of, all their grace. Well then may the
angels claim to sing the song of the Lamb, to
whose outpoured Human Life they also owed so
much, though not because it was outpoured.
Nevertheless the Precious Blood belongs in an
especial manner to men. Much more, therefore,
does God invite them to come to its heavenly
baths, and receive therein, not only the cleansing
of their souls, but the power of a new and
amazing life. Every doctrine in theology is a
call to the Precious Blood. Every ceremony in
the Church tells of it. Every sermon that is
preached is an exhortation to the use of it.
Every Sacrament is a communication of it.
Every supernatural act is a growth of it. Every
thing that is holy on the earth is either leaf, bud,
blossom, or fruit of the Blood of Jesus. To its
fountains, God calls the sinner, that he may be
lightened of his burdens. There is no remission for
him in any thing else. Only there is his lost son·
3

26

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

ship to bo found. But the saints are no less called
by God to these invigorating streams. It is out
of the Precious Blood that men draw martyrdoms,
vocations, celibacies, austerities, heroic charities,
and all the magnificent graces of high sanctity.
The secret nourishment of prayer is from those
fountains. They purge the eye for sublime con­
templations. They kindle the inward fires of
self-sacrificing love. They bear a man safely,
and even impetuously, over the seeming impos­
sibilities of perseverance. It is by the Blood of
Jesus that the soul becomes ever more and more
radiant. It is the secret source of all mystical
transformations of the soul into the likeness of its
Crucified Spouse. It is the wine which “ inebri­
ates” the virgins of God. Out of it come rap­
tures, and ecstasies; and by it the strength of
faith grows even to the gift of miracles. It fills
the mind with heavenly visions, and peoples the
air with divine voices. All the new nature of the
man, who is “renewed in Christ Jesus,” comes
from this Blood, whether it be hie love of suffer­
ing, his delight in shame, his grace of prayer, his
unworldly tastes, his strange humility, his shy
concealment, his zeal for souls, his venturous
audacity, or his obstinate perseverance. Sinner,
saint, and common Christian, all in their , wn
ways, require the Precious Blood each moment
of their lives; and, as the manna in the mouths
of the Israelites had the savor which each man
wished it to have, so is it with the sweetness the
variety, and the fitness of the graces of the Pre­
cious Blood.
All men remember their past lives by certain

TITE MYSTERY OF T Π K VRECIOUR ΒΤ,ΟΟΤι.

27

datos or epochs. Some men date by sorrows,
some by joys, and some by moral changes or
intellectual revolutions. Some divide their lives
according to the different localities which they
have inhabited, and some by the successive occu­
pations in which they have been engaged. The
lives of some are mapped out by illnesses,while the
tranquillity of an equable prosperity can only distinguish itself by the lapse of years and the eras
of boyhood, youth, a\id age. But the real dates
in a man’s life are the days and hours in which it
came to him to have some new idea of God. To
all men perhaps, bnt certainly to the thoughtful
and the good, all life is a continual growing reve­
lation of God. We may know no more theology
this year than we did last year, but we undoubt­
edly know many fresh things about God. Time
itself discloses him. The operations of grace illu­
minate him. Old truths grow: obscure truths
brighten. New truths are incessantly dawning.
But a new idea of God is like a new birth. What
a spiritual revolution it was in the soul of St.
Peter, when the Eternal Father, intensely loving
that eager, ardent follower of his Son, one day
secretly revealed to him the divinity of his be­
loved Master 1 It matters not whether it were in
a dream by night, or in an audible voice at prayer,
or in the last noiseless step of a long-pondered
train of thought. Whenever and however it came,
it was a divine revelation out of which flowed
that new life of his, which is the strength of the
Church to this day. So in its measure and degree
is everyr new idea of God to every one of us. The
Precious Blood brings us many such ideas. One

28

ΤΠΕ MYSTERY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD

of them is the fresh picture which it presents to
us of his intense yearning love of souls. If wo
were to form our idea of God from theology, it
would he full of grandeur. Wo should have a
perception of him as vivid as it would be sublime.
But. if, not hitherto having known the Bible, wo
were to turn to the Old Testament, and see God
loving, favoring, magnifying, bis own historic
people, and hear him passionately pleading for
their love, he would seem like a new God to us,
because we should receive such a new idea of him.
Indeed, it would be such an idea of him as would
require both time and management before it
would harmonize with the idea of him implanted
in us by theology. Even our own sinfulness gives
us in one sense a broader idea of God than inno­
cence could have given. So, if we think of the
almost piteous entreaties with which he invites
all the wide heathen world to the Precious Blood,
whether by the voice of his Church, or by the
bleeding feet and wasting lives of his missionaries,
or by secret pleadings down in each heathen
heart, grace-solicited at every hour, we get a new
idea of God, and a more complete conviction that
his invitation of his creatures to the Precious
Blood is indeed the genuine expression of his
creative love.
There is no narrowness in divine things. There
is no narrowness in the Precious Blood. It is a
divine invention which partakes of the universality
and immensity of God. The tribes that inhabit
the différent lands of the earth are distinguished
by different characteristics. One nation differs so
much from another, as to be often unable to judge

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

29

of the moral character of the other’s actions
What, for instance, would be pride in the inha­
bitant of one country would only be patriotism in
the inhabitant of another; or what would be false­
hood in one country is only the characteristic way
of putting things in another. It is not that the
immutable principles of morality can be changed
by national character or by climate; but that out­
ward actions signify such different inward habits
in various countries, that a foreigner is no judge
of them. Thus a foreign history of any people is
for the most part little better than a hypothesis,
and is not unfrequently a misapprehension from
first to last. But the Precious Blood is meant for
all nations. As all stand in equal need of it, so all
find it just what they want. It is to each people
the grace which shall correct that particular form
of human corruption which is prominent in their
natural character. The Oriental and the Western
must both come to its healing streams; and in it
all national distinctions are done away. In that
laver of Salvation there is neither Jew nor Greek,
barbarian, Scythian, bond, or free: all are one in
the redeeming Blood of Jesus.
As it is with the countries of the world, so is it
with the ages of the world. Each age has its own
distinctive spirit. It has its own proper virtues,
and its own proper vices. It has its own sciences,
inventions, literature, policy, and development.
Each age thinks itself peculiar, which it is; and
imagines it is better than other ages, which it is
not. It is probably neither better nor worse. In
substantial matters the ages are pretty much on a
level with each other. But each has its own way,
3·

30

THF. MYSTERY OF THF, PRECIOUS BLOOD.

and requires to be dealt with in that. way. This
is the reason why the Church seems to act differ­
ently in different ages. There is a sense in which
the Church goes along with the world. It is the
same sense in which the shepherd leaves the sheep
which have not strayed, and goes off in search of
the one that has strayed. Each age is a stray
sheep from God; and the Church has to seek it
and fetch it back to him, so far as it is allowed to
do so. We must not make light of the differences
of the ages. Each age needs persuading in a man­
ner of its own. It finds its own difficulties in reli­
gion. It has its own peculiar temptations and
follies. God’s work is never done in any one age.
It has to be begun again in every age. Old con­
troversies become useless, because they cease to
be convincing. Old methode are found unsuitable,
because things have changed. It is on this account
that theology puts on new aspects, that religious
orders first succeed and then fail, that devotion
has fashions and vicissitudes, that art and ritual
undergo changes, that discipline is modified, and
that the Church puts herself in different relations
to the governments of the world. But the Pre­
cious Blood adapts itself with changeful uniformity
to every age. It is always old and always new.
It is the one salvation. It is coextensive with
any civilization. No science innovates upon it.
The world never exhausts its abundance or out­
grows its necessity.
But why should we heap together these gene­
ralities? Are they any thing more than so much
pious rhetoric? Let us draw nearer to the mystery
and see. What strikes us at the first thought of

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

31

the Precious Blood? It is that we have to wor­
ship it with the highest worship. It is not a relic
at which we should look with wonder and love,
and which we should kiss with reverence, as having
once been a temple of the Holy Ghost, and an
instrument chosen by God for the working of
miracles, or as flesh and bone penetrated with that
celestial virtue of the Blessed Sacrament which
will raise it up at the last day in a glorious resur­
rection. It is something unspeakably more than
’ this. We should have to adore it with the highest
adoration. In some local heaven or other, in some
part of space far off or near, God at this hour is
unveiling his blissful majesty before the angels and
the saints. It is in a local court of inconceivable
magnificence. The Human Body and Soul of Jesus
are there, and are its light and glory, the surpass­
ing sun of that heavenly Jerusalem. Mary, his
Mother, is throned there like a lovely moon in the
mid-glory of the sunset, beautified rather than ex­
tinguished by the effulgence round her. Millions
of lordly angels are abasing their vast grandeur
before the ecstatic terror of that unclothed Vision
of the Eternal. Thrills of entrancing fear run
through the crowds of glorified saints who throng
the spaces of that marvellous shrine. Mary her­
self upon her throne is shaken by an ecstasy of
fear before the mightiness of God, even as a reed
is shaken by the wind. The Sacred Heart of Jesus
beats with rapturous awe, and is glorified by the
very blessedness of its abjection, before the im­
mensity of those Divine Fires, burning visibly in
their overwhelming splendors. If we could enter
there as we are now, we should surely die. We

82

ΤΠΕ MYSTERY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

nre not strengthened yet to hear the depth of that
prostrate humiliation, which is needed there, and
which is the inseparable joy of heaven. Our lives
would be shattered by the throbs of awe which
must beat like vehement pulses in our souls. But
we know the limits of our nature. We know, at
least in theory, the abjection which befits the
creature in the immediate presence of its Creator.
We can conceive the highest adoration of a sinless
immortal soul as a worship which it could not pay
to any creature, however exalted, however near to
God. We can picture ourselves to ourselves, pros­
trate on the clouds of heaven, blinded with excess
of light, every faculty of the mind jubilantly
amazed by the immensity of the Divine Perfec­
tions, every affection of the heart drowned in some
forever new abyss of the unfathomable sweetness
of God. We know that we should lie in sacred
fear and glad astonishment before the throne of
Mary, if we saw it gleam.ng in its royalty. Yet
we know also that this deep reverence would
be something of quite a different kind from our
abjection before the tremendous majesty of God.
But, if we saw one drop of the Precious Blood,
hanging like the least pearl of dew upon a blade
of grass on Calvary, or as a dull disfigured splash
in the dust of the gateway of Jerusalem, we should
nave to adore it with the selfsame adoration as the
uncovered splendors of the Eternal.
It is no use repeating this a thousand times ; yet
we should have to repeat it a thousand thousand
times, for years and years, before we should get
the vastness of this piercing truth into our souls.
We should worship one drop of the Precious Blood

ΤΠΕ MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

33

with the same worship as that wherewith we wor­
ship God. Let us kneel down, and hide our faces
before God, and say nothing, but let the immensity
of this faith sink down into our souls.
If the Easter Resurrection left any red stains
upon the stones, or roots, or earth of Gethsemane,
they are no longer to be found beneath the luxu­
riant vegetation of the Franciscan garden there.
Neither indeed if they had been left, when Easter
passed,could we have worshipped them with divine
worship; for they had already ceased to be the
Precious Blood. AVhatever Jesus did not reunite
to himself in the Resurrection remained disunited
from the Person of the Word forever, and there­
fore, however venerable, had no claim to adoration.
But, had we been in Jerusalem on the Friday and
the Saturday, we should have found objects, or
rather the multiplied presence of an object, of
dreadest worship everywhere. The pavement of
the streets, the accoutrements of the Roman
legionaries, the floors of their barracks, the steps
of Pilate’s judgment-hall, the pillar of the scourg­
ing, the ascent of Calvary, the wood of the Cross,
many shoes and sandals of the multitude, many
garments either worn or in the clothes-presses,
ropes, tools, scourges, and many other things,
were stained with Precious Blood; and every­
where the angels were adoring it. Had we been
there, and had been Avise with the holy wisdom of
our present faith, we must have adored it also.
But what a picture of the world it gives us! What
an awful taking of a place in bis own creation on
the part of the Incomprehensible Creator! What
a view of God it gives us! What an idea of sin !

c

34

THE MY8TBBT OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

What a disclosure of the magnificence of our salva­
tion! The Blood of God, the human Blood of the
Uncreated, the Blood of the Unboginning drawn
three-and-thirty years ago from the veins of a
Jewish maiden, and she, the unproclaimed queen
of creation, hidden in that very city in the depths
of an immeasurable sorrow ! Millions of angels
intently adoring down upon the low-lying surface
of the ground, as if heaven were there, below
rather than above, as indeed it was, and at each
spot adoring with such singular concentration, as
if the Divine Life had been broken up, and there
were many Gods instead of One ! Meanwhile men,
the very part of creation which this Precious Blood
most specially concerned, were passing through
the streets, and over the ruddy spots, treading on
adorable things and yet never heeding, with angels
beneath their sandals and yet never knowing it,
compassed thickly round with mysteries the sudden
revelation of which would have struck them dead,
and yet with the most utter, unsuspecting igno­
rance. It is hard to bring such a state of things
home to ourselves; and yet it is but a type to us
of what we are all of us always doing with the
invisible presence of God among ourselves. God
is within us and without us, above, below, and
around us. Wheresoever we set our feet, God is
there, even if we be going to do evil. If we reach
forth our hands, God is in our hand; ho is in the
air through which our hand passes; and where
our hand touches, there is God also. lie is there
in three different ways, by his essence, by his pre­
sence, and by his power; and in each of those
three ways bis presence is more real than tho

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

35

hardness of the rocks, or the wetness of water, or
the firmness of the earth. Yet we go our ways
as we please, sinning, boasting, and committing
follies, not simply in a consecrated sanctuary, but
in the living God. This mystery was made mani­
fest, by the most wonderful of revelations, in the
Precious Blood, when it was scattered about
Jerusalem.
But we need not go to Jerusalem, we need not
have lived eighteen hundred years ago, to find the
Precious Blood and worship it. Here is part of
that awfulness of our holy faith, which makes us
so thrill with love that it. is sometimes as if we
could not bear the fire which is burning in our
hearts. We actually worship it every day in the
chalice at Mass. When the chalice is uplifted over
the altar, the Blood of Jesus is there, whole and
entire, glorified and full of the pulses of his true
human life. The blood that once lay in the cave
at Olivet, that curdled in the thongs and knots of
the scourges, that matted his hair and soaked bis
garments, that stained the crown of thorns ami
bedewed the Cross, the Blood that he drank him­
self in his own communion on the Thursday night,
the Blood that lay all Friday night in seeming!}'
careless prodigality upon the pavement of the
treacherous city,—that same Blood is living in the
chalice, united to the Person of the Eternal Word,
to be worshipped with the uttermost prostration
of our bodies and our souls. When the beams of
the morning sun come in at the windows of the
church, and fall for a moment into the uncovered
chalice, and glance there as if among precious
stones with a restless, timid gleaming, and the

SG

THE MYSTERY OF THE FHECIOOS BT.OO1J.

priest sees it, and the light seems to vibrato into
his own heart, quickening his faith and love, it is
the Blood of God which is there, the very living
Blood whose first fountains were in the Immacu­
late Heart of Mary. When the Blessed Sacrament is laid upon your tongue,—that moment and
that act which the great angels of God look down
upon with such surpassing awe,—the Blood of
Jesus is throbbing there in all its abounding life
of glory. It sheathes in the sacramental mystery
that exceeding radiance which is lighting all
heaven at that moment with a magnificence of
splendor which exceeds the glowing of a million
suns. You do not feel the strong pulses of his
immortal life. If you did, you could hardly live
yourself. Sacred terror would undo your life.
But in that adorable Host is the whole of the
Precious Blood, the Blood of Gethsemane, Jeru­
salem, and Calvary, the Blood of the Passion, of
the Resurrection, and of the Ascension, the Blood
shed and reassumed. As Mary bore that Precious
Blood within herself of old, so do you bear it now.
It is in his Heart and veins, within the temple of
his Body, as it was when he lay those nine months
in her ever-blessed womb. We believe all this;
nay, we so believe it that we know it rather than
believe it; and yet our love is so faint and fitful.
Our very fires are frost in comparison with such
a faith as this.
The whole of the Precious Blood is in the Chalice
and in the Host. It is not part : it is the whole.
We may well tremble to think what sanctuaries
we are when the Blessed Sacrament is within us.
Let us think again of the innumerable stars. Let

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

37

us multiply their actual millions by millions of
imaginary millions more. Let us suppose them
all to be densely inhabited for countless agf-s by
rav'is of fallen beings. We have no figures to
show the numbers of the individual souls, still less
to represent the multiplied acts of sin of all those
single souls or spirits. But we know thia, that
one drop of the thousands of drops of the Precious
Blood in the glorified Body of Jesus would have
been more than sufficient to clease all those count­
less fallen creations, and to absolve every separate
sinner from every one of his'multitudinous sins.
Nay, that one drop would have given out all those
worlds of redeeming grace, and yet no tittle of its
treasures would be spent. The worth of one drop
of the Precious Blood is simply infinite; conse­
quently, no imaginary arithmetic of possible crea­
tions will convey any adequate idea of its over­
whelming magnificence. Alas ! the very copious­
ness of our redemption makes our view of it less
clear. The very crowding of God’s love causes it
to have something indistinguishable about it.
Who docs not see that it will take us an eternity
to learn Jesus, or rather that we shall never learn
him, but that the endless work of learning him
will be the gladness of our eternity?
But this is not all the mystery. It was no neces­
sity which drove God to the redemption of the
world by the Precious Blood. He might have re­
deemed it in unnumbered other ways. There is
no limit to his power, no exhaustion of his wis­
dom. He might have reconciled the forgiveness
of sin with his stainless sanctity by many inven­
tions of which neither we nor the angels can so
4

88

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

much ns dream. There are vastnesses in Him
who is incomprehensible, of the existence of which
wo have no suspicion. He could have saved us
without Jesus, according to the absoluteness of bis
power. All salvation must be dear: yet who can
drcam of a salvation which should seem at once
so worthy of God and so endearing to man as our
present salvation through Jesus Christ? Even
then our dearest Lord need not have shed his
Blood. There was no compulsion in the Blood­
shedding. One tear of his, one momentary sigh,
one uplifted look to his Father’s throne, would
have been sufficient, if the Three Divine Persons
bad so pleased. The shedding of his Blood was
part of the freedom of his love. It was, in some
mysterious reality, the way of redemption most
worthy of his blessed majesty, and also the way
most likely to provoke the love of men. How
often has God taken the ways of our hearts as the
measure of bis own ways! How often does ho let
his glory and our love seem to be different things,
and then leave himself and go after us !
The Precious Blood is invisible. Yet nothing in
creation is half so potent. It is everywhere, prac­
tically everywhere, although it is not omnipresent.
It becomes visible in the fruits of grace. It will
become more visible in the splendors of glory.
But it will itself be visible in heaven in our Lord’s
glorified Body as in crystalline vases of incom­
parable refulgence. It belongs to him, the Second
Person of the Most Holy Trinity, although its
work is the work of the whole Trinity. In its
efficacy and operation it is the most complete and
most wonderful of all revelations of the Divine

THF. MYSTEllY OF THF. FRF.CIOUS BLOOD.

39

Perfections. The power, the wisdom, the good­
ness, the justice, the sanctity, of God, are most
pre-eminently illustrated by the working of this
Precious Blood.
These are the first thoughts which strike us
about the Precious Blood. They are the ordinary
considerations which our faith has made familiar
to us. We shall have to return to them again in
a different connection; and upon some of them
we must enlarge in another place. A minuter
acquaintance with Christian doctrine teaches us
much more. Some little of this much must be
introduced here for the sake of clearness and in
order that we may better understand what has to
follow.
The Precious Blood was assumed directly to our
Blessed Lord’s Divine Person from his immacu­
late Mother. It was not taken merely to his
Body, so that his Body was directly assumed to
the Person of the Word, and his Blood only in­
directly or mediately as part of his Body. The
Blood, which was the predetermined price of our
redemption, rested directly and immediately on
the Divine Person, and thus entered into the very
highest and most unspeakable degree of the
Hypostatic Union,—if we may speak of degrees
in such an adorably simple mystery. It was not
merely a concomitant of the Flesh, an inseparable
accident of the Body. The Blood itself, as Blood,
was assumed directly by the Second Person of the
Holy Trinity. It camo also from Mary’s blood.
Mary’s blood was the material out of which the
Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Most Holy
Trinity, the artificer of the Sacred Humanity,

40

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

fashioned the Blood of Jesus. Hero wo see how
needful to the joy and gladness of our devotion
is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Who could bear to think that the matter of the
Precious Blood had ever been itself corrupted
with the taint of sin, that it had once been part
of the devil's kingdom, that what was to supply
the free price of our redemption was once en­
slaved to God's darkest, foulest enemy? Is it not
indeed an endless daily jubilee to us, that the
Church has laid upon us as an article of our faith
that sweet truth which the instincts of our devo­
tion had so long made a real part of our belief?
Moreover, there is some portion of the Precious
Blood which once was Mary’s own blood, and
which remains still in our Blessed Lord, incredibly
exalted by its union with his Divine Person, yet
still the same. This portion of himself, it is
piously believed, has not been allowed to undergo
the usual changes of human substance. At this
moment in heaven he retains something which
once was his Mother’s, and which is possibly
visible, as such, to the saints and angels. He
vouchsafed at Mass to show to St. Ignatius the
very part of the Host which had once belonged to
the substance of Mary. It may have a distinct
and singular beauty in heaven, where by his com­
passion it may one day be our blessed lot to see
it and adore it. But, with the exception of this
portion of it, the Precious Blood was a growing
thing. It increased daily, as bo increased in size
and age. It was nourished from his Mother’s
breast. It was fed from the earthly food which
he condescended to take. During hie three-and

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

41

thirty years it received thousands of increments
and augmentations. But each one of those aug­
mentations was assumed directly to his Divino
Person. It was not merely diluted by that which
had existed before. It did not share in the Hypo­
static Union in any lower degree. The last drop
of Blood made in him by the laws of human life,
perhaps while he was hanging on the Cross, was
equally exalted, equally divine, equally adorable,
with the first priceless drops which he drew from
his Blessed Mother.
Our dearest Lord was full and true man. He
was flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone ; and
his incomparable Soul, although it was incom­
parable, was simply and veritably a human soul.
Every thing in his human substance was so ex­
alted by its union with his Divine Person as to be
adorable. Yet it was only his Blood which was
to redeem the world ; and it was only his Blood
as shed which was to do so, and it was only bis
Blood as shed in death which could be the price of
our redemption. The Blood shed at the Circum­
cision was adorable. The Blood shed in Gethse­
mane was adorable. If it be true, as some con­
templatives have seen in vision, that he sweated
Blood at various times in his Infancy because of
his sight of sin and of his Father’s anger, that
Blood also was adorable. But it was the Blood
shed upon the Cross, or at least the Blood shed in
the process of dying, which was the ransom of
our sins. Throughout the whole of the triduo of
the Passion, all his Blood, wherever it had been
shed and wherever it was sprinkled, remained
assumed to his Divinity, in union with his Divine
4·

42

THE MYSTERY OF TÏTE PRECroUB BLOOD.

Person, just ns his soulless Body did, and there­
fore was to be worshipped with divine worship,
with the same adoration as the living and eternal
God. At the Resurrection, when his Precious
Blood had been collected by the ministry of the
angels, and he united it once more to his Body as
he rose, some of it remained unassumed. This
perhaps was for the consolation of his Mother, or
for the enriching of the Church with the most
inestimable of relics. This was the case with the
Blood on the veil of Veronica, on the holy Wind­
ing-Sheet, on some portions of the Cross, and on
the Thorne and Nails. But this Blood, which
was not reassumed at the Resurrection, instantly
lost its union with his Divine Person, ceased to
be what is strictly called the Precious Blood, lost
its right to absolute adoration, and became only
an intensely holy relic, to be venerated with a
very high worship, but not to be worshipped as
divine or adored as the Blood of God. It was no
longer part of himself. But the Blood in the
chalice is the Blood of the living Jesus in heaven.
It is the Blood shed in the Passion, reassumed at
the Resurrection, borne up to heaven in the
Ascension, placed at the Right Hand of the
Father there in its consummate glory and beauti­
fied immortality. Thus it is the very Blood of
God ; and it is the whole of it, containing that
portion which ho had originally assumed from
Mary.
Miraculous Blood is not the Precious Blood
Neither is it like the unassumed Blood of the
Passion. For that had once been Precious Blood,
and had only ceased to be so through the special

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BEOOD.

13

will of our Lord, whereby he willed not to re­
assume it at the Resurrection. The Host has
miraculously bled at mass, to reassure men’s faith
or to cause a reformation in their lives. It has
bled in the hands of Jews and heretics, as if re­
senting sacrilege, and striking awe into their
souls, like the deep fear which fell upon Jerusalem
at the Passion. Crucifixes have sweated Blood
to convert sinners, or to portend some public
calamities, or to show forth symbolically the
ceaseless sympathy of our blessed Lord with his
suffering Church. But this is not Precious Blood,
nor has it ever been Precious Blood. It has never
lived in our Lord. It is greatly to be venerated,
inasmuch as it is a miraculous production of God;
and it appeals especially to the reverence of the
faithful, because of its being appointed to repre­
sent in figure the Precious Blood. If the angel,
who passed at midnight over Egypt to slay the
first-born, reverenced the blood of the Paschal
lamb sprinkled on the door-posts of the Israelites,
simply because it was a type of the Blood of
Jesus, much more should we reverence the mira­
culous Blood which issues from the Host or from
the Crucifix, as a higher and a holier thing than
the symbolic blood of animals. Nevertheless it is
not Precious Blood, nor is it to be adored with
divine worship.
Perhaps this is enough to say of the doctrine
of the Precious Blood. There are many other
interesting questions connected with it. But they
are hard to understand : and, although no minutest
detail of scholastic theology is other than fresh
fuel to our love of God, yet it woo'id not suit

44

THF. MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS ΠΤ.ΟΟη.

cither the brevity or the plainness of this Treatise
to enter upon them here. How shall we ever
raise our love up to the height of the doctrine
which we have put forth already? The Precious
Blood is God’s daily gift, nay, rather we might
call it his incessant gift to us. For, if grace is
coming to us incessantly, save when we sleep,
it comes to us in view of the Precious Blood, and
because of it. But who can estimate the wonder­
fulness of such a gift? It is the Blood of God.
It is not the giving to us of new hearts, or of
immensely increased powers, or of the ability to
work miracles and raise the dead. It is not the
bestowing upon us of angelic natures. It is some­
thing of far greater price than all this would be.
It is the Blood of God. It is the created life
of the Uncreated. It is a human fountain opened
as it were in the very centre of the Divine
Nature. It is a finite thing, with a known origin
and an ascertained date, of a price as infinite as
the Divine Person who has assumed it. To us
creatures the adorable majesty of the Undivided
Trinity is an inexhaustible treasure-house of gifts.
They are poured out upon us in the most lavish
prodigality, and with the most affecting display
of love. They are beautiful beyond compare ;
and they are endlessly diversified, yet endlessly
adapted to the singularities of each heart and
soul. Yet what gift do the Divine Persons give
us, which has more of their own sweetness in it,
than the Precious “Blood ? It has ir it that
yearning and tenderness which belong to the
power of the Father, that magnificent prodigality
which marks the wisdom of the Son, and that

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

45

refreshing fire which characterizes the love of the
Holy Ghost.
It is also a revelation to us of the character of
God. Nothing on earth tells us so much of him,
or tells it so plainly and so endearingly. How
adorable must be the exactness of his justice, bow
unattainable the standard of his sanctity, bow
absorbing the blissful gulfs of his uncreated
purity, if the Precious Blood is to be the solo
fitting ransom for the sins of men, the one di­
vinely-chosen satisfaction to his outraged Majesty!
Yet what a strange wisdom in such an astonish­
ing invention, what an unintelligible condescen­
sion, what a mysterious fondness of creative love I
The more we meditate upon the Precious Blood,
the more strange does it appear as a device of
infinite love. While we are really getting to un­
derstand it more, our understanding of it appears
to grow less. When we see a divine work at a
distance, its dimensions do not seem so colossal as
we find them to be in reality when we come
nearer. The Precious Blood is such a wonderful
revelation of God that it partakes in a measure
of his incomprehensibility. But it is also a mar­
vellous revelation of the enormity of sin. Next
to a practical knowledge of God, there is nothing
which it more concerns us to know and to realize
than the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The deeper
that knowledge is, the higher will be the fabric
of our holiness. Hence a true understanding of
the overwhelming guilt and shame of sin is one
of God’s greatest gifts. But in reality this reve­
lation of the sinfulness of sin is only another kind
of revelation of God. It is by the height of his

16

THE MYSTERY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD,

perfections that we measure the depths of sin.
Its opposition to his unspeakable holiness, tho
amount of its outrage against his glorious justice,
and the intensity of his hatred of it, are mani­
fested by the infinity of the sacrifice which he has
required. If wo try to picture to ourselves what
we should have thought of God and sin if Jesus
had not shed his Blood, we shall see what·» foun­
tain of heavenly science, what an effulgence of
supernatural revelation, the Precious Blood has
been to us.
No doubt it was partly this power of revelation
which made our dearest Lord so impatient to
shed his Blood. He longed to make his Father
known, and so to increase his Father’s glory.
He knew that we must know God in order to love
him, and then that our love of him would in its
turn increase our knowledge of him. He yearned
also with an unutterable love of us ; and this also
entered into his Heart as another reason for his
affectionate impatience. At all events, ho has
been pleased to reveal himself to us as impatient
to shed his Blood. If habits of meditation and
a study of the Gospels have transferred to our
souls a true portrait of Jesus as he was on earth,
this impatience will seem a very striking mystery.
There was ordinarily about our Blessed Lord an
atmosphere of quite unearthly calmness. His
human will seemed almost without human ac­
tivity. It lay still in the lap of the will of God.
It was revealed to Mary of Agreda that he never
exercised choice, except in the choosing of suffer­
ing. This one disclosure is enough to give us
a complete picture of his inward life. Yet there

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

17

was an eagerness, a semblance of precipitation,
a stimulating desire for the shedding of his Blood,
which stand alone and apart in the narrative of
his Thirty-three Years. With desire had he de­
sired to communicate with his chosen few in the
Blessed .Sacrifice of tho Mass, wherein his Blood
is mystically shed. He shed it in that awful,
miraculous reality before he shed it upon Calvary,
as if he could not brook the slowness of human
cruelty, which did not lay hands upon him so
swiftly as his love desired. He was straitened in
himself by his impatience for his baptism of
Blood; and he bedewed the ground at Gethse­
mane with those priceless drops, as if he could
not even wait one night for the violence of Cal­
vary. It seemed as if the relief and satisfaction,
which it was to him to shed his Blood, were
almost an alleviation of the bitterness of his Pas­
sion. This impatience is in itself a revelation to
us of the yearnings of his Sacred Heart.
The prodigality, also, with which he shed his
Blood, stands alone and apart in his life. He was
sparing of his words. He spake seldom, and he
spake briefly. The shortness of his Ministry is
almost a difficulty to our minds. It was the
instinct of his holiness to hide itself. This was
one of the communications of his Divine Nature
to his Human. Even his miracles were compara­
tively few ; and he said that his saints after him
should work greater miracles than his. Yet in the
shedding of his Blood he was spendthrift, pro­
digal, wasteful. As his impatience to shod it
represents to us the adorable impetuosity of the
Most Holy Trinity to communicate himself to hie

48

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

creatures, so his prodigality in shedding it shadows forth the exuberant magnificence and libe­
rality of God. During the triduo of his Passion
ho shed it in all manner of places and in all
manner of ways; and he continued to shed it
even after he was dead, as if he could not rest
until the last drop had been poured out for the
creatures whom he so incomprehensibly loved.
Yet, while he thus carelessly, or rather purposely,
parted with it, how he must have loved his Pre­
cious Blood ! What loves arc there on earth to bo
compared with the love of his Divine Nature for
his Human Nature, or the love of his ever-blessed
Soul for his Body ? Moreover, he must have loved
his Blood with a peculiar love, because it was the
specially appointed ransom of the world. His
love of his dearest Mothci· is the only love which
approaches to bis love of the Precious Blood ; and,
rightly considered, is not one love enclosed within
the other?
He has continued the same prodigality of his
Blood in the Church to this day. He foresaw then
that he should do so; and it was part of his love
of that fountain of our redemption, that he beheld
with exquisite delight its ceaseless and abundant
flowing through the ages which were yet to come.
There is something almost indiscriminate in the
generosity of the Precious Blood. It is poured in
oceans over the world, bathing more souls than it
seems to have been meant for, only that in truth
it was meant for all. It appears not to regard the
probabilities of its being used, or appreciated, or
welcomed. It goes in floods through the seven
mighty channels of the Sacraments. It breaks

THE MYSTERY OF THE PRECIOUS Bl.OOP

4P

their bounds, as if they could not contain the im­
petuosity of its torrents. It lies like a superincum­
bent ocean of sanctifying grace over the Church.
It runs over in profuse excess, and irrigates even
the deserts which lie outside the Church
It goes
to sinners as well as saints. Nay, it even looks as
if it had a propension and attraction to sinners
more than to other men. It is falling forever like
a copious fiery rain upon the lukewarm. It rests
on the souls of hardened apostates, as if it hoped
to sink in in time. Its miraculous action in the
Church is literally incessant. In the Sacraments,
in separate graces, in hourly conversions, in multi­
plied death-beds, in releases from purgatory every
moment, in countless augmentations of grace in
countless souls, in far-off indistinguishable preludes
and drawings toward the faith, this most dear
Blood of Jesus is the manifold life of the world.
Every pulse which beats in it is an intense jubilee
to him. It is forever setting him on fire with frosh
love of us his creatures. It is forever filling him
with a new and incredible gladness, which we can­
not think of without amazement and adoration.
Oh that he would give us one spark of that immense
love of his Precious Blood which he himself is
feeling so blissfully this hour in heaven !
Such is the mystery of the Precious Blood. It
makes the poor fallen earth more beautiful than
the Paradise of old. Its streams are winding their
way everywhere all over the earth. The rivers of
Eden are not to be compared to them for fruitful
ness. Poets have loved the music of the mountain
stream, as it tinkled down the hills amidst the
stones or murmured under leafy shades. Scripturo
D
£>

50

THE MYSTERY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOP.

speaks of the Voice of God ns the voice of many
waters. So is it with the Precious Blood. It. has
a voice which God hears, speaking better things
than the blood of Abel, more than restoring to him
again the lost music of his primeval creation. In
our ears also does it murmur sweetly’, evermore
and evermore, in sorrows, in absolutions, in com­
munions, in sermons, and in all holy joys. It will
never leave us now’. For at last, when it has led us
to the brink of heaven, and when, in the boundless
far-flashing magnificence, the steadfast splendors
and unfathomable depths of the Uncreated joy of
God lie out before us, ocean-like and infinite, that
Blood w’ill still flow round us, and sing to us be­
yond angelic skill, with a voice like that of Jesus,
which when once heard is never to be forgotten,
that word of him w’hose Heart’s Blood it is, Well
done, thou good and faithful servant! enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord! What is the life in
heaven, but an everlasting Te Deum before the
Face of God? But there also, as now in our Te
Deum upon earth, we shall have a special joy, a
special moving of our love, when we call ourselves
“ redeemed with Precious Blood and, as we do
now in church, so there in the innermost courts of
our Father's House, wo shall only’ say’ the words
upon our knees, with a separate gladness, and a
separate depth of adoration.

ΤΠΕ NECESSITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

51

CHAPTER II.
THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

It is very difficult to feel as we ought to do
about eternal things. We are surrounded by the
sights and sounds of this short earthly life. We
judge of things, if not by appearances, at least by
their earthly importance. We cannot disentangle
ourselves from the impressions which earth makes
upon us. We are forced to measure things by «a
standard which we know to be untrue, but which
we are so accustomed to that we cannot even
think by any other standard. Eternity is simply
a word to us; and it is exceedingly hard to make
it more than a word. Thus, when we try to bring
home to ourselves or to others the immense im­
portance of eternal things, and the extreme tri­
viality of all temporal things which are not simply
made to minister to eternal things, we find our­
selves in a difficulty. If we speak of them in
common words, we convey false ideas. If we use
high-sounding language and deal in superlatives, a
sense of unreality conies upon ourselves, and still
more upon our hearers ; and we seem to be exag­
gerating, even when what we say is far below the
mark. Time alone enables us in some degree to
realize the importance of eternal things. A striking
expression may rouse our attention. But eternal
things, in order to be fruitful and practical, must

i>2

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

grow into us by frequent prayer and long fami­
liarity. Even then we fall far short of the mark.
Even then we get false ideas, and, becoming used
to them, are unable to substitute true ones in their
place. It is almost impossible for us truly to
realize the fact that lifelong pain or exuberant
health, ample riches or bitter poverty, uninter­
mitting success oi’ incessant failure, are matters of
perfect unimportance and of absolute indifference,
except so far as they concern the salvation of our
souls. We recognise the impossibility by seeing
bow men who talk and believe rightly fall far
short both of their faith and their words, even
when they are acting up to the highest standard
in their power. We are placed in the same diffi­
culty now, when we want to realize truly the
necessity of the Precious Blood. It is more neces­
sary than we can say or think. What would come
of being without it is inconceivable by us. When
we have said that, we have said all we can say.
So, as time alone will make it familiar to us, we
must say it in many different ways, and look at it
from many different points of view, and repeat it
to ourselves as if we were learning a lesson. This
will enable us to gain time, and will answer better
than big words or unusual metaphors.
The most recollected saint and the most thought­
ful theologian, do what they will, live in the world
all day without being able to realize how much,
and in what ways, they are indebted to God, re­
ceiving from him, living upon him, using him, and
immersed in him, nor how indispensable he is to
us. So is it in the spiritual world with Jesus. It
is a wonder that he ever came among us. Yet he

THE NECESSITY OF THF, PBECIOU8 BLOOP

63

is simply indispensable to us. We could in no
wise do without him. W e want him at every
turn, at every moment. It is the wisdom of life,
as well as its joy, to be always feeling this great
need of Jesus. Λ true Christian feels that he
could no more live for an hour without Jesus, than
he could live for an hour without air or under the
water. There is something delightful in this sense
of utter dependence upon Jesus. It is our only
rest, our only liberty in the world. It is the
bondage of our imperfection that we cannot be
directly and actually thinking of Jesus all day and
night. Yet it is astonishing how near we may come
to this. Our very sleep at last becomes subject to
the thought of Jesus, and saturated with it. It is
part of the gladness of growing older, not only that
we are thereby drawing nearer to our first sight
of him, but that we feel our dependence upon him
more and more. We have learned more about him.
We have had a longer and more varied experience
of him. Our love of him has become more of a
passion, which, by a little effort, promises at some
not very distant day to be dominant and supreme.
The love of Jesus never can be an ungrowing love.
It must grow, if it does not die out. In our phy­
sical life, as we grow older, we become more sen­
sible to cold and wind, to changes of place and to
alterations of the weather. So, as we grow older
in our spiritual life, we become more sensitive to
the presence of Jesus, to the necessity of him, and
to his indispensable sweetness. A constantly in­
creasing sensible love of onr dearest Lord is the
safest mark of our growth in holiness, and the
5·

54

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

most, tranquillizing prophecy of our final perse­
verance.
What would the world he without Jesus? Wo
may perhaps have sometimes made pictures to
ourselves of the day of judgment. We may have
imagined the storms above and the earthquakes
underneath, the sun and the moon darkened, and
the stars falling from heaven, the fire raging over
the face of the earth, men crying to the mountains
and rocks to fall upon them and hide them, and in
the masses of the eastern clouds Jesus coming to
judge the world. We think it appropriate to add
to the picture every feature of physical tumult and
desolation, every wildest unchaining of the ele­
ments, although doubtless the catastrophe of that
day of horrors will follow the grand uniformity of
a natural law, even amidst the impetuosity of its
convulsions. Yet the misery and confusion of earth
at that day will have less of real horror in it than
the earth without Jesus would have, even though
the sun were shining, and the flowers blooming,
and the birds singing. An earth without hope or
happiness, without love or peace, the past a burden,
the present a weariness, the future a shapeless
terror,—such would the earth be, if by impossibility
there were no Jesus. Indeed, it is only in such a
general way that we can conceive what the world
would be without him. We can make no picture
to ourselves of the real horror. His Five Wounds
are pleading forever at the Right Hand of the
Father. They are holding back the divine indigna­
tion. They are satisfying the divine justice. They
are moving the divine compassion. Even temporal
blessings come from them. They are bridling the

ΤΠΕ NECESSITY OF THE ΓΠΕΓΙηϋΗ ΒΙ.ΟΟη.

55

earthquake and the Btorm, the pestilence and the.
famine, and a thousand other temporal conse­
quences of sin, which wo do not know of, or so
much as suspect. Besides this, Jesus is hound up
with our innermost lives. He is more to us than
the blood in our veins. We know that ho is indis­
pensable to us; but we do not drcam how indis­
pensable he is.
There is not a circumstance of life, in which we
could do without Jesus. When sorrow comes
upon us, how should we bear it without him?
What feature of consolation is there about the
commonest human grief, which is not ministered
by faith, or hope, or love? We cannot exagge­
rate the utter moral destitution of a fallen world
without redeeming grace. With the apostate
angels that destitution is simply an eternal hell.
Let the child of a few weeks lie like a gathered
lily, white, cold, faded, dead, before the eyes of
the fond mother who bore it but a while ago; and
how blank is the woe in her heart, if the waters
of baptism have not passed upon it ! Yet what
are those waters, but the Blood of Jesus ? Now
she can sit and think, and be thankful even while
she is weeping, and there can be smiles through
her tears, which, like the rainbows, are signs of
God’s covenant with his people; for she has vo­
lumes of sweet things to think, and bright visions
in her mind, and the sounds of angelic music in
her soul’s ear; and these things are not fancies,
but faiths, knowledges, infallible assurances. Even
if her child were unbaptized, dismal as the
thought is that it can never see God, its eternal
destiny is for the sake of Jesus shorn of all the

56

THE NECESSITY OF THE FUECIOUS BLOOD.

sensible pains and horrors which else would have
befallen it. It owes the natural blessedness, which
it will one day enjoy, to the merits of our dearest
Lord. It is better even for the babes that are not
hie, that he himself was once the Babe of Beth­
lehem.
Sorrow without Christ is not to be endured.
Such a lot would bo worse than that of the beasts
of the field, because the possession of reason would
be an additional unhappiness. The same is true
of sickness and of pain. What is the meaning of
pain, except the purification of our soul 1 Who
could bear it for years, if there were no signifi­
cance in it, no future for it, no real work which it
was actually occupied in doing? Here also the
possession of reason would act to our disadvan­
tage ; for it would render the patience of beasts
impossible to us. The long, pining, languishing
sick-bed, with its interminable nights and days,
its wakeful memories, its keen susceptibilities, its
crowded and protracted inward biography, its
burdensome epochs of monotony,—what would
this be, if we knew not the Son of God, if Jesus
never had been man, if his grace of endurance
had not actually gone out of his Heart into ours
that we might love even while we murmured, and
believe most in mercy when it was showing itself
least merciful ?
In poverty and hardship, in the accesses of
temptation, in the intemperate ardors of youth
or the cynical fatigue of age, in the successive
failures of our plans, in the disappointments of
our affections, in every crisis and revolution of
life, Jesus seems so necessary to us that it appears

ΤΠΕ NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

57

as if he grew more necessary every year, and were
more wanted to-day than he was yesterday, and
would be still more urgently wanted on the mor­
row. But, if he is thus indispensable in life, how
much more will he be indispensable in death !
Who could dare to die without him ? What would
death be, if he had not so strangely and so gra­
ciously died himself? Yet what is death com­
pared with judgment ? Surely most of all he will
be wanted then. Wanted! Oh, it is something
more than a want, when so unspeakable a ruin is
inevitably before us I Want is a poor word to
use, when the alternative is everlasting woe.
Dearest Lord ! the light of the sun and the air
of heaven are not so needful to us as thou art;
and our happiness, not merely our greatest, but
our only, happiness, is in this dear necessity I
Nobody is without Jesus in the world. Even
the lost in hell are suffering less than they should
have suffered, because of the ubiquity of his
powerful Blood. Yet there are some nations who
are so far without him, as to have no saving
knowledge of him. Alas ! there are still heathen
lands in this fair world. There are tribes and
nations who worship stocks and stones, who make
gods of the unseen devils, who tremble before the
powers of nature as if they were at once almighty
and malicious, or who live in perpetual fear of the
souls of the dead. There are some, whose sweet­
est social relations are embittered by the terrors
and panics of their own false religions; and the
innocent sunshine of delightful climates is not
unfrequently polluted by human sacrifices. Yet
these people dwell in some of the loveliest por­

68

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

tions of man s inheritance. Amidst the savage
sylvan sublimities of the Rocky Mountains, on
the eastern declivities of the magnificent Andes,
in the glorious gorges of the Himalayas, in the
flowery coral-islands of the Pacific, or in those
natural Edens laved by the warm seas of the
Indian archipelago, human life is made inhuman
by the horrors of a false religion. Let us take
a picture from the banks of the Quango, in the
interior of Africa. In speaking of the people,
Dr. Livingstone says, “ I have often thought, in
travelling through their· land, that it presents pic­
tures of beauty which angels might enjoy. How
often have I beheld, in still mornings, scenes the
very essence of beauty, and all bathed in a quiet
air of delicious warmth ! Yet the occasional soft
motion imparted a pleasing sensation of coolness
as of a fan. Green grassy meadows, the cattle
feeding, the goats browsing, the kids skipping,
the groups of herdboys with miniature bows,
arrows, and spears; the women wending their
way to the river with watering-pots poised
jauntily on theii· heads; men sewing under the
shady banians; and old gray-headed fathers
sitting on the ground, with staff in hand, listen­
ing to the morning gossip, while others carry
trees or branches to repair their hedges; and all
this, flooded with the bright African sunshine, and
the birds singing among the branches before the
heat of the day has become intense, form pictures
which can never be forgotten.”* Nevertheless, he
tells us that they cannot “ enjoy their luxurious
* Travels, p. 441

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

59

climate,” so completely and habitually do they
fancy themselves to be in the remorseless power
of the disembodied souls. Around our daily path,
on the other hand, are strewn the memorials and
blessings of Jesus. There is the morning Mass,
and the evening Benediction. Three times a day
the Angelus brings afresh its sweet tidings of the
Incarnation. Our early meditation has left a
picture of Jesus on our souls to last the livelong
day. Our beads have to be told, and they too tell
of Jesus. When we sink to rest at night, his own
commendation of his Soul upon the Cross prompts
the words which come most natural to our lips.
Think of those poor heathen, wandering savior­
less over their beautiful lands :—what if we were
like to them ? And what perchance would they
have been if they had had but half our grace?
There arc many who call themselves after the
name of Christ, who are yet outside the Church
of Christ. Theirs is in every way a woeful lot.
To be so near Jesus, and yet not to be of his
blessed fold,—to be within reach of his unsearch­
able riches, and yet to miss of them, to be so
blessed by his neighborhood, and yet not to be
savingly united to him,—this is indeed a deso­
lation. Their creed is words : it is not life. They
know not the redeeming grace of Jesus rightly.
They understand not the mysterious dispositions
of his Sacred Heart. They disesteem his hidden
Sacraments. They know God only wrongly ami
partially. Their knowledge is neither light nor
love. Every thing about Jesus, the merest ac­
cessory of his Church, the faintest vestige of his
benediction, the very shadow of his likeness is

60

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

of such surpassing importance, that for the least,
of these things the whole world would be but a
paltry price to pay. The gift of being in the true
Church is the greatest of all God's gifts which
can be given out of heaven. Wo cannot exagge­
rate its value. It is the pearl beyond price.
Hence also the woeful ncss of being out of the
Church is not to be told in words. I doubt if it is
even to be compassed in thought. What, then,
if we had so far lost Jesus, as to be out of his
Church? Unbearable thought! yet not without
some sweetness, as it makes us feel more keenly
how indispensable he is to us, and what a merciful
good-fortune he has given us to enjoy.
But even inside the Church there are wander­
ing Cains, impenitent sinners who have gone out
from the presence of God and wilfully abide
there. They have lived years in sin, and the
chains of sinful habits are heavy upon them.
They have resisted gjaco a thousand times, and it
looks as if the divine inspirations were weary
of whispering to hearts so deaf. Nothing seems
to rouse them. They never advert to God at all.
Their conversion must be a perfect miracle. They
are obdurate. They are living portions of hell
moving up and down the earth. It is only by
God’s mercy, and through the merits of Jesus,
that we are any better than these obdurate sin­
ners. Yet we rightly thank God, even while wo
tremble at the possibility, that he has prevented
our falling into such a state. What then if we
were like to these ? What if we were numbered
among the hardened and impenitent ? What if
we were now even what we ourselves may have

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

61

been in past years, before the strong arm of the
Sacraments was held out to us, and we had the
grace to lay bold of it and let it draw us safely
to the shore? Yet if we were any of these, hea­
thens, or heretics, or obdurate sinners, we should
still be far better off than if there were no Jesus
in the world ; for all these classes of men are
blessed by Jesus, are visited by his grace con­
tinually, and are for his sake surrounded by hope­
ful possibilities of which they themselves are not
aware. How uflspeakably dreadful then our life
would be without Jesus, when to be a heathen or
a heretic is a misery so terrible !
But surely we have said enough to show the
necessity of Jesus. Let us look at the world
without his Precious Blood. In the early ages
of the earth, while the primitive traditions of
Eden were still fresh and strong, and when God
was from time to time manifesting himself in
supernatural ways, the world drifted so rapidly
from God that its sins began to assume a colossal
magnitude. There was a complete confusion of
all moral laws and duties. There was such an
audacity in wickedness, that men openly braved
God and threatened to besiege heaven. He sent
strange judgments upon them, but they would not
be converted. Scripture represents to us very
forcibly by a human expression the terrific nature
of their iniquity. It says that the Eternal re­
pented of having done what be had eternally
decreed to do, repented of having made man. At
length the divine justice opened the floodgates
of heaven, and destroyed all the dwellers upon
earth, except eight persons; as if the issue of
6

62

THE NECESSITY OF THE PHECIOUS BLOOD.

evil could not otherwise bo staunched. This is a
divino manifestation to us of the nature and
character of evil. It multiplies itself. It tends
to be gigantic, and to get from under control.
It is always growing toward an open rebellion
against the majesty of God. Everywhere on the
earth the Precious Blood is warring down this
evil in detail. Here it is obliterating it: here it is
cutting off its past growths, or making its future
growth slower or of less dimensions. There it is
diluting it with grace, or rendering it sterile, or
wounding and weakening it, or making it cow­
ardly and cautious. Upon all exhibitions of evil
the action of the Precious Blood is incessant. At
no time and in no place is it altogether inopera­
tive. Let us see what tho world would be like,
if the Precious Blood withdrew from this cease­
less war with evil.
It is plain that some millions of sins in a day
are hindered by the Precious Blood ; and this is
not merely a hindering of so many individual
sins, but it is an immense check upon the mo­
mentum of sin. It is also a weakening of habits
of sin, and a diminution of the consequences of
sin. If then, the action of the Precious Blood
were withdrawn from the world, sins would not
only increase incalculably in number, but the
tyranny of sin would be fearfully augmented, and
it would spread among a greater number of people.
It would wax so bold that no one would be secure
from the sins of others. It would be a constant
warfare, or an intolerable vigilance, to preserve
property and rights, falsehood would become so
universal as almost to dissolve society; and the

THE NECESSITY OP THE PBEcICUS BLOOD.

R3

homes of domestic life would bfc turned into the
wards cither of a prison or a madhouse. We < annot
be in the company of an atrocious criminal without
some feeling of uneasiness and fear. We should
not like to be left alone with him, even if bis
chains were not unfastened. But without the
Precious Blood, such men would abound in the
world. They might even become the majority.
We know of ourselves, from glimpses God has
once or twice given us in life, what incredible
possibilities of wickedness we have in our souls.
Civilization increases these possibilities. Educa­
tion multiplies and magnifies our powers of sin­
ning. Refinement adds a fresh malignity. Men
would thus become more diabolically and unmixedly
bad, until at last earth would be a hell on this
side of the grave. There would also doubtless be
new kinds of sins and worse kinds. Education
would provide the novelty, and refinement would
carry it into the region of the unnatural. All
highly-refined and luxurious developments of
heathenism have fearfully illustrated this truth.
A wicked barbarian is like a beast. His savage
passions are violent but intermitting, and his
necessities of sin do not appear to grow. Their
circle is limited. But a highly-educated sinner,
without the restraints of religion, is like a demon.
His sins are less confined to himself. They involve
others in their misery. They require others to be
offered as it were in sacrifice to them. Moreover,
education, considered simply as an intellectual
cultivation, propagates sin, and makes it more
universal.
The increase of sin, without the prospects

64

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

which the faith lays open to ns, must lead to an
increase of despair, and to an increase of it upon
a gigantic scale. With despair must come rage,
madness, violence, tumult, and bloodshed. Yet
from what quarter could we expect relief in this
tremendous suffering? We should be imprisoned
in our own planet. The blue sky above us would
be but a dungeon-roof. The greensward beneath
our feet would truly bo the slab of our future
tomb. Without the Precious Blood there is no
intercourse between heaven and earth. Prayer
would be useless. Our hapless lot would be irre­
mediable. It has always seemed to me that it^
will be one of the terrible things in hell, that
there are no motives for patience there. We
cannot make the best of it. Why should we
endure it? Endurance is an effort for a time; but
this woe is eternal. Perhaps vicissitudes of agony
might be a kind of field for patience. But there
are no such vicissitudes. Why should we endure,
then? Simply because we must; and yet in eter­
nal things this is not a sort of necessity which _
supplies a reasonable ground for patience. So in
this imaginary world of rampant sin there would
be no motives for patience. For death would be
our only seeming relief; and that is only seeming,
for death is any thing but an eternal sleep. Our
impatience would become frenzy; and, if our
constitutions were strong enough to prevent the
frenzy from issuing in downright madness, it
would grow into hatred of God, which is perhaps
already less uncommon than we suppose.
An earth, from off which all sense of justice had
perished, would indeed be the most disconsolate

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

65

of homes. The antediluvian earth exhibits only
a tendency that way; and the same is true of the
worst forms of heathenism. The Precious Blood
was always there. Unnamed, unknown, and un­
suspected, the Blood of Jesus has alleviated every
manifestation of evil which there has ever been
just as it is alleviating at this hour the punish­
ments of hell. What would be oui· own individual
case on such a blighted earth as this ? All our
struggles to be better would be simply hopeless.
There would bo no reason why we should not
give ourselves up to that kind of enjoyment
which our corruption does substantially find in
sin. The gratification of our appetites is some­
thing; and that lies on one side, while on the
other side there is absolutely nothing. But wo
should have the worm of conscience already, even
though the flames of hell might yet be some years
distant. To feel that we are fools, and yet lack
the strength to be wiser,—is not this precisely the
maddening thing in madness? Yet it would be
our normal state under the reproaches of con­
science, in a world where there was no Precious
Blood. Whatever relics of moral good we might
retain about us would add most sensibly to our
wretchedness. Good people, if there were any,
would be, as St. Paul speaks, of all men the most
miserable : for they would be drawn away from
the enjoyment of this world, or have their enjoy­
ment of it abated by a sense of guilt and shame;
and there would be no other world to aim at ot
to work for. To lessen the intensity of our hell
without abridging its eternity would hardly bo
a cogent motive, when the temptations of sin
E
β»

06

TT1E NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

and the allurements of sense are so vivid and so
strong.
What sort of love could there be, when we
could have no respect ? Even if flesh and blood
made ns love each other, what a separation death
would bo ! We should commit our dead to the
ground without a hope. Husband and wife would
part with the fearfullest certainties of a reunion
more terrible than their separation. Mothers
would long to look upon their little ones in the
arms of death, because their lot would be less
woeful than if they lived to offend God with their
developed reason and intelligent will. The sweet­
est feelings of our nature would become unnatural,
and the most honorable tics be dishonored. Our
best instincts would lead us into our worst dan­
gers. Our hearts would have to learn to beat
another way, in order to avoid the dismal conse­
quences which our affections would bring upon
ourselves and others. But it is needless to go
further into these harrowing details. The world
of the heart, without the Precious Blood, and
with an intellectual knowledge of God and hie
punishments of sin, is too fearful a picture to be
drawn with minute fidelity.
But how would it fare with the poor in such a
world? They are God’s chosen portion upon earth.
He chose poverty himself, when he came to us.
He has left the poor in his place, and they are
never to fail from the earth, but to be his repre­
sentatives there until the doom. But, if it were
not for the Precious Blood, would any one love
them? Would any one have a devotion to them,
and dedicate his life to merciful ingenuities to

the necessity of τπε PBECTOus ητ,οοη.

07

alleviate their lot? If the stream of alm·
*giving
is so insufficient now, what would it be then ?
There would be no softening of the heart by
grace; there would be no admission of the obli­
gation to give away in alms a definite portion
of our incomes; there would be no desire to ex­
piate sin by munificence to the needy for the love
of God. The gospel makes men's hearts large ;
and yet even under the gospel the fountain of
almsgiving flows scantily and uncertainly. There
would be no religious orders devoting themselves
with skilful concentration to different acts of spi­
ritual and corporal mercy. Vocation is a blossom
to be found only in the gardens of the Precious
Blood. But all this is only negative, only an
absence of God. Matters would go much further
in such a world as we are imagining.
Even in countries professing to be Christian,
and at least in possession of the knowledge of the
gospel, the poor grow to be an intolerable burden
to the rich. They have to be supported by’ com­
pulsory taxes ; and they are in other ways a con­
tinual subject of irritated and impatient legislation.
Nevertheless, it is due to the Precious Blood that
the principle of supporting them is acknowledged.
From what we read in heathen history,—even the
history of nations renowned for political wisdom,
for philosophical speculation, and for literary and
artistic refinement,—it would not be extravagant
for us to conclude that, if the circumstances of a
country’ were such as to make the numbers of the
poor dangerous to the rich, the rich would not
scruple to destroy them, while it was yet in their
power to do so. Just as men have had in France

08

THE NECESSITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

and England to war down bears and wolves, so
would the rich war down the poor, whose cla­
morous misery and excited despair should threaten
them in the enjoyment of their power and their
possessions. The numbers of the poor would be
thinned by murder, until it should be safe for
their masters to reduce them into slavery. The
survivors would lead the lives of convicts or of
beasts. History, I repeat, shows us that this is
by no means an extravagant supposition.
Such would be the condition of the world with­
out the Precious Blood. As generations succeeded
each other, original sin would go on. developing
those inexhaustible malignant powers which come
from the almost infinite character of evil. Sin
would work earth into hell. Men would become
devils, devils to others and to themselves. Every
thing which makes life tolerable, which counteracts
any evil, which softens any harshness, which
sweetens any bitterness, which causes the machi­
nery of society to work smoothly, or which con­
soles any sadness,—is simply due to the Precious
Blood of Jesus, in heathen as well as Christian
lands. It changes the whole position of an offend­
ing creation to its Creator. It changes, if we may
dare in such a matter to speak of change, the
aspect of God’s immutable perfections toward his
human children. It does not work merely in a
spiritual sphere. It is not only prolific in temporal
blessings, but it is the veritable cause of all tem­
poral blessings whatsoever. We are all of us every
moment sensibly enjoying the benignant influence
of the Precious Blood. Yet who thinks of all
this? Why is the goodness of God so hidden so

ΤΠΕ NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

69

imperceptible, so unsuspected? Perhaps because
it is so universal and so excessive, that we should
hardly bo free agents if it pressed sensibly upon
us always. God’s goodness is at once the most
public of all his attributes, and at the same time
the most secret. Has life a sweeter task than to
seek it, and to find it out?
Men would be far more happy, if they separated
religion less violently from other things. It is
both unwise and unloving to put religion into a
place by itself, and mark it otf with an untrue dis­
tinctness from what we call worldly and unspiritual
things. Of course there is a distinction, and a
most important one, between them; yet it is easy
to make this distinction too rigid and to carry it
too far. Thus we often attribute to nature what
is only due to grace; and we put out of sight the
manner and degree in which the blessed mystery
of the Incarnation affects all created things. But
this mistake is forever robbing us of hundreds of
motives for loving Jesus. We know how un­
speakably much we owe to him; but we do not
see that it is not much we owe him, but all, simply
and absolutely all. We pass through times and
places in life, hardly recognising how the sweet­
ness of Jesus is sweetening the air around us and
penetrating natural things with supernatural
blessings.
Hence it comes to pass that men make too much
of natural goodness. They think too highly of
human progress. They exaggerate the moralizing
powers of civilization and refinement, which, apart
from grace, are simply tyrannies of the few over
tho many, or of the public over the individual soul

70

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Meanwhile they underrate the corrupting capabili­
ties of sin, and attribute to unassisted nature many
excellences which it only catches, as it were by
infection, from the proximity of grace, or by con­
tagion, from the touch of the Church. Even in
religious or ecclesiastical matters they incline to
measure progress, or test vigor, by other standards
rather than that of holiness. These men will con­
sider the foregoing picture of the world without
the Precious Blood as overdrawn and too darkly
shaded. They do not believe in the intense ma­
lignity of man when drifted from God, and still
less are they inclined to grant that cultivation and
refinement only intensify still further this malig­
nity. They admit the superior excellence of
Christian charity; but they also think highly of
natural philanthropy. But has this philanthropy
ever been found where the indirect influences of
the true religion, whether Jewish or Christian, had
not penetrated? We may admire the Greeks for
their exquisite refinement, and the Romans for the
wisdom of their political moderation. Yet look at
the position of children, of servants, of slaves, and
of the poor, under both those systems, and see if,
while extreme refinement only pushed sin to an
extremity of foulness, the same exquisite culture
did not also lead to a social cruelty and an indi­
vidual selfishness which made life unbearable to
the masses. Philanthropy is but a theft from the
gospel, or rather a shadow, not a substance, and as
unhelpful as shadows are wont to be. Nevertheless,
let us take this philanthropy' at its word, and see
what the world would be like, with philanthropy
instead of the Precious Blood.

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

71

We will take the world as it is, with its present
evils. What amount of alleviation can philan­
thropy bring, supposing there could be such a
thing without the example and atmosphere of the
gospel? In the first place, what could it do tbr
poverty? It would be dismayed by the number
of the poor and appalled by the variety and
exigency of their needs. All manner of intract­
able questions would rise up, for the solving of
which its philosophy could furnish it with no
simple principles. Men would have their own
work to do, and their own business to attend to.
It is not conceivable that mere philanthropy
should make the administration of alms and the
ministering to the poor a separate profession; and
self-devotion upon any large scale is not to be
thought of except as a corollary of the doctrine
of the Cross. Thus, while the alms to be distri­
buted would necessarily be limited, and the claims
almost illimitable, there would be no means of
proportioning relief. Unseen poverty is for the
most part a worthier thing than the poverty which
is seen: but who would with patient kindness and
instinctive delicacy track shamefaced poverty to
its obscure retirements ? The loudest beggars
would get most, the modest least. The highest
virtue aimed at in the distribution of alms, and it
is truly a high one, would be justice. Thus it
would come to pass that those who by sin or folly
had brought poverty upon themselves would
obtain no relief at all : and so charity would cease
to have any power to raise men above their past
lives, or elevate them in the scale of moral worth.
Eccentricity is a common accompaniment of

l~

TUE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

misery; and that which is eccentric would hardly
recommend itself to philanthropy, even if it did
not seem to be a proof of insincerity. Christian
charity can only sustain its equanimity by fixing
its eyes upon a higher object than the misery
which it relieves. What is not done for God in
this matter is done but uncertainly as well as
scantily, and soon wearies of the unlovely and
exacting poor. It is only the similitude of Jesus
which beautifies poverty. Works of mercy are
not attractive to hearts untouched by love. More­
over, no slight amount of the beneficence of Chris­
tian charity resides in its irregularity. Coming
from the impulses of love, it has an ebb and flow
which make it like the seeming unevenness and
inequalities of outward providence; and this, which
reason would account as a defect, turns out in
practice a more real blessing than the formal
equality and periodical punctuality of a merely
conscientious and justice-loving benevolence. Phi­
lanthropy must have a sphere, a round, a beat. It
must of necessity have in it somewhat of the
political economist, and somewhat of the police­
man. It must never allow individual sympathies
to draw off its attention to the public welfare. Its
genius must bo legislative, rather than impulsive.
Sudden misfortunes, a bad harvest, a commercial
crisis, a sickly winter,—these things would sadly
interfere with the calculations of philanthropy. If
the amount of self-sacrifice is so small, when we
have the example of our Lord, and the doctrine
that alms redeem souls, and the actual obligation
under pam of sin to set aside a portion of 0Ur in-

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

73

comes for the poor, what would it be if all these
motives were withdrawn ?
Let us consider bodily pain, and the agency
of philanthropy in alleviating it. An immense
amount of the world's misery consists in bodily
pain. There are few things more hard to bear.
It is one of our unrealities that we write and speak
lightly of it. We think it grand to do so. We
think to show our manliness. But the truth is,
there are few men who could not bear a breaking
heart better than an aching limb. There are many
points of view from which bodily pain is less easy
to bear than mental anguish. It is less intelligible.
It appeals less to our reason. If the consolations
of moral wisdom are of no great cogency to hearts
in sorrow, they are of none at all to those whose
nerves are racked with pain. Mental suffering has
its peculiar extremities. To the few probably they
exceed the extremities of bodily agony; but in
the majority of cases they are less intolerable;
and in all cases most intolerable when they have
succeeded in deranging the bodily health and so
adding that suffering to their own. Moreover, the
excesses of mental anguish, while they visit chiefly
the rarer and more sensitive minds, are always of
brief duration: whereas it is fearful to think of
the heights to which bodily torture can rise, and
of the time extreme torment can last without pro­
ducing either insensibility or death. But what
can philanthropy do for bodily pain? Everyone
whose lot it is to lead a life of pain knows too
well how little medical science avails to alleviate
this particular kind of human suffering. It may
do much in the way of prevention. Who knows?
7

74

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

For the pain we might have had, but have not
had, is an unknown region. Let us give medical
science the benefit of our ignorance. But, as to
the pains which we have actually suffered, bow
often have they refused to abate one tittle of their
severity at the bidding of science! When they
have done so, how slowly have they yielded to tho
power of remedies, and how often have the remedies
themselves brought new pains along with them!
The pains which the human frame has to bear
from various ailments are terrible in their number,
their variety, and the horror which attaches to
many of them : over this empire, which original
sin has created, how feeble and how limited is the
jurisdiction of medical science! Yet what could
philanthropy do for bodily pain, except surround
it with medical appliances and witli physical com­
forts? Let us not underrate the consolation of the
large-minded wisdom, the benevolent common
sense, and the peculiar priestly kindness of an
intelligent physician. It is very great. Neither
let us pretend to make light of the alleviations of
an airy room, of a soft bed, of well-prepared food,
of a low voice and a noiseless step, and of those
attentions which are beforehand with our irrita­
bility by divining our wants at the right moment.
Nevertheless, when tho daily pressure of bodily
pain goes on for weeks and months, when all life
which is not illness is but a vacillating convales­
cence, what adequate or abiding consolation can
we find, except in supernatural things, in the mo­
tives of the faith, in union with Jesus, in that
secret experimental knowledge of God which
makes us at times find chastisement so sweet ?

THE NECESSITY ΟΕ THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

75

It is the characteristic of mental suffering to he
for the most part beyond the reach of philan­
thropy. Every heart knows its own bitterness.
That part of a mental sorrow, which can be ex­
pressed, is generally the part which rankles least.
The suffering of it depends mainly on feelings
which belong to individual character, feelings
which can hardly be stated, and which, if stated,
could not be appreciated, even if they were not
altogether misunderstood. Who has not often
wondered at the almost invariable irritation pro­
duced in unhappy persons by set and formal sooth­
ing? There is a pity in the tone of voice which
wounds rather than heals. The very composure
of features aggravates us by making us feel more
vividly tho reality of our grief. We have long since
exhausted for ourselves all the available topics of
consolation. Not in gradual procession, but all at
once like a lightning’s flash, all the motives and
wisdoms, which occupy my unsuffering friend an
hour to enumerate, were laid hold of, fathomed,
and dismissed by my heart, which suffering had
awakened to a speed and power of sensitiveness
quite incredible. Job is not the only person who
has been more provoked by his comforters than
by his miseries. Even the daily wear and tear of
our hearts in common life cannot be reached by
outward consolation, unless that consolation comes
from above and is divine. Philanthropy, with the
best intentions, can never get inside the heart.
There are sufferings there too deep for any thing '
but religion either to reach or to appreciate; and
such sufterings are neither exceptional nor uncom­
mon. There are few men who have not more than

76

THE NECESSITY OF THE rnECIOCS BLOOD.

one of them. If wo take away the groat sorrow
upon Calvary, how dark and how unbearable a
mystery does all sorrow become! Kindness is
sweet, even to the sorrowing, because of its inten­
tions: it is not valuable because of its efficacy
except when it is the graceful minister of the Pre­
cious Blood.
I reckon failure to be the most universal un­
happiness on earth. Almost everybody and every
thing are failures,—failures in their own estima­
tion, even if they are not so in the estimation of
others. Those optimists who always think them­
selves successful are few in number, and they for
the most part fail in this at least, namely, that
they cannot persuade the rest of the world of
their success. Philanthropy can plainly do nothing
here, even if it were inclined to try. But philan­
thropy is a branch of moral philosophy, and would
turn away in disdain from an unhappiness which
it could prove to be unreasonable, even while it
acknowledged it to be universal. It is simply
true that few men are successful; and of those
few it is rare to find any who arc satisfied with
their own success. The multitude of men live
with a vexatious sense that the promise of their
lives remains unfulfilled. Either outward circum­
stances have been against them, or they have been
misappreciated, or they have got out of their
grooves unknowingly, or they have been the vic­
tims of injustice. What must all life bo but a
feverish disappointment, if there be no eternity
•n view? The religious man is the only successful
man. Nothing fails with him. Every shin
i
the mark, if the mark be God
’eaelles
tie has wasted no

ΤΠE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

77

energies. Every hope has been fulfilled beyond
his expectations. Every effort has been even
disproportionately rewarded. Every means has
turned out marvellously to be an end, because it
had God in it, who is our single end. In piety,
every battle is a victory, simply because it is a
battle. The complètent defeats have somewhat
of triumph in them; for it is a positive triumph
to have stood up and fought for God at all. In
short, no life is a failure which is lived for God;
and all lives are failures which are lived for any
other end. If it is part of any man’s disposition
to be peculiarly and morbidly sensitive to failure,
he must regard it as an additional motive to be
religious. Piety is the only invariable, satisfac­
tory, genuine success.
If philanthropy turns out to be so unhelpful
a thing in the difficulties of life, will it be more
helpful at the bed of death ? Death is the failure
of nature. There is no help then, except in the
supernatural. Philanthropy cannot help us to die
ourselves ; nor can it take away our sorrow for
the deaths of others. Without religion death is a
problem and a terror. It is only by the light of
faith that we see it to be a punishment commuted
by divine love into a crown and a reward. The
sense of guilt, the uneasiness in darkness, the
shrinking from the unknown, the shapeless sha­
dows of an unexplored world, the new panic of
the soul, the sensible momentary falling off into
an abyss, the inevitable helplessness, the frighten­
ing transition from a state of change to one of
endless fixedness,—how is philanthropy to meet
such difficulties as these? Truly, in the atmo7·

’.Î »”Γ ■

*" 118“'s”

'-I-

But we have spoken of the actual miseries of
life, and the condition we should be in, if we took
the consolations of philanthropy instead of those
of the Precious Blood. This however is in reality
not a fair view of the case. Great as the actual
miseries of life are, the Precious Blood is conti­
nually making them very much less than they
otherwise would be. It diminishes poverty by
multiplying alms. It lessens the evil of pain, and
to some extent even its amount, by7 the grace of
patience and the appliances of the supernatural
life; not to speak of miraculous operations, occur­
ring perhaps hourly upon the earth, through the
touch of relics, crosses, and other sacred objects
The amount of temporal evil which would other­
wise have come upon the earth, but is daily
absorbed by the Sacrament of penance and by the
virtue of penance, must be enormous. In the case
of mental suffering, besides the many indirect
alleviations brought to it by the Precious Blood,
wo must remember the vast world of horrors
arising from unabsolved consciences, horrors which
the Sacraments are annihilating daily. Failure is
indeed the rule of human enterprise, and success
is the exception. Yet there are numberless coun­
terbalancing blessings won by the interest of the
Mother of God, by the intercession of the saints,
by the intervention of angels, by the Sacrifice
of the Mass, and by the sacramental residence
of Jesus upon earth, which would not exist but for
the Precious Blood. Finally, as to death what­
ever light is cast upon it is from the Blood of

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

79

Jesus. Were it not for Jesus, the dark hour would
be darkened with an Egyptian darkness. It has
something of the glory of a sunset round it now,
and the glory is the refulgence of the Saviour’s
Blood.
But, in this world, manner is often a more sub­
stantial thing than matter. We often care less for
the thing done than for the manner in which it is
done, less for the gift than for the way in which
the gift is given. Now let us picture to ourselves
an imaginary philanthropic city. Its palaces
shall be hospitals, hospitals for every form of
disease which is known to medical science. Its
business shall not be politics, but the administra­
tion of benevolent societies. Its rich population
shall divide and subdivide itself into endless com­
mittees, each of which shall make some human
misery its specialty. Its intellect shall be occu­
pied in devising schemes of philanthropy, in in­
venting new methods and fresh organizations, and
in bringing to perfection the police, the order, the
comfort, the accommodation, the pliability, of ex­
isting beneficent institutions. The strangest suc­
cesses shall be attained with the blind, the deaf
and dumb, and the insane. Moreover, in this city,
which the world has never seen, the philanthropy
shall be the most genial and good-humoured of all
the philanthropies which the world has had the
good fortune to see. Yet who that has ever seen
the most estimable, easy-going, and conscientious
board of Poor-Law guardians can doubt but that,
on the whole, considerable dryness, stiffness,
woodenness, theoretical pugnacity, benevolent pertinaciousness, vexatious generalizations, and irri-

80

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

table surprise at the unmanageable prejudiced
poor, would characterize this philanthropic city ?
Misery cannot be relieved on rules of distributive
justice. Masses will not organize themselves
under theories. Hearts will not attain happiness
through clear convictions that they ought to be
happy. Individual misery has an inveterate habit
of dictating its own consolations. The most openhearted benefactors would be met by suspicion.
A needy man can outwit most committees. Ma­
chinery for men gets soon choked up by multi­
tudes,and for the most part blows up and maims
its excellent inventors. There are few who
can handle a large army ; yet that is easy work
compared to the Question of the management of
the poor. Moreover, when the best men have
done their best, there always remains that instinct
in the poor, which makes them see only enemies
in the rich ; and that instinct is too strong for the
collective wisdom of all the philanthropists in the
world.
I am far from saying that Christian charity is
perfect, or that the duties of catholic mercy,
whether monastic or secular, leave nothing to be
desired. Everywhere the scantiness of the alms
of the rich is the standing grievance of the priest.
Everywhere the breadth and activity of human
misery are baffling and outrunning the speed and
generosity of charity. Nevertheless, I verily be­
lieve that one convent of Sisters of Charity or
one bouse of St. Camillus, would do more actual,
more successful work, in a huge European < -mit->l
than
would
in thebeen
whole
of such n& Cof
1 i ’
thropie
citybeasdone
we have
in^ng.

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BI,OOP.

81

the love of Jesus comes the love of souls; and
it is just the love of souls which effects that most
marvellous of all Christian transformations, the
change of philanthropy into charity. Jesus with
the Samaritan woman at the side of Jacob’s well,
or with the Magdalen in the pharisee’s house,
inspires a spirit totally different from that which
animates the most benevolent philosopher. It is
a spirit of supernatural love, a spirit of imitation
of Jesus, a spirit of gentle eagerness and affec­
tionate sacrifice, which gives to the exercise of
charity a winning sweetness and a nameless
charm which are entirely its own. The love of
individual souls is purely a Christian thing. No
language can describe it to those who do not feel
it. If men see it, and do not sympathize with it,
they so mistake it that they call it proselytism.
They attribute to the basest motives that which
comes precisely from the very highest. Indeed,
from a political or philosophical point of view
those things which are the most C'hristlike in
charity are the very things which men condemn
as mischievous, if not immoral. In their view
harm is done by treating men as individuals, not
as masses. Alms are squandered. Unworthy ob­
jects get them. The misery which punishes vice
is the object of love, as well as that which comes
of innocent misfortune. Charity cares too little
about being deceived: it is too impulsive, too
irregular, too enthusiastic; above all, it does not
make the tranquillity and well-being of the state
its sole or primary object. Evidently, then, the
manners and gestures of charity in action are
wholly different from those of philanthropy in
F

82

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECtOUS

action. The one succeeds with men, and the other
does not; and the success of charity is owing to
the spirit which it imbibes from tho Precious
Blood of Jesus Christ.
Here are many words to prove a simple thing,
and a thing which needed no proving. But it
brings home to us more forcibly and more in detail
the necessity of the Precious Blood. But, after
all, the grand necessity of it is the necessity of
having our sins forgiven, the necessity of loving
above all created things our most dear God and
Father. Let us think for a moment. Tho depth
of summer silence is all around. Those tall chest­
nuts stand up, muffled down to the feet with their
heavy mantles of dark foliage, of which not a leaf
is stirring. There is no sound of water, no song
of bird, no rustling of any creature in the grass.
Those banks of white cloud have no perceptible
movement. The silence has only been broken for
a moment, when the clock struck from the hidden
church in the elm-girdled field, and tho sound was
so softened and stifled with leaves that it seemed
almost like some cry natural to the woodland. We
do not close our eyes. Yet the quiet of the scene
has carried us beyond itself. What are time and
earth,beauty and peace, to us? What is any thing
to us, if our sins be not forgiven? Is not that our
one want? Does not all our happiness come of
that one want being satisfied? The thought of its
being unsatisfied is not to be endured. Time, so
quiet and stationary as this summer noontide,
makes us think of eternity, and gives us a shadowy
visa of it. But the thought of eternity is not to
be faced, if our »>na be not forgiven.
.m

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOtS BLOOD.

S3

eternal ruin—is that a possible thing? Possible!
yes, inevitable, if our sins be not forgiven. The
loss of another’s soul is a hideous thing to con­
template. It broadens as we look at it, until our
head gets confused, and God is obscured. It is a
possibility we turn away from : what then can we
do with the fact? We think of the sorrows and
the joys of a soul, of the beautiful significance of
its life, of its manifold loveliness and generosity,
and of all the good that glittered like broken
crystals amidst its evil. How many persons loved
it! How many lives of others it sweetened and
brightened! How attractive often in its goodhumored carelessness about its duty! God loved
it: it was the idea of his love, an eternal idea. It
came into the world with his love about it like a
glory. It swam in the light of his love, as the
world swims in radiance day and night. It has
gone into darkness. It is a ruin, a wreck, a
failure, an eternal misery. Sin! What is sin, that
it should do all this? Why was there any sin?
Why is sin sin at all ? We turn to the majesty of
God to learn. Instinctively we lift up our eyes to
that noonday sun, and it only blinds us. Sin is
sin, because God is God. There is no getting any
further in that direction. That soul, some soul, is
lost. What we think cannot be put into words.
Hut our own soul I That soul which is ourself!
Can we by any amount of violence think of it
as lost? No! our own perdition is absolutely
unthinkable. Hope disables us from thinking it.
But we know that it is possible. We sometimes
feel the possible verging into the probable. We
know how it can be lost, and perceive actual

84

THE NECESSITY OF THE VREC10U8

Blood.

dangers. We know how nlono it can avoid being
lost; and in that direction matters do not look
satisfactory. But it must not bo lost: it shall not
be lost: it cannot bo lost. Tho thought of such
a thing is madness. Soo, then, tho tremendous
necessity of the Precious Blood. Those heartless
chestnut-trees! how they stand stooping over tho
uncut meadows, brooding in the sunshine, as if
there were no problems in the world, no uneasi­
ness in hearts! They make us angry. It is their
very stillness which has driven us on these
thoughts. It is their very beauty which makes
the. idea of eternal wretchedness somewhat more
intolerable. Yet let us be just to them : they have
also driven somewhat further into our souls tho
understanding of that unutterable necessity of the
Precious Blood.
How precious is every drop of that dear Blood!
How far more wonderful than all that the natural
world contains is each one of those miracles which
it is working by thousands every day ! How would
creation be enriched by one drop of it, seeing that
infinite creations could not attain to the value of
it! and bow would the history of creation be
glorified by ono manifestation of its omnipotent
mercy! What are wo to think, then, of its prodi­
gality? Yet this prodigality is not a mere mag­
nificence of divine love. It is not simply a divine
romance. It would indeed be adorable if it were
only so. But to my mind it is oven yet more
dwrne that tins prodtgality hUouIJ itself be an
absolute necessity, and, therefore in th»
calmnetw and equability of
a·’ · 1 0 majestic
prodigy at all.
* ® dlVm* compels, no

THE NECESSITY OF THE FllECIOCS BLOOD.

85

We have thought of tho world without the Pre­
cious Blood; let us think of it now with only par­
tial or intermitting access to its saving fountains.
Man foil, and God’s justice was blameless in his
fall. God's mercy strove to hinder man from fall­
ing, and yet he fell. God did every thing for man,
short of destroying his liberty. The very act of
creation was a magnificence of mercy. But the'
creation of man, not in a state of nature, but in a
state of grace, was a glorious love, which could
proceed only from a grandeur as inexhaustible as
that of God. Man fell, and God was justified.
Adam’s descendants might have found themselves
hanging over the dread abyss of eternal woe.
They might have felt in themselves a violent propension to evil which only just stopped short of an
actual necessity. The prospect before them would
have been terrible, and yet they would not have
one intelligent word to say against it. If their
minds were not darkened, they would have seen
that not the justice only, but even the love of God
stood unblemished in the matter. Nevertheless,
how unbearable the prospecti Earth would be
almost worse than hell, because it would bo hell
without the miserable peace of its irrevocable cer­
tainty. It would be worse, in the same way that
a hopeless struggle is worse than the death which
follows. Truly there might still be hope, but then
it would be such a hopeless hope! Now let us
suppose that God in tho immensity of his com­
passion should tell men, in this extremity of
wretchedness, that he would assume their nature,
die for them upon the cross, and purchase for them
by bis Precious Blood the inestimable grace of
s
i I Ά

86

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

baptism. They should have another trial given
to them They, who had blamed Adam, should
have a chance of their own. They should be regenerated, spiritually born again by the most
stupendous of miracles. They should be justified,
and sanctified in their justification. The guilt of
original sin should be altogether remitted to them.
Not a shadow of it should remain. Even their
liability to temporal punishment for that sin in
purgatory should be remitted. God’s justice
should be satisfied in full. But the grace of bap­
tism is far more than this. It restores us to a
supernatural standing. It makes us God’s adopted
children. It does not merely rescue us from hell,
and leave us to spend an eternity of mere natural
blessedness by the streams and among the fruittrees of some terrestrial paradise. It entitles us
to possess and enjoy God forever. Moreover, this
Sacrament stores our souls with most mysterious
graces. It infuses celestial habits into us, and
endows us with those unfathomable wonders, the
gifts of the Holy Ghost. No miracle can be more
complete, or more instantaneous, or more gratui­
tous, than the grace of baptism.
This, then, should be the work of the Blood of
God; and no more than this. Yet would it not
seem to men to be an outpouring of the most
auperabounding love? Would it not open to the
wisest of men new depths in the character of God,
and be a new revelation of unsuspected goodness
>ulnm( The most ardent and expansive of the
“x;:“μ
xve
GOd
would never have dreamed of Un?J8818ted science
O1 8Uch a mystery as

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOOS BLOOD.

87

the Incarnation, of such a redemption as the price
of the Precious Blood. Yet does it not make ns
tremble to think of no more grace after baptism ?
Munificent as is that justifying grace, an invention
only possible to a goodness which is simply infinite,
what, with our experience of ourselves and our
knowledge of others, would be our dismay if that
one glorious access to the Precious Blood were the
only one allowed to us I Surely a more frequent
access to it, while it is on God’s side a marvellous
extension of a gratuitous indulgence, is on our
side nothing less than an imperious necessity.
Blessed be the inexhaustible compassions of the
Most High, we have incessant access to the Pre­
cious Blood. Our seeking of our own interest is
made to be the glory of God. Our eager supply
of our own needs is counted as an act of sweetest
love to him, the more sweet the more eager it shall
be. Yet it is difficult to bring this gracious truth
home to ourselves, unless we put imaginary cases
of a more restricted use of the Precious Blood. It
would be a great thing to be forgiven once more
after baptism ; whereas we are being endlessly
forgiven, and with as much facility the thousandth
time as we were the first. No greater amount of
attrition is needed to make our thousandth absolu­
tion valid than was required for our first. It would
be a huge mercy if almost all sins were capable
of absolution, but some few were reserved as un­
pardonable after baptism. Even this would seem
to the angels a wonderful stretch of the divine
forbearance. What then must it be to have no
sins and no reiteration of sins, exempted from the
jurisdiction of that dear ransom of our 80018? At

88

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

first sight it looks as if such an inveterate compassion lowered the character of God and im­
paired the lustre of his exceeding sanctity. In
this matter, as in others, God must be loved in
order to be understood. It is the heart which
must illuminate the head. Accustomed as we are
to the free participation of the Blood of Jesus,
how terrible seems the idea of men going about
the world, visible portions of hell, because they
have committed some sin exempted from absolu­
tion 1 To have met Cain upon his passionate
wanderings over the unpeopled earth would have
been less terrible; since we are not forbidden to
have hope for him. But here, again, this incessant
pardoning, this repetition of absolution, this end­
less sprinkling of our souls with the Precious
Blood,—is it not a necessity to our happiness, a
necessity to our salvation? Astonishing as is the
prodigality of the Blood of Jesus, could any con­
ceivable restriction have been endured ? It would
have been something more than a diminution of
our privileges : it would have been a bar to our
salvation.
But let us suppose no sins were exempted from
the pardon of the Precious Blood, but only that
that price of our redemption was hard to get.
God might have willed that it should only be
obtained in Jerusalem, and that distant nations
must seek it by long and painful pilgrimage. Of
a truth, it would be glad tidings to a sinner, that
al the eastern end of the Mediterranean there was a
mysterious guarded well, which contained some of
our Savior s Blood, the touch of whiel i forgave sin
to those who possessed certain inward
dispositions,

ΤΠΕ NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

89

but only forgave it on the spot, in Jerusalem itself.
Most willingly would the children of the faith un­
dergo the toilsome pilgrimage, rather than endure
the miserable weight of sin. Yet what woulc
happen to the sick, who were too weak to go, 01
to the aged, who had delayed too long, or to the
dying, who have nothing before them but despair 1
How would it fare with the sorely-tempted poor,
if absolution cost so dear? Shall the rich, or the
young, or the robust, only be forgiven ? What
misery and disturbance also would be there in the
social relations of life, while multitudes were
evermore impulsively pouring themselves out of
their homes in caravans of pilgrimage I Or what
an intolerable inhumanity would prisons be, if
the law of man could secure the eternal as well
as the temporal ruin of its offenders ! Still, even
this single well at Jerusalem would be a mercy
of God so great, that it would be incredible, un­
imaginable, unless it were revealed. Or, again,
we might have to gain access to the Blood of our
^Redeemer by going through considerable bodily
pain, or passing some severe ordeals. No one
could complain of this. It would be a mercy
beyond the uttermost mercies of human law. Oh,
does it not make us weep to think then of our
own carelessness, and backwardness, and dilatory,
lukewarm indifference to that most dear Blood
which we can have always and everywhere ? Me
have come to slight God’s mercies because his
amazing goodness has made them to be so com­
mon. We have not even to seek the Blood of
Jesus. It comes to us: it pleads with us: it en­
treats us to accept it: it complains; it waits; it
s·

90

τπκ nbcessity

0Ρ ΤΗΕ rnj!cioüg biood

knocks; if, cries out to us: it all-but forces itself
upon our acceptance.
But all this mysterious condescension of God is
not the needless outburst of an excessive love.
Alas for our shame that we should have to say
itl it is a downright necessity for our salvation.
Look at tho innumerable confessionals of the
Church, at the hundreds of daily death-beds, at
the countless retreats of suffering poverty. Is the
seeking for the Precious Blood what it ought to
be? Nay, do men's hearts soften at its tender,
eloquent pleading ? Have not sinners to be con­
strained to come to Jesus? and even of those who
are constrained to come to him, how many are
there who will not let him save them ? One saint
speaks of souls flocking daily to perdition like the
flakes of a snow-storm, blinding from their multi­
tude. Another tells us of visions, in which she
saw souls trooping constantly into the gates of
hell, like the rabble of autumnal leaves swept into
thick eddies by the wind. Yet not a soul gets
there before whom the Precious Blood has not
stood again and again, like the angel before Ba­
laam's ass, and tried to drive it back. If, then,
when all access is so easy, and when persuasion
mounts almost to compulsion, souls are so back­
ward in having recourse to the Precious Blood,
what would be the case if any of these imaginary
difficulties of ours were allowed to come in the
way ? Alasl so it is, that it is necessary to salva­
tion that our salvation should be easy.
Let us tease ourselves with one more imaginary
case, and then we will have done. To many nereone the great burden of life is the secret of pre

THE NECESSITY OF ΤΠΕ PRF.CTOUS BLOOP.

Π1

destination; and most men have at times felt the
uncertainty of salvation as a weight upon their
spirits. To a good man, whatever increases this
uncertainty is a grave misfortune. Without a
private revelation, no one can at any time say
absolutely that he is in a state of grace, not even
although he may just have received absolution in
the best dispositions in his power. Nevertheless
he feels a moral certainty about it, which for all
practical purposes is as good as an assurance. We
are not then always absolutely certain that the
Precious Blood has been applied to our souls in
absolution. But whence is it that we derive that
moral certainty which is our consolation and our
rest? From the fact that, when properly re­
ceived, the operation of the Precious Blood is
infallible. What an unhappiness it would be, if
this were not so ! The power of the Blood of
Jesus is never doubtful, its work never incom
plete. Moreover, God has gathered up its virtue
in a very special way into certain Sacraments,
lie has made its application almost visible. He
has tied its miracles as it were to time, and place,
and matter, and form, so as to bring us as near to
a certainty of our being in a state of grace as is
compatible with his laws and our own best inte­
rests. If we could be no more sure that we had
validly received absolution in confession, than we
can be sure we have ever made an act of perfect
contrition, we should be in a sad plight, and go
through our spiritual exercises and our inward
trials in a very downcast and melancholy way
Our state would be, at least in that one respect,
something like the state of those outside the

92

THF. NECESSITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Church, who are not living members of Christ,
nor partakers in his saving jurisdiction in the
bacrament of penance. If the Precious Blood had
been shed, and yet we had no priesthood, no Sa­
craments, no jurisdiction, no sacramentals, no
mystical life of the visible unity of the Church,—
life, so it seems, would be almost intolerable. This
is the condition of those outside the Church ; and
certainly as we grow older, as our experience
widens, as our knowledge of ourselves deepens, as
our acquaintance with mankind increases, the less
hopeful do our ideas become regarding the salva­
tion of those outside the Roman Church. We
make the most we can of the uncovenantcd mer­
cies of God, of the invisible soul of the Church, of
the doctrine of invincible ignorance, of the easi­
ness of making acts of contrition, and of the visi­
ble moral goodness among men ; and yet what are
these but straws in our own estimation, if our own
chances of salvation had to lean their weight upon
them ? They wear out, or they break down. They
are fearfully counterweighted by other considera­
tions. We have to draw on our imaginations in
order to fill up the picture. They are but theories
at best, theories unhelpful except to console those
who are forward to be deceived for the sake of·
those they love,—theories often very fatal by keep
ing our charity in check and interfering with that
restlessness of converting love in season and out
ot season, and that impetuous agony of prayer
upon which God may have made the salvation of
our friends depend. Alas I the more familiar we
Sir” T“" With the °Per“tions of grace the
further we advance into the spiritual life,\he more

THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

93

wo meditate on the character of God, and taste in
contemplation the savor of his holiness, the more
to our eyes does grace magnify itself inside the
Church, and the more dense and forlorn becomes
the darkness which is spread over those outside.
Yet not indeed to this state,—God forbid !—but
to a painful partial resemblance of it, should wo
be brought, if God’s tender considerate love had
not as it were localized the Precious Blood in his
stupendous Sacraments. Truly the Sacraments
are an invention of love, yet are they not also as
truly a necessity of our salvation, not only as
applying the Precious Blood to our souls, but as
enabling faith to ascertain its application ? Would
not the divine assurance of our salvation be a
very heaven begun on earth? Yet the Sacra­
ments are the nearest approach to such a sweet
assurance as the love of our heavenly Father
saw to be expedient for the multitude of his
children.
The Precious Blood, then, is the greatest, the
most undeniable, of our necessities. There is no
true life without it. Yet, and it very much con­
cerns us to bring this home to ourselves, all crea­
tion could not merit it. Necessary as it is, it is in
no way due to us. It is not a right. God's love
toward us had been a romance already. It was
wonderful what he had done to us. It is almost
incredible even now when we think of it. We
know the unspeakable tenderness of our Creator,
bow placable he is, how soft of heart, how prone
to forgive, how easy to be persuaded. Wo know
that the needs of his creatures plead with him
more eloquently than we can tell. Yet no necessi­

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THE NECESSITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

ties could have claimed the Precious Blood, no
merits could have won it, no prayers could have
obtained it. In truth, no created intelligence of
angel or of man could have imagined it.
Were heaven to be filled with saints in endless
millions, as holy as St. Joseph, the Baptist, or the
Apostles, and were their holiness allowed to merit,
not in millions of ages could their united merits
have earned one drop of the Precious Blood. If
all those starry spirits in the godlike realm of
angels had consented to sink their grandeurs in
the penalties of hell for thousands of revolving
epochs, or even had they consented to be annihi­
lated in sacrifice to the justice of God, never could
they have merited the Precious blood. If all the
merits, graces, gifts, and powers of our dearest
Mother had been possible without the Precious
Blood, they might have ascended as sweet incense
before God forever, and yet in no possible dura­
tion of time could they have merited the Precious
Blood. Not all these together, saints, angels, and
Mary, with all their glorious holiness, growing yet
more glorious in endless ages, could have bought
one drop of Precious blood, or merited that mys­
tery of the Incarnation whose wonderful redeem­
ing power resides in the Precious Blood. Oh, how
this thought overwhelms my heart with joy,—to
have to rest upon the free sovereignty of God
instead of my own wretched littleness, to be always
thus thrown upon the gratuitous magnificence of
^ubÆ,TX^riÏÏÎe,1,;i"d,u’,>
·“»
b
“‘J· “
or

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

95

CHAPTER III.
THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

The life of God is very vast. It is a thing to be
thought rather than to be spoken of, nay, to be
seen in the mind rather than to be thought. It is
very vast. It seems to grow vaster every day.
We kneel down before it in our prayers, as a man
might kneel to pray on a great sea-shore. God
lies before us as an ocean of infinite life. We
kneel upon the shore. But behind us rolls the
same great ocean. Suddenly it is at our right
hand and on our left. We look upward, but the
sky is gone. An ocean rolls where there was sky
when we first knelt clown to pray. The boundless
waters stretch above us like a living canopy. The
shore on which we kneel gives way. It is no
shore. We are kneeling on the waters. The sarfie
eternal ocean rolls beneath us. We are hemmed
in on every side by this ever-blessed ocean of infinite
being. How full it is of burning life, how master­
ful, how soundless, how unchangeable !
The life of God is very vast. I feel it overawing
me more and more, as I go on thinking of it. God
is very simple. He is simply God. Hens to be
adored in his simplicity. His perfections are him­
self, and he is simply all his perfections. His per­
fections are not manifold. They are but one. He
is himself his only perfection. His attributes are

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THE UMPIRE 0F THE pRECIOUS blood

our ways of looking at him, of speaking of him
of worshipping him. His perfections are not
separate from each other, nor from himself. We
cannot comprehend so simple a simplicity. We
have not purity of understanding sufficient to
apprehend so infinitely pure an idea. It is on
this account that we take the idea of God to
pieces in our own minds, and contemplate and
love and worship him from a thousand points of
view. We have no other way of dealing with the
incomprehensible. Speaking then of the divine
perfections in this sense, it appears to me that
none of his attributes call forth so much worship
in my heart as his life. His life amazes me; and
yet it melts me with love. He seems to me least
like an infinitely perfect creature, when I contem­
plate him as life ; and when he is least like an in­
finitely perfect creature, he is most like the in­
describable God. That view of him is less distinct
than many others; but it appears to my mind
more true on that very account.
The life of God is very vast. This is the thought
which comes to me when I put before myself the
empire of the Precious Blood. The life of God is
blessedness in his own self. It is the joy of hie
unity, the fact of his simplicity. Once he was
without creatures; and the calm jubilee of his
immutable life went on. There could be no im­
pulses in that which had had no beginning. Ilia
life started from no point, and reached to no
point; therefore it could have no momentum : that
is a created idea. He was imperturbable bliss
■What can be more self-collected than immensity ?
His infinite tenderness comes from his being im-

THE EM Pi HE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

97

perturbable, though at first sight there seems to
be contradiction between the two. When he was
without creatures, they were not a w’ant to him.
ITis unbeginning life was unspeakably centred in
himself, and so went on. He became, what he had
not been before, a Creator. But no change passed
upon him. All his acts had been in himself before :
now he acted outside himself. But no change
passed upon him. Hitherto all his acts, which
were the Generation of the Son and the Procession
of the Holy Ghost, had been necessary: now his
creative acts were free. Still no change passed
upon him. Still the calm jubilee of the unbegin­
ning life went on. As it was before creation, so
it was after it, a jubilant life of unutterable sim­
plicity. These are things we can only learn by
loving. Without love they are merely hard words.
God worked, and then God rested. Yet creation
had been no interruption of his everlasting rest.
Nevertheless, that Sabbath of God, of which Scrip­
ture tells us, is a wonderful mystery, and one full
of repose to toiling, seeking, straining creatures.
What was that seventh day’s rest? To the un­
toiling Creator preservation is as much an effort
as creation, and quite as great a mystery. But
even creation, the evoking of being out of nothing,
was not suspended. Human souls are forever
being created, created out of nothing. Perhaps
new species of animals may be so also. What
then was his rest? Perhaps it is only another
name for that expansive love, which as it were
arrested itself to bless its beautiful creation out
of its extreme contentment and ineffable com­
placency.
o
9

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THE empire of the precious blood.

Still the vast life of God goes on. He was free
to create; and ho made his creation free. Per.
haps those two things have much to do with each
other. lie made himself an empire outside him­
self, and crowned himself over it, the kingliest of
kings. God is very royal. Royalty is the seal
which is set on all his perfections, and by which
we sec how they are one. He enfranchised his
empire, and then began to reign. Still there was
no change. His free people dethroned him. Often­
times now in the depths of prayer the love of his
saints beholds him sitting in dust and ashes an un­
crowned king, as it were piteously. But all this is
embraced within his vast life without a shadow of
change. It was part of the eternal idea of crea­
tion, that one of the Divine Persons should assume
a created nature. The Second Person did so. lie
has carried it to heaven, and placed it in the bosom
of the Holy Trinity for endless worship. This
has displaced nothing. The vast life goes on. No
pulse beats in it. No succession belongs to it.
No novelty happens to it. The Precious Blood of
the Son’s Human Nature would have been a pure
beauty, a pure treasure of God, an unimaginable
created life, if there had been no sins. But there
was sin, and the destiny of the Precious Blood was
changed. But there was no change in the divine
life. The Precious Blood became the ransom for
sin. The Precious Blood had to conquer back to
God his revolted empire. It had to crown him
again, and to bo his imperial vicegerent. What
stupendous mutabilities are these! Yet there is
no change in the vast life of God. Its very vast­
ness makes it incapable of change. It has no ex

THF. EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOHS Bt.OOH.

99

pcricncos. It goes through nothing. It cannot
begin, or end, or suffer. It works while it rests;
and it rests while it works; and it neither works
nor rests, but simply lives, simply is. O adorable
life of God ! blessed a thousand thousand times bo
thou in the darkness of thy glory, in the incom­
prehensible sweetness of thy mystery !
To us the Precious Blood is inseparable from the
life of God. It is the Blood of the Creator, the
agent of redemption, the power of sanctification.
Moreover, to our eyes it is a token of something
which wo should call a change in God, if wo did
not know that there could not be change in him.
It seems to give God a past, to recover for him
something which ho had lost, to be a second
thought, to remedy a failure, to be a new orna­
ment in the Divinity, a created joy in the very
centro of the uncreated jubilee. The empire of
the Precious Blood is due to its position in the
history and economy of creation, or, in other
words, to its relation to the adorable life of God.
It seems to explain the eternity before creation,
inasmuch as it reveals to us the eternal thoughts
of God, his compassionate designs, his primal
decrees, and his merciful persistence in carrying
out his designs of love. It makes visible much
that in its own nature was invisible. It casts a
light backward, even upon the uttermost recesses
of that, old eternity. Just as some actions disclose
more of a man's character than other actions, so
the Precious Blood is in itself a most extensive
and peculiarly vivid revelation of the character of
God. The fact of his redeeming us, and, still
more, the way in which he has redeemed us, dis­

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

closes to us his reason for creating us; and when
we get some view, however transient and indis­
tinct, of his reason for creating us, wo seem to
look into the life he leads as God. The light is so
light that it is darkness; but the darkness is know­
ledge, and the knowledge love.
We are to speak of the empire of the Precious
Blood. But we must first see in what its royal
rights are founded. The Precious Blood ministers
to all the perfections of God. It is the one grand
satisfaction of his justice. It is one of the most
excellent inventions of his wisdom. It is the prin­
cipal feeder of his glory. It is the repose of his
purity. It is the delight of his mercy. It is the
participation of his power. It is the display of
his magnificence. It is the covenant of his pa­
tience. It is the reparation of his honor. It is
the tranquillity of his anger. It is the imitation
of his fruitfulness. It is the adornment of his
sanctity. It is the expression of his love. But,
above all, it ministers to the dominion of God. It
is a conqueror and conquers for him. It invades
the kingdom of darkness, and sweeps whole
regions with its glorious light. It humbles the
rebellious, and brings home the exiles, and re­
claims the aliens. It pacifies; it builds up; it
gives laws; it restores old things ; it inaugurates
new things. It grants amnesties; and dispenses
pardons; and it wonderfully administers the king­
dom it has wonderfully reconquered. It is the
crown, the sceptre, and the throne of God’s in­
visible dominion.
the UfedoilG<7'ltB7eie fTded Ü1 itS relati°n to
the lite of God; and its relation has to do espe-

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101

cially with that which is kingly and paternal in
the character of the Creator The dominion of
God is part of his invisible beanty ; but the Pre­
cious Blood is the scarlet mantle of bis eternal
royalty. God became a king by becoming a
Creator. It was thus he gained an empire over
which his insatiable love might rule. We are
obliged to speak of creation as if it were a gain
to Him who has all fulness in himself. He created
because of his perfections, because he was God,
because he was the infinitely blessed God that he
is. Temporal things came into existence because
there were eternal things. Time is a growth of
the ungrowing eternity. Nature is very beautiful,
whether we think of angelic or of human nature.
Created nature is a shadow of the Uncreated
Nature, so real and so bright that we cannot
think of it without exceeding reverence. Yet
God created neither angels nor men in a state
of nature. This is, to my mind, the most won­
derful and the most suggestive thing which we
know about God. He would have no reasonable
nature, even from the very first, which should not
be partaker of his Divine Nature. This is the
very meaning of a state of grace. He as it were
clung to his creation while he let it go. He
would not leave it to breathe for one instant in
a merely natural state. The very act of creation
was full of the fondness of maternal jealousy. It
was, to speak in a human way, as if he feared
that it would wander from him, and that his
attractions would bo too mighty for the littleness
of finite beings. He made it free; yet be em­
braced it so that it should be next to impossible it
0·

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

should leave him. He gave it. liberty, yet almost
overpowered its liberty with caresses the very
moment, that he gave it. Oh, that Majesty of God
which seems clothed with such worshipful tranquil’
lity in the eternity before creation, how passionate
how yearning, how mother-like, how full of inven­
tions and excesses, it appears in the act of creation I
God lost nothing by the fall of angels or of men.
Yet., in our way of thinking, how great must have
been the loss to a love which had longed so pas­
sionately to keep his creation with him ! It was
gone now. That mysterious gift of liberty had
been too strong for that other mysterious tender­
ness of creating us in a state of grace. There
was nothing of failure, or of disappointment, or
of frustrate love, in all this. But how there was
not we cannot tell. We know that the vast life
of God went on the same in its unshadowed,
unimpeded gladness. Yet to our ignorance it
seems as if the Creator would have to begin all
over again, as if he would have to pause, to collect
himself, to hold a council of his attributes, and
either to retire into himself or begin afresh. None
of these things are compatible with his everlasting
majesty. They are only our ways of expressing
those divine things which are unspeakable. But
what is before us? By an excess of tenderness,
which only grows more amazing the longer we
think of it, God had cloistered his creation in the
supernatural state of grace. The cloister was
broken. Almost the first use of angelic and
human freedom had been sacrilege. What will
God do? Creative love has no mutabilities.
Mercy .teelf shall find out a way to satisfy jus-

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103

tice, rather than that this dear creation shall he
tost. Time shall not be a grave in which eternal
ideas shall be buried. The lost shall be found ;
the fallen shall be raised; the ruined shall be
redeemed. The original idea of creation shall be
reinstated, without the gift of freedom being with­
drawn. The everlasting scheme of divine love
shall bo inaugurated again in all the plenitude
of divine power, with all the splendor of divine
wisdom, only illustrated now even more than
before with the flames of divine love. The act
shall be the act of God, the act equally of all the
Three Divine Persons. Yet it shall be appro­
priated to One of Them, to the Second Person.
The instrument shall be a created thing, not
created only for the purpose, for it would have
been even if sin had not been; but it shall be
a created thing whose value shall be simply in­
finite, because of its belonging to an Uncreated
Person. It was the Precious Blood.
One of the ways, in which God chiefly makes
himself known to us, is by his choices. Choice
reveals character; and, when we know the cha­
racter and excellence of him who chooses, the
choice enables us both to understand and appre­
ciate the object chosen. Thus, when God chooses
the weak things of the world to confound the
strong, and the foolish things to confound the
wise, he makes a very broad revelation to us of
his character. He discloses principles of action
quite alien from those of creatures, and never
adopted by them except from supernatural mo­
tives and in conscious imitation of him. We
know also that the things in question are in them

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

selves weak and foolish, because he chose them on
that account. In the same way, when ho chooses
persons for some great and high end, his very
choice endows them with gifts proportionate to
their work and dignity. We have often no other
means of judging except his choice. It is thus
that we measure the immense holiness of the
Apostles. It is thus that we learn the incom­
parable sanctity of tho Baptist. It is by com­
paring God’s choice of him with the office he was
to fill, that we come to see the glory and the
grandeur of St. Joseph, and to contemplate with
reverent awe the heights of a holiness to which
such familiarity with God was permitted. We
are astonished that familiarity should be the cha­
racteristic of devotion to a saint so high ; and yet
we perceive that it must be naturally the special
grace of a devotion to one who outdid all others
in the spirit of adoration because he outstripped
all others in tender familiarities with God. It is
thus also that wo gain some idea of the beauty
and splendor of St. Michael, one of the foremost
jewels in tho crown of God’s glorious creation.
Thus, also, the choice of God is the only measure
by which we can approach to any knowledge of
his Immaculate Mother. As her office was incon­
ceivable either by angel or by saint, unless it had
been revealed, so also is tho immensity of her
holiness. The choice of God lights up vast tracts
of her magnificence, and shows us also how much
there is left for us to learn and to enjoy in heaven.
The grandeur of her office is infinite, as St. Thomas
says, and the omnipotence of God could not create
a grander office·, what then must be the infiX

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105

of her grace ? It is God who chose her, the God
of numberless perfections, of illimitable power,
and of lavish munificence. His choice tells us
that the mighty empress of heaven was adorned
with the utmost participation of the divine splen­
dor of which a creature was capable. What
regalia must they be which come out of the inex­
haustible treasures of God, and which are chosen
for her whom he chose eternally to be his blessed
Mother? So, finally, we get our idea of the worth
of the Precious Blood by seeing the end for which
the Creator chose it. It is an idea which cannot
be put into words, or be estimated by human
figures. If we may dare so to speak, God chose
it as the auxiliary by which he would save him­
self in the day of battle with the powers of dark­
ness, when the battle was going against him, and
when he vouchsafed to appear as if put to bis last
resource. I know not how else to state that
choice of his, and the circumstances under which
he made it, which cover with such dazzling splen­
dor the redeeming Blood of Jesus. It had to save
a falling creation, which God had hindered his
own omnipotence from saving, because he had con­
ferred upon it the gift of freedom.
It is hard to breathe in heights like these. We
have climbed the mountains of God’s primal de­
crees, and have penetrated to those first fountains
of creation which lie far up in the solitude of eter­
nity. It is difficult to breathe in such places, amid
such lonely sublimities, in such divine wilder­
nesses, where the features are so unlike those of
earthly scenery. Let us then rest a while, and
think of our own poor selves. Of what avail to

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

us is nil this magnificent election of the Precious
Blood, its astonishing relation to the immutable
life of God, its intrinsic dignity in the plans of
the Creator, and the fearfulness of its resplendent
beauty ns the sole successful auxiliary of the God
of Hosts, unless it is the one joy of our lives that
we ourselves are its happy conquest ? What use
is it to us that it looks as if it had rescued the
Creator from failure, if it docs not ransom us from
sin ? What does it matter to us that it makes
wonderful harmony between God’s seemingly
opposite decrees, if it does not make sweet peace
between our heavenly Father and ourselves?
The Precious Blood saved God an empire; and he
has given it that empire for its own. It is the
one thing needful for ourselves, that we should
belong to its empire and be happy beneath its
rule. One sin forgiven, one sinful habit brought
into subjection, one ruling passion uniformly
tamed, one worldliness courageously kept down,
—these are more to us than the theological glo­
ries of the Precious Blood. Indeed, these glories
are chiefly glorious to us, in that they tell us more
and more of our dear God, that they widen our
minds and deepen our hearts to make more room
for him, and that they heat tho furnace of our
love seven times hotter than it was before. Theo­
logy would be a science to be specially impatient
with, if it rested only in speculation. To my
mind it is the best fuel of devotion, the best fuel
of divine love. It catches fire quickest; it makes
least smoke; it burns longest; and it throws out
most heat while it is burning. It is tho best fuel
of love, until the soul is raised to high degrees of

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107

mystical contemplation ; and then, as if to show
how needful it was still, God infuses theological
science even into the ignorant and youthful. If
a science tells of God, yet does not make the
listener’s heart burn within him, it must follow
either that the science is no true theology, or that
the heart which listens unmoved is stupid and
depraved. In a simple and loving heart theology
burns like a sacred fire.
But, if this is the relation of the Precious Blood
to Creation, in what relation does it stand toward
the Incarnation? This also we must consider.
The Incarnation of One of the Three Divine Per­
sons was part of the original idea of Creation. It
expresses in God the same mysterious and adorable
yearning which was manifested in his creating
angels and men in a state of grace. If there had
been no sin, still the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity would have been man. Jesus Christ was
eternally predestinated to be King of angels and
of men, the sovereign of all creation in right of
his created nature, even if there had been no fall,
and no redemption. I am repeating what I have
said before; but I must do so in order to be clear.
As God in his Divine Nature was the Sovereign
Lord of all creation, so Jesus in his Created Nature
was to be the King of kings and Lord of lords
He would have come and lived among us. He
would have been born of the same blessed and
most dear Mother. But his Bethlehem and his
Nazareth and his Jerusalem would have been very
different. He would have had no Egypt and no
Calvary. He might perchance have dwelt longer
with us than Three-and-Thirty years. But all

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ΤΠΕ EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the while, wherever he was, ho would have been
radiant as on the summit of Mount Thabor, the
beauty and the glory streaming out from him
incessantly. He would have had no Passion, no
Resurrection ; and perhaps he would not have
ascended till the Day of Doom. lie would have
had the same Sacred Heart, the same Precious
Blood. His Blood would have been a living joy
to him, a beauty and a joy to all creation. Perhaps
his Blood would still have been the wine of im­
mortality to his elect. It might have been still
the Blood of the Eucharist. There might have
been the Sacrament without the Sacrifice. It
might have been the chalice of his espousals with
the soul.lÇAe some theologians say there might
have been Communion before the Incarnation for
the saints of the old covenant, if God had so willed,
much more might it have been so with the im­
passible and glorious Incarnation, had there been
no sin. The Precious Blood might still have been
the sacramental fountain of eternal life. But it
would not have had the office of ransoming the
world from sin. Sin came; and by its coming it
did to the Sacred Humanity of the Incarnate
Word what it also did to the uncreated Majesty
of God. It deprived it of its kingdom. It laid
waste its empire. It miserably uncrowned it. It
left him only the unfallen tribes of angels to rule
over. It threatened to frustrate the Incarnation,
and to take the chiefest jewel out of his Mother's
diadem, the jewel of her sinlessness. As sin bad
dared to impede divine love in the matter of
Creation, so did it dare to binder divine love in
the matter of the Incarnation. Iu one case it

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109

tried to infringe the eternal dominion of God ; in
the other case it strove to destroy the kingship of
his created nature. As with Creation, so with the
Incarnation, it was the Precious Blood which
saved the kingdom. A change, as we are obliged
to call it, came over its destinies. It should be
created passible, and not impassible. It should be
endowed with a suffering life. It should flow out
of a suffering Heart, and should sustain a suffering
Body. It should be selected by the Holy Trinity,
for reasons inscrutable to us, inscrutable perhaps
because we know so little about life, to be the
solitary ransom for sin. If we knew the secret
of life, we might perhaps know many new things
about the Precious Blood. The wisdom of God
beheld innumerable fitnesses in this mysterious
choice. We can adore them, even though we do
not know them. Thus the Precious Blood was to
conquer back his kingdom for Jesus, and to secure
the jewel of sinlessness for his Mother’s diadem.
Thus Jesus owed to his Precious Blood his king­
dom and his Mother. Yet this Blood, what is it
but the own life of Jesus? Thus was sin frus­
trated without the creature's liberty being forfeited.
Thus did darkness war against light; and what
came of it was, that, through the Precious Blood,
the original idea of Creation was even beautified,
without any change in the Unchangeable. These
are the relations of the Precious Blood to Creation
and the Incarnation. These are its titles to
royalty,—that it reinstated the dominion of God,
and that it restored the kingdom of Jesus.
Let us pause for a moment to make an act of
loving reparation to the immutability of God. We
10

I

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

have had to speak of him with the infirmity of
human woids, as if his plans had failed, or his
counsels had been altered. But we must not let
any such idea rest on our minds. How it is that
he did not change we cannot see: but we know
that he did not; and we adore his blissful immuta­
bility. God changes his works without changing
his counsels, says St. Augustine. But the change
is in creatures, not in him. Time cannot change
him, because he is eternal; nor place, because he
is immense. He cannot change within himself,
because he is perfect. He cannot be changed by
any thing outside him, because he is almighty.
His life is absolute repose, beatitude, simplicity:
and in all this there can be no change. The very
necessity, which compels us to speak of God as if
he changed, only brings home to us more forcibly
the perfection of his tranquillity. Let us then
boldly offer to his love these ignorant words; and,
while they enable us to understand somewhat of
the peculiar office and grandeur of the Precious
Blood, let us lovingly adore that unchangeableness
of God, which has lain for all eternity more un­
wrinkled than a summer sea, and will lie to all
eternity, with almost infinite worlds round about
it, and yet have neither current, stream, or pulse,
or tide, or wave, with no abyss to hold it and with
no shore to Sound it, with no shadow from with­
out, and no throbbing from within.
Now that we have endeavored to show tho
place, which the Precious Blood holds in the coun­
sels of God, with reference both to Creation and
the Incarnation, let us, before we advance any
further, see how the Holy Scriptures speak of it

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Ill

and how completely their language is in harmony
with our theology. We will content ourselves
with putting the texts together, as we find from
experience that many persons, when a special
devotion to the Precious Blood is urged upon them,
were not at all aware of the stress which the in­
spired writings lay upon itrç but have rather
regarded it as merely a convenient figurative ex­
pression to sum up and represent the mysteries of
redemption.
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, Amen, I say
unto you : Except you eat the Flesh of the Son
of man, and drink his Blood, you shall not have
life in you. He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh
my Blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise
him up in the last day. For my Flesh is meat
indeed, and my Blood is drink indeed. He that
eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, abideth
in me, and 1 in him. In him, says St. Paul, it
bath well pleased the Father that all fulness
should dwell, and through him to reconcile all
things unto himself, making peace through the
Blood of his cross, both as to the things on earth,
and the things that are in heaven. Christ, being
come an high-priest of the good things to come,
by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made
with hand, neither by the blood of goats, or of
calves, but by his own Blood, entered once into
the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption.
For, if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the
ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such
as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh, how
much more shall the Blood of Christ, who by the
Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God,

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cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve
the living God? Neither was the first testament
dedicated without blood ; and almost all things,
according to the law, are cleansed with blood ; and
without shedding of blood there is no remission.
It is necessary therefore that the patterns of hea­
venly things should be cleansed with these; but
the heavenly things themselves with better sacri­
fices than these. We have, therefore, brethren, a
confidence in the entering into the Holies by tho
Blood of Christ, a new and living way which ho
hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to
say, his Flesh. We are come to tho sprinkling of
Blood, which speaketh better than that of Abel.
The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought
into the Holies by tho high-priest for sin, are
burned without the camp: wherefore Jesus also,
that he might sanctify the people by his own
Blood, suffered without the gate. St. Peter speaks
of us as elect, according to the foreknowledge of
God the Father, unto the sanctification of tho
Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the Blood
of Jesus Christ. St. John says, The Blood of
Jesus Christ bis Son cleanseth us from all sin.
This is be that came by water and Blood: not by
water only, but by water and Blood: and it is the
Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the truth;
and there are Three who give testimony in heaven,
the Father, the AVord, and the Holy Ghost; and
these Three are One; and there are three that
give testimony on earth, the spirit, and the water,
and the Blood; and these three are one. Tho
Ancients in the Apocalypse sung a new canticle
saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to take the

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

book, and to open the seals thereof: because thox
wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God in th)
Blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people
and nation, and hast made us to our God a kingdom
and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. Ana
one of the Ancients answered and said to me:
These that are clothed in white robes, who are
they? and whence came they? And I said to him,
My lord, thou knowest. And he said to me, These
are they who are come out of great tribulation,
and have washed their robes and made them white
in the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are
before the throne of God; and the Lamb, which is
in the midst of the throne, shall rule them. And
I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: Now is
come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of
our God, and the power of his Christ; because the
accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused
them before our God day and night; and they
overcame him by the Blood of the Lamb. And I
saw heaven opened, and behold ! a white horse :
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and
True; and with justice doth he judge and fight;
and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and on bis
head were many diadems; and he had a name
written, which no man knoweth but himself; and
he was clothed with a garment sprinkled with
Blood;· and his name is called The Word of God:
and the armies that are in heaven followed him on
white horses, clothed in fine linen white and clean;
and he shall rule: and he hath on his garment and
on his thigh written, King of kings and Lord of
lords. Again St. Paul says, The chalice of benedic­
tion, which we bless, is it not the communion of
H
10»

I

w

Π4

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the Blood of Christ? Now in Christ Jesus, you,
who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the
Blood of Christ. St. Peter says, We know that
we were redeemed with the Precious Blood of
Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled, fore­
known indeed before the foundation of the world,
but manifested in the last times. St. Paul also
speaks of the God of peace, who brought again
from the dead the great pastor of the sheep, our
Lord Jesus Christ, in the Blood of the everlasting
testament. To the clergy of Ephesus St. Paul
speaks of the bishops who rule the church of God,
which be hath purchased with his own Blood. To
the Romans he speaks of the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus, whom God bath proposed to be a
propitiation, through faith in his Blood, to the
showing of his justice, for the remission of former
sins, through the forbearance of God. Christ died
for us: much more therefore, being now justified by
his Blood, shall we be saved from wrath through
him. He speaks to the Ephesians of our being
predestinated unto the praise of the glory of God's
grace, in which he hath graced us in his beloved
Son, in whom we have redemption through his
Blood, the remission of sins, according to tho
riches of his grace. Similarly to the Colossians
he speaks of the Father having delivered us from
the power of darkness, and translated us into the
kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have
redemption through his Blood, . . . that in all
things he may hold the primacy. St. John in tho
preface of the Apocalypse delivers his message as
from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the
first-begotten of the dead, and the prince of the

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

f

115

kings of the earth, who hath loved ns, and washed
us from our sins in his own Blood, and hath made
us a kingdom, and priests to God and his Father,
to him be glory and empire for ever and ever’.
*
Amen.
He who desires to attain to a deep and fervent
devotion to the Precious Blood cannot do so more
readily than by taking the foregoing texts of
the Holy Scriptures for the subjects of his medita­
tions. They will carry him, and very gently, far
down into the mind of God. They will infuse
into him a more tender and a more ardent love
of the Person of the Eternal Word, while they
will also increase his reverence for the Sacred
Humanity. They, like all Scripture words, will
bring forth fruit a thousandfold in his heart.
Meanwhile, with reference to our present train
of thought, the reader will observe how frequently
and in what a striking way the mention of the
Precious Blood is coupled by the Holy Ghost with
the idea of kingdom-, empire, and primacy, how
carefully the eternal determination and fore­
knowledge of the Precious Blood is kept in sight,
how it is put forward as the making of an offer­
ing, the restoring of his creatures, to God, and,
finally, how it is to St. Peter, our Lord’s Vicar
upon earth, that we owe the title of Precious as
applied to his Master’s Blood. I cannot but
* St. John vi. 54, 56. Col. i. 20. Heb. ii. 14 ; ix. 7 ; x.
19; xii. 24; xiii. 11. 1 Pet. i. 2. 1 John i. 7 ; v. 6, 8.
Apoo. v. 9; vii. 14; xii. 11; xix. 13. 1 Cor. x. 16. Eph.
ii. 13. 1 Pet. i. 19. Heb. xiii. 20. Acts xx. 28. Rom. iii
25 ▼. 9. Eph. i. 7. Col. ». 14. Apoc. i. 5

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

believe that many men will feel their devotion
to the Precious Blood increased as a special devo­
tion when they see the wonderful teaching of the
Bible on the subject brought into one view.
There are of course many ways in which the
Precious Blood establishes the empire of Jesus.
We may illustrate the matter sufficiently for our
purpose by selecting three of them, Conversion,
Sanctification, and the Building up of the Church.
We shall have to speak more at length of Conver­
sion in the next chapter. We shall treat there­
fore very briefly at present of these three things,
and chiefly from one point of view, namely, the
contrast and comparison between them and the
act of Creation.
We have then to remember that it is the office
of the Precious Blood to reconquer for God an
empire which sin has wrested from him, and to
govern and administer this empire in proportion
as it reconquers it. Its royal rights, while they
are the gratuitous appointments of God and flow
from his eternal choice, are also based on the
double relation of the Precious Blood to Creation
and the Incarnation. Its relation to Creation
makes it the rightful representative of the Domi­
nion of God. Its relation to the Incarnation
makes it the natural vicegerent of the Kingdom
of the Sacred Humanity.
To us fallen creatures Conversion is the most
interesting divine act of which we are able to
take intimate cognizance. It is an act going on
in the world at all moments, and which must
M’Pen t0 every one of us, either in the waters
of baptism or out of them, if we are to be saved.

ΤΠΕ EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

.

>

117

Moreover, it is an act which may be repeated
several times in each individual soul. It is to our
supernatural being what Creation is to our natural
being. The one calls us out of nothingness into
life: the other out of darkness into light. The
one makes us citizens of earth ; the other citizens
of heaven. By the one we are entitled to pre­
servation, and all the numerous means, appliances,
and consequences of life ; by the other we have
a right to claim sanctification, and all the nume­
rous means, appliances, and consequences of grace.
The creation of our souls was the work of an
instant. God willed the existence of our souls,
and exactly of such souls as he had foreseen and
chosen to be our peculiar selves from all eternity.
There was no process. He willed, and it was done.
Where there had been nothingness, there was
now a human soul, a soul beautiful in its inde­
structible simplicity, beautiful in its complicated
life. The sum of existences had been swelled by
one; and that one had now to fulfil a strange,
difficult, varied, romantic, destiny which would go
on to be eternal. Conversion, on the other hand,
is a process, and often a very long one. Some­
times whole years of life go to its preparation.
Ten thousand circumstances, sweetly constrained
by the paternal tenderness of God, gradually con­
verge upon some predetermined hour and minute.
Misfortunes are sent to prepare the ground, to
plough it up with rude troubles, to soften it with
silent weeping, or to break it to pieces through
the kindly action of the frost. Happiness comes
from God like an angel, to exorcise evil spirits
from the mind, the temper, or the heart, and to

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clear the way for more supernatural operations.
Accident, or seeming accident, also has its func­
tion in this work. Chance books, chance conver­
sations, chance meetings, frequently accelerate
the process, and not seldom hurry it at once to its
conclusion. If only wo could see them, wo should
discover that the graces which precede conver­
sion are, for number, variety, strangeness, un­
expectedness, and kindliness, among the most
wonderful works of God and the most touching
ingenuities of his love. Yet, while the process
of Conversion contrasts with Creation in that it is
a process at all, it also resembles it in being really
instantaneous. The actual justification of a sinner
is the work of an instant. We see this in the
baptism of infants. But also in grown-up people
the transition from the enmity of God to his
friendship, from a state of sin to a state of grace,
takes place in a moment. One moment, and
if the soul left the body it must perish eternally;
another moment, and if sudden death came salva­
tion would be secure. The change from the form­
less abyss of nothingness to the fresh, complete
soul, is not more instantaneous than the justifica­
tion of a sinner. What has gone before has been
merely preparatory. It might weigh in judgment
as ground for abating the severity of punishment;
but it could not avail to alter that state of the
soul which death has rendered fixed, certain, and
irrevocable.
God condescends to put himself before us as
effecting Creation by a word. He spoke, and it
was done. Let light be, and light was. Thus
Creation is effected by the most simple of all

ΤΠΕ EMPIRE OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

b

Πθ

agencies, namely, by a single means, and that;
means, not a work, but a mere word. The Pre­
cious Blood, on the other hand, effects its crea­
tions in Conversion by a multiplicity of means,
of means which are often repeated, often varied,
often intensified, often newly invented for fresh
cases, and often quite peculiar to the individual
case. There is nothing in the world which the
Precious Blood cannot make a means of grace.
Even sin, though it cannot be a means of grace,
can be constrained to do the ministries of grace,
just as Satan is made the reluctant bondsman
of the elect, and is forced to jewel their crowns
with the very temptations he has devised for their
destruction. Nevertheless in this respect also
Conversion is like Creation. It is like it in its
choice of means, though not like it in its sim­
plicity. For the Precious Blood also chooses
words for its instruments, as if in honor of that
Eternal Word whose human life it is. The Sacra­
ments are its ordinary modes of action, as we
shall see later on ; and words are the forms of
the Sacraments, without which their peculiar
miracles of grace cannot be wrought. Divine
words are the chosen instruments of production
in the supernatural as well as in the natural
world.
It is one of the glories of the act of Creation,
that there is no semblance of effort about it. It
is the free act of God, but it is hardly an act in
the sense in which we commonly use the word.
It is an act in a much higher sense, a simpler
and yet a more efficacious sense. It fe an act
without effort, without succession, without pro­

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cesses. It is an act such as befits the perfections
of the Most High. His power did not rise up, as
it were, to do it, nor his wisdom deliberate about
it, nor his love grow to it. Nothing went out
of him to the act, nor was the tranquillity of his
life quickened by it. Conversion, on the contrary,
has all the look of effort about it. Nay, effort
is not the word : I should rather have said agony.
The Precious Blood working its way out of our
Blessed Lord’s Body in the sweat of Gethsemane,
the slow, painful oozings from the Crown of
thorns, the rude violence of the sprinkling at the
Scourging, the distillation of the Blood along the
streets of Jerusalem and up the slope of Calvary,
the soaking of his clinging raiment, the four wells
dug by the cruel nails ebbing and flowing with the
pulses of his feeble life, the violation of the silent
sanctuary of his Dead Heart, to seek for the few
drops of that precious treasure that might be left,
—all these are parts of the effort of Conversion.
Neither is there less look of effort in the Conver­
sion of each single soul : more with some, and
less with others. In most instances the Precious
Blood seems to return to the charge again and
again. Here it fails, there it succeeds. Now its
success is hardly perceptible, now it is manifest,
striking, and decisive. The Precious Blood tries
to convert every one, just as it was shed for every
one. Multitudes remain unconverted, and arc
never won back to the kingdom of God. With
them the battle has gone against grace. Even in
defeat the Precious Blood triumphs. It gains
glory for God; but it is in ways which in this life
we cannot even put ourselves into a position to

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121

understand. It can boast also of decisive victo­
ries, of great strokes of grace, of hearts carried
by storm, of saints made at once out of one heroic
deed. But these are not the common cases. With
most hearts it strives, and pleads, and toils; then
it seems to intermit its labors, as if it were
fatigued; it retires from the heart as if in despair.
Once more it returns to its task, and occupies
itself with incredible patience in minutest details,
often working under ground and in circuitous
ways. Not seldom it retires again, as if now
completely baffled; and finally, when least ex­
pected, it leaps upon its prey from afar, and
triumphs as much by the suddenness, as by the
impetuosity, of the onslaught.
Look at that soul, almost the richest booty it
ever won in war, the soul of St. Paul. What long
years there were of religious antecedents, what a
blind generosity of misdirected zeal, what a fidelity
to unhelpful ordinances, what a preparation for
humility in the cruel persecution of the faithful,
what a prelude to apostolic fervor in that furious
partisanship of the conscientious pharisee, what
an insensible drawing nigh to the Gospel through
the very perfection of bis Judaism! Then follow
St. Stephen’s prayers, and things are coming to
the best with Saul when they are at their very
worst. Yet Stephen’s prayers are not so much
attacking him as circumventing him. Then the
heavens open at noonday, and the glorified .Re­
deemer overwhelms him with sudden light, and
blinds him, and flings him to the ground; and the
blood of Stephen, which had cried aloud to the
Blood of Jesus, is sweetly avenged by the heart of
11

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ΤΠΕ EMPIRE OP THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Γηul being cleansed by that atoning Blood, and sent
out unto all nations to be the especial preacher of
that Blood which had so glorified itself in his Con­
version. Yet, while there is such a seeming con­
trast between Creation and Conversion in this
matter of effort, there is also a close comparison
between them. There is in reality no effort in the
operation of the Precious Blood. It only needed
to let itself bo shed. It only needs now to let
itself be outpoured. Its touch is health, life, resur­
rection, immortality, and glory. Its sole touch is
its sole work. It never touches but it changes.
It needs but to touch once in order to make its
spiritual change complete. If it seems to add, to re­
peat, to re-touch, to deepen, to broaden, to improve
on itself, all that comes from another part of its cha­
racter. It is no sign of want of power, no necessary
expenditure of artistic labor, no demand of expe­
rience, no consequence of more mature reflection.
The absence of contrivance is another splendor
of the divine act of Creation. No plan was laid.
No gradual train of thought reached the grand
conclusion. No provisions were made, no prepa­
rations finished, no materials collected. There
were no preliminaries. There was no change in
the Ever-blessed Agent. Without any prelude, and
yet with a tranquillity which admitted not of sud­
denness, God created. There was no model for
him to go by. There was no law to constrain
nim. He had never done a free act before. This
was bis first. Yet it affected not his immuta­
bility. brom all eternity the Son was being born
of the Father; from all eternity the Holy Ghost
was proceeding from the Father and the Son. But

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123

these were necessary actions. They were the in­
ward life of God. Creation was a free act, an act
which he was free to do, or to leave undone, with
out altering his perfections. He acted. He created.
The consequences are stupendous. They are end­
less. They are beyond the comprehension of the
highest angels. With all these consequences God
himself is most mysteriously mixed up. There is
his concurrence with all created actions and move­
ments, the intricacies of his never-halting provi­
dence, the Incarnation, the Divine Mother, the Fall,
the Precious Blood, the Church, the Sacraments,
the Economy of grace, the Doom, the Wail of hell,
the J ubilee of heaven. Yet he acted out of his ado­
rable simplicity. He put himself in no attitude to
create. He made no movement. He contrived
nothing. He spoke, but his utterance broke not
the everlasting silence; and at his voiceless word
all was done. There is no calm in the universe
like the calmness of the act by which the whole
universe was created. There was not a stir in the
life of God when a million times ten million angels
sprang into beautiful existence, and a million
times ten million material worlds leaped up like
fires out of a void abyss, where a moment before
neither abyss nor void had been. Thus there was
no history in the act of Creation, whereas in each
Conversion there is a marvellous, orderly, yet en­
tangled history. There is a look of contrivance
about the Precious Blood. It was to be got from
Mary’s heart. Her heart was to be hindered, by a
strange miracle of anticipation, through the very
virtue of the unformed Precious Blood itself, from
coming under the law of sin. It had to pass into

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the life of Jesus, and to multiply in his veins to the
full supply of manhood. The methods by which
it was to be shed were all to be contrived, with
times, places, quantities, and circumstances befitting
them. It had to be looked after during the triduo
of the Passion, and its restoration to the Body of
our dearest Lord contrived. After all this, further
contrivance was needed concerning the methods
of applying it to the souls of men. Its impetu­
osity had to bo in order. Its prodigality had to
submit to law. What an immensity of divine con­
trivance wont to all this machinery I Yet in itself
the Precious Blood operates with as little contri­
vance as effort. In the matter of contrivance, as
in the matter of effort, Conversion emulates the
simplicity of Creation. The brief word of a Sacra­
ment is enough to work its huge miracle upon the
unresisting soul of the infant at the Font. Nay,
with the most obdurate sinner it can by its first
grace accomplish the entire work of sanctity, and
raise him into a saint at once without any of the
sweet insidious contrivances with which the gentle­
ness of redeeming love so often surrounds the ope­
ration of the Precious Blood. Conversion can be
masterful as well as tender.
He that is eternal grows not weary. Eternity
itself is endless, unbeginning rest. Eternity before
Creation is but the name of the life of God. But
the Eternal rested after Creation. He had an
unimaginable sabbath, in which he rested from
the works that he had made. There is no sabbath
yet for the Precious Blood. Its creative work
upon the earth is incessant, increasing as the mul­
titudes of the tribes of men increase. There is no

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125

end to its activity, day and night. It starts each
epoch and each century with renewed ardor and
redoubled vigor. It becomes more abundant and
more energetic in the Church on earth, in propor­
tion as the Church becomes more populous in
heaven. Yet it has a sabbath too, even while it
toils. It rests in the glorified Heart of Jesus in
heaven. It rests upon that mediatorial throne
whereon the Sacred Humanity has been exalted.
The souls of the righteous worship it on high with
everlasting lauds; and the angels, prostrate in
adoration, sing canticles in its honor all through
the nightless day of that radiant land above. It
rests in Jesus. It is his life, his love, his jubilee,
and his repose. This is its sabbath-life in heaven,
while its industry is so divinely vigorous and fer­
tile upon earth. But the sabbath of Creation is
also a time of working, while it is a time of rest.
Not only is the continuous preservation of all
things and the fulfilling of all created things with
the divine concurrence an almost illimitable exten­
sion and on-going of creation, but new souls of men
are literally created out of nothing every moment
of time. Yet still, in some mysterious sense, God's
sabbath is unbroken. Thus Conversion, like Crea­
tion, has its sabbath, even while it works. When
the Grand Doom has come and gone, who can tell
into what a sabbath the rest of our dearest Lord
shall deepen ?
If Conversion is the conquest of the empire of
the Precious Blood, Sanctification is its govern­
ment of that which it has conquered. Sanctifica­
tion is to Conversion what Cosmogony is to
Creation. Jt is the dividing up, and dispensing,
n·

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

and setting in order, and adorning, what has
already been created out of nothing. Or, again,
it is to the work of justification what, in natural
things, the preservation of life is to the evolving
of life out of nothing. It was the Holy Ghost
who fashioned the Precious Blood out of the im­
maculate blood of Mary. He was the Fashioner
of the Sacred Humanity. To him that work is
specially appropriated. He also is especially, and
by appropriate office, our Sanctifier. It was to
him that Jesus left bis Church. What our Lord
himself had been during the Three-and-Thirty
Years, the Holy Ghost began to be in some pecu­
liar manner from the day of Pentecost. Jesus
himself has returned to abide in his Church in the
Blessed Sacrament; but he abides in it as it were
beneath the administration of the Holy Ghost,
which he himself appointed. The Precious Blood,
which the Holy Spirit fashioned, is now the same
Spirit’s instrument in the great work of sanctifica­
tion. As that Blood was the love of the Son’s
Sacred Humanity, by which he offered his atone­
ment to the Father, so is it the love of his Sacred
Humanity, by which with sweetest affectionate
ministries he subserves the sanctifying office of the
Holy Ghost. By tho Precious Blood the Son him­
self became Redeemer, while by the same dear
Blood reparation was made to the Father’s honor
as Creator, and to the Holy Spirit’s tender love as
the Sanctifier of creation. He who in the Holy
Trinity was produced and not producing became
fertile by the Precious Blood.
Was there ever any such fertility as that of the
Holy Ghost? The leaves of the trees, the blades

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127

of the grass, the matted entanglement of tropical
herbs in the moist forest, the countless shoals of
the living inhabitants of ocean, the swarms of in­
sects which in hot regions blacken the sun for
miles as if they were sand-storms,—these are but
types of the fecundity of the Holy Ghost in the
operations of grace. We never can do justice to
the magnitude of the world of angels. The poor
child, who has no notion of money but in pence,
would be bewildered if be were called upon to deal
with gold and to count his gold by millions. So
we in earthly things are accustomed to dimensions,
and to numbers, on so dwarfish a scale, that even
our exaggerations will not raise our ideas to the
true magnitudes and multitudes of the world of
angels. The countless myriads of individual spirits,
the countless graces which are strewn all over the
breadth of their capacious natures, the colossal
size of those graces as compared with those of
human souls, the inconceivable rapidity, delicacy,
and subtlety of the operations of grace in such
gigantic intelligences and such fiery affections,—
these considerations, if well weighed, may give us
some idea of the fruitfulness of the most dear
sanctifying Spirit. Every one of those graces was
merited for the angels by the Precious Blood.
Converting grace they never had; for they never
needed a conversion ; and to those who fell no
conversion was allowed. If we think also of tho
multitude of souls, the sum of successive genera­
tions from Adam to the uncertain Doom, if we try
to bring before ourselves the variety of vocations
in the world, the strictly peculiar needs of each
single soul and the distinctive characteristic shape

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empire of the precious blood.

of the holiness of onch single soul, then the multi­
plicity of the processes of grace prolonged perhaps
over half a century or more, we shall see that the
arithmetic of even human graces is amazing.
I hrough the instrumentality of the Precious Blood,
the Holy Ghost is everywhere and always making
all things productive of sanctity in some measure
and degree. Sanctification may be called the pro­
duction of heavenly beauty in the world. It is
the filling of nature with the supernatural. It is
the transforming of the human or angelic into the
divine. It is the engraving of the imago of God
upon every piece and parcel of the rational crea­
tion. It is the brightening and the beautifying of
creation. It is the empire of light stealing upon
the realm of darkness, swiftly, slowly, variously,
with beams and splendors, with transformations
and effects, more marvellous than those of any
lovely dawn upon the mountains and forests of
the earth. It is the especial and appropriate office
of the Holy Ghost, with the universal and inva­
riable and inseparable agency of the Precious Blood.
Thus, every process of Sanctification, while it is an
outpouring of exquisite love upon creatures, is also
a passage of mutual love between Jesus and the
Holy Ghost. Our Lord’s words in the Gosper in­
dicate to us something of the unspeakable jealous
love of the Sacred Humanity for the Eternal Spirit
Our dearest Savior, whose very office and occupa­
tion it was to forgive sin, was unlike himself when
be excepted from this amnesty the sin against the
Holy Ghost: uulike himself, yet true to some depth
of holiness and love within himself. On the other
band, it was to be the office of the Paraclete to

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bring Jesus to mind, to fill the memory with the
sweet words he had said, to keep the Thirty-Three
Years alive on earth forever, to be forever testify­
ing of Jesus, and forever completing and adoring
the work which he had come on earth to do. Thus,
as in theology the Holy Ghost is named the Kiss
of the Father and the Son, the Son and the Holy
Ghost kiss Each Other in the Precious Blood. All
Sanctification is the love of the Holy Ghost for
the Sacred Humanity ; and every operation of
the Precious Blood is a tender adoration of the
Holy Ghost by the Created Nature of our blessed
Lord.
But we should soon sink out of our depths in
mysteries like these. We will pass on to the third
of the principal ways in which the Precious Blood
reconquers for God the empire of his own creation,
and establishes the kingdom of Christ,—the Build­
ing up of the Church. To continue our comparison
with Creation,—as Conversion represents the act
of Creation, and Sanctification the work of Cos­
mogony, so the Building up of the Church is
parallel to those changes in the face of Creation
made by the lapse of time and the agency of the
natural laws of the universe. The alterations of
the bed of ocean, the deposits of mighty rivers,
the crumbling of the rocks, the devastations of the
earthquake and volcano, the elevation and sub­
sidence of the earth, the spreading of the sandy
deserts, the mutations of climate from other and
less normal catastrophes,—all these things have
altered the face of the earth, made it more habit­
able, and by deciding its physical geography have
gone far to decide its history and to locate the
I

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centres of its civilization. So is it with the epiritual earth through the vicissitudes of the Church.
The Church is the work of the Precious Blood. It
was made by it, cleansed by it, adorned by it, pro­
pagated by it, and kept glorious by it. The Church
is that portion of creation purchased by the Pre­
cious Blood out of alien possession, recovered from
unjust holding, redeemed from slavery, conquered
from enemies. The salvation of individual souls
is dependent upon the Church. Hence the Building
up of the Church is one of the grandest works of
the Precious Blood. The conversion of nations,
the history of doctrine, the holding of councils, the
spread of the episcopate, the influence of the
ecclesiastical upon the civil law, the freedom of
the Holy See, the papal monarchy of past ages,
the concordats of the present day, the filial sub­
ordination of catholic governments,—all these
things alter the face of the spiritual world. Every
one of them is a vast fountain of God's glory, an
immense harvest of souls, a prolific source of
human happiness, and the antidote to a thousand
evils. Above all things, the honor, the freedom,
and the empire of the Holy See are the works of
the Precious Blood. The Church is the Body of
Christ ; and nowhere are the lineaments of our
dearest Lord, his beauty, his persuasiveness, his
strange commingling of gladness and of woe, so
faithfully expressed as in the Head of his Church.
Hence it is that the joyousness of the saints ebbs
and flows with the vicissitudes of the Holy See.
Hence 't is that the most secret mystic's are
affected by the fortunes of distant Home, like the
wells that dry and til! .again in hidden

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131

with an earthquake in some remote quarter of the
world.
In quiet times good men can love the Vicar of
Christ, and look at him as their venerable father
and monarch, ruling over all the best affections of
their hearts, with a loyalty which the hereditary
sovereigns of the earth can never obtain, and
which is a far more heavenly thing than a patriot’s
love of the land which gave him birth. But when
the clouds gather round the Sacred City, when the
pressure of self-seeking potentates again begins to
crucify our Lord afresh in the person of bis Vicar,
when the coils of diplomacy twist themselves
round Peter’s throne, when wellnigh all the world,
schism, heresy, unbelief, ambition, injustice, and
catholic states world-tainted, league together
against the Lord’s Anointed, then to the saints
the face of Christ’s Vicar becomes like the counte­
nance of his Lord. It grows more majestic in
abjection. The anguish on it is divine. It is more
worshipful than ever, at the very moment when
it is calling out our tenderest love and our keenest
sympathies. This too is a time rife in victories to
the Precious Blood. Rome is saved, and man has
not saved it. They were bearing the papacy out
to burial, and lo! a glorious resurrection ! When
deliverance was furthest oft
*, then it came.
But these great historical triumphs are not the
only victories of the Precious Blood in evil days.
It wins many in the secrets of hearts. The spirit
of the age is forever tainting the minds and hearts
of the elect. There are few who do not end by
going with the multitude, few who are not imposed
upon by the pompous elation of science, by the

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juvenile pronouncements of an improved litorature, by the complacent self-glorifications of tem­
poral prosperity, and by the pretensions to an
unparalleled grandeur which each generation
makes as it struts out upon the stage of life. It is
fine to innovate: it is refreshing to be audacious:
it is a cheap victory to attack : it is comfortable
to be on the same side with the loud-voiced world
around us. Few men have clearly ascertained
their own principles. They admit into their in­
consequent minds wandering ideas of the times,
without seeing that they are in reality hostile to
the holy things which occupy the sanctuary of
their hearts. Hence they get upon the wrong
side, specially in middle life. It is not youth so
much as middle life that falls in this way. While
the generosity of youth makes early life to err in
questions of degree, the same generosity keeps it
incorrupt in questions of kind. It is the egotistical
self-importance of middle life, which makes apos­
tates, reformers, and malcontents. It is then that
men get upon the wrong side. They fight under
wrong banners. They frustrate the promise of
their better years. They become out of harmony
with the Church. From that hour their lives are
failures. They grow querulous and contentious,
peevish and captious, bitter and sour. Their old
age is extremely solitary ; and it is a great grace
of God if they do not die on the wrong side, they
who seem to have been raised up to be the very
foremost champions of the right. Now it is bad
times which open men's eyes. They see then how
the spirit of the age has been nigh to deceiving
them, how they mistook its loudness for wisdom

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133

and how near they were to losing the simplicity
of their devotion in the unhelpfulness of an intel­
lectual demonstration, which has passed away, and
has done as little, and is remembered as much, as
the popular novel of a season. Many are the vic­
tories of disenchantment which the Precious Blood
gains in times like those. Souls, that are won
back to the old ways and the antique fashions,
may yet be saints, whose promises of holiness
must soon have been withered, cankered, or dis­
persed in the vanity of modern attempts and
innovations.
Nay, though we may be unable to see it, we
cannot doubt that there are triumphs of the Pre­
cious Blood in the spread of heresies, in the schism
of kingdoms, and in similar catastrophes of the
Church. Souls seem to perish, and it is hard to
bear. But the life of the Church is very vast, and
is ruled by immense laws; and when her Spouse
comes at the end, the Precious Blood must needs
present her to him “a glorious Church, not having
spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.”* We must
remember always, therefore, that the Church is
the empire of the Precious Blood, and that that
Blood will be the law of its life, and will govern
it, not at all in the world’s way, not at all in the
spirit of an age, but altogether after its own spirit
and altogether in its own way. Souls soon lose
themselves who chafe because the Church is not
wise with a worldly wisdom.
But we should have a very imperfect notion
of the empire of the Precious Blood if we did not
* Eph. ▼. 27.
12

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

take into account the chief methode by which it
does its work. We have seen somo^of the prin­
cipal ways in which it spreads its empire; let us
now see the means by which it spreads it. These
means are the Sacraments.
It is difficult to describe tho Sacraments. If an
angel were to bear us from this globe which we
inhabit, and carry us to some distant star, which
God may have adorned as a dwelling-place for
some other species of reasonable creatures, we
should be struck with the novelty and peculiarity
of the scenery around us. Some of its features
might remind us of the scenery of earth, although
with characteristic differences; wdiile other fea­
tures wTould be entirely new, entirely unlike any
thing we had ever seen before, either in color,
form, or composition. This is very much tho
effect produced upon us when we come to learn tho
catholic doctrine about the Sacraments. It intro­
duces us into a new world. It gives us new ideas.
It is more than a discovery ; for it amounts to a
revelation. The Sacraments are part of the new
world introduced into creation by the Incarnation
of the Eternal Word, and therefore are an essen­
tial part of creation as it was eternally pre­
ordained by God. Yet they aro quite distinct
from any other province in creation. The Sacra­
ments of the Old Law were but shadows of the
Sacraments of the Gospel. Tho Sacraments of
the New Law are created things which have been
devised and fabricated by our Blessed Lord him­
self. The Eucharist was foreshadowed by the
Paschal Lamb : the Sacrament of Order by the
consecration of priests; and Penance by the legal

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135

purifications of the tabernacle. There was no
shadow of Confirmation, because it is the Sacra­
ment of the fulness of grace, and so can belong
only to the Gospel dispensation. Neither was
there any shadow of Extreme Unction, because
it is the immediate preparation for the entrance
of the soul into glory; and there was no entrance
into glory for any human soul till Jesus had risen
and ascended. Neither could Matrimony be a
Sacrament under the Old Law, because the Word
had not yet actually wedded our human nature;
and the sacramentality of Marriage consists in its
being the figure of those transcendent nuptials
of the Sacred Humanity.
What then shall we call these Sacraments ? They
are not persons, yet they seem to be scarcely
things: I mean that they seem to be something
more than things. We want another word for
them, another name, and cannot find one. They
are powers, lives, shrines, marvels, divine hiding­
places, centres of heavenly power, supernatural
magnificences, engraftings of heaven upon earth,
fountains of grace, mysterious efficacies, marriages
of matter and spirit, beautiful complications of
God and man. Each Sacrament is a species by
itself. Each has some specialty, which is at once
its excellence and its mystery. The pre-eniirience
of Baptism consists in its remission of original sin
and of the pains due to it. The pre-eminence of
Confirmation resides in the vastness of the succors
of actual grace which it brings with it, as we see
in the fortitude which it conferred upon the Aposties, and which the Eucharist had not conferred

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THE EMPIRE OF THF. PRECIOVR BLOOD.

The Sacrament of Penance can claim the privi,
lego of being the most necessary of all Sacramonts to those who have boon baptized, and of
tho capability of reiterated remission of mortal
sin, which Baptism cannot claim. Extreme Unc­
tion excels Penance in the greater copiousness
of its graces. The excellence of Order consists
in its placing mon in the singularly sublime state
of being domestic ministers of Christ. Matrimony
has a glory of its own in its signification of the
union of our Lord with the Church. The pre­
eminence of the Eucharist resides, as St. Thomas
says, in the very substance of the Sacrament,
seeing that it is as it were the Sacrament of all
the other Sacraments, the centre of them, tho
cause of them, tho end of them, and the harmony
of them. AU are because of it, and are subordi­
nate to its amazing supremacy.
These Sacraments were designed by our Lord
himself, and were instituted by him with varying
degrees of detail as to matter and form in various
Sacraments; and yet, saving their substance, he
has given his Church very extensive power over
them, because they are so intimately connected
with its unity. We see the exercise of this power
in the bread of tho Eucharist, in the impediments
of Marriage, and in the varieties of Order in the
Latin and Greek Churches. The Sacraments are
institutions which illustrate at once the magni­
ficence of God’s dominion over his creation, and
also the capability of creatures to bo elevated by
him to astonishing sublimities far beyond the
merit and due of nature ; and this elevability of

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13”

creatures is one of the most glorious manifesta
tions of the liberty of God.
*
* There are certain differences of opinion in theology
which seem to keep quiet in their own subject-matter, and
not to control other opinions in separate departments of theo­
logy. But there are, on the contrary, opinions, often of seem­
ingly little or merely local importance, which draw along
with them a man’s whole theology. Among these, hardly any
is more remarkable than the opinion we may form on the
subject of what theology calls “potentia obedientialis.” I
mention this here, because in the exposition of the doctrine
of the Sacraments given in the text, I have taken pains to
use no expressions which shall be unfair to those who hold
the moral operation, and not the physical operation, of the
Sacraments. Amicus has beautifully shown that both the
theories equally, though differently, magnify the grandeur
of the Sacraments. If the physical theory attributes to them
a more marvellous operation on the recipient, the moral
theory attributes to them a more mysterious action upon God
himself. I wish to observe also that, although there is a
manifest, sympathy between the Scotist doctrine of the Sacra­
ments and the Scotist doctrine of potentia obedientialis, the
connection is not necessary. It is a matter of sympathy rather
than of logic. A man who holds the moral theory of the
operation of the Sacraments lies under the same obligation
of explaining his potentia obedientialis as one who holds the
physical theory. This Amicus has candidly pointed out. The
doctrine of potentia obedientialis is to me the part of Scutus's
system which is most hard to receive. St. Thomas’s doctrine
of potentia opens out a view of creation much more deep and
philosophical, from this point of view, while, when we come
to look at creation from the point of view of the Incarnation,
Scotus seems to be much more deep and philosophical than
St. Thomas. Perhaps the views of the later scholastics on
potentia obedientialis are still more philosophical. I would
venture to recommend a special study of this question to stu­
dents of theology, as one which particularly gives unity and
consistency to the multitude of a man's theological tenets
13·

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The Sacraments are not mere signs of grace,
but causes of it. They cause grace in us physi­
cally by the omnipotence of God which exists in
them as if it were their own proper virtue and
energy; for the omnipotence of God exists so spe­
cially in the Sacraments that if, by impossibility,
God were not omnipresent, he would nevertheless
be present in the Sacraments. The Sacraments
cause grace physically, just as our Lord’s Blood,
shed long ago, cleanses us from our sins physi­
cally, not morally only, and just as his Resurrec­
tion and Ascension cause our resurrection >and
ascension physically, by an energy and a force
which God has appropriated to them.
*
The SaSee Ripalda, De Ente Supernatural!, lib. ii. and especially
Disputations 40 and 41. Haunoldus, Controversiae Theolo­
gies, lib. iv. tract ii. cap. 1, controversia 2.
Amicus, the
latter part of Disp. iv., de Causalitate Sacramentorum, and all
Disp. v., de Potentia Obedientmli, and Disp, vi., Quæ entia et
ad quos effectus elevari possint. Viva, the whole of Disp. ii.,
de Causalitate Sacramentorum; and the other great theolo­
gians in loco. But in connection should be read also in the
different writers de Angelis the treatment of tne question,
An creatio communicari possit creatur® obedientialiter, and
its cognate questions, which are to be found under the de
principio productivo Angelorum : or, in some theologians,
under de Deo, especially de Dei cognoscibilitate, or de Beatitndine, or de Hominis creatione, or de Opificio sex dierum.
I would especially mention the De Deo of Francis de Lugo,
Disp. vii., De ente supernatural! in communi, and Disp. viii.,
De variis divisionibus entis supernaturalis : and likewise the
10th and 11th Disputations in Arriaga de Sacramentis.
There are also some interesting things in the huge work
of Cnstaldus the Dominican, de Potestate Angelica, and in
Arriaga’s Physics.
* Viva Pars., vii. Disp. ii. q. 2.

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139

craments also cause grace in us morally, by
representing to the Father the merits of Christ's
Passion actually accomplished, and so doing a sort
of holy and irresistible violence to God, and
thereby procuring for us more abundant, and at
the same time very special, succors of grace.
Both these methode of causing grace bring vividly
before us the unspeakable majesty of the Sacra­
ments, and enable us to estimate the grandeur
of the merits of our dearest Lord ; but perhaps
of the two methods the honor of Jesus is most
concerned in the Sacraments causing grace phy­
sically, because it is more intimate to him so to
cause it,
* and in many other respects more divine
and more excellent. But these are questions too
difficult for us to enter upon here. It is enough
to say with St. Chrysostom that the way in
which the Sacraments confer grace is above the
power of an angel to tell, or with St. Gregory
Nyssen that the grace of Baptism transcends
human understanding. Such language could
hardly be used of the merely moral efficacy of
* Sicut Caro Christi habuit virtutem instrumentalem ad
faciendum miracula propter conjunctionem ad Verhum, ita
Sacramenta per conjunctionem ad Christum crucifixum et
passum. S. Thomas, Quodlibet. 12, art. 14. Theology suggests
three ways in which the Sacraments may confer grace phy­
sically,—per virtutem obedientialem cum concursu omnipotentiæ, per qualitatem supernaturalem intrinsecam, per
omnipotentiam specialiter inexistentem.
In the text the
third method has been adopted, in harmony with the views
of Viva ; but the theological discussion of the question
has been avoided as unfit for the popular character of this
Treatise.

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the Sacraments; and, as Viva observes, if the
fires of Purgatory and Hell act upon the soul
physically in real and marvellous ways, it is at
least congruous to suppose that the instruments
of the Divine Mercy’ shall enjoy the same privi­
leges as the instruments of the Divine Justice.
But the Sacraments not only confer sanctifying
grace and infuse habits of virtue, both physically
and morally’ : they also confer a certain special
sacramental grace, which is peculiar and distinct
in each Sacrament. It is difficult to explain this
sacramental grace; but it seems to be a special
power to obtain from God, by a certain right
founded upon his decrees, particular assistances
and kinds of grace in order to the fulfilment of
each Sacrament. Moreover, it belongs to the
grace of the Sacraments that certain of them
impress what is called a character, or seal, or
signet, on the soul. The nature of this character
is involved in mystery’ ; but the most probable
interpretation of it is that which describes it as
a natural similitude of the Soul of J esus, likening
our souls to his, and imparting hiddenly to our
souls a resemblance of his, hidden in this life,
but to be divulged with exceeding glory here­
after. This is a beautiful thought, and fills us
full of a peculiar love for the dear Human Soul
of Jesus. Lastly, the grace of Sacraments sus­
pended or dormant has a marvellous power of
revival, which enhances the mystery and the
magnificence of these strange and unparalleled
■works of God.
But our clearest idea of the Sacraments is that
which we gam from Hugh St. Victor and the elder

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theologians. They are the making visible of invisi­
ble grace. In them the Precious Blood has clothed
itself in visible forms. In the matter and form
of the Sacraments it has put on its priestly vest­
ments, of unearthly fashion, and of manifold signifi­
cance. Indeed, the grace of the Sacraments is the
very physical grace which was in the Soul of Jesus,
replicated, as theology speaks, that is, repeated
again and again in us, and repeated in us by means
of the Precious Blood. Many theologians have
held that all the grace, which is in any of us, was
first, physically, really, and locally, in the Soul of
Christ; so that our grace is, most literally and
most affectingly, a derivation from the abundance
of his grace. How near does this exquisite doc­
trine seem to bring us to our dearest Lord 1* Do
the forms, the fashions, and varieties of these
sevenfold sacramental garments, in which the
Precious Blood clothes itself, tell us of its mys­
teries, its nature, or its character? Doubtless
they have deep meaning, and are symbolical
of its genius; but we are unable to decipher
them. They are hieroglyphics of some hidden
wisdom of God. But we see so much as this: that
the Sacraments are the actions of Christ. He
instituted them as Man ; and thus they are the
going-on of the Thirty-Three Years upon earth. This
* Some eminent theologians have even held that of two
Communions of equal fervor, one by a layman, and one by a
priest, the priest’s Communion would merit more, because of
his conjunction with our Blessed Lord as his domestic minister.
In like manner the special efficacy of our Lady's prayers is
attributed precisely to her conjunction with our Lord as his
Mother.

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is the clearest and the truest view of these mar
vellous portions of creation. Let us now see if we
have not learned enough of their theology to medi­
tate practically upon them in connection with our
subject.
The Sacraments are then, as we see, in a very
special sense the vases of the Precious Blood.
They arc the means by which the Precious Blood
is ordinarily applied to the souls of men. They
are the most characteristic features in the economy
of grace. They are the most striking memorials
of the love of Jesus; and a knowledge of them is
most necessary to a right understanding of re­
demption. This is not the place for entering
further upon the doctrine and definition of the
Sacraments. My readers are doubtless sufficiently
familiar with the teaching of the Church upon a
subject of such constant practical importance, and
what has been said in the foregoing pages will en­
able them to call to mind at least its most promi­
nent features. But it is very needful for our
present subject that we should make some reflec­
tions upon the Sacraments, rather in the way of
meditation than of doctrine. We cannot do justice
to the Precious Blood of our dearest Lord, unless
we have a true spiritual discernment, a loving ad­
miration, and an immense esteem of the grandeur,
riches, and sweetness of the Sacraments. In an
ascetical point of view, I hardly know any thing
uponwhich I should lay greater stress in these days,
thim a fervent devotion to the Sacraments.
ée bacraments are the inventions of God himself. No creature could have devised them. I do
not believe that without revelation the most magnifi­

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143

cent intelligence of the angele could have imagined
such a thing as a Sacrament. It is a peculiar idea
of God. It represents a combination of his most
wonderful perfections. It conveys to us in itself
quite a distinctive notion of God. We already
know God as the unbeginning God. We know
him also as the God of nature and as the God of
grace. These are two different disclosures of him
to us. So the knowledge of him as the God who
devised the Sacraments is another disclosure of
him. It adds many new ideas of him to the other
ideas of him which we possessed before. We should
in some respects have thought differently of God,
if there had been no Sacraments, from what we
think now. This is a great deal to say. It con­
fers upon the Sacraments a most singular dignity,
or rather it expresses in an intelligible manner
that singular dignity which belongs to them. More­
over, God not only invented them, but he invented
them for the most magnificent of purposes. He
invented them, that by their means especially he
might impart his Divine Nature to created natures,
that he might justify sinners, that he might sanc­
tify souls, that he might unite to himself the race
whose nature he had condescended to single out
and assume to himself. If they are his own in­
vention, they must be works of unspeakable excel­
lence; for the least of his works is excellent : but,
if they were meant also for purposes so dear to
him and of such an exalted character, who shall
be able rightly to imagine the excellence of these
Sacraments ? Furthermore, they are very peculiar
inventions. They do not follow the laws of nature.
They even superadd to the laws of grace. They

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are th.ngs apart, almost belonging to an order of
their own. They are apparently without parallel
in all creation. I know of nothing else to which
I could liken them. They come out of some depth
in the unfathomable wisdom of God, which does
not seem to have given out any other specimens
of itself. They are emanations of some abyss of
his magnificence, which has only opened once, to
give them forth, and then has closed, and rested.
As matter and spirit, as naturo and grace, are
samples of God’s beauty, tokens of ineffable reali­
ties in him, manifestations of his invisible treasures,
so likewise are the Sacraments. They invest God
with a new light in our minds. They are some of
his eternal ideas, the more imperiously demanding
our devout study, because we have no others like
them, no others which we can use as similitudes or
as terms of comparison. My knowledge of God is
not only increased in degree, but it is extended in
kind, by my knowledge of a Sacrament.
Strictly speaking, we do not call the Sacraments
miraculous. They7 have laws of their own. So
perhaps have miracles. But the law’s of the Sacra­
ments are revealed to us. Their action follows
rules, and is, under fitting circumstances, invaria­
ble. Their order and immutability are two of
their most striking features ; and this distinguishes
them from miracles. They are processes; and in
this also they are unlike what we popularly’ term
miracles. But so far as they are wonder-working,
so far as their results call forth our astonishment,
so far as their effects are beyond the power of
nature, so far as their completeness and their inBtantaneousness are concerned, so far as the révolu-

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tions they accomplish and the transmutations they
make are beyond the strength of common grace,
so far as their success is in their secret divinity,—
so far wo may call their operation miraculous. It
is certainly in the highest degree mysterious.
Their use of matter seems to point to a philosophy
of matter and spirit far deeper than any which
has yet been taught. It awakens trains of thought
which carry us rapidly into speculations which are
too high for us, yet which give us now and then
unsystematic glances into the secrets of creation.
The forms of the Sacraments betoken a myste­
rious grandeur in language, reminding us of God’s
peculiar way of working by efficacious words, a
characteristic which doubtless is connected in some
hidden manner with the Eternal Generation of the
Word. The invisible sacerdotal power which is
necessary to the validity of so many of the Sacra­
mentsis another of their splendors, while the Sacra­
ments which do not need it imply that latent
priesthood which abides in all Christians, and
which is an emanation of our Savior’s own priest­
hood “ after the order of Melchisedec.” The juris­
diction required for the administration of so many
of the Sacraments, and especially for valid absolu­
tion, is a participation in those regal powers which
belong to the kingdom of Christ, to the Church in
its character of a monarchy. The power of the
Church itself to limit the validity of a Sacrament,
as in the case of reserved sins in Confession, and
of impediments in Matrimony, is another feature
in the Sacraments, which enhances their mysterious
character, while it exalts that lordship of the
Sacred Humanity of Jesus which has been so coK
13

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piously imparted to the Church. All these things
are points for meditation, which cannot fail to fill
the soul with reverence and love, and to unite it
more closely with God, by making us feel how the
natural is hemmed in with the divine, and with
what awful reality we are always lying in the
arms of God, with our liberty held up, secured,
and at once imprisoned and set at large, by all
this exuberance of supernatural interventions.
The grace of the Sacraments is another subject
for pious wonder. The special grace of each
Sacrament, peculiar to itself and accomplishing a
peculiar end, is a marvel in itself. Just as the sun
brings out the blossoms, and paints their variegated
leaves in parti-colored patterns, though the whole
leaf is supplied with the same sap through the same
veins, so does the Sun of justice work in the special
graces of the Sacraments. How he determines
them to such various effects is a secret hidden from
us. The Sacraments have probably spiritual laws
of their own, which are neither gratuitous nor
arbitrary, but founded in some intrinsic fitness of
things, which results from the character of God.
The special grace of each Sacrament seems to be
almost a visible approach of God to the individual
soul, to accomplish some particular end, or con­
firm some definite vocation, or interfere in some
distinct crisis. It is not his usual way of work­
ing. It is not merely a general augmentation of
sanctifying grace, an infusion of livelier faith, of
keener hope, or of more burning charity. It is
something more intimate between God and the
soul, more personal, more full of reference to the
individual ease. Again, we must not omit to

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reflect on the inexhaustibleness of the grace of the
Sacraments. It takes an immense heroism like
martyrdom to come near to the grace of a Sacra­
ment. Even martyrdom does not supersede Bap­
tism or Confession, if they can be had. No one
can tell how much grace lies in a single Sacrament
In a single Communion lies all grace; for in it is
the Author and Fountain of all grace; and, if the
theological opinion be true, that there is no grace
in any of his members which has not actually been
first in our Lord himself, then all the grace of all
the world lies in one Communion, to be unsealed
and enjoyed by the degree of fervor which we
bring. The saints have said that a single Com­
munion was enough to make a saint. Who can
tell if any created soul has ever yet drained any
single Sacrament of the whole amount of grace
which was contained in it simply by virtue of its
being a Sacrament? I should be inclined to think,
from manifold analogies both of nature and of
grace, that no Sacrament had ever been duly
emptied of its grace, not even in the Communions
of our Blessed Lady.
No Sacrament is content to confine itself to the
conferring of its special grace. There is always
an exuberance about it, giving more than is asked,
doing more than is promised, reaching further than
was expected. This is a characteristic of all God's
works. His magnificence is confined in every one
of them, and is forever bursting its bounds, and
carrying light, and beauty, and fertility, and bless­
ing, far beyond the shrine in which it had been
localized. But the Perfection of God, which above
all others the Sacraments appear to represent, is

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hie magnificence. They belong to this Attribute
in a very special and peculiar way. lienee there
is about them a redundancy of grace, a prodigality
of power, a profusencss and lavishness of benedic­
tion, which go beyond the ordinary laws of the
world of grace. Moreover, besides this exuberance,
there is an agility about the Sacraments which is
most worthy of note. Sometimes, if need be, one
will do the work of another. Those, which have
no office to communicate first grace and justify the
sinner, will do so under certain circumstances.
Communion will forgive. Extreme Unction will
absolve : not ordinarily, but when there is neces­
sity for it, and the fitting dispositions. We cannot
think without surprise of this power of transform­
ing themselves, and of passing into each other and
supplying for each other, which within certain
limits the Sacraments possess. Furthermore, the
rivers of grace in the Sacraments never run dry.
Consider the multitude of Sacraments administered
daily in the Church. Picture to yourself the won­
derfulness of grace and its supernatural excellence,
and then imagine the quantity of it drawn out of
the eternal fountains for tho well-being of the world.
It is an overwhelming thought. Grace is not
only more abundant in the Sacraments, and more
nimble, but it is also more sure, more invariable,
more victorious. It is also more patient. Grace
waits longer inside the Sacraments, than out of
them. They seem to detain it, to hold heaven
down upon earth with a sweet force, and so to
multiply the occasions and prolong the opportunities of men.
11
The character, which some of the Sacraments

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confer, also belongs to their grace. It is a revela­
tion to us of the divine impetuosity and energy
of the Sacraments. Amid the ardors of heaven,
and in the dazzling splendors of the Beatific Vision,
the mystic signets, the inexplicable characters of
the Sacraments, three in number, as if adumbrating
the Three Divine Persons, shine forth as distinct
beauties, and brighten through eternity. The cha­
racter of Baptism is as it were the finger-mark of
the Eternal Father on the soul. The character of
Order glistens like the unfailing unction of the
priesthood of the Eternal Son. The character of
Confirmation is the deep mark, which the fires of
the Holy Ghost burned in, the pressure of his tre­
mendous fortitude, which was laid upon us, and
yet we perished not, so tenderly and so gently did
he touch us. In the wild fury of the tempestuous
fires of hell the same characters glow terribly.
They are indestructible even there, fiery shames,
intolerable disgraces, distinct fountains of special
agony forever and forever.
To these reflections on the grace of the Sacra­
ments we must not fail to add a due consideration
of the doctrine of intention. What things can be
more purely divine than these Sacraments? Yet
see how sensible they are to human touch ! It is
as if the very delicacy of their divine fabric made
them more liable to human impressions. They
are jealous of their powers. They do not need our
active co-operation, so much as our permission.
They require obstacles to bo removed, but not
assistance to be conferred. They work, as we say
in theology, by the force of their own work, not
by the energy of the recipient. This is their
J
is·

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peculiarity. It is this which distinguishes them
from other means of grace. They have reason to
be jealous of so magnificent a distinction. Yet
in spite of all this, they are so sensitive to tho
touch of our fervor, that they unlock fresh and
fresh graces according as we press them, as if in
their love and their likeness to God they were
delighted to be pressed, to be solicited, and to bo
importuned. They are also so delicate and so
susceptible that they are at the mercy of our in­
tentions. The very thought of this makes us
tremble. We could almost wish it were not so.
To be so fragile, while they are so exceedingly
strong, is not this a surprise and a perplexity, not
seldom too a sorrow and a dread? It seems to
show that they are purely things of heaven, exotics
upon earth, or weapons of omnipotence becoming
brittle when they are plunged suddenly among
human actions. Baptism can justify the child
whose reason has not dawned. Extreme Unction
can deal with the relics of sin in a sinner who lies
insensible. Such independent power have these
masterful Sacraments. Yet are they in bondage
to our intention. They must be human acts, if
they are to be divine ones also. They are not
mere charms, or spells, or sleight of hand. They
have magic about them, but it is only that magic
of incredible love in which God has clothed them
with such resplendent beauty. Nothing, as I
think, demonstrates the divinity of the Sacraments
more evidently than this exquisite sensitiveness to
human touch.
Now look out upon the great laboring world
the world of human actions and endurances. It is

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151

not possible to measure the influence which is
being exercised upon the world at this moment by
the Sacraments. They are penetrating the great
mass of mankind like the network of veins and
arteries in a living body. They are being the
causes of millions of actions, and they are hinder­
ing the consequences of millions of other actions.
They are weaving good, and unweaving evil, in­
cessantly. The roots of great events, which grow
up and tower in history, are perhaps fixed in some
secret Sacrament or other. The silent and orderly
revolutions of the Church are often moulded in
them. Society would hardly credit to what an
extent it is held together by them. The influence
of a single reception of a Sacrament may be handed
down for generations; and the making of the des­
tinies of thousands may be in its hands. At this
instant by far the greatest amount of earth’s in­
tercourse with heaven is carried on, directly or
indirectly, through the Sacraments. There is a
vast wild world of sorrow upon earth. But over
great regions of it the Sacraments are distilling
dews of heavenly peace. In the underground
scenery of hidden hearts they are at work, turning
wells of bitterness into springs of freshness and
of life. They are drying the widow's tears, rais­
ing up unexpected benefactors for the orphan,
nerving the pusillanimous, softening the desperate,
rousing the torpid, crowning those who strive, and
doing all things for those who die. As the animals
came trooping to Adam to be named, so mortal
sorrows are coming in herds at all hours to the
Sacraments to receive the blessing of the second
Adam. Somewhere or other at this moment a

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Communion may be giving a vocation to some
youthful apostle who in at'ter-years shall carry the
Gospel to populous tribes in the Asian uplands, or
throughout the newly-opened river-system of
neglected Africa. Crowds in heaven shall owe
their endless bliss to that one Communion.
But the world of human joys is not much less
vast than the world of human sorrows ; and the
Sacraments are there also, purifying, elevating,
sanctifying, multiplying, supernaturalizing multi­
tudes of these blameless delights. Yet there is a
difference between their action upon sorrows and
their action upon joys. They make no sorrows.
They cause no mourning. They create no dark­
ness. Whereas they are forever creating glad­
nesses. Splendors flash from them as they move,
and their splendors are all jubilees. They are
fountains of happiness to all the earth. They cover
even the monotonous sands of life with verdure,
and make the desert bloom, and crown the hard
rocks with flowers, and beautify with their soft­
ness the sternest solitudes. Who can tell tvhat
songs of human goodness are being sung this hour
in the ear of God, because of the joyous inspira­
tions of the Sacraments ? Of a truth human joy
is a beautiful thing, a very worship of the Creator.
Out of himself there is no beauty like it, unless it
be the jubilee of angels. But the joys which the
Sacraments have sanctified, and, still more, the
joys which the Sacraments have gendered who
can tell how sweet they are to the complacency
of our heavenly Father ?
emb™ Ïnd\°UBht η'β°’ h°W the Sacraments
embrace and compass human life in theil. mye.

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terious number seven. Man’s life is a pathetic
thing. There is no dulness in any biography of
earth. Each life has many turns. Within the
soul common vicissitudes are not without romance.
Supernatural things greatly increase the romance
of life. Even calmness and uniformity are like
sunset skies, full of noiseless plays of light, and
scarce perceptible shiftings of gold-red clouds,
which change the splendor we know not how.
Yet is there in all human lives a like recurrence
of like vicissitudes. It is this which blends them
into one, although they are so various. It is like
the burden of the song, which chimes in with
equal fitness whether the verse be one of gladness
or of sorrow. The things that are common to all
men are more touching than those which happen
only to some. They are fountains of deeper feel­
ing. They are more touching because they are
more natural. They are diviner visitations, be­
cause they are more general. It is these things
upon which the Sacraments fasten with their in­
stincts of love. The times, the vocations, the
states, the crises of human life, these are all
clasped together by the seven-fold band of Sacra­
ments. If we think of all these things, we shall
own that it is no exaggeration to say that their
mere existence makes all creation different from
what it would have been without them.
But who can speak worthily of the Sacraments?
The Eucharist gives us a measure of their grandeur;
and is it not an immeasurable measure? Would
that men would study more the science of the
Sacraments! Devotion would be greatly increased
thereby. The peculiar hatred, with which the

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author of heresy pursues what may be called the
sacramental principle in our holy faith, is a token
to U8 of the stress which we ourselves ought to
lay upon it. Hardly anywhere is theology more
deep than in the matter of the Sacraments. They
give us more intimate glimpses of God than almost
any thing else, and especially of the ways of God,
those ways by which we seem to know him, to
recognise him, and to realize him. We should
know much less of the'capabilities of human
actions, their limit and their reach, the point at
which grace is grafted on them, and their com­
portment under the pressure of divine things, if
it were not for our knowledge of the Sacraments.
That human actions can be the matter of a Sacra­
ment is surely a truth full of philosophical import
as well as of theological significance. The union
of freedom with sustaining and impelling grace,—
where is it so marvellously illustrated as in a
Sacrament ?
Moreover, a devotion to the Sacraments is very
needful for the times in which we live. The
spirit of the age must necessarily affect both our
theology and our asceticism. Under its depress­
ing constraints we shall bo tempted to sacrifice
the supernatural to the natural, the passive to the
active, and the infused to the acquired. Theology
will be allured to merge into metaphysics. Devo­
tion will be considered a vocation, priests a caste,
and theology a private professional training. The
substance of the old Condemned Propositions
about spiritual direction will be adroitly renewed.
Men will sneer at perfection in the world. Edu­
cation will be bidden to throw off what it will be

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1.55

taught to consider the last relics of its monastic
trammels. Men will chafe at the condemnation of
books, and indeed at all acts of intellectual au­
thority on the part of the Church. The study
of dogmatics will be discouraged. The whole
theory of Condemned Propositions will be dis­
liked. A discontent with the existing Church, or
at least a want of cordial forward sympathy with
it, will grow up, while the wickedness of “the
respectful silence” of Jansenism will be renewed.
The sovereignty of the Church, the pope's tem­
poral power, and the hallowed truths enshrined
in canon law, will provoke impatience as obstinate
things which will not die although their hour of
death has come. The mystical side of the Gospel
will become more distasteful while it grows less
intelligible. Heroism will have to rank lower
than the ordinary attainments of conscientious
piety. The privileges of the Church will be less
esteemed, and heresy less hated. The Sacraments
will count almost for nothing in a man’s system.
The influence of the Incarnation will be far less
recognised and acknowledged in the world; and
a modern mixture of Judaism and Pelagianism
will take possession of many minds, to the grievous
disadvantage of Christian perfection. Such is the
spirit which will try to waylay souls on their road
to Calvary or to Thabor. Such was not the tem­
per or genius of the saints. Such, by the blessing
of God, will not be ours, if w*e foster in ourselves
a deep, a tender, and an intelligent devotion to
the Sacraments. I repeat, as I said before, that,
in an ascetical point of view, I hardly know any
thing upon which I should lay greater stress in

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these days, than a fervent devotion to the Sa­
craments.
Now, these Sacraments are simply the machinery
of the Precious Blood. They are tho means by
which it first conquers, and then keeps what it
has conquered. They are, under ordinary circum­
stances, the conduits by which it is conveyed to
the souls for whom it was shed. They' are God's
system for dispensing it. We should have not
only an inadequate but an absolutely wrong no­
tion of the empire of the Precious Blood, if we
did not see it as working and circulating through
the Sacraments. They are the grand features of
its Empire. They are its method of government,
which expresses its character and suits its disposi­
tion. It is the Sacraments which hinder it from
being a past historical expiation for sin. By them
it is always truly flowing in the Church. Nay,
by them it is forever being shed afresh within the
Church. Possibly, there might have been Sacra­
ments even if man bad needed no redemption.
But it seems as if there would hardly have been
Sacraments if there had been no Incarnation. The
Sacraments, while they express a most wonderful
part of the Divine Mind, seem also to imply the Pre­
cious Blood. They might have carried the glorious
life of the Incarnate Word into the lives of his fel­
low-men in mysterious comminglings and engraft­
ing», even if there had been no fall. But, if there
had been no Precious Blood, we cannot conceive of
the Sacraments. The nuptials of matter and spirit
might have been celebrated in other ways, yet not
idea of r,ticular 'ν*
? 8 wl‘ich “°w make up our
•dea of Saeramen .,. Anyhow, according to the

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economy of redemption, the Sacraments form the
system by which the Precious Blood traverses the
whole Church, gifts it with unity, and informs it
with supernatural energy and life. We cannot,
even in thought, disjoin the Sacraments from the
Precious Blood, or the Precious Blood from the
Sacraments, without changing in our minds the
order and establishment of God.
But we have not spoken sufficiently of the vast­
ness of the empire of the Precious Blood. Let us
look for a moment at its extremes. On the one
hand, it includes the first-fruits of creation, and
on the other hand, the refuse of creation. Tho
first-fruits of creation are those flowers whom our
Lord gathers in the pure fragrance of their first
blooming. They are the souls of infants, in whom
as yet reason has not dawned, but whom the
water of Baptism, our Savior’s Precious Blood,
has justified and crowned. These are the suc­
cessors of the Holy Innocents, those first Chris­
tians who, baptized in blood, went to adorn with
their infancy the Church Triumphant, first in
Abraham’s Bosom, and then in the heaven of
heavens,—the first martyrs, whose blood was at
once the prophecy and the prey of the Precious
Blood of Jesus, which had already preluded its
shedding in the mystery of the Circumcision.
Those, who form the refuse of creation, are they
whom God has cast off forever. They lie iu
outer darkness. Their exile is eternal. Yet
even there we find the energy of the Precious
Blood. Inconceivable as are the severities of hell,
they are less than rigorous justice would exact.
They are so, precisely because of the Precious
14

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PBECIOVS BL00I)

Blood. Before the days of Peter Lombard tho
generality of theologians held that, as time wont
on, there were some mitigations of the fierce
punishments of hell. They sank after a while
to a lower level. There were expiations which
were only temporal and not eternal. There were
condonations within certain limits. Peter Lom­
bard, as St. Thomae himself says, innovated upon
this teaching, and St. Thomas followed in his
steps. In recent times Emery of St. Sulpice
revived the older traditions, but without making
much impression upon the schools. Suffice it to
say that, if, independent of all hell being below
the rigor of justice because of the Precious Blood,
there were any such mitigations as the elder theo­
logians believed, they also came without a doubt
from the empire of the Precious Blood. To it
alone can they bo due, if they exist at all.
There are saints in heaven. They are the
heights of the Church of Christ. There are newlyconverted sinners upon earth. These are the low­
est depths in the happy land of redeeming grace.
But the light upon those mountain-tops is the
glory of the Precious Blood, and the sunshine in
those valleys is the kindness of the selfsame Blood.
There are sufferers in purgatory, dwelling in a
mysterious region of pain and quietude, of patience
and of love. They live beneath the earth, yet are
upon their road to heaven. Their land is vast and
populous. It is a territory won from hell by the
Precious Blood, and its pains made uneternal. It
is a detention, not an exile,-a detention which is
a marvellous artifice of mercy, one of the many
compassionate devices of the Precious Blood

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Thero are sufferings on earth, sufferings by which
hearts are cleansed, sins swiftly expiated, merits
rapidly accumulated : sufferings in which grace
comes, sufferings which are likenesses of Jesus,
sufferings which are secret loves of God. These
earthly sufferings also the Precious Blood alle­
viates, illuminates, sanctifies, crowns, glorifies, and
knows how to render so delectable that they who
have drunk deep of the Precious Blood get a
strange new nature, and thirst for more suffering
still. Thus both these extremities of suffering,
beneath the earth and on it, belong to the em­
pire of the Precious Blood. If we look outside
ourselves, we see everywhere the empire of the
Precious Blood stretching away in interminable
vista. The whole Church is its legitimate in­
heritance. Her jurisdiction is the law and order
of the Precious Blood. The priesthood is its army
of officials. The catholic hierarchy is its venerable
administration. The lofty tiara, that most sove­
reign thing on earth, gleams with it like the polar
star of nations. The Blessed Sacrament, multiplied
a hundred thousand times, is its own adorable self,
its Heart-fountain, and its Five Free Wells, wor­
shipful in its union with the Godhead, the beautiful
amazing Created Life of the Uncreated Word. If
we look within ourselves, there is still the self­
same empire of the Precious Blood. There is the
character of Baptism, its still inexhausted grace, its
titles unforfeited or re-conferred, its infused habits,
its heroic Spirit-gifts. There are the footprints
of so many Absolutions, the abiding fragrance of
such reiterated Communions, perhaps the character
of Order and its fearful powers, perhaps the myste-

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rions traces of Extremo Unction, certainly the
signet of the Holy Ghost in Confirmation, and name­
less graces, nameless vestiges where Divine Feet
have gone, and where Divine Virtue still resides.
There also is that most innermost sanctuary of the
soul, which so few reach on this side of the grave,
the secret cabinet where the Holy Trinity dwells
blessedly, in the very centre of our nat ure, up from
whose secret recesses joys shall one day break and
flow, such as we never dreamed of, such as would
look to us now far beyond the possibilities of our
nature. All this, outside us or within us, is the
empire of the Precious Blood.
But it is only in heaven that its supremacy is
tranquil and complete. Wo must mount thither in
spirit, where we hope one day to mount in all the
jubilee of an incredible reality, if we would see in
its full grandeur the royalty of the Precious Blood.
Countless saints are there, various in the splendors
of their holiness. They are all kings now, who
once were serfs, but were redeemed by the Precious
Blood. They are the children of many generations,
the natives of many lands. They were of all degrees
on earth, and in their fortunes the diversity was
endless. But they were all bought by the same
Blood, and all own the lordship of that Blood in
heaven. When they sing their songs of praise,
songs of a human sweetness which the angels
greatly love, they sing of the Lamb slain and of
the triumphs of his Blood. When their potent
intercessions win hourly graces for their clients
who are still struggling upon earth, it is their
desire to spread the empire of the Precious Blood
which throws such loyal intensity intQ

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prayers. Shall they forget their Hansom, whose
freedom is their endless joy ?
Cast your eye over that outspread ocean, whose
shores lie so faintly and far off in the almost in­
finite distance. It gleams like restless silver,
quivering with one life and yet such multitudinous
life. It flashes in the light with intolerable mag­
nificence. Its unity is numberless. Its life is
purest light. Into the bosom of its vastness the
glory of God shines down, and the universe is
illuminated with its refulgence. It is an ocean of
life. Who can count the sum of being that is
there ? Who but God can fathom its unsearchable
caverns? What created eye but is dazzled with
the blazing splendor of its capacious surface? It
breaks upon its shores in mighty waves; and yet
there is no sound. Grand storms of voiceless
praise bang over it forever, storms of ecstatic
lightning without any roll of thunder, whose very
silence thrills the souls of the human saints, and
is one of their celestial joys,—that deep stillness of
unsounding worship. This is the world of angels.
There too the Precious Blood reigns supreme. The
angels have needed no ransom. Amid their almost
countless graces there is no redeeming grace. But
there is not a grace in all that sea of grace which
was not merited for them by the Precious Blood.
They too owe all they are, and all they have, to
its blissful royalty. They too sing anthems in its
praise, though not the same anthems as the Re­
deemed. Jesus is Head of Angels as well as men;
and it is as Man that be is Head of angels. Thus
the whole of that marvellous world of glorious
intelligence, profound gladness, gigantic power,
L

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THF. EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

and beautiful holiness, is a province of the empire
of the Precious Blood.
Who can doubt its sweet constraints over the im­
maculate heart of Mary ? She is queen of heaven
and earth. Far and wide her empire stretches. Its
boundaries are scarce distinguishable from those
of the Precious Blood itself: so closely and so
peacefully do the two sovereignties intertwine.
Mary holds sway over the Precious Blood. It
does her bidding, and she commands with a mo­
ther’s right. Yet she too is a subject of the Pre­
cious Blood, and rejoices in her subjection. Out
of her very heart that Blood first came ; and out
of that Blood came also her Immaculate Concep­
tion. It was the very office of her Divine Ma­
ternity to minister that Blood ; and it was that
Blood which from all eternity had merited for her
the Divine Maternity. It was the Precious Blood
which made her suffer; but it was the Precious
Blood also which turned her suffering into digni­
ties and crowns. She owes all to the Precious
Blood, to whom the Precious Blood owes its very
self. Yet the river is greater than its fountain.
The Precious Blood is greater than Mary; nay, it
is greater by a whole infinity, because the waters
of the Godhead have assumed its uncommingled
stream unto themselves. Mary sits upon her
throne to magnify the Precious Blood. Her
power is used for the propagation of its empire.
Her prayers dispense its grace. Her holiness,
which enchants all heaven, is the monument and
trophy of that victorious Blood.
Shall it rule also over the Divine Perfections 1
Behold that inexorable justice, which an infinito

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163

holiness stands by as assessori Can endless worlds
of mere creatures satisfy those claims, or appease
that adorable wrath ? Yet the Precious Blood
has done it. A mercy that is limitless, and a jus­
tice that is insatiable,—will not sin set these
attributes at strife ? Who shall be peace-maker in
such unspeakable debate? The Precious Blood!
Justice and mercy have met together, and have
kissed each other in the Precious Blood. How
shall the decrees of the Creator comport with the
continued liberty of the fallen creature ? The
Precious Blood, heavenliest of inventions ! has
found out a way. The unchangeableness of God
shall condescend to wait upon the mutabilities of
the fickle creature, and yet its own repose be all
the more glorified the while; for this too shall be
one of the secrets of the Precious Blood. If greater
good comes out of evil, it is through the alchemy
of the Precious Blood. If all the Divine Perfec­
tions combine in some resplendent work of the
Most Holy Trinity, whether it be Creation, Re­
demption, or the Blessed Sacrament, it is the Pre­
cious Blood in which the combination has been
made, and which the attributes of God delight to
magnify, while it with its adoring ministries is
magnifying them. If any of the Divine Perfec­
tions will come down from heaven, and walk
amidst the nations of men, and give light and
scatter peace and healing as it goes, it first puts
on the vesture of the Precious Blood, in order that
it may not slay but make alive. Justice is occupied
in crowning saints. Mercy is forever traversing
its empire as if in pure delight at its immensity.
Holiness is adorning its infinite purity with the

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THF. EMPIRE of THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

little sanctities of feeble and imperfect souls. Immutability is hourly adapting itself to the changefill needs of innumerable hearts. Omnipotence is
putting itself at the disposal of created weakness,
as if it were some generous beast of burden serving
a master whom it could so easily destroy. Eternity
is busy commuting time into itself. Love changes
its eternal name, and only calls itself by the name
of the Precious Blood. All these marvels belong
to the empire of the Blood of Jesus. The peace
of God is all activity to do the work of that dear
Blood. The self-sufficiency of God is toiling as if
nothing could suffice it, except the salvation of its
creatures. All this is the sovereignty of the Pre­
cious Blood. Nay, the dread sovereignty of the
Everlasting King seems to be forever passing into
the created Kingship of the Precious Blood.
Inside the Unity of God, within the life of the
Threefold Majesty, even there we find the tokens
of the Precious Blood; even there it seems to rule.
The Son, who has assumed it, owns the gladness
of its love. The Holy Ghost, who fashioned it at
first, and now works with it his sanctifying work,
broods dovelike with complacency upon its deeps.
The Eternal Father chose it as the one thing to
appease him; for he too owns the mastery of its
exceeding beauty. It seems, if with becoming
reverence we may say so, to have widened his
Fatherhood. It has added fresh treasures to those
inexhaustible treasures which he had in his Eternal
Son. But these are thoughts for silence rather
than for words. May his infinite Majesty pardon
the freedoms which the ignorance of'our love has
been taking with his perfections ! It is of his own

ΤΠΕ EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

*

*

165

goodness that we cannot help loving, even while
we tremble.
There is one corner of creation, where the empire
of the Precious Blood is not what we would have
it be. It is our own hearts. Yet is it not our one
work to subject ourselves to it in all things? We
desire to have no instincts, but the instincts of the
Precious Blood. We wish to esteem nothing, but
as the Precious Blood esteems it. It desires no­
thing so much as to be loved. We desire nothing
so much as to love it. Why then is it that our
weakness and our want of courage so sadly keep
our grace in check? Alas! we are inverting the
right order of things. We are ruling the Precious
Blood by limiting its empire. It longs to rule over
ns; it longs with a masterful sweetness. The day
shall come, when its longing shall be satisfied.
Neither shall it be a distant day. For we will
begin this very day to love and serve our dearest
Lord as we have never loved and served him
heretofore. Always and in all things shall his
Blood rule and guide us. Its rule is blessedness
even upon earth. It shall rule, not our spiritual
life only, but all our temporal circumstances. It
shall rule our love of those we love, and it shall
make our love of them a doing to them spiritual
good. How shall we die unless at that moment
the Precious Blood is reigning in our hearts? If
it rules us not then, we are lost forever. But how
shall we better secure its empire at our deaths,
than by establishing it over our lives? The past
will not do. Jesus must be more victorious in our
souls, more a conqueror, and more a king. Oh
that the Precious Blood might so work in our

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THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

hearts that life should seem to have only one pos­
sible gladness, the gladness of having Jesus to
reign over us as King! Oh Grace ! Grace! would
that we were altogether conquered ! But we will
be of good cheer; for the time is coming when we
shall bo completely and eternally vanquished by
victorious love.

ΤΠΕ HISTORY Ο” ΙΠν. PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Itfi

ί

CHAPTEB ÏV
THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Why is it so hard to be at peace in life ?

>

•

Why
do little things, and such very little things, trouble
us? We came forth from God, who is the Father
of peace: why then are we so restless? We are
but winging our flight over this narrow gulf of
time, and the great eternity is already in sight
why are we so full of volatile distractions? Ever
in our flight God still holds us in his Hand : why
then do we flutter so? It is strange we cannot lie
still even in the Hand of God. It is because ou?
minds are at once so active and so wandering
They need continual occupation. They require tc
be fed incessantly with images, which they con
Bume rapidly, and are insatiable. It is this which
makes a contemplative life so difficult. It is thi?
need of images. Our minds are restless if they dr
not see a thousand varying objects before them ir
constant motion, with light and color upon them
They are fatigued with stillness. They pine whei
they are kept to one thought, to one object. Thej
sicken even of one range of thought, one class of
objects. The weary sea with its monotonous clasl
of waves is not more restless or more mobile than
our minds. Here is the grand difficulty of prayer,
the fixing of our minds on the object of our wor­
ship. Most of the things which are hard in the

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

spiritual life, are hard because of the unity the
simplicity, the concentration of mind, which they
require or imply. The chief power of the world
over us arises from our having given it possession
of our minds. It would bo a much less difficult
task to dislodge it from our hearts, if we could only
once expel its images from our minds. Satan’s
power over the heart comes from his power over
the mind. Here then is the universal work of
everybody’s spiritual life, either the getting rid of
images or the changing of them.
Now, the first of these processes, is a very diffi­
cult one, and belongs to a high region of the spi­
ritual state, with which we have nothing whatever
to do just now. The second, the changing of our
images, is more within our reach. In fact, we
must absolutely reach it, if we are to be devout at
all. Our hearts will be what our minds are. If
our minds arc full of images of the world, we shall
never be weaned from the world. If they are full
of images of self, we shall never conquer our selflove. If our minds will never rest, unless endless
processions are forever winding their way across
them, then let us have our processions religious ;
let our images be of God, of Jesus, of Mary, and
of heavenly things. 1 do not say this is altogether
easy to do ; but it is comparatively easy; and more­
over it must be done. Let me refer to childish
things for our example. When sleep was coy and
would not visit us, when the pains, or the sorrows,
or the excitements of childhood banished slumber
from OUT eyes, they used to tell us, at least among
the hdls of the north, to make a picture in our
minds, and to count the very white sheep as they

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

1G9

passed across the very green slope of the mountain­
side : and so of a truth sleep was often won ; and
the opiate at least was innocent. In later years,
when the sense of pain was keeping the mind
awake, sleep has been wooed after a somewhat
similar fashion. We filled our minds with images;
only, books and travels made them of a more am­
bitious and complicated sort. We bent our minds
on placid objects such as we knew to be somewhere
on earth that night. We looked down the golden
green vistas of tropical forests, or on the calm
shores of very solitary shining seas, or on the per­
fumed shrubby tangles of islets in the ocean, or on
some dusky glen which a cataract fills with silence
by deadening all other sounds except its own : and so
also sleep has come. It were better to have thought
of God, and so have rested. Still we may learn a
lesson from our success. It is even so with the
restlessness and perturbation of our minds in the
spiritual life. If we will shut our eyes to the
world, and make pictures of heavenly things, and
watch the Thirty-Three Years of Jesus, or the
Mysteries of Mary, or the flights of angels, or the
panoramas of the Four Last Tilings, or the figura­
tive pageants of the Divine Perfections, pass stu­
diously before our inward sight, then that sweet,
facile, rapid, undistracted prayer, which is the
soul's sleep, the soul’s renewal of its vigor, will
soon come to us. An oblivion of the world, less
and less disturbed by dreams, will steal over us,
and we shall taste the gift of peace.
This is not the highest of spiritual ways ; I know
it well. Yet is the highest one fittest for you and
me ? Are we yet in such a state that we should
15

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

strive to banish all images from oar minds, and
think only of the indistinct and formless majesty
of God ? We know not what God may do with us
in time. One thing, by his help, we have resolved
upon. It is that we will not stand still, neither
will we be contented with any grace, with any
degree of love. All life long we will advance.
Daily will we climb higher. Constantly will we
trim the fires of our love, and make them burn
more ardently. We know not, therefore, what God
may do with us in times to come. But for the pre­
sent we must endeavor to cast one set of images
out of our minds by introducing another set. So
shall we fill our minds with God continually, and
be delivered from the burden of self and from the
thraldom of the world.
Our present task, then, is to marshal a Proces­
sion of the Precious Blood, with all its various yet
kindred images, through our minds. It shall be to
us like the defiling of soldiers over the mountain­
passes. The bravery of war shall add to the beauty
of the scenery, and the scenery shall set off the
bravery of war. Par off we shall see the glitter­
ing pomp, and then again so near that the martial
music shall strike upon our ears. Here the light
shall fall upon it in all its beautiful array, and
there the clouds shall obscure its path, and the
crags appear to swallow up the pageant. Much
we may see which we cannot understand ; but
much also which we can both understand and love.
From first to last it all tells of Jesus. From first
to last it is a thing of God. Nay, we must not bo
strange to it ourselves. We too must fall in with
the Procession. We must climb with it, as part

i

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171

of its life, its beauty, and its music, until we are
lost to sight among the cloud-covered mountains
of eternity. Our soul longs for rest. It would
fain seek some peaceful solitude, where the sights
and sounds of the world cannot intrude. It yearns
to repose itself on God in the vigilant sleep of
prayer. How shall it attain its end ? We rend in
the Book of Esther that, when King Assuerus
could not sleep, “he commanded the histories and
chronicles of former times to be brought him,”
and they read them before him. So may we have
the history and chronicle of the Precious Blood
brought to us. It will make music in our ears,
like the reading of a famous ancestry to the high­
born and the royal. It will be a picture before
our eyes, like a procession emerging out of that
first dark eternity of God, winding over the pic­
turesque inequalities of time, and re-entering the
second illuminated eternity of God, up which we
see in a vista of confused gorgeousness, as those
who look through the doorway of some vast ca­
thedral, and behold the banners waving, and the
masses of gold and color all tinted with the hues
of the painted windows, moving slowly in indis­
tinct progress to the distant starry altar. If with
this pageant we can fill our minds, for a time at
least the hold of the world upon us will be loos­
ened. The things of God will interest our hearts,
and many acts of divine love will flow from us, as
from a fountain. Let us then turn aside from the
images of earth, and rest a while, and watch this
venerable Procession.
Towhat shall we dare to liken the Mind of God?
With what shapes of allegory shall we venture to

1’2

τπε history of the precious blood.

clothe that infinite eternal object, which is the
fountain of all our destinies? To us it looks like
some tremendous chain of mountains, whose subli­
mities are inaccessible, whose heights arc hidden
always in the darkness, whose shapes are not the
shapes of earthly scenery, whose sound and silence
arc alike terrible, and yet whose sides are always
clad in the beautiful repose of radiant light. But
it is a chain of mountains which has only one side,
one descent. None has ever climbed those heights,
nor ever shall. But we know that, if they were
surmounted, there would be no descent upon the
other side. A vast table-land stretches intermi­
nably there into the boundless distance, an un­
beginning, uncreated land, of which faith alone,
itself a supernatural virtue, can report; and it
reports only, together with some few facts, the
unchanging peace of awful sanctity which is the
life and joy of God. That is the land of the Di­
vine Decrees. There is the cradle of Eternal Pur­
poses, which were never younger than they are
to-day, and needed no cradle, because they had
neither beginning, growth, nor change. In the
trackless distances of that nameless upland have
we ourselves been hidden from all eternity : so
that, in some sense, our nothingness is clothed
in the robes of God’s eternity. In those un tra­
velled, unimaginable plains, the Divine Perfections
have been tranquilly occupied with us in unbe­
ginning love, an unbeginning love which does the
work of everlasting justice. In those fastnesses,
round which a glory of impenetrable darkness
hangs, lie the living mysteries of Predestination,
of the Divine Permissions, and of that unnamed

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173

perfection out of which the gift of Freedom to
creatures came. It is a land before whose misty
regions we bend our knees in breathless adoration,
in prayer which ventures not to clothe itself with
words. A sacred horror fills our souls as we think
of the irresponsible power which reigns there, of
the mightiness and the celerity of that all-absorb­
ing will, of the resistless march of that all-devour­
ing glory, of the unfathomable abysses of that
incomprehensible secrecy, of the unswerving ex­
actions of that appalling sanctity, and of that
amazing plenitude of life, to which no creations
have been able to add, and which no incarnations
could intensify. If the mysteries which we know
to lie there undivulged are so tremendous, what
may we not conceive of other grander mysteries
which arc simply unimagined ? Yet one thing we
know of that pathless world of the Mind of God,
pathless because neither reason of man nor intelli­
gence of angel has ever wandered there, pathless
because God himself traverses it not by any process
of remembrance or discourse but always possesses
it in simple act,—one thing we know of it, and
cling to : it is, that everywhere its vastest soli­
tudes, its farthest-withdrawn recesses, are all
resplendent with the most tender justice, and
are all beautified by the omnipotence of love.
Nothing is small to a God so great. It is this
thought which renders so vast a majesty, not
tolerable only, but so sweetly intimate and so
intensely dear.
Over then those fertile deserts, fruitful though
nothing grows there, unpeopled but where all is
life, coming out of the interminable dark distances,
15·

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

we behold the Procession of the Precious Blood
emerging. Wo could not see its starting-point, if
it had had one. But it never had. In the Mind
of God it was an unbeginning Procession of created
things. It went forth from his power, and it re­
turns into his love. The Precious Blood is the
crowned king of all his decrees. All other creation
sprang from it in prolific, multitudinous diversity,
and it is forever fetching creation back to the
Creator. We see it only as it were through daz­
zling mists. Yet it seems to come with banners
flying, whereon the names of the Divine Perfec­
tions are emblazoned. The Divine Decrees hover
above it like glorious clouds, which are dark from
their exceeding luminousness. All the Types of
created things appear to follow in its train. On­
ward it comes, so like an uncreated splendor, that
it is hard to think it a created thing. We kneel
to worship, because faith, like a herald, proclaims
it as it comes, as the Created Life of an Uncreated
Person. Ages of epochs hang like shapeless mists
about the long Procession, as if there were even
in eternity some divisions which would seem to us
like time, or as if eternity were thus striving to
make its length and its endurance visiblcfto mortal
eyes. The whole of that illimitable country is
somehow covered with the Precious Blood. It is
like the spirit of the place, or at least the atmo­
sphere which hinders its being mere darkness to
our view. The light is colored by it. The dark­
ness is thickened by it. The silence makes it felt;
mid, if there be any sound, it is the sound of that
Blood lapsing in its channels.
Now it has reached the edge of that boundless

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175

upland. Now it stands revealed upon the heights,
which face down upon creation. It passes from
the region of bright bewildering mists, mists which
bewilder the more because they are so bright; and
it emerges into light amidst created things. Or
rather, to speak more truly, it comes, the Proces­
sion of Divine Decrees, the pageant of the Precious
Blood, to that invisible, imperceptible point in
eternity, when time should fittingly begin. At
once a whole universe of fairest light broke forth,
as if beneath the tread of those Decrees, as if at
the touch of that Precious Blood. It was but an
instantaneous flash, the first visibility of the in­
visible God; and there lay outspread the broad
world of angels, throbbing with light, and teeming
with innumerous and yet colossal life. The bright­
ness that silvered them was the reflection of the
Precious Blood. From it and because of it they
came. Out of it they drew their marvellous diver­
sity of graces. Their sanctities were but mantles
made of its royal texture. They beautified their
natures in its supernatural streams. It seemed as
if here the Procession halted for a moment; or
perhaps it was only that the sudden flash of light
looked like a momentary halt. The new creatures
of God, the first created minds, the primal offspring
of the Uncreated Mind, were bidden to fall in, and
accompany the great Procession. Oh, it was fear­
ful,—that first sight outside the immense serenity
of God ! Then truly, too truly, there was a halt,
as if homage and obedience were refused. There
is a gleam as of intolerable battle, and a corusca­
tion of archangelic weapons, and Michael’s war­
cry, echoing, the first created cry, among the

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

everlasting mountains. A third of that creation
of purest light has refused to adore tho Human
Blood of the Incarnate Word, and is flung speedily
into the dread abyss; and tho ranks close in, and
the unfalleu light now beams more resplendently
with its thinned array than over it beamed before
the fallen fell; and onward the Procession moves.
To our eyes it has a firmer footing when it
comes among material things. It is a material
thing itself. It has passed the world of angels,
who are now following in its train. Suddenly, on
its advance, or even before it has advanced at all,
another universe springs up to life, the immense
universe of matter. Perhaps there was hardly
any gulf between this creation and that of spirit.
But it was a new manifestation of the Divine Per­
fections. In some respects it was more wonderful
than the creation of spirit, because its product was
less like any thing in God. It was a wider thing
than spirit, and perhaps more various. It carried
God further out of himself. It was a longer reach
of his perfections. It was a more unexpected thing
than spirit. Yet it was in some way older in tho
decrees of God. It was the creation in which his
predilections lay. It was here that he bad selected
the created nature which he would assume to him­
self. It should be a nature neither wholly material
nor wholly spiritual, but which should bridge tho
interval between the two. It was a creation also
which should bo more under the dominion of time.
It should be left to ripen through long epochs for
human habitation. Material life should bo tried in
a gradually ascending scale. The laws of physical
nature should be allowed to operate for long sue-

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177

cessions of periods upon the huge masses of matter
Moreover, God himself, by a series of secondary
creative acts, would set in order and adorn in a
sequence of six divine days the matter, which in
one instant, without succession, he had evoked
from nothingness. Moreover, alongside the secular
mutations of matter, God would move in a series
of unresting creative acts. Age after age, every
hour of every day, would he call up from nothing
beautiful souls to tenant the new bodies perpetually
budding forth and growing upon the earth. So
that this creation of matter was in all respects
a very peculiar and notable creation, not to be
thought meanly of because of its manifold imper­
fections, but to be- deeply studied and reverently
admired as the locality and material of the Incarna­
tion. It was now to this point that the Precious
Blood had come, to a world which was as it were
its natural home. The Types of created things,
which had surrounded it from the first, now sud­
denly as if at some divine command spread them­
selves out in front. With lightning’s speed they
flew in showers of golden fire into the vast realms
of space created to contain them. It was like a
vast swarm of locusts gleaming, now lonely, now
in troops, in the distinct blackness of space. Orbs,
and pairs of orbs, and brotherhoods of orbs, and
hosts of brotherhoods of orbs, sprung oft’ ex til tingly
on their immense careers. It was a scene that
looked to be one of wild terrific power, of ruin
rather than of creation : only that on closer view
there was such unstriving peace, such harmony
among the unimpeded crowds of worlds, such a
magnificent gentle self-confidence of order, that it
M

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

was amazing to behold. Minerals and vegetables,
solids and fluids, shone in families with hitherto
uncovered types, which had come from the ex­
haustless beauty of the Maker. It was all so pon­
derous and yet all so light, so multiplied and yet
so simple, so profuse yet so economical, so free and
yet loving law so strangely, that we could never
weary of admiring this spectacle of the material
creation. It was created also expressly as the
equipage of the Sacred Humanity. It was formed
upon its model. It was in intimate relations with
it. The Precious Blood was beneath the jurisdic­
tion of its laws, even while it was advancing like
a lawful king and like a heavenly conqueror.
Verily the Divine Decrees are coming now in
sight of their magnificent conclusion.
For a long while the road of our Procession has
lain over lonely worlds, now in lifeless chaos, in
heaps of mineral ruin or in fantastic crystal shapes,
now clamorous with life which, to our eyes used to
other types, seems portentous and uncouth, now
through periods of glacial cold when life died out,
and then again through epochs of streaming heat
when life was almost strangled in the green density
of colossal verdure. Order grows beneath the feet
of the Procession, as if the earth were beautified
by its advance: when, all at once, in a mountaingirdled garden of this uncentral planet there are
seen amid the shades two startling shapes, shadows
to the angels they would seem, shadows of Jesus
and Mary whom those blessed spirits had been
allowed to gaze upon in the Divine Decrees Now
from out eternity that beautiful patient pomp has
reached so near to us, has reached the father and

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179

the mother from whom we ourselves are sprung.
But why does it linger on the banks of Eden’s
fourfold river? Why docs it not rather come on
with quickened step, quickened by love to meet us,
the children of centuries still far on, who are so
yearning for its coming? Alas! there are mists
covering the mountains. There are rude winds
waving the boughs of Eden, and displacing its quiet
foliage. The powers of evil, through mysterious
permission, are breaking up out of their dark im­
prisonment. There is a stir among the angels.
The faces of the Divine Decrees are clouded. The
Procession has halted, not in confusion, yet ab­
ruptly. Man also has sought himself, and has used
his liberty against the divine dominion. The
beautiful paradise is overcast with shades. The
rivers brawl more hoarsely in their beds. There
are sounds of tempests among the mountains. The
quiet beasts are seized with a panic which they do
not comprehend. Yet there is no suddenness of
God’s glorious anger now, as with the angels. It
is as if there were heavenly deliberations, as if
mercy were pleading against justice, and staying
the uplifted arm. Those two human faces, the
likenesses of Jesus and of Mary, are sweet to the
eye of God even in their fall. That look of human
sorrow and of human penitence, why should it be
so availing? Why should he pause to look at it,
and as if to let it work upon him, when he dashed
in pieces with so summary a wrath the surpassing
beauty of those countless angels? It is the Pre­
cious Blood itself which seems to interfere. It
glows with unusual light. The splendor of it ap­
pears to clothe the justice, and the mercy, and the

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

sanctity of God with a glory which to our eyes
makes those perfections softer, while it also makes
them more resplendent. Λ kind of glorified sad­
ness, yet also of well pleased love, comes over all
countenances in that Procession ; and it looks even
more divine. Now angels join the ranks, bearing
new banners in their hands, emblazoned with mys­
terious symbols. They are the emblems of the
Passion. The vision of the blissful Mother passes
into the Queen of dolors ; and the Incarnation
forsakes the white brightness of Thabor for the
unutterable gloom of Calvary. Yet the human
sadness beautifies it all. That Precious Blood was
human from the first; and now that those two
human faces of Adam and of Eve have joined it,
and have not only joined it but called forth new
possibilities in its nature, there seem, if we may
dare to say it, a more congruous loveliness, a more
harmonious unity, in the wonderful Procession.
But it turns away from the mountainous frontiers
of Eden, and advances slowly over the expanses
of the untilled earth.
Men built cities for themselves, because they
had instincts of the heavenly city which was
above·, and Damascus was the first city which
they built, the first Jerusalem of the Precious
Blood. Then for four· thousand years the ever­
widening and ever-lengthening Procession wended
on. They were four thousand years of those grand
vicissitudes which form the traditions and religions
of all the nations of the earth. There was a
murder and a martyrdom just outside the gates
of paradise. The first brother shed his brother’s
blood, and the hitherto unpolluted earth cried aloud

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181

to God. Yet, rightly considered, that elder brother
was not the first to shed fraternal blood ; Adam
had already shed the Blood of his Elder Brother,
who should also be his Son, in Eden itself: and
now Abel, like another St. Stephen, was the martyr
of the Precious Blood, and went to dwell, himself
the first inhabitant, in the peaceful expectation
of the limbus of the Fathers. They were wild
scenes, amidst which the Procession had now to
move. The glorious science of Adam faded from
the minds of men. The patience of God seemed
at last worn out, and the deluge came. But the
Precious Blood, with its retinue of angels, was
everywhere on the face of the angry waters. It
was not only in the ark with the chosen eight. It
was cleansing countless souls among the drowning.
It was shriving them upon the high hill-tops. It
was uttering brief but victorious prayers out of
their souls, as they sank like stones into the depths.
That Flood was a stern mission. Yet the Precious
Blood was a marvellous missionary, and a glorious
harvest of souls was garnered, with Abel and the
primeval saints, into the limbus of the Fathers.
But the new earth grew colossal sins. It was like
the time when the steaming soil had grown the
gigantic ferns of the coal-beds. The cries of the
hunters filled the glens, and the animals fell off
from human-kind in terror and alarm. Had God's
judgments only quickened the fertility of sin?
Truly a singular portentousness of sin answered
to a singular immensity of mercy. Multitudes
banded together to build a high tower to reach
to the low-seeming heavens; but their tongues
were confounded, and they could no longer sing
16

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the same songs in the Procession. Still every,
where that Procession was reflected ; for their re­
ligion and their worship wore nothing but blood­
shedding and prayer.
It would take too long to tell all the travels of
the Precious Blood during those wistful ages, while
it. was at once a pilgrim and a warrior, an explorer
and a king, a conqueror going up to take posses­
sion and a victim led forth to sacrifice and to be
slain. We know of it by the tents of Abraham
on the Chaldean plains. It was Isaac's evening
meditation in his pastoral fields. Jacob dreamed
of it in the dark nights upon the lonely wolds of
Mesopotamia. Job sang of it wonderfully amid
the ruddy cliffs of the Stony Arabia. Moses shed
the glory of it over the gravelly desert and round
the haunted sanctuaries of Sinai. It shone like
moonlight over Palestine, and it was the dim but
sufficient light of all the rest of earth. The time
of sunshine was not come. It was a voice of min­
strelsy in the heart of David, ravishing the world.
It was the sun behind the clouds of prophecy,
making them to glow with such a crimson glory.
The temple of Jerusalem was its well-head; but
its tricklings reached to the newest-pcopled island
in the far Pacific. It had made the limbus of the
Fathers populous with the accumulated genera­
tions of the saints. Angels cannot tire. Yet
there was a look of weariness about the long Pro­
cession. It went slowly, was often silent, and was
manifestly travel-stained. Sighs took the placo
ol songs. Hearts made faces beautiful by the
mtensity of their desires. Yet on many eountenances there was an air of doubt which mingled

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183

sadly with their wistfulneee. Everywhere there
were bands of brave Maccabees, whose hearts
could be unmanned by no captivity. But the
greater part of men marched on like slaves going
toward the land of their foreign bondage, rather
than pilgrims to their homes. Nevertheless, in
the foresight of the shedding of that Blood, grace
took possession of those four thousand years, and
delighted itself in incessant victories, victories that
were not confined to the chosen race of Israel.
But now a great and sudden change comes over
the aspect of our Procession. It is not so much a
change in the retinue of the Precious Blood, as it
was in the case of Adam and Eve: this time it is
a marvellous change in the Precious Blood itself.
It has prepared all things for itself in secret; but
its preparations have been hidden mysteries. The
souls of Joachim and Anne have been adorned
with unusual graces. The yearnings of the saints
in Israel have burned within them, until their
hearts have hardly been able to endure the fire.
The instincts of all the earth have grown uneasy,
as if some unwonted thing were coming upon
nature. In secret the Precious Blood has done a
work which may vie with the great work on
Calvary. It has effected the Immaculate Concep­
tion, wherein heaven was opened, and such abysses
of grace poured out upon the earth, that the accu­
mulated graces of the four thousand years of
human history, and even the worlds of grace with
which the angels were so munificently endowed,
were as drops to the ocean compared with the
grace of the Immaculate Conception. Beautiful
as an unexpected sunrise seen suddenly as we

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

turn out of tho dark defiles of a mountain-pass,
was tho Nativity of Mary, as the Procession of the
Precious Blood camo all at once into its visible
effulgence. Perhaps there is not among the divine
mysteries one of such unblemished gladness, of
such unmixed joy, as the Nativity of our Blessed
Mother. It was like Bethlehem, without those
grave foreshadowings of Calvary which give to
Bethlehem such pathetic solemnity. The birth
of Mary was like a mystery of the unfallen world.
It was the sort of mystery unfallen worlds would
have, and its feast the sort of feast unfallen souls
would keep. Swiftly the Procession advances.
The shapes, the figures, and the symbols of tho
pageant seem to furl themselves one by one, while
the Precious Blood assumes the distinct features
of an actual Human Life. It is more heavenly
now, because it is more earthly. Its actual crea­
tion renders yet more visible those uncreated per­
fections out of which it sprang. It is more mani­
festly a glory to be worshipped, now that it can be
seen in the Face of the Infant Jesus.
But who can tell the beauty of that Precious
Blood, as it moved about the earth with slow
human movement during the Three-and-Thirty
Years? Saints rapt in ecstasy may see, and haply
may in part understand a spiritual loveliness, which
they cannot express in words. Like other artists,
their conceptions are mostly above the level of
language. But to us the Thirty-Three Years are
an indistinct wonder, distinct enough to fix us in
admiration, and to make our hearts burn with
love, but indistinct so far as understanding <roes
There is something in our Lord’s mysteries, which
1

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185

is akin to the Divine Perfections. They are best
seen in indistinctness. An indistinct view seems
to teach us more than a distinct one. We see
more truthfully, if not more clearly, when onr
view is less defined. When onr view is distinct, it
is like a beautiful picture or a beautiful poem. Tt
pleases and soothes; it elevates and chastens; it
sobers and refines. It fills us full of sweet thoughts,
noble sympathies, and heavenly imaginations. Bnt
it is not the repose of prayer. It is not the heat of
the mystical life. It is not the swiftness of spiritual
growth. It only unites us to God in a distant or a
circuitous way. The saints perhaps may see these
mysteries clearly, and yet at the same time with
such a view as transforms their souls and unites them
to God in the crowning grace of the divine espousals.
To them, a spiritual beauty may be always a spiritual
grace. Yet even to contemplatives there is for the
most part more of heavenly and supernatural ope­
ration in an indistinct view of the Divine Perfec­
tions and of the Mysteries of Jesus, than in a dis­
tinct one. We only desire to know, in order that
we may increase our love. To love is better than
to know. Indeed, it is itself a higher knowledge.
Here, then, at the point of Bethlehem, the Pro­
cession of the Precious Blood comes out into a
light too strong for us to see the details of its
magnificence. It is too near to ns to be seen ex­
cept in detail, and its details are too bright to be
distinct. Like all the works of God, it hides
itself by coming close up to us. We must speak
of it hereafter from a different point of view,
rather as of a Life, than as of a Procession. Never­
theless it moved in fairest pomp along those Three16·

186

τπε history of τπε pbf.cious blood.

and-Thirty Yeni-a of visible, earthly, human life.
Λow and then it appeared upon the highways of
the world and in the streets of cities; but for the
most part it haunted sequestered retreats of its
own, and it haunted them with mysterious delays.
]t bore its banners furled. No voice of song, but
the low strains of the Mother's Magnificat, were
heard iu its encampments. Λ saint, whose very
soul was part of the silence of heaven, alone
guarded it for nearly all its appointed years. For
thousands of years the world had looked for its
manifestation; and now, behold! that manifestation
was a concealment. Before it came, it was a pal­
pable pageant of history. When it came, it melted,
as a cloud melts in the sunshine, into the more
substantial reality of a divine mystery. It hid
itself in Mary; and we see it for an instant pass-,
ing in unwonted haste over the uplands of Judea.
We hear it in the tones of Mary’s voice. We
taste it in the sweetness of her chosen words.
By the light of Joseph’s lantern we catch a glimpse
of it at midnight on the floor· of a cavo at Beth­
lehem,where shepherds gaze in silence,and Oriental
kings are kneeling to adore, while the angels, who
that night could not be so silent as their God, sing
high up in heaven as if they feared lest their
jubilee should wake the earth and divulge the
secret of their King. In the courts of the great
temple we see the humble pomp of its dear Can­
dlemas, a sort of childish anticipation of its second
triumph on Palm Sunday more than thrice ten
years hereafter. It moves along the sandy depressrons and stone-sprinkled troughs of the desert
not in a glorious caravan of merchants laden with

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187

the gold and jewels of India or with the drags
and gums of Araby, but in a timid pilgrimage
with Joseph and with Mary. It hides amidst the
bulrushes of the Egyptian river, as the cradle of
the Hebrew lawgiver had hidden centuries ago.
Once more it wound its way across the desert.
Its pilgrimage was one of three now, whereas
seven years before it seemed only to be of two,
itself being nothing more than the alternate burden
of the foster-father and the mother. The Boy can
walk now, though the sands weary his Feet with
their burning, and the pebbles bruise him with
their hardness. But the thorns of the acacias and
the prickles of the salt-plants pierce him, and his
Feet leave a faint line of red behind them, which
angels adore and recognise as the veritable Proces­
sion of the Precious Blood.
As if impelled by its kingly instincts, it drew
near its own lawful palace in Jerusalem ; and then,
as if glad of an excuse to hide itself afresh, it
turned aside through fear of a usurping king, and
sank, like a bird whom the hawk has been pur­
suing, into that hidden bowl of mountain-meadows
which men call Nazareth. Here it disappeared,
like a river which has gone under ground. There
was a long halt of three-and-twenty years. Occa­
sionally, when the crowding of the feasts gave
greater facilities for its disguise, it went over the
steep paths to its sacred metropolis, and worshipped
in the temple amidst the multitude. Once very
notably it appeared there, five years after the re­
turn from Egypt; and its voice was heard in the
Jewish schools; and its beauty looked out of boy­
ish eyes into the hearts of old men and wise seho*

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THF. HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

lars and profound interpreters, anil puzzled them
with its loveliness, which needed a more spiritual
interpreting than they could give. This was a
moment in the Procession of the Precious Blood,
of all moments the most difficult to understand ;
for it seemed to turn away from that fountain in
Mary's heart, round which it had been flowing in
rings which seemed to draw nearer at every cir­
cuit. But it had this time only fetched a wider
circuit, that it might better turn, and flow straight
back into its fountain, and live hidden there in
indistinguishable distinctness for eighteen years
of another childhood, which the strength of size
and age only adorned with more tender ministries
and only graced with a more beautiful docility.
Even the appearances, the looks, the outward
shows of divine mysteries are full of significance.
In this staying behind at Jerusalem it seems as if
the Eternal Father and the mortal Mother were
beckoning the Procession of the Precious Blood
different ways, and as if in the end the Creator
had given way to his chosen creature. This is the
look of that secret parting of the Boy of twelve
at the gate of Jerusalem.
But now, as. through some gateway on which
the sun is brightly shining, or some triumphal
arch hung round with braided flowers, the Proces­
sion of the Precious Blood issues out of the pas­
toral solitude of Nazareth at Cana of Galilee in
the unexpected light of a marriage-feast. It. was
us if the multiplying of the human family was a
joy to its love of souls. With how exquisite a
fittmgness, and wtth how much disclosure of his
own character, did our Lord make that first of bis

ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

189

public mysteries a triumph to his Mother! We
know not how to express the glory of that feast
to her. The eternal counsels were anticipated at
her word. The time, which in our Lord’s mind
had not come, came at his Mother’s will; and the
first refulgence of his miracles shone forth on her,
and at her bidding. Through her he had entered
on the earth : through her he entered on his Minis
try. With her he went up Calvary : with her he
mounted the Hill of the Ascension. All the mys·
tcries of Jesus are glories of Mary. The Ministry
is not less full of her fragrance than the Childhood
or the Passion. As the Father’s work was deferred
for Mary when her Son was twelve, the same work
was precipitated for her when he was thirty.
Through this portal, then, of Cana in Galilee,
this Gate of Mary, as we may call it, the Precious
Blood issued forth from its concealment. The low
white houses gleamed with their flat roofs among
the pomegranate-trees, and the broad-leaved figs,
the
*
and
shrubby undergrowths, while the plain
below was all waving with the billowy corn. The
corn below, even if it bore a thousandfold, was
but a poor figure of the harvest that Blood should
gather now, that Blood which shone more ruby­
like than the ripest pomegranate in Cana. A little
water from the village well was turned into gene­
rous wine; but that Blood, which men will spill
like water, shall be the wine of immortality to all
the world. Now for three years the Procession
of the Precious Blood moved to and fro within the
precincts of the Holy Land. One while it was upon
the hill-tops, which look down upon the lake, the
lake of the Great Vocations, as we may fitly name

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

it. Another while it was winding along the paths
which clove tho tall corn in the fields. The day
saw it in the temple-courts; the moonlight dis­
closed it in the gray hollows of the stony moun­
tains. It went to carry blessing to the houses of
the poor; and it crossed the inland sea in the
boats of fishermen. Yet it did not move at ran­
dom. Its very journeys were a ritual. It was
like the procession in the consecration of a church.
Its movements have a meaning, and make up a
whole. Whether it goes round the walls with the
bunch of hyssop, or writes alphabets on the ashstrewn floor, or clusters in seeming confusion
round tho yet unconsecrated altar, there is a sym­
bol and a law in every posture. So was it with
the sinuous wanderings of the Precious Blood in
Palestine. Like the course of tho Israelites in the
desert, it had a pattern to the eye of God, and
betokened some hidden wisdom, which we are un­
able to decipher. It was beautiful beyond words,
beautiful beyond our comprehension. It had no
ornaments. Its figurative pageantry was gone.
The words of life were its only music. It was
now neither like a pilgrimage nor a march. There
was nothing to which it could be compared. It
was a Countenance which moved to and fro, in­
tensely human because it was more than human,
smiling, weeping, looking downcast, adoring, speak­
ing, clad in wonderful anger, bound in placid sleep,
pale, weary, meek, submissive, yet unspeakably
commanding. All human expressions gathered
there, save one ; and that was the expression of
surprise. Sometimes in his words there was what
sounded like a tone of surprise, escaping plaint-

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191

ively from some wounded love within his Heart.
But on the vastness of his mind nothing like sur­
prise could dawn, nor any perplexity pass upon
the serenity of his Face. To see that Face was a
heaven to the pure and good ; and when the heart
came to fear too much, because the beauty of the
Face was so reverend, its likeness to the Mother’s
face confused it sweetly with earthly things, and
enabled the heart to repose on its divinity. Thus
the Procession came to Olivet and Calvary.
Who can gaze steadily on the intolerable bright­
ness of that Procession now, all flashing with a
crimson light which blinds the eye of the be­
holder ? As, when we gaze upon the sun, we seem
to see it double, and the two orbs quiver in our
wounded eyes with a vermilion haze, so is it with
the Precious Blood amid the mysteries of the
Passion. It appears double. There are two Pro­
cessions instead of one. One is all shame, and
Buffering, and defeat. We might almost have said
disorder; but there is something so venerable in
its disgrace, something so imposing in the tran­
quillity of that Countenance, that there is order
and self-mastery in its abasement. The other Pro­
cession is all triumph and exultation. Eager mercy
hurries to and fro. Hidden counsels of the Eter­
nal open their banners for the first time, and wave
them joyously; and the jubilant silence of the angels
is so intense that we might almost dream we heard
it, as some strain of music in which the complain­
ings of blameless envy mingled with the impas­
sioned notes of self-forgetting victory. How dark
the stains looked in the moonlight that silvered
the olive-tops of lone Gethsemane ! How the red

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THE HISTORY OF the precious blood.

nun spotted the pavements of Jerusalem, like those
portentous showers of blood which pagan history
records with fright! How red the streams looked
upon the white Body, and then how black! and
how the eclipse, which camo on and hid it all,
made the spectre of it burn with a fiery reality in
our eyes, because we knew so certainly and so
exactly what the darkness contained I At the foot
of the Cross also the Blood itself looks double ;
for. if the Face of Jesus was like the face of Mary,
now the tears of Mary' are like the Blood of
Jesus. They were tears of blood, and of the very
blood which had been the fountain of the Precious
Blood.
Then a change comes over our Procession. The
Blood goes alone. It is no longer in the Sacred
Heart as in its living tabernacle. It is no longer
mantling in the Mary-like Face. It is apart and
uncompanioned now, and by itself is absolutely
adorable. The souls of men have got the Soul of
Jesus to themselves beneath the earth, where it is
brightening the caverns with the Beatific Vision.
The love and piety of men have tended the Body,
embalmed it, and laid it in the tomb. To whom
shall the Blood belong? Even to those for whom
only it was not shed in expiation, to those fur
whom only’ it was not a ransom, to the multitudes
of the delighted angels ! Who can tell their jubi­
lee in that brief but sole possession of the ransom
of mankind ? They’ are sentinels over it, where it
lay. On the hard stones of the street and on the
Stained plants of Calvary, on the accoutrements
of the soldiers and on the garments of fl
"
Mother, in the dry dust of Idivet ^nd θηζ^Χ

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193

instruments of the Passion, they kept watch and
ward, and adored the Precious Blood. Mary saw
them, and blessed them in their deed. Through
the Friday night, and the Saturday, and till the
Sunday dawned, they sang their voiceless songs in
those low-lying crevices of earth, finding their
heaven amid the dust of men’s feet. Then they
raised each drop with touch of reverent fear and
tremulous abasement, and set it up as a grand
thing of beauty and of worship, and went in un­
imaginable procession to the sepulchre. Who can
tell how they marshalled that pomp upon the
earth, nor how like it was to that simultaneous
order of the Incarnation, of which theology teaches
such marvellous things, nor how like it was to the
Chalice which Jesus himself had consecrated, as it
were an external Sacred Heart, on the Thursday
night, nor how like it is now to the daily separa­
tion of the Blood in the Chalice of the Mass?
Alongside of the Soul returned from limbus, and
enjoying the same Divine Union as the Soul, the
Precious Blood re-entered the Sacred Heart, filled
with the sounds of life its silent halls, and poured
the glorified beauty of an immortal human life
over every sacred Limb, effacing all vestige of the
Passion, save where it gathered itself up and
burst forth into five roseate suns in the Hands
and Feet and Heart, suns whose exuberant ra­
diance is causing unsetting day this hour in the
farthest extremities of heaven. But that separate
procession, that exclusive keeping of the Pre­
cious Blood, is a glory and a pride of the angelio
kingdom, which their songs will tell of to all
eternity.
N

17

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

Green Nazareth was not a closer hiding-place
than the risen glory of the Forty Days. Λβ of old,
the Precious Blood clung round the sinless Mother’.
Like a stream that will not leave its parent chain
of mountains, but laves them incessantly with
many an obstinate meandering, so did the Blood
of Jesus, shed for all hearts of men, haunt the
single heart of Mary. Fifteen times, or more, in
those Forty’ Days, it came out from under the
shadow of Mary’s gladness and gleamed forth in
beautiful apparitions. Each of them is a history
in itself, and a mystery, and a revelation. Never
did the Sacred Heart say or do such ravishing
things as during those Forty’ Days of its Risen
Life. The Precious Blood had almost grown more
human from having been three days in the keeping
of the angels. But, as it had mounted Calvary on
Good Friday, so now it mounts Olivet on Ascen­
sion Thursday, and disappears into heaven amidst
the whiteness of the silver clouds. It had been
but a decree in heaven before, a divine idea, an
eternal compassion, an inexplicable complacency
of the life of God. It returns thither a Human
Life, and is throned at the Right Hand of the
Father forever in right of its inalienable union
with the Person of the Word. There is no change
in the Unchangeable. But in heaven there had
never been change like this before, nor ever will
be again. The changes of tho Great Doom can bo
nothing compared to the exaltation of the Sacred
Humanity of the Eternal Word. The very worship
Îhat thFOr,On.e TritS
chanSed- θθ changed
that the angels themselves cannot say how it is
that no change has passed on God. Somehow the

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195

look of change has enhanced the magi ificence of
the divine immutability, and has given a new
gladness to their adoration of its unspeakable
tranquillity.
For a moment nothing on earth is visible. The
white light of the Ascension has dazzled our eyes.
We see a confused splendor, and nothing more. It
is but for a moment; and then, more wonderful
than ever, the Procession lies outstretched before
the vision of our minds. It is no longer single.
It is not even double, as it was on Calvary. It is
treble now. Girdled with amazing refulgence, it
fills all heaven. Upon earth, breaking away beyond
the confines of Palestine, it is visible in all nations
of the globe, and crossing the broadest seas.
Everywhere it is traversing the plains, scaling the
mountains, and penetrating the sanctuaries of the
wilderness. The Procession in repose above is like
the Procession of the Thirty-Three Years. It is
the actual life of the Precious Blood. The Pro­
cession below is the omnipresence of its power, the
outstreaming of grace from its treasuries, faith’s
veritable application of the Precious Blood to the
souls of men. This last is like the Procession of
the four thousand years before the Incarnation,
only that it has now sacramental realities of its
own, and looks backward to the past, not, as that
other Procession, forward to a future. The third
Procession is not one, but manifold, and multiplied
incessantly. Swifter than the sunbeam, from out
the opened heavens the Precious Blood is flowing
upon the altars of the Church. It is tilling in­
numerable chalices at the same moment in the
most distant places. The Sacred Heart, which is

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THE HISTORY OP THE PRECIOUS BL00D

its natural tabernacle, is halting in count,eee
tabernacles of human artifice, or is being borne
about the fields and streets to the dying by the
anointed servants of our Lord. This last Pro­
cession is not less actual than the one which is in
heaven. It lives the same glorified life. It is but
one life, and the same life. This is the threefold
vision of the Precious Blood, which we see when
the radiance of the Ascension has passed away.
The one in heaven ministers in unknown mys­
teries to the Majesty of the Father. The one that
moves over the earth is the minister of the Holy
Spirit, who guides and rules the Church. The
mingled activity and rest of the Blessed Sacra­
ment is the human life of the Eternal Son himself,
haunting the earth which he loved so dearly as to
redeem it with his Blood. So the glory of the
Holy Trinity satiates itself upon the Precious
Blood.
The Upper Boom of Pentecost is another Bethle­
hem. It is the birthplace of the Church. There
is the same Mother as in the midnight cave. But,
instead of Joseph, there are apostles. Instead of
angels’ songs in the quiet midnight, there is the
rushing wind of the Eternal Spirit; and his fiery
tongues, instead of the wintry brightness of the
stars. From that Upper Boom the Procession
seems to start again. Not that the Precious Blood
had left the earth, even at the Ascension. The
whole of those ten days it lay, in real sacramental
presence unconaumed, on Mary’s immaculate heart
as on a reposoir. But it is not our present purpose
to dwell upon the analogies between Bethlehem
and U» Room of Pontoeost. We muet still foHow

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197

our Procession. From the day of Pentecost we
can see its course onward for ages. The scenery
of history is more varied than even that of geo­
graphy. It has its bleak mountains and its culti­
vated lands, its valleys and its plains, its forests
and even its deserts, its cities and its solitudes, its
beautiful maritime borders and its gray expanses
of melancholy wold. Across all this various
scenery the Procession of the Precious Blood
moves on, sometimes in single pomp, sometimes
multiplied into many pomps, then again reuniting
in one, or again sending forth a branch which
shines for many a league and then disappears
gradually or at once, as if the earth had drunk it
up, as the sands drink the rivers of the desert.
Still its course is plainly onward, from the east to
the west; and its metropolis is changed, from
Jerusalem to Rome. Its pageantry is more mag­
nificent than ever. The choirs of angels still
attend it; but its sacred vessels are borne by a
resplendent human hierarchy, which is a copy of
the hierarchies of heaven, and an emanation of
the eternal priesthood of Jesus. At its head moves
the never-dying Peter, the prince of the apostles
and the vicar of his Lord, while by his side moves
evermore the glorious St. Michael, the captain of
the hosts of God and the famous zealot of his
honor. So multiplied are the symbols and the
blazonries of Mary, that we might sometimes take
it for a procession of our Lady. But then again,
from its more solemn pomp, and more austere
observance, we perceive that it is in truth a Pro­
cession of the Blessed Sacrament. Above it all,
in a glory of sweetest light, hovers the Eternal
17·

198

the history of THF. PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Dove, who has come to bo to the Church what
Jesus was to his disciples during tho Three-andThirty Years. Beautiful Spirit! Ho lias clothed
the Procession with his beauty. He has shed over
it the whiteness of his holiness. He, who fashioned
the Sacred Humanity after his own model of Mary’s
loveliness, has imprinted tho thousandfold expres­
sion of the likeness of Jesus upon tho Church. So
the Procession moves on, bearing on high the
strange heaven-invented vessels of the Sacra­
ments, and attended with this amazing equipage.
It fits all times. It harmonizes with all scenery.
Its bravery does not flaunt the twilight of the
catacombs, while it is in equal keeping with im­
perial courts. It illuminates ages which else were
dark, and the eye rests reposefull}7 upon its placid
glories when false glitter all around at once deludes
and fatigues the sight. With appropriate mag­
nificence it adorns institutions venerable for their
long antiquity, while with equal fitness it inaugu­
rates the unprecedented novelties of daring epochs,
as calmly as if it had been used to them for centu­
ries. In the desert of the Thebais and amidst the
temples of Athens, in the white squares of Iconium
and by the thousand runlets of Damascus, amidst
the swamps of Bulgaria and the mosques of Gra­
nada, in the oak sanctuaries of Scandinavia or tho
colleges of Paris, in the market-places of tho
Blemish towns or by the missionary rivers of Da
Plata, it is at once the light of the supernatural'
ennobhng nature, and at tho same time a beautv
aged woXo w"fl know-how to^ne
'θ'' ""
its quiet self. We have seen all t^X

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

199

of history falls clearly upon it. But we trace the
Procession far onward, toiling over the unborn
ages, where the starry indistinctness of prophecy
reveals it to our eyes. There are times to come,
which shall be very different both from the times
that have been, and from the times that are. The
later ages of tho Church will be portentous epochs.
The times of Antichrist will never have been
paralleled, although they may have been fore­
shadowed chiefly by the primeval centuries of
Scripture history. But even amid those mon­
strous novelties the Procession of the Precious
Blood, with its miraculously-preserved Sacraments,
will move on with the same ready gracefulness,
the same instinctive pliability, the same tranquil
consciousness of its mission, which have distin­
guished it since Pentecost. Oh, happy we, who
shall see that marvellous future in peaceful admira­
tion from out the Bosom of our heavenly Father,
and may have to help it with our prayers!
But this Procession is not to be always a
splendor of the earth. Its eternal sanctuary is
heaven. It will pass from earth to heaven through
the dark portal of the Valley of Josaphat, the
Valley of Universal Doom. That will be the
day of his earthly triumph, the crown of that
other day of shame and outpouring upon Calvary.
The lone trumpet of the archangel, which shall
wake the dead, is part of the pageantry of the
Precious Blood. The union of the souls and
bodies of the just is its work. The transfigur­
ing of all glorified bodies into the likeness of tho
Body of Jesus is due also to the energy of its
merits. Out of the Human Life, which is in that

200

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOR.

Blood, all judgment will proceed. The Blood
itself will be the measure of justice, and the irnmeasurablencss of mercy. All that will be magnificent in the vindictive sanctity of God that day
will be a glory of the Precious Blood. In all that
will be sweet, and gentle, and compassionate, it
will seem as if the Precious Blood led the very love
of God captive through its own greater capacities
of love. Then too will all its difficult secrete
be told, and its honor gloriously’ restored. Its
mysteries of election, its seeming inequalities
of grace, the irregularities of its patience, its
varying prodigality, the apparent caprices of its
impetuosity, its predilection for particular races
and climates, its choice of favorite epochs, its
look of waywardness with each individual soul,
the amazing revelations of the saving grandeur of
the Seven .Sacraments,—all these things will then
be made plain, all will magnify its justice aud
its lovingness, all will illustrate the Godlike equality
of its beneficence, and all will redound to its eternal
praise. The Universal Doom will be nothing else
than a grand Feast of the Precious Blood, a Feast
solemnized by the most marvellous functions,
ushered in by the archangel’s trumpet at the dead
of night. The rendering of their dead by land
and sea, the jubilee of countless resurrections, the
leading in chains of Satan and the rebel populace
ot hell, the superb gathering of the angels, the
radiant Advent of the Judge and his Mother froni
heaven, the silent pomp of the all-holy judgment,
the ascent at eventide back to the palaces of
Inaven with very worlds of material beauty won
to God by the resurrection of the just,-these are

ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

201

the sacred pageants of that supreme Feast of the
Precious Blood.
After this, what shall we dream of the history
of the Precious Blood in heaven? Will it still be
like a Procession, though gathered round the High
Altar of creation ? Will it still have new works
to do, new glories to contribute to the Uncreated
Majesty? What means that mysterious laying
down of the kingdom by the Sacred Humanity,
of which the apostle speaks to the Corinthians?
What side are we to take in that thrilling contro­
versy of theologians about the eternity of the
priesthood of our Lord ? Will not the repose of
heaven be more energetic than the activity of
earth, and be the more energetic because its peace
is so profound ? At least we may say so much as
this :—No work of God is a work done; but rather
it is eternally a grand work, being grandly, and
always more and more grandly, done. It seems
to my ignorance that, with God, all his works will
be, now that they have once begun, like the Gene­
ration of his word and the Procession of his Spirit;
they will not be done, but will be being done for­
ever. So perchance there will be in the Precious
Blood eternal novelties eternally to magnify the
glory of the Un created Trinity. All works of God
are completed as soon as they are begun ; and yet
they are also endless in the unity of their accom­
plishment : and which of his works is invested with
such royal rights as is the Precious Blood ?
Our object in this chapter was to get a clear idea
of the history of the Precious Blood. There are
some subjects in which clearness is every thing.
If we can make a definite picture in our minds,

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THE HISTORY of THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

we have done every thing. This is the case with
the history of the Precious Blood. The price of
our redemption is full of unfathomable mysteries.
e cannot hope to understand them all, or indeed
any of them, fully. That single divine law, that
without shedding of blood there is no remission of
sin, is beyond our grasp. It only clothes for us
with dim magnificence that gift of God, which of
ail his natural gifts we least understand, the gift
of life. What wo want is to understand so far as
to be able to worship and to love. Our best under­
standing of the Precious Blood is the sight of what
it has done, the enumeration of its deeds, the nar­
ration of its history. So far wo have endeavored
to get a clear idea of its history under the figure
of a Procession. Most divine works liken them­
selves better to processions than any thing else.
Any one, who has tried to make theology clear to
those who are not theologians, must have dis­
covered this ; and a great deal that is very remark­
able is implied in the fact. All that is outside of
God has an inveterate likeness to that which is
within. It is the genius of creative acts to put on
the semblance of processions. At the same time
we look upon a procession from without. Things
seen from without are seen more definitely. Their
form and figure are more palpable. Hence we
gair. in clearness. But the outside is never more
than a partial manifestation. Besides this, it is
to erroneous impressions whlich can only be
corrected by some knowledge of what is within,
Having asked you, then, to look a t the history of
the Precious Blood as a Procession , I must now, at
the risk of some repetition, ask v
ou to look at it

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

203

as a Life, or as a series of lives. We shall thus
complete our study of this marvellous history, and
do our best to guard against any such misapprehen­
sions as might interfere with our devotion.
All God's works are in a certain sense part of the
life of God. It is this which gives to creation its
interest as well as its significance. It is in this
way that time participates in eternity. The life
of the Precioee Blood may be divided into seven
epochs; or it would be more true to call them
seven lives, both because they do not follow each
other in order of time, and also because they are
not all actual periods of its existence. These
seven lives are as follows: the life of the Precious
Blood in the Mind of God before creation; its life
of efforts in the world from creation to the Incar­
nation; its life upon earth during the Thirty-Three
Years ; its life of energy in the Church afterward,
up to the day of Doom; its contemporaneous life
all that time in heaven ; its contemporaneous life
on earth in the Blessed Sacrament daring that
same time; and finally its eternal life in heaven,
when the Doom is past. In all these lives of the
Precious Blood there is a hidden life which we
cannot reach, and whose mysteries are not only
above our comprehension but beyond our imagina­
tion. Its union with the Divinity is inexplicable.
Its peculiar redeeming value, in that it is bluod,
is also a secret hidden from our intelligence. It
represents abysses of the divine wisdom, which
are not only unfathomable but nameless. It bears
upon itself the imprint of unsuspected perfections
in the broad majesty of God. The jubilee of its
life is a height of creation lost to our eyes in the

204

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS RI.OOD.

burning vicinity of the uncreated. To this innermost inward life wo cannot penetrato ; but wo can
see, and understand, and lovo much of an inward,
though less secret, life, which wo could not see
when we regarded the Precious Blood under the
figure of a Procession. It is of this inward life
wc must now endeavor to got some idea.
The life of the Precious Blood in the Mind of
God from all eternity is in one sense a real life,
and in another sense an unreal one. It was not an
actual life. It was a life of predestination, of
foreseen beauty, of multiplied divine intentions.
It was a specially divine invention, if we may use
such a word. It was an idea which could not
have come to any mind but that of God, and there­
fore the complacency which it caused in the
Divine Mind was immense. It was a sort of
second Word to God, a created expression of his
uncreated perfection. It was part of the most
grand and glorious thought of God, the Incarnatien. It was a most important part of it. It was
also a specially chosen part, selected for the accom­
plishment of our redemption, and for the re­
storing of a revolted creation to the dominion of
its Maker. In the most dear and dread Mind of
God it was a fountain always flowing. The beauty
of its flowing had been one of his unbeginning
gladnesses. It was the fountain which gave forth
multitudinous and beautiful as the creation of the
radiant angels, the countless predestinations of the
infinitely varying souls of men. The mystery of
all election was from the first glassed in its beam
mg depths. It was its spray, .which caught the
golden light of eternal things, and fell down before

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

20&

the throne, even as it is still falling now, in starry
showers of splendor. It was a mirror too in
which the manifold countenances of the divino
perfections looked always, and loved to make their
beauty bearable to mortal eye. It is there to this
day, that the oppositions in God are seen to be
harmonies most simple and most worshipful. All
parts of creation give us double views of God,
simultaneous views of his seeming opposite per­
fections, just as on the Mount of Olives the eye
may rest at will either on the Dead Sea or on the
Holy City. But of no part of creation is this so
true,, or true in so high a sense, as of the Precious
Blood. Redeeming grace tells the whole history
of God, so far as it can be told, unfolds his cha­
racter in all of its breadth which is comprehensible,
and as it were recites and magnifies each separate
perfection ; and redeeming grace is the specialty
of the Precious Blood. Moreover, the Precious
'Blood dwelt also in the Mind of God as the type
and model of all creation, whether fallen or un­
fallen. In its unity lay the germs of all created
loveliness and of all created variety. Mary was
its first shadow, its first reflection, the freshest
copy of the original. No wonder then that it was
an infinite delight to the Three Divine Persons.
To them it was none the less real because it was
not yet actually created ; for to God the eolidest
created substance is but as shadow compared with
the reality of his ideas. Thus from all eternity
did the Precious Blood reign like a sovereign thing
in the adorable complacency of God.
As it had lived, an eternal life in the Mind ot
God before creation, so also did it live a life of
is

2θ«

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

visible effects and real jurisdiction from the begin,
mng of the world, before it had become itself an
actual created thing in the mystery of the Incarnation. It was the Precious Blood which hindered
the fall of man from being as irretrievable as the
fall of angels had been. It did real work in every
single soul which was created in those four thou­
sand years. It altered their position in the world.
It made the eye of God look differently on them.
It rained supernatural graces upon their hearts.
It diminished temporal chastisements. Neither
was it less influential in the counsels of God than
in the souls of men. It caused his compassion to
overspread the whole earth. It turned the chroni­
cles of the world into a succession of types, and
shadows, and predictions of itself. While it was
itself preparing all things for its own coming and
shedding, it so controlled all things that they
rather seemed to be a preparation for itself. It
sounded in every thing that God said. It impressed
its character upon every thing that God did. It
underlay all heathen life, and all Hebrew life. It
was the significance of the most significant, and
also of the most insignificant, events. It moulded
all sanctity into an onlooking for itself. It beauti­
fied the hearts of men for God with supernatural
desires. For all those forty ages it was the secret
meaning and the hidden agent of the world. All
that blossomed upon earth blossomed only because
the Precious Blood watered the soil under ground
Who would not long to see it, as it would one day
be, m the actual Human Heart which was to be
its living chalice? Even the patience of thn 1 „
waiting God might vouchsafe to yearn for the

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

207

♦

actual creation of the Precious Blood. How
sweet then to him must have been that dear
sanctity of Mary, whose beautiful compulsion
caused the Word to anticipate his time!
But the hour arrived, and the Creator became a
part of his own Creation. The Precious Blood
was actually created, and rose and fell in pulses
of true human life, and filled with joyous being
the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart, and lived its
life of Three-and-Thirty Years among men. These
Three-and-Thirty Years formed in all true senses
the longest and most important epoch of the his­
tory of creation. They were filled with countless
actions, the value of each one of which was infi­
nite. The vocations stamped upon millions of
souls came from those actions of God made man.
Their energies are vigorously ruling the world at
this hour. They have moulded age after age since
then. All holiness has been but an infinitely di­
versified copy of them. Out of their merits the
attributes of God daily drink their fill, and yet
those merits still abound and overflow. Out of
their merits the Sacraments are drawing incalcu­
lable exuberances of grace all day and night; and
they are still full to tho very brim, and capable of
saving unnumbered new creations. Out of the
satisfactions of those years the jurisdiction of the
Church has drawn almost unlimited indulgences;
yet no visible impression has been made on their
abundance. Poetry and art go to those years as
to a school of heavenliest beauty; and all times
and all minds find the lessons fresh and new
Theology sits by them as by abysses of divine
wisdom, and one while is actively weaving her

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ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF THE PRECI0Bg BM0„

Zdr0,U7nenle °U\Of them’ and another ’«le,
cap ivated by then· beauty, forgets to weave, Ù
rapt in contemplation, and becomes devotion. As
to devotion, those years are its very cloister and
its garden. That life is God made visible to his
creatures as the rule of life. It lays bare the very
foundations of morals. It reveals the possibilities
of human actions, while it also paints as in a pic­
ture the indefinable operations of the Holy Ghost.
It is a freshness and a joy to think that, at this
hour of the peaceful dawn, thousands of souls are
silent before God, caught in the sweet snares of
the beauty of these earthly years of Jesus. Our
Lord revealed to the Blessed Michael of Florence,
the Camaldolese, how he longed that those who
loved him should honor the Thirty-Three Years
with affectionate minuteness. It has been the
characteristic devotion of all the saints. The souls
that have been most drawn to meditate upon the
attributes of God have learned their science in
that other science of the Three-and-Thirty Years.
Sometimes this devotion takes special possession
of a religious order for some length of time. Some­
times it fastens upon a single religious house, and
develops itself with marvellous fertility. This
appears to have been the case with the Carmelite
convent at Bole in the seventeenth century. To
Sister Anne of the Cross, a lay-sister, it was the
form and type of her whole life. It came natural
to her to do even her ordinary actions in thirtythrees. Still more did her penances and devotions
take that shape. When she was asked if she did
XtW<TJVf Th areiterated devotion, she replied
that, so far from lt, it always name to her as

ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

i

209

new. The devotion of Mother Louisa of Jesus
was even yet more remarkable. She could hardly
occupy her soul with any thing but the ThirtyThree Years; and the abundant lights she received
from God in prayer had chiefly reference to this
devotion. The first years of the Sacred Infancy
were “ delicious” to her soul. She had an especial
attraction to contemplate the first time our Lord
bent his knees, and clasped his hands, in prayer to
the Father. Her holiness seemed always to be a
participation in some of the interior dispositions
of Jesus upon earth ; and the characteristics of her
spiritual life, consequent upon this devotion, were
persevering fervor and extreme joyousness. She
imprinted this devotion upon the whole com­
munity, and also upon the extcrns who came
across her.
We see remarkable traces of the same devotion
in our Lord’s answer to the prayers of Frances of
the Mother of God, Carmelitess at Dieppe, distin­
guished for her devotion to the Precious Blood.
When she was praying for the soul of Sister
Catherine of the Angels, she asked our Lord after
Communion to apply to Sister Catherine’s soul one
drop of his Precious Blood in order to achieve her
deliverance. Our Lord answered, “I have given
her one of my steps,” thus showing the value of
his least actions. At another time she made the
same prayer for Sister Elizabeth of the Nativity,
asking for one drop of the Precious Blood; and
our Lord answered, “ I will give her one of my
tears, the efficacy of which is so great that it would
turn hell into paradise, if it were applied there.”
These answers seem to imply a special devotion

210

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

in Frances of the Mother of God to the Thirty.
Ihree Years; and that saintly religious was one
of the most remarkable among the holy persons
of the seventeenth century.
We speak very truly when wo divide the world
into many worlds. We talk of the vegetable
world, and the mineral world, and the animal
world. We even subdivide these into lesser worlds.
We go to the sidereal world to learn the immen­
sities of space. Geology opens a world to us,
which overshadows us with its distances of time.
We call man a little world in himself; and the mi­
croscopic world, while it is so rife with new aspects
of God, delights us with all that it insinuates of
the possibilities and likelihoods of the invisible
world of immaterial and angelic life. We call
these by the name of worlds, because they seem
like complete creations in themselves, and are
each of them a distinct revelation of God,, distinct
from all other revelations of him, and yet harmo­
nizing with them all. They are separate shadows
of God. They are his wisdom and bis beauty, his
power and his love, seen from different points of
view. He is many Creators in one Creator. We
are very right in making his one world into many
worlds. So it is with the Incarnation. The whole
material universe is not so vast as that one world
of the Incarnation, nor capable of so many or
such magnificent subdivisions. Intellectually or
spiritually, the Thirty-Three Years form a world
far vaster than the world of stars. They can even
bear to be subdivided into many other worlds
whwh are etill epaeious enough for the swift intel’
hgeneee of angels, as well as the rapidity of glori

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. ’ 211

fled human minds, to traverse for eternity, finding,
fresh wonders evermore. The Precious Blood has
one biography in Mary’s Womb, where it issued
from the lone sanctities of her immaculate heart.
It has another in Bethlehem, and another in Egypt,
and another in Nazareth, and another on the
shores of Gennesarcth, and another in Jerusalem,
and another in Galilee. Each of these is a world
beyond the measures of our science, a cloister for
devotion, and yet a cloister in which eternity has
ample room. God’s vastness is a living vastness.
It carries itself everywhere, and everywhere ib
entire and transcends the necessities of space.
Each of these separate worlds of the life of Jesus
upon earth is tied by some occult sympathy to
some particular attribute, or group of attributes,
in God. Thus we learn in the life of Mother Mar­
garet of the Blessed Sacrament, Carmalitess at
Dijon, that the souls which are called to a special
devotion to our Lord’s Resurrection have always
a peculiar attraction to worship the divine sanc­
tity. These are glimpses of that glad science of
the Threc-and-Thirty Years, which will be part of
our unutterable bliss beyond the grave. Surely it
makes the world seem wearier than ever, to think
of the unsuspected grandeurs which the myste­
ries of our sweet Jesus are waiting to pour out
into our souls, when he has received us into his
kingdom.
It is plain, from what has been said, that our
knowledge of the inward life of the Precious
Blood during the Thirty-Three Years must bo
very superficial. Nevertheless, we must put it
before ourselves as clearly as we can. Its first be­

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

ginning was in the thrills of beatific joy. Wo shall
sec reasons afterward for carefully noting this.
The beginning of the Human Life of Jesus was
not gradual. It bad no dawn. Its very union with
the Divinity rendered this impossible. It broke
out of nothingness into the blaze of conscious and
blessed ecstasy. It saw God as not even Mary
sees him now. It saw him, went out of sight of
all creation toward comprehending him, enjoyed
him as not all heaven after the Doom will enjoy
him, and adored him as no fabulous number of
possible worlds could ever have adored him. This
was the first pulse of the Precious Blood. Tho
very first throb had in it an incalculable immen­
sity of gladness. Out of its first moment all worlds
might be gladdened beyond their power of bearing
gladness. Save the Uncreated Jubilee, the sweet
Spirit of the Father and the Son, never was there
jubilee like that of the Precious Blood in its begin­
ning. Yet from that hour the jubilee has never
ceased ·, it has never lessened ; it has never changed.
Its pulses are not tides. They imply no vicissi­
tudes. They betoken only an equable impetuosity
of immutable delight. The gladness which flashed
like lightning out of the eyes of the Infant into
the heart of Mary was unabated when the same
eyes drooped languidly toward her upon Calvary.
The blessedness which broke forth like a creation
of light in the glory of the Resurrection had never
left the Sacred Heart even during the Way of the
Cross. But, with the beatific joy, tho Precious
had all other joys as well. That Human
Life was a joy in itself, a joy in its divine union,
independently of ite vision of God. It was a joy

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

213

in the love and possession of so sweet a Mother.
It was a joy in the unearthly tranquillity of Jo­
seph’s deep, loving, adoring heart. It was a joy
in the jubilee of the worshipping angels. It was
a joy in the very bitterness of its redeeming woes,
and it was a joy in the intensity of its own loves
of God and men.
But it was a life also of colossal sorrows, even
though they abated not the joy. Never did blood
of man throb with such excesses of anguish as the
Precious Blood of our most dear Redeemer. Its
sorrows were lifelong. Their excesses exceeded
all the tortures of the martyrs. There was never
a moment which was not occupied with sorrow.
The jubilee never commingled with the woe, nor
tempered it, nor compensated for it. Nay, rather,
all joys intensified the sorrows. Joy, surely, is in
itself a diviner thing than sorrow; for there can
be no sorrow in the Ever-blessed. But sorrow was
more human; and therefore it was chosen as the
instrument of man’s redemption; and thus to us it
becomes more divine, because it brings God to us
and raises us up to God. Thus sorrow was more
natural to the Precious Blood. It was a life more
congenial to its nature. Moreover, it was its offi­
cial life. For by sorrow it was to accomplish its
redeeming work. Its shedding was to be not only
the consummation of our Lord’s suffering, but the
chosen suffering, in which precisely the work of
redemption was to lie. Jesus—thrice blessed be
his most dear Name!—is all our own, neither can
we spare any thing of him. Yet it was nbt pre­
cisely his Soul which was to redeem us, nor tho
Passion of bis Body which was to be exactly our

214

the HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

expiation. It was the shedding of his Blood which
was to cleanse us from our sins. The remedy of
the Fall was precisely in the Saviour's Blood. All
the sorrows of his life grew up to the shedding of
his Blood, and were crowned by it; and his shed­
ding the last few drops of it after he was dead was
significant of the work it had to do. The Soul, and
the Body, and the Blood lay separate; and the
sacrifice was thus complete.
The life of the Precious Blood was also a life of
great secrecy. This is the invariable characteristic
of all divine things. The more they have been the
objects of God's eternal complacency in his everblessed Mind, the more instinctively do they affect
secrecy. God is a God who hides himself, and who
even manifests himself by means of new conceal­
ments. All holiness has the same love of secrecy
imprinted on it as the seal of God. We should
have imagined that the gladness of the Precious
Blood would have made it prone to manifest itself,
and to be forever manifesting itself out of its exu­
berant love of souls. We might have supposed that
its intense desire to shed itself would have given it
a character of publicity. Yet, as God is so secret
that St. Austin ventured to name him “ the most
secret Being,” and at the same time is also un­
speakably communicative, so is it with the Pre­
cious Blood. It hid itself all through the ThirtyThree Years, and it hid itself most effectually at
the moment it was being shed. It hid itself on
the roots of the olive-trees of Gethsemane, only
making the brown wood a little ruddier. It sank
into the thirsty ground of Calvary. It hastened
to mingle with the street-dust of Jerusalem
It

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215

clung to the soles of men’s shoes, so . that they
might not notice it. In like manner it works be­
hind a veil at this hour. It works in Sacraments,
in invisible communications of grace, in viewless
contacts of divine things with the soul. It is only
when God opens the eyes of favored souls that it
is seen working as truly the Blood of Jesus. Such
a favored soul was Frances of the Mother of God,
Carmeli tees of Dieppe. When she held her chap­
ters of faults, and the nuns accused themselves of
their short-comings of observance, she saw Jesus
by her side, touching those who accused them­
selves with simplicity and frankness with a drop
of his Blood, and leaving untouched those who ac­
cused themselves unsimply and without any inte­
rior self-condemnation. On Palm Sunday, during
a jubilee, she saw our Lord apply to the souls of
the nuns at Communion the grace of the jubilee
by means of his Blood ; and he said to her, “ To
persons in the world I give my Blood by drops,
but here I give it in profusion.” One year, on the
feast of the Circumcision, our Lord showed him­
self to her lying in the manger, bathed in blood
and the blood dropping from him into a vessel.
Iler soul became “ deliciously occupied” with the
dignity and price of that adorable Blood, and she
cried out, in a transport of rapture, “Ah, my
Lord ! that was enough to redeem the world, with­
out so much suffering.” He then vouchsafed to
reveal to her that he had offered the Blood of the
Circumcision to the Father for two objects espe­
cially. The first was to satisfy for the sins which
had been committed since creation and before the
Incarnation ; and the second was to obtain for

SIC.

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

souls the grace of making a right use of his mystenes. Thus it has been in numberless revelations,
that, when the realities of grace have been shown
to favored souls, they have been shown as actual
contacts of the Precious Blood, just as supernatu­
ral favors at Communion have so often taken the
form of filling the mouths of the saints with blood,
which had a sweetness beyond all known earthly
tastes; and the way in which it veils its operations
is but a continuance of the secrecy of the Threeand-Thirty Years.
The life of the Precious Blood on earth was also,
and eminently, a life of love, or, as we may rather
call it, a life of many loves. It was such a human
love of God as immeasurably surpassed the collect­
ive love of Mary, angels, and men. It was a joy­
ous and yet a reverential love of Mary, such as far
outdid all the united devotion and enthusiastic af­
fection of the angels and the saints for their mother
and their queen. It was such a love of men, and
particularly of men’s souls, as the hearts of all
mankind could not hold if it were divided among
them and their hearts were enlarged to the mag­
nificent capacities of apostles’ hearts. Souls were
its attraction, its passion. Its genius fastened upon
them as its portion and its prey. Its choice, its
work, its food, its rest, its joy,—all were in human
souls. Tho thought of it had won grace for souls
before it was actually created. The figures of it
cleansed souls. The shedding of it was the life of
souls. It became almost omnipresent, that it might
embrace all souls. It cast itself into Sacraments,
that it might reach souls by a quicker road, in more
diversified ways, with a more infallible operation,

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217

and with a more abundant success. Then, as if
(discontented even with the magnificence of the
Sacraments, it threw itself into Indulgences and
Jubilees. It made men after its own likeness, and
called them Apostles. An apostolic call is a voca­
tion of the Precious Blood. The mild judgments
of moral theology are but the casuistry of the Pre­
cious Blood. Who can think unmoved of the tenIderncss and of the impetuosity of this soul-loving
Blood ? All sweet, eloquent patience in the Con­
fessional is only the impassioned self-control of the
Precious Blood. All true, simple, evangelical
preaching is only the uplifted voice of the Pre­
cious Blood. Let me tell you again that old story
of the Blessed Angela of Foligno. She saw our
Lord in vision embracing some Franciscan Friars,
and pressing them with a yearning fondness to his
wounded side. He pressed them so closely to him
that their lips were tinged with his Blood, some
slightly, some very much; and some had their
mouths all ruddy with it, so tightly had he pressed
them against the wound. He told her that these
were his preachers, and that the word of the Gos­
pel only went with power to the soul when it
passed over lips that were stained with his Pre
cious Blood. Ah, we poor preachers ! we have
need to hang our heads at this tale; and yet it ir
one full of good cheer to our humility, if only ou
*
humility be generous and brave.
Finally, the life of the Precious Blood on eartn
was a life of incomparable sanctity. It was made
up of the most gigantic operations of grace. Wo
cannot approach to them even in thought. Let it
suffice to say that they were multitudinous anu
1
19

218

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECI0tJ8 „

manifold all day, and that sloop by night never
interrupted them ; and yet that the least of them
transcended in spiritual beauty and dignity the
gorgeous mystery of the Immaculate Conception.
It was a life made up also of interior dispositions
of such vast heroism, of such fiery lovo, of such
majestic intensity, of such delicate complications,
as have no parallel in any other created holiness.
What can we imagine of them, when it is sober to
say of them that the least and most transient of
them surpassed all the dispositions of Mary’s Do­
lors? and, after the virtues of Jesus, are not those
the most colossal sanctities that were ever known
on earth or ever crowned in heaven? In all these
operations of grace, in all these inward disposi­
tions, in all the glorious heroisms of the Sacred
Humanity, the Precious Blood was over minister
ing, with most special intention, to those two kin­
dred Attributes of God, his Dominion and his Mag­
nificence. Did I not speak truly when 1 said that
the Three-and-Thirty Years were an epoch of secu­
lar duration, a kind of eternity of tima?
The life of the Precious Blood upon earth after
the Ascension was, as we have seen, in one sense
an actual life, and in another sense not an actual
life. We have lessons also to learn from this, or,
at least, fresh proofs of the character and disposi­
tion of the Precious Blood. Its life upon earth
may be divided into natural and supernatural, or
into direct and indirect, or into religious and secu­
lar, according to the point of view from which we
may regard it. For our purpose no strict division
is necessary. It is enough for us to speak of it as
it concerns the world and as it concerns the

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219

Church. On the first head we need not say much,
ns we have already seen in the second chapter
what the world would have been without the
Precious Blood. Nevertheless, there is still some­
thing to be said. There is not, and has not been
since Christianity was preached, a state or govern­
ment which has not been materially influenced by
the Precious Blood. History shows us that there
is an obvious unity of life in states, of which they
themselves are scarcely ever conscious, or at least
conscious only during transient intervals. They
do God’s work without knowing it. They serve
the Church at the moment they think they are
thwarting it. After centuries of self-praise and
pride they lose their positions and sink into some­
thing narrower and smaller, and find that they
have all along been the unintelligent and uninten­
tional servants of the Holy See. Sometimes indi­
vidual statesmen make an impression on their age
and country; and it is curiously borne out by his­
tory that in this case the impression is for the
most part adverse to religion at the time, but
turns out to be for its advantage in the end.
More often the state makes the statesman, who
follows rather than leads, while the state itself is
filled with a life it does not understand, and, like
a tree growing in a particular position, works out
its instincts unconsciously. In both cases it is
the interests of the Precious Blood which are
found at last to have presided over the revolutions
of states.
Civilizations and customs are also modified and
controlled by its genius, character, and influence.
Its work in individual souls is in the aggregate

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THE HISTORY OE ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

such an enormous power, that it cannot help
making itself felt in all social movements. To
literature it has contributed fresh forms and new
ideas. In art it has been a fountain of beauty and
inspiration far surpassing any other both in the
quantity and the excellence of its production
Philanthropy owes more to it than it will acknow­
ledge, and morality has hardly any independent
practical life without it. In what is called the
progress of humanity it has been at once a curb
to restrain, and a rudder to guide, a light to see
by, and a compensation enabling us to endure.
But, while we must never forget that the outer
world is always owing all that is good in it to the
influence of the Precious Blood, we are rather
concerned with its life in the Church. We have
already seen that the laboratories of its life are in
the wonderful Sacraments, which are the living
present actions of Christ, the actual going on of
the Thirty-Three Years on earth. We have seen
that all processes of justification and of sanctifica­
tion are in reality operations of the Precious Blood.
We have remembered its ubiquitous activity in
those veiled triumphs of death-bed graces, which
will rank among the sweetest astonishments of
heaven. But its principal and most characteristic
occupation upon earth is Conversion; and, as its
energy in the Church is so broad and so incessant
that it is difficult to comprehend it in one view
without becoming vague, we may select this par­
ticular occupation to which it is so specially ad­
dicted as a favorable illustration of its spirit and
method, and as conveying to us by a single instance
the most faithful idea of its life'upon tar[h s'ee

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221

the Ascension. But, while we put forward the
phenomenon of Conversion as the best exponent
of the normal life of the Precious Blood, we must
not forget that it.· is only one out of many spe­
cimens of its fertility. Let us then think of what
is implied in the Conversion of a soul, and what
that agent must be like whose main and favorite
occupation is Conversion.
It is not possible to exaggerate the importance
of the Conversion of a single soul. As single souls,
we feel lost in an overwLelming multitude. We
are nobodies in the great grand world, and in the
huge overmastering progress of human destinies.
If we died, we might leave a temporary ache in
some few hearts, and that would be all. But we
are never lost, we are never nobodies, in the dear
world of God’s all-seeing love and all-loving pro­
vidence. According to his standards, an empire is
a less thing than a single soul. The empire will
not last so long, nor can it effect so much. Even
upon earth the divine importance of its history
lies simply in the amount and kind of its influence
upon single souls. In the next world, the truer
world, it has no representative. It is as though it
had never been, or at least it is a mere item in the
sanctification of the saved. The fortunes of earth’s
most gorgeous empire cast no shadow upon heaven.
God appears to make fewer arrangements for em­
pires than for souls; and, when he occupies him­
self with nations, it is for the sake of souls. The
degree and manner of divine interference are less
for an empire than for a soul. Heaven’s interest
in an empire is less than its interest in a soul. The
consequences of an empire are less than the con
19·

222

THF. HISTORY OF THF. PRECIOUS litOOD.

sequences of a soul. Thia is the estimate which
the Precious Blood takes of a single soul.
Now let us look at the machinery of Conversion.
What is wanted, what is actually put forth, to
convert & tnan in mortal sin ? *The Throe Divine
Persons work as one in all external works. Yet
the Father represents in our imperfect views the
power of the Godhead; and this power is wanted
to convert a soul. Nothing short of omnipotence
can do it. Mary’s sceptre only reaches so far
through the omnipotence of prayer. When I think
of enormous power, I think of St. Michael ; but ho
is too weak to convert a sinner: or of the choir
of Thrones; but the magnificence of their repose
cannot cleanse from sin, or infuse peace into a
sinful soul. Secondly, it needs the wisdom of the
Son. The Cherubim are very wise, and our dearest
mother Mary is a very abyss of science. But they
could not have invented the needful ingenuities
for the Conversion of a sinner. Indeed, they are
so far from being able to devise them, that they
find it hard to understand them, and they are
adoring them to this hour with unabated astonish­
ment. Then, also, it needs the love of the Holy
Ghost. The magnificent Seraphim live in the
divine fires, and are themselves vast and huge
abysses of burning love. Yet they are but sparks
from the furnace of the Holy Ghost. His love is
simply incomprehensible. They can but fall down
and tremble before the unutterable conflagrations
of bis uncreated fires. Many things are hard to
understand in God but, most of all, the excesses
of his love. Yet this power of the Father this
wisdom of the Son, and this love of the Holy

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223

Ghost, this threefold compassion of the Most Holy
Trinity, have been engaged for the Conversion of
souls through the exquisite pleadings and beautiful
constraints of the Precious Blood.
It is part of the ordinance of our Blessed Lord
that the prayers and dolors of his Mother should
also go to the Conversion of a soul. But the power
of those prayers and the merit of those dolors
came from the Precious Blood. The whole of
Mary, and all the benignity of her queendom, and
all the glory of her exaltation, and all the splendor
of her graces, and all the mystery of her mother­
hood, are because of the Precious Blood. No part
of creation has been made so white by its redness
as her unspotted heart. She is the creature of
the Precious Blood, its daughter, its mother, its
servant, and its queen. The angels of heaven must
be stirred for the Conversion of a soul. Numberless
ministries, each one of which is a heavenly wonder,
are put forth by them. They plead in heaven.
They visit earth. They do Mary’s bidding. They
conspire with the saints. They procure the Sacra­
ments. They prepare. They co-operate. They
confirm. They warn. They defend. They cross
each other betwixt earth and heaven, like royal
messengers on the highways in time of war. It is
the Precious Blood which has merited these minis­
tries for the soul. It is devotion to the Precious
Blood which fills the angelic realms with jubilee
when a sinner is converted. Our Lord loved to
think of that jubilee, and spoke of it with pleased
affirmation and tenderest delight.
The Conversion of a soul requires that a mul­
titude of circumstances should be providentially

224

THE HISTORY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

ordered and times, persons, and places made to fit
each other m some one peculiar way. This har­
mony of circumstances is providence doing honor
to the Precious Blood. There must bo, ordinarily
speaking, the knowledge of the Gospel; and the
bringing of this to the neighborhood of each soul
is a distinct act of love on tho part of the Precious
Blood. Much has to be merited for the soul by tho
good works of others ; and no works merit except
through the Precious Blood. The goodness of
others has to influence tho soul; and goodness only
influences because the Precious Blood makes it so
attractive. The moment of contrition is the mo­
ment of revolution in the soul; it was a moment
foreseen and foreordained from all eternity in view
of the Precious Blood. It is part of God’s eternal
complacency in that redeeming Blood. The Sacra­
ments, which are the resplendent instruments of
Conversion, are the application of the Precious
Blood to the soul in a manner which seems to in­
tensify that which is already infinite. The actual
shedding of the Blood on Calvary was the far-off
preparation for this individual Conversion. The
revival of old merits, and tho restoration of for­
feited rights to reward, are only instances of the
energy of the Precious Blood, and of tho complete­
ness with which it does its work. This vitality of
merits, this power of a resurrection in them when
mortal sin has killed them, is only because it was
the Precious Blood which made them merits at the
first. Indulgences are the loving ministers of the
Precious Blood, which understand its ways and
enter into its spirit, and so go about picking un the
fragments that remain after the Sacraments have

ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

225

had their fill. The joy of God, of Mary, of the
angels, of the saints, of the holy souls in purgatory,
and of God's priests and servants upon earth, is
only an emanation of that joy of which the Pre­
cious Blood is the universal and incessant fountain.
Moreover, all through this process of Conversion
there is a marvellous hiding, a divine extenuation,
of sin’s affront against God, which can only be
because it is inundated by the Precious Blood,
while at the same time there is such a revelation;
of the sinfulness of sin as can only be made by
that same Blood, which is the beautiful reparation
of God’s sanctity.
By night and by day all over the earth is the
Precious Blood engaged in this occupation of Con­
version. It is going on in thousands of souls at
once. In all of them is all this supernatural ma­
chinery at work, and at work all at once. In each
case there is tho same apparently exclusive con­
centration of divine love upon the single soul,
which makes all God’s dealings with us seem so
inexpressibly tender. This has been going on for
centuries. It will go on still for many centuries:
for the end of the world does not yet seem near,
unless its not seeming so be indeed a sign that it is
so. Who can mistake the character and office of
the Precious Blood, when he studies this work of
Conversion which is its work of predilection ? It
is the one question of life and death with each one
of us, whether this change has been wrought in
us, either at our baptism or since. Who then can
calculate the debt he owes to the Precious Blood ?
Is there a joy in life more invigorating than an
overwhelming sense of our obligations to the
P

Î26

ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Blood of Jesus? Who doos not long to pay him
back in love, and long all the more ardently the
more ho secs how the greatness of his debt makes
the payment of it impossible? To bo in debt to
God is the light-heartedness of life. The grace he
gives us is even sweeter to us as an obligation
than as a gift. The weight of our obligations is
the delightful pressure of his love; and the sweet
feeling of it is in proportion to the weight.
This leads me to another matter, on which, for
the sake of our dearest Lord, I would that I could
speak with more than usual persuasion. We are
considering the life of the Precious Blood in the
Church. Its supernatural works of benignity are
wrought in the Church and through the Church.
The Church is in an especial manner, and in strict
scriptural phraseology, the creation of the Pre­
cious Blood. It is its visible edifice, the house it
has built for itself, the home where it hides itself,
the bride it has espoused and then dowered with
its Sacraments, the mother of its children, the
monument it has erected and hung round with
trophies of its victories. It is the living palace
of the Precious Blood, built with the Blood itself
as with cement, and beautified by it as by the
brightness of very heaven. It is the life and love
of the Precious Blood, made visible to men by an
institution invented by God himself, and which
copies upon earth the order and the hierarchies of
heaven. Hence it follows that all true devotion
to the Precious Blood must be accompanied by a
hearty devotion to the Church. Heresies, which
have done despite to the Precious Blood by narrowing it» sphere or by limiting its prodigality,

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227

have also been distinguished by a want of loyally
to the Church. In all times we have seen that
those who take a rigid view about the easiness of
salvation also take a lax view about the exclusive
privileges of communion with the Church ; while,
on the other hand, those who dwell more strongly
on the doctrine of exclusive salvation in the true
Church are also most given to magnify the abun­
dance of redeeming grace within its pale. At first
sight it seems a strange inconsistency, that those
who make it hard to be saved in the Church
should make it comparatively easy to be saved out
of it. It is indeed curious that such men should
regard what they must at the least admit to be
one of God’s chief means of grace, namely, the
Church, as adding very little to the chances of a
man’s salvation. If two men, born in one country,
the one in the Church with all the Sacraments, the
other not in the Church at all, have, as some say,
nearly the same chances of salvation, it must fol­
low, either that God has one standard for the for­
giveness of sin in the one case, and another in the
other, which is surely an impiety, or that the Sa­
craments are of very little consequence or efficacy,
which would be hardly a less impiety. That Jesus,
God and Man, should be truly received in the
Blessed Sacrament, and yet that this should not
make simply an incalculable difference between
the religious state of those who enjoy this privilege
and of those who do not, is a supposition highly
dishonorable to our Blessed Lord. Yet so it is
that a light esteem of the overwhelming advan­
tages of the Church, and a want of apprecia­
tion of the Sacraments, go along with the most

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THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS blood.

rigid and harsh views regarding the easiness of
salvation and tho number of the saved ; and those
errors go together for want of a true and tender
devotion to the Precious Blood. The doctrine of
the Sacraments is the touchstone of all the theo­
logy of the day. He who constantly and dovoutly adores the Precious Blood of Jesus will
not think lightly of the Sacraments which are
the vases to hold it and the channels to convey
it. Ho who magnifies the glory of the Sacra­
ments will make much of the Church whoso espe­
cial possession and characteristic they are. It is
thus, through the doctrine of tho Sacrament, that
the apparent contradiction of making salvation
very difficult in tho Church, and yet holding
that tho being out of the Church does not put
a man at such a great disadvantage as regards
salvation, comes from a want of devotion to tho
Precious Blood.
Hence it follows that all lovers of the Precious
Blood should bave a cordial devotion to the Church,
and should immensely honor, revere, and prize the
Sacraments. Scripture calls the Church the Body
of Christ ; and tho chief of the Sacraments is pre­
cisely tho Body of Christ; and St. Paul speaks
wonderful things of the mysterious union between
Christ and tho Church. It is ono of our greatest
dangers of the present day to think lightly of
the Church. Now that the world is overrun with
heresy, and that in social life almost all distinc­
tions between tho faithful and others are oblite­
rated it is convenient to men’s ease and accept­
able to their cowardice to regard tho faith as
one oi many saving opinions, and the Church us

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

229

one of many saving institutions. Men will make
light of the enormous privileges and of the exdiisivo rights of tho Church, either out of human
respecty or as an easy way of diminishing the dif­
ficulties of a problem which they are unable to
solvo and do not like to face. A disesteem of the
Sacraments follows upon this with a very speedy
and disastrous logic. The practical consequences
soon work themselves out. Such men destroy the
souls of others by discouraging the frequentatiori
of the Sacraments, and they destroy their own
by that laxity of worldly, comfort-loving lives,
which in almost all cases are found in conjunc­
tion with very rigorous views. Such men either
rest in the very rigor of their view, as if its
rigorousness were meritorious enough of itself to
save them, or they put feelings and sensible de­
votions in the place of mortifications, and so
make their whole spirituality a delusion. They
will bo found restive and uneasy under the praise
of the great Sacraments; and this shows how far
they have drifted from the instincts of the Church.
They will be found to consider the chances of sal­
vation for the poor as almost less, even in the
point of unworklliness, than those of the rich; and
this shows how far they have drifted from the
mind of our Lord, who blessed the poor precisely
as entering the kingdom of heaven more easily
than tho rich. A man who thinks lightly of the
really inestimable privileges of the Church lets go
of every thing, and must ultimately either end in
active heresy or settle down into a wearied irreligiousness. Tho Church is a kingdom, not a lite­
rature,—a life, not a congeries of doctrines; it is
20

230

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

n rule and a sovereignty, a royalty which belongs
to the royalty of the Precious Blood.
Let us then cultivate with tho most jealous care
a fervent devotion to the Church. Love of the
Church was part, and a great part, of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus. The Jansenists, who made so
light of the maternal authority of the Church,
turned away with instinctive displeasure from the
devotion to the Sacred Heart. We must look at
the Church habitually as the sole ark in the deluge
of the world, the sole mistress of salvation. We
do not bind God further than he has been pleased
to bind himself. We do not limit the far-reaching
excesses of his mercy. But we remember that his
ordinary law is, that there is no salvation what­
ever outside the Boman Church. It is his ordi­
nary institution that no accurate beliefs, no right
sympathies, no generous views, no near approaches,
no sensible devotions, no felt actual graces, will
make a man a living member of Jesus Christ,
without communion with tho Holy See. We must
be jealous of the uncompromising simplicity of this
old-fashioned doctrine. We must be suspicious of
all the fine words, and specious theories, and inge­
nious abatements, which the spirit of the day would
suggest. We must be misled by no circumstances
of time or place, by no prevalence of heresy, by
no arguments drawn from consequences, which
are the affair of God’s government of the world,
not ours. The sins of men cannot change the
truth of God. They are at his mercy, not he at
thews. In the days of Antichrist, when two-thirds
even of the faithful shall fall away from the Church,

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231.

their apostasy will not make it less the exclusive
mistress of salvation.
We must be loyal to the Church in our least
thoughts of it, nor even talk lightly of its majesty.
We must put faith in it in all its contacts and
concussions with the world, and in all its contra­
dictions of the assumed grandeur of this nine­
teenth century, which is more than half spent,
and has done nothing yet to justify its boasting.
We must not measure the Church by unsupernatural standards, which it is the world’s great
object to persuade us to do. We must not be
ashamed of it because it holds back when it seems
grander to go forward. We must not be discon­
tented with it when its action intersects some
little favorite anticipations of our own. We must
merge our own selves and our own views in its
consciously or unconsciously Spirit-guided policy.
When we are perplexed, we must stand still and
believe. Silence makes us great-hearted, and
judging makes us little-minded. We must do all
we can to get ourselves infected with the instincts
of the Church. We must like its ways, as well
as obey its precepts and believe its doctrines.
We must not theorize; for, if we once begin to
theorize, we shall soon come to sneer. A mind
not under authority always lies under a necessity
of being pert. We must esteem all that the
Church blesses, all that tho Church affects. When
the Church suffers, or souls suffer, we must not
be content with the selfish consolation that, after
all, the Church is eternal, and must conquer in
the long run ; but we must have an active sym­
pathy with all its present vicissitudes, and an

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THS HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

untiring zeal and an unquenchable thirst for
souls; and the salvation of souls is a matter of
the present; it cannot wait for a future, because
men are dying daily.
We must even fear the Church with a filial
reverence. If we are converts, we must never
cease to dread the underground action of here­
tical habits of mind and heretical methods of con­
troversy in ourselves. There is a leaven of inhe­
rent lawlessness in every man who has once been
a heretic. We must be as afraid of these things
as Scripture tells us to be afraid of forgiven sin.
In some cases we should abstain from using all
the liberty of speculation which the Church allows
us, because we humbly distrust the strength or
the genuineness of the principle of obedience
within us, to stop us before we go too far. Neither
must wc allow ourselves to be discontented with the
state of things anywhere or at any time. Dis­
content breeds in us the base and sour spirit of
reformers. The chief discontent of the saints was
with themselves. So should ours be. We read
of saints being downcast and discontented about
the sin that is in the world. We even read of
their being discontented with political matters,
when they concerned the free action and unhin­
dered sovereignty of the Holy See. But I never
read of any saint being discontented with the
intellectual, or philosophical, or literary state of
things in the Church. I doubt if such a dis­
content is compatible with true loyalty to the
Church.
J
Our attitude must be always one of submission,
not of criticism. He, who is
disappointed with

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233

the Church, must be losing his faith, even though
he does not know it. I hear of some foreign
countries where the precepts of the Church are
now thought lightly of, and a marked distinction
made between them and other obligations ; and 1
feel sure that the faith of those countries is failing,
although there may be a show to the contrary.
When I meet with new Catholics careless about
these same precepts, careless of the Masses and ab­
stinences of obligation, I see in this, not so much
a negligent spirit, as a downright want of faith.
A man’s love of the Church is the surest test of
his love of God. He knows that the whole Church
is informed with the Holy Ghost. The divine
life of the Paraclete, his counsels, his inspirations,
his workings, his sympathies, his attraction, arc in
it everywhere. There is nothing in the Church or
about it, however seemingly trivial, transient,
or indirect, which is not more likely than not to
contain some of the fire of the Holy Ghost; and
this likelihood is the cause of a perpetual and
universal reverence for the Church to the good
catholic. The gift of infallibility is but a concen­
tration, the culminating point, the solemn official
out-speaking, of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost
in the Church. While it calls, like revelation, for
absolute submission of heart and soul, all the
minor arrangements and ways and dispositions of
the Church call for general submission, docility,
and reverence, because of the whole Church being
a shrine fulfilled with the life of the Holy Ghost.
St. Philip Neri’s special devotion to the Third
Person of the Most Holy Trinity was part of that
intense loyalty to the Church, which raised him to
20·

234

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the rank and title of an apostle, and the apostle
of the Holy City. In a word, onr feeling toward
the Church should be a devotion. A grandeur
faded from the page of history, when the loyalty
to the old monarchies went out; but even that
loyalty was not enough for our feelings toward
the Church. The Church is full of God, haunted
by spiritual presences, informed with a super­
natural life, instinct with Jesus. Our love of the
Church is one form of our love of Jesus, the form
on which the saints were moulded. It is our love
of our Lord's love of us. It is the enthusiasm of
our devotion to his Precious Blood. Surely it
were a shame, if we did not love the Church more
than the Jews of old loved their dear Jerusalem !
From this cultivation of a great devotion to the
Church weshould gain many of those graces of which
we stand in especial need. It would bring with it
the grace of simplicity, because it would be founded
on the virtue of obedience, and because it would
foster the gift of faith. In these days it is a huge
evil to be inconsistent; and we are inconsistent as
much from want of simplicity as want of courage.
Simplicity makes a quiet spirit; and a quiet spirit
is the true home of heavenly love. But times
when we want simplicity are also times when we
especially require prudence; and prudence is an­
other grace which will come out of devotion to the
Church. They, who have the habit of leaning
upon authority, distrust themselves, and they dis­
trust themselves, not timidly, but bravely. They
are not precipitate. There is a maturity abuul
their promptitude, and a security about their speed,
and a porousness even in their delays, which ar«

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

235

caught from the spirit and conduct of the Church
itself. Moreover, devotion to the Church is a
loyalty, and, further, it is a supernatural loyalty.
But loyalty makes a man generous. It causes him
to dare great things, to be forgetful of himself, to
be disinterested, to love hard work, to delight in
sacrifices, and always to be aspiring to something
higher and more arduous. It makes a man genial;
and it is only a genial mind which is creative,
fertile, or successful. How many hearts are daily
telling God that their want of wants is generosity I
They will find it through devotion to the Church.
Stability is another grace which the men of our
day have need to covet. Multiplicity makes men
vacillating. Those, who are always catching at
things, grasp nothing. To be really earnest we
must be constant. But the earnest man is the
man who takes every thing in earnest. He is not
merely the persistent man. True stability must
be elastic while it is constant; or rather it will be
constant precisely because it is elastic. This is an
exact description of that changeful uniformity of
which the whole history of the Church is an
example. Lastly, a certain grace comes from
secret union with the Church, just as unction
comes from union with God. This grace of union
with the Church gives us a winningness in the
eyes of others, a sort of inward equable sweetness,
which first fills our own souls with light and glad­
ness, and then draws the souls of others into the
light and gladness which are within ourselves.
Each man knows how far he needs these things as
helps to him in his spiritual life. To many of us
in these days they are special needs

236

j

1

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

There are still three lives of the Precious Blood
remaining to be treated of; but wo may in reality
consider them as one. There is the actual life in
heaven, which is contemporaneous with that life in
the Church from the Ascension to the Doom, which
we. have just been contemplating. There is the
life of the Precious Blood in the Blessed Sacra­
ment, the heavenly life miraculously dowered with
an earthly locality and with innumcrous localities
at once. There is, lastly, the eternal life of the
Precious Blood in heaven after the Doom for all
eternity, when Jesus has laid down his kingdom
and changed the offices of his priesthood. These
are certainly in many deep senses, and with
regard to many curious yet edifying questions,
different lives. Yet, for our present practical pur­
pose, they may be regarded as one. The life of
the glorified Blood is a life of beatitude. It is
glad in itself, and ministers gladness to others,
even to the boundless uncreated jubilee of God.
The Precious Blood is the Human Life of the
Word. Beatitude is the natural life of God ; and
so joy is the natural life of the Precious Blood.
In truth, is not joy the nearest definition of life
that we can have : for is it not God's first intention
in the gift of life?
In heaven and in the Blessed Sacrament the
Precious Blood dwells, incomparably glorified, in
the veins of Jesus. Its beauty there is wonderful
to see, wonderful to think of. The sight of it in
our Lord’s translucent Body is an immense gladness
to the Blessed. Earth has no beauty to which we
can compare it; yet earth is not therefore poorer
than heaven; for it has this very beauty in the

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

237

adorable Sacrament. But it is not only a joy to
others. Its own life is an unbroken jubilee. As
it goes and returns to and from the Sacred Heart
it is filled with pulses of the most abounding glad­
ness. It thrills with the exquisite delight of
created life carried to its utmost ecstatic possibility.
But, over and above this, there is the indefinable,
unimaginable ecstasy of the Hypostatic Union,
which is felt in every particle of that Precious
Blood. It throbs with such pacific tumult of
immortal love, as no created life could bear with­
out some miraculous union with the Godhead. It
thrills with sacred fear, with transports of intensest
adoration, before the uncreated majesty of God.
It is penetrated through and through with the
excesses of this holy fear. That, which itself is
worshipped by the hierarchies of heaven, trembles
with a very jubilee of worship before the Throne
of the Eternal. Possessed with such extremity of
rapturous fear, how could the Precious Blood so
tremble, and so exult, and yet live on, if it were
not that it rested for its dear support upon the
uncreated Person of the Word? It seems to stop
the beating of one’s heart to think of this unutter­
able repose of that created nature, that Sacred
Humanity, that personless life, on the Person of
the Eternal Word ! The strange beauty of such a
God-invented union, the delight of the Divine Per­
son in the touch of a created nature which yet is
no touch at all, for the Divine Person can suffer
none, the ecstasies of the Sacred Humanity as the
unction of the Word with soft sweet fire pene­
trates its secret sanctuaries of life, the compre­
hension of that humble, affectionate, pathetic,

238

ΤΠΕ HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

material nature within the cnfoldings of the In
comprehensible, which embrace it with such for­
bearing gentleness of omnipotence, and yet with
such a riveted closeness of invincible union,—to
what heart, sweetly smitten with love of Jesus
arc not these things the unfading joys of prayer,
the unfailing wells of tears? What a life is the
life of that Precious Blood ! Yet amid the untold
magnificence of the Divine Union it feels its
kindred to Mary, as a special joy of its abounding
life. Its original fountains are still flowing in
their sinless purity, beautified now with the gifts
of glory, in the Mother’s Immaculate Heart; and
the fountain in the Sacred Heart beats in myste­
rious sympathy with the source from which it
came itself. Singular in all its wonderful preroga­
tives, it yet intertwines the life of Mary with its
own.
Look at the Precious Blood for a moment as it
lies within the Sacred Heart with a living peace,
like the restless tranquillity of ocean. It is itself
the ocean of joy from which all other joys in crea­
tion come. It is through it that the immensity
of God’s gladness pours itself into all the universe,
and at the same time lets itself also be mysteriously
gladdened by the Precious Blood. All the joys,
and they are numberless, which are still left in the
fallen world, whether they be natural or super­
natural, are in substance Indulgences, Indulgences
which are granted because of the Precious Blood.
Sinners upon earth still have joys : they come
from the Precious Blood. Saints on earth are the
gladdest of God's creatures. Their lives are all
Sight and song, like the hot-blooded lives of the

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239

birds of the air. All this gladness is from the
Precious Blood. The saints in heaven are spirits
overflowed with joy, spirits whose quietness is
transport and whose soberness is ecstasy. It is
the Precious Blood which flows over them forever.
The wide, outspread vastness of angelic jubilee,
the thing likest to immensity of all created things,
created to mirror the immensity of God, is all an
emanation from the Precious Blood. Nay, it is a
changeful, changeless sea, with tides; for there are
daily, hourly increases of new joys in the angels
from the conversions of sinners; and these con­
versions are precisely the operations of the Pre­
cious Blood. Yet that ocean of angelic jubilee
washes but the base of Mary’s throne. Her joy
is like the fringe of the blessedness of God. It is
all the multitudinous joys of creatures made one
joy by her Divine Maternity, and multiplied, as
well as intensified, by being one. Yet the bliss of
Mary is all from the Precious Blood, the nearest
gladness to the gladness of the Sacred Humanity,
the first heart filled from the Sacred Heart. But
who shall tell the nameless, immeasurable joys
with which the Precious Blood fills the Sacred
Heart itself ? It cannot contain its own jubilee.
It multiplies itself in order to relieve its exulta­
tion. It has inundated heaven; but the vast shores
of the empyrean confine it and restrain its floods.
By the help of its omnipotence, behold! it escapes
as if by miracle, sparkles in countless daily chalices
upon earth, and within the cup of each chalice it
peacefully outstretches itself, unhindered in its
infinity, with its grandeur enfranchised, and its
love set free from all material laws. But the

24U

THE HISTORY OP THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

jubilee of the Precious Blood lies onward still and
onward, whither we cannot exploro it. Wo listen
to hear its breakers sounding on the misty shore.
But there comes no sound. The shores are too
far off; or are there shores at all? The Word
delights eternally in his Human Blood. Its golden
glow beautifies the fires of the Holy Ghost. Its
ministries beget inexplicable joys in the Unbe­
gotten Father.
I was upon the seashore; and my heart filled
with love it knew not why. Its happiness went
out over the wide waters and upon the unfettered
wind, and swelled up into the free dome of blue
sky until it filled it. The dawn lighted up the
faces of the ivory cliffs, which the sun and sea had
been blanching for centuries of God's unchanging
love. The miles of noiseless sands seemed vast as
if they were the floor of eternity. Somehow the
daybreak was like eternity. The idea came over
me of that feeling of acceptance, which so en­
trances the soul just judged and just admitted into
heaven. To be saved ! I said to myself, To be
saved! Then the thoughts of all the things im­
plied in salvation came in one thought upon me;
and I said, This is the one grand joy of life; and I
clapped my hands like a child, and spoke to God
aloud. But then there came many thoughts all in
one thought, about the nature and manner of our
salvation. To be saved with such a salvation ! This
was a grander joy, the second grand joy of life :
and I tried to say some lines of a hymn; but the
words were choked in my throat. The ebb was
suckmg the sea down over the sand quite silently;
uud the cliffs were winter, and more daylike Then

THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

211

there (Mme many more thoughts all in one thought;
and I stood still without intending it. To be saved
by such a Savior! This was the grandest joy of
all, the third grand joy of life; and it swallowed
up the other joys; and after it there could be on
earth no higher joy. I said nothing; but I looked
at the sinking sea as it reddened in the morning.
Its great heart was throbbing in the calm; and
methought I saw the Precious Blood of Jescs in
heaven, throbbing that hour with real humar love
of mo

2ï

212 TUE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

CHAPTER V.
THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Let us kneel down before the magnificence of
God. It is outstretched as an ocean of manifold
Being and yet of indivisible, uncreated Life, in­
tolerable in its splendor, uncircumscribed in its
simplicity. His magnificence is the vastness of
his beauty, the multitude of his perfections, the
coruscations of his sanctity, the impetuosity of his
communicativeness, the minuteness of his govern­
ment, the strange celestial sweetness of his gifts,
the prodigality of his tenderness, the abysses of
his incredible condescensions, and the exuberance
of his simplicity. These are many words; but the
idea is one. Our thought of God’s magnificence is
as a sea. It changes not; but it changes us while
we look upon it. We see the calm of eternity upon
its waters, peaceful as an endless evening. Airs
from a far country come quivering over its shining
tracts, freighted with aromatic odors, which are
diffused around and sensibly deepen the tranquil­
lity. Then again the freshness of morning is upon
its swaying fields; and a thousand waves crest
themselves with foam, and fling up star-showers
into the sunlight; and it booms upon the shore;
and it makes us feel the gentleness of power which
knows how to become terrible; and the visible
imexerted omnipotence is an admonition to prayer

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 243

Then it clothes itself with the plumage of dark­
ness, and murmurs in the midnight as if it were
gone down to a great distance; in order that we
may know how different it is when it is felt from
what it is when it is seen. Another while it lies
gray-green beneath a sunless sky, with snow
*capped cliffs around, sovereign when all else is
subject, free when all else has lost its liberty, im­
mutable when all else has suffered winter’s change.
It has also its tempests, more beautiful and more
terrible than the glorious storms of earth. Its
lightnings make the darkness round it palpable
and solid. Its thunders command a universal
silence. Its decrees rush after each other in
mighty waves of orderly confusion, menacing the
land like falling towers, and breaking in dull inar­
ticulate shocks against the precipices of the divine
justice. Yet evermore, in storm or calm, there
lies upon the ocean the light of the Precious Blood
of Jesus, restful as the golden red of evening, hope­
ful as the rosy flush of dawn. This is the figure
of the magnificence of God.
There is nothing more glorious upon earth than
magnificence, nothing which more delights the
mind or expands the soul, while it gratifies the
senses at the same time that it ennobles their
pleasure. But, among creatures, magnificence is
always a revelation of defects. Indeed, it not only
discloses imperfections, but causes them. It is too
great an effort. It calls for sacrifices which had
better not be made. It is often obliged to be re­
gardless of justice. It is made up of imprudences.
There is for the most part a tyranny about it.
Much suffering has generally to be contributed to

244 THE PRODIGALITY OF THF. PREOIOUa

it; and the euffering falls mostly on those who
have not the glory of the magnificence. Moreover
it is debased by ostentation, and disfigured by
pretence. Nevertheless it wins the applause of
men, and even lives in history. The nations will
pardon almost any thing to magnificence. It
seems to satisfy a want of the soul which is rarely
satisfied. It refreshes the littleness of the creature;
and, even when it is the glory of one man, it is felt
as if it were that one man’s gift to all mankind.
What then must be the beauty and the delight of
magnificence when it is supremely holy? What
must be its grandeur where it is natural ? How
great must be its splendor when it is the normal
expression and the simple exercise of innumerable
perfections! There is no effort in the magnificence
of God, and no display. It is not a higher height
rising above the lowlands. It is not a transient
demonstration. It is the refulgence of his eternal
quietude. It is the brightness of his infinite jus­
tice. It is the unchanging aspect of his glorious
sanctity. It is the inevitable light of the riches
of the Godhead. It is the self-possessed enjoyment
of his beatitude. To us all holiness is a form of
restraint. We can hardly form to ourselves any
other conception of it. If we try to do so, we
shall be surprised to find bow difficult it is. Think
then what holiness must be, where it is a form of
largeness, of prodigality, of boundless freedom!
Yet.this is the magnificence of God
Hoses grow on briers, say the wise men of the
world, with that sententious morality which thinks
to make virtue truthful by makino it ,r
, '
but, as the very different spirit of niett
1 ' C’!
1
>1 piety would say

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

245

it is a truer truth that briers bloom with roses. If
roses have thorns, thorns also have roses. This '.a
the rule of life. Yet everybody tells us one side
of this truth, and nobody tells us the other. A
kind-hearted man finds life full of joys, for he
makes joys of things which else were not joys ;
and a simple-hearted man can be very joyous on a
little joy; and to the pure-hearted man all things
are joys. How can the world be an unhappy
world, which has so magnificent a God? His mag­
nificence is the fountain of all our joys; for it is
the fountain of salvation. Here lies the secret of
the inveterate happiness of the world. Even in its
fall, it is so implicated in the blessedness of God
that it has not a darkness anywhere without its
light, nor a bitter without its sweet. God’s simple
presence is an overflowing of delight. His inani­
mate creatures have a changeless joy stamped
upon their mute features. The multitudinous
species of unreasoning creatures, whether they
belong to the earth, to the air, or to the waters,
plainly revel in life as a joy which fills their natures
to the brim. We ourselves have a hundred hap­
pinesses, even when we fancy ourselves quite deso­
late. There is no real desolation except mortal
sin. There is too much of God everywhere to
allow either of permanent or general unhappiness.
He, who can find his joy in God, is in heaven
already; only it is a heaven which is not secured
to him, unless he perseveres to the end. Yet is it
hard to find our joy in God? Rather, is it not
hard to find our joy in any thing else? The mag­
nificence of God is the abounding joy of life. It
is an immense joy to belong to God. It is an im21·

246

.

τπε prodigat
ιτν
'JALITT

OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Γ'.Τ" ' ?°'· *° 'lave such a God belonging to us
Like the joys of heaven, it is a joy new every
morning when we wake, as new as if we had never
tasted it before. Like the joys of earth, it is a
joy every evening resting and pacifying the soul.
But it has a gift of its own besides. For its
novelty grows fresher and more striking daily,
and its repose more satisfying and more com­
plete. The joy of God’s magnificence more
than counterbalances all mortal griefs. When
I think of bis magnificence, of all that his mag­
nificence implies, of its intimate concernment
with myself, and of the way in which I am
always sinking more and more irretrievably into
the abysses of his sovereignty, I often wonder
how we can contain ourselves with joy at having
such a God.
In treating of the prodigality of the Precious
Blood, it is necessary that we should have clear
ideas of the magnificence of God : for the one is
a part of the other. No one, of course, doubts
the magnificence of God. Our loftiest conceptions
must fall infinitely below the gorgeousness of the
reality. No accumulation of beautiful ideals can
reach the incredible glory of the truth. An im­
mensity of omnipotent beauty is a thing which it
bewilders us to think of. We should suppose that
a single glimpse of the magnificence of God would
annihilate us by its excess of impetuous light. Yet,
notwithstanding all this, the character of God is
never revealed to us more intimately or more
clearly than when he is disclosed to us as the God
who “orders all thmgs in measure, in number, and

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 247

weight.”* He does every thing by measure. The
Immeasurable decrees by measure, works by mea­
sure, rewards by measure, punishes by measure,
delights in measure. The Eternal, of uncounted
ages, of uncounted spaces, loves to count by num­
bers. Jle counts all things, and calls them by
their names. He surrounds each unity with his
whole Self, with his entire justice, with his com­
plete love. He leaves out nothing. He overlooks
nobody. It belongs to him as Creator to be accu­
rate, to be methodical, to be infallible in his mi­
nuteness. The Illimitable weighs all things, as if
their weight were an object even to his unsearch­
able riches. His magnificence delights in nothing
more than in the strictness of proportions. His
justice weighs out glory with the most un­
blemished accuracy. Even his measure that is
pressed down, and shaken together, and running
over, has all its merciful superfluity weighed out
with minutest carefulness. The very orbs that
roll in heaven keep up the universal harmony by
the exceeding nicety and adjustment of their
weights. So is it in the world of grace. So is it
in the world of glory. Oui· God is an accurate
God; and in nothing is he more adorable than in
his accuracy.
Magnificence, in our idea of it, is above law.
Now, to our eyes, the divinest of all God’s pro­
pensities is his love of law. The grandeur of his
liberty is, that it is an uncircumscribed law.
Within his own infinite life all things are abso­
lutely necessary, all things are, in the most tran* Wisdom xi. 21.

248

THE moDIOALJTY OF ΤΠΕ PBECIOUS BLOOD.

eeendental sense of the word, laws. His knowledge
of himself is not the Holy Ghost; but it is tho
Word. His love of himself is not the Word; but
it is the Holy Ghost. Much more is this magni­
ficent attribute of law-lovingness shown forth in
his external works, wherein there is no necessity.
He is himself a sufficient living law to his creiition. Yet everywhere in the universe he is at
once multiplying and simplifying laws. Every
thing is done by law, the least no less than the
greatest of things. He almost hides himself be­
hind an impenetrable screen of laws. It is as if
he wished to fetter bis infinite freedom with an
infinity of finite laws. He seems to make himself
the captive of his own punctuality. Every time
and place have their laws. There is not a corner
of creation where there is not a whole code of
laws. His omnipresence is an omnipresence of
law. Every thing wears the chains of order, of
sequence, of repetition. From this adorable love
of law comes the unutterable tranquillity of all
the divine operations in the world. It is this tran­
quillity which makes the earth so like a sanctuary,
it is so manifestly the covering under which God
hides himself. The silent calm of so much onward
overwhelming power, the gentleness of such a gi­
gantic pressure, the graceful, unsuspecting liberty
amidst such a complication of restraints, the un­
hindered exuberance of such multitudinous and
seemingly eccentric life, the unending soundless
conflict of opposing forces which ends in sueh un_
,κΐami’'itu,.de of reP°se and harmony,—all

H.

,

tne sweet majesty of God

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD. 249

It is his way to love uniformity ; and the Creator's
uniformity is the creature’s liberty. It is his
uniformity and his slowness which at once repro
sent his eternity and yet hinder it from oppressing
time.
The magnificence of God, then, is no waste of
splendor. It is no lavish prodigality of glory. It
is not a mere pageant of his royal state. It is,
if we may use the word, a necessity to God. He
cannot be otherwise. He is magnificent, simply
because he is God. He cannot lay down his gran­
deur, or be less grand, or be grander at one time
than at another. Magnificence is his divine life.
It does not cling to his perfections like a robe. It
is inseparable from him. It is the outward opera­
tion of his wonderful attributes. It is the inward
tranquillity of his incomprehensible life. His
accuracy, his punctuality, his love of law, his
propensity to number, measure, and weight, his
fashion of uniformity, his ways of order and se­
quence,—all these things are part of the magni­
ficence of God; and they are the ways by which
his magnificence is imparted to his creatures.
This is very different from our human ideas of
magnificence, and must be borne in mind. The
truth is, that God is so high that we can onlyapproach to truth in speaking of him by speaking
in superlatives. Thus we often speak of his love
and his compassion as if he did more for us than
he need do, as if less would be sufficient, as if he
wasted grace with a kind of spendthrift genero­
sity, as if his magnificence were always in excess.
All this expresses a most holy truth, so far as the
inconceivable magnificence of his goodness toward

250

the

rnoDiGAMTY

of the dbectodb blood.

is concerned. Yet it is not true, so far as ro
garde the awful magnificence of God himself. In
hke manner we sometimes speak of the Incarna­
tion and of the Atonement, as if they had per­
suaded God to bo less God than ho really is, as
if they bad given mercy some sort of advantage
against justice, as if God would overlook now
what he would not overlook before, as if the terms
of forgiveness of sin had become easier because
God’s sanctity was content with less. This also
expresses a kind of truth. I am not quarrelling
with the language. Holy Scripture sometimes
uses it, in order to make things plain to us. All
language about God labors under the necessity
of being inaccurate. It cannot even escape by
being merely short of truth. But, when it be­
comes of importance to us to obtain a somewhat
clearer view of any particular attribute of God,
then we must do our best to correct this otherwise
harmless error in our minds. It is necessary now,
in order to understand what we popularly term
the prodigality of the Precious Blood, to under­
stand also that God’s magnificence docs not over­
whelm, as with an inundation of glorious light,
his love of law, repetition, order, and accuracy, or
his methodical uniformity, or his punctual strict­
ness, or his undistracted attention to details ; but
rather it brings out all these characteristics still
more strongly, because it shows him to be mag­
nificent precisely in these things, and because
of them.
Thue the divine magnificence is a divine method
ot order and measure. So far fro) 1 being above
the restraints of law, its grandest developments

ds

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD. 251

of itself are by means of laws. So far from being
oblivious of petty details, its infinity confounds
the distinction between great and small, and
makes all things equal in its sight. May I not
even say that in some mysteries, and from some
human points of view, there is even an appearance
of parsimony in the magnificence of God? Is
there not, to our ignorance, this semblance about
the fall of the angels, and about the long delay
of the Incarnation, and about the low tides of
grace which are known to the experience of most
men in their own lives? It is not so, but it seems
so. God is never parsimonious; but he is some­
times sparing. He proportions graces to tempta­
tions in a way which disquiets us because it
makes our risks plainer. His very liberality is
adorably just. His gifts are given under laws.
They are the administration of his laws. Thus
it comes to pass that his magnificence partakes
of the severity of his holiness. What looks to us
like economy is in fact the operation of his ex­
ceeding sanctity.
Nevertheless, when all this order, and sequence,
and law, and proportion, and number, and weight,
and measure, and accuracy, are upon a scale which
is infinite, when they are all clothed in immensity,
when they are the vast sweeping circuits of ever­
lasting decrees, when they hold a love which is
inexhaustible and a compassion which is un­
wearied and a tenderness which has no likeness
to itself outside of .God, they have all that exu­
berance, lavishness, and prodigality, which are
the characteristics of magnificence. Only they
have these things without the corresponding im-

!52 THE PRODIGALITY OP THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

perfections which are inseparable from them in
the case of creatures. Prodigality in this higher
sense is a characteristic of all the divine works,
finite and limited as they are, nothingness and
the children of nothingness, yet in that they are
also the creations of God they wonderfully shadow
forth the munificence of his immensity. We have
already seen this in the number of the angels.
We cannot meditate upon their countless multi­
tudes without astonishment. So vast a populace,
of such surpassing beauty, of such gigantic intel­
ligence, of such diversified nature, is simply over­
whelming to our most ambitious thoughts. A
locust-swarm, and each locust an archangel, the
myriads of points of life disclosed to us by the
microscope, and each point a grand spirit, the
sands of the seas and the waters of the ocean, and
each grain and each drop a beautiful being the
brightness of whose substance we could not see
and live,—this is but an approximation to the
reality. So theologians teach us. Or, again, let
us think of the multitudinousness of the starry
skies. Astronomers tell us that our Milky Way
is but one of hundreds, perhaps of thousands, of
nebulæ, to which our instruments may hope to
reach. Yet our one Milky Way, in which we our­
selves are dwellers, is reported to contain thirty
millions of suns ; and we are but a little planet
of one of the lesser suns. Moreover, it is probable
that the depth in space in which our instruments
can reach is but as the ankle-deep water on the
shore, through which the fearless child can wado
*
LX
’.· “mparJe'i Wllh the yet unfathomed
depths of the und-ocean. Figures are har(Uy a

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 253

help to us in estimating the probable number of
God’s worlds. St. John speaks with rapture of
the multitude of the saved, as of a number that
no man can count. The same magnificence of
numbers reigns in the laws and the lives of the
material world ; and who can doubt but that the
spiritual far outstrips the material world in its
prolific exuberance of graces and inspirations?
We are speaking only of numbers; and yet see the
magnificence of God! For the vastness of the
numbers is but a lesser development of the bound­
less love from which creation springs. It is the
royalty of his love which the blameless custom
of the faithful has named his prodigality.
Now let us apply all this to the prodigality of
the Precious Blood. In nothing was he more
likely to be prodigal than in this work, which
was especially to minister to his Dominion and his
Magnificence. In nothing was he more likely to
be prodigal than in that which represented in
itself the whole series of his divine decrees. In
nothing is it of so much importance to us that
he should be magnificent as in the shedding of
his Blood. It would be part of his Dominion,
part of his Magnificence, to be accurately prodi­
gal of that which made his Dominion more dear
to him, and his Magnificence more magnificent.
Yet I would fain keep before you what I hinted
at in the Second Chapter,—that’ the prodigality
of the Precious Blood is simply necessary for our
wretchedness, that we could not do with less of it,
that, if so infinite a price were to be paid for our
redemption, it must be infinitely paid. I said a
while ago that magnificence was a kind of neces12

254 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

sity to God. He could not help being magni­
ficent. precisely because he is God. Now, I want
to say that, in a sense which is full of devotional
reality, the magnificence of the Creator is the
Creature’s necessity. We could not do without it.
We could not live, still less rejoice, if God were
less magnificent. It is true we cannot compre­
hend God. But we can possess him, we can enjoy
him; nay, we must possess him, we must enjoy
him, in his whole Self. Wo must do so, or fall
into the abyss of eternal death. Unless his in­
finity thus supports, sustains, fulfils, our finiteness,
we are but ruin and desolation. It is his infinity
thus compassionately and delightedly acting upon
our finiteness, which we call his magnificence. It
is an attribute which ought to be most dear to us,
and which we should honor with a special devo­
tion. If the tranquillity of holiness comes of our
loving to be overwhelmed by the sovereignty of
God, we come to love his sovereignty by delight­
ing in his magnificence.
"What we have said amounts to this. The mag­
nificence of God was nowhere more needed than
in the Precious Blood ; and, as a matter of fact,
it has been nowhere more shown. It was of sur­
passing importance to us that it should be so.
Moreover, we have seen all along that the magni­
ficence of God is the attribute to which the Pre­
cious Blood is very specially addicted, and that
the attribute of dominion is never separated from
that of magnificence. The Precious Blood con­
quered creation back for the Creator, and recon,*? r the Sacred
y aeeua. It w a magnificent price for

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 255

sin, because it is infinite; and sin is only infinite
by a figure of speech or an invention of mind.
We did not therefore require an infinite redemp­
tion : though on the side of God’s sanctity there
may have been a propriety, looking to us like a
necessity, for an infinite expiation. Furthermore,
one drop of the Precious Blood would suffice to
redeem all possible worlds; so we did not require
more than our share of that drop. We did not
require of absolute necessity that it should be so
often shed ; or that it should be shed under such
a variety of pathetic circumstances, every one of
which is a beautiful allurement of love; or that
it should be all shed, shed even by a miracle of
jealous prodigality after death. In all this, the
magnificence of God goes beyond our necessities,
and envelops us in its own immensity. But
those other wonders of his magnificence, that
we should have unrestricted, repeated, incessant
access to the Precious Blood, that it should be
to us more copious, more prompt, more at hand,
more abundant, than the water of our wells and
streams, that at every turn of life it should be
conveyed to our souls by glorious aqueducts of
divine invention, namely, the Sacraments, that it
should be as common and as convenient to the life
of our souls as the air is to the life of our bodies,—
all these wonders are simply necessities to a
wretchedness and a feebleness so utter and pros­
trate as ours. The sinfulness of sin causes us to
require nothing short of this. Thus there are
two prodigalities of the Precious Blood, both
belonging to the adorable magnificence of God;
but one of which is a simple necessity to us, while

256 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the other is a liberality of his magnificence, befitting his love, in keeping with his perfections
but not a necessity to us.
I have laid some stress upon this, for the follow­
ing reason. There is often a good deal of exagge­
ration in devotional books, and it is for the most
part practically harmless. Yet there are cases in
which it may come at last to be mischievous; and
these are generally cases where the exaggeration
in question tends to give an erroneous idea of
God, and especially of his strictness and sanctity.
Thus, writers, as I have said before, sometimes
speak of the Incarnation as if God wore less strict
and jealous in consequence of it; and this leads
men not to think sufficiently of mortification and
good works. So, if we dwell one-sidedly upon the
goodness of God in giving us such abundant access
to the Precious Blood, we may easily fall into an
unreality. Of course, it would have been a won­
derful disclosure of God’s magnificence, if he bad
justified us once for all in Baptism through the
Precious Blood. It would have been worthy to
have sustained the wonder of the angels through
eternity. What then are we to say to the bewil­
dering varieties, facilities, repetitions, and exube­
rances of the Precious Blood? Plainly, no lan­
guage that we can use can really exaggerate the
magnificence of God’s goodness in this respect.
But we may come to think that we wanted less
than God has given us, that his magnificence was
not a necessity to us, but that the very meaning
of lue magnificence is excess, is his doing more
than we require. Tims, we become less careful
about corresponding to grace and about fidelity

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

257

to inspirations. We imagine ourselves in a great
wasteful sea of grace, which we may move about
in. as a fish moves about in the waters of the
ocean, drinking when it will, but not requiring
for its whole life more than a few sips of the
unfathomable depths. Whereas the truth is, that
not a single grace comes to earth which does
not come addressed to some individual soul, and
is not noted by God, and has not to be given
account for at the last. There is not one least
grace, not one most transient inspiration, which
is not part of God’s accurate and orderly provi­
dence over each one of us for the salvation of
our scftils. Consequently there is not one which
can safely be neglected. Wc have no more grace
than we require. St. Teresa tells us that, even
where the grace of perfection is given, it is often
necessary for mere salvation. As a theological
speculation, we could be saved with less ; but in
practice we should be lost if we had less.
Thus, while, on the one hand, the masters of
the spiritual life warn us not to attempt to go
beyond our grace, they teach us still more em­
phatically that we must be faithful to the grace
we have. We read that one Communion is
enough to make a saint. So it is in itself; and
it is important that we should know this, as it
brings home to us the value of Communion. Yet,
in fact, hundreds of Communions may in our case
be practically necessary, not to make us saints
but just to save our souls. The grand practical
mischief to men’s souls is the neglect of the Sa­
craments. The grand practical mistake of pious
people is the neglect of fidelity to grace. I
R

22·

258 the rnoniGAUTT

of τπε precious blood.

believe that unintentionally spiritual writers nra
somewhat to blame for both these unfortunate
delusions. They eannot magnify too much the
magnificence of God. They cannot magnify too
much the redeeming grace of our Blessed Lord.
But they may magnify both one and the other
without making proper distinctions. What I
have wanted to dwell upon, and experience has
shown me the utility of it, is that, while God’s
magnificence gives us a superabundance of grace,
that superabundance is not in reality a super­
fluity. We have not a grace which we can aft'ord
to spare. Our frequent absolutions are not too
frequent for us; nor our many Communions, if
under obedience, too many. One grace may be
enough in itself to save a soul; but it will not
save it if it was not precisely meant to do so. It
does not derogate from God’s magnificence, that
we should stand absolutely in need of its grand
largeness. But the knowledge of this necessity
gives us a truer view of our wretchedness, and fos­
ters our humility. So also God’s magnificence is
not a perfection which rough-rides his exactness,
bis accuracy, his punctuality, his methodical mi­
nuteness, his jealousy of law, and his scrupulous
distributions and proportions. Yet we often speak
ae if it did do so; and hence we come to think,
not to put into words, but practically to think,
that God in Jesus Christ is God with one half of
his ever-blessed perfections dispensing themselves
from the other half. This lowers our standard of
Ins sanctity; and whatever lowers that lowers
also our estimate of the sinfulness of sin, and our
carefulness >n avoiding little sins. May I consider

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 259

that I have proved that God’s magnificence is
sometimes a necessity to os, and that it is not on
that account less magnificent?
There are then two prodigalities of the Precious
Blood, both belonging to the magnificence of God;
and one of the two belonging also to our necessi­
ties. We must examine both of them. As I said
before, the very choice of the Precious Blood as
the instrument of our redemption is part of God's
magnificence. There were merit and satisfaction
enough in a single tear of the Infant Jesus to have
redeemed us all. Nothing in the external works
of God is necessary; and therefore the Precious
Blood is not necessary. God was free to have
chosen some other expiation, or he was free to
have pardoned us without any expiation at all.
Yet nothing is merely gratuitous with God;
nothing is unnecessary, even though it be not
necessary. There was doubtless on the side of the
divine perfections such a propriety and fitness in
the choice of an infinite sacrifice for sin, that it
was in one sense necessary to have one There
were doubtless, in the depths of the same per­
fections, reasons and fitnesses for the Precious
Blood of the Incarnate Word being chosen for that
sacrifice, which may form part of the blessed
science of another life. Divine love, divine justice,
and divine sanctity, have necessities of their own,
which do not interfere with their freedom. All
this, then, belongs to the magnificence of God
without belonging to our necessity; and may be
considered truly as a prodigality of the divine
compassion. But I will illustrate what I may now
venture, without fear of being misunderstood, to

260

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

call the unnecessary prodigality of the Precious
Blood by the manner and circumstances in and
under which it was shed during the Three-andThirty Years; and we shall be most closely follow­
ing the mind of the Church, if wo select, as our
examples, the SCven Bloodsheddings, which are
put before us as the objects of indulgenced devo­
tions.
There has been some variety in the enumeration
of the Seven Bloodsheddings by different holy
persons, though the difference has been little more
than one of division. The enumeration which we
shall follow is the one approved and indulgenced
by Pius the Seventh. The Seven are the Circum
cision, the Agony, the Scourging, the Crowning
with Thorns, the Way of the Cross, the Crucifixion,
and the Piercing of the Sacred Heart. There is
no doubt a divine intention in these particular
seven mysteries. We shall find that they illustrate
in a most complete and touching manner the spirit
of the Precious Blood. While they are like each
other, they are also different. They have that
mixture of likeness and of difference, which so
often makes up the beauty of divine works. One
of them belongs to the Infancy, and the other six
to the Passion. Six of them were sufferings of
Jesus, and one was that mute preaching of his
love which took place after he was dead. The
first and the last hud nothing to do with the re­
demption of the world; the first because it had no
connection with his death, and the last because it
only took place after he was already dead. Of
some of the others also, but less certainly, we may
eay that they did not belong to our redemption.

THE PRODIOALITY OP THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 261

At all of them our Blessed Lady was present, in
spirit, if not in body, and all of them were sorrows
to her immaculate heart. In the number of times
that the Blood was shed, in the quantity shed, and
in the mysterious manners of its shedding, it is the
magnificence of God which is revealing the excesses
of his love. Each Bloodshedding has its own way
of touching our hearts, and its own attraction for
our devotion. The whole Seven together have also
a distinctive unity, and form a complete picture
and a definite spirit in our souls.
The first Bloodshedding was the Circumcision.
To the Heart of Jesus, already enamored of sor­
row and suffering, seven days were enough for the
tranquil joys of Bethlehem, joys over whose tran­
quillity the shadow of Calvary was already cast.
The stainless Mother had only one short octave of
the Precious Blood for her own delight. She knew
its mission and its mystery. She saw it in the
almost transparent vase of the Infant Body. She
saw the pulses of its life beat with all the natural
rapidity of childhood. Through the veil of snowy
skin she saw its purple streams. From time to
time she saw it mantle in his Face, and flush his
little cheek. She saw its coral upon those tiny lips,
over which were to flow the words of everlasting
life, and also the awful judgments of uncounted
millions of human souls. In the still night she
heard its throbbing, and adored the mysteries of
that busy sleep, the secrets of that silent Heart.
When she clasped him to her breast, she felt the
beatings of the Precious Blood, and knew that it
was the harmless force of the vast omnipotence,
which had with such sweet craft imprisoned itself

“θ" THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

in the frailty and the littleness of a new-born Babe.
She knew it was that Blood, which the justice of
the Father sought after. She know how lovingly
and how severely his sanctity thirsted for its shedding. She was awe-struck with the thoughts which
crowded upon her; and yet, those amazing
thoughts! how full of joyousness they were! She
knew the temper of that dear Blood, and boro
with its impatience, an impatience which love
might have deemed unreasonable; only that the
love of Jesus is the adoration of him also. He had
hastened the time of his coming, because of the
loveliness of Mary. He had been impatient even
in heaven. Now he had come into her arms. Ho
had looked in her eyes but seven short days. How
much the two silences of the Mother and the Son
had to say to each other! Could he not rest a
while? Need he begin redeeming all at once?
Nay, he cannot redeem yet. There are Three-andThirty Years to be spent before that, crowded
with the fulfilment of numerous eternal purposes..
No! he cannot rest. He could not rest in his
Father’s Bosom. He cannot rest in his Mother’s
arms. His rest is in the shedding of his Blood.
Let the Child shed his Blood, and then he will be
content to rest: and so he shed it in the Circumci­
sion, being yet but eight days old.
Strange thought ! but there were seven days
during which our Blessed Lord was nameless.
How did Joseph name him? if indeed, in the ful­
ness of bis joy, that peaceful saint needed to speak
at all. Now with the Blood comes the sweet
Name of Jesus, as if ho had no right to it, until
he shed his Blood. Impatient Blood ! Yet its first

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

263

act is to put itself beneath the law! It will begin
by obeying, though it is in no wise bound to such
obedience. It will let itself be taken captive by a
ritual, as soon as it is bora. See how full it is,
from the first, of the law-loving instincts of God’s
magnificence. But of what use were those first
drops of that Precious Blood ? They had no
redeeming power in them, because they were dis­
connected from his Death. They were not a part
of the Blood shed for the sins of the world. Doubt­
less they had special purposes and did secret won­
ders, as we have already seen in the revelation to
Frances of the Mother of God.
*
All the things
of God are pregnant with undisclosed mysteries,
are endowed with unsuspected powers, and have
eternally-foreseen destinations. For us it is enough
to see in this dear impatience, in this sweet child­
like waste, if we may dare thus to speak, most
touching revelations of our Savior’s love. The
days of type and figure had not yet gone by; and
he gave us this mystery as a type and figure of
his future life and work. He taught us doctrine
by it also, the doctrine that, now that man had
fallen, he had only assumed his Blood in order
that he might shed it. It was so completely for
us, that it was more ours than his. By needing
redemption, we made his Blood more utterly and
more intimately ours, than if we hjfd never sinned.
All things turn to love, all things turn to our profit,
when they belong to Jesus. Perhaps, too, this
mystery was also very specially for St. Joseph. It
was his Calvary. He saw no more of the Passion,
See pages 216, 216.

264 THF. PRODIGALITY OF THE PREOIOD8 UT.OOD.
except, that it was shown him mystically, and that,
after the fashion of the saints, ho was perhaps made
partaker of its mysteries and inward stigmata.
Otherwise he saw the Precious Blood no more,
until the morning of Easter. Joseph counted for
much in the plans of God. He shared all, or most,
of those Mary-haunting years at Nazareth, when
the whole wide world without had but a three
years' Ministry bestow'ed upon it. Doubtless
many mysteries of the early years of Jesus were
meant singularly for St. Joseph. This Circumci­
sion was his one mystery of the Precious Blood.
It begins each year for us. It is our new year’s
day. It braids upon the front of every coming
year of life the Name of Jesus, our life’s dear
Lord, and it braids it in those red snow-drops of
his Infancy, the first blossoms of his Precious
Blood.
But who shall tell the share of Mary in this
mystery? It was an exceeding joy to her; for to
what holy heart would not the sight of tho Pre­
cious Blood be a jubilee? It had been a wondrous
joy to her, after her months of expectation, to see
the Face of Jesus in the eave of Bethlehem. It
was a beauty, the thought of which had fed her
desires, but the reality of which was bliss unspeak­
able. So now it was a joy, in which was mingled
perhaps still more of wonder, to see tho Precious
Blood, -which had purchased her own Immaculate
Conception, and the redemption of all mankind. It
was a joy to her also to read in our Lord's trans­
lucent Heart the inward dispositions in which he
first shed his Blood His abounding gladness, his
inexpressible adoration of God, his intense love of

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD 266

souls, the unsearchable riches which his own Blood
was to himself, as enabling him to satisfy so many
loves and so many worships,—all these things she
saw, and rejoicing she adored. Doubtless also
many hidden meanings of the mystery were visible
to the clear eye of her sinless soul. At the same
time it was a bitter grief as well. It was a public
beginning of sorrows, as the marriage at Cana was
the public beginning of miracles. As her dolors
at the foot of the Cross made her one of his exe­
cutioners, so his little Passion now was her own
ministry. If, as some think, and it seems by far
the truest thought, it was her own hand which
shed the Blood, who does not see how fitting it
was that she first should shed that Blood which,
before all others and above all others, was to be
shed for her ?
Long years have passed since that cruel New
Year’s Day of the guiltless Babe of Bethlehem;
and now another scene opens to our view. It is
the Agony in the Garden. The spot looks tranquil,
innocent, and unconscious now, when the crisp
foliage of the olives turns its silver lining to the
wind, and, within the latticed fence of the Fran­
ciscan friars, the tall sceptres of the golden-rod
rise up from among the trailing gourds, and the
roses bloom among the yellow flowers, and all is
gay and garden-like. But it was once the scene
of a fearful mystery, the mystery of the second
Bloodshedding. Jesus kneels there. He is now a
grown-up man. Three-and-thirty years have
passed over him. They have been the longest, be­
cause the fullest, years that earth has ever known.
His weary Ministry of three years has drawn to
23

2GG

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

its close. He has often been weary lie was
weary when ho sat by Jacob’s well and asked the
Samaritan woman for an alms of the cold fresh
water which be himself had created. He has
been weary on the mountain-sides, when he prayed
instead of sleeping, while the moon shone tremu­
lously on the limestone rocks, as if it hardly dared
to light up the furtive figure of its Creator keep­
ing watch among the crags. But his lovo of souls
has never yet been tired. Hie weariness has never
reached the yearnings of his Sacred Heart. This
Thursday night amidst the olives we find him still
unchanged. We ventured to charge his dear lovo
with impatience three-and-thirty years ago. Wo
charge it with impatience now. Why will not the
Precious Blood keep back until its time ? Can it
not wait now some twelve or fifteen hours more
for Calvary ? It is the way of human desire to
grow more impatient, as it draws nearer to its
object. See what a true human heart this Heart of
Jesus is ! We dare to love it more when it looks so
very human. To-morrow men will crucify his
blessed Body, and pour out his Blood like water.
But to-morrow is not soon enough. To-night his
adorable Soul, that King among creatures, that
roynllest of all the works of God, frill itself crucify
hie Body. He will suffer a martyrdom to-night even
more mysterious than that martyrdom on Calvary.
What impatience! What precipitation ! He began
his ministry by an act of precipitation, by work­
ing a miracle before his time, because his -Mother
asked him. He ends it with another act of pre­
cipitation : be anticipates his Passion. But what
is it about him which is so impatient? It is bis

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD. 267

Blood. It is burning to be shed. It longs to leave
its sanctuary in the Sacred Heart, as if it were
wearied with so much waiting. He himself had
waited four thousand years before he came.
There was delay enough then. Now all things
are quickened, are even anticipated. It is the
pulses of the Precious Blood which are hurrying
all things forward. Sec now what that Soul is
doing. It gathers round it ail the sins of men,
manifold, multitudinous, ponderous. Over its
beautiful sanctity it puts on all this hideous ap­
parel, which burns like poison and like fire. It
clothes itself thus with the most awful human
shudderings. He only preserves his life by an
energetic miracle. Never on earth was there such
mortal heaviness, such aching sadness, such a dry­
ing up of life’s fountains, such a tormenting lan­
guor, such an exceeding sickening of soul. Then
it lifts up its hands, that mighty Soul, as if with
more than Samson’s strength it were about to pull
down the big heavens upon itself; and it draws
down upon itself the huge storm of God’s eternal
justice and overwhelming wrath, and then lies
crushed beneath it, a plaintive Human Life almost
extinguished, and only not extinguished because
it is a Divine Life as well. Such Manhood ! Such
Godhead ! Who is equal to so terrible a mystery?
Ah, Jesus ! how dreadful is this solitude, which is
even deepened by the presence of that one trem­
bling angel whom thy cries have drawn from
heaven ! The Sacred Heart can bear no more. It
gives out its red life, as in a wine-press. Drop by
drop, unnaturally, through the burning pores of
the skin, the beads of Blood ooze out. They stand

268 the ηηοηιπΛί,ττν of τπε precious blood.

upon his brow, mid then roll down his face. They
clog his hair. They blind his eyes. They fill
his mouth, otherwise than as the chalice of his
Blood filled it three hours ago. They mat bis
beard. They7 wet his hands. They suffuse every
limb as in a universal Sweat of Blood. They stain
his garments. They ruddy the olive-roots. They
spot the white dust with black. Truly, if ever
suffering was beautiful,—and how little suffering
there has been on earth that was not beautiful!—
it was the woe which the paschal moon beheld
beneath the olive-trees that night.
Who can tell the mysteries of this Second Blood­
shedding? Yet here again we have the same
feature of prodigality. This Blood shed itself
through the desire of redeeming the world; yet
it did not itself redeem it, because it was not the
Blood of his death. It was his own act, not the
appointed sacrificial act of others. But what a
vast significancy of love there was in this mira­
culous portent of the Bloody Sweat ! Ho was
straitened, it was his own word, with eagerness
for his Passion. He had desired with desire, it is
his own expletive, to drink his own Blood with
his disciples. So had he desired with desire to
shed it, and thus ho had anticipated noonday at
midnight, and had made a Calvary of Olivet.
Mary was present in the garden, though she was
also in the house of John. AU men were asleep.
Alas! even the three Apostles close at hand were
sleeping. Only Judas was awake, and the handful
of the servitors of tyranny that were with him.
let even for them Jesus would not wait His
Blood so burned with love of souls that it could

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 269

not contain any longer its impetuous instinct to
be shed. He could get no man to wound him in
that lonely garden, which had been to him so often
a sweet haunt for prayer. So he let his heart
wound him from within. Observe also that the
very pressure of his Passion in thought could only
translate itself into the language of a Bloodshed­
ding. When the vehement, ponderous justice of
God crushed him to the earth, the mark that it
left upon the earth, as afterward on the napkin
of Veronica, was an impression traced in Blood.
The sin he had assumed was within him; it had
sunk into him ; the anger of the Father was upon
him. Thus the inward and the outward of his
Passion met, and they were one—in Blood.
The sun in the heavens and the shadows in the
streets mark it to be about nine of the morning
in Jerusalem. It is the hour of the Third Blood­
shedding, the Scourging. This is the most intole­
rable of all the mysteries of our Blessed Savior’s
Passion. It is the one which is the hardest to con­
template in the quietness of prayer. There is
something revolting in the anguish of sheer bodily
pain. There is something degrading in the inten­
tional infliction of shame. Yet these two horrors
are combined in the mystery of the Scourging.
Our Lord is left in the hands of the vilest satellites
of criminal justice. There is neither the pomp of
a court, nor the pageant of an execution. He is
at the mercy of the vilest and most abhorred of
men. The punishment is one, in his case, without
check, without measure, and without order. When
we think of the contact of their loathsome hands,
and their abominable sacrilege in stripping his
23·

270 THE rnoTHGAMTY or

the precious rlood.

Sacred Body, a shudder of anguish passes all
through us, as though some secret sanctuary of God
were being violated. The shame of it seems to
gather round ourselves, and we are hardly able to
hold up our heads. We pray about it with onr
eyes shut as if by instinct. The shape, the gaze,
the variety, of the instruments of torture are alike
horrible. The muscular violence and brutal
gestures of the executioners offend our very
thought. Then the sounds ! the dull sounds of
the scourges as they fall upon the living Holy of
Holies, monotonous yet various, changing as the
whips are changed, and then the wet sound as tho
thongs become soaked with Blood,—who can bear
them ? The echoes from the houses in the place,
and the spiritual echoes from out the indignant
meek heart of the outraged Mother,—are they not
fearful also? The sound, hardly perceptible till
the ear becomes unnaturally quickened by excite­
ment, as of light-falling rain, which we know to
be the Precious Blood, mingles with that still
fainter sound, as of the almost inaudible bleating
of a dying lamb, which we know to be the Voice
of God, complaining with that inextinguishable
human tenderness. Though our eyes are closed,
we see the staring looks, the compressed lips, the
ferocious countenances, the knotted arms, the rude
swarthy chests, of the myrmidons of cruelty,
denaturalized by the brutality of their task. Wo
see them sprinkled with Preciou, Blood, which
mixes with their sweat and rolls down their limbs
with discolored stains. Him we do not see, even
with the eyes of onr souls; for we have thrown
ourselves on the pavement in his Blood, and are

■

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 271

holding his feet and are devouring them with kisses.
It is an intolerable mystery ; yet, if we love him.
we must endure it. We must not be fastidious,
lie was not. We sent him to this. It was suffered
for us We must not turn away. It is an intole­
rable mystery; but it has a sweet gift. There is
no mystery of the Passion whicli so uncovers his
Divinity to us. It is almost like a vision of the
Godhead. There is no mystery which fills our
souls so full of so deep an adoration.
But in this third Bloodshedding there is the
same character of prodigality. It was shed in an
excess of pain and an excess of shame; and it was
shed in an excess of wasteful copiousness. It was
as if it foresaw how on the Cross it would have
but five local vents, five wells distilling salvation
for the world, and it could not bear to be thus
restricted. So now it presents the whole surface
of the Body, that it may be able to gush forth in
unrestrained abundance, as from one vast wound.
A thousand channels, all gifted with exquisite sen­
sation, and now burning with insufferable fire, are
torn up and lacerated with the scourges. Streams
of Precious Blood, infinite in price, each of them
laden with the magnificence of God, broke forth
in hundreds of places. Yet the Blood of the
Column was not the Blood shed upon the Cross.
It did not redeem the world, nor was it necessary
to its redemption. It was simply one of tho
mysterious magnificences of the Precious Blood
Moreover the Blood of the Scourging was sprinkled
as it were at random over careless multitudes, as
if it were in type or prophecy of its future sacra­
mental prodigality. Our blessed Lord himself ap-

272

the prodigality

or

the precious blood.

peered in strange symbolical guise in this Third
Bloodshedding. In the Agony he had been seen
by the Father clad in all the darkness of human
sin. No human eye saw him in the shadowy
moonlight, nor could have discerned bis fearful
transfiguration, even if it could have seen him. But
now he was an open symbol to the city and the
people. He was bathed in his own Blood. He
was clad in a living robe of royal purple. He,
the Redeemer, put on the image of the redeemed.
As bis Church was always to bo, so was he then,
ail red with Precious Blood. As he was in the
open place of Jerusalem, so are we in our Father’s
eyes at this hour, so shall we be in our happiness
through all eternity, red, and red all over, with
the glorious dye, better than that old imperial dye
of Tyre, of his most Precious Blood. As he was
in his shame and misery, so shall we be in our
glory and our joy, all beautified with Blood, that
self-same Blood wherewith they clothed him when
they had stripped him of his garments.
But now the Precious Blood has swiftly formed
a habit of being shed; and who shall stay it? It
was with no bitterness, but with truthfullest love,
that Jesus named that Friday the Day of his
Espousals. But we read that his Jewish mother
crowned him with a diadem in the day of his
espousals. Whoso heart does not leap up at the
thought of such a mystery,—the Coronation of the
Creator by his creatures ? Crowned as is each
man s life with a beautiful coronal wreathed for
him by divine love out of all God’s perfections
what grateful crown shall they set upon His Head
who bas set them free by reigning over them as

r..

/

-r

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 273

King? Alas I it is another Bloodshcdding, the
Fourth Bloodshedding, the Crowning of Thorns.
It is his dear dominion which is distasteful to their
hearts. They cannot bear that he should call him­
self a King. They would fain deride his kingship;
but they feel and fear it all the while. If he had
never been a King before, had he not become one
now through the very royalty of his gentleness
under the ignominies of the past night and the
outrages of that morning? Only a king’s face
could look so venerable through such disfigurement.
But his sweetness embittered them. It sank them
in their own estimation. It taunted them by the
mildness of its silence. There was something so
worshipful in his woe that it uncrowned their
vulgar bravery. His look humbled them, because
it was so beautiful. So in the blindness of their
malice they wrought a divine mystery. They
crowned him King. The oppressed are given to
be oppressors, and the violent to be brutal. If
there be no other use of the Eternal God for
Roman soldiers, at least he shall relieve the tedium
of a Syrian guard-room. They have trouble
enough with these Jewish criminals; they shall
have sport out of them also. Sun and rain had
come alternately on the green briers, which the
unsuspecting earth had grown for the Creator.
They had trailed over the sward. They had
tangled themselves with many a juicy shoot.
They had grown up into matted bushes, and the
sun of autumn had hardened their soft spikes into
strong, tough barbs. Perhaps the honey-bees had
come to their flowers to extract sweetness, and
the restless butterflies had been attracted for a
8

274 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

yy <thTir Rromatic fragrance, or the bird,
had rifled their golden berries with their beak,.
But who would have dreamed that they were yet
to be gilded with the Blood of their Creator? Protecting their hard-skinned hands with their leathern
gauntlets, the soldiers weave a crown of these
sharp and obstinate thorns. What matter if it be
not exactly round? What matter if it be not
made to fit the head of their mock Crcsar? With
jest, and gibe, and heathen oath, the rough work
is speedily accomplished. Then they rise and
come near their King. It is not as we draw near
to the Blessed Sacrament, or the angels to the
Throne. Jesus is sitting on a bench. We hardly
dare to look at him, he is so God like in his abjec­
tion. How love constrains our hearts to worship,
and then how worship encourages our hearts to
love! How patiently he sits, blood-stained, dis­
honored, wan and pale, yet strangely pleasant to
look on, and exceeding gracious ! They come nigh
to the Eternal. They are reeking with sin, and
swaggering in their recklessness. The guard-room
is silently filling with the splendor of his God­
head. Bo they not see it? No! Fearless and
peremptory and loud, they lay hands on his long
hair. If they only waited a moment, they might
feel the pulses of that blessed life beating in his
Head. They swear· by their gods, and make vulgar
pleasantries in their Roman tongue, as if before a
foreigner. But they see by· the Hebrew's face
that he knows Latin. It is but an amusement the
more. They thrust the crown upon his Head with
rmle vehemence. It is not round. It will not fit.
They force the 8pikee into his skin . and
Β|θο()

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

275

comes, blackly and slowly, and with excruciating
pain. The Jews cheer these Romans in their bar­
barity; and one of them, not without loud jocose
applause, takes a heavy reed and beats the crown
into the Sufferer’s Head. Long spikes go under
the skin of the forehead, and come out above the
eyes. Others pierce his ears. Others fret against
the nerves of his neck. Others penetrate the
skull, and burn like prickles of fire. He trembles
from head to foot with the intolerable agony. His
beautiful eyes are clouded with pain. His lips are
bloodless with the extremity of endurance. But
the face of a sleeping child is not more sweet than
his, nor its heart more calm. He has grown more
beautiful, now that he is crowned. 0 Precious
Blood ! Lover of God’s Dominion ! Thou hast
thirsted for thy kingdom long; but with what
strange and startling ritual hast thou ordained thy
Coronation !
In this Fourth Bloodshedding there was not
much Blood. Yet it was not without its note of
prodigality. If it was little, it was very precious;
for it was the Blood of his Head. It was the
Blood which had just been feeding his brain, the
Blood by the help of which he had been thinking
unutterable thoughts. Each of those thoughts
had been broader and deeper than an angel’s
science. They had been sweeter and gentler than
a mother’s love. They had all been tinctured
with that passionate love of souls which was the
spirit of the Precious Blood. The Blood shed was
little: but why was it shed at all? Our Lord’s
Head had envied his Body. His whole Body bad
been ploughed and seamed by the scourges. Each

276 THE PRODIOALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

limb had made its offering of Blood. But they
were not to slay him; and bo they had not
scourged his Head, though doubtless in their cureless fury chance bruises were made upon it. Now
the Head will take its turn. It will have a whole
Bloodshedding to itself. Indeed, it will do more
than take its turn. If the Heart loves, is it
not the Head which rules? Moreover, is not the
Precious Blood in a special way the minister of his
royalty and of his headship ? It then must shed
its Blood, and shed it in a mystery apart.
Sweet Blood of Jesus ! longing to be shed and
loving to be shed, impatient and yet so patient too,
prodigal yet counting itself out drop by drop with
a kind of avaricious pleasure, thou, like all other
loves, wort driven to be inconsistent in order to
preserve consistency! But a while ago it was
hurrying on and would brook no delay. It was
anticipating time, and precipitating mysteries.
Now it is all for delay. Now, in the Fifth Blood­
shedding, it enters upon a mystery of slowness.
But there are still the same instincts, still the same
ends. It contrives to be prodigal by being tardy.
This Bloodshedding is the Way of the Cross, that
singular mystery of the Passion in which the
Hearts of Mother and Son, hitherto to outward
eye divided, meet in one current, and flow to­
gether till the end. The two victims of the
Scourging, the Son’s Body and the Mother's Soul,
come forth into the streets. The King and the
queen both wear their Crowns of Thorns, tho
King wears his upon his Head, while the queen
wears hers upon her heart ; for the queendom of
Mary is iu bar heart. We epoke, in the last chap.

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 277

ter, of tho procession of the Precious Blood, out
of an unbeginning eternity, over long epochs and
ages, until it re-enters the portals of its second
eternity. This Fifth Bloodshedding is a veritable
procession of the Precious Blood. Slowly winding
and unwinding itself out of the streets of Salem
up the ascent of Calvary, it had not far to go; but
it was long in slowness, long in suffering, long in
the manifold mysteries which were densely com­
pressed within it. Every wound was bleeding.
The drops from the Crown trickled slowly down,
or gathered and curdled upon the Face of Jesus.
The hundred fontinels of the Scourging oozed out
into his garments, as the wet rocks on the moun­
tains ooze through their robes of moss. The
wounds of the night’s arrest, and of the indignities
before the High-Priests, and in the yard of Herod,
flow silently with Blood. The weight of the Cross
opens the wounds wider still, and increases the
Bloodshedding. It also disturbs the Crown, and
keeps it freshly bleeding; while it makes another
wound of its own upon the shoulder, and is the
cause of new wounds in the knees through the
cruel falls which it occasions. The sight of Alary's
face quickens the beating of his Heart, and makes
the Blood flow more freely. He leaves his foot­
prints in the way; and they are of Blood. He
imprints the likeness of his features on the napkin
of Veronica; and the impression is in Blood.
They that brush against him are stained with
Blood. They that walk after him dye their sandals
in his Blood. His march to Calvary is a perfect
triumph of the Precious Blood. It covers every
thing. It clings to the meanest objects It seem»
24

278

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF THF. PRECIOUS BLOOD.

to multiply itself. Its old fountains in Mary’s
heart break up in sympathy with it; and she
sheds tears of blood. The Way of the Cross is a
mystery of many objects, of constant movement,
a transition from one mystery to another. What
is its unity ? It is in its prodigality, in its endless,
manifold Bloodshedding. It seems a time, an in­
terval, a journey, contrived for the very purpose
of letting the Blood flow, and flow in the most in­
discriminate way, and in the most promiscuous
places. For the most part it flowed from old
wounds. It was the going on of the Scourging
and the Crowning. It was as if when those
mysteries ceased the Blood loved still to flow, and
therefore took a mystery to itself, which was to
be engrossed simply with its flowing.
But there are also other peculiarities in this
Fifth Bloodshedding which should not bo over­
looked. It was a mystery of unions, of meetings,
of harmonies. We have already seen that it was
the mystery of the Passion in which the Mother
and Son came together again. In the Agony, and
the Scourging, and the Crowning, they had been
visibly separate, though closely and miraculously
united in a mystical way. She had seen in spirit,
and suffered in soul, all that he had endured. Her
body also had mysteriously sympathized with
each changing state of his. But now they come
visibly together again, and are not disunited until
the tomb is closed. Then also the Cross and the
Precious Blood are now for the first time united.
Hitherto the saving Blood has flowed apart from
the saving Cross. It is the union of the two in
which the secret virtue of redeeming grace re-

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

279

sides. Now the weight of tho Cross, as we have
seen, opens old wounds and causes new ones. The
Blood and the Cross are together now. This is
the Betrothing; and the Marriage will be on Cal­
vary. Here is the actual prelude of redemption.
Moreover, the Way of the Cross is a great mystery
of prophecy and figure. It is a prophecy of the
history of the Church; it is a prefiguring of the
fortunes of the Holy See; it is a type of our Lord’s
own life in the Church through all the ages of
unjudged time,—a Blood-dropping life, wearily up
to the Doom. This is the meaning of its indis­
criminate profusion. Good and evil alike are
stained with it. It flows to save souls; but it will
flow over souls who will not let it save them. It
has but one law : it must flow. Anywhere, every­
where, always, it must flow. It is the one mission
of the Precious Blood,—to be shed. Then see how
the Way of the Cross ends! It finishes in another
shame, another stripping, another tearing open of
the wounds of the Scourging. It looks as if, to
the Precious Blood, the Scourging were its mystery
of predilection. It returns to it again now, and,
as nearly as possible, repeats it over again. The
Bloodshedding of the Scourging was the most
exuberant, the most vehement, the most penal, the
most universal. Thus it coincides most with the
genius of its love. Hence it will have it reiterated,
so far at least as Bloodshedding is concerned, at
the foot of the Cross. Now that it is going to begin
the strictly needful work of our redemption, it
seems to hanker after tho freedom of its unneces­
sary sheddings. There is a great deal to think of
here. In this Fifth Bloodshedding the Precious

280 THF. PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Blood begins to be unlike itself, in order that it
may be more like itself than over. A while ago
it was impatiently looking onward; now it is look­
ing half regretfully backward; yet it is the same
spirit which rules it in both these dispositions,—
its love of being shed.
Men can lie for hours, and look upon a running
stream. It seems to afford them at once occupation
and repose. Its uninterrupted sameness fills them
with tranquillity, while its unintermitting lapse
gratifies their sense of life. They feel that they
are thinking; yet they are hardly conscious of
their thoughts. Their eye is fixed with a sort of
fascination on the noiseless gliding waters, and
they are soothed, rested, and engaged. This is a
faint picture of what often happens to us in our
prayers, especially with regard to certain mys­
teries, such as the Crucifixion, which is the Sixth
Bloodshedding. It is so familiar to us that, like
the river, we understand it all at sight. We cannot
reason about it. It is too much part of our daily
lives for that. We do not need to elicit the right
affections; for they come unbidden, and flow in an
order of their own. The significance of the mys­
tery is at once too deep and too plain for words.
It is so vast an object of faith, that simply to gaze
upon it seems to be the broadest study of it. More­
over, like all large objects, it is one of those mys­
teries which are best seen at some distance. Wo
see the whole of it then. We comprehend its size,
its shape, its fashion, and the disposition of the
groups round about it. Who does not know the
strange vivid, palpable peace which distance gives
to sunlit vistas in a forest? There is something

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 2R1

of this kind about meditation on the Crucifixion.
How almost visionary looks the bone-strewn sward
and the tufted grass of that green hill-top, with its
crosses standing against the dark sky, and a kind
of wan sunshine creeping up the mound, as if it
came rather frcm the white roofs of the city than
from the sun in heaven ! The Precious Blood has
Deen out in the vast calms and ocean-solitudes of
the mind of God. It has voyaged through the
beautiful tranquillities of the creations of spirit,
matter, and men. Its lanterns have gleamed like
red beacons in the unspeakable tempests of the
divine anger, in falls of angels and of men, in
floods and fires, in judgments and captivities, in
discordant panics of Babel and bituminous upheavings of Gomorrah. It has kept its course over
thousands of years of the uneasy currents of human
history; and lo! that hill-top was all the while its
haven! The Cross was its predestinated anchor,
holding it to earth. How marvellous a harbor!
How like one of those plans of God, which are so
little like any plan of ours!
The Precious Blood has found at last a home,
which is seemingly dearer to it than the Sacred
Heart. It is the wood of the Cross. It has been
so impetuous, that it has shed most of itself before
it reached the Cross. It flows very slowly now.
Those wounds in the Hands and Feet are too
parsimonious; and, besides that, they are almost
obstructed by the nails themselves. But the dis­
comfort of the Cross makes the Sacred Body hang
downward and outward, and so reopens the almost
exhausted wounds of the previous Bloodsheddings.
The Blood flows very slowly. In some places it
24·

2S2 THE PRODIGALITY ΟΥ THF, PRECIOUS BLOOD.

still trickles over the pale limbs. In others it only
blackens round the wounds. Here we may see
just a visible oozing, while there it barely keeps
itself red and blood-like. It flows very slowly, as
if it would prolong its delight in flowing. It looks
as if it were conscious of the grandeur of its work.
This is redemption; this is the world-saving flow;
this is the crown of all its flowings; this is the
enduring and omnipotent shedding of itself, the
end of the battle it bas won for God, the final and
total accomplishment of that array of eternal
decrees which all along have clothed it like royal
robes. How slowly it flows, with a fascinating
slowness, and so silently ! Yet the scarcely-moving
streams blend with each other in many places, and
steal down upon the Feet. The Cross is wetted by
it, and the wood is darkened. Mary’s hands are
red. The dear Magdalen has an unconscious con­
sciousness that the Blood of her Love is upon her
hair; and the innermost wells of the Sacred Heart
drop and drop as if with pulses upon the disciple,
who had pillowed himself upon that Heart the
night before. Here and there a blade of grass is
ruddy. There are spots on the skulls of the dead;
for the dead also have their interest in the Pre­
cious Blood. The torturers and soldiers have gone
down the hill with their garments and their accou­
trements discolored; for the Precious Blood shrinks
not from the vilest resting-places. How slowly it
flows, as if the very grandeur of redemption made
it cautious, or caused some difficulty ! The slow­
ness fascinates us more and more. But it is a
t0?ave lhe eilence broken. There is no look
of life but in the Blood. Nothing is moving but

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 283

the Blood. Blood is life. It was within him. Now
it is almost all outside him. Those seven words
are the voices of his Blood. With what a clear
ringing sweetness they come forth, and the dark­
ness round the mount murmurs with them as if it
were tingling with delight! How beautiful are his
thoughts upon the Cross, beautiful like the beauty
of God ! How beautiful are the seven words, with
their revelations of the beauty of God ! Each word
is a ravishing melody, in which the Eternal Word
utters himself with human utterance. Then what
a perfect abyss of rest is the interval between each
word, silences like the silences which the angels
keep in heaven! The soul flutters over them as
over hollow seas, and wellnigh faints with love.
But in the silence the Blood creeps slowly, out­
ward, onward, earthward. Still it flows, but so
industriously, so carefully, so methodically, and
yet so secretly, so noiselessly, so mysteriously. It
not only evades the ear by its soundless footfalls:
but now it almost evades the eye. Its movement
is scarcely visible over the pale Form, like the
hands of a timepiece. It seems as if we should
never see that dear impetuous Blood precipitate
again. But do not old habits come back at last in
all created things, and youth rise again to imprint
its character on death? The Precious Blood has
come within reach of its end, so near it as to be
impatient. It abandons the slowness of its oozing
it will be precipitate once more; and, as if to show
that all shedding of itself, all surrendering of its
precious life, was voluntary, it bids one cell of the
Heart to keep what it contains, dislodges all the
rest of itself with a loud cry of miraculous strengt h,

284

the

rnoniOALiTY

of the

rnEctons

blood.

and leaps forth at once from every cavern of tho
Body; and death accomplishes itself, so far as it
was a natural death, by the shedding of the Blood.
Is there to be more Bloodshedding still? Why,
like a miser on bis death-bed, had the Precious
Blood hidden that little treasure? Why' did it die,
hoarding itself? It was that the Dead Body might
shed Blood. It was to deride death, to survive
death, to proclaim love’s victory over death, to
show that its own propensity' to shed itself had not
been killed by death. Hence the Seventh Blood­
shedding, the Piercing of the Sacred Heart. We
often know men best by what they do when they
come to die. So it is with the Precious Blood; or
rather we know it best by what it did when it was
dead. It was so liquefied by love that death could
not curdle it; and still it flowed, as if flowing were
the unchangeable feature of its character. Death
contents men. Hearts ask no further proof of
love. Monarchs consider it the extremity of
loyalty.’ Death contents God. He asks no more
than martyrdom; and he cherishes the martyrdoms
of his Saints as the inestimable rubies of his crea­
tion. But death does not content the Precious
Blood. That Sixth Bloodshedding was necessary,
lu many way’s it was prodigal; but it was also
necessary. Redemption was a needful task, a task
of love, but still a task. The Precious Blood, as I
have said, hankered after the days of its unneces­
sary sheddings, the days when its lovo wantoned
in the pure prodigality of its royal riches. As it
shed itself before the work of redeeming the world
and without redeeming it, so will it shed itself
agam now that the work of redemption is aeeom-

THE PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD. 285

plished. Once more it will reveal its character in
that wastefulness which is a secret of divine
economy. O Divine Love! there is no more in­
veterate prodigal than thou I
Moreover, the work must be a complete work.
All the Blood must be separated from the Body,
and enjoy, by itself and in its separation, its union
with the Person of the Word. It must be a total
outpouring. Divine things are never done by
halves; and mercies above all insist upon com­
pleteness. The Heart had been bidden to keep
some of the Blood within itself, and had obeyed.
It was undecided whether to obey reluctantly or
gladly. On the one hand it was the home of the
Precious Blood, and loved it with the fondest love.
To be untenanted by the Precious Blood would be
its uttermost desolation. Yet, on the other hand,
that Heart had learned the instincts of its inhabit­
ant. Mothers have sent forth their own sons to
martyrdom with a strange covetous love, which
had more of heaven in it than of earth. So would
the Sacred Heart fain send forth that lingering
Blood to the cruel glory of its shedding. As the
Head in the Crowning had been jealous of the
Body in the Scourging, and so had claimed the joy
and dignity of a Bloodshedding to itself, so now
the Heart was jealous of the Hands and Feet.
It envied them their dripping wells of life. It
grudged them the beauty of their eternal stig­
mata. Even when dead the Sacred Heart has
irresistible attractions The Soul of Jesus beneath
the earth felt the dea» ^miliar constraints of that
grand Heart ; and so the Heart wooed the lance
of the centurion, and the hidden Blood sprang

286 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

forth, baptized as if in gratitude its heathen liberator with all the cleansing graces of conversion,
and stole gently down the Side of Jesus, kissing
the Flesh which it had animated so long.
The time was to come when tho Body was to
resume the Blood. While tho Sacred Humanity
had been as it were unloosed and dispersed for tho
salvation of mankind, tho Soul busied in brighten­
ing limbus, tho Body reposing in the borrowed
grave of the Arimathean, and the Blood scattered
with a sort of wasteful ubiquity all over the
vicinage of Jerusalem, the Hypostatic Union of
the Divine and Human Natures had never been
broken, nor even impaired, for one moment. The
separate Soul was to be worshipped with divine
worship still. The Body lay peacefully among
the rocks, always and absolutely to bo adored.
The Blood, vagrant, outlying, parcelled, indis­
tinct, apparently commingled with or adhering to
other substances, was also in each drop, in each
stain, in each colored impression, in each volun­
tary burial-place of its own, to be adored with
absolute adoration, in virtue of its unbroken and
unstrained union with the Godhead in the Divine
Person of the Word. But these worshipful Three,
the Soul, the Body, and the Blood, wore to come
together again in one of the holiest of all myste­
ries, the Resurrection. It was to be the grandeur
of this mystery that it should as it were open tous
the magnificent abysses of the Hypostatic Union,
and show ns the glorious strength and tho invin, ? °5,the Illcarnation, while it should also
even amidrtU? "eW ,I?carnation
itself. But
en amidst the repainng and beautifying force

TUE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 287

of the Resurrection, it was the will of our dearest
Lord, one of the most affectionate and character
istic of all his wills, that some marks at least
of the old Bloodsheddings should be retained
Ten thousand times a day should his whole Blood
be poured forth from heaven into the Chalices
of the Mass. But this was not enough. He clung
to the memory of those old Bloodsheddings. He
would have us cling to the memory of them also.
It should be a new joy to the angels forever to see
his stigmata. They should fill the souls of hie
elect with fresh jubilee for all eternity, and keep
their angelic glory tempered with the human ten­
derness he loves so dearly. So he bade the glory
of the Resurrection, as it beautified him by its
immortalizing fires, not only to respect and to
retain the Five Wounds of his Sacred Body, but
to beautify them with a tenfold beauty. They
were to be roseate luminous suns to gladden the
palaces of the Heavenly Jerusalem, which tho
cruel artificers of earth’s Jerusalem bad wrought
upon him with such unintending skill. He keeps
his stigmata for the love of us. He keeps his
stigmata for the love of his Precious Blood.
Many single mysteries seem to tell me the whole
of Jesus; yet I find I cannot spare the rest; for
each has its needful revelation of his sweetness.
But, if I were compelled to choose one thing only
as being all memorials of my Saviour in one,
I would choose this keeping of his stigmata.
It signifies so many things, and it signifies them
all so tenderly. When one we love does some­
thing more than usually like himself, our love
leaps up with joy; and when he does it unex

288 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

pectedly, our hearts burn hotter for being taken
unawares. Jesus has described his whole Self, as
in a concise Gospel, in this one act of keeping the
stigmata of his blessed Wounds. I seem to know
him better, and to be more sure I know him
rightly, because of this dear pathos which abides
unconsumed amidst the burnings of that Easterglory, this lingering of the Passion among the
splendors of the Resurrection.
Let us now turn from all this prodigality of the
Precious Blood, which was unnecessary for us, but
necessarily befitting the magnificence of God ; and
let us turn to that other prodigality which is so
needful for us that we could not afford to spare
one out of the numberless reiterations of its exu­
berance. What an incredible history it is! and
yet of such daily occurrence, of such common­
place appearance, of such matter-of-fact practice,
that it is difficult to steady our minds to the right
understanding of ft. We grow confused with
numbers, or teased with the childishness of ima­
ginary calculations, when we come to think of the
sacramental applications of the Precious Blood,
which the souls of the living and the dead are
receiving daily. The bounty of redeeming grace,
state it as soberly as we please, has all the un­
natural unpersuasive dazzle of an Arabian tale. It
is all gold and precious stones in impossible pro­
fusion. It seems like a fairy-land vision rather
than a human reality. The ungenuinencss of de­
votional exaggerations makes us angry and incre­
dulous. But divine love has a marvellous sobriety·
and under its restraints let us sneak of this
more coldly than we feel
1
“ matteI

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 289

If we go round the world, there can hardly ever
be an hour in which some children are not being
baptized. Baptism is the application of the Pre­
cious Blood to their souls. No act in life can
surpass it in importance. It effects a most com­
plete spiritual revolution even in the unconscious
child. It effects it in a most wonderful way, and
by means of mysterious infusions, and in conse­
quence of a mysterious Incarnation, and through
the virtue of mysterious Bloodsheddings; and
these things take their effect through the pouring
of water simultaneously with the pronunciation
of the grand Names of the Divine Persons, accom­
panied by an intention on the part of the person
baptizing, priest or lay, man or woman, or even
child. Theology composes volumes in order to
elucidate scientifically the group of mysteries
which lie compressed in the Sacrament of Baptism.
It is enough for us to remember that it is the dif­
ference between heaven and hell. Each Baptism
is a greater, a diviner, a more magnificent work
than the creation of the material world. Yet, in
sober truth, the waters of Baptism are flowing
perennially, so that if they could run together
they would form a flowing rivulet, undried
throughout the year. The creation of a new star
every second of time would be but a little thing
by the side of this. Even in heathen lands this
amazing stream is flowing. Amid the dense popu­
lations of China it moves visibly to God's eye
like a sweet silver brooklet. It has made the
national atrocity of child-murder the channel in
which its beautifying love might ingeniously run.
Children in fair France, and in green England,
T

25

290 the prodigality of the precious blood.

and in German towns, and over the Atlantic, con­
tribute to keep up this strangely-characteristio
work of Christianity. European and American
child ren send their baptismal missionaries to take
up the exposed and dying children from the fields
and from the dung-heaps, and to baptize them, in
thank-offering to God for the grace of Baptism
to which they themselves have reached. Eu­
ropean and American mothers send to purchase
of Chinese parents the children they would slay,
or at least to purchase permission to baptize the
doomed innocents, in thank-offering for their own
children having attained to the grace of Baptism
If we put all this continuity of Baptism into
numbers, and remember meanwhile the spiritual
magnificence of Baptism, we shall be able to form
some idea of the prodigality of the Precious Blood
hidden in those waters of salvation.
What is Absolution ? It is the authentic drip­
ping of the Precious Blood upon the head of the
repentant sinner. It is God’s patience grown so
patient as to be magnificent. It is, almost but
not quite, the limit of the outstretching of the eter­
nal arms of mercy. In it human acts reach to
one of their highest heights. They are lifted up
to merit salvation by the merits of the Precious
Blood. Human sorrow is consecrated and made
divine by the touch and the anointing of the
sorrow of Jesus; and that unction was only to
reach us with the flowing of his Blood from his
gracious Wounds. Without shedding of Blood
there was to be no remission. Millions of souls
Tn m Λ’’8® “Î heaven this day· who without
Absolution would have been in hell. Yet it were

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

291

botter a whole solar system should be shattered
to pieces than a single soul lost. If there is
something very divine in the facility of Baptism,
reminding us of creation when the word was
spoken and forthwith the work was done, there is
also something very divine in the difficulty and
effort of Absolution, reminding us of redemption
which was only accomplished by a Passion and
with Blood. Hearts have to be softened, habits
weakened, dispositions changed, occasions de­
serted, new tastes infused, entanglements untied.
The Precious Blood has to put forth more of its
strength here than in Baptism; because it has to
overcome more inveteracy and resistance. It has
also to venture its sacred riches more prodigally
here than in other Sacraments. In all Sacraments
it runs two generous risks, the risk of invalidity,
and the risk of sacrilege. Both these risks are
more especially run in the Sacrament of Penance.
Yet what numberless confessions are daily heard !
What hundreds, or thousands, of Absolutions are
daily given, the greater portion of which I am
undoubtingly certain, from the character of God
and the experience of the confessional, are valid !
How many Absolutions have we ourselves received
in our lives, and hope still to receive.' Surely,
if we could see as God sees, and as perchance the
angels are allowed to see, we should behold innu­
merable streams of Blood intersecting the crowded
souls of men, as a vast river-system shows like a
net-work on a map ,· and this would be a vision
of the prodigality of Absolution.
How beautiful are the graces of the Sacrament
of Marriage! Full of human tenderness, yet so

292 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PMOIODS BLOOD.
softly insinuating the sovereign love of God; teeming with habitual self-sacrifice, yet filling the
sacrifice with such sweetness that it becomes, not
painless only, but a joy ; breeding in young hearts
such a gravity of new heavenly duties, and yet
flinging over life the lustre of an additional light;
hardening the changeful heart with a supernatural
preparation of perseverance, and yet softening
every harshness and making every sensitiveness
more exquisitely keen; fortifying the soul with
boldness to do right, at the very moment it is
gracing it with all tho bashful timidities of love;
elevating affection into devotedness, and giving
therewith a beautifulncss of purity which is akin
to the white innocence of virginity :—these are
the graces of the Sacrament of Marriage; and
they are all creations of the Precious Blood. They
are all of them working daily in millions of hearts,
hearts in sorrow and hearts in joy; and their life
is in the throbbing and pulsation of the Precious
Blood. This time it is not a stream of Blood we
see, but a wide-stretching inundation.
Of all the Sacraments, Ordination is the most
like marriage. It weds hearts to Jesus. It makes
those hearts his homes. The priesthood is his
domestic life in the Church. It is replete with
images of Mary and of Joseph. It repeats Naza­
reth. But what a complication of graces is im­
plied in Ordination, and then also what a magnifi­
cence of powers ! Moreover, it is a manifold Sacra­
ment. Its unity is a threefold unity in Bishops,
Priests, and Deacons, a shadow of unutterable
divine grandeurs. Furthermore, it is as it were
the sacred vessel in which the other six Sacraments

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 293

arc kept, and out of which they radiate their glory
and their life. This grand Sacrament is the earthly
heart of the Precious Blood. It is to it on earth
what the Sacred Heart is to it in heaven. It gives
the movement to its life. It takes it back and
gives it forth. It regulates its energy, and makes
its beatings equable as well as forcible. It concen­
trates the Precious Blood in itself, and then vehe­
mently diffuses it all over the earth through every
remotest vent of missionary fervor. The graces
of this Sacrament are like the graces of angels;
and yet they are of all graces the most human ;
for they impart the likeness of the Sacred Hu­
manity as no other graces can impart it. Each
grace of Ordination is a characteristic of Jesus.
Its gift is to make the clear heart of the priest a
mirror into which the Savior is for ever looking
down, and his Countenance is marvellously glassed
therein. Yet, for all this, men must be partially
changed into angels by the operation of these
intensely human graces. In truth, Ordination is
specially a Sacrament of the Precious Blood. Jesus
became a priest by the shedding of bis Blood, by
the offering of his Bloody Sacrifice. His Blood is
the virtue of his priesthood. Yet when it lay
separate from the Soul and from the Body, it was
angels who kept it, and not men. This is tho
figure of the strange mixture of the human and
angelic in the graces of the priesthood. But how
many arc the anointed of the Lord, how multiplied
are their works, how manifold their vocations,
how vast their missions, how continuous their re­
cruits I All this implies so much prodigality of
the Precious Blood.
2δ·

291 ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ FRECIOUS BLOOD.

Jesns once looked into a young man's face, and
loved him. He has perpetuated this incident in
his Church. It is perpetuated in the Sacrament
of Confirmation. When Jesus went, and the Holy
Ghost came to take his place and to administer
the Church, he also was forever looking into the
faces of the young; and his look was a gift, a
magnificent substantial love, an imparting of that
fortitude which youth so much requires, and the
want of which made the young man of the Gospel
turn away in the cowardice of an earthly sorrow.
But the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost were only
purchased for us by the Precious Blood. The very
title, which the Gospel gives to the times before
the sacrificial shedding of our Redeemer’s Blood,
was “ the times when the Holy Ghost was not yet
given.” Now look at the multitude of Christian
youth. If there is much to sadden, how much
also is there to cheer ! How much generous piety
do we behold, how many early breakings with
the world, how many works of mercy, how
many edifying confraternities, how many levites
in the seminaries, how many beautiful vocations
in the cloisters! What is all this but Confirma­
tion’s gift of fortitude, made fertile by the Pre­
cious Blood ?
We have seen that the Precious Blood shed
itself chiefly round about the death of Jesus ; and
that his Death was in reality a death by bleeding.
Hence the hour of death is the chosen hour of the
Precious Blood. It is the favorite season of its
ingenuities. Thus it makes a Sacrament for itself
at that precise time, the Sacrament of Extreme
Unction, the last of its anointings, the anting

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 295

reserved for the supreme contest of the soul, the
last of its sacramental visitations to the elect.
This wonderful Sacrament shrouds its graces in
mystery, a mystery congenial to the darkness
which belongs to its dread hour. But the very
fact of its being a Sacrament at all, and the season
of its administration, sufficiently testify to the
grandeur of the graces which it must convey.
God is eminently a God of time and place, as
we have seen ; and bis places and times are the
measures of his gifts. Extreme Unction, like the
oil of the Grecian wrestlers, anoints us for our
mortal struggle. Whatever relics of sin there
may be in us, the powers of darkness will fasten
upon them. But the grace of this Sacrament
searches them out with a mysterious penetration,
and puts them to a supernatural death. The best
name for its grace is the grace of health; and so,
if God does not will that it should impart health to
our bodies, it turns its exotic medicinal virtues upon
the soul. Other Sacraments liken our lives to the
life of Jesus. This likens our deaths to the death of
Jesus. It diffuses itself over our souls, strewn with
the work of a whole life, and gathers up the frag­
ments which other Sacraments have left untouched.
It cleanses them with a last cleansing. It arranges
them with neatness and order for the coming of
our Lord. It puts them in their right posture and
attitude for being most safely judged. Must not
its graces be very peculiar, and yet also very
magnificent? Throughout the world there is a
whole population dying daily. A section of the
world is always on its death-bed and in its agony.
How prodigal then must the Precious Blood be of

296 THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

its magnificent peculiarities in this pathetic Sacra­
ment I
But what shall we say of that twofold wonder,
the Sacrifice of tho Mass and tho Sacrament of
Communion ? There the Precious Blood puts on
the vesture of omnipresence, and it becomes it well.
Multiplied by how many hundreds of thousands of
times is it not dwelling, whole, living, and glorified,
in the Hosts reserved within the tabernacles of tho
world ? Into how many thousand human hearts
does it not descend daily, whole, living, and glori­
fied, in the glory of the dread reality of Commu­
nion 1 Into how many thousand chalices does it
not empty itself from out the Sacred Heart in
heaven every day? The very whirling of the
earth; as it makes day and night by turning to or
from the sun, ministers to the longings of the Pre­
cious Blood. It is bewildering to think of the
countless graces of expiation which flow daily
from the Sacrifice, or the countless graces of union
which flow daily from the Sacrament. This is the
great laboratory in which the Precious Blood makes
holiness. In the heart of the Andes, vast, inter­
woven, and mutually enfolding mountains cover
themselves with gigantic forests. The condor, as ho
wheels above, looks down upon an ocean of impene­
trable foliage, without a rent, or break, or insight
into the green abyss. So does the Precious Blood,
in Mass and Communion, mantle the whole Church
with tropical exuberances of grace, as they ap­
pear, hiding the natural features of the ground
with the ample folds of their verdant overgrowth
The tinklings of the mass-bell, like new-ereative
words, change the whole aspect of the uncon

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 297

scions world. Unknown and unsuspected temporal
calamities are daily driven away, like clouds be­
fore the wind, by the oblations of the Precious
Blood. Nay, through the crust of the earth the
superincumbent weight of that Blood presses its
way, and reaches to the sinless caves of Purga­
tory. Consolations of all shapes and patterns
come there, and are the cooling rains of the Pre­
cious Blood. Who can class them? They are like
the monotonous diversities of crystals, beautiful
for their variety, and beautiful also for their
sameness. The angels, who had the Precious
Blood in their keeping during the Triduo of the
Passion, have also the administration of it in
Purgatory, and are well pleased with this labor
of congenial love. But the arithmetic of all this
prodigality of the Precious Blood, is it not impos­
sible to the imagination and distracting to the
heart? It disquiets our love. Let us leave off the
calculation, and contemplate in quietude the ocean
of painstaking graces, of vast satisfactions, and
of kingly expiations, into which the daily Masses
of the Church outpour themselves, lighting the
patient darkness under ground, flashing up to the
skies as so much additional light and song, and
beautifying the poor exiled earth in the eye of the
all-holy heavens.
In closest propinquity with the Sacraments we
should make mention of the Holy See, wherein
dwells the paternity of all the Sacraments, and in
which resides with incredible plenitude the juris­
diction of the Precious Blood, the regalia of the
kingdom of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus. At no
point of history can we look at the Sovereign Pon­

298 ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

tiff without seeing as it were before us, in most
vivid type, the Fourth Bloodshedding, the Crown­
ing of Thorns. Tho pontifical monarchs of the
Middle Ages, no less than the martyr-pontiffs who
haunted the Catacombs, or the modern popes who
toil, like patient heroes, through the pusillanimous
hostilities of diplomacy, equally bear upon them
this peculiar image of our Lord. They adminis­
trate his Headship. They are his Head made
visible to us. The tiara is the most veritable
crown of thorns, and tho pontificate the most
literal of martyrdoms. It is the Head ever bleed
ing, bleeding slowly. There is the old suffering
patience in its majesty. It is a true royalty ; but
men mock it because its kingly mantle is soiled
with all earth’s poverty. It is a bidden kingliness,
like the kingship of the guard-room at Jerusalem.
It is a sort of sacrament of the Sacraments, the
sacrament of the royalty of the Precious Blood.
The papacy is tho Fourth Bloodshedding continued
till the Doom.
This is one department of the prodigality of the
Precious Blood, its sacramental prodigality. But,
besides this, there is a whole world of extra-sacra­
mental prodigality. At least we may for distinc­
tion’s sake cull it so. But in reality’ all holiness
is tied to the Sacraments by innumerous, indirect,
and hidden fastenings. Good works come out of
the Sacraments, or come out of other works which
have done so, or they go into the Sacraments, or
are the accidents and superfluities of Sacraments,
or minister to the Sacraments, or are, we know
not. why, contemporaneous with them. Even tho
grandeur of perfect contrition is tied to the Sacra-

ΤΠΕ PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

299

merits by desire. The martyrdom of the cate­
chumen is riveted to Baptism by secret desire,
desire which may even be unconscious as well as
secret, yet must infallibly be there. The whole
system of redemption is interpenetrated with
Sacraments. The sacramental tendency in it is
ineradicable. It coheres by Sacraments. Sacra­
ments are the tissue of its life; and its life is the
Precious Blood. Therefore when we come to con­
sider the daily penances and supernatural actions
which are consecrated by the Precious Blood in
the Church, although we may fairly call them
extra-sacramental, we must at the same time bear
in mind, that there is probably not one which has
not some relation, open or occult, with a Sacrament,
and that the genius of them all is an affinity to the
Sacraments and an instinctive sympathy with
them. They dart into the Sacraments, and blend
with them, and lose themselves in them, with a
swiftness and a volatility which remind us of things
in chemistry.
If we are devout to the Church, if we have keen
sympathies with the Holy See, and if we are in­
terested in missionary enterprise, we can rapidly
make for ourselves a geographical picture of the
Church. We know what countries belong to her,
and where her missions are growing, and where
they are receding. We can pass in swift thoughts
from one pole to the equator, and from the equator
to the other pole. We know how much life goes on
in a little space,—especially spiritual life. The
religious actions, inward and outward, of one rural
parish are multitudinous and rapid, a dense world
of thoughts, motives, words, and works. How

300

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

innumerable then must be the daily supernatural
actions of the wide Church ! Yet wherever grace
is, there is the Precious Blood. Whatever may
merit can only merit by coming in spiritual con­
tact with the Precious Blood. In all this seething
mass of actions, it is the Precious Blood which is
causing all the movement and all the fermentation.
Wheresoever nature is raised above itself and
lifted into the supernatural, there we discern infal­
libly the agency of the Precious Blood. But what
a ubiquitous life, what a universal energy, what
rapidity and what persistence of operation ! Then
look at the other side of the question. Who could
number the sins in the world at any one given
moment? Is not evil always like the sea which is
with difficulty banked out from low-lying lands?
It is bursting the banks, tearing away the gates,
flooding the sluices perpetually. The thought of
the number of sins at any given time is at once
distracting and oppressive. Yet I believe that
always, in some way or other, proximately or
remotely, the Precious Blood is trying to hinder
each one of these sins. The number of sins mai<es
us wonder how the Precious Blood can divide
itself into such numberless activities, while the
gravity of the sins shows us how prodigal it is,
not only of its presence, but of its strength. The
life of the Precious Blood in the religious houses
of the Church is amazing. The crowds of daily
heroic actions which are sustained by it, each of
which seems to draw it up from its choicest depths,
xnd then the plentiful harvest of more ordinary
mente the quantity of sanctified suffering, the
.mount of supernatural obedience,-how immense

THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. 301

is all this! and yet it is but one department of the
sleepless business of the Precious Blood ! Another
and a vaster world is to be round in its favorite
sphere of death-beds. All that activity, all those
inventions, all that concentration of convening
love, all that precipitate accumulation of sanctify­
ing grace, all that lightning-like formation of
habits which are to be eternal, all those strange
heroisms of death, those resurrections of old
selves, those creations of new selves, those almost
overwhelming embraces of nature by grace, must
all go to the account and enter into the calcula­
tion. Nay, look at the multitudes who wander
outside the Church ; even those desolate tracts of
the world, those unwatered regions, are yet beauti­
fied in some degree by the overflowings of the
Church, the prodigal outgoings of the Precious
Blood.
All this prodigality of the Precious Blood,
whether in the Sacraments or alongside of them, I
call necessary, as distinguished from the prodi­
gality of the Thirty-Three Years, which was not
necessary to us, but belongs to the magnificence
of God’s love. The other prodigality is necessary
to us, because without it we should not be saved.
Our corruption is so active, our weakness is so
lamentable, our vileness is so great, our dangers
are so terrible, our carelessness is so incredible, that
we could not for the most part work out our salva­
tion with any access to the Precious Blood less
free, less easy, less common, less abundant, than
that which God’s magnificence has opened to us.
Still, if we consider the grandeur of the Sacraments
in themselves, or the immense capabilities of grace,
26

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THE PRODIGALLY OF THE PRECIOUS BLUUU.

or the intrinsic glory of the mysteries so reiterated,
and if we look at all these things from a th co·
logical rather than a practical point of view, wo
must acknowledge that they betoken an amazing
prodigality on the part of God, even though our
necessities be so hungry that they consume it all.
We must be continually replenishing the shallow­
ness of our finite lives, and we can only replenish
them out of the Divine infinity. We cannot satisfy
our thirst at any fountain less magnificent. It is
another joy which God’s love added to his beati­
tude, that we should drink of those wells for ever­
more, and drink of them with liberty and glad­
ness.
Now let us come out under the starry sky, and
think of this prodigality of the precious Blood.
The great tent of heaven above us seems to waver,
and the stars to swing like lamps from its purple
roof. But the desert could not be more silent than
this outspread scene. If the uninstructed man
looks at the starry skies, he either feels no mystery
in them, or feels that it is a mystery which ho
cannot understand. Some feeling, which if it is
not poetry is akin to poetry, and which if it is
not religion is akin to religion, would surely bo
awakened within him. But all would be vague,
restless, and uncertain, and therefore would soon
weary him, and so be transient, and speedily for­
gotten. The astronomer would look on the love­
liness of this spangled night with far other eyes.
His knowledge would disentangle the constella­
tions for his eyes. The orbs would be individuals
to him, with names, known pointe, and some pecu­
liarities. The purple concave would at once

THE PRODIGALITY OF THF. PREC1OC8 BLOOD. 303

inscribe itself for him with glittering lines and
orbits, bettor than the grooved spheres of Ptolemy.
It would be a joy to him to inform so much seem­
ing confusion ^vith so much real order. He might
think little of the beauty of night, and still less
of the beauty of the God of night. But the scene
would speak in grand sonorous language to his
understanding. Then let us bring a poet to the
place. He might know as little of the mechanism
of the heavens as the uninstructed man. But he
would understand the scene by feeling it. He
would feel that the starry heavens outside corre­
sponded marvellously with the starry heavens
within him. Behold him. His soul is taken
captive with the beauty of night. He looks. He
grows calm with a sweet calmness. Chafings
cease. Breathings as of far-off music rise up
from some deep sanctuary within his soul. The
beauty melts him ; the glory masters him; and he
sings the infinity of God. Both the astronomer
and the poet have their truth. But the poet’s
truth is a truer truth than that of the astronomer.
So it is in looking at the world redeemed The
uninstructed man sees nothing in it but puzzle and
contradiction. His faith is vague; and where
faith is not clear there is seldom earnestness.
There is truly a look of God about the world, and
a w’andering fragrance of Jesus. But it breeds
little more in him than a kind of incredulous
superstition. To the instructed believer, who is
without the poetry of religion, whose head errs
because bis heart does not help it, whose thoughts
go wrong because they are speculations instead of
prayers,—to him the aspect of redemption is what

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THE PRODIGALITY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

the starry skies arc to tho astronomer. IIo
admires; he is amazed; he praises. Yet adoration
is so little to his taste, and worship so uncongenial
to his disposition, that the demand for it at once
awakens a kind of skepticism even in his faith Ho
doubts whether so much be done, because lie sees
so little come of it. lie judges by what ho sees
with the eye. He docs not know how to divine
with his heart. He does not perceive that the
world he sees is nearly as far beyond his under­
standing as the God who is invisible. Sight does
not help us to understand men. Their actions arc
not their hearts. Still less does it help us to un­
derstand grace, which, when it supernaturalizes
nature, lies undermost, not uppermost. To under­
stand God and God’s world, we must look at him
and it from the Precious Blood point of view.
The saints of the Church are the poets of redemp­
tion. It is from this point of view that they always
see the world. It was thus that Mary saw the
world at all times, a vision most awful, yet most
touching and most dear. It is the way in which
God sees at this instant. All things to him, good
or evil, are tinged with the Precious Blood. He
beholds them all in his own repetition of Josue's
miracle, in that unsinking crimson sunset of the
Precious Blood, which ho has bidden to hang in all
its beauty on the horizon of creation forever.

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305

CHAPTER VI.
THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Most men live in an imaginary world; and yet

their imaginary world is a real one. They make
a beauty for themselves, and throw their heart
into it. Some men live among the stars, either as
observers or as astronomers. It becomes the pas­
sion of their lives to do so. The movements of
the heavenly bodies are to them as the activities
of practical life. To watch, to discover, to verify,
up in the heavens, is their vocation. It is the way
in which they will enjoy themselves, and the way
also in which they will benefit their kind. Others
spend their lives with equal devotion among the
strata of the earth and the long interesting epochs
of geology. Others give themselves up to dwell
with patient vigilance among the secret labora­
tories of matter, where its separations, combina­
tions, and transmutations are discovered, and
whose mysteries are yearly spreading themselves
more and more over daily life in the shape of most
important practical utilities. Another becomes
the companion of animals, and reigns like a
natural king, as he is, among his beasts and birds
and fishes and reptiles. Another is the doctor
and prophet of plants, and another of minerais.
Men can make fascinating scientific worlds for
themselves out of the flooring of the sea, out of
U

20·

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ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

tho stormy circles of the air, out of the rushing
thread-like arteries of electric force, and out of
many other subprefectures of nature. These
worlds are imaginary, and yet real: real because
of the substantial truth and practical utility
of them ; imaginary because of the exclusive
enthusiasm with which they are dwelt upon,
and the breadth of responsible life which is
consumed in them. The world is not only or
altogether a celestial globe, or a geological map,
or an arithmetic of chemistry, or a hierarchy
of animal life.
Neither again, indeed much less, is the length
and breadth of human life contained in the straits
of politics, the shallows of diplomacy, the quaking
mosses of balances of power, or the frail clock­
work of constitutions. I can understand better
than most of these idolatries a passionate occupa­
tion of the mind with statistics, out of which time
will evolve revelations of the nature of man and
of the laws and storms and methodical fluctua­
tions of human actions, which cannot fail to
illuminate in some wonderful way and with un­
expected light the adorable character of God.
But statistics are not commensurable with life.
Men may easily live in an epic of metaphysics and
psychology, and neglect all else; but they can
establish no right to such a concentration of them­
selves, any more than the physiologist with the
patient slowness of his singularly attractive pur­
suit. Life is broader than any science of life; for
it is a law, a duty, a responsibility, an affection,
a religion. Yet all natures have their poetries.
Most men must have their ideal, or one of these

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

307

imaginary real worlds which subserve all the
better purposes of an ideal. These are the devo­
tions of the intellect, which absorb within them­
selves the interests of the heart. We are placed
in creation as kings; and, often quite uncon­
sciously, our kingly instincts work in our souls;
and we take creation to pieces, and choose the
provinces over which we intend to rule. But we
are quarrelsome kings. We do not like neigh­
boring rulers. The proverbial jealousies of scien­
tific men are like the peevish diplomacies of fretful
politicians.
Now, what astronomy, and geology, and che­
mistry, and other cognate sciences, and what poli­
tics, statistics, metaphysics, and their congenial
sciences, are to many men, and to most men, the
Church is to us. It is our devotion, our pursuit,
our passion. It is our favorite science, our chosen
study, our life’s enthusiasm. As a matter of taste
no one can blame us; for tastes are facts, and
facts which are mostly inculpable, and hardly
admit of criticism. One man has as much right
to be immensely interested in a Sacrament, as
another in a curious dip of strata, or the varying
magnitude of a perplexing star, or in some new
property of a metalloid, or in the dethroning of
an old element by dividing it. If one man may
without blame make all other sciences, literature»,
and pursuits, subordinate to his one science,
literature, and pursuit, another may make all
sciences, literatures, and pursuits, subordinate to
his exclusive devotion to the Church. This is
putting devotion to the Church upon its lowest
ground. It is well sometimes to remember lowest

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THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

grounds for things. Important rights are often
founded in them. Not unfrcquontly the essences
of things lie hidden in them. They ought not
therefore to bo abandoned or despised. To me,
then, the Church is what the starry skies are to
the astronomer. 1 know there are other things
in creation besides the Church ; but I am only
very partially interested in them. Practically to
me the world means the Church. For the only
interest I can take in the world outside the
Church arises from the fact that the Church must
be affected by its movements. I delight in all
progresses of science, because they are an addition
to the science of theology. I sympathize ar­
dently with all social progresses, because they are
at once, whether as difficulties or as facilities,
questions of soul-saving. The revelations of sta­
tistics form a sort of hand-book for catholic
charity. Psychology illustrates the Sacraments.
Political changes interest me; for they all act
upon the wonderful fortunes of the Holy See, and
arc mostly for its ultimate advancement. All real
widening of men’s minds by education, or litera­
ture, or art, is an effacing of prejudices against
the Church, and facilitates conversion. In almost
every department of knowledge the world, as it
advances, keeps answering its own objections to
religion; and this is both grateful and interesting.
AU that is wide, deep, forward, active, trustful, is
most congenial with the spirit of the Church.
Even the grand old science of history has taken
to discovery; and its discoveries, one after the
Thc'f'h^.80 many reParatlons to the Church.
The Church ,e my centre. I look at al| thjnge

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

309

revolving round it; and my interest in them is
proportioned to their action upon it. The Church
is my science, my taste, my «interest, and my
attraction. I do not sneer at the devotion of the
astronomer, and he must not sneer at mine. I
tolerate the metaphysician, and he must tolerate
me. 1 have neither fears, suspicions, nor jealous­
ies of his philosophy; he must have none of my
theology.
But, in reality, devotion to the Church may rest
upon higher grounds than these. In my own
mind it rests upon this,—and I say it with all
reverence,—that it is God's own devotion. It is
God’s creation within his own creation, a creation
called into being with a specialty of love, created
with the miraculous toil and human Bloodshed­
ding of the Omnipotent. It is his own life, his
own created life, in creation. Its history is his
biography upon earth. Its form is the abiding
of his Incarnation among men. It is thus forever
repeating bis Three-and-Thirty Years. It is not
that he does not love the whole world, and the
most out-lying souls in the world, with a strange
surpassing love. On the contrary, it is for the
very sake of the world that he loves the Church·
with a better love. If his almighty wisdom saw
fit to overwhelm our liberty with its constraints,
its first act would be to turn the whole world into
the Church, making the Church and the world one
and the same thing. The world is his creation as
Creator; and our wretchedness did not find its
prodigality of love sufficient. The Church is his
creation as Redeemer; and it lies in furnaces of
divine love heated seven times hotter than the

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THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

furnaces.of creation. Thus tho Church is hie
devotion, his complacency. He loves it with a
special, an electing love. This is the true ground
of our devotion to the Church. It is God's own
devotion. It is his choicest way of loving us. It
is our choicest way of loving him.
But let us think of this, both more in detail and
more at large. As a place tho Church is a crea­
tion within creation, the royal residence of tho
Creator-King. To its privileged jurisdiction is
granted the full royalty of the whole world. Its
laws are holiness. Its atmosphere is grace. Its
forms are copies of divine things. Its nature is
transfigured with supernatural energies. Its so­
lemnities are celestial mysteries. It is a life, and
a giving of life. But it is not only a divine copy
of divine things. It contains divine things, and
lives by them. In peculiar ways of its own, it
contains the Divino Persons. Thus, its life is not
a mere likeness of God, though it is a likeness
of him. But, when faith looks upon his likeness,
it sees a further vision. The tabernacles of tho
Church blossom as with light; the lineaments of
the Church fade as in a glorious conflagration,
obliterated by the intensity of splendor; and,
behold! it is Jesus himself, God and Man, within
whose life wo have been living ; and tho glory
had been so gentle that we perished not ! The
mystery of the Blessed Sacrament is the truth
of the life of the Church. We can see and revere
the magnificence of tho Church. But we shall
know tho Church better, and appreciate it more
truly, when we have seen God. We shall perceive
then, that the Church was even more full of

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311

divine mysteries than we supposed it was. This
is the case with all created things. We must see
the Creator, in order to understand the plenitude
of their beauty. But it will be more especially
so with the Church, because of its special dignity
in creation. We see the mountains mirrored in
the lake with exquisite distinctness. But when
we have looked up to the mountains themselves,
and learned them in themselves, the images in
the lake are more charming, more distinct, more
evidently like, more fascinatingly like, than they
seemed to be before. To the eye of God the
Church must look most wonderful. It is the
work of art on which all the adorable incredi­
bilities of redemption have been expended. Every
attribute has tried its handicraft upon it. It
expresses the secrets of the Incomprehensible, the
yearnings of the Ever-blessed, the desires of the
Eternal. It is draped with the golden magni­
ficence of everlasting decrees. The beauty of the
Divine Mind is suffused around it like an im­
palpable atmosphere of loveliness. Once he saw
the woods, and the mountains, and the lakes, and
the foaming rivers, and the flowery plains, which
he had made, and he remained outside them, and
gave them his paternal benediction. But when he
had created the Church, not of earth and of his
word, but of his Blood and Breath, its fair beauty
so won upon him that he came into it, and multi­
plied himself, and hid himself, in her tabernacles,
as the birds hide themselves within the mighty
woods.
This is the simple account of the Church, the
chief thing to be said of it, but not the only thing.

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TUE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

It mirrors tho hierarchies of tho angels as well as
the magnificence of God. It not only imitates
their orders and operations, but it supplies them
with now ministries, and is every day enlivening
them with fresh joys. Its life is bound up with
theirs, and its children mingle with them and
become members of their choirs. As to men, it
initiates them into a divine citizenship. It explains
their destinies. It ennobles their disabilities. It
anticipates their glory. It gives a value to their
sorrows and a significance to their joys. It eman­
cipates them from their own littleness, and it con­
veys to them God’s forgiveness of their sins. It
puts them to dwell in the suburbs of heaven even
while they are still being tried on earth. As a
power, the Church has been tho most unearthly,
tho most remarkable, tho most successful upon
earth. It has no parallel and no analogy. It is a
problem which neither historical nor political nor
philosophical solutions satisfy. It has a history
of peculiar interest and of the most extraordinary
variety. In duration its chronicles surpass those
of the most ancient monarchy. The records of
revolutions are less various, while tho history of a
single town is less consistent. In the romance of
vicissitudes and in dramatic changes no history is
to be compared to it. In our own times it is load­
ing a very peculiar life under entirely novel circum­
stances; and in the midst of universal fluctuation
and distrust it is a monument of self-confident tran­
quillity. It is certain of ultimate conquest, and
equally certain of present suffering. Its power
and Us spirit are felt in the most retired sanetuar.es of the private life of a hundred bloods and

THE DEVOTION TO THE PHKCIOUB BLOOD.

313

nations. Yet all this is without sound and without
effort. While it is as solid as adamant, it is as per­
vasive as the air. Who ever saw any thing earthly
like it? Moreover, it is the only institution of
time which wi’.l be prolonged into eternity. The
grandest monarchies of earth will cast no shadow
in heaven. Dumbness and oblivion will pass upon
all philosophies. Not a single literature has any
eternal meaning. The most magnificent civiliza­
tion represents nothing on the other side of the
grave. Tho most glorious revolutions have only a
temporal significance. The fortunes of the whole
earth will leave no impression, will transfer no
lines, upon eternity, further than as they may
have helped or hindered tho salvation of this or
that individual soul; whereas the grandeur of the
Church on earth is but a prelude to its grandeur
up in heaven.
It is no wonder, then, that the Church should
lay such a singular grasp on our affections and
our loyalty. On the lowest grounds it may rank
with astronomy, or psychology, or politics, as the
devotion of a life ; only that the exclusiveness of
tho devotion, which in the case of those sectional
sciences is a narrowness and a defect, is here a de­
votedness rather than an exclusiveness, because
that which is universal cannot be exclusive. Devo­
tion to the Church combines all interests. It takes
in every duty. It provides for every responsibility.
It intensifies every love. It embraces all social
life, and ennobles it by its embrace. It penetrates
all private life, and sanctities it by its penetration.
It is the unity of all knowledge and the harmony
of all philosophy. It is interested in all diploma27

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THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

ciea, and it survives them all. Its minuteness
allows nothing to be overlooked, while its compre­
hensiveness includes every thing within its influ­
ence. In a word, the Church is that part of every
thing, that side of every thing, that view of every
thing, that interference with every thing, which
represents the double sovereignty and jurisdiction
of the Creator and the Redeemer.
All this, as we shall see shortly, is part of the
devotion to the Precious Blood. But we must
pass on at present to look at the Church from one
particular point of view,—its life of devotions. In
nothing is the beauty of the Church more ravish­
ing, or its disclosures more intimately divine. Full
of divine instincts, its worship grows with all the
exuberance of a tropical forest, covering itself with
verdure and with blossoms. It puts forth its devo­
tions with all the freedom of a tree which has
liberty to spread on all sides. Everywhere it is
free of the sun and air. There is nothing to hinder
its development, nothing to hamper its genius,
nothing to disfigure its natural forms and ampli­
tudes of beauty. The diversity of its blossoms is
astonishing. It makes devotions out of joys, out
of sorrows, and out of glories. It has a treasury
of innumerable mysteries, and out of every mys­
tery it can unfold many devotions. Ages roll on.
None of the old blossoms wither or fall off. Yet
new varieties are added. Its colors grow more
beautiful than ever, and its fragrances are multi­
plied. This is the way in which the age of the
Church is forever clothing itself with the lovelineee of a new youth. n ig more beautjftl| |JOW
an it was three centuries ago ; and three oentu-

ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

315

ries hence we shall almost envy ont of our calm in
heaven the fortune of those who come after us, and
are sanctified by the novelties of glory in the
Church. Taken with all its array of manifold de­
votions, the Church worships the Iloly Trinity
with such magnificently expansive freedom and
such large variety that we can hardly, even in our
imagination, embrace it in one view. Yet there is
a deep-seated unity in this diversity of worship.
When we see a tree in a favorable soil and posi­
tion as it were wantoning in its robust vigor,
flinging out its year’s growth on this side and on
that, here filling itself in with close pendant foliage
in curves which might have been drawn with in­
struments, there presenting an indented outline
with inlets of blue sky among its branches, it
seems hard to believe that there is a law under all
this irregular exuberance; and yet so it is. In
like manner dogmatic theology is the hidden law,
the infallible unity of all this multiform devotion
of the Church. It is a law, whose control is unerr­
ing and never relaxed, and yet whose pressure in
no way checks exuberance. Indeed, it would be
more true to say that the very law itself is the
prolific fountain of these varieties. The science of
theology is forever passing into love, and, as love
receives it, it transmutes it into devotion. These
devotions of the Church are the giving forth of its
private affections and secret inner life. By them
we know the Church better than by any thing
else. They are the action of the Holy Ghost upon
her heart, made visible by this perennial spring­
tide of heavenly flowers. We may say that we
come to know that Ever-blessed Spirit better by

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THE DEVOTION TO

THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

these devotions than by any thing else. They are
a revelation of himself.
If we examine this seemingly confused multitude
of devotions, wo shall find that they may bo parted
off into two spheres, forming indeed but one world,
and the one sphere for the most part lying within
the other. Nevertheless, we shall attain clearness
by so regarding it; and in fact the division is a
real one. One sphere of devotions is based upon
the Incarnation. It glasses the Thirty-Three
Years, and continually lives them over again in
devotions. The Soul of Jesus, his Body, his Blood,
and the Divinity, ns united to the Sacred Human­
ity, are abysses which seem to give forth devotions
inexhaustibly. In reading the lives of saints and
holy persons we are constantly coming across de­
votions which we never beard of before. The
seventeenth century alone gave birth to some hun­
dreds. Among the Carmelites they have gone on
blooming as in a garden ever since the days of St.
Teresa. Sometimes a holy man has looked at the
Incarnation under a new aspect, due partly to the
peculiarity of his own genius and partly to tho
characteristics of his times,—not of course without
God impressing a direction upon these things,—
and then bis influence or his writings have given
birth to manifold devotions. This is tho case with
Cardinal Berulle, with Father Condrcn, Father
Eudes, and also with Olier, in France. Tho same
may bo said of Maria Tommasi, Isabella Farnese,
Uomeniea del Paradiso, St. Mary Magdalene of
Pazzi, and Cherubina dell’ Agnus Dei, among the
Italians. St. Gertrude, St Meebtildis, and Eliza­
beth of Schaunberg have done the same in Ger-

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317

many j and Marina d’Escobar, Mary of Agreda,
Mary of Antigua, and Isabella of Bcniganim, for
the Spanish peninsula. While one set of devotions
have followed the division of the Soul, the Body,
the Blood, and the Divinity of Jesus, another set
have gone by times and places. Bethlehem, Egypt,
Nazareth, Galilee, and Jerusalem have each their
constellations of devotion proper to them. Then
again, devotions follow the different lives of our
Blessed Lord,—his Life in the Womb, his Infant
Life, his Hidden Life, his Public Life, his Suffering
Life, his Risen Life, his Ascended Life, and his
Sacramental Life. Or they follow his offices, or
his Names, or his joys, or his sorrows, or his glo­
ries, or his journeys, or his words, or his apostles,
or classes of his actions. Again, his Mother is a
perfect world of devotions, with her various mys­
teries and ministries and offices and graces and
endurances and identifications with himself. _ For
eighteen hundred years Catholic devotions have
come forth from the Incarnation, as from an in­
ward world of spiritual beauty, in magnificent pro­
cession. There is no sign of their ending. Each
new devotion seems to make more devotions pos­
sible. They multiply by the very outpouring of
them. Each devotion becomes the head of a family
of devotions. It seizes upon some saint or upon
some religious congregation, and perpetuates itself,
and multiplies itself, and is a fresh visible adorn­
ment to the Church. Nothing gives us such a
vivid idea of the inexhaustible treasures of the
Thirty-Three Years as this multiplicity of devo­
tions. We see how the eternal contemplation of
the Blessed may feed itself upon those years, and
27·

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THF. DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

they shall yet remain unfathomod and, by created
intellect, unfathomable.
These devotions are like particular revelations.
They are constantly telling us either what we did
not know before about our dearest Lord, or what
had never struck us before. It is the Holy Ghost
adding to our knowledge of Jesus, or bringing to
our minds his sayings, his doings, and his ways.
The theology of these devotions, and the way in
which they are started and propagated by the pri­
vate revelations of tho saints, by visions, voices,
and apparitions, make them to be a sort of com­
plement to the Four Gospels. This, then, is one
view which the Church presents to us in her devo­
tions. If we could see her in her whole extent,
we should see this Bride of Christ living over
again, in all its breadth, if not in all its depth, the
earthly life of Jesus: or, to speak more accurately,
he is living it endlessly over again in her. There
are a thousand Bethlehcms, a thousand Nazareths,
and a thousand Calvaries, scattered through the
Church. There are visible similitudes of his out­
ward actions. There are aseetical reiterations of
his inward dispositions. There are mystical con­
tinuances of his various lives. Tho whole earth
has come to be a Holy Land. Palestine has swelled
out into a world. Every Christian family is a
Bethlehem. Every catholic village is a Nazareth,
every city a Jerusalem. All shrines of human
sorrow are Gethsemanes. There are Calvaries
everywhere. There are countless cloisters, nay,
countless single hearts, which are in themselves
Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary at once Look
over the Church with this light upon it; and then

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

319

look upward to the Face of Jesus bending over it
in tenderness and joyous love, and think how holy
and how zealous and how ardent must be our
devotion to the Church, if it is to resemble his
complacency.
The other sphere of the devotions of the Church
is based upon the Attributes of God. What the
various mysteries of Jesus are in one sphere of
devotions, the various Attributes of God are in the
other. The Church receives from heaven upon
its placid bosom the image of Jesus; it receives
also the image of the Uncreated. We can worship
God in his simplicity. We can also have a special
devotion to his simplicity. But in this latter case
we are regarding his simplicity as one of his
Attributes. We cannot have a devotion to God as
God. We simply worship the Majesty of the God­
head with trembling adoration. The feeling and
the act are distinct from devotion. But we can be
said to have a devotion to the various Attributes
into which we divide his simplicity and by which
we conceive his perfection. In strict truth, as I
have warned you before, he is all his Attributes,
and all his Attributes are himself. But, in our lan­
guage and in our conceptions, his Attributes are
not himself: they are less than himself; they are
parts, for so our ignorance necessitates us to depict
them, of Him who is indivisible. Thus they stand
in the same relation to God that the mysteries of
the Incarnation stand in to our Lord. When we
have a devotion to one of our Lord’s joys, we know
that there is something which it does not include,
either other joys, or his sorrows, or his glories. So
when we have a devotion to God’s justice, we know

320

THE DEVOTION TO ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

that we are for the present leaving out of direct
view his mercy. The finite may worship the In­
finite as infinite, and in his unity. It can only
study the Infinite in detail ; and these details are
the creations and conveniences of its own limited
mind, not substantive external truths. Thus there
is no such thing as omnipotence: but there is a
Being who is omnipotent, or (if the idiom of our
language would have permitted me so to express
myself) who is omnipotence. There is no such
thing as omnipresence: but there is a Being who is
omnipresent. I say this for the sake of accuracy,
and to anticipate misunderstanding. But the
devotion to the Attributes of God is practically a
very simple matter to the most ordinarily pious
believer.
Among the children of the Church, chiefly but
not exclusively those who are aiming at perfection,
there exists this devotion to the Attributes of God.
It is less universal, as a special devotion, than de­
votions to the Incarnation; and it has also this
peculiarity, that, whereas devotion to the mys­
teries of the Sacred Humanity can exist without
any special or pronounced devotion to the Attri­
butes of God, this last devotion is always accom­
panied by some special devotions founded on the
Incarnation. It is one of the common marks of a
spiritual delusion, when men are without some
special devotion to the mysteries of Jesus, and
affect to meditate or contemplate the divine per­
fectione instead. Some holy persons have a peculiar devotion to the Attributes of God in general,
and in their prayers change from one to another;
and this change is very often influenced by the

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

321

feasts and seasons of the year, in conseqnence of
the connection and sympathy which appear to
exist between particular Attributes of God and
particular mysteries of the Incarnation. Others,
again, devote themselves to honor some one Attri­
bute, and to make it the main, if not the sole,
subject of their meditations. There are examples
of this devotion, which carry with them great
authority. Some have always had this attraction
to the Attributes of God; and it has even given a
peculiar shape to their devotion to the mysteries
of Jesus, especially the Passion. Some have arrived
at it through long meditation on the Sacred Hu­
manity, as if they had been raised by the con­
templation of the Sacred Humanity to that of the
Divinity. But even in this case the devotion to
the Sacred Humanity is rather heightened than
abandoned. These positive devotions to the divine
Attributes arise very often from the characteristics
of the mind and disposition, not of course without
the concurrence of grace, and even some special
leadings of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes the
attraction seems to be entirely supernatural, and
not unfrequently distinct and sudden like a voca­
tion.
But these· attractions to the Divine Attributes,
like those of the mysteries of the Incarnation, do
not always rest in devotion. They assign voca­
tions and pursuits. They cast a man’s external
actions into some peculiar mould. The whole life
becomes shaped on the Attribute to which the
soul is specially devoted. This is more particularly
the case with the two Attributes of justice and
sanctity. Some saintly persons, devoted to these
V

822

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Attributes, have been bidden to lead lives of mar­
vellous expiations or reparations. The instincts
of the Holy Ghost have urged them into terrible
novelties of penance, or strange depths of inward
self-abasement. Their lives have been admirable
rather than imitable. Instances of this might be
given from the Chronicles of Religious Orders,
especially those of Carmel and the Visitation, and
also from the lives of many of those who have had
the stigmata. If devotion to the Attributes of
God proceeds to the extremity of moulding the
outward life, much more may we expect to find it
shaping inward holiness, and stamping a peculiar
character upon our spirituality. Even the eternity
of God, seemingly the least likely of his Attri­
butes for such a purpose, has been made to be the
form of the holiness of some very interior and
elevated souls.
*
I believe the agency of the Attributes of God
in the spiritual life to be much more extensive
than is commonly supposed. In other words, the
Church is a truer image of the invisible majesty
of God than our faith is ordinarily allowed to
perceive. Ilis perfections impress themselves upon
his creatures, very deeply, even when invisibly.
There are certain phenomena in the spiritual lite,
very delicate and very volatile, which lead to the
supposition that the action of some one Attribute
lies at the bottom of each man’s vocation, as well
as of each devotion in the Church. If this be so,
and it we consider it in connection with the affinity
Cb’Xi' i"8tan0" Of A,,n0 8era>)hine duller, quoted in

ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO TilE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

328

between nature and grace, we shall sometimes
wonder whether each soul that is created is not
created in the special likeness of some one Attri­
bute of God, ranged as it were under the banners
of that one Attribute, and called by a very sweet
vocation to form its life upon it.
But these are speculations. Certain it is, that
the Church worships God in all his breadth, so far
as creatures can do so, and produces a unity of
worship through this multiplicity of devotions to
his perfections. One soul, one saint, one order,
cannot do the whole work by itself; but the whole
work is done, and it is done by the harmony and
conjunction of them all. It is the affectionate
conspiracy of all created beauty to make a worthy
offering to the Uncreated Loveliness. It is difficult
to make pictures of spiritual things. But it brings
wonderful thoughts into our minds, and vast inde­
scribable images, if we try to picture the Church
to ourselves as thus outstretching itself to enclose
all the Attributes of the Most High, one while
rising to each of them, like the arms of the great
sea flung upward to the moon, and offering to each
the incense of a peculiar devotion,—and then
another while lying passive while they descend
upon it, and leave upon it nameless signs of their
mysterious contact. The depths of the Church,
like the depths of ocean, are fields of wild flowery
loveliness, strangely lighted by the sun through
the translucent waters; and thither the glory of
God descends, at twilight as he came to Adam, or
at midnight as he came to Mary, or in the morning
as he came to Israel in the wilderness, to pasture
the beautiful flock of his perfections. The Church

324 THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.
—it is the fairest of her splendors—is tho mother
of her Maker s glory.
It is natural, almost necessary, when we are
speaking of the devotions of tho Church, to speak
also, and once again, of devotion to the Church;
but it is still more necessary to do so, when we
have to speak of the devotion to the Precious
Blood. The Church, as we have already said, is
the creation of the Precious Blood, the institution
which it has founded, and wherein its virtue con­
tinues to reside. It is impossible to study the
grandeurs of the Precious Blood without being led
at almost every step into the magnificences of the
Sacraments; and then again the Sacraments are
the structure of the Church. The theology of the
Sacraments and the theology of the Church are
but one. We cannot separate them without
making both of them unintelligible. With these
theologies, the theology of the Precious Blood is
also inextricably intertwined. This will strike
any thoughtful student of theology. Moreover,
as we have seen, the Precious Blood ministers
especially to the dominion and magnificence of
God; and the Church is the living vicegerent of
God’s dominion, and the Sacraments are a peculiar
and unparalleled emanation of his magnificence ;
and thus from another point of view the Precious
Blood is bound up with the Church and the Sacra­
ments. The instincts of the saints have united
the two devotions. Those, whose lives strike us
because of the active interest they took in the
outward politics and destinies of the Church, an in­
terest often at seeming variance with their manifest
cah to contemplation, are almost always found to

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

325

have had a peculiar devotion to the Precious Blood.
The Precious Blood magnifies the Church, and the
Church magnifies the Precious Blood. There was
once a narrow-minded heresy which denied that
the Precious Blood was shed for all, maintaining
that it was shed only for a chosen few. Like all
heresies which depreciate the grandeurs of Jesus,
it was an especially soul-destroying heresy ; and,
like all soul-destroying heresies, it clothed itself in
the garb of harshness, as if the pomp of rigor
was to give it tho venerable dignity of holiness.
We shall avoid falling into cognate errors about
the Church, if we remember its connection with
the Precious Blood. The object of the Church,
like the object of the Precious Blood, is univer­
sality. It is not a snare of God to overwhelm
poor souls with the insupportable responsibilities
of terrible privileges. It is an institution for the
express purpose of making salvation easier, shorter,
safer, more various, and more universal. Its ex­
clusiveness is concentration rather than exclusive­
ness. It is its surest and its swiftest road to being
universal. If the responsibilities of grace were
actually difficulties in the way of salvation, it is
plain that heathenism would be the best religion,
because it would be the least perilous. If the pro­
digality of God’s love be only a burden made the
more crushing by its beautiful excess, then God’s
gifts are snares to entrap his creatures, for the
future purpose of justifying his vengeance. If men
are less likely to be saved because they have more
to answer for, it is cruel to preach the Gospel, bar­
barous to invite them into the Church, treacherous
to allure them to the Sacraments. On this theory,
28

326

ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO THE rnEClOUS BLOOD.

the Church is part of the machinery of God’s vin­
dictive justice; and it is not life, as the Bible calls
it, but a greater likelihood of death, “to know God
and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.” This unfilial
depreciation of the Church is also a depreciation
of the grandeurs of Jesus, similar to that of
Jansenism, though coming by a different road and
from an opposite quarter. It will bo found to bo
accompanied with the same dieesteem of the Sacra­
ments, and to delight in the same parade of rigor.
But it is a theory which cannot consist with a life
of prayer, and which will wither before a growing
devotion to the Precious Blood. We must learn
the theology of the Church and of the Sacraments
in its union with the theology of the Precious
Blood. Theology will make our devotion more
devout; and devotion will make our theology more
true.
In treating of the devotion to the Precious Blood
we naturally begin with its history. In one sense,
and a very notable sense, the whole history of the
Church is a history of the devotion to the Precious
Blood ; for it is a history’ of the preaching of the
Gospel, and of the administration of the Sacra­
ments. It is the prominent devotion of dogmatic
theology ; for it is that upon which the doctrine of
redemption lays the greatest stress. But we are
speaking of it rather as a special and separate
devotion. It certainly seems to have existed as
such in the mind and heart of St. Paul, if we may
judge from the evident fondness with which ho
dwells upon it in his epistles, with reiterations
made on purpose, ns if they were grateful to bis
love. We may call him the doctor of the Precious

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

327

Blood, and the author of the special devotion to it.
It was in this devotion that the strength of his
apostolic instinct lay. It was the natural fruit of
the peculiar magnificence of his conversion and
vocation. Among the Fathers we have St. Chrysos­
tom in the East and St. Austin in the West, who
may be regarded as striking examples of a special
devotion to the Precious Blood. The zeal for
souls, which burned in St. Chrysostom, and the
enthusiasm for the liberalities of redeeming grace,
which was quite a passion with St. Austin, explain
the prominence of this devotion in their writings.
Among the saints, St. Gertrude’s revelations are
full of the sweetest and deepest things about the
Precious Blood. But the devotion seems to take
its modern form and consistence chiefly in St.
Catherine of Siena, whom we may justly term the
Prophetess of the Precious Blood.
*
She has singled
out this devotion with a more obvious predilection ;
and she has singled it out as a remedy needful for
her times, and one upon which, in her judgment,
sufficient stress had not been laid. We read of
Osanna of Mantua, that, so vehement was her
devotion to the Precious Blood, she could never
see any human blood without at once going into
an ecstasy. Coupled with her singular devotion to
the Person of the Eternal Word, St. Mary Magda* It should be remembered now that it once p’easel God to
save Italy by means of St. Catherine of Siena, and to restore
the Pope to Rome. By an increased devotion to the great
Dominicaness may we not help the Holy See. and the poor land
which does not know its own blessedness in possessing the
Chair of Peter and the Holy City ?

828

ΤΠΕ DEVOTION ΤΟ ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD,

lone of Pazzi had also a special devotion to tho
Prenons Blood.
The lives of the saints are of course replete with
instances of devotion to the Precious Blood; and
it would be impossible to enumerate them all.
Let it suffice to give some specimens. The Vene­
rable Maria Francesca of the Five Wounds, an
Alcantarine nun at Naples, was communicated by
St. Raphael out of the chalice, the priest missing
it at the time of mass, and observing a diminution
in the Sacred Blood. IV e can hardly doubt that
this grace was an answer to an intense desire, and
a reward for a special devotion to the Precious
*
Blood.
In that amazing and delightful repertory
of spiritual science, the Chronicles of the French
Carmelites, we read of Frances of the Mother of
God, that one day before Communion those words
of the Apocalypse were deeply imprinted on her
mind:—He hath loved us and washed away our
sins in his Blood. Presently our Lord said to her
interiorly, I have shed my Blood for your sins,
and now I come in Holy Communion to wash away
the stains which remain. When she had received
our Lord, she saw her soul all covered with Blood.f
In the life of the Venerable Anne of Jesus, the
companion of St. Teresa, we read that once in com­
municating she had her mouth sensibly filled with
very sweet Blood, which flowed from the Host;
and another time she bad a vision of the joy which
an infinite number of blessed souls have in that
Blood in heaven .J Marcello Benci often when he
* Vit·, p. 165.
t Chroniques, ii. 595-596.

t Vie, pp. 512-613.

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

329

served St. Philip’s mass, saw after consecration
the chalice full of Blood.
*
Margaret of Beaune,
the Carmelitess, is well known in the Church for
the new devotions to the Infant Jesus with which
she enriched it. Patrignani, in his life of her, tells
us that she so habitually saw the Blood of Jesus
in the souls of men, and saw them so beautified by
it, that she could not bear to hear any one blamed,
however justly; because of the reverence she felt
for wicked souls through the Blood of Jesus which
she beheld in them.f When Margaret of the Pas­
sion, Carmelitess at Rouen, was on her death-bed,
she said that the Blood of Jesus had been applied
to her, and that it had caused her a light and brief
pain, while it had filled her soul with God, and
infused into her a profound peace, and had par­
doned all her sins.| But it is useless to multiply
instances.
Another development of the devotion to the
Precious Blood has arisen from the possession of
relics, whether of what was once Precious Blood
or of miraculous Blood. These have been the
object, not only of a local worship, but of devout
pilgrimages, which have often led to signa) con­
versions of sinners. Beyrout, Bruges, Saintes,
Mantua, the imperial monastery of Weingarten,
which claimed to possess the portion of the Blood
of Mantua which had been given to the Emperor
Henry the Third, and the English monasteries of
Ashridge and Hailes, may be quoted as instances
of this kind of devotion.§
* Bacci, Vita di Filippo Neri, p. 82.
t Vita, p. 99.
J Chroniques »«■ 417
g See Haag Sanguis Christi in terra vindicatus, 1758.
28»

830

ΤΠΕ DEVOTION ΤΟ ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

There is no surer sign of tho growth of a special
devotion in the Church than the erection of a Con­
fraternity, representing and embodying it. There
was an ancient confraternity of the Precious Blood
at Ravenna. Another was erected in Rome in
the Pontificate ot Gregory XIII. which was con­
firmed by Sixtus V. It was afterward merged in
the confraternity of the Gonfalone. Its members
were priests, and took upon themselves tho obliga­
tion of preaching missions. But the pontificate of
Pius VII. was the great epoch in the history of
this devotion. An archconfraternity of the Pre­
cious Blood was set up at Rome in tho Church
of San Nicola in Carcere by Albertini, Bishop of
Terracina, Bonanni, Bishop of Noreia, and Gas­
pare del Bufalo, Canon of San Marco. The pope
enriched this confraternity, and also tho devotion
independently of the confraternity, with great
indulgences. Ho also granted indulgences to the
Passionists and to tho Missionaries of the Precious
Blood, in favor of this devotion. The Congrega­
tion of the Missioners of the Precious Blood was
founded in the same pontificate by Gaspare del
Bufalo, who was likewise the founder of a congre­
gation of religious women devoted to the worship
of the Precious Blood. He died at Rome in the
odor of sanctity on the 28th of December, 1837
It was in the church of his Missionaries of the
Precious Blood at Rimini, that tho miraculous
appearances took place a few years ago, in con­
nection with a picture of our Lady ; and this
fact is probably not without some supernatural
significance regarding the devotion to the Pre­
cious Blood.

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

331

I have not been able to trace satisfactorily the
rise of confraternities of the Precious Blood. But
their existence in Spain seems to betoken Rome
special devotion to the Precious Blood in that
country, which has been the nursery of so many
grandeurs of the faith, and which the super­
natural has so often chosen with a kind of predi­
lection as the theatre of its manifestations, as if it
were a kind of Western Palestine shutting up the
end of the Mediterranean, to pass the faith across
the broad Atlantic. In the life of Anne of St.
Augustine, the Carmelitess, it is said that she
always received with hospitality those w’ho went
about collecting alms for the confraternities of the
Precious Blood, which are spoken of as having
been “ erected in many places.” She died in
*
1624.
In the life of Brother Francis of the
Infant Jesus, a Carmelite lay-brother, mention is
made of a confraternity of the Precious Blood
in the street of St. Vincent at Valentia in 1601.f
But I have not been able to find any account
of these confraternities. These scattered notices
suffice to show that it was a popular Spanish
devotion.
Among the reforms of the Cistercianesses, there
arose a Congregation of Divine Providence, with
which St. Francis of Sales had to do, as it was
founded with his assistance, and by the Mother
de Ballon, a near relation of his. Out of thi
Congregation, and under the auspices of the
Mother de Ponçonas, sprang another Congrega­
tion, entitled Bernardines of the Precious Blood,
* Vita, p. 146.

t Vita, p. 826.

332

THE DEVOTION TO THE PREOIOOB

ulood.

which reached its full development in Paris in
1654. The strife between the Mothers de Ballon
and de Ponçonas occupies perhaps the least edifying chapter of monastic history, and it is only
alluded to here because of its connection with the
history of the devotion to the Precious Blood.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century,
Vincent of Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, founded
a military order of Redemptorists of the Precious
Blood, in order to guard the relic of the Precious
Blood in the cathedral of St. Andrew at Mantua.
Our own England was not without its place in the
history of this devotion. Richard of Cornwall,
brother of Henry the Third, brought from Ger­
many a large relic of the Precious Blood, and
founded a Congregation entitled the Congregation
of Good-Men, (Bonhommes,) in order to keep, to
watch, and to honor this relic. He placed twothirds of it in a monastery which he built at Ash­
ridge near Berkhampstead, in Buckinghamshire,
and the other third in a similar monastery at
Hailes, in Gloucestershire. The Bonhommes had
the reputation of being great mystics. They lived
under the rule of St. Augustin.
*
* See Helyot, Hist, des Ordres Rélig. under the words
Divine Providence, Précieux Sang, and Rédempteurs: Morigia, Istoriadi tutte le Religioni, lib. 1, cap. lx. : and Dugdale’s
Monastico», under Ashridge. Morigia gives the date of
Richard of Cornwall’s foundation as 1257 ; Tanner dates it
in 1288; Mr. Todd, who wrote the privately-printed history
of Ashndge for Lord Bridgewater, dates Richard, the first
rector, trom 127G. Thomas Waterhouse, the last rector, sur­
rendered the house to Henry the Eighth. The seal repre­
sented the Agnus Dei with the Earl of Cornwall’s lion
beneath it.

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

333

Leo ÎIÎ. enriched this devotion with indul­
gences. But the present pontificate of Pius IX.
has been another grand epoch in the history of
this devotion, similar to that of Pius VII. In this
pontificate the red scapular of the Vincentians has
been instituted, in consequence, it is said, of some
private revelation; and it has been indulgenced
by the Sovereign Pontiff. The confraternity of
the Precious Blood has been enriched with still
further indulgences; and similar confraternities
have been multiplied. One—it is believed the
first in England since those of Richard of Cornwall
in the middle of the thirteenth century—was
established in the Church of St. Wilfrid among
the Staffordshire hills in 1847, with the approval
of the bishop, and bad a great success. It was
afterward transferred to the church of the London
Oratory, and was re-erected by a papal rescript,
August 12, 1850. In this confraternity more than
thirty-eight thousand members have been en­
rolled, and one hundred and four religious com­
munities ; and the numbers are increasing daily.
Besides this, there are several other local confra­
ternities affiliated with it; and others which have
been independently erected at a subsequent date,
both in England and Ireland.
There was already a commemorative feast of
the Precious Blood in Lent. But when Pius IX.
returned to the Holy City from his exile at Gaeta,
he issued a decree to the whole world, instituting
a new feast of the Precious Blood on the first
Sunday of July. There is surely a great signi­
ficance in this decree. The Holy See has taken
the lead in this special devotion, and has thereby

834

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

immensely increased its popularity, the usual
result of authority. Moreover, the selection of
the devotion is of still greater significance. The
latest new devotion of the Church was the devo­
tion to the Sacred Heart. The choice has fallen
next upon the Precious Blood, which is as it were
a development of the devotion to the Sacred
Heart. So that there is a sort of historical or
chronological fitness in it. It seems part of
catholic piety to believe that, while these things
arc by no means supposed to lie within the gift
of infallibility, there is a peculiar guidance of the
Holy Spirit in them. It is he who as it were
writes the history of the Church. It is to his
instincts that we reverently refer all movements
which have to do with the spiritual life and devo­
tion of the faithful, and also the choice of the
times at which these movements are made. Such
movements are parts of a whole, steps toward an
end ; but the whole and the end only become visi­
ble to us when they have grown a portion of past
history. They mean much more than we see, or
than can be comprehended by one generation. The
circumstances, under which this decree of a new
feast of the Precious Blood was issued, stamp upon
the feast the same character of thanksgiving which
belongs to the feast of the Help of Christians. It
is an historical monument of a vicissitude of the
Holy See, a perpetual Te Deum for a deliverance
of the Vicar of Christ.
All devotions have their characteristics ; all of
them have their own theological meanings. We
must say something, therefore, upon the character­
istics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. la

TUE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

835

reality the whole Treatise has more or less illus­
trated this matter. But something still remains
to be said, and something will bear to be repeated.
We will take the last first. Devotion to the Pre­
cious Blood is the devotional expression of the
prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul.
St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A de­
vout study of his epistles would be our deliverance
from most of the errors of the day. He is truly
the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he
seems to have a special mission. Certainly his
mission to ours is very special. The very air we
breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel
shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the
world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to
pass that wrong theories among us are always
constructed round a nucleus of Pelagianism; and
Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able
to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is
the age of the natural as opposed to the super­
natural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused,
of the active as opposed to the passive. This is
what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat.
Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is
on the whole very captivating. It takes with the
young, because it saves thought. It does not
explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of
difficulties to be explained. It takes with the
idle; for it dispenses from slowness and research.
It takes with the unimaginative, because it with­
draws just the very element in religion which
teases them. It takes with the worldly, because
it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the
sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the

336

TUE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

controversial, because it is a short road and a
shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which,
while it admits that we have abundance of grace,
intimates that we are not much the better for it
It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes
the sovereignty of God odious by representing it
as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its
ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devo­
tion to the Precious Blood.
The time is also one of libertinage; and a time
of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical
logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out
God’s side in creation, and magnifies his inces­
sant supernatural operation in it, is the contro­
versy which infidelity can least withstand. Now,
the devotion to the Precious Blood docs this in
a very remarkable way. It shows that the true
significance of every thing is to be found in the
scheme of redemption, apart from which it is use­
less to discuss the problems of creation. It is a
revelation to us of the character of God as well as
of the work of Jesus. By bringing out the won­
ders of the Church and the energies of the Sacra­
ments, it insinuates into our hearts the love of the
sovereignty of God, together with a sense of per­
fect freedom and enlargement. By drawing out
into strong lights the most intimate human reali­
ties of the Incarnation, it meets the false spirit­
uality, which sometimes runs into heresy, about
the Sacred Humanity. More especially does it
war against that dangerous fastidiousness which
even believers sometimes feel, through want of
reverential discipline of mind, about the physical
mysteries of Jesus, especially those of his Passion.

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

337

This fastidiousness is a deep source of widelyspreading evil. It makes us ungenuine and pro­
fane. Reverence contemplates divine things, and
does not divert its thoughts from the physical
horrors in which, because of our sins, those divine
things have deigned to manifest themselves.
Magdalen holds Jesus by his feet, while the Gerasens entreat him to depart from their vicinity.
We lose much which we cannot afford to lose, by
any thing which makes our devotion to the Pas­
sion less faithful and less real.
Another characteristic of the devotion to the
Precious Blood is the way in which it brings out
and keeps before us the principle of sacrifice.
Sacrifice is peculiarly the Christian element of
holiness; and it is precisely the element which
corrupt nature dislikes and resists. There is no
end to the delusions which our self-love is fertile
enough to bring forth in order to evade the obli­
gation of sacrifice, or to narrow its practical appli­
cation. If it were enough to have correct views,
or high feelings, or devout aspirations, it would be
easy to be spiritual. The touchstone is mortifica­
tion. Worldly amusements, domestic comforts,
nice food, and a daily doing our own will in the
lesser details of life, are all incompatible with
sanctity, when they are habitual and form the
ordinary normal current of our lives. Pain is
necessary to holiness. Suffering is essential to the
killing of self-love. Habits of virtue cannot by
any possibility be formed without voluntary mor­
tification. Sorrow is needful for the fertility of
grace. If a man is not making constant sacrifices,
he is deceiving himself, and is not advancing in
W

29

838

THF. DEVOTION TO THE PllECIODS BLOOD.

spirituality. If a man is not denying himself
daily, he is not carrying tho cross. These are
axioms which at all times offend our weakness
and self-indulgence. But they are of peculiar im­
portance in times like these, when comforts and
even luxuries are almost universal. It is comfort
which is the ruin of holiness. Gayety, fashion,
ostentation, expensiveness, dissipation, frivolity,
and the other things which make up a London
season, are undoubtedly not the component parts
of sanctity. But in iny estimation they are far
less worldly, have far less of the poison of world­
liness in them, than the daily worship of comfort
which distinguishes the groat bulk of quiet people
in these days. Many are not attracted by balls,
parties, and similar fashions of amusement, and
therefore have no merit in keeping away from
them. But these same persons may set a great
value upon the uninterrupted course of their daily
comforts. They rise when they will, and gather
every convenience round their rising. Their meals
must be elegant, and pleasant, and faultless. Their
servant-machinery must go smoothly, anticipating
wants and keeping out of sight annoyances. Their
time must be for the most part at their own dis­
posal. They must have the pastime of amusing
conversation and of social intercourse; and they
must be able to satisfy their restlessness, when they
please, by change of air and scene and company.
There is generally a far greater intensity of worldliness in all this than in the pleasure-hunting
riot of a London season. Thus wo often find in
connection with this last, great graces, generous
aaenfices, unexpected mortifications, anil unkilkd

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

339

heavenly longings. But these are hardly ever
found in tho quiet unobtrusive worship of domestic
comfort. Yearly out of the dissipations of the
great world come grand vocations. Every London
season inscribes against its will some few glorious
conversions in the annals of grace, conversions
whose peculiar glory is the frankness of their
generosity. Nothing grand ever comes out of the
daily round of comfort. The heroic things of
Christian attainment have less chance in quiet
gardens and by pleasant river-sides than in the
ball-room or the court. There is a smoothness in
the mere lapse of a comfortable life which is fatal
to holiness. Now, all the forms, and images, and
associations, and pictures, and ideas, of the devo­
tion to the Precious Blood breathe sacrifice. Their
fragrance is the odor of sacrifice. Their beauty
is the austerity of sacrifice. They tease the soul
with a constant sense of dissatisfaction and distrust
with whatsoever is not sacrifice ; and this teasing is
the solicitation of grace. In time they infect us
with a love of sacrifice; and to gain this love of
sacrifice is to have surmounted the first ascent of
holiness, and to be breathing the pure air and yet
treading the more level road of the upper table-land
of the mountains of perfection. It is the very mis­
sion of the devotion to the Precious Blood to preach
a crusade against quiet sinless comforts. The Mass
is the compendium of the Gospel. It is a heresy in
doctrine to acknowledge the Sacrament and to deny
theSacrifice. Worldliness is guilty of a similar prac­
tical heresy with regard to holiness. It admits the
claims of all its obligations but one ; and that is the
obligation of sacrifice.

840

THF. DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

It is another characteristic of tho devotion to
the Precious Blood that it does not usurp tho placo
of other devotions, but by its own growth makes
more room for them. We cannot have an equal
devotion for all the things to which wo ought to
be devout. Wc have not breadth enough for it.
We are obliged to take things in detail. Calvary
on the whole turns our thoughts from Bethlehem,
and Bethlehem on the whole turns our thoughts
from Calvary. One mystery comes in the way of
another. Devotions stand in each other’s light.
There is no harm in this. It is a blameless imper­
fection. But it is a peculiarity of the devotion to
the Precious Blood that it does not interfere with
other devotions. On the contrary, it rather fosters
them. For it is not only a devotion by itself,
separate from other devotions, and with a spirit
of its own, but it is also a part of other devotions,
a particular form of other devotions, a shape which
many other devotions may assume. It mingles
in the most natural way with devotion to our
Blessed Lady. It is an additional splendor to
every one of her mysteries. It throws light upon
them. It brings her into the mysteries of Jesus.
It. has, as we shall see afterward, a peculiar con­
nection with the Immaculate Conception. It forms
in itself a separate devotion to our dearest Mother,
us the fountain of the Precious Blood, a devotion
ot the most inexpressible tenderness, a devotion to
her immaculate heart and sinless blood.
It is also a variety of devotion to the Passion.
It furnishes a point of view from which wo may
regard each separate mystery, while it is also a
mould in which we can fuse all the mysteries of

THE DEVOTION TO ΤΠΕ PRECIOUS BLOOD.

341

tho Passion into one. It is thus a unity of the
devotion to tho Passion as well as a variety of it,
besides being in itself an additional devotion to
the Passion. When wo wish to range the whole
Passion into one view, we find that simply to look
upon it as tho single mystery of the Passion, it is
too largo for us, and becomes vague. Now, vague­
ness is precisely what we must try to avoid in
devotion to tho Passion. Its virtue resides in its
vividness. Unless it be vivid, it will not betrue;
and unless it be true, it will not be reverent.
Thus wo have various devices by which we make
the Passion into one mystery and yot preserve its
details. Wo take the five trials of our Lord, or
the seven journeys, or the seven words, or the
five wounds. All these are excellent contrivances
of love. But the Precious Blood supplies us with
a more natural unity and also with a more vivid
detail.
Wo may say the same of devotion to Jesus
Risen. It is a devotion which we cultivate by
separate meditation on the beautiful apparitions
of those Forty Days. It is a devotion out of
which wo draw bright thoughts of God, the sun­
niest views of his adorable sovereignty, heavenly
yearnings, a more reverential and amazed devotion
to our Lady, an increased zeal for souls, and all
that ministers to the alacrity of holiness. Alacrity
is the characteristic of this devotion. But, when
we desire to make a unity of this devotion to Jesus
Risen, wo find it either in devotion to the Soul of
our Blessed Savior, or to his Precious Blood.
Dovotion to tho Precious Blood also supplies us
with an additional form of devotion to tho Blessed
*
20

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THE DEVOTION TO THE PBECIODS BLOOD

Sacrament. The devotion to the Precious Blood
in the chalice may be considered not merely as an
additional form of devotion, but as an additional
devotion, to the Blessed Sacrament; while the
special adoration of the Precious Blood, when we
are kneeling before the tabernacle, is a form of
devotion bringing much doctrine before us, and
enabling us better to comprehend the august
realities of that tremendous Sacrament.
But the closest alliance of the devotion to the
Precious Blood is with the devotion to the Sacred
Heart. The Precious Blood is the wealth of the
Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart is the symbol
of the Precious Blood ; yet not its symbol only,
but its palace, its home, its fountain. It is to the
Sacred Heart that it owes the joy of its restless­
ness and the glory of its impetuosity. It is to the
Sacred Heart that it returns with momentary
swiftness, and assails it, as a child assails his mother,
for fresh powers, for new vigor, and for the con­
tinuance of its unwearied impulses. The devotion
to the Precious Blood is the devotion which unveils
the physical realities of the Sacred Heart. The
devotion to the Sacred Heart is the figurative ex­
pression of the qualities, dispositions, and genius
of the Precious Blood,—only that the figure is itself
a living and adorable reality. The Sacred Heart
is the Heart of our Redeemer : yet it was not
the Sacred Heart which redeemed us. It was
precisely the Precious Blood, and nothing but the
Precious Blood, which was the chosen instrument
ol our redemption. It is this singular reality, this
unmated office, this unshared privilege, in which
the grandeur of the Precious Blood resides, a grand-

ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

343

eur which is also communicated to the devotion.
If it were not for this, the devotion to the Precious
Blood and the devotion to the Sacred Heart would
be but one devotion, two aspects of the same devo­
tion. The one would honor the actual workings
of the Human Nature of our dearest Lord, while
the other would magnify its inward dispositions,
its hidden sweetness, its tender characteristics,
its profuse liberalities, and its magnificent affec­
tions. One would have to do with operations, the
other with significances. One would be occupied
with processes, the other with consequences. The
one would be the meaning of the other, and a
commentary upon the other. So close is their
alliance. But the mysterious fact that the Blood,
and only the Blood, of Jesus, was the chosen price
of man’s redemption, and that it was only the
Blood, and the Blood shed to death, which did
actually redeem us, confers a distinctive majesty
upon the Precious Blood, in which our Lord’s Body
and his Soul only participate concomitantly.
Hence, while we commonly see that a devotion to
the Precious Blood and a devotion to the Sacred
Heart go together, we also see occasionally, and it
is an exception to the rule given above, that the
one does stand in way of the other, as if it were
only a different aspect of the other, more congenial
to the spiritual taste of the worshipper. But in
reality this seeming opposition is only an evidence
of the closeness of their alliance.
In connection with this harmony of the devotion
to the Precious Blood with other devotions, we
should mention another of its characteristics,
which is of much interest in a devotional point of

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THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

view. This is the way in which it links all tho
lives of Jesus into one. It does in devotion what
it does «also in reality. As it pervades the whole
Body of our Lord and is its life, so does it mould
into one all those lives, into which we are accus­
tomed to divide our Lord’s most blessed life, for
the purposes of devotion. Every thing about our
dearest Lord is so adorable, and at the same time so
full of manifold attractions, that love is compelled
to feed itself upon all the details which it can under­
stand. Thus the divisions, and subdivisions, and the
divisions of tho subdivisions, which give the theo­
logy of devotion so technical an appearance, are in
reality so far from being evidences of dryness that
they are the very work of the assiduity and faith­
fulness of love. Jesus in the Womb, and an Infant,
and a Boy, Jesus in his Ministry, in his Passion,
and his Risen Life, and in his Ascended Life, and
Jesus in his Sacramental Concealment, are all
different lives, and yet the same. His Nine Months
in the Womb are an epoch of the most amazing
mysteries, the pleasant food of deep and contem­
plative worship. His Infancy is not his Boyhood,
nor his Boyhood his Infancy. The Preacher in
the green fields is not the Sufferer upon Calvary,
—is not, and yet also is. The Risen Jesus haunt­
ing the seclusions of his dear Galilee is not the
Ascended Jesus whom the angels are welcoming
with triumphal pomp in heaven upon his Session
at the Father’s Right Hand. He is not the same,
and yet he is the same. Jesus in the miraculous
coverts of the deep-enfolding Sacrament, hiding
«
I,.rofound «eeasee of tho light thinness of
the Host, ia another Jeaua from any of the other

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344

seven; and yet it is the same dear Lord, so wondrously like himself in all the transmutations of
his love. What interminable regions of delight
are there not to traverse in these eight lives of our
Blessed Lord! His sacred Humanity seems to
grow to the dimensions of his divine immensity.
Any one of these lives is too big a world for the
mightiest scholar to fill with his intelligence.
What could St. Michael himself do with the very
shortest of them ? Even Mary does not fully
comprehend the beauty of her Son, nor has she
ever come to the last depth of his sweetness. Yet
we shall understand nothing of these lives sepa­
rately, unless we also realize them as one. This is
the secret charm of the Rosary. It simplifies
while it divides. It is a unity, while it is a variety
as well. It parts our Lord in the Joys, the Sor­
rows, and the Glories of his Mother, and five times
subdivides each of those three divisions ; and yet
it is all the one Jesus as Mary saw him, Mary’s
Jesus, Mary’s view of him, love of him, and worship
of him, which the complete Rosary brings before
us. The devotion to the Precious Blood performs
the same office differently to those eight lives; and in
this function lies that affinity to the Rosary which
those who practise it are not slow to discover.
The Precious Blood runs through all those lives,
and is the one human life of all of them. Yet it
is not a mere fanciful string upon which our devo­
tion may hang them for convenience’ sake, as if
they were so many beads. It is a living unity.
It runs them into one, and gives a special mean­
ing and imparts a special light to each. It is the

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ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS RI.OOD

one devotion to the Precious Blood eight times
multiplied by the thoughtfulness of love.
Its use ns n power of intercession is another
characteristic of the devotion to the Precious
Blood. It is a special office of our Saviour’s
Blood to plead. Its very existence is the mightiest
of prayers. Its presence in heaven is a power
which nothing but omnipotence exceeds. It was
the power by which God redeemed man. It is
the power by which man prevails with God. It
was the oblation which, when actually offered,
reconciled the offended Creator to his sinful crea­
tures. It was the oblation the more foresight of
which made God overflow the world with mercies,
and the imitation of which, in the blood of animals,
was once the acceptable religion of the earth. It
is the oblation, in spiritual union with which all
Christian oblations are efficacious now. It is the
oblation, the real repetition of which upon the
altar is the continuance of the world’s right to its
Maker’s forbearance. In this respect, also, the
devotion to the Precious Blood has a more lively
and intimate reality than other devotions. Wo
shall speak hereafter of the spirit of this devotion,
which wo shall see to bo a spirit of intercession.
We are speaking of it here as a power, or instru­
ment, of intercession. Many revelations from tho
other world testify to the peculiar devotion of the
Dead to the Precious Blood. Souls in Purgatory
have been allowed to appear and to tell how, in
their patient land of woo, it is Blood, and only
Blood, tho Blood of the Adorable Mass, which can
quench the flames. The pictures, which represent
the angels holding chalices to tho Woundfd Side

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347

of Jesus, while Mary prays beneath, and then pour­
ing those chalices into the fires of Purgatory,
simply represent this catholic truth as it exists in
tho sense of the faithful. Prayers for the conver­
sion of sinners naturally seek their efficacy in the
oblation of tho Precious Blood. Tho Precious
Blood shed itself for their conversion. Conver­
sion is its principal occupation upon earth. It is its
own work more than it is ours. Used for this pur­
pose, it is something more than intercession : it is
the doing of the work, at once the prayer and tho
answer to tho prayer. Prayer for the exaltation
of tho Church spontaneously flics to tho Precious
Blood ; for tho Church is the peculiar creation of
that Blood. Its own devotion is devotion to the
Church. It hastens therefore with promptitude to
overwhelm our petitions with an unexpected mag­
nificence of fulfilment. If we pray for the extir­
pation of heresies, it is the glory of the Church
which we are seeking. If we pray against schisms,
it is for tho peace of the Church that we are plead­
ing. If we pray for Christian kings, it is the free­
dom of the Church for which we are interceding.
If we pray for tho missions, it is the fertility of the
Church upon which we ask a blessing. If we pray
for the intentions of the Sovereign Pontiff, it is the
sweet Spirit-guided will of tho Church which wo
are assisting to its accomplishment. In all these
things wo are exercising devotion to the Church,
in which devotion the Precious Blood only waits
our invitation in order to join us with impatient
love. Hence we may name the devotion to the
Precious Blood the Apostolic Devotion.
There is yet another characteristic, which the

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THE DEVOTION TO THE PBB010U8 BLOOD.

history of this devotion suggests tp us, but which
'·' no means depends only upon the circumstances
ot its history,—its peculiar alliance with the Im­
maculate Conception. It is curious that both these
devotions have received great contemporary de­
velopments during the present pontificate. After
centuries of growth, first in popular piety and then
in the schools of theology, the Immaculate Con­
ception has received its crown in the glorious
definition of the dogma. This is the grandest
event of the nineteenth century. The devotion to
the Precious Blood has also had its indulgences
and privileges augmented, and a new memorial
feast instituted in its honor. The Pope's exile at
Gaeta was sweetened by his Encyclical in favor of
the Immaculate Conception. His return to Rome
was celebrated by the institution of the new feast
of the Precious Blood. The chief function of
both these mysteries is to illustrate redeeming
grace. They both preach redemption. The Pre­
cious Blood was the very instrument which re­
deemed the world. The Immaculate Conception
was the first, as it is the grandest, victory of re­
demption. Thus the Immaculate Conception is
the highest and the eldest work of the Precious
Blood. But there is more than this in the matter.
There is a sweet circle of cause and effect; now
the cause is effect, and now the effect is cause
For in the Immaculate Conception, which was its
choicest work, the Precious Blood first took its
rise. The Immaculate Conception was for the
sake of the Precious Blood. It was for the ineurmg of its purity and the protecting of its honor.

The Precious Blood raised up the mountains of the

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349

Immaculate Conception by the subterraneous heav­
ings of its fiery love, and then flowed down from the
summits as a sweet fountain for the gladdening of
the nations. The Immaculate Conception is there­
fore actually part of the devotion to the Precious
Blood. It is creation’s richest offering, made by
the queen of creatures, who thus in the jubilee of
her sinless dawn crowned the Precious Blood by
being crowned herself with its choicest crown.
It is no wonder, then, that we find in the two de­
votions, the devotion to the Precious Blood and the
devotion to the Immaculate Conception,a similarity
of spirit, a similarity of gifts, a similarity of graces.
But what is the unshared distinction of the devotion
to the Precious Blood ? Has it no solitary grandeur
of its own? It has one, which is not solitary, but
which it shares only with devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament. The distinctive privilege of the devo­
tion to the Precious Blood is that it has the pecu­
liar union of adoration and devotion which is the
spirituality of heaven. But let us look more
minutely into the spirit of this devotion, as wit­
nessed by the fruits which it produces in the soul.
First of all, it breeds in us an unexhausted loving
wonder of the common things of the faith. The
supernatural is not necessarily the same thing as
the wonderful. A love of the supernatural is a
higher thing than an appetite for the wonderful.
It is a great grace, a mother-grace containing
many graces. There are few graces more to be
coveted; for many reasons, but for this reason
especially, that it gives such fertility to the three
theological virtues. People are attracted by mira­
cles, by prophecies, by apparitions, by visions, and
30

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ΤΠΕ DEVOTION TO THE FREO1OUS BLOOD.

by strange heroisms of an inimitable Sanctity.
We ought to be attracted by them. God puts
them out as attractions. He meant them to at­
tract us. But, to the thoughtful and to the loving,
the common things of tin? faith are a hundred times
more attractive ; and for the most part they are in
themselves more wonderful. Graces and inspira­
tions, services and functions, beads and scapulars,
jubilees and indulgences, the common marvels of
prayer, and the commonplace blessings ofthe Church
—these are what we ought most to wonder at, most
to prize, and most to love. What is shared by the
greatest number of the faithful ought to be more
dear to us than what is shared by few or is singular
to ourselves. Surely it is a higher thing to be a
priest and to participate in the grand universal
priesthood of the Church, than to be a canon of a
chapter which may wear a bishop’s mitre or a
cardinal’s red. In religion what is common is
better than what is uncommon, because the com­
mon is universal ; and it is his highest gifts which
God gives to all men, and his peculiar gifts which
he gives to the few. This is one of God's ways, to
be observed and made much of:—his choicest
things are the most universal. Now, tho Pre­
cious Blood is the commonest of all supernatural
things, the most accessible, and the most universal.
It enters into all the commonest things of religion
with an unfastidious ubiquity ; and the devotion to
it partakes of the universality which belongs to
tself. In spirituality, wise mon value more and
more each passing year this esteem and love of the
common things of faith.
Here is another fruit of the spirit of this devo-

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351

tion to the Precious Blood. It is easier to love
God than to trust in him. In human things it is
not easy to doubt and yet to love; but in divine
things it is not uncommon. The greatest defect
in our worship of God is want of confidence in
him. Confidence is the genuineness of worship,
and the tranquil plenitude of love. What can
give us more confidence in God than the study of
the Precious Blood ? Who can doubt Jesus, when
he bleeds? Whether we look at the grandeurs of
the Precious Blood, or its liberalities, or its tender­
nesses, or its peculiarities, the result of our con­
templations is a steadfast childlike confidence in
God. Out of this comes generosity with God, that
other of our great wants, which we are always
mourning over and never taking the pains to
supply. It is more easy-to be generous when we
have come thoroughly to trust the object of our
love. Moreover, we catch generosity, by a kind
of infection, from the prodigality of the Precious
Blood. We can hardly live in fire, and not grow
hot ourselves. The excess of love betrays itself in
unconscious imitation. We shall do great things
for God, if we are conversant all day with the
groat things which God has done for us.
Another gift of this devotion is a vehement and
intelligent hatred of sin. It is useless for the
hatred to be intelligent unless it be also vehement,
and worse than useless for it to be vehement unless
it be intelligent as well. In these days what our
loyalty to God most needs is sternness to the dis­
loyal. This should be shown first and foremost to
ourselves. Whom do we know to be so disloyal as
ourselves? What resistance to grace, what con-

3Ô2

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

tempt of warnings, what neglect ofinspirations, what
slovenliness of performance, make up our lives ! If
we hated sin, as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly,
manfully, we should do more penance, wo should in
diet more self-punishment, we should sorrow for onr
sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowningdis­
loyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, tho
very loathsomest of things which God looks down
upon in this malignant world. Yet bow little do wo
understand of its excessive hatefulness ! It is the
polluting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all
impurities. Yet how light we make of it! Wo
look at it, and are calm. We touch it, and do not
shudder. We mix with it, and have no fear. We
see it touch holy things, and we have no sense of
sacrilege. We breathe its odor, and show no signs
of detestation or disgust. Some of us affect its
friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt.
We do not love God enough to be angry for his
glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably
truthful for their souls. Having lost the touch,
the taste, the sight, and all the sense of heavenlymindedness, we can dwell amidst this odious plague,
in imperturbable tranquillity, reconciled to its foul­
ness, not without some boastful professions of
liberal admiration, perhaps even with a solicitous
show of tolerant sympathies. Why are we so far
below the old saints, and even the modern apostles
of these latter times, in the abundance of our con­
versions ? Because we have not the antique stern­
ness. Wo want the old Church-spirit, the old
ecclesiastical genius. Our charity is untruthful,
because it is not severe; and it is unpersuasive’
because it is untruthful. We lack devotion to

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353

truth as truth, as God’s truth. Our zeal for souls
is puny, because we have no zeal for God’s honor.
We act as if God were complimented by conver­
sions, instead of trembling souls rescued by a
stretch of mercy. We tell men half the truth,
the half that best suits our own pusillanimity and
their conceit; and then we wonder that so few are
converted, and that of those few so many aposta­
tize. We are so weak as to be surprised that our
half-truth has not succeeded as well as God’s
whole-truth. Where there is no hatred of heresy,
there is no holiness. A man, who might be an
apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the
want of this righteous abomination. We need St.
Michael to put new hearts into us in these days of
universal heresy. But devotion to the Precious
Blood, with its hymning of the Church and its
blazoning of the Sacraments, will give us Michael’s
heart and the craft to use Michael’s sword. Who
ever drew his sword with nobler haste, or used his
victory more tenderly, than that brave archangel,
whose war-cry was, All for God?
The Precious Blood is His Blood, who is espe­
cially Uncreated Truth. It isllis Blood who came
with his truth to redeem souls. Hence, love of
souls is another grace, which comes from the spirit
of this devotion. I wish “the love of souls” were
words that were not so shortly said. They mean
so much that we should linger over them, in order
to imbibe their sweetness, perhaps also their medi­
cinal bitterness as well. A volume would hardly
say all that wants saying upon this matter. In all
ages of the Church a zeal for souls is a most neces­
sary grace; and this is hardly an age in which it
X

30·

854

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

is loss necessary than usual. Alas! it is a rare
gift, incredibly rare, rare even among us priests,
and a gift unfortunately dishonored more than
most gifts by base counterfeits and discreditable
impostures. Of all things that can be named, the
love of souls is perhaps the most distinctively
catholic. It seems to be a supernatural sense,
belonging only to the Church. There are several
classes of saints, classes divided from each other
by wide discrepancies of grace, and a dissimilitude,
almost an incompatibility, of gifts. Yet the love
of souls is an instinct common to all saints of
whatever class. It is a grace which implies the
accompaniment of the greatest number of graces
and the exercise of the greatest number of virtues.
It is the grace which irreligious people most dis­
like; for even sin has its instinct of self-preserva­
tion ; and it is a grace which is peculiarly obnoxious
to the worldly. It is a gift, also, which requires an
unusually fine spiritual discernment; for it is always
and everywhere the harmony of enthusiasm and
discretion. Natural activity, vulgar emulation, the
bustle of benevolence, the love of praise, the habit
of meddling, the over-estimate of our own abilities,
the hovheadedness of unripe fervor, the obstinacy
of peculiar views, the endless foolishnesses of indocile
originality,—all these things prepare so many de­
lusions for the soul, and so multiply them by com­
bining in varieties, that the gift of counsel and the
virtue of prudence, as well as the cool audacity
of an apostle, are needed for the exercise of this
love of souls. It is also a very laborious grace,
wearing the spirit, fatiguing the mind, disappointmg the heart. This is the reason why in so many

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

354>

persons it is a short-lived grace. It is a part of
almost everybody’s fervor, while it is part of the
perseverance of very few. It is a grace which
never grows old, never has the feelings of age, or
the repose of age, or the slowness of age. Hence
many men cast it aside as a thing which belongs to
youth, as if it were a process to be gone through
and then there were an end of it. The soul of an
apostle is always youthful. It was mature in its
young prudence; and it is impetuous in its gray­
haired zeal.
But, if it is a grace hard to persevere in, it is
one which gives marvellous unity and consistency
to a man’s life, and ultimately crowns it with
inevitable and enviable success. If there is nothing
in which work is harder, there is nothing in which
success is more certain, than the love of souls. It
is a perfect combination of spiritual nobilities. Of
all single expressions of the Sacred Heart it is the
broadest. It unites, as nothing else does, charity
to God and man. On the one hand it seems intui­
tively to understand God, and on the other hand
to have a supernatural attractiveness about it,
which crowns it a king of men. It is a grace
which makes a man surprisingly genial and inveterately happy. It delivers the heart from jealousy,
rivalry, and all littleness; and by this especially
do we know it from its counterfeits. Moreover, it
works little miracles of its own; for it increases a
man’s intellectual power, at least in its own direc­
tion. This is a beautiful sight, and one of those
palpable things of grace, which seem to supersede
faith by sight,—the beholding of the grand things
accomplished, and the broad regions covered, by

356

THE DEVOTION TO THE TRECIOUS BLOOD.

mediocrity of talent when raised above itself by­
zeal for souls. It lives equally in action and contemptation, and thereby supplies for a number of
omissions in the spiritual life. It imparts a de­
lightful simplicity to the character, sobering all
gayety, and enlivening all seriousness. It is an
emanation of apostolic grandeur, a touch of the
vocation of the Apostles whose calling was above
all others in the world, as their sanctity was special
among other sanctities. It impregnates tho soul
with a strong personal love of Jesus, and is a par­
ticipation in the adorable communicativeness of
God. What a grace is this to possess! It is the
grace which perhaps of all others is tho most
direct, natural, and inevitable grace of the Devo­
tion to the Precious Blood.
In close connection with this grace we should
name, as another fruit of the spirit of this devo­
tion, a great devotion to the Sacraments. But this
has been sufficiently dwelt upon in the course of
the Treatise. A zeal for souls is naturally given
to magnify the Sacraments. An apostolic man
knows of them by experience. He has seen tho
magic of their operations. He has seen how they7
can lie in the bosom of corruption, like God's
amulets, and charm away the vicinity, the relies,
the associations, the roots, the attractions, of sin.
He Ims handled their divine realities, and worships
lather what he sees than what he knows of by the
hearing of faith. But a great devotion to the
Sacraments is not only an inseparable accompani­
ment of zeal for souls: it is also an antidote against
all that is worldly, material, and anti-supernatural
in the tendencies of the present day. It will in

THE DEVOTION TO THE DRECIOVS BLOOD.

357

crease in us, in proportion as we grow in devotion
to the Precious Blood.
The effect of this devotion upon onr devotion to
our Blessed Lady may well be named as one of its
graces, one of the revelations of its spirit. It
makes our devotion to her an integral part of our
devotion to Jesus. It makes the two devotions
one. It draws her into the scheme of redemption
so intimately, and at the same time with such
splendors of separate exaltation, that the very
highest language of the saints about her becomes
easy to us, and is the only natural expression of
our inward love. To be enthusiastic, our love of
Mary only needs to be theological. The devotion
to the Precious Blood clothes her with a new glory.
It makes Mary magnify Jesus, and Jesus magnify
Mary. It causes her individual mysteries to shine
forth like stars, the Precious Blood forming the
clearness of the purple night in which their pecu­
liar brightness is more visible and more distinctive.
He that can find another point of view, from which
our dear Lady seems greater than before, has got
a new means of sanctification; for he has acquired
a new power of loving God : and the devotion to
the Precious Blood is full of such points of view.
The devotion to the Precious Blood must also
obviously impart to us a special love of the Sacred
Humanity. It admits us into the most secret
recesses of our Lord’s Human Life. Like its own
reiterated pulsations, each one of its mysteries
urges upon our faith and love the droadest realities
of his Created Nature, while at the same time it
seems to lay open before us the Hypostatic Union,
aud to illustrate its strength. Our Lord is God;

358

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

nnd we all worship him as such. But there is a
peculiar adoration of his Divinity, which comes
from a special love of his Humanity. We would
fain love God as ho loves us. But there is a ten­
derness in his love of us, which we dare not return
because of his infinite majesty. Yet somehow
there is something in the particular adoration of
our Lord’s Godhead arising from special devotion
to his Humanity, which insinuates this element of
tenderness into our adoration without diminishing
the sacred terror of our self-abasement. This ele­
ment is one of the peculiar gifts of the devotion to
the Precious Blood.
One thing more. Where Jesus is, all honors and
all glories and all loves gather round the Father.
Who can doubt, then, but that the devotion to the
Precious Blood is also a devotion to the Eternal
Father? Think of the immensity of the Father’s
love for that redeeming Blood. Out of all possible
creations he chose it alone for the price of our
redemption. Only its value could enrich the glory
of the Creator, which the creature’s sin had striven
to impoverish. Only from its victory would he
condescend to receive back the dominion of which
he had been despoiled. Only its fulness could
satisfy the claims of all his outraged perfections.
Only its sweetness could make universal peace in
heaven and on earth. It was to the Person of the
Father, by appropriation, that this dear price of
our souls was paid. Nay, our devotion to the
Blood of his Son is only an imitation of the
Father's complacency therein. It is his joy, and
his devotion. To join him in this devotion to the
Blood of his Son is in truth to practise a distinct

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BI.OOD.

359

devotion to himself. Devotion to the Eternal
Father! this is the sweet grace to covet. Show
us the Father, said Philip to his Lord, and it is
enough for us.
Now, reader, our task is done, and yet we
would fain linger over the subject. It so fasci­
nates us that any conclusion we can make seems
to be abrupt. The more we say, the more appears
to remain unsaid. New glories of the Precious
Blood are constantly coming into view, and new
abysses opening to our contemplation. So it is
with all divine things. They clothe themselves
in the changefulncss of divine love. They shine
with a divine light upon them, and therefore their
brightness is always new. They borrow the beauty
of God, and so they satisfy our love by making it
still more insatiable. We feel that all that has been
said has been unworthy of the Precious Blood.
Indeed, it has been unworthy even of our own
conceptions of it. But what love has taught to
one soul may waken the chords of love in others.
What has been a light to one mind, and a joy to
one heart, may carry light to other minds and joy
to other hearts. May it be so, and Jesus more
loved and God more glorified !
Let us recapitulate. We began with reflecting
on the mystery of the Precious Blood, because all
devotion starts best with doctrine. The incre­
dibilities of divine love become more credible
when we have learned them first as dogmas. It
was also the more necessary to begin with doc­
trine in the case of a devotion which claims to be
an adoration also. We then turned from God to
man, and strove to form a right estimate of the

360

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD,

Precious Blood by studying from various points
ot view our extreme need of it, and our immea­
surable •wretchedness without it. We then tra­
versed its empire, learned its character by studying
the method of its government, and judged of its
magnificence by the splendor of its dominion.
Our next step was to unfold its chronicles. We
found there a whole revelation of God, and much
of the secret history7 of his eternity. We dis­
covered there our own place in creation by dis­
covering our place in the procession of the Pre­
cious Blood. From its history we passed to its
biography, to that notable characteristic of it
which especially reveals its spirit,—its prodigality.
We saw then how God’s prodigalities arc not
excesses, but most orderly magnificences; and also
how our poverty is so extreme that we can only
live on from day to day by being economical of
God’s most exuberant liberalities. As we had
begun with doctrine and adoration, we have had
to end with practice and devotion. The history,
the characteristics, and the spirit of the devotion
to the Precious Blood have been the concluding
subjects of our reflections. We have thus consi­
dered the Precious Blood as a Doctrine, a Neces­
sity, an Empire, a History, a Divine Prodigality,
and a Devotion. In all these six aspects of it we
have found it continually disclosing certain affini­
ties, running into certain subjects, illuminating
certain depths, and connecting itself with certain
mysteries, and all this with so much repetition
and so much constancy that we cannot believe its
sympathy with them to be accidental. It beepenke rather a divine law, and is a disclosure

THE DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

361

of the Divine Mind. These cognate subjects with
Ü e Precious Blood are three in number. They
a>e first the Magnificence of God's Dominion,
secondly the Church, and thirdly the Sacraments.
An we grow in devotion to the Precious Blood,
the sovereignty of God will become more dear to
us, and clearer as it grows more dear. Our
loyalty to the Church will become more and more
a part of our spiritual life, and more and more
a sanctifying exercise of the special virtue of reli­
gion. Our faith and joy in the Sacraments will
be continually increasing, and our devotion to
them will be at once our shelter and our shield
from the dangers which at this day threaten both
the minds and hearts of the faithful, while our
more reverent fréquentation of them will augment
our union with God and make us saints. Such is
devotion to the Precious Blood. It is a glory and
an ornament to the Church. It is the life of the
living, and the thirst of the Holy Dead. It is the
song of angels. It was the light of all Mary's
darkness, and the jubilee of all her woes. It was
the device of the Holy Ghost, and the devotion
of his love. It was the devotion and singular
possession of Jesus himself It was the devotion,
the choice, and the complacency of the Eternal
Father.
What more can wo say? Sweet worship of the
Blood of God ! a worship with so many of man's,
peculiar rights in it, embracing all theology in
itself, and then turning all its vast theology into
tenderly triumphant song! Dear Fountain, that
rises in the heart of God’s human Mother, and
flows down over the glorified souls of men into the
31

362

THF. DEVOTION TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD.

Bosom of the Eternal Father, while those count­
less souls, like the pebbles of the stream, make
everlasting music as it flows ! It is earth’s beati­
tude to feel that tho Precious Blood is bearing us
onward into that adorable Abyss of Love. It is
heaven’s jubilee to be sinking evermore through
that same Blood in the unfathomable depths of
the Uncreated Bosom of the Father. All glory
and all worship bo to that mysterious River of
the City of God, whose Spirit-fashioned streams
are carrying us this hour with such breathless
swiftness to our home,—our home with the
Mortal Mother and the Unbcginning Father of
the Eternal Son I

INDEX
Abu, 1Π.
Absolution. 290.
Actions, outward, Hable to misappre­
hension, 29; supernatural, of tho
Church, 300.
Adoration of the three kings, 186.
Age, spirit of the, evil influence of,
164.
Agee cf the world, 28.
Agony, the, 265.
Alacrity, 341.
Almsgiving, whence it comes, 67 ;
what it would be without faith, 71 ;
of obligation, 73.
Angela B. of FcHgno, 217.
A ngels, creation of the, 18.175 ; graces
of, 25 ; their worship of the Precious
Blood, 34; created In a state of
grace, 101; multitudo of, 117 , 252;
glory of, 160 ; full of. 176 ; guardians
of the Precious Blood during the
three days, 193, 2j7 ; ministers of it
in purgatory, 297 ; mirrored in tho
Church, 312.
Anno of the Cross, 208.
Anne of Jesus, 328.
Anno of St. Augustine, 381.
Antichrist, times of, 19'.», 230.
Apostates, what makes them, 132.
Apostasy, the general, 230.
Ascension, the, 195.
Ashridge, monastery of, 329, 332.
Attributes of God, 95; devotion to
them, 319; fruits of devotion to,
322 ; mystery of, 323.
Attrition, 87.
Authority of tho Church, by whom
hated, 155.

Barbarinns less wicked than th·
civilized, 63.
Baptism, 86, 135, 136; character oC
149 ; the application of the Preclows
Blood, 289.
Beatitude, natural, 86.
Beauty of the Church, 314.
Ballon de, Mother, 331.
Benci, Marcello, 328.
Blessed, the, rejoice in the vision at
tho Precious Blood, 237.
Bloodsheddings, the seven, 260.
Blood, the Precious, 11 ; the source of
salvation, 14, 342; Eternal, 17 ; in­
fluences of, 23-25; worship of, 31 ;
during the Passion, 33, 120, 286; in
the chalice, 35, 242; infinity of its
worth, 37, 115; the shedding of it
free, 38, 242; Is invisible, 38 ; how
assumed. 39; God’s dally gift. 44;
reveals the character of God, 45, 99 ;
prodigality of its shedding, 47, 84 ;
a voice which God hears, 50; neces­
sity of, 52; hinders millions of sin%
62; the protection of the poor, 67;
tho cause of all temporal blessings,
69; everywhere accessible, 69; ope­
rations of, infallible, 91 ; unmerited,
93; unimaginable, 94; destiny of,
changed by sin, 98,108; inseparable
from the life of God, 99; empire of,
100; glories of, 106; relations of,
to Creation, 108; and to the Incarna­
tion, 107 ; reinstated tho dominion
of God, 101,109; how spoken of in
the lioly Scriptures, 111, 115; con­
verts, 120 ; work of, incessant, 125;
builds up the Church, 129; inatru-

363

864

INDEX.

mrntfi of, 133; flnws through tho
Sacraments, 142, 16« ; effect of on
hell, 153 ; on pnrgntory, 258, 297,
847 ; aungby the angels, 161 ; flowed
front tho heart of Mary, 162; ap
peases the anger of God, 163; in
the Unity of God, 164; an nnbeginning procession of created things,
174; t he beginning of creation, 176;
in thq fall, 179; in the flood, 181;
among tho patriarcha, 182; in the
Immaculate Conception, 183; in
Bethlehem, 185; in the desert, 187 ;
in Nazareth, 187 ; in Cann, 189; in
tho Holy Land, 189; on Olivet and
Calvary, 191 ; in tho charge of the
angels, 193, 293 ; on Ascension day,
195; on the day of Pentecost, 196;
in Borne, 197 ; tlirough tho world,
199; at the last day, 199; in tho
mind of God, 204; before the In­
carnation, 206; in adoration, 212 ;
life of, a great secrecy, 214; life of,
on earth, 216; in conversion, 220,
225 ; life of, in tho Church, 226; joy
of tho blessed, 237 ; in tho Sacred
Heart, 247, 342; in the chalice, 239;
conquered back creation, 254; exu­
berance of, 256 ; in the circumcision,
262; in the Agony, 266; in tho
Scourging, 270; in the Crowning,
275; on the way of the Cross, 276 ;
in the Crucifixion, 281 ; in the
piercing of the Sacred Heart, 285 ;
in baptism, 289 ; in Absolution, 290 ;
in the Sacraments of Marriage, 291 ;
of Orders, 292; of Confirmation,
294; of Extreme Unction, 294; of
the Eucharist, 296; in the Papacy,
298; Extra-sacramental effects of,
209; History of, 326; the most com­
mon of all supernatural things,
350.

Cain, «0. 88.
Cana, tho marriage-feast of, 188.
Captiousneas, 132.
Catherine, 8t^ of Siena, 327.
Centurion, tho, lance of, 286.
Change, none in God, 97, 110.
Character, Sacramental, 140, 257 ;
Eternal, 149.
Charity, Christian, 72
more than
philanthropy, 81.
Child-murder, 289.
Chalice, reveals character, 103.
Church, relation of, to the world. 30;
blessedness of being in the, 60 ; the
work of the Precious Blood, 130,134,
324; power of, in relation to tho
Sacraments, 145; palace of the Pre­
cious blood, 226; not to be criti­
cized, 231 ; to be feared, 232; devo­
tion to the, 309 ; a special creation,
310; how she appears to God, 311;
grandeur of, 313; vicegerent of
God’s dominion, 324.
Circumcision, the, 261; what it was
to St. Joseph, 263 ; to our Lady, 264.
Cities, types of heaven, 180.
Civilization increases sins, 63 ; be­
comes a tyranny, 69 ; perishes with
the world, 313.
Column of the Scourging, 271.
Comfort of good people, 339.
Communion, grace of, 147, 257.
Conception, the Immaculate, 40,123,
183; definition of, 348.
Confidence in God, 351.
Confirmation not prefigured in the
old law, 135 ; character of, 149 ;
effects of, 294.
Confraternity of the Precious Blood,
330 ; in England, 333.

Congregation of the Missioners of the
Precious Blood, 330.
Consolations of philanthropy, 75.
bonhommes, 332.
Controversy, 30.
books of devotion, occasionally exag­ Conversion of St. Paul, 121
gerated. 256.
Conversion, 116; resembles creation,
Boulier, Mother Anne Seraphim, 17.
118,124 ; operation of tho Precious
Bufalo del, Gaspare, 330.
Blood, 221 ; agencies of, 222

INDEX.
Corruption of mon, IMI.
Creative love, expression of. 20.
Creation, 17; in what sense eternal,
17 ; how to be viewed, 23, 85 ; free,
98, 119, 122 ; instantaneous, 117,
118.
Crown of thorns, 273.
Cross, the, 278.
Crucifixion, the, 271.

3β5

love of the Sacred Ilnmanity, »T;
is a devotion to the Eternal rather,
358.
Diplomacy, 131.
Diacoutent, 232.
Doctrine of tho Sacramenta the touchstone of all the theology of the day,
228.
Dfile, Carmelite convent at, 208
Dominion of God, 101 ; reinstated by
the Precious Blood, 10». 254; mi­
nistered to by the Preclone Blood,
324.
Dying without religion, 77.

Days, the Six, 177.
Dead, devotion of the, to the Precious
Blood, 346.
Decrees, the divine, 172.
Deliverance from sin, when it comes,
10.
Earnestness, 235 ; dependent on faith,
Delusion, sign of, 320.
303.
Depreciation of the Church, 325.
Earth, creation ofi 21; special glory
Destitution of the world without
of, 21 ; changes of. 129 ; special
grace, 55.
station of the Preciou· Blood, 177.
Devotion to tho Sacraments, neces­ Eden,179.
sary, 142; why, 154; perils it wards Education helps men to sin, 63.
off, 155 ; to the Church, 228, 307 ; Elevability of Che creature, 136.
combines all interests, 318 ; to tho Emery, of St. Sulpice, on the doctrine
attributes of God, 319.
of bell, 158.
Devotions, 316, 334.
Empire of our Lord, established by
Devotion to the Precious Blood, 326,
the Precious Blood, 116.
335 ; destroys Pelagiunism, 335 ; Empires, human, of less importance
and libertinage, 336 ; brings out
than one soul, 221.
the principle of sacrifice, 337 ; does Epochs of life, 27.
not usurp the place of other devo­ Espousals, the divine, 186 ; day of, 272.
tions, 340; is a variety of devotion Eternity, 17 ; hard to realise. 51.
to the Passion, 340; an additional Eucharist, sacm ment of the, might
form of devotion to the Blessed Sa­
have been instituted, if Adam had
crament, 342; unveils the phy­
not sinned, 108 ; what it is. 134,136,
sical realities of the Sacred Heart,
136; the great laboratory of the
342; comprehends the life of our
Precious Blood, 296.
Lord, 344; has an affinity with that Exchisiveness of the Church, 325.
of the Rosary, 345 ; has a power of Extra-sacramental effecta of the Pre­
intercession, 316; its peculiar alli­
cious Blood, 298.
ance with the Immaculate Con­
ception, 348; begets love of the Face, the, of Jesus, 190.
common things of faith, 349; begets Failure, the most universal unhsppi
ness, 70.
confidence, 351 ; creates hatred for
sin, 351; begets a love of souls, Fall, the, 85; consequences of, 86;
353 ; a great devotion to the Sacra­
effects of, on creation, 179; wherv
ments, 356; effect of, ou devotion
the remedy of, precisely aonsteta
to our Lady, 867 ; imparts a special
214.

366

INDEX.

FMtidinuanesa, 336.
Father. Eternal, devotion to the, 358.
Fear of the Church, 232.
First fruits of creation, 157.
Flight, the, into Egypt, 187.
Flood, the, 181.
Forms of the Sacraments, 141.145,
*
France
of tho Mother of God, 209,
215, 328.
Francia of the Infant Jcsns, 331.
Francis, St., of Sales, 331.
Fruits of devotion to tho Precious
Blood, 349.
Garden of the Agony, 205.
Gertrude, St., 327.
Ghost, the Holy, 120; fertility of, 127.
Gladness of salvation, 11.
Glories of tho Precious Blond, 95.
God, presence of, 34, 52; life of, 95;
simplicity of, 90; dominion of, 101;
magnificence of, in the Sacraments,
148; revealed more intimately in
the Sacraments, 154; vastness of,
211; secrecy of, 214; magnificence
of, 242, 247, 250; infinity of, 254.
Grace of the Sacraments, 140; never
exhausted, 148.
Grace, all to be accounted for, 257.
Greek civilization, 70.
Ground, lowest, 307.

Holiness, a restraint, 244; cannot
exist where there is no hatred of
heresy, 353.
Horrors of unrestrained sin, 65.
Host, bleeding of tho, 43.
Humanity, exaltation of the Sacred,
194.
Hypostatic Union, 39, 237 ; never in­
terrupted, 286.
Ideas of God, 27.
Ignatius, St., 40.
Images in the mind, use and abuse
of, 168.
Immutability of God, 110.
Incarnation, mystery of, 18 ; how
affected by sin, 22 ; affects all things,
69; unmerited, 94; not the conse­
quence of sin, 102 ; part of the idea
of creation, 107.
Indulgences, whence they come, 207 ;
ministers of the Precious Blood,
224.
Infallibility, gift of, 223.
Infancy of Jesus, 209.
Infinity of God, 254.
Influence of the Precious Blood on
states and policies, 219.
Innocents, the Holy, 157.
Intention, doctrine of, 149.
Invalidity of Sacraments, 291.

Jacob's well, 266.
Hailes, monastery of, 329, 332.
Happiness of sinners, 12; whence it Jansenism, 230, 325, 326.
Jealousies of scientific men, 307.
comes, 82.
Heart, the Sacred, 31 ; emptied of the Jesus Risen, devotion to, 341.
Precious Blood, 192; filled withit, Joseph, St., greatness of his sanctity,
104; silence of, 186; at the circum­
238; in the Agony, 267; piercing
cision, 263.
of, 284; symbol of the Precious
Blood, 342.
Joy, all, comes from tho Precious
Heathen, state of the, 57 ; influenced
Blood, 238.
by the Precious Blood, 128.
Joy, human, purified by the Sacra­
Hell, fires of, 140; doctrine of, 158 ; the
ments, 152.
descent into, 192.
Judgment, day of, 54,199.
Heresy of society, 238 ; effects of, on Jurisdiction, in the Sacraments, 145;
converts, 232 ; the ein of sins, 352.
of the Church, the law of the Pre­
Heretics, misery of, 59, 92.
cious Blood, 159, 297.
I Judging the Church, 231.
Hierarchy, the, 197.

INDEX.

367

154, 105; hold· sway over the Pre­
Juellflcntion, operation of the Pre­
cious Blood, 162.
cious Blood, 220.
Mary of Agreda, 48.
Mary
Magdalen. St., of Panai, 327.
Kingliness of tho Papacy, 298.
Mass. 35 ; daily effects of, 297.
Kings of creation, 307.
Maternity, the divine, merited by th·
Kiss of the Father and the Son, 129.
Precious Blood, 162.
Matter, creation of, 175.
Laxity and rigor, 229.
Matrimony, the sacrament of. 135.
Law in God, 247.
Meditation on the crucifixion. 281.
Liberty of tho creature, 102.
Merits, vitality of. 224.
Liberty of God, 248.
Libertinage, 330.
Michael, B. of Florence, 209.
Life of tho Precious Blood, 203 ; one Middle Age, the time of deception·»
of joy, 213; of sorrow, 214.
132.
Literature, helpless, 10; influenced by Mind of God, 171.
tho Precious Blood, 220; perishes Miracle, the first, 189.
with tho world, 313.
Miracles compared with the Sacra­
ments. 144.
Lombard, Peter, on the doctrine of
hell, 158.
Miraculons Blood, 42.
Loss, the three days, 188.
Missionaries, 290.
Louisa of Jesus, 209.
Misery of life without God, 71.
Love of the Church, necessary, 234.
Mortification, 337.
Love of Jesus, must grow, 53.
Mysteries in God. 173.
Loveliness of Joos, 14.
Mystery of the Precious Blood, 15.
Love of souls, 353, 355.
Loyalty tn tho Church, 233.
Napkin of Veronica, 269, 277.
Luxury, 338.
Nations, diversities οζ 28.
Nativity of our Lady, 184.
Magnificence, 243.
Natural goodness, too much thought
Magnificence of God, represented in
of. 70.
the Sacraments. 148; in the Pre­ Naturalism, 335.
cious Blood, 242; the fountain of Nature and grace. 60.
salvation, 245.
Nature, created, 101.
Malcontents, what makes them, 132.
Necessity of God's magnificence, 253,
Man, degeneracy of, 181.
258.
Manna, 26.
N umerousness of sin, 300.
Mantua, relics of the Precious Blood
at, 329, 332.
Oblations of the Precious Blood, 397,
Margaret of Beaune, 329
340.
Margaret of tho Blessed Sacrament, Orbs of heaven, 20, 247 ; numbers of,
211.
'252 ; order οζ 302.
Margaret of the Passion, 329.
Order, sacrament of, 134. 135 ; cha­
Maria Francesca V. of the Five
racter of, 149 ; earthly heart of th·
Precious Blood, 293.
Wounds, 328.
Marriage. Sacrament of, 291.
I Order of all things. 247.
Martyrdom, 147.
Oratory, London, 338.
Mary, her blood, 80; her grandeur. I Original sin, possible fruits of, 68

368

INDEX.

Osanna of Mantua, 327.

Pain. 56; physical, 73; varieties of, 74.
Pamimoniousness, apparent, in God,
251.
Passion, severities of the, 19; two­
fold aspect of, 191 ; devotion to tho,
340.
Paul, St., the preacher of the Pre­
cious Blood, 16, 326; conversion of,
121.
Pelngianlsm, 335.
Penance, absorbs temporal evil, 78;
sacrament of, 134,135.
Pentecost, 196.
Perfection, grace of, sometimes ne­
cessary for salvation, 258.
Perfections, the divine, and the Pre­
cious Blood, 163.
Peter, St., 28 ; author of the title of
Precious, as applied to his Master’s
Blood, 116.
Philanthropy, 70; helpless, 72; can­
not reach mortal pain, 75 ; hollow­
ness of, 79, 80.
Philip Neri, St, 233, 329.
Philosophy, helpless, 10.
Piercing of the Sacred Heart, 284.
Pius IX. instituted a new feast of the
Precious Blood, 333.
Poor, the, what they might be with­
out the Precious Blood, 60, 67.
Popes, the, present the crown of
thorns, 298.
Potentia obedientialis, 137, note.
Poverty, beautiful, 72.
Prayer, difficulty of, 167 ; for the
Church. 347.

visible In Bethlehem, 185; in the
Desert, 187 ; in the Holy Land, 189;
In heaven and earth, 195.
Prodigality, extra-sacramental, of the
Precious Blood, 298.
Prodigality of God, 252.
Progress, 70; influenced by tho Pre­
cious Blood, 220.
Prophetess of tho Precious Blood, 327.
Proselytism, 81.
Purgatory, fires of, 140 ; how affected
by tho Precious Blood, 158,347.
Queen of Creation, 10.
Qucendom of our Lady, 223 ; in her
heart, 276.

Raphael, St., gavo communion to
Maria Francesca of the Five
Wounds, 328.
Redemption, through the Precious
Blood, 11, 343; might have been
otherwise, 37 ; interwoven with tho
Sacraments, 299.
Refinement makes sin more malig­
nant, 63.
Reformers, what makes them, 132;
spirit of, 293.
Relics of the Precious Blood, 329;
at Mantua, 329; at Ashridge and
Hailes, 330.
Religion, terrors of a false, 57.
Religious men alone successful, 76.
Resurrection, the, 193; effect of devo­
tion to the, 211.
Revelations and devotions, 318.
Reverence, 337.
Richard of Cornwall, 332.
Precepts of the Church, 233.
Rigorousness, 229,325.
Predestination, 91; of our Lord, 107.
Rimini, miraculous apparition nt, 330.
Preparation of the Incarnation, 183.
Roman civilization, 70.
Presence of God, 34.
Rome, scat of the Precious Blood,
PrieUhood of our Lord, 201.
1197; salvation only in the Church
Principle, the sacramental, by whom
of, 230.
hated, 154.
Procession of the Holy Ghost, 123,
125.128.
Procession of the Precious Blood, 174 ;

Rosary, the, 345.

Sabbath, the, 97,125.

Sacraments, the communication· of

INDEX.
the Precious Blood, 25, 48; tho
nearest approach to an assurance
of salvation, 93; description of,
134, 136 ; causes of grace, 138; re­
plicate the grace of Jesus in us, 141 ;
vases of the Precious Blood, 142;
inventions of God, 143 ; aro not
properly miracles, 144; special
grace of each, 140,146; have laws
of their own, 144,146; supply each
other, 148; sensitiveness of, ISO;
influence of, 151; create joy, 152;
number of. 153; conduits of the
Precious Blood, 156; dowry of the
Church, 226; aqueducts of the
Precious Blood. 255 ; grandeur of,
301 ; power of, 356.
Sacrifice, the principle of, 337.
Sacrilege, Sacraments exposed to the
risk of, 291.
Saints, intercession of the, 160; vision
of, 185 ; the most joyful on earth,
239.
Salvation, 9; through the Precious
Blood, 14; of those out of the
Church, how difficult, 92; depend­
ent on the Church, 130; none out­
side the Roman Church, 230; bless­
edness of, 240.
Sanctification, 125,128.
Satan’s power over us, source οζ
168.
Scapular, the red, 333.
Science, helpless, 10; varieties of,
305.
Scourging, the, 270.
Secrecy, characteristic of divine
things, 214.
See, tlio Holy, fount of the Precious
Blood, 130; has the jurisdiction of
it, 297.
Silence, tho respectful, of Jansenism.
155.
Silence, effect of, 231.
Simplicity, 234.
Sin. horrors of, 9.10; why permitted,
21 ; consequences of, 22 ; import­

369

ance of realizing what It ta, ·Λ5
before the flood, 61 ; always grow­
ing, 62; made more malignant by
civilization, 63, 70; effecta of, oo
creation, 109.
Sinner, the habitual, 12; In tho
Church, 60; the educated, 63.
Sleep, artificially induce], 168.
Solitude of Jesus in his agony. 207.
Sorrow, withont Christ, 56; purified
by the sacramenta, 151 ; instm
ment of redemption, 213.
Soul, innermost sanctuary of the,
160.
Souls, creation of, 97, 117. 125; love
of, 353.
Spirit of the age, 131,132.
Spiritual and temporal, unwisely
distinguished, 69.
Stability, 235.
Stars, their number, 20.
Statistics, 306.
Stephen, St., 181.
Stigmata, the, 287.
Sufferings of lost souls. 57.
Sweating of tho Blood of Jesus, 41.
268.
Temple, the, 182; the disputation in,
187.
Theology, connection of. with sanc­
tity, 17 ; changes of, 30; scholastic,
43: tbe fuel of devotion, 106; the
mw of, 315.
Theories about heretics, 92; danger
of, 231.
Thorns, the crown of, 274 ; how worn
by the Popes, 298.
Tiara, the crown of thorns, 298.
Time, beginning of, 175.
Tongues, confusion of, 181.
Tranquillity of God, 172. 248.
Trinity, the Holy, how worshipped la
the Church. 315.
Triumphs of tho Holy See, 131.
Truth, danger of betraying, 353.

870

INDEX.

Unbaptized, the. 55.
Uncbangeableness, the, of God, 110.
Unction, Extreme, not prefigured in
the old law, 135; -effecte of, 150,
205.

Way of the Cross, 276.
Wickedness of the world before ths
flood, 61.
Words, divine, 119; power of, 145;
the seven, 283.
Works of God, 201 ; none of his ex­
Vastness of God, 211.
ternal works necessary, 259.
Veronica, St., napkin of, 269, 277.
World, scientific divisions of the, 210.
Vicar, the, of Christ, 131; comes to World, the, without the Precious
Rome, 197.
Blood, 62.
Views, worldly, the danger of, 132; Worldliness, 338.
rigorous, 229.
Worship of the Precious Blood, 31.
Vincent of Gonzaga, 332.
Wounds, the Five, 54, 287.
Vincentians, red scapular of, 333.
Virtue of the Precious Blood, where Yearning of our Lord for his Passion,
47 ; of his Sacred Heart, 266.
it resides, 324.
Virtue, habits of, impossible without Years, the Thirty-Three, 184, 207;
effects of meditating on, 208; ever
mortification, 337.
repeated in the Church, 309, 310;
Vocations, 26, 67, 338.
source of manifold devotions, 317.
Youth,
how it errs, 132; temptations
Water, running, 280.
I of, 335.
Way, the Milky, 252.

TUE END.

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