THE SUPREME END AND OFFICE OF RELIGION.

BY THE REV. WALTER ELLIOTT, O.S.P.

The end and office of religion is to direct the aspirations of the soul toward an infinite good, and to secure a perfect fruition. Man's longings for perfect wisdom, love and joy are not aberrations of the intelligence, or morbid conditions of any kind; they are not purely subjective, blind reachings forth toward nothing. They are most real life, excited into activity by the infinite reality of the Supreme Being, the most loving God, calling his creature to union with himself. In studying the office of religion we therefore engage in the investigation of the highest order of facts, and weigh and measure the most precious products of human conduct-man's endeavors to approach his ideal condition.

Reason, if well directed, dedicates our best efforts to progress toward perfect life; and if religion be of the right kind, under its influence all human life becomes sensitive to the touch of the divine life from which it sprung. The definition of perfect religious life is, therefore, equivalent to that of most real life; the human spirit moving toward perfect wisdom and joy by instinct of the divine Spirit acting upon it both in the inner and outer order of existence.

REGENERATION.--But man's ideal is more than human, Man would never be content to strive after what is no better than his own best self. The longing toward virtue and happiness is for the reception of a superior, a divine existence. The end of religion is regeneration.

The final end of all created existence is the glory of God in his office of Creator. As man is a micro-cosmos, so the human nature of the God-man, 'Jesus Christ, is the culminating point at which the creative act attains to its summit and receives its last perfection. In that humanity, and through it in the Deity with which it is one person, we all are called to share. The supreme end and office of religion is to bring about that union and to make it perfect.

THE NEW LIFE.-"The justification of a wicked man is his transla tion from the state in which man is born as a son of the first Adam, into the state of grace and adoption of the sons of God by the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Saviour." These words of the Council of Trent affirm that the · boon of God's favor is not merely restoration to humanity's natural innocence. God's friendship for man is elevation to a state higher than nature's highest, and infinitely so, and yet a dignity toward which all men are drawn by the unseen attraction of divine grace, and toward which in their better moments they consciously strive, however feebly and blindly.

Religion, as understood by Christianity, means new life for man, different life, additional life, a superior and transcendent life, which is nothing less than the natural life of God, given to man to elevate him to a participation in the Deity—into a plane of existence which naturally belongs to God alone.

ATONEMENT FOR SIN.-It may be asked, why does Christ elevate us to union with his Father through suffering? The answer is, that God is dealing with a race which has degraded itself with rebellion and with crime, which naturally involve suffering.

God's purpose is now just what it was in the beginning, to communicate himself to each human being, and to do it personally, elevating men to brotherhood with his own divine Son, making them partakers of the same grace which dwells in the soul of Christ, and sharers hereafter in the same blessedness which he possesses with the Father. To accomplish this purpose God originally constituted man in a supernatural condition of divine favor. That lost by sin, God, by an act of grace yet more signal, places his Son in the circumstances of humiliation and suffering due to sin. This is the order of atonement, a word which has come to signify a mediation through suffering, although the etymological meaning of it is bringing together into one.

In the present order of things atonement is first, but originally mediation, as it was the primary need of imperfect nature, was likewise God's initial work. As things are, too, the righteousness through sharing the cross of Christ elevates man to a degree of merit impossible if the gift were purely and simply a boon.

A mistaken view of this matter of atonement is to be guarded against. For if there is any calamity surpassing the loss of consciousness of sin, it is the loss of consciousness of human dignity. If I must believe a lie, I had rather not choose the monstrous one that I am totally depraved. I had rather be a Pelagian than a Predestinarian. But neither of these is right. Christ and his church are right; and they insist that the divine life and light are communicated to us as being sinners, and in an order of things both painful to nature and superior to it, and yet will allow no one to say that any man is or can be totally depraved.

Religion is positive. It makes me good with Christ's goodness. Relig. ion does essentially more than rid me of evil. In the mansions of the Father, Sorrow opens the outer door of the atrium in which I am pardoned. and Love leads to the throne-room. If forgiveness and union be distinct, it is only as we think of them, for to God they are one. And this is to be noted: all infants who pass through the laver of regeneration have had no conscious experience of pardon of any kind, and yet will consciously enjoy the union of filiation for ever. Nor can it be denied that there are multitudes of adults whose sanctification has had no conscious process of the remission of grave sin, for many such have never been guilty of it. To

excite them to a fictitious sense of sinfulness is untruthful, unjust and unchristian. Hounding innocent souls into the company of demons is false zeal and is cruel. Yet with some it seems the supreme end and office of religion. This explains the revolt of many, and their bitter resentment against the ministers and ordinances of religion, sometimes extending to the God whose caricature has been seated before their eyes on the throne of false judgment. No order of life needs truthfulness, strict and exact in every detail, so much as that known as the religious. The church is the pillar and ground of truth. The supreme end and office of religion is not the expiation of sin, but elevation to union with God.

PARDON AND LOVE.-The expiation of sin is the removal of an obstacle to our union with God. Nothing hinders the progress of guileless or repentant souls, even their peace of mind, more than prevalent misconceptions on this point. Freed from sin, many fall under the delusion that all is done; not to commit sin is assumed to be the end of religion. In reality pardon is but the initial work of grace, and even pardon is not possible without the gift of love.

The completion of man's being is his glorification in the Godhead: this is the answer to those who are shocked at the thought that Christ came into the world as a mere sin-victim. Christ's sorrow is indeed our atonement, but the end he had in view is the ecstatic joy of the union of human nature with the divine nature.

THE PROCESS.-The process, on man's part, of union with God, is free and loving acceptance of all his invitations, inner and outer, natural and revealed, organic and personal. This is affirmed by the dogma of Trent: "Justification is not solely the remission of sins, but is the sanctification and renewal of the inner man by the voluntary reception of grace and gifts." The main practical lesson of which is that love, the unitive virtue, reigns supreme in Christian life, which is the union of the divine and human. Love is a virtue as supremely necessary for pardon as for perfection. And if obedience be required it should be perfect or instinctive obedience. The instinct of rational obedience is love.

Loving God is the practical element in our reception of the Holy Spirit. The fruition of love is union with the beloved. If to be regenerated means to be born of God, then what is to be sought after is newness of life by the immediate contact with life's source and centre in love. The perfection of any finite being is the closest possible identity with its ideal. The supreme end and office of religion is to cause men by love personally to approximate the ideal, not merely of humanity, but of humanity made one with the Deity. The carrying out of this process by a dual nature such as man's, is menaced by one of two dangers: either divorce from the bodily and external life of man, or slavery to it and divorce from the spiritual. The former is false mysticism, and the latter is formalism. The one endeavors to etherealize a being who is part of, if monarch of, a visible realm; and this leads to

delusions, not seldom ending in the wild dream that one is irresponsible for deeds done in the flesh-a spectral man. The other is degeneration into externalism, and absorbs the soul in thoughts of the outward means rather than the spiritual ends of religion, forming an unspiritual character.

But Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, is the synthesis. As a method or process of human betterment, religion is the fulness of all outer and inner, visible and invisible aids to bring the mind and heart of man under the immediate influence of the Divine Spirit in the union of love. Organizations and authorities and discipline, sacraments and worship, are external channels, helps and incitements to love, instituted by the Son of God, as the extension of his own external divine life.

Religion taken, then, at the highest development, which is Christianity, is the elevation of man to union with God, in an order of life transcending the natural. It attains this end by elevating the soul to heavenly wisdom in divine faith, heavenly life in divine love. This attests itself not only by the outward criterion of unity with Christ's Church, but also by the inner witness of the Spirit; it exalts and extends the consciousness of God; it pervades daily life and transforms it with Christ's heroism; it infuses into the soul the fullest confidence in God's fatherly oversight; it imparts deep tranquillity, and bestows the most joyous sense of loving intercourse with that benign power which alone can secure us the victory over death and hell.

It will be seen that the ideal religious character is not formed by constant absorption in thoughts of the Deity's attribute of sovereignty, but rather by meditation on all the attributes, loving kindness being supreme. For the same reason it is not obedience that holds the place of honor among the virtues; in forming the filial character love is supreme. Love outranks all virtues. The greatest of these is charity.

It never can be said that it is by reason of obedience that men love, but it must always be said of obedience that it is by reason of love that it is made perfect. Obedience generates conformity, but love has a fecundity which generates every virtue, for it alone is wholly unitive. The highest boast of obedience is that it is the first-born of love. As the Humanity said of the Divinity, "I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I," so obedience says of love, "I go to my parent-virtue, for love is greater than I."

Hence not the least fault we find with the religious separation of the last three hundred years is, that it has unduly accentuated the sovereignty of God.

THE ARGUMENT FOR IMMORTALITY.

BY PHILIP S. Moxoм, D.D.

It is impossible, of course, within the limits of this brief paper, even to state the entire argument for the immortality of man. The most that I can hope to do is to indicate those main lines of reasoning which appeal to the average intelligent mind as confirmatory of a belief in immortality already

existent

Three or four considerations should be noticed at the outset.

First, It is doubtful if any reasoning on this subject would be intelligible to man if he did not have precedently at least a capacity for immortality. However we may define it, there is in man's nature that which makes him susceptible to the tremendous idea of unending existence as an attribute of his own spirit.

Here sits he, shaping wings to fly;

His heart forebodes a mystery,

He names the name Eternity!

It would seem as if only a deathless being, in the midst of a world in which all forms of life perceptible by his senses are born and die in endless succession, could think of himself as capable of surviving this universal order. The capacity to raise and discuss the question of immortality has, therefore, implications that radically difference man from all other creatures about him Just as he could not think of virtue without a capacity for virtue, so he could not think of immortality without at least a capacity for that of which he thinks.

The second preliminary consideration is that immortality is inseparably bound up with theism. Theism makes immortality rational, if not necessary. Atheism makes it incredible, if not unthinkable. The highest form of the belief in immortality inevitably roots itself in, and is part of, the soul's belief in God. Most reasonably has Rothe said : "Wer an einem Gott glaubt, der muss auch an die Fortdauer des Menschen nach dem Tode glauben. Ohne eine solche, gäbe es keine Welt die als Zweck Gottes denkbar wäre."'

A third consideration is that a scientific proof of immortality, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, "scientific proof," is, at present, impossible. The life of the human spirit is a transcendent fact. It cannot be coördinated with the phenomena of nature on which the scientific mind is turned.

1 "He who believes in a God must believe in the continuance of man after death. Without such a faith there is no world that would be thinkable as an end of God."

Copyright, 1893, by J. H. B.