The apparent exception alleged turns out, therefore, to be no real exception at all; for the persons excepted are still members of the body of the Church in effect, as the authorities referred to labor to prove. They are persons who have renounced their infidel and heretical societies, and have found and explicitly recognized the Church. Their approach to the Church is explicit, not constructive, to be inferred only from a certain vague and indefinite longing for truth and unity in general, predicable in fact, we should suppose, of nearly all men; for no man ever clings to falsehood and division, believing them to be such. Their desire for truth and unity is explicit. Their faith is the Catholic faith ; the unity they will is Catholic unity; the Church at whose door they knock is the Catholic Church; the sacrament they solicit, they solicit from the hands of her legitimate priest. They are in effect Catholics, and though not re et proprie in the Church, nobody ever dreams of so understanding the article, out of the Church no one can be saved, as to exclude them from salvation. These being in effect members of the external communion, the distinction between the soul and the body of the Church does not at all affect the assumption of the Brothers Walenburch, "out of external communion with the true Church of Jesus Christ there is no salvation.”

The Church is always and everywhere, at once and indissolubly, as the living Church, interior and exterior, consisting, like man himself, of soul and body. She is not a disembodied spirit, nor a corpse. The separation of the soul and body of the Church is as much her death, as the separation of the soul and body of man is his. She is the Church, the living Church, only by the mutual commerce of soul and body. There may be grave sinners in her body who have no communion with her soul; these are indeed members, but not living members, and are in the body rather than of it, as vicious humors may be in the blood without being of it, for they inust have communion with the soul in order to be living members ; and some theologians maintain that they who are in the body of the Church, without pertaining to the soul, at least by faith, though a dead faith, are not, strictly speaking, members at all. On the other hand, if, as all our theologians teach, and Moehler and Perrone especially, the life of the Church is in the mutual commerce of the exterior and the interior, the body and the soul, no individual not joined to her body can live her life. Indeed, to suppose that communion with the body alone will suffice, is to fall into mere formalism, to mistake the corpse for the living man;

and, on the other hand, to suppose that communion with the soul out of the body and independent of it is practicable is to fall into pure spiritualism, simple Quakerism, which tapers off into Transcendentalism or mere sentimentalism, a doctrine which Father Perrone expressly controverts. Either extreme is the death of the Church, which is, as we have said, to be regarded as always, at once and indissolubly, soul and body.* To assume real or virtual communion with the body is not necessary, or that we may be joined to the spirit without being joined to the body is to make the body only occasionally or accidentally necessary to salvation ; and, in fact, some modern speculations imply, perhaps expressly teach, that it is necessary only in the case of those who recognize it to be necessary, as if its necessity depended on the state of the human intellect, and not on the appointment of God, or as if a man's disbelief could excuse or make up for his want of faith, a doctrine not to be extracted from the Holy Scriptures, taught by no Father or Mediæval Doctor, and from which we should suppose every Catholic would instinctively turn with loathing and disgust. The Church is the living Temple of God, into which believers must be builded as so many living stones. It is his body, and its body is no more to be dispensed with than its soul; otherwise we could not call her always visible, for to some she would be visible, to others only invisible, and then there would be no visible Catholic Church.

There is no name given under heaven among men but the name of Jesus Christ by which we can be saved. There is salvation in none other; and what Catholic needs to be told that Christ, as the Saviour, is in the Church, which is his body, and that it is in the Church, and nowhere else, that he does or will save? True, though in the Church, he is also out of her, by his grace operating on the hearts of those not yet within ; but he operates ad Ecclesiam, to bring them within, that he may save them there, not that he may save them without. He loves his Church; she is his Chosen, his Beloved, his Spouse, and he gave his life for her. In her, so to speak, centre all his affections, his graces, and his providences; and all creatures and events are ordered in reference to her. Without ber all history is inexplicable, a fable, and the universe itself meaningless and without a purpose. The salvation of souls itself is in order to her, and God will have no children who are not also

hers. As there is but one Father, so can there be but one Mother, and none are of the Father who are not of the Mother. Clear and explicit are all the Fathers and Saints as to this, and they plainly teach that it would dishonor her, and make God an adulterer, to suppose the salvation of a single soul of which she is not the spiritual mother.

God, in establishing his Church from the foundation of the world, in giving his life on the cross for her, in abiding always with her, in her tabernacles, unto the consummation of the world, in adorning her as a Bride with all the graces of the Holy Spirit, in denominating her his Beloved, his Spouse, has taught us how he regards her, how deep and tender, how infinite and inexhaustible, his love for her, and with what love and honor we should behold her. He loves us with an infinite love, and has died to redeem us; but he loves us and wills our salvation, only in and through his Church. He would bring us to himself, and he never ceases as a lover to woo our love ; but he wills us to love, and reverence, and adore him only as children of his Beloved. Our love and reverence must redound to his glory as her Spouse, and gladden her maternal heart, and swell her maternal joy, or he wills them not, knows them not. O, it is frightful to forget the place the Church holds in the love and providence of God, and to regard the relation in which we stand to her as a matter of no moment! She is the one grand object on which are fixed all beaven, all earth, ay, and all hell. Behold her impersonation in the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother of God, the glorious Queen of heaven. Humble and obscure she lived, poor and silent, yet all heaven turned their eyes towards her; all hell trembled before her; all earth needed her. Dear was she to all the hosts of heaven; for in her they beheld their Queen, the Mother of grace, the Mother of mercies, the channel through which all love, and mercies, and graces, and good things were to flow to man, and return to the glory and honor of their Father. Humblest of mortal maidens, lowliest on earth, under God, she was highest in heaven. So is the Church, our sweet Mother. O, she is no creation of the imagination ! O, she is no mere accident in human history, in divine providence, divine grace, in the conversion of souls ! She is a glorious, a living reality, living the divine, the eternal life of God. Her Maker is her Husband, and he places her, after him, over all in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth. All that he can do to adorn and exalt her he has done. All he can give he gives ; for he gives himself, and unites her in

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VOL. I. NO. IV.

indissoluable union with bimself. Infinite love, infinite wisdom, infinite power, can do no more. All bail to thee, dear and everblessed Mother, thou chosen one, thou well-beloved, thou Bride adorned, thou chaste, immaculate Spouse, thou Universal Queen ! All hail to thee! We honor thee, for God honors thee; we love thee, for God loves thee; we obey thee, for thou ever commandest the will of thy lord. The passers-by may jeer thee ; the servants of the prince of this world may call thee black; the daughters of the uncircumcised may beat thee, earth and hell rise up in wrath against thee, and seek to despoil thee of thy rich ornaments and to sully thy fair name; but all the more dear art thou to our hearts ; all the more deep and sincere the homage we pay thee ; and all the more earnestly do we pray thee to receive our humble offerings, and to own us for thy children, and watch over us that we never forfeit the right to call thee our Mother.

Did we reflect on what the Church is, did we consider her rank in the universe, her relation to God, the place she holds, so to speak, in his affections, the bare thought of the salvation of a single soul not spiritually begotten of her would make us thrill with horror. It would give the lie to all God's providences, and subvert the whole economy of his grace. We need not start at this. All may have the Church for their mother, if they choose. Christ is in the Church, but he is also out of the Church. In the Church he is operating by his grace to save those who enter ; out of her he operates also by his grace, or is ready to operate, in the hearts of all men, to supply the will and the ability to come in. Do not imagine that God has only half done his work, that he has merely prepared his Church, fitted her up as a palace, filled her with all good things, all things necessary for our salvation, when once we have entered, but that he has left us without the ability to find her out, or, having found her out, without ability to enter. He leaves nothing undone. No man has the natural ability to come into the Church, any more than he has the natural ability to save himself after he has come in. All before and all after is the work of God. We can do nothing of ourselves alone, — make not even the first motion without his grace inciting and assisting us. Of no use would have been his Church, — it would have been a mere mockery, or a splendid failure, - if he had not pro

- vided for our entrance as well as for our salvation afterwards.

But he has provided for our entrance. He gives sufficient grace to all men. The grace of prayer, gratia orationis, is given freely, gratuitously, unto every one. All receive the ability to ask ; all, then, can ask, and if they do ask, as sure as God cannot lie they shall receive the grace to seek ; and if they seek, the same divine veracity is pledged that they shall find; and if they find, they may knock; and if they knock, it shall be opened to them. God has said it. Christ is in the Church; he is out of it. In it and out of it he is one and the same, and operates ever ad unitatem. He is out of the Church to draw all men into the Church ; all have, then, if they will,

; the assistance of the Infinite God to come in, and if they do not come in, it is their own fault. God withholds nothing necessary. He gives to all, by his grace, every thing requisite, and in superabundance. If we come not at his call, on our own heads lies the blame. We have no excuse, not the least shadow of an excuse. The reason why we come not can be only that we do not choose to come, that we resist his grace, and scorn his invitations, and will not yield to his inspirations. No nice theological distinctions, no scholastic subtilty, no latitudinarian ingenuity, can relieve us of the blame, or make it not true that we could have come, had we been so disposed. If, then, we stay away, and are lost, it is we who have destroyed ourselves.

Here are the great mass of our countrymen aliens from the Church of God. Why do they not come and ask to be received as children and heirs ? Is it lack of opportunity ? It is false. There is no lack of opportunity. God does not deny them, not one of them, the needed grace. The Church is here; through her noble and faithful pastors, her voice sounds out from Maine to Florida, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. How can they hear without a preacher ? But they have heard. Verily the voice of the preacher is gone out into all the earth. They have no need to say, Who shall ascend into heaven to bring Christ down ? or, Who shall descend into hell to bring Christ up from the dead? The word is nigh them. It sounds in every ear ; it speaks in every heart. We all know they might come, if they would. From all sections, and from all ranks and conditions, some have come, and by coming proved that it is possible for all to come; and in so proving rendered invalid the plea of ignorance or inability. Those who have not

. come can as well come as those who have come ; and their guilt in not coming is aggravated by their knowledge of the fact that some of their own number have come ; for they are no