The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-12 00:00:00

If the task before us is difficult by reason of personal
infirmity, it is easy in itself. We have no new mission to
commence, no theology to construct, no principles to find.
The living Church of God moves on majestic and change-
less from age to age. A great pastor goes to his reward ;
a lesser enters in his place ; but all personal inequalities
are lost in the immutable and divine office of the Church.
Tho same divine faith, the same mind, the same Catholic
spirit, with all its delicacy of instinct, tact, and sensitive
purity, guides and sustains the Church in England as
in Rome, in the nineteenth century as in the first. We
have nothing but what we have received. We have re-
ceived all that Jesus communicated to His Church, in
which we lose ourselves to be reproduced by it again with
a life and light derived from its own.
In England this is emphatically true. Your ancestors of
the last three hundred years have upon them the aureolas
of martyrdom, exile, ignominy, and the cross. In no part
of the Catholic Unity is there to be found a Church which
is more ennobled by the recent victories and splendours
of its children. Nothing could have survived the storm
but "the Victory which overcometh the world, our Faith."'
The " remnant saved according to the election of grace"
yet lives on, transmitting with its life, its instincts,
and spirit of fidelity to the truth and to the Apostolic See.
And this remnant has received again its perfect organisa-
tion, and is expanding once more with an even and steady
growth. With such a Divine power in our hands, what
can be difficult ? There is nothing we may not hope for,
nothing we may not ask of the Lord of the Harvest.
And for this our late lamented Pastor, with the largeness
and foresight which marked all his administration, has
made an abundant provision by multiplying the centres of
ecclesiastical and corporate agency. These permanent
works are the strongholds of the truth, and the guarantees
of a future which the world may deride, but every Catho-
lic heart can forecast.

To these two grounds of confidence we must not forget
to add a third, namely, the labour of a body of priests as
simple, as exemplary, and as unworldly as any clergy in
the world.

Add to this once more, the fidelity, generosity, devotion,
and piety of a laity, who boar worthily the names of their
ancestors, and aro true witnesses of the inextinguishable
faith of Ireland in all its sorrows, and of the constancy of
England in all the humiliations of the Catholic name. We
can boar testimony from personal knowledge in these last
years to the deep and fervent piety which animates the
Catholics of London in every condition of life, from the
highest to the humblest.

Thus far, indeed, the work is easy. Beyond this all is
arduous. The mission of the Church to London and to the
English people has nothing analogous since the mission of
the Church to Rome and its imperial race. If S. Paul so
loved his kinsmen according to the flesh that ho would
willingly have been anathema from Christ for their sal-
vation, we need not be ashamed of the love we bear to
our separated brethren. In the supernatural order the
Church is our native land ; and in the natural, our mother
country. We love both, but with a discriminatir g charity ;
the higher and the lower with a due and proportionate
subordination. There can be no collision between these
two orders of duty, unless the one or the other deviate
from the principles of its constitution. This the Church
of God cannot do. This, alas, three hundred years ago, our
rulers and country did. It is, unhappily, thereby at variance
with the first principles of the unity, authority, and infalli-
bility of the Church of God, which are more precious than
life itself. The Catholic Church in England would not be
aggressive, if England were within the light and unity of
the Catholic Church. We have no aggressive aims but
those which inspired the Apostles when they went forth to
convert the world, and to gather the nations into the bene-
dictions and peace of eternal life. Much less have we im-
placable hostilities except against sin and falsehood, and
whatsoever dishonours God and destroys the soul of man. We
are indeed always in con tro versy,but we are not controversi-
alists. Life is too short for polemical encounters to amuse the
idle. It is one of the devices of the enemy of souls to di-
vert attention, and to waste time. When our divine Lord
sent forth his disciples He said, "Salute no man by the
way." And surely the inflexible and unrelaxing execution
of our great errand forbids us to turn aside and to lose time
and opportunity, if not souls, in battles of words. Our
controversy is of another character, such as none can ven-
ture except they who speak under the guidance of a Divine
Voice ; who can say, as the Prophets and Apostles said of
old, without possibility of error, " Thus saith the Lord."
The Church teaches with authority, calm, precise, and
positive. And the conscience in men, and the Spirit of
God in the conscience, respond to the Divine Voice. Let
such be our promulgation of the Eternal Truths; in sea-
son, and out of season, casting the seed by all
waters, going onward, waiting the time of
the harvest after mny days. None but the Church of
God can so speak to, the nations of the world. Whether
they will hear or whether they will forbear, they know
that the Voice claims to be not of man, but of God. And
every way God is glorified, even when we seem most to
fail, when men reject our word, and cast out our names as
evil, even then the witness of Jesus is accomplished ; and
in our weakness and isolation, in the midst of a lordly
world, we may say with calmness and holy fear the words
of the Apostle—" Thanks be to God who always maketh
us to triumph in Christ Jesus, and manifesteth the odour
of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are the
good odour of Christ unto God, in them that are saved
and in them that perish. To the one, indeed,
the odour of death unto death; but to the others, the
odour of life unto life. And for these things who is suffi-
aient."

But this divine mission, so severe in its separation for
life or for death, has been committed to those who, need-
ing mercy, have learned to show mercy. The Good Shep-
herd, because he is compassed with our infirmities, knows
how to have pity upon the weak and the tempted. He has,