St. Paul daily globe., 1894-02-12
PLEA FOR SELF-DENlAL.
ARCHBISHOP IRELAND MIKES A POW.
ERFW ONE
IN A LENTEN DISCOURSE.

Being.
81 want every Catholic during this
holy season of Lent to practice self
denial to the extent Of refraining from
the drink habit"
1t was with these words that Arch
bishop Ireland concluded his remarks
yesterday at the Cathedral. His SER
mon, which was on The Observance of
Lent" was mastery effort, logical,
eloquent and convincing. "Our blessed
Lord" he said, "when he withdrew
into the desert. fasting forty days and
nights. taught his disciples the great
principle of self-denial. What was the
meaning of self-denial? Why were we
asked to put it into practice? The
answer presupposed knowledge of
the nature of man, of what he is and
what his destiny is to be. According
to so-called material evolutlonists. man
is i'll all his parts mere product of
earth. In the opinions Of such thinkers
modification or selt-denial would have
very little place. Man being a mere
product of matter, is simply 10 be
guided by the laws of matter and
material life. Now the laws of matter
impose themselves upon the being so
that the being is not capable of es-
Gaping from them. Thus motion in the
world is governed by the great laws of
attraction and grayitation; so animal
life is governed by animal instinct. The
animal follows Its instructive taste for
pleasure, and only turns away from a
given pleasure because it has become
| source of pain. Pleasure is the whole
life of the animal. Now if man is an
advanced species of animal. as some
claim, he remains subject to the same
general laws that regulate animal life.
Hence. in the opinion of So-called ma.
terialists, pleasure is the sum total of
mans duties. There was in antiquity
a Pagan school of epicureans that init
mated that pleasure was the ruling
cause of mans action. And there is TO-
day among Christians school which
puts the destiny of man in pleasure. at
least in the pleasure to be derived from
the aggregation of mans acts; from the
aggregation OF the acts Of humanity.
Some, afraid of the consequences of
their theory that pleasure is limited to
the individual, put before us the good
results to humanity at large. This doc
trine, followed to its logical out
come, brings back humanity to
mere animal life, and necessar-
lily to all the confusions that take
place among beings who have only their
own pleasures in view. This is not
what man is. Man is born of earth as
to his body, but the body is the minor
part of man. Holy Scripture tells Us
that the Infinite made mems bodies out
of the slime of the earth, and then
breathed into it soul made to His own
image and likeness. Man is made up of
body material and soul spiritual; of
body governed by the things around
it; of a soul belonging to the realm of
the Infinite, and seeking with all its in
stinctive energy to turn back to God
from whence it came. Simple obSerya-
ton shows man this double nature of
himself; his own conscience tells him of
bis dignity. The one thing that dis
tinguisheS the animal as against man is
that it is governed by laws it cannot
control. Throw stone upward in the
air and 1t falls. Gravity controls its
motion absolutely The sun cannot
refuse to give its light. the earth to turn
on its axis. So with the animals. they
are ruled by certain fixed, immutable
laws. There is within them no prin-
ciple of life which, rising above their
instincts and passions, SAYS: Il
will" or Twill not" There is a
school of skeptics Qhere are
schools of every possible opinion)
that tells US that our belief that
we can act or not act, as we wish, is
fallacy-as matter of fact, that what
we are compelled to do we do. | know
Sist at my will, and humanity at large
has always felt this principle of action.
This liberty of action is mans greatest
boon; it Is the principle of action on
which he rises to the very skies. Now.
there are in man two principles of &C
ton, the body and the soul-the soul,
the superior principle, is made to reign.
to govern. Thou shalt keep under
thee thy Appetite" If the body were
to rule, see the contradiction--the ami
NAL charming the angel TO submissions;
the material world dominating the be-
iEg made to Gods image and likeness.
iS ioW "a viz 0OoI 10 eiiC law vi tllO
animal.
The soul has for its field of duties the
moral world. The soul, by its superior
intellect, reads its nature. understands
the relation between souls and other
souls. between the present life and the
future life. and all these relations beyet
a moral code-a code of laws imposed
upon us by our own reasons, which
revelation has come to proclaim and
invest with sovereignty over all things
else. These moral laws are seldom CON-
patible with the instincts of the body.
The soul speaks to the body and
declares that its natural instincts
must be subservient to and
dominated by the moral code.
Hence the battie-the combat between
soul and body, the combat which is as
old as the garden Of Eden, where Adam
fell, yielding to his concupiscence. as old
as when Ovid said, ''He knew what was
right, but did what was wrong;" as old
as when the apostle Paul said, There
are two men within me, the mission of
the Christian man to give victory to the
Christian being, to say to the soul, Reign
and make the body slave.~ TheCreator
willed when He put man ON earth that
there should exist a certain rebellious
spirit between soul and body. Take the
body and use it for all legitimate uses.
The Christian religion does not say that
the body is bad III itself. Man, as far as
lie goes, is good. The body is good-all
that is needed is to limit its purposes.
If the different heavenly bodies were
allowed to rush to and fro at will, there
would be chaos: so il the instincts of
| the body are allowed full freedom, there
| follows the same chaos and want of
| harmony. Now the question is, what
are we to do? What is to rule-the body
or the soul? The soul! you will say, of
| course. The victory of the soul is the
| price of eternal blessing; it is the
| srandeur and heallh of the body itself.
| What Is the human body? 1t is the
| assimilation of mere animalism. Its
| own health demands that it be held
within God-marked lines.
The speaker then drew terrible
picture of the body OF man given over to
vice and dissipation; how it loses its