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Show CHRIST THE DIVINE EX- j EMPLAR OE HUMAN LOVE The Love of Mankind a Necessary Preparation j for Christianity Renunciation a J rundamental Requisite. j (The Rev. Joseph McSorley, C. S. I, in the Catholic World.) It is almost needless to say liiat: such an ideal could scarcely have found a lodging place in the breasts of the Israelites of olden times, whose ' conduct offers so strong a. contrast, to that of Christian Saints. The records of I-aac. Jacob and their contemporaries, leave- us, if not puzzled and dismaye,!, , t least convinced that such men could ; ' not easily Lave assimilated Christian ideals. Their conception of duty toward neighbor and wite and ': brother and fellow-townsmen, and especially their view of the attitude to be adopted toward stranger ; and enemy, indicate the great development that had to precede their acceptance of the standard of Christ. As we go along through the centuries ' we see, like occasional gleams of light, the intimations inti-mations that this growth is taking place. The days of the Philistine wars give place to the sympathetic sym-pathetic relations of the captivity and the res formation; for-mation; the savage necessities of the early settlements settle-ments to the high ideals prevailing in the schools ! of the prophets. Ruth and Tobias and Elias and . . Eleazar appear like the glimmering rays that precede pre-cede the dawn. As the whims of the wandering-tribes wandering-tribes fade into oblivion, we have the noble conceptions con-ceptions of Job and the Psalms and the last chapters chap-ters of Isaias. The road was a long one and hard to travel; many fell by the wayside during the ; march, and not a few forgot the new lessons soon ' .- after learning them. Selfishness and sensuality worked against the leaven wherewith God was leavening the mass. But in the end the leaven prevailed. When the time was ripe, and the people peo-ple ready, the heart of the Jew was made into the heart of the Christian, and the zealots of the Jew became the vessels of election of Christ. That slow process of growth showed how incapable in-capable gross, sensual minds must ever be of appreciating ap-preciating the teachings of Christ; and the same impossibility holds now among us. "Never 'can a selfish soul be the proper raw material of a Christian. Christ-ian. The religion of Jesus Christ will strike root only in a heart harrowed by self-denial, worked ' j over by the slow, painful attempts to dig up and loosen the hard soil of the natural man. The high- ; er the type to which a soul belongs, the fitter ic is to receive and to develop the seed of the Gospel message. Tie who would be a Christian must, be no slave of food and drink; must be the master of : sensual passion; must be energetic and vigilant, and industrious and brave;' must be weeded free of the root of all evil, the love of money. As the man begins to be Christlike, tho ape and the tiger j must die; the wild beasts that prowl about within " j him must be tamed, if need be, even with tire. Tho j neophyte must learn that though all creatures arn j for man's enjoyment, yet the temperate use o ' j them is a precept of the moral law. He must gi I through an education similar to that by which the f race is taught the necessity of sternly prohibiting the coarser forms of self-indulgence, of basing th I highest social institutions upon the restraint, of j primal appetites. The wild excesses of th youth J in the first mad fling of freedom must settle down i into the graver carriage and saner speech of th ' j mature man, ere he will be trusted by his fellows; I something similar must take place before the heart 1 can become the fit dwelling place of God. Taken ; all in all then, it seems we can truly say that tho ' ! interval between animal standards and human law " I is hardly as great as that which separates tho I Christian from the pagan. ! Which of us shall deny that much growth is 1 necessary for each of us before we can in very v I truth be Christians; that we are still children in f selfishness and savages in cruelty? As we review the incidents of each day's history, we must re- . member that we are both largely responsible for ' and largely affected by our surroundings; tlut we i are not aliens to the society in the midst of which ' ' j we live; that we bear our inevitable share-in tho ' 1 1 burden of its every crime. Hence rightly does a ; f sense of shame sweej over us when we read tho crimes listed in our daily press; when we visit the s ' homes of our city poor; when we listen to tales of f cynical harshness and maddening extravagance, I too frequent and too well authenticated to be ig- 1 . f no red or disbelieved. i God's ideal of iian the selfless Christ! How ! strange and far away from it are we; and how clear this is in the moments when our better nature is deeply stirred. The head of the nation is shot down by an assassin and expires with a prayer on , his lips; the fire demon leaps forth in a crowded theatre and. while jnen are hurrying to the rescue. r five hundred die an awful holocaust; an excurs- ion steamer, With its freight of singing children I and light-hearted parents, meets with a sudden mishap, and a thousand perish miserably under the ' very eyes of the mother city of whose womb they all came forth., These things shock us; and for : the moment we act like Christians. .Great, pity '! . chokes a man; the tears well up; the human heart asserts itself in the worst of us. We go so far as, I for a moment, to suspend our business, to devote i our goods recklessly, to forego opportunities of . i gain, to risk our very lives. For one divine instant in-stant we sound the note of charity; the music of ' Christ's love re-echoes in our souls as the Chicago ! dead are cared for and the Slocura victim are carried by. It is good for us thus to be moved, even though at such dreadful cost. It tells us what we could be, what we ought to be. It will remain re-main a help to U3- all our lives even though, afn-r a day or two, the lesson seems to be fortrotten. We shall do well to recall it, to multiply the nrimcrl:! which make us feel as we felt then, to extend something some-thing of the same spirit into the smaller and ruor-frequent ruor-frequent events of life: for just as truly as h ; (Continued on Page 4.)' i CHRIST THE DIVIXK KXEMPLU;. (Continued from Page l.i ' surrender to our brutal instincts is a . In , , i Christianity's progress, "so surely, to . ,,;.:., sympathetic, kindly, is to bring the spirit -..f i !ir:J . among men, and to strengthen his presence in y.Hl, To turn away from an inviting- opporiuni! .- f, evil-doing, to relinquish the chance of -intH! ;i:..;,s. ure, to resist a seductive temptation, tho-un" ulrl, i a pain at the heart and a groan on the lin-; ni,; - I to do all this because we are unwilling l.u r neighbor, race, enemy, any fellow-creature. i.ni .! unborn this is to become for the moment, and ,;t some little measure, like unto Christ's id at ,t man. Yes; the love of mankind is a preparation. A " necessary preparation for Christiani'y. r -x sentiment which measures by its deveiopim nr growth of the soul; which, in its increasing purity, : reveals every advance from the selfish pas-ion , t" youth to the matchless sacrifice of a mother'., lor -which registered the progress of the Israelites f-iu the beginning to the end of sacred history; wihrh has marked all the stages of man's evolution nun sin to sanctity, from savagery to civilization. It h a sentiment which must, at least in sm d.-irn e, always be present in order that a soul may ..!,t; in even thc first weak grasp of Christi'ani:y ; and must grow strong and deep before any real and ' hearty assimilation of Christ's spirit can take I place. - ' What would the prevalence of such lor. anion us not imply! At its coming dishonesty and corrupt cor-rupt ion would disappear, and unjust trials ::n.l unfair un-fair legislation as well; the systematic and hgl oppression of the poor Would cease, o to . tho crime of the betrayer who purchases a moment' j pleasure at the cost of another's soul, and thc s"l-' s"l-' fishness that degrades marriage into a meiv nieuii-s of sensual satisfaet on. At jts coining would tl'.wi r forth the spirit which calls it wicked o save oiip's self at the cost of another, which lavs upon tin! f best and noblest as a supreme duty the oblia.i'"i to throw away life for the sake of the meaik-st and weakest of his brethren; the spirit, so essenriai'v Christian, which has kept pace with the progrp-M of Christianity, grown with its growth ind ''-strengthened ''-strengthened Avith its strength, and made die rimd measure of a nation's advance from barbarism, ir-s loyalty to the law which dictates that women and children must be looked after first in the fire or ihc shipwreck and placed in safety before the c:v.;t ones, most valuable to humanity, dare even think of saving themselves. We may not say that the study of thp spirit ' of Christ will at once render us able to pursue ;:U i these ideals faithfully and successfully, nor may we say that any one of us alone can do much toward to-ward making them prevail; but this is true, that only in proportion as men aim at and earnestly strive after these ideals can thev hope to be fash- loned into the image of God and recognized by Christ as the. children of his inspiration. ; But all this will interfere with our comfort, . says some one. Why of course it will interfere undoubtedly and most decidedly. And therefore Christ gave us not only an example of service, but a lesson in renunciation. He taught us than ! the Christian ideal can be attempted only by thne who are willing to deny themselves; he made in j understand that Christianity can easily be taken ? out of souls which have not been made firm by f pain, and tempered like fine steel in the furnace ot renunciation. To do all Christ bids us do. w i must be as children, indeed, but we must have mom than the strength of children; for to be a Christian is a great life work, no mere child's play. Jl is a crown we must win by effort, a pearl for wbi.di we must pay a great price. Much physical comfort must be surrendered by him who is striving for a:i ideal which is divine. Renunciation is foremost, in the scheme of salvation proposed by Christ and i shown in his life for our imitation. We should never forget the disappointment and failure of tlit materialistic Jews, brought face to face with our Lord, but having nothing in their selfish soul wherewith to lay hold of the treasure he proffered them. The same opportunity, the same danger. th- same issue, is always ours. We can have Mammon ; if we wish that is many of us can, and for a titno at least but we cannot have God and Mammon. ;. The bread of angels will not be savory to him wli? has been feeding on the husks of swiiie. I Every great institution, every nation, has it symbol: England, its Lion and Unicorn; Russia, iu ! Great Bear; France, its Fair Lilies; the United States, its Soaring Bird of Freedom. The ?un- I bol of Christianity has ever been the Cross. Oh! j j it is no longer a sign of shame to be hidden and J concealed. In the life of every day it meets in -'j again and again; it jingles at the wrist of fashion; j it dangles from the golden watch-chain of wealth; it hangs upon the bosom of light-hearted beauty; it stands clear-cut against the sky as it crown i the spire under which people meet to kneel and pray. But unless it be branded into the mind and j seared into the individual heart, then has the soul 1 not yet begun to be Christian. We must remember this as we seek to prepare ! ourselves for growth in the knowledge of Christ, j and increase in the love of him; as we pray for the grace to assimilate his spirit and to imitate his conduct. The true symbol of Christianity h a tho Cross. And the figure that hangs upon it. , H naked and suffering for the sins of others, is the j Son of Man, God's Ideal of a man. I |