proved from Scripture, all the principal doctrines of the Catholic Church; but we think his work would have proved them more satisfactorily to the minds of non-Catholic readers, if, instead of proving each doctrine as a separate and independent doctrine, he had presented the several doctrines in their proper theological relations one to another. Few Protestants have belief enough in the holy Scriptures to accept an isolated doctrine on the authority of single texts, however numerous and express they may be, or sufficient philosophical culture and theological knowledge to detect under an analytic statement of Catholic doctrines and dogmas the real Catholic synthesis. The analytical method of the schools, however convenient to the professor, while it renders the mind acute, and is well fitted to silence an opponent, is but ill fitted to give one a comprehensive view of Catholicity as a living whole, or to convince an unbeliever of its truth. All the parts of Catholicity have a mutual relation, and so grow out of and fit into each other, and lend each other such mutual support, that when they are presented in their real synthesis, they carry conviction of themselves, and little proof is required beyond what the schools call ratio theologica, or theological reason. We may cite as many authorities and proof texts as we please for the worship of Mary and the Saints, but if we fail to show its reason in the Mystery of the Incarnation, we shall fail to convince a Protestant of its justice and propriety. We may prove conclusively from the holy Scriptures, from the Fathers, and from universal tradition, the authority of the Church to teach, but unless we show the relation of the Church to the Incarnation, and her place in the economy of salvation, as an essential part of one grand scheme, if we may use the word, of mediatorial grace, of one grand whole, of which the Incarnation is the principle, and the glory of the God-Man, the end, the central life, from which life flows out and animates the whole as a living organism, we shall produce hardly a perceptible effect on a non-Catholic mind. So of any other Catholic doctrine. All belong to and grow out of one grand principle of mediation. Accept

what St. Paul says: "There is one mediator between God and men, the MAN Christ Jesus," and you have bound yourself logically to accept every thing in Catholicity, even the holy water and the veneration of relics. Christ had a human body-the Word was made flesh,-and his body has, by virtue of its union with his soul and divinity, a part or office in the grand work of Christian mediation. Man's body is a resumé of the whole material world. Man, as the ancients maintained, is a microcosm, a world in miniature. A rational animal, he has at once the nature of angels and the nature of animals; and by the union of soul and body, he contains in himself the elements of the whole vegetable and mineral worlds, and hence it is that he is declared to be the lord of the lower creation. All material nature was assumed by our Lord when he assumed a human body, and therefore it is, that in its sphere and degree, all matter may participate in the work of the Mediator. Hence the Apostle tells us, "Every creature of God may be blessed by prayer." Present Catholicity as a whole, and explain it from its central principle, and show the relation and dependencies of its parts, and their mutual consistency, and there will be little more to be done, for then whatever proves one point proves the whole, and a single Scriptural hint or allusion becomes sufficient to establish any particular doctrine.

There is a wide difference between the Catholic fundamental conception and the Protestant fundamental conception of Christianity. Catholics and Protestants do not start from the same point, run along together for certain distance, and then diverge in opposite directions. Their starting-point is not one and the same. One class of Protestants see in Christianity only certain gracious helps to man in his work of self-culture, or in attaining the highest moral, intellectual, and social development of his nature. To this class belonged the late Dr. Channing of Boston, and virtually to the same belong the adherents of what is called the New Theology, in Germany, only these run a little further into natural mysticism. The

other principal class of Protestants admit, in words, at least, the Incarnation, but in their scheme, as we have elsewhere said, it serves only one single purpose, that of making an atonement for sin At most, God becomes incarnate in order to expiate man's transgression, and to repair the damage done by sin. All in the Gospel is directed to this one end. Man has sinned; God looks at him as a sinner, as having forfeited life, and incurred death, spiritual and physical, temporal and eternal, and would forgive him, and receive him to his favor, but he cannot, because his justice forbids it, and cries out, Die he or justice must! Terrible dilemma! If man dies, mercy is sacrificed; if he is saved, justice is sacrificed. What shall be done? The Son answers: "I will assume man's nature and die on the cross, and satisfy the demands of justice. Those demands satisfied, Thou, O Father, mayst forgive him, and receive him to thy favor." Well pleased, the Father accepts the sacrifice of his Son, in whose blood he quenches the fiery darts of his wrath, and now giving full flow to his mercy, pardons the sinner for Christ's sake. Beyond this, the Protestant theology, as far as we have ever learned it, recognizes nothing for the Son of Man to do, and nothing that man receives from the Incarnation.

This is not Catholic doctrine. Catholic theologians may, indeed, differ on the question: Whether if man had not sinned God would have become incarnate? But the very fact that such a question can be debated among them, proves that their theology differs widely from the Protestant. The Protestant can ask no such question, for if men had not sinned there could have been on his theology no motive or reason for the Incarnation. The tendency at present among our theologians, is to defend the opinion that, if man had not sinned God would still have become incarnate, though he would not have suffered on the cross, as there would have been no expiation needed. The other opinion, perhaps the more common one, is, that if man had not sinned, God would not have become incarnate, and so far coincides with the Protestant view; but they who hold

this opinion hold, what Protestants do not, that the Incarnation was not designed simply as the condition of making satisfaction for sin, and rendering it consistent with divine justice for God to pardon the sinner, but that its principal design was to elevate human nature to be the nature of God, and to make sin the occasion to the believer of a superabounding good. Hence the Church breaks out in her ecstasy on Holy Saturday: “O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem." Man having sinned, God not only provides through the Incarnation for the complete satisfaction of divine justice, but also, through the assumption of human nature, makes man's sin the occasion of ennobling man and elevating him to an intimate union. even by nature with himself, so that where sin abounded grace superabounded, and the gain, through the obedience of Christ, the second Adam, might infinitely exceed the loss through the disobedience of the first Adam. Sin is thus overruled, and made the occasion, through the power, the wisdom, and the love of God, of supernatural beatitude.

But whichever of the two views we adopt, the end and effect of the Incarnation are the same, and both agree in this, that the satisfaction for man's transgression and the reparation of the damages of sin, are not the only nor even the principal end of the Incarnation. Certainly, without the Incarnation, complete satisfaction to divine justice for man's sin could not have been made; but God, without such satisfaction, could, had he so chosen, have pardoned man's sin, on simple repentance and reformation of life; but he did not choose to do so, for he would do something infinitely better for man. The sin is blotted out by our Lord's cross and passion, but to blot out the sin was not the principal end of the Incarnation. The principal end of the Incarnation was in satisfying for sin, if we take one opinion, the elevation of human nature to union with God, to create in men a new and higher order of life, and to secure the believer, persevering to the end, supernatural beatitude, or a participation in the nature and beatitude of God, or, according to the other opinion, the principal end

of the Incarnation is this same elevation and beatitude, but in securing this end it makes by the way satisfaction to divine justice, and blots out man's transgression, by infusing into his heart supernatural grace and enabling him to merit a supernatural reward. In either case sin is condemned and atoned for, but the mind is not fixed exclusively nor primarily on this fact, but on the unbounded love of God, which not only loves us while we are yet sinners, and procures us satisfaction and pardon for our sins, but elevates us to a higher order of life, and an intimate blissful union with God himself. The believer bewails and detests his sin which is so offensive to God, and which has caused our Lord such bitter agony, but he is still more affected by the infinite love and goodness of God, and his joy in the divine mercy overcomes even his sorrow for sin.

Now, take this Catholic view, and consider that the end of the Incarnation is the glory of the God-man in the new creation, or as the principle and end of a new and supernatural order of life and immortality, through the mediation of the human nature, hypostatically united to the divine, and you will see that it is not only very different from the Protestant view, but that all Catholic doctrine and practice centres in it, grows out of it, is presupposed or authorized by it. The whole is coherent and self-consistent, and nothing can be added to it or taken from it, without marring its beauty and destroying its symmetry. Few minds can take it in as a whole, without being convinced that man himself could never have invented it, that priests and monks could never have forged it, even little by little, for human reason, normally or abnormally exercised, never could, without supernatural revelation,. have conceived its central or generative principle. Show the Protestant, as you may, that all Catholic doctrine and discipline forms only a complete and symmetrical whole, and grows, legitimately, out of the central fact of Christianity, and you remove his objections, and compel his intellectual assent to its truth and sanctity. So, presenting Catholicity, is what