Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 59
Conclusion.
The True Faith the Secret of National Stability.
" When the king heard of it, he was angry, and sending his army he destroyed those murderers and burned their city."—Matt. xxii. 7.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. History's repetitions. II. Past and future. III. God's agency.
I. Denial: 1. Call rejected. 2. Heir murdered. 3. Destruction prophesied.
II. Destruction: 1. Passover and siege. 2. Rome's victory. 3. Rome's downfall.
III. America : 1. Dewey's victory. 2. Our worldliness. 3. Religious decadence.
Per. : 1. Church in Rome and America. 2. Her unique work. 3. Catholicism, infidelity, ruin.
Brethren, to superficial minds it may seem a far cry from the king's rejected invitation to the refusal of so many to accept Christianity; from the destruction of Jerusalem to the fall of Pagan Rome; from the triumph of Vespasian and Titus to the Dewey celebration; from the rejection of the Jews to the decay of modern nations; yet as surely as history repeats itself, so surely do these and similar great events echo and reecho one another down the ages. To understand the present and the future's possibilities we must turn on them the search-light of the past. When the triumphant shouts have died away and the glittering pageants disappeared, it is well to recollect that the unseen hand of God runs through it all, reaching from end to end mightily and ordering all things sweetly. Our services at the shrine of patriotism should close with a recessional full of the thought of God. We should remember it was His hand gave nations victories in the past and afterwards crushed them for their infidelity. For infidel nations that trust in legion and armor-clad, with not a thought of God, are dust that build on dust. Amid our foolish boasts of power, therefore, we should pray the God of hosts to mercifully turn His face to us and ours to Him lest we forget, lest we forget.
"The king being angry, sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city." Brethren, the real King was God the Father, and the marriage He made for His Son was the union of the divine and human natures when the Word was made flesh. The invitation to the marriage, therefore, was the call to communion in the Christian Church either by faith in the future Messias, as in the Old Law, or by actual membership, as in the New. But God's messengers were coldly received. Though they came to their own — God's chosen people — their own received them not. Though called and called again, men turned in preference to their farms and their merchandise. So little, indeed, could they brook interference with their worldly interests, that they laid violent hands on the prophets of old and Apostles and martyrs of later days, and having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. Aye, when God sent even His only Son, hoping they would revere and obey His commands, the world hung Him as a felon on the cross. Then it was that the anger of the King of Icings burst forth. Mercy gave place to justice, and sending His army He destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Thirty-seven years after the Saviour's Ascension, the Roman legions under Vespasian and his son Titus invaded Palestine and besieged Jerusalem. Not only in the parable we have read, but in distinct prophetic words the Saviour had foretold it all — on that memorable day when standing on Olivet's slope, turning His streaming eyes to Jerusalem, He said: "The day shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round and straighten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground and thy children who are in thee, and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation." When the Apostles boastingly pointed out to Him the beauties of the Temple, He answered: " Amen, I say to you, there shall not be left a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed." When on the march to Calvary the women of Jerusalem fain would have offered Him their sympathy, He replied: " Daughters, weep not for Me, but for yourselves and for your children."
Thus many times and often did Christ prophesy Jerusalem's impending doom. For well-nigh forty years God chose to bide His time, the city meanwhile ripening for His vengeance." The historian Josephus relates that fully three millions of Jews had come for the feast of the Passover and were housed within the city walls, when suddenly the Roman legions swooped down on them and surrounded them. For three whole years the war had lasted, the Roman objective point ever being Jerusalem. During the siege, battles were daily fought between the Jew and Roman without, and between Jew and Jew within. Internal dissensions, war, famine, and pestilence — a very avalanche of woes — fell on the fated city. The streets were blocked with dead and dying, while the living fought like dogs for the little food there was. Nay, horrible to relate, famished mothers even slew and ate their babes. Not more awful in their miserable destruction were Sodom and Gomorrha, and not less visible in Jerusalem's fall was the hand of an angry God. He had purposely fostered the power of Rome, Pagan though it was, to be the instrument of His vengeance, and when the Romans would have stayed their hand, He urged them on. For, when finally the city fell and the enemy rushed in with fire and sword, Titus, then in command, — Vespasian having gone to Rome to succeed the banished Nero, — Titus gave orders that the Jewish Temple should be spared. But God had otherwise decreed, and a soldier, impelled, as he declared, by an irresistible impulse, applied a brand to the sacred edifice, and so literally was Christ's prophecy fulfilled that not a stone upon a stone was left. With one fell blow the Jewish Temple, the Jewish city, and the Jewish nation were utterly and forever crushed. And why? Because they knew not the time of their visitation, because they knew not God. " Amen, I say to you," says Christ, "if any man deny Me before men on earth, I will deny him before My Father who is in heaven."
But Rome, you say, knew not the one true God, and resisted Christianity to the death, and yet behold her, God's chosen agent and the mistress of the world! Ah, Brethren, to be chosen by God for the accomplishment of His designs is not always proof of God's favor or God's love. Amid the ruins of the Roman forum stands the arch of Titus, bearing on its sculptured sides the emblems of his eastern victories, but Rome, oh, where is Rome? All her pomp of yesterday is to-day one with Ninive and Tyre. Judge of the nations, spare us yet, lest we forget - lest we forget! How little reckoned they whose genius erected that glorious arch, or whose hands outlined its graceful symmetry, that they therein embodied a lasting monumental proof of God's supremacy, of Christ's divinity, and of the evanescence of purely earthly glory! The Rome of Titus and Vespasian lies to-day beneath the feet of Christian Rome, because she acknowledged not the God of her fathers, Lord of her far-famed battle-line, beneath whose awful hand she held dominion over palm and pine — because she knew not the day of her visitation — because she knew not God. Victories and triumphal fame that are of the earth earthly are subject to the earthly condition of decay, but the glory of God's heroes stands forever. The captains and the kings depart, but still stands that ancient sacrifice, an humble and a contrite heart. When Alexander and Napoleon shall have become unmeaning words, the lowly saints of God will still be able to count by thousands the worshippers at their shrines. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget — lest we forget!
The Spaniard's cruel policy of pillage in his colonies called down God's wrath and raised up this mighty republic to be His avenger. To Dewey more than any other under God belongs the credit of that glorious achievement, and right worthy is he of the magnificent triumph he receives and the laurels the nation places on his brow. Like all great Christian men of noble deeds, especially who have seen the Almighty in the fury of the elements and heard Him 3mid the roar of battle, our Admiral is deeply imbued with the consciousness of God's omnipotence; but how many, think you, of the mighty throng that passed beneath that Fifth Avenue model of Titus' arch gave a single thought to the God of nations or that monument's possible significance? Listen as closely as you might, it is doubtful if amid the popular acclaim you could have caught the faintest echo of the Psalmist's prayer: " Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory." But if, as doubtless is the case, it were unreasonable to look for such like sentiments on such an occasion, consider us in our cooler moments, and you will find that as a nation; alas! we do forget, unhappily we do forget. Such all-absorbing interests have our farms and merchandise become, that they serve to-day among our critics as a byword and reproach. More lavishly than ever before the beeves and fatlings have been killed and the Lord's banquet more sumptuously prepared, but take a census of our people and see how many respond to His repeated invitations. Where much is given, much will be exacted. At Abraham's prayer and for the sake of ten just men God would have spared the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha. Are we quite sure the Lord will never find in us proportionate iniquity? Moral degeneracy is sure to follow on our refusal to listen to God's messengers. What a commentary it is on our decaying Christianity that even a civil governor feels called upon to raise his voice in solemn protest! And even such Christianity as we have is in great part so diluted with worldliness and unbelief that on analysis we find the residue but little better than rankest Paganism. Witness the hundreds and thousands of sectarian churches utterly deserted, or, if used at all, frequented for their social rather than their religious attractions. Read the sermons preached therein and learn how very odious Christ's Gospel has become, how popular the gospel of the world and even of Antichrist. Blame not the preachers; 'tis useless to break the bread of life when men have lost their appetite. The real culprits were the original mutineers on Peter's bark — the authors of religious privateering and piracy. That bark was moored while Jesus taught; they weighed anchor only when He ordered them to let down their nets for a draught. Though progressive in her methods, the Church in her teaching is necessarily conservative. The so-called reformers, on the contrary, hauled up the anchor of conservatism, and drifting, suffered shipwreck of their faith. Their followers to-day are only nominally Christian. The natural part of Christianity — humanitarianism — remains, but the supernatural virtues are practically unknown. Purely natural virtue will never save a soul, much less a people, from God's anger. Herein among other respects our nation much resembles the ancient Romans. They had many good and noble traits, but the patrician's religion was culture and refinement, while the worship of the gods was left to freedmen and to slaves. Lax marriage laws resulted in the degradation of their womankind and the shattering of the nation's corner-stone— the family. Verily, at no distant day, America bids fair to out-Roman the Romans, for, over and above the other evils we have copied from her, we have accomplished a dangerous something Rome never attempted — the divorce of religion and education. But the acme of Rome's guilt was her hostility to Christianity. For that, God crushed her, and so suddenly that Vespasian, with all his glory, was the last of the Caesars. We have to-day no reeking amphitheatre wet with the blood of martyrs, no Christians buried alive in catacombs, nor edicts against the preaching of Christ crucified, but a more subtle and dangerous warfare is being waged by science and agnosticism against Christ and His Church, against the Bible, against man's immortality, and against Christ's divinity. Ah, God does not change; given the same cause, He will be avenged as in the past, and even now perhaps He is arming our conqueror. Judge of the nations, spare us yet, lest we forget — lest we forget.
Brethren, in the Rome of Nero and Vespasian there was a little band of Catholics, with Peter at their head, who,, had they been permitted, could have saved the empire; aye, and they did save and Christianize the remnants of it later under Constantine. In America to-day that ancient Church carries on her heaven-appointed work. Her detractors regard her with suspicion, call her the republic's greatest enemy, and seek to compass her destruction, as Nero did to Peter and his followers, as Herod did to Christ. She is reproached with being able to appeal to the illiterate only and the poor — a calumny refuted by every page of history. Her especial solicitude for the lower strata of society is proof of her divinity, for she was sent to preach the Gospel to the poor by Him who resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Her sphere of activity in our land is one of paramount importance, and one that she alone can fill. Our vast domain is peopled with representatives from every clime, and to them the Catholic Church alone can speak in their mother-tongue the tenets of Christianity and the principles of good American citizenship. Take this venerable Church as an example. In the Sunday-school are thirteen hundred little ones of seven different nationalities, and though to many of their parents English is an unknown tongue, yet each Sunday you will find the children here learning from the same Catechism those eternal truths which in time will make them devoted Christians and loyal Americans. This is but an instance among many of the Church's works. Her chiefest claim to recognition, however, is that between Catholicism and infidelity there is no permanent abiding-place. Forego but one iota of her infallible definitions, and inexorable logic will force you eventually into indifference or absolute unbelief. The invitation, therefore, to the marriage-feast in our day, and always, is in reality a call to embrace the Catholic faith. On that issue America will be judged, and because we love her and wish her length of days, therefore do we desire to see America Catholic. While God is humbling or destroying the nations that reject or persecute His messenger, the one true Church, we want America to hearken to her voice and take a place at the very head of the Lord's banquet-board. When the gracious Host comes in to see His guests He will find, we trust, America clad, not in the variegated and tattered rags of a spurious Christianity, but in the seamless wedding-garb of Catholicity. If the voice of history is true — and who will dare deny it? — on our fidelity to God and His Christ and Christ's true Church depends the permanency of our republican institutions. God Himself affirms it in Deuteronomy xxviii., and His words are as true of us to-day as they were of Israel: " If thou wilt hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to do and keep all His commandments, the Lord thy God will make thee higher than all the nations on the earth; but if thou wilt not hear the Lord thy God, to do and keep all His commandments, the Lord thy God will bring upon thee a nation from afar and from the uttermost ends of the earth to destroy thee."