CHAPTER II.

SPIRIT AND TRUTH.

OUR Lord Jesus Christ has Himself declared that two of the principal characteristics of Christian worship are Spirit and Truth. Though these qualities belong rather to the interior than the exterior element of worship, yet the whole question of Ritual is intimately connected with them, and we cannot proceed a step in our inquiries until we have ascertained what relation Spirit and Truth bear to Ceremonial.

St. John alone among the Evangelists has recorded the conversation between the Samaritan woman and the Son of God. The woman saith to Him: Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet. Our fathers adored on this mountain, and You say that at Jerusalem is the place where men must adore. Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe Me that the hour cometh when you shall neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem adore the Father. You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore Him. God is a Spirit, and they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth' (John iv. 19-24).

It is important to ascertain first what our Blessed Lord here says, and then what He does not say.

He says that hitherto the worship offered by the Jews in Jerusalem, and not the schismatical and heretical worship of the Samaritans, had been acceptable to God. He says that a new order of things is now commencing. The knowledge of God shall no longer be confined to one nation, nor His wor

ship to one place. The worship, as well as the kingdom, of God shall be universal. He says that God seeks a higher class of worshippers than He has hitherto generally found; that the worship in which He delights must be akin to His own divine nature, which is spirit and truth.

Interpreters are not agreed as to the precise meaning of these two words, or as to their difference. The prevailing view seems to be that worship in 'spirit' is contrasted with the typical sacrifices of the Jews; worship in 'truth' with the erroneous and half-idolatrous worship of the Samaritans. To myself it appears most in accordance with the context and the scope of the discourse to take both words (if they really differ in meaning) to refer to the errors of the Samaritan woman whom our Lord is addressing. Which of the two places is the more sacred? she asks; which is God's chosen abode, Jerusalem or Garizim? Our Lord answers that hitherto the Jews have known what and how and where to worship, while the Samaritans have adored they knew not what. To this first error, which she had shared with her countrymen, Jesus Christ perhaps refers again when He says that God must be worshipped in truth, that is to say, with a true faith in His Nature and true knowledge of His Will. Her question had betrayed a second error. Which is the holy place? she asked; as if God's worship. must be confined to some one place, as if He were not 'the God of the spirits of all flesh.' Perhaps too, in her ignorant mind, that holy place must needs be a mountain, as if to be nearer the sky was to be nearer God. To this our Lord answers that God is a Spirit, and therefore not confined to place, like a man or a heathen god. Hence, though for special reasons, regarding not Himself but His worshippers, He had chosen Jerusalem as the place of sacrifice, yet now the hour has come when altars may be erected in every place, and the worship will sanctify the place, and not the place gain acceptance for the worship. God then, being a Spirit, seeks worshippers who will worship Him in accordance with His nature, that is, in their own spirit. 'Do not think you must go up into a mountain to find God'-it is thus St. Augustin paraphrases our Lord's words—' God is a Spirit, seek Him in your

own spirit, and make it fit to be His temple, and you will find Him.' But whether we assign to our Lord's words this or any other probable meaning, the result is substantially the same— that the essence of worship is in the soul and its acts, in true faith and hope and charity, sincerity, compunction, and the

rest.

But we must remark also what our Lord does not say. He does not say that when the Temple at Jerusalem is no more, men shall worship without temples. It is curious that this doctrine, which, if our Lord was contrasting the externals of religion, would be the only inference which could be plausibly drawn from His words, is just the one conclusion that even Protestants do not draw. They will allow local buildings which our Lord seems to abolish, but not Ritual within them, of which our Lord says nothing. But if Jesus Christ does not forbid to build churches, but rather allows them to be built everywhere, He does not say that the future temples shall be inferior in beauty or riches to those of Jerusalem and Samaria. He does not deny that the future worship of the Church shall be exterior as well as interior. He does not say, He does not insinuate in any way, that the external element shall be in any degree less elaborate or less splendid than what has been offered up in the Temple.

If, indeed, worship in spirit and truth is irreconcilable with a minute or a splendid ceremonial; if even there is opposition between the two; then, of course, our Lord's words foretelling an increase of spiritual worship would also foretell an abolition or a diminution of the magnificence of external Ritual. But it must be remembered that, though this may seem an axiom to some Protestants, the vast majority of Christians of all ages deny it with convictions equally strong; and therefore it is a simple begging of the question to gather such a conclusion from our Lord's words.

Catholics see no antagonism whatever between piety and Ritual no more than there is between believing with the heart unto justice, and confessing with the mouth unto salvation (Rom. x. 10). We see no opposition of any kind between fervour of spirit and magnificent rites, between truth of concep

tion and minute and varied symbolism. The contrary opinion is not self-evident, and therefore cannot be legitimately deduced from our Lord's words, which do not explicitly contain it. Nor can it be imposed on them unless it be evident from other sources.

Writers of controversy seem often to be unaware that the interpretation they give to these words of Jesus Christ is not necessarily contained in them, and that for this reason, in controversy at least, they cannot assume, but ought to prove, their interpretation to be correct. Dr. Vaughan, for instance, affirms the Protestant view in the most dogmatic tone, as if no contrary opinion to his own had ever been entertained by a man capable of reading Scripture. The least,' he says, 'that can be inferrred from our Lord's words is, that no such Ritual system as the history of Judaism presents was to have any place in the Christian Church. If that Church is to know anything of ceremonies, it must be within such limits as to be next to nothing, compared with the ceremonies of the Church preceding it. Our Lord, it may be assured, did not mean to say less than this when uttering the words we have cited. For it is to be distinctly marked, that not only are the things existing to pass away, nothing resembling that order of things is to follow. The Local is to give place to the Universal, the Ritual to the Spiritual.'

Now our Lord says not one word, direct or indirect, about Ritual in the passage referred to. Yet it is taken for granted here that the words Ritual and Spiritual represent antagonistic ideas, just like Local and Universal. It is Dr. Vaughan, however, not Jesus Christ, who says this. It will be the object of this Essay to see whether anything in the life or teaching of our Blessed Lord implies such doctrines. All that I now ask is, that Protestant readers will suspend their judgment till they have weighed the evidence.

Let them also have the charity to believe that Catholics are no less zealous than themselves for the spirituality of God's worship; and that if we defend the use of Ritual, it is not as a hindrance, but as a help to interior piety. I am not yet entitled to assume that our views on this question are Scriptural o

Christian; but at least we have a view on the matter, and it may be well here to state it.

That the only worship pleasing to God is worship in spirit and in truth is acknowledged on all hands. That if the use of Ritual can be shown to be an obstacle to such worship, it must be rejected, is what we most readily concede. But that it is so in fact we strenuously deny. It is the belief of Catholics that, in order that man might be 'born not of the flesh but of God,' 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' Whence they conclude that through the senses man is spiritualised, as by the senses he had been enslaved.

Our theory may perhaps be stated as follows. In its ordinary state the soul is weighed down by the senses: the multitude of objects ever acting on the senses enthral the soul, and prevent it from soaring to things spiritual and divine. It requires a great effort to break this thraldom, and this effort is facilitated by the impressions made on the senses by the ceremonial of public worship. The senses are thus used against the senses, not to ensnare and captivate the soul, naturally free, but to set free the soul, naturally captive. The great pageant of things temporal, ever before the eyes, is, for a time, effaced by the imagery of things invisible; and the soul, escaping from its bondage, has a glimpse of the Eternal Spirit, and bows itself before Him in spiritual worship. And so, too, if the senses are used to release the spirit from its captivity to sense, the imagination is enlisted on the side of truth, to break the fascinating spell of error which acts quite as much by means of the imagination as of the reason. Reason may discover that things visible and transitory are but trifles. Yet visible and tangible trifles have an enchanting, a deluding power, a lying power over the soul, from which reason in vain strives to free itself. No doubt 'the just man lives by faith,' and it is faith which conquers the visible world by a lively realisation of things unseen and eternal. Yet faith not merely conquers the world; it reduces it to obedience, and makes a servant of what was before an enemy. Faith creates a ceremonial, a living embodiment of its own thoughts and feelings, which then helps faith in its turn in the contest against the lies and treachery of sense.