that bled in the Temple and of
every wine-offering poured out before the Holy Place, to deny or to
obscure (if we will but penetrate to the roots of things) the free will
of Man and the Love of God. If Christ had not died, our faith would be
vain.

II. Once again, then, let us turn to the event in our own lives that
closes them; that death which, united to Christ's, is our entrance into
liberty and, disunited, the supreme horror of existence.

(1) For without Christ death is a violent interruption to life,
introducing us to a new existence of which we know nothing, or to no
existence at all. Without Christ, however great our hopes, it is abrupt,
appalling, stunning, and shattering. It is this at the best, and, at the
worst, it is peaceful only as the death of a beast is peaceful.

(2) Yet, with Christ, it is harmonious and continuous with all that has
gone before, since it is the final movement of a life that is already
_dead with Christ_, the last stage of a process of mortality, and the
stage that ends its pain. It is just one more passing phase, by which is
changed the key of that music that every holy life makes always before
God.

There is, then, the choice. We may, if we will, die fighting to the end
a force that must conquer us however we may fight, resisting the
irresistible. Or we may die, in lethargic resignation, as dogs die,
without hopes or regrets, since the past, without Christ, is as
meaningless as the future. Or we may die, like Christ, and with Him,
yielding up a spirit that came from the Father back again into His
Fatherly hands, content that He Who brought us into the world should
receive us when we go out again, confident that, as the thread of His
purpose is plain in earthly life, it shall shine yet more plainly in the
life beyond.

One last look, then, at Jesus shows us the lines smoothed from His face
and the agony washed from His eyes. May our souls and the souls of all
the faithful departed, through His Mercy, rest in Him!

XI

LIFE AND DEATH

_As dying, and behold we live_.--II COR. VI. 9.

We have considered, so far, a number of paradoxical phenomena exhibited
in the life of Catholicism and have attempted to find their
reconciliation in the fact that the Catholic Church is at once Human and
Divine. In her striving, for example, after a Divine and supernatural
Peace, of which she alone possesses the secret, she _resists even unto
blood_ all human attempts to supplant thi