she alone
can be his Saviour. If, then, her saints are one sign of her identity,
no less are her sinners another.

For not only is she the Majesty of God dwelling on earth, she is also
His Love; and therefore its limitations, and they only, are hers. That
Sun of mercy that shines and that Rain of charity that streams, _on just
and unjust alike_, are the very Sun and Rain that give her life. If I
_go up to Heaven she is there_, enthroned in Christ, on the Right Hand
of God;_ if I go down to Hell she is there also_, drawing back souls
from the brink from which she alone can rescue them. For she is that
very ladder which Jacob saw so long ago, that staircase planted here in
the blood and the slime of earth, rising there into the stainless Light
of the Lamb. Holiness and unholiness are both alike hers and she is
ashamed of neither--the holiness of her own Divinity which is Christ's
and the unholiness of those outcast members of her Humanity to whom she
ministers.

By her power, then, which again is Christ's, the Magdalen becomes the
Penitent; the thief the first of the redeemed; and Peter, the yielding
sand of humanity, the _Rock on which Herself is built_.

IV

JOY AND SORROW

_Rejoice and be exceeding glad.... Blessed are they that mourn_.--
MATT. V. 12, 5.

The Catholic Church, as has been seen, is always too "extreme" for the
world. She is content with nothing but a Divine Peace, and in its cause
is the occasion of bloodier wars than any waged from merely human
motives. She is not content with mere goodness, but urges always
Sanctity upon her children; yet simultaneously tolerates sinners whom
even the world casts out. Let us consider now how, in fulfilling these
two apparently mutually contradictory precepts of our Lord, to rejoice
and to mourn, once more she appears to the world extravagant in both
directions at once.

I. It is a common charge against her that she rejoices too exceedingly;
is arrogant, confident, and optimistic where she ought to be quiet,
subdued, and tender.

"This world," exclaims her critic, "is on the whole a very sad and
uncertain place. There is no silver lining that has not a cloud before
it; there is no hope that may not, after all, be disappointed. Any
religion, then, that claims to be adequate to human nature must always
have something of sadness and even hesitancy about it. Religion must
walk softly all her days if she is to walk hand in hand with experience.
Death is