miserable race. While
other denominations are, little by little, eliminating melancholy, you
are insisting upon it. While the rest of us are agreeing that Hell is
but a bogy, and sin a mistake, and suffering no more than remedial, you
Catholics are still insisting upon their reality--that Hell is eternal,
that sin is the deliberate opposition of the human will to the Divine,
and that suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice,
Purgatory, and Hell--these are the old nightmares of dogma; and their
fruits are tears, pain, and terror. What is wrong with Catholicism,
then, is its gloom and its sorrow; for this is surely not the
Christianity of Christ as we are now learning to understand it. Christ,
rightly understood, is the Man of joy, not of Grief. He is more
characteristic of Himself, so to speak, as the smiling shepherd of
Galilee, surrounded by His sheep; as the lover of children and flowers
and birds; as the Preacher of Life and Resurrection--He is more
characteristic of Himself as crowned, ascended, and glorified, than as
the blood-stained martyr of the Cross whom you set above your altars.
_Rejoice, then, and be exceeding glad_, and you will please Him best."

Once more, then, we appear to be in the wrong, to whatever side we turn.
The happy red-faced monk with his barrel of beer is a caricature of our
joy. Can this, it is asked, be a follower of the Man of Sorrows? And the
long-faced ascetic with his eyes turned up to heaven is the world's
conception of our sorrow. Catholic joy and Catholic sorrow are alike too
ardent and extreme for a world that delights in moderation in both
sorrow and joy--a little melancholy, but not too much; a little
cheerfulness, but not excessive.

II. First, then, it is interesting to remember that these charges are
not now being made against us for the first time. In the days even of
the Roman Empire they were thought to be signs of Christian inhumanity.
"These Christians," it was said, "must surely be bewitched. See how
they laugh at the rack and the whip and go to the arena as to a bridal
bed! See how Lawrence jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They
must be bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of
darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and common pleasure. In
either case they are not true men at all." Their extravagance of joy
when others would be weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when all
the world is glad--these are the very signs to