hem--I take them simply
as I find them, and believe and adore. "Your father Abraham rejoiced to
see my day, and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto Him,
Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?" One
cannot blame them for asking that question, for Abraham had been dead
then nearly two thousand years. But what is our Lord's solemn answer?
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am."

"I Am." The same name by which our Lord God had revealed Himself to
Moses in the wilderness, some sixteen hundred years before. If these
words were true,--and the Lord prefaces them with Verily, verily, Amen,
Amen, which was as solemn an asseveration as any oath could be--then the
Lord Jesus Christ is none other than the God of Abraham, the God of
Moses, the God of the Jews, the God of the whole universe, past, present,
and to come.

Let us think awhile over this wonder of all wonders. The more we think
over it, we shall find it not only the wonder of all wonders, but the
good news of all good news.

The deepest and soundest philosophers will tell us that there must be an
"I Am." That is, as they would say, a self-existent Being; neither made
nor created, but who has made and created all things; who is without
parts and passions, and is incomprehensible, that is cannot be
comprehended, limited, made smaller or weaker, or acted on in any way by
any of the things that He has made. So that this self-existing Being
whom we call God, would be exactly what He is now, if the whole universe,
sun, moon, and stars, were destroyed this moment; and would be exactly
what He is now, if there had never been any universe at all, or any thing
or being except His own perfect and self-existent Self. For He lives and
moves and has His being in nothing. But all things live and move and
have their being in Him. He was before all things, and by Him all things
consist. And this is the Catholic Faith; and not only that, this is
according to sound and right reason. But more: the soundest
philosophers will tell you that God must be not merely a self-existent
Being, but the "I Am:" that if God is a Spirit, and not merely a name for
some powers and laws of brute nature and matter, He must be able to say
to Himself, "I Am:" that He must know Himself, that He must be conscious
of Himself, of who and what He is, as you and I are conscious of
ourselves, and more or less of who