and what we are. And this, also, I
believe to be true, and rational, and necessary to the Catholic Faith.

But they will tell you again--and this, too, is surely true--that I Am
must be the very name of God, because God alone can say perfectly, "I
Am," and no more. You and I dare not, if we think accurately, say of
ourselves, "I am." We may say, I am this or that; I am a man; I am an
Englishman; but we must not say, "I am;" that is, "I exist of myself."
We must say--not I am; but I become, or have become; I was made; I was
created; I am growing, changing; I depend for my very existence on God
and God's will, and if He willed, I should be nothing and nowhere in a
moment. God alone can say, I Am, and there is none beside Me, and never
has, nor can be. I exist, absolutely, and simply; because I choose to
exist, and get life from nothing; for I Am the Life, and give life to all
things. But you may say, What is all this to us? It is very difficult
to understand, and dreary, and even awful. Why should we care for it,
even if it be true? Yes, my friends; philosophy may be true, and yet be
dreary, and awful, and have no gospel and good news in it at all. I
believe it never can have; that only in Revelation, and in the Revelation
of our Lord Jesus Christ, can poor human beings find any gospel and good
news at all. And sure I am, that that is an awful thought, a dreary
thought, a crushing thought, which makes a man feel as small, and
worthless, and helpless, and hopeless, as a grain of dust, or a mote in
the sunbeam--that thought of God for ever contained in Himself, and
saying for ever to Himself, "I Am, and there is none beside Me."

But the Gospel, the good news of the Old Testament, the Gospel, the good
news of the New Testament, is the Revelation of God and God's ways, which
began on Christmas Day, and finished on Ascension Day: and what is that?
What but this? That God does not merely say to Himself in Majesty, "I
Am;" but that He goes out of Himself in Love, and says to men, "I Am."
That He is a God who has spoken to poor human beings, and told them who
He was; and that He, the I Am, the self-existent One, the Cause of life,
of all things, even the Maker and Ruler of the Universe, can stoop to
man--and not merely to perfect men, righteous men, holy men, wise men,
but to the enslaved, the sinful, the brutish--that He may deliver them,
and teach them, and raise them from the de