east of the race.

If celibacy, therefore, means untrammeled vice, and marriage
degenerates into New Englandism, the world will get along better with
less of both. Vows, if they have no other merit, respect at least the
law of God, and this world is run according to that law.

CHAPTER XLV.
BLASPHEMY.

TO blaspheme is to speak ill of God; blasphemy is an utterance
derogatory to the respect and honor due to God. Primarily, it is a sin
of the tongue; but, like all other sins, it draws its malice from the
heart. Thus, a thought may be blasphemous, even though the blasphemy
remain unexpressed; and a gesture, oftentimes more expressive than a
word, may contain all the malice of blasphemy. This impiety therefore
may be committed in thought, in word and in deed.

Blasphemy addresses itself directly to God, to His attributes and
perfections which are denied, or ridiculed; to Jesus Christ and the
Blessed Sacrament; indirectly, through His Mother and His saints,
through Holy Scripture and religion, through the Church and her
ministers in their quality of ministers,--all of which, being
intimately and inseparably connected with the idea of God, cannot be
vilified without the honor of God being affected; and, consequently,
all contempt and irreverence addressed to them, takes on the nature of
blasphemy. An indirect sin of blasphemy is less enormous than a direct
offense, but the difference is in degree, not in kind.

All error that affects God directly, or indirectly through sacred
things, is blasphemy whether the error consist in a denial of what is
true, or an attribution of what is false. Contempt, ridicule, scoffing
and sneering, where are concerned the Holy and things holy, are
blasphemous. He also blasphemes who attributes to a creature what
belongs to God alone, or can be said only of holy things, who drags
down the sacred to the level of the profane.

Revilings against God are happily rare; when met with, they are
invariably the mouthings of self-styled atheists or infidels whose
sanity is not always a patent fact. Heretics are usually blasphemous
when they treat of anything outside Jesus Christ and the Bible; and not
even Christ and Scripture escape, for often their ideas and utterances
concerning both are as injurious to God as they are false and
erroneous. Finally, despair and anger not infrequently find
satisfaction in abusing God and all that pertains to Him.

Nothing more abominable can be conceived than t