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latter fear was the dominant sentiment, the new Law
is essentially a law of love, as Jesus Christ Himself teach
es us in the Gospel of the Mass for this Sunday.
In His answer to the captious arguments of the pharisees,
the divine Master declares that the first and the
greatest of the commandments is that which pre
scribes the love of God. To this commandment is added
so that it forms but one and the same precept, the com
mand to love one s neighbour. We cannot, in fact, love
God unless we love, His work also, that is to say, all
rational beings. To fulfil the precept of charity, adds
our divine Lord, is to fulfil the whole Law. In. reality,
the whole Law is summed up in the Decalogue. The
first three precepts of the Decalogue have reference to
our duties towards God, the remaining seven formulate
our duties to our neighbour, founded on those duties
which we owe to ourselves. He who loves God with
his whole heart, will faithfully observe all those diffe
rent precepts, and thus in loving God, he will fulfil the
whole of the Law. The prophecies which our Lord
speaks of as being fulfilled in the love of God, chiefly
refer to the work of Redemption. Now the end of the
work of Redemption is to save men, and by this means
to glorify God ; this therefore is to fulfil the prophecies
and to practise pre-eminently the love of God.
In his Epistle to the Ephesians, read at the Mass for
this Sunday, Saint Paul explains in his own way, the
" We find as
unity of the new Law in which he says :
the bond of peace but one Lord, one faith, one baptism".
One Lord, because in it God alone commands ; one faith,
because the one only belief, the same creed, or profes
sion of the same faith, unites all intellects in adhesion
to God, the eternal unchanging Truth; one baptism,
because all are saved in the same waters of regenera-