Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY365persuading his will. And Constantino beheld thatin five hundred cities of his dominion, and whereverthe Christian community existed, this Sacrifice wasoffered incessantly, and gathered about it the mostfervent prayers of all worshippers for the variousorders of the great Christian Church. In it wereremembered princes and governments, relations andfriends, enemies likewise and persecutors, the prosperousand the afflicted, departed souls who had notyet fully discharged the temporal punishment dueto sin. In it, in short, the Christian heart prayedwith absolute unanimity for the living and thedead.In this triple function which made up the perpetualwork of the Church, teaching was inseparably boundup with action, the informing of the intellect with themoulding of the will. And equally close with bothwas the union of the Christian Sacrifice. It taughtdaily before the eyes what the sacraments communcated. It set forth 4Jesus Christ crucified ; and He wthe beginning and end of the teaching ; He was thsource and giver of the sacraments. The severpowers which a corruption, whose seat was in thewill much more than in the intellect had disunitedhe society originally set up by God for the whol, and which philosophy, assuming as it did thffice of religion, had utterly failed to reunite, where once more joined together. The teaching, thsacraments, and the Sacrifice embraced the wholinner life of the individual from childhood to age,m birth to death. The heathen priest had worshipwithout teaching; the philosopher taught without aworship; but to both the wide field of human actionT suffering lay apart from the teaching or the