Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER385ing the usurper, took those very elements of naturalincrease which heathenism had put under two falsedeities, and perverted in their worship to incitementsfor evil, and in taking them caused them to becomeHis Body and Blood for the creation of a sacred race.Moreover, He took them likewise and constituted themto be the perpetual commemoration of the Sacrificewhich He had offered of His Body. He had associatedmatter with Himself in a wonderful way in taking abody; and now He made that Body itself the meanswhereby the Creator and Kedeemer of man becomeshis Sacrifice. This is the part which matter playswhen touched by God. In the Neoplatonic philosophyit was deemed the cause of evil. In the ChristianFaith it becomes the special instrument which bringsabout the triumph of good. But the consecrationthus given to matter ran all through the doctrine ofthe sacraments. Water conferred regeneration, aridoil was the channel of grace; and the Church tookpossession of the whole material world for the gloryof its Maker. All this was involved in the fact ofChrist's resurrection in the body.The second great fact, therefore, by which the Churchin setting forth supernatural mysteries replaced civilsociety on its true basis, was in establishing by theresurrection of Christ in His Body the eternal personalityof man. This doctrine, and this alone, isan adequate foundation for the whole conduct of manin the .trial to which he is exposed. Without itmorality becomes what it became in the Graeco-Eomanheathenism, and what it is now in every country wherethe moral order is not based upon Christian belief.3. God is One. He is intelligent. By an actof freedom, which had He chosen He need not haveVOL. m. 2 B