Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 11 mediaeval theology, but of that spiritual body that receives its inspiration from the Holy Ghost, its authority from Jesus Christ — in short, all that in which it consists from God Him- self. I am the representative of the Catholic Church and hence the representative of the Creator.” The apostate had been moved; even in his pain he had roused himself to hear the glowing words of the speaker. “ You are eloquent, father,” he said with difficulty. “ I re- spect your devotion to your cause. I honor you as a just man, but I cannot agree with all your belief.” The priest looked with anxiety at the rapidly dying man. Then he said: “Would you have proof of my words? Forget your own belief, disregard for the moment that deli- cate system of philosophy you have built up for yourself; cease using those grand ideas and vague passions which you have forced into justifying yourself. Look not into your abstract speculations, but into your life. Have your actions proved the purity and justice of the course you have taken? You abandoned your church for your wife and pleasure; you gave up your God for the ambition of this life. She who aided you in the fcdl has realized her sin and has appealed to the Infinite mercy. Recall your own sins, and look to Calvary where, hanging on the infamous gibbet of shame, is your God. Give heed to His words and apply them to yourself: ‘ Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ ” The priest broke off, for by a superhuman effort the man- gled creature before him had thrown himself on his knees, and in a voice that sped over the boundless waste of waters he cried : “ My God, I believe.” A moment later he was pouring forth in broken accents a confession of his life, and as his voice grew weaker the priest solemnly gave him abso- lution. The effort had exhausted his last strength; he fell by the side of his wife, and the minister of God realized that

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10 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL He stifled a groan and caught at the breath which was fast leaving him. “ Your wife was no coward,” said the priest. “ She did not gaze into the unknown, but into a future that rose before her eyes with far more certainty and distinctness than did the sinking ship with its condemned throng, praying, cursing and raving in the face of death. She saw that it was her duty to serve her God now as He commanded, though she had never done so before. Those words were ringing in her ears, ‘ He that believeth in me shall live, though he die, and he that liveth in me shall never die.” Christ Himself willed that she should live, and she bowed before His Holy Will. The husband’s eyes were glazed. “ Would she not have lived because she willed to live — because she possessed a soul that through its very nature could not die, and through its own powers would live happily? ‘ Man doth not yield him- self to the angels or to death utterly save through the weak- ness of his feeble will.’ She did not need the form of bap- tism, confession, and all the other ceremony with which man has clothed his inherent religion. Do you think to terrify me with the phantasmagora of mediaeval theology? ” “ You set the human will above the Divine,” cried the priest. “ Do you not know that all the powers of the human mind, all that transcendent will in which you glory, all the beauties of the soul of man are but images — faint reflections of the qualities of God? You have absolutely nothing, except in- asmuch as you have received it from God. You can do abso- lutely nothing, except inasmuch as you are made after the likeness of that Creator, whose Will is the supreme and in- finite law. It is in condescension to your weak intellect and your material form that God, not man, has given an outward form to the worship He demands from the children of Adam. I am here as the minister, not of a society of men, not of

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12 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL he was the only living creature left in the boat. He looked up, and across the waves saw the black hull of an approaching steamer. He started to signal, but the ship had already stopped her engines and was lowering a boat. He alone, of the four hundred and thirty-nine souls aboard the “ Nova Scotia,” had been saved from the jaws of the ocean, and the sea gulls wheeled over the tossing life-boat with its cargo of dead. Charles S. Lerch, ’ll.