NO. 7

9ie PURE

of HEART

A7JK (.o /9'f Price I OC

6y Daniel .Lord, S.J. -

THE PURE OF HEART

BY

DANIEL A. LORD, S. J.

First edition, February. 1928-25,000.

Second edition, June, 1928-25,000.

Thiru ed illon, J a nuary, 1929-50,000.

F ourth edition, September. 1930.

THE QUEEN'S WORK PRESS 3115 SOUTH GRAND B LVD.

ST. LOUIS, Mo.

THE QUEEN'S WORK PAMPHLETS

Shall I Be a Nun? Don't Say It!

Marry Your Own The Call of Christ.

My Friend the Pastor.

Shall My Daughter Be a Nun? Christ and Women.

Hints to Happiness. These Terrible Jesuits.

A Novena in Honor of the Little Flower. (and many others)

Price of These Pamphlets Single copy ........ $0.10 100 copies ...... $ 7.00 50 copies .............. 4.00 1000 copies ...... 60.00

THE QUEEN'S WORK PRESS, 31 15 S. Grand Boulevard. St. Louis, Mo.

1 mprimi potest: Matthaeus Germing, S. J. Praep. Provo l\Hsso urianae

Nihil Obstat: Joannes Rothens teiner Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: >1< Joannes J. Glennon Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici

S:lllct i Ludovici, die 31 Januarii, 1928

Copyright. 1928

GERALD A. FITZGIBBONS

The Pure of Heart

EVERYBODY li-ked the twins. The best part about it was that neither Dick nor

Sue apparently was aware of the fact. They returned their mother's affection with ap­preciative interest; she was just the finest woman in the world, and that was all there was about it. They knew that their father liked them to drive him to town, and both were quite willing to play chauffeur; it didn't occur to them that Dad fairly glowed with pride as he drove up to the bank with his sturdy young son or his live young daughter at the wheel.

His comrades liked Dick, for he played a square game, no matter what the game, tool{ a defeat wi thout alibi and a victory without conceit, and never put on f ront. Girls liked Dick because he wasn't too good-looking, but was saved by an unmistakably generous mouth, because a sense of humor made him regard movie heroes as entertainment and not as Ideals, because he talked even to the most frivolous girl as if he thought she had sense, and because he treated all girls as he'd like other chaps to treat his sister.

Boys followed Sue like devoted Airedales, even when she treated them with casual in­difference or bullied them and kept them waiting at her heels. Girls trusted her with their secrets and took it for granted that she wouldn't tell-a supreme compliment. So everybody liked the twins, and Father Hall admitted that he liked them too.

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Because Father Hall was a student and an author, he had aslted for and had been given his little parish down in the country. In winter time he was weather·bound among his booles-fettered, as he put it, to his type· writer and his bookcases. There was daily mass and an afternoon which he spent driv· ing his sturdy flivver or his even more sea· going buckboard and mare about his parish, but there were mornings and evenings he spent turning out his brilliant novels and his stimulating essays.

When summer came and the roads were open and the people swarmed down from the cities to settle at the lakeside and overrun his little church, he put the cover on his typewriter, supplied himself with a hundred or more bookmarks to slip into interrupted books, and gave himself to a busy life among people. And the proprietor of Lakeside Lodge, an arrogant, French·chateau sort of hotel, that flung wide arms out along the most beautiful of the bays and lorded it over a hundred or more little cottages used by those who objected to hotel life, thanked the heavenly patron of hotelkeepers for putting Father Hall in the parish church. For the Catholics who came once to Lakeside came again, and they were never quite clear about whether it was th€ sl,ill of the Lakeside's chef, the crystal clearness of the lake, or the charm of Father Hall that brought them back.

Father Hall's machine was skimming up the road toward the cottage that topped the hill. the very highest and the very finest

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cottage ot all the Lakeside group, as Dick and Sue came up from the tennis court. They waved welcoming hands at the oncom­ing machine ; then Sue swung into the house and Dick paused, as if slll!htly ashamed, on the porch. His mother sat in the porch swing apparently absorbed in her book, till, with a quickness that almost startled her, though she had been vividly aware of his presence from the moment he and his twin had left the court, he stooped and kissed her cheek.

"Sorry about last night, especially on ac­count of Sue," he said. "Forgive me, mother."

And without waiting for an answer, he dashed into the house for a shower and a change.

The mother of the twins dropped her book on the tIoor beside her. Truth to tell, she hadn't r ead a page of it in an hour. She was wondering what Dick would say, if any­thing, when he had to pass her to enter the house. Sue had wept a bit on her shoulder the night before, but Dick had said noth­ing. Well, when he finally spoke, he had said just the right thing, she felt, with a glow of pride. Thank heaven, he hadn't laid any of the blame on Sue or the J ones girl.

F ather Hall stopped his car, carefully locked it as if he were in the heart of the city (Father Hall was still a little mystified by any sort of mechanism, and since the book of instructions which came with his car had enjoined locking it, he alwaflii lQI:Ked

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It), and came up toward the porch. The twins' mother rose and greeted him with a welcoming smile.

"How is it," she asked, in that voice of hers that nobody ever forgot, "that you come like an answer to prayer?"

Father Hall dropped his h~t down on the grass matting and sank into a deep porcb chair. It was fifteen years since Dick's mother had carried her busky two-year·old twins into tbis very cottage at Lakeside, and Father Hall, already in bis forties and ana· tional figure in literature, had noticed for the first time this young wife and her babies. For fifteen summers they had returned, and in three of them the mother of the twins bad brought a lovely new baby for Father Hall to bless. But from that July day fifteen years before, when Father Hall had taken baby Dick and baby Sue into his arms and blessed them, his affection for the twins had become one of the- fine things in his life.

"I read and write books in winter," he used to say at the close of each season, "but in summer I let my soul have the luxury of people. Bring the twins back with you next June."

They sat with the silence of old friends. Then Father Hall ran his hands through his fine grey hair, a gesture that indicated that something had suddenly struck him, and looked at the twins' mother.

"You're worried, aren't you?" lJe said, In a statement rather than a question. "Would It help any if you told me about it?"

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"Lots," she said. She was silent tor a mo­ment. Then she spoke again, in a lowered tone. "Dick and Sue are inside, and I shouldn't want them to lmow we were talk­ing about them."

"Quite right," said Father Hall, and gazed off into space with the vacant look he wore when he was listening intently.

"It's that queer little Jones girl and her brother," she went on.

"I've noticed them," said Father Hall dryly.

"I wondered if you'd seen them," she said. "Well, the girl's been playing up to Dick unblushingly, and I'll admit she is a cute little trick. And the boy has been rushing Sue. But, frankly, I don't like them."

"Why not?" asked Father Hall. "Well, last night I came up from the hotel

and found them all on the porch together, Dick and the girl ill the porch swing, Sue and the boy on the steps. Nothing really serious, of course, but just such wretchedly vulgar taste. Dick looked horribly em­barrassed, and Sue fled; but the Jones girl smoothed her hair and laughed like the lit­tle Idiot she is, and the boy wished me good evening as if that sort of thing meant noth­ing to him. I went into the house with just my coldest greeting."

"I thought I noticed a tall in temperature late last evening," said Father Hall.

"Dick almost immediately atter took the girl back to her cottage, and the boy walked away whistling. That's all there was to it. I've not mentioned it to Dick, but Sue came

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to my room arid cried a bit (she's a sweet though thoughtless child). Dick was fine about it when he carne in from their tennis game. 'The twins are seventeen now, and these modern youngsters know such a sur· prising lot about life. If they could only see things in their proper light, value these kisses that they t,hrow away as kisses should be valued. . .. You see what r mean, don't you? They get such a twisted sense of val· ues, read so much trash, see so many queer plays, hear such terrible opinions about life, and I'm afraid that the twins' father and mother aren't much when it comes to han­dling a delicate subject like that."

"I see," said Father Hall, still looking off into space.

"You know how I've brought the twins up, treated them like comrades, made them feel like comrades toward each other. I've felt that if they were calm and fine in their relations with each other they would proba­bly be calm and fine in their relations with other boys and girls. Perhaps if they could see this whole thing in the same light, look at it eye to eye, so to speak. ... "

"r see," said Father Hall again, and they talked about the weather, the new Gothic vestments he had ordered from a Chinese convent, the corning horse show, and the book that the twins' mother had been trying to read.

• • • Father Hall and the twins picked out the

path through the woods that ran betweeD

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the clumps of scrub oaks and birch and then skirted the rapid little stream flowing so gladly toward the lake. Dick had suggested the walk, and Sue had seconded the proposal enthusiastically. F ather Hall, who loved every tree in the woods and knew where the first wild flowers thrust up their heads through the mud and melting snow and where the last crouched down under a fallen log, had turned at once toward his favorite path. They walked in silence, "tandem hitch," through the first narrow stretch of path; but as they reached the margin of the brook, they came abreast, Dick walking with hands thrust deep into his pockets, Sue swinging a supple cane that cut the air with quick swishes.

Dick spoke first. "Mother must have thought me pretty

cheap last night," he said. Sue cut with savage strokes the leaves

from an oak sapling. "Last night?" Father Hall repeated, with

a rising inflection. "Oh, you know. S'he tells you every·

thing," said Sue almost impatiently. "It wasn't, I suppose, particularly wrong,"

Dick went on, "but when mother suddenly carne up the walk, I felt awfully common and cheap and vulgar. Of course, it was all my fault, though I'll admit that I'd rather like to smash that Jones chap."

"It was my fault quite as much as yours," Sue protested.

"Junk! A man ought to be decent to girls, and I wasn't and he wasn't. Queer, sort of,

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that a chap will want to do that kind of thing."

Father Hall stuffed his pipe full of rough· cut out of a big rubber pouch and st(')pped for a light.

"Not queer a bit," be said between puffs; "it's a natural instinct given us by God. Only He meant it to be very beautiful, not cheap and common."

The twins stood a step in advance with their backs to the priest, waiting for him to get his light. Instinctively Dick shrugged his shoulders, but Father Hall was not so blinded by the smol(e he was vigorously puffing as to miss the worry in the tilt of Dicl('s head.

"I don't know," Dick said; "it seems just cheap and common to me."

"Last night was," agreed Father Hall, as they once more swung along the path. "But God did not give you the instinct for some­thing like last night."

. "It's a beautiful world we live in, wonder­fully beautiful," he went on. "A rugged old oak like that one over there-the vigorous strength of its trunk, the delicate lacework of its leaves, pale green in spring and burnt red and gold in fall! There's a fresh little squirrel staring at us from behind that stump. Can you see him? A coat that beau­tiful ladies would envy and with eyes that spark fire! Those wild flowers over there, not far from the blackberry bushes, almost breaking under their purple fruit-beauti­ful, aren't they? Did you ever see a color like the color of that green toadstool? Even

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a poisonous thing like that has a color that no artist can duplicate. It's a beautiful world, children. God is a great artist and a great architect."

The twins were used to Father Hall's en· thusiasm, but now, as they walked along, each listened to him with something like surprise. They had been talking of a crude flirtation, of an affair they both felt ashamed of; and suddenly this ode to nature!

"And beautiful as all of it is, its one pur· pose is to make our summer's afternoon a happier, more contented one. We are more important, however unimportant we may sometimes seem to ourselves, than the trees and the oaks and the stars in the sky. We are wonderful creatures, we men and women."

Father Hall smoked silently for a moment as they walked through the quiet woods. About them age-old oaks; near them an un· tiring brook; under their feet the sort spring of the green turf.

"I love to think of the moment," he went on, "when God sent the universe flying out into space and, where nothing was just a second before, the first star dust began to whirl and the light picked out and played upon the stuff of future worlds. I love to think of the moment when the first flower lifted its bead on the cooling earth and when the first tiny animals Wriggled feebly in the mud. God's tremendous act of creation, mak· ing all this world with its beauty and its powers! And yet-why, all this was unim· portant compared to the moment when the

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first man looked up and lmew God, and the rest of the world seemed insignificant in his presence.

"It's a gorgeous thing to have faith; it makes all the possible difference. Without faith this world is just a marvelous juggler's trick, quite as meaningless and quite as silly. With faith, we know that, when God made a world of stars and plants and ani­mals, He was looking forward to the mo­ment when that fi rst man would lift h is head, know his Creator, and voluntarily bend his knee. Here you and I are walking through the woods, warmed by the sun, pro­teeted by the foliage, soothed by the stream and the birds, and knowing that everything was put there just for us."

"Seems all out of proportion, somehow," Dick ventured. "Whenever I look up at the stars, I feel so small."

"I know," Sue agreed. "When we were out in the Grand Canyon last summer, I felt just like the most insignificant worm."

"Never say that, never! You're not. Not at all. You'll be living, body and soul, when the stars are burnt out and the Grand Canyon is the dust of a desert. You are im­mortal; they belong to time. Stars and mountains are forced to do God's will; you only serve Him if and when you want to, and you can refuse if you prefer to disobey. You've a free will, you see, and an immortal soul, and that's why you are so important compared to the most brilliant star. And you've got the marvelous power of doing

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something like what God did at the supreme moment of creation."

Dick looked up puzzled. He had been in­terested, as he always was when Father Hall talked, but the conversation had seemed too irrelevant to the subject that was worrying him.

"What do you mean, Father?" he asked.

~'We call God our father because He cre­ated the human race. Nothing else.in crea­tion compared with that act. And, Dick, He gives you the astonishing power to be a father too. Y,ou can call into the world one of those wonderful creatures for which the sta rs and flowers and mountains were made. You can father an immortal man."

Dick looked up quickly and then walked on with lowered head.

The branches of the trees almost met above their heads, forming a long canopy over the path they were traveling. All the lovely little woodland noises sounded their short staccato against the sharp rush of the shallow brook. But over the boy and the girl came the nervous tension of youth in the presence of fundamental truth.

"God has been marvelously generous to us creatures," the priest continued gently. "He has lavished His best gifts upon us. This mind of ours, grasping furiously, in­satiably, after truth, never satisfied, rest· lessly seeking more-it's just like a frag­ment of God's omniscient intellect. This strong, noble will of ours is an image of God's own will. And His divine fatherhood

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that brought the human race into being, He has shared that with us, too.

"Some day, Dick, if God means you to malTY, you 'll stand at the bedside of a woman whom you call your wife and she'll hold up to you a little bit of squirming, weep­ing, pitiful life. And you'll lean over, with pride and happiness almost crushing your

. heart, and say, as you lilt the baby in your arms, 'Under God, I am the maker of this child's ·being.' You'll have actually given to the world another of its most astonishing creatures, the very ones for whom God made the universe. You will be a father of men, like God Himself.

"And some day, Sue, if God so wills it, you'll hold an infant against your heart, and all the happiness tlLat can come to a woman will be summed up in that moment when you know that the tiny bit of humanity is your baby, your own lovely child.

"Great heavens, what a power! The power to call into existence God's children! God, you Imow, might have created human beings as He created Adam, out of the slime of the earth. Instead, He gave men and women a share in His creative power. They are the fathers and mothers of the human race, co­operators with God himself in the making of their children. God actually waits for their cooperation. As the tiny body of the child is formed by the parents, God breathes into it an immortal soul. Great heavens, what a power!

"And that power, you know, is bound up absolutely with a thing called by a name

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that is bandied about so cheaply-sex. It Is sex. Oh, it's only wben sex is abused, turned from its tremendous purpose, used, not like the creati ve power of God, but like tbe blind and selfisb instinct of beasts, tbat it is c'heap or common or vulgar."

Dick kicked a broken branch out of the way.

"I bad not thougbt of it precisely that way," he said.

Sue walked on quietly, but the cane in her hand had ceased its vicious swishing.

"This queer, twisted modern world of ours doesn't see it that way. As a matter of tact tbe decay of faith is simply setting tbe world on its head. Things don't mean wbat tbey used to mean. The poor old faithless world is doing itself terrible damage without even suspecting it."

"Do you mean tbat, Father?" It was Sue who asked.

"Absolutely. Wben taitb goes, men are just more or less beautiful, developed, trained, parlor-broke animals, that's all. They are just one step ahead of the ape and one jump away from the grave. They are animals, with the importance of animals and wilb a life that starts from nothing and goes straight for the darkness of a tomb. I! they never happen to be born, it doesn't make much difference. If they are born, it's all over wben the gravedigger pats the last sod on their graves. So they are not im­portant, life is not important, children are not mucb more important than other baby animals, and the power that generates life

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and brings children into the world really isn't precious either.

"So, if it were not that sex is associated with pleasure, the modern pagan world would simply refuse to use it. In fact you've read enough to see that these moderns are trying to keep the pleasure and eliminate the crea­tive power of sex. They want the pleasure without the purpose. They can't see any· thing very wonderful in the power of gen­erating creatures that die in a year or a hundred years, and sex has become an unim­portant thing or a frivolous thing. But a creative power, divine, intended to people this world with children whom God loves and has promised to immortality-what un­believing modern looks on sex as that sort of thing?"

Ahead of them was an open space near the stream. A circle ·of young maples sur­rounded a lovely green bank sloping down to the river, and near the stream a fallen log lay invitingly. With the sense of com­panionship which makes explanations un­necessary, Father Hall headed for the log, .sat down, stretched his legs out at full length, and filled his pipe again. Dick flung himself down on his stomaoh and lay with his head resting on his crossed arms, but his face was turned toward his friend. Sue, her bacl, propped against the log, sat facing the swiftly rushing water. Father Hall regarded them affectionately.

"How any man can look at youth," he said, "and not marvel at the power that brought such splendid beings into existence is more

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than I can see. Yet you are going to hear and read, if you haven't already, terrible things about sex. Men and women will tell you funny stories about sex, and others will roar with laughter over them. It ought to make your blood run cold, this treating as a joke the thing that brings little children into the world, the thing but for which you wouldn't exist today. Men will write clever books to prove that sins against sex aren't sins at all. This flinging away of a precious power, this waste and squandering and spoil­ing and soiling of it, isn't wrong? Then what, in God's name, is wrong? It's wrong to tamper with truth, to squander money, to play with someone's good name, but not sin to tamper with life, squander God's com­municated · power, cheapen love? God gives men the privilege of bringing human beings into the world and they use the privilege for selfish pleasure and refuse to accept the responsibilities of that power. Why, they know they are lying when they argue most cleverly that it isn't a sin.

"Women will shamelessly throw themselves at your head, Dick, use their bodies to at­tract you. Isn't it sad?

"Men will watch you, Sue, with hungry, unclean eyes, and try to win you with their glib and clever tongues into giving them the sweetness of your innocence. So many women have listened to men who talked beautifully of sin that these men will expect you to listen too."

An impertinent robin hopped down from a maple and stood regarding them quizzi-

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cally. Dick watched It. with an unseeing eye; Sue was looking intently at her hands clasped in her lap, as Father Hall went on.

"The ClJtholic Church has been accused of making too much fuss about sins of this sort. It's perfectly true that it does regard them as something terrible, but that is simply because it regards human life as so im· portant and precious that any tampering with the very source of life is just horrible and terrifying.

"And her veneration for women is largely connected with just this same respect for life. Women in her eyes are infinitely pre­cious. Each woman is potentially a mother, a sanctuary of the human race. Some day, in the ordinary course of events, she will carry the tiny germ of life under her heart, bring it, through months of discomfort, to maturity. and then, wan and smiling, offer to her husband and to God the Father a child with an immortal destiny. Actually every woman is the temple of the future, something sacred and almost divine. The Church, in consequence, willingly risks the charge of prudery in its demands upon women. Every woman's body is a shrine of life. and shrines, you know, are holy things.

"You see, it isn't strength or beauty that really makes a body fine and sacred. There's so much more to it than just that. You'll often hear these pagans, who are a great deal more pagan than the chaps you meet in your Vergil and Cicero, singing the praises of the human body and talking as if the Catholic Church despised it. What non-

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sense! It's really the Church that respects and loves the human body, not the pagans. The Church insists on purity simply be­cause it regards the body as so tremendously fine and noble.

"It's the difference, largely, between a group of men who just see the beauty and strength of human flesh and a group who see the flesh as sheath, so to speak, of an im­mortal soul. The pagans parade the body, grow fearfully self-conscious about it, use it as bait on the stage or in advertisements. Decent chaps or girls get sick sometimes, don't you think, when they see the lovely young body of a girl used as a lure to draw the eye to an ad for soap or collars or per­fume or chewing gum or peppermint drops? That the sweet young body that was meant to be the sanctuary of human life should be exposed like a shameless thing-heavens, it's disgusting!

"And when some low-minded theatrical producer hasn't brains enough to make his show go, he'll parade beautiful human bodies before a lustful-eyed audience. Paganism talks a lot about respect for humanity; but it has no idea of a human soul and it uses human bodies in pictures and plays and revues and ads as the cheap bait for filthy-minded men and women. Sad, isn't it?

"I'd never thought of it in that way," Dick said, half to himself.

"Perhaps that's why a girl resents it at first-till she gets used to seeing it," Sue said softly.

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"Rather too bad she ever gets used to it," Father Hall replied. "At any rate, the Church, just because it loves souls so much, respects the bodies that shelter those souls and that shelter too the life germ of un· born races. Your bodies, you know, carry germs to which God may some day unite an immortal soul as He united your · soul to the germs carried in the bodies of your father and your mother. And that's what makes bodies sacred things, not frivolous, un· important creatures of mere animal strength and beauty. Every woman's body is meant to be the sanctuary of souls; every man's body carries a life germ to which may some day be united an immortal spirit. It's the Church, not the pagan, who really loves the body. The pagan admires it as he admires a sleek horse or a blue-ribbon dog or an ex­quisite bird or a blooded sheep; the Catholic reveres it as the companion of an immortal soul and the bearer of fu ture generations.

"And while the pagan regards the body as something that will fall back into worm­eaten and filthy decay, fertilizing, possibly, the grass and the daisies, the Catholic sees it as the happy companion of the soul through eternity. Strange how little we think of the resurrection of this body of ours. Our bodies with their familiar lines will rise from the grave, drop their imperfections and enjoy heaven with our souls. No wonder that the Church treasures every tiny par· ticle of the bodies of its saints."

"Oh, relics!" said Dick in surprise. "Precisely. Relics are portions of their

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holy bodies that will be so beautltul, so happy eternally. If ;vou die in the state ot grace, your bodies will deserve our homage; they will be holy relics too."

"It makes you feel differently about your body," Sue said.

"Vastly. And the saints have regarded tbeir bodies with real reverence.

"Poor St. Paul, so often misquoted and so often misunderstood by people who only halt read him, is accused of being a hater ot the body. When they talk that way, we know at once they just don't understand St. Paul. It's perfectly true that he distrusted the fl esh, but what man or woman with any sense doesn 't? Certainly, when the hum­orou.s old monks talk€d about the flesh as if it were a wild, untamed Arab horse that needed a lot of breaking and training betore it could be trusted, they weren't so far trom the truth. It's a spirited steed , this body of ours, and like all spirited steeds it certainly needs a tight rein and a curb bit, pulled short on many an occasion if the soul isn't to go tumbling off into the mud-no place for any soul to land. It's only when we've mastered our mount and taught him to travel our way that he's worth having or riding; and it's only when we've learned to conquer and control our hodies that we can move safely through life."

Father Hall cut short his thought as he threw back his head and laugbed. DicIt looked up quickly, while Sue turned toward him de€p, astonished eyes.

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"My figures o( speech are getting terribly mixed," the priest said in apology (or his mirth. "You'll be trying to picture the soul striding the body like the Prince of Wales starting off for a fox hunt."

"No, Father," Sue said, unsmilingly; "I get just what you mean."

"Perfectly clear," agreed Dick. Father Hall looked down at the boy, who,

save (or his alert and slightly troubled eyes, lay apparently listless in the grass, and then at the girl with her unsmiling face, and grew momentarily serious. What boy or girl, he mused, but felt that wild steed, the flesh, straining so hard at the bit, kicking its rebellious heels, rearing in terrifying strength to throw its rider? Then he looked whimsically at his own hands. (He hardly knew how strong, firmly moulded, and char· acterfuI others thought them.) It took a deal of practice, a lot of skilled horsemanshIp, he felt, to master that spirited, blooded, mag· nificient mount. No wonder it pulled so hard at young, inexperienced hands.

Dick was the one who finally broke the silence.

"The only thing that I know about St. Paul," he said, "is that once he wrote some­thing about its being better to marry than to burn, and something about the world, the flesh, and the devil."

"You're like the rest. Sue probably reo members that he told women to keep their heads covered in church."

Sue smiled up at him. "Right as usual," she said .

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"That's just why I called him 'poor' St. Paul. People remember that marry-or-burn statement and forget all about the fact that he called marriage a great sacrament and compared it to the union of Christ and the Church. They remember that he had hard words for the temptations of the flesh, but they forget that he called our bodies temples of the Holy Ghost and said that they are ac­tually united in one body to the body of Jesus Christ."

He paused as if collecting his thoughts, and then spread out his hands in an inclu­sive gesture.

"God the Father," he said, "chose the uni­verse for His dwelling; God the Son chose the tabernacles on our altars; and God the Holy Ghost chose the bodies of human beings. 'Know you not: St. Paul said, 'that you are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God?' That is positively breath-taking, isn't it? God the Father in the tremendous temple of the universe; God the Son in the mighty cathedrals of the world; God the Holy Ghost in the living tem­ples of our bodies. That makes our bodies positively holy things, holy as a church

. is holy, or a chalice, or a tabernacle. For, when the bishop held his hands over us in confirmation, the Holy Spirit came down from heaven and said, 'Henceforth these young bodies shall be my living temples.'

"To be perfectly consistent, I suppose I ough t to be burning incense before you; not because you are you, but because your body is as sacred as the most splendid cathedral of

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Europe. And even it the Church doesn't burn incense before you, it recognizes the holiness of your body and hates impurity all the more on this account. Impurity is the soiling, the horrible profanation of a holy thing.

"You remember how Attila swore to stable his horses on the altar steps of St. Peter's? He intended that to be the greatest possible insult to the God of the Christians; the very temple in which He was supposed to dwell was to be made filthy by unclean horses and vile men. Sometimes some frightful vandal deliberately pollutes a Catholic church, and the mere mention of the fact makes our blood run cold. And yet what is an act of impurity, after all, but the deliberate foul­ing of our bodies which are the temples of the Holy Ghost? If you saw a crowd, let's say, of lewd women dancing on the altar (as they did in the French Revolution), you'd shrink back in terror. It's too hor­rible to consider. Yet, when one welcomes a lot of sinful pictures that go dancing through the mind, or one's body is desecrated by an unclean touch, isn't it quite as horrible? Filthy sin is fouling a sacred temple, des­ecrating the house of God the Holy Ghost.

"But St. Paul goes a great deal further than that. He was thinking, of course, of Holy Communion and its intimate union of our bodies with the body of Christ when he said, 'Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ?' Through Holy Com­munion we become one body with Jesus Christ. St. Paul hurries on, with a fearful

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shudder as he thinks or the sins of impurity. 'Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid.' He sees, as it were, the impure sin­ner taking the sweet body of Christ, which has become united with his own body in Holy Communion, and bringing it into inti­mate contact with an impure wuman. Or if the sinner be a woman, her flesh, which was once united with the pure flesh of Christ in Holy Communion, he sees given into the intimate keeping of some sinful man. No wonder St. Paul shuddered. It is a terrible thought, isn't it?"

An almost fierce seriousness had crept into his voice, and the boy and the girl sat in rapt silence. Father Hall leaned back for a moment and beat the dead ashes out of his pipe in a sharp tattoo against his heel, and the grim line of his jaw softened in a smile.

"So you see, 'chilc',ren," he said, "it isn't the body nor this flesh of ours nor sex itself that is cheap or common or vile. They are holy and sacred. Next to the gifts made to our soul, our most splendid gift is the glorious natural gift which makes us pos­sible cooperators with God. And God so loved our bodies that the Holy Ghost makes them His temple, Christ unites Himself to them, and the Father will raise them up on the last day."

Dick snapped a twig he had been playing with and then, slightly turning away hi~

head, said: "That's all fine and splendiG, I"ather, and I'm glad you told us just that

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way. You see, I hadn't regarded it in any· thing like so beautiful a light."

"And I hadn't either," Sue interjected. "But somehow," Dick hurried on, "that

makes me think of last night as just that much more cheap and common and vulgar. I'm just that much more a rotter and I'm thoroughly ashamed."

"What about me?" Sue said softly. "That's a little different, Sue," Dick pro·

tested. "It was that J ones chap that was the rotter, as I was."

Fa ther Hall looked from one to the other. of the slightly flushed faces and smiled. He thought, with a sort of quick, intuitive flash, of the millions of boys and girls in the world who had fel t cheap and common and vulgar and unclean when they had mistaken for love the easily and often disguised t hing called desire and sometimes lust.

"Once upon a time," he began, and Dick relaxed completely, dropping .his face once more into his arms, while Sue leaned for· ward, her lips slightly parted, "a young man and a young woman m et. She was beautiful and sweet and pure; he had been fight ing nobly to get the complete mastery over that spirited body of his. They met, I say, and looked and loved. As they did, t he whole world suddenly appeared different. Nothing seemed so important as the fact that they might-no, they must-Clasp their hands together and vow never to part. To make that possible he plunged harder than ever into his work, drove himsel! like a galley slave to make a home suited to enshrine her

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loveliness, and begged God on bended knees to let him be worthy to protect her. He wrote poetry (it was bad stuff, and later they laughed at it), but he was obeying the impulse that bas called for th the world's finest art. Sbe on her part went home, looked into ber mirror, and wished she were a thousand times more fair. She worried for fear he might not find her beautiful and she longed to appear lovely in his eyes. She gave up all idea of a career for herself or the prospect of a wealthy marriage. She just wanted wbat he could give her and sbe give him.

"Miracles followed them about. Whenever they met, she was far more beautiful than at any other time, and he talked more cleyerly and sbowed a considerateness un· dreamed of before. They talked and walked and danced in new and perfect content and discovered that stars were not prosaic other worlds but diamonds studding a canopy hung over their heads. He laid a flower over her heart and for the first time felt he knew wby flowers had been created. Poets watched them and wrote ecstatically in praise of this marvelous attachment of two souls. The callous world saw that they were lovers and loved them for it. Grim taxi drivers felt a warm glow as tbey sped them homeward In their careening cabs.

"So, after days of . dreams and castles in Spain, they married, were blessed and strengthened by God's sacrament, and as the young husband gathered his bride into his arms, the Christ who blessed tbe marriage

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least smiled approvingly upon them. And so they met and loved and married-a fairy tale come true.

"Then, because they loved each other so, lovely twins, a boy and a girl, were born into the world.

"For this is the story of your father and mother as it is the r€peated story of good men and women who have met, loved, and married."

Sue looked up at him and smiled. "It is beau tiful, isn't it," she said.

"Very beautiful, Sue," the priest repli€d. "God, you see, when He placed upon man·

kind the terrible responsibility for human life, this participation in His power of crea· tion, knew that He was fearfully burdening men and women. To bring children into the world, to assume the responsibility for their eternal destiny, to suffer as mothers have to suffer and to make the sacrifices that fathers have to make---<well, it was asking a lot, and God never asks without giving abundantly in return.

"So into the hearts of men and women he poured this tremendous attraction and joy and exhilaration and sympathy and mu· tual impulse called love. It is something so beautiful that nobody has ev€r been able really to explain it. Men and women clasp hands and take up the burdens of parenthood not so much because they are aware of their cooperation with God in peopling the world a!1d filling heaven as because they are drawn toward each other powerfully, delight· fully, almost irresistibly. A great d€sire to

-28-

unite their Ii ves, their futures, their thoughts, their very bodies, flings them to­gether in a happiness that is beyond any other purely natural happiness of earth. So God gives mankind in return for their par­ticipation in His divine creatorship the marvelous thing called love.

"Then, because men love wo-men, they do more heroic deeds, dare more courageously, achieve more splendidly, carve more splendid monuments and careers, dream vaster dreams of literature or art or empire. Be­cause women love men, they grow more beautiful, make the sanctities of home so much sweeter and more personal, become unselfish and devoted, and keep themselves sweet and fine, sing more sweetly, write more exquisitely, dream lovelier dreams.

"Love, then , is G~d 's way of drawing men and women toward each other, and it Is His reward for their share in the creation of His little children."

Father Hall paused; he was thinking of the devoted love that had united his own parents, made his fath er the great architect he was and his mother the tireless, sweet, sympathetic mistress of a perfect home. Then his face, faintly smiling at his revery, grew more serious.

"Thus far," he went on, "I fancy it's in­telligible enou'gh and beautiful enough. But that only explains the wonderful side of love. Isn't there a side that isn't beautiful?"

Dick moved restlessly. "I wish

there is. there weren't, but unfortunately Unfortunately we are a fallen

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•

race who spoil so easily the most beautiful things in the world.

"Most men were, in the ordinary course of nature, meant some day to find the full satisfaction of love in the companionship of a woman. Yet, because this is so, a man feels a strange attraction for women in general. Their beauty fascinates him. Their charm stimulates him. They appeal to him In a way entirely different from the way in which men appeal, for he was never meant to love a man as he will some day love a woman.

"So, too, a girl finds a similar attraction In the strength or chivalry of men. She responds to their attentions as she does not respond to the sympathy or friendship of any woman. They fascinate her as she fas· cinates them, for often, absolutely uncon· sciously, she sees In the casual man she meets someone who may possibly love her and win her love. And he is drawn to her as she is drawn to him simply because he is a man and she a woman.

"At this point enters the strangely vulgar, common, corrupt part that spoils so much of the beauty of love and so often thwarts God's design. Men feel this attraction for a chance woman acquaintance; women feel drawn, sometimes slightly, sometimes st rongly, to men they just happen to meet. Then, without stopping to ask if this be the great love, or without admitting that love is a great responsibility and a reward given for the fulfillment of a sacred trust, they accept the attraction, gratify more or less t he

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momentary whim, drag the manifestations of love down into the common uses of a casual acquaintanceship or the base uses of sin.

"Tl1ere is something terrible, 1 think, in seeing a boy and a girl who may have just met, who hardly know each other, and who really have only this natural attraction of any man for a pretty girl or almost any girl for an acceptable man, simulate the sacred· ness of love, play a game with the finest . natural instincts of the human race, trifle with love if not with life. And when either of the parties is really unworthy or so vile that sin is his or her purpose, it is not only terrible, i t is a crime against love, a sin ' against life, an offense against God the giver of both love and life.

"And that's why last night was cheap and common and vulgar and-forgive me for saying it-dangerous. Dick, you did not really care a snap about that particular girl nor she about you. She was just pretty and smart, and you were an acceptable male who happened to be on hand. Sue, that Jones boy really meant nothing to you; a year from now you 'll hardly remember him. Yet, Dick, you allowed physical attraction to trick you into simulating the signs of love. You did as .a man would do who really loved a woman, and you asked her to' act as if she loved you. She was silly enough to be will· ing, so you played at love and' by so doing were false to love and living a lie. And you, Sue-"

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"Please, Father," she Interrupted, plead­

ingly. "I know you both well enough," the priest

hurried on, "to be sure it was nothing more th a n that. But it's difficult, you see, to keep things just that far. Sin lies so close to sil­liness; we let down the bars to cheap signs of affection and the terrible tiger called pas­sion leaps into our souls.

"And when a man and a woman seriously sin, they are squandering on unworthy or vile or forbidd en people the sacredness wbich goes with love. The man acts toward the woman as a man was meant to act toward the m other of his children. The woman acts toward the man as if he were the father of her babies. What a terrible, terrible crime, that is against the very love in the name of which it is committed! If the silly affairs of boys and girls are like the sub­stituting of broken glass for diamonds, these serious sins are like the feeding on the husks of swine instead of eating at the candle­lighted table of quiet, peaceful homes.

"Perhaps just because it is a sin ' against life a nd love as well as sin against God, it is Olle of the sins that God so often pun­ishes here in this world. I'm not going even to hint at the horrors that follow sins of this sort. It's enough that the world is full of frail men and sickly women and children born with deformed and spoiled bodies­often the sad consequence of men and women mistaking lust for love or giving to chance acquaintances or forbidden persons the in­timacies that God and nature meant to be

-32-

reserved tor the sanctity ot marriage and the home. God punishes more often than we think the sins against life and love."

They sat silent for a moment, the stillness broken only by the purling ot the water as it sped over its rocky bed. Father Hall's long n eglected pipe lay on the grass. He picked it up, brushed an intruding ant off the bowl, filled it slowly, and tamped the tobacco with his thumb.

"Forgive, me for talking a lmost violently," he said as the match blazed over the bowl, "but the world at the present moment is in a grea t conspiracy against life and love. It is trying through some of its cleverest men and women to persuade the young genera· tion, chaps like you, Dick, and girls like you, Sue, that it isn't possible for young people to keep clean till marriage, and, what's more, that it doesn't really much matter whether they fall or not."

"I've read some of that stuff," said Dick quietly.

Sue nodded swiftly but was silent. "You are bound to stumble across it,"

Father Hall agreed. "They're clever in their methods too. They just keep saying over and over again, 'Sin doesn't matter; sin doesn't matter; sin isn't sin; sin is joy, happiness, life.' So that, though they haven't one argument to back up their rot, people who don't think begin to fancy there must be something to it.

"Of course, if you keep telling a person that he can't do a thing, especially if the thing is very hard, and if quitting the fight

-33-

would be even momentarily sweet and easy, he isn't likely to succeed in doing it. It I put a young fellow in a bank and tell him that I really don't expect him to be honest, he'll be rather a surprising chap If he doesn't Jive up to, or rather down to, my expecta· tions. If I tell a girl that no modern young woman is supposed to do anything but have a gorgeous time, that I expect her to be a butterfly and not a drudge, she'll probably show me how eminently right I am. And if I tell young men and women, living in the midst of all the temptations carefully planted by a modern world that has made love so cheap and sin so common, that no one nowadays expects them to resist tempta­tion or to live decently, they are pretty strong types if they set their jaws and fight against passion.

"All this truck about free love and com­panionate marriage and living your own life is nothing else than telling young men and women that nobody expects them to resist any chance inclination that excites them; that they can pick up with and give their tender intimacies to any casual acquaint­ances; that lust and not love is what mat­ters. And I know very well that if it weren't for the Catholic Church, which keeps defend­ing true love, attacking lust (no matter what its modern name), and venerating the sacred­ness of life, there would be very few young people today thinking it worth while re­sisting these easy and agreeable temptations.

"But is it really possible for a man or a woman to wait for the great love that will

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sanctify marriage and make them cooperators with God in the peopling of His world? Once more, strangely enough, it's the Church and not the pagans who r eally believes in human beings and trusts them. The pagans say it isn't possible. The Church says, 'Of course it's possible, and it happens all the time. Christ said you could. St. Paul was convinced that you could. St. John actually lived and died a virgin. Why, history is filled with mill ions of ordinary young men and women who lived stainless lives and with saints who died rather than substitute lust for love.'

"The Church is so persuaded that human beings can, with the help of God, keep them­selves pure that it actually demands that its priests and its n~ligious men and women bind themselves by a vow never to yield even in thought. While the pagans, who brag so much of their belief In humanity, shake their despairing heads and dolefully protest that men and women have to be thEl. slaves of every brute impulse, the Church takes it for granted that thousands of young men and women every year will have the strength to vow perpetual chastity in priesthood and re-

. ligious orders, and it gathers these conse­crated souls right out of the ranks of ordi­nary Catholic young men and women.

"Certainly no Catholic young man who has ever looked at a picture of St. Aloysius or St. Stanislaus or St. Gabriel the Passionist dares to say 'I can't keep my soul and body pure.' No Catholic girl who has watched Agnes or Cecilia or the Little Flower can

-35-

ever doubt that b el' purity may be presel'ved stainless. Here are our Catholic young peo­ple receiving into their hearts the virgin Christ in Holy Communion 'day after day. Can't they be pure? You may be sure that, despite the war of temptation from within and without, they are pure, thousands of them. ' Here are Catholic young people kneel­ing before the spotless Queen of H eaven and asking her to teach them to love virginity and respect motherhood. Of course she'll watch over the boys who are her knights and the girls who are her daughtets.

"Do you know, I've often thought that it boys and girls really stopped to think even for a moment when they felt this mysterious attraction for some partner of a dance or ac­quaintance of a week-end-well; they'd prob­ably find themselves brought up short before they approached anywhere near the line of sin. If, Dick, when you were attracted, to put it quite frankly, by the young vibrant body whicn some girl thoughtlessly or reck­lessly garbs in a shocking dress, you remem­bered that girl is formed as Our Blessed Lady was form ed and as your own mother was formed; if a girl, when she found the eyes of some man too warmly appraising and admir ing her, remembered that she is a woman like the spotless Mary and the pos­sible mother of innocent little babies, temp­tation might fade rather rapidly.

"EJvery girl Is sacred because she Is of the same fine material of which Mary and your mother were made; she is sacred even

-36-

when she is silly; she is a potential mother even when she is playing the fool.

"A nd are they right when they say that s ins against life and love don't matter? It's a dirty race of immoral blackguards or a silly race of irresponsible fools who tell you tbat. I wish we could drag the young generation to the deathbed of Oscar Wilde, deserted by Ilis neares t friends, who fled from the filthy stench of his lust-rotten body. I wish th ey could hear Du Barry screaming on the guillotine. What's the divorce court but the record of selfishness and sin? No other vice so hardens the soul, makes the eyes so bitter and cruel, breeds selfishness and motbers tbe other vices as this sin does. Lust grows like a devouring monster in the soul. When th e old Carthaginians set up their Moloch, swallowing his victims, men, women and bel pless babies, in a burning maw, th ey had tb e perfect image of lust. Sins of this sort are back of more tban half of the world's murders as they are back of more than balf of the world's dishonesty..

"And the pitiful little children whimper­ing in bospitals, with nothing but siclmess and idiocy abead of tbem, deserted chil­dren on doorsteps, slain unborn babies, mil­lions of infants never allowed to see tbe Iigbt of earth or feel tbe hope of heaven, may blame their rate on sins against love and lite. Not important? Good God! What damnable liars tbese men and women are wben they defend tbis sin!

"God gave men an d women a marvelous power, but He punishes its abuse as He pun-

-37-

tshes the abuse of anything sacred. Most punishment He reserves for the next world. But since on the proper and noble use of this power depends the very future of this pre!'­ent world, He also punishes its abuse right here and now."

They sat some time in silence. was getting low in the heavens

The sun and the

long shadows of the maples cut across the greensward in dark, heavy lines.

"P€rhaps-who knows ?-God may call either or both of you to consecrate this power to Him and to renounce your parent­hood of bodies by becoming the father or mother of souls. If so, you will want to bring to God's service clean hands and a clean heart.

"But if He means you to marry, how happy and proud you will be, Dick, to come to your wife with a pure and unspoiled love, the sort of love you will expect her to give you. What joy, Sue, when your husband looks into your eyes, to know that he sees there an unspoiled purity. How str ong you will feel if you can take your children by the hand, talk to them of the strength and beauty of purity, and know that you can face their inquiring eyes without flinching. You have kept, thank God, the purity you are asking of them.

"And you will be so much stronger for life's battles if you have first of all con­quered yourself. You will inspire confidence in others because you give them the feeling of your calm, assured self-mastery and strong, developed purity.

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"And always you can hear Christ saying to you, 'Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.' They shall see God. Beautiful thought, isn't it? Where the pagan sees only filth and animals, you will see Christ in the tabernacle, the Holy Spirit in your soul, God in your neighbors, and in every man and woman a brother or sister of Jesus Christ. And you'll see Him eter­nally as a reward for your loyalty of life and love.

"Keep yourself clean, and don't ever have the shame of knowing that because of you any boy or girl has soiled love or wasted life."

They walked back down the path, now growing dusky in the lovely, noisy twilight of the woods. Their mother had left the porch swing; so they paused on the steps.

"Won't you stay and take dinner with us?" Dick asked.

"Mother would be glad," Sue added. "Plense stay."

"Thanks, my dears," he said, "but I'll trot along. Possibly later in the week. Tonight I've got to stop in and see the stableboy over at Wilbur's. He broke his leg in a bad fall from their new colt. Good night, Dick. Good night, Sue. God bless you both."

Dick's mother, through the partially opened door of her room , heard the screen door slam and Sue run up the stairs and past her room with a quick, light step. Then Dick's footfall, unusually slow and measured, mounted the stairs. He paused outside her

-39-

door. She waited breathlessly. Then he knocked.

"Come in," she called, and he entered ..

"The "Vi i burs' stableboy broke his leg," he said, with studied irrelevance.

"So I heard," she answered. A pause, and then she asked, "Did you and

Sue have a pleasaut walk with Father?" "Yes," he replied. She was resting in the chaise longue, a

book still in her hand. He was not keen-eyed enough to see that she had not t urned a page since he came in from his tennis.

"Where's Sue?" she asked, really to make r.onvel'sation.

"Gone to lie down," he answered. "She was a bit tired from the walk, and I told her to rest before dinner."

She nodded understandingly. Sue would want to think, not talk.

"She's a sweet kid," he said; and then sud­denly he walked over and stood beside his mother. "She's like you," he added shyly.

She took his hand and held it, looking up at h im questioningly.

"Thanks so much," he said. She smiled but asked no questions. He had

known she wouldn't.

"Fatter Hall's a wonderful fellow, Isn't he?" A pause and then: "I'll a lways try to be a decent son of the wonderful mother God gave me."

And he kissed her swiftly and almost ran from the room.

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