It is great in self-devotion, and
in this is found its only lasting independence.
To give much and ask little in personal return is independence of the
highest kind. But faith alone can make it possible. The Catholic Faith
gives that particular orientation of mind which is independent of this
world, knowing the account which it must give to God. To some it is duty
and the reign of conscience, to others it is detachment and the reign of
the love of God, the joyful flight of the soul towards heavenly things.
The particular name matters little, it has a centre of gravity. "As
everlasting foundations upon a solid rock, so the commandments of God in
the heart of a holy woman." [1--Ecclus. XXVI. 24.]
APPENDIX I.
EXTRACT FROM "THE BLESSED SACRAMENT"
BY FATHER FABER.
BOOK III. SEC. VII.
Let us put aside the curtain of vindicative fire, and see what this pain
of loss is like; I say, what it is like, for it fortunately surpasses
human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could
see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific
masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and
thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic
momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus
describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their
mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying circles, we should behold in the
nakedness of its tremendous operations the Divine law of gravitation.
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