Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come (7). He shall never have forgiveness, and shall be guilty of an everlasting sin." He spoke thus to them, "because they said: He hath an unclean spirit (8)."

operated. Were we to understand it in the first sense, we should believe that the Eunomians, who denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost, were the most hardened of all sinners. Yet, Saint Chrysostom says that they were seen returning in crowds to the bosom of the Church. By blasphemy against the Son of man, the interpreters understand commonly the reproachful calumnies of the Jews, which only affected the humanity of the Saviour, for example, when they said that he loved good cheer and wine, that he favored sinners, &c., &c. These reproaches were always highly criminal. Still, because they only attacked directly his divinity, Jesus, the meekest of men, seems to account them as nothing, and is not unwilling to let it be known how ready he is to pardon them.

(7) Therefore, there is some remission in the other world; and the Protestants, who deny it, and who consequently reject purgatory and prayer for the dead, are refuted by this single saying.

(8) This expression decides what is the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is here in question. It is visibly that which the Pharisees committed, by attributing to the demon the works of Jesus Christ, which had the Spirit of God for author. I leave it to theologians to examine, if there be other sins against the Holy Ghost, what they are, and how many should be reckoned of this class. I content myself with remarking that, among the sins which are committed in the world, that which approaches nearest to the sin of the Pharisees, is to attribute to hypocrisy, or to any other vicious principle, the virtues of the saints, which the Spirit of God operates by his grace-a sin as common as it is enormous; but it remains for us to see in what sense it is said that it shall never be pardoned.

Saint Augustine, and, after him, the majority of interpreters, regard this passage as one of the most difficult to explain. The difficulty arises from the fact that the Church does not recognize any sins to be absolutely irremissible, and that this seems to be declared such. We are, therefore, forced to say, that when Jesus Christ assures that it shall never be pardoned, he does not advance any thing further than that the remission shall be more rare and more difficult. We agree that this mitigated interpretation is with difficulty adjusted to the strong and absolute expressions which the Saviour employs here. Nevertheless, we find, even in this passage, matter to justify it. Those who have asserted that sin or blasphemy against the Son of man is merely a venial sin, have asserted an absurdity: this sin is mortal and irremissible in its nature, whether in this world or in the other, if it be not expiated by penance. Yet Jesus Christ says simply and absolutely, that he shall be pardoned, remittetur. Does he wish to give us to understand that it shall be so always? No, but that it shall be so easily and so often, in comparison with the sin against the Holy Ghost, which shall, therefore, only be pardoned rarely, and with difficulty. In a word, Jesus Christ says absolutely of the sin against the Son of man, that it shall be pardoned, as he says absolutely of the sin against

Finally, inasmuch as the expulsion of the demons is evidently a good work, there exists only one more consequence to be drawn, viz., that Jesus Christ, the author of this, was good-that is to say, holy and irreprehensible, and that those who calumniated him so atrociously were wicked and corrupt. The Saviour did not leave these perverse men to remain ignorant of this. "Either make the tree good, he again said to them, and its fruit good; or make the tree evil, and its fruit evil; for by the fruit the tree is known. O, generation of vipers, how can you speak good things, whereas you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man, out of a good treasure, bringeth forth good things; and an evil man, out of an evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things (9). But I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it at the day of judgment; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." The latter words of the Saviour give us to understand that the Pharisees reckoned as of little consequence the sins of the tongue; and those immediately preceding were meant to inform us how rigorously blasphemous words shall be punished at that exact and severe judgment, in which an idle word shall not remain unpunished.

the Holy Ghost, that it shall not be pardoned. It does not occur to our mind to believe that the first shall be always pardoned; neither, therefore, should we conclude that the second shall never be pardoned.

(9) Habitually, and not always. See Note 9 of Chapter XVII., page 141. It is not necessary for the truth of moral propositions, that they should never suffer exceptions. They are true when the things are, generally speaking, such as these propositions an

nounce.

11

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SIGN OF JONAS.-THE NINIVITES. THE QUEEN OF SABA. THE EXPELLED DEMON ENTERS IN AGAIN.-EXCLAMATION OF A WOMAN. THE MOTHER AND BRETHREN OF JESUS. PARABLE OF THE SEED.

(a) "THEN some of the Scribes and Pharisees answering him, said: Master, we would see a sign." Apparently these petitioners were the same who had already asked him for a heavenly sign. Jesus had left them unanswered, because he should first reply to the odious accusation we have just spoken of. These inquisitive and artful men renewed the tempting solicitation, and (b) “the multitudes running together," to see the wonder they expected, "Jesus began to say: This generation is wicked and adulterous; it asketh a sign, and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet (1). For as Jonas was a sign to the Ninivites, so shall the Son of man also be to this generation. As then Jonas was in the whale's belly three days and three nights (2), so (a) St. Matthew, xii. 38.

(b) St. Luke, xi. 29, 30; St. Matthew, xii. 40.

(1) Jesus Christ refuses to them the miracle which they asked, and he promises one to them which they did not ask. Was it reasonable that the divine power should be subservient to their caprices, and that it should perform the miracles which they wished for, because they did not wish to yield submission, in consequence of those which it wrought? Yet, if we are even slightly acquainted with the genius of incredulity, we shall not hesitate to believe that they were highly puffed up after the refusal, and that they said more than once, and with an air of triumph: Why does he not work the miracle which is asked of him?

(2) Jesus Christ was not three entire days and three entire nights in the bosom of the earth; he only passed there one entire day and one entire night, with a part of two other days and of two other nights. It is in this sense it is said that he passed there three days and three nights. Here is the way in which this is explained. We must just reckon the entire day from midnight unto midnight. We do so thus: and although this was not the Jewish mode, it was that of the Egyptians, whom all people then regarded as legislators in astronomy, and that of the Romans, the masters of the world, and particularly of Judea, where it is natural to think that they partly introduced this usage, as well as in the other countries of their domination; for they dated, apparently, the public transactions according to their ordinary manner of reckoning the days. Sup

shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth (3) three days and three nights."

This sign, more wonderful than that of Jonas, since it is more wonderful to come forth alive from the bosom of the earth, after having entered it dead, than to come forth alive from a fish, which a living man had entered-this sign, I say, according to God's intention, was to be for the Jews a sign of conviction and salvation; but because Jesus Christ foresaw that their incredulity would render it useless, he proposes it to them here as a sign of judgment and of condemnation, the equity and rigor of which are justified with regard to them by the example of the Ninivites. He proceeds, therefore, as follows: (a) "The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonas; and behold a greater than Jonas here. The Queen of the South shall rise in judgment with this generation, and (a) St. Matthew, xii. 41-45; St. Luke, xi. 24, 26.

posing this to be the case, there exist no longer any difficulties. Jesus Christ, having died on Friday at three o'clock, after mid-day, and being almost immediately taken down from the cross, may have been laid in the tomb before sunset, which was then after six o'clock. This is the more likely, as the repose of the festival, which obliged the Jews to suspend their work, commenced at sunset. Thus Jesus Christ shall have passed in the bosom of the earth the part of the day which remained from his deposition in the sepulchre until sunset. From sunset until midnight there are about six hours of the night which belong to Friday. We therefore have already part of a day, and of the night of Friday, passed in the tomb. The Saturday does not puzzle us. As to Sunday, we have firstly, the part of the night which commenced at midnight, when Saturday closed; and as to the day, although it be held that the Lord rose before sunrise, he may not have risen until the day gleamed with sufficient light to enable us to say truly that it was day. And that period of light, or day, passed in the tomb, if it were only to have lasted for a moment, suffices to enable us to say with truth that he was there upon the day of Sunday. (3) There is in the Latin text in corde terra, in the heart of the earth: this word is usually understood with reference to the bosom of the earth, in which the body of the Lord was inclosed. Yet as this is the only passage where Scripture makes use of this mode of speech to express a sepulchre, and as, besides, the Hebrew phrase also signifies the centre of the earth, an expression too strong for the sepulchres, which we may say were only on the surface, Catholic interpreters have thought, with reason, that it should also be understood with reference to Limbo, whither the holy soul of the Saviour descended immediately after his death. Saint Paul has said, in the same sense, that Jesus Christ descended into the lower parts of the earth (Ephes. iv.). This truth is of faith; it forms a part of the Apostles' Creed, and we do not see upon what grounds, nor for what reason, Protestants insist on rejecting it.

shall condemn it: because she came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon; and behold a greater than Solomon here."

It was on the occasion of a man being possessed by the demon that Jesus said all this. He closes by a sort of parable, in which, under the figure of a man repossessed after deliverance, he announces to the Jews the increase of their crimes, and the excess of their future misfortunes. "When the unclean spirit," said he to them, "is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and not finding, he saith: I will return into my house whence I came out; and coming, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goeth, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. They enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be also to this wicked generation."

There are several ways of explaining this parable, but we pass them over to confine ourselves to its clear signification. This is, that the Jewish nation, so often criminal and so often penitent, having again given entrance to the demon by its outrageous contempt for the person of the Saviour, his doctrine and his miracles, shall again become more criminal and more unfortunate than it had ever been before. The event too truly justified the prophecy, and the application tested by every day's experience, in the case of relapsing sinners, is but too highly justified by experience.

(a)" As he spoke these things it came to pass, a certain woman from the crowd lifting up her voice," midst the murmuring of the Pharisees, "said to him: Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck." She envied, as is usual with those of her sex, the happiness of her who had brought into the world a man so wonderful, and wished that herself could have been that happy mother. Jesus Christ instructed her, by informing her that there was a happiness preferable even to that of such an exalted maternity, and consoled her by giving her to understand that she could procure for herself this happiness. "Yea, rather," he said, "blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it." This expression was not meant to depreciate that inestimable happiness which the

(a) St. Luke, xi. 27, 28.