at love of which S.
Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as
condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as
consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of God's approval
upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us? The final
Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are saved into the
full joy of their Lord. There once more will our humanity be complete
because it is the whole man, not the soul only, but the soul clothed
with the body of the resurrection, once more clothed upon with its
"house from heaven," which is filled with the joy of the Beatific
Vision. The thought of the particular judgment may fill us with dread;
but if we are able to look beyond that to the general Judgment at the
last day, we shall think only of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment
of God.

The belief in the Assumption of our Lady is a belief that in her case
that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they shall rise
again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of God, has been
anticipated. In her, that which we all look forward to and dream of for
ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in God's presence in her
entire humanity, clothed with her body of glory.

This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts among
us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to answer. And it
may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth taught in Holy
Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the Church after
centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the Church as a divine
organism with a continuous life from the day of Pentecost until now, as
being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as being continuously guided by
Him into all the truth; unless we can accept in their full sense our
Lord's promises that He will be with the Church until the end of the
world, we shall not find it possible to accept the assumption as a fact,
but shall decline to believe that, and not only that but, if we are
consistent, many another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have
an adequate understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the
Church as the organ of