Religion’, says St Thomas, ‘denotes properly a relation to God’ and ‘consists essentially in those acts by which man worships God by subjecting himself to his lordship’. (Summa, II-II, 81, 1). Whenever there is a special kind of lordship, there must be a special kind of service, and it is evident that lordship belongs to God in a special and singular way, because he made all things and has supreme dominion over all. Therefore a special kind of service is due to him, called ‘religion’, ‘piety’, or ‘worship’ (Ibid. ad 3. Cf. In Boeth: 8, 2).

But this worship must be of a fitting nature both as regards its object and as regards the one by whom it is offered. Its object, God, is a spirit, and therefore his worship must consist essentially in acts whereby the mind or soul is directed to him. But the worshipper is man composed of body and soul; wherefore his acts of worship must include a bodily element, both to give God the service of the whole man, and to incite himself to internal acts of religion by external ones—‘from things seen to the love of things unseen’.

A natural division in the purgative way arises from the two types of purification which the soul must undergo before it is ready for its second conversion and entry into illumination. These are first the active and then the passive purifications. The beginner on entry into the way of perfection has the relics of past sin hanging about him like so many rags and pieces of knotted cord. He has to struggle to shake himself free of this foul heritage. The ascetic moral virtues must be brought particularly into play. He must burn away the dross from his senses and his emotions, He must practise, above all, temperance and justice—the caustic virtues that will cleane him thoroughly if he fears no personal suffering. It is precisely here that a rule plays its first part. The soul needs guidance and also the virtue of obedience, which lies at the root of all sacrifice and of every moral virtue insofar as the virtuous actions are performed, because they are known as God's will. After this active following of a rule and its ascetic influence, God himself begins to apply the knife to the diseases which pass unnoticed in the general bustle of the active life.

My Lord and My God: this is the summing up by St Thomas the doubter after he had seen the Christ risen from the dead. It is the challenge every man since has had to face: is Christ God?

The following is not going to be an exhaustive analysis of the evidence, nor is it to be written in an apologetic spirit. My aim is to state the position as I see it.

The Catholic Church today holds as its basic object of belief the fact that Christ is God. The Protestants wobble, some do believe, some do not. The Eastern Churches, until their contact with moderniam, held the Catholic faith. It was this foot—that Christ, is God and Man—that was worked out in the first six councils of the Church between the 4th and 6th centuries.

Nicaea: ‘We believe… in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made.…’

If Thomas à Kempis, in his Life of Gerard Groote, can speak of the world of his day as ‘ever turning to yet more evil courses’, John Busch, the Chronicler of Windesheim, and, like à Kempis, one of the earliest members of that Congregation, says, with his characteristic bluntness of speech, that it was ‘set already upon the way which leadeth down to Hell’. For it was in 1340 that ‘God, looking upon the world with the eye of Fatherly goodness and merey, saw fit to make ready a light to enlighten the eyes of men and a lamp to show the way to Christ our Lord. This light was that reverend man of God, Gerard the Great, or, in the vulgar tongue, Groote, an inhabitant of Deventer in the diocese of Utrecht’. Endowed with ‘wealth, honour, learning and high place’, he passed, after brilliant school studies at home, first to Aachen and then to the Sorbonne, where he graduated in medicine and theology, as well as in law. He then returned home and was appointed Teacher in the Chapter School of Deventer, where he soon noquired a reputation as an educator and a leader of youth.

The exhortations and counsel of St Benedict in his Rule on the reception of guests are too well known to be repeated here. Their importance however can never be sufficiently stressed and their wisdom and beauty can never be aufficiently praised. There is in the Luxembourg Museum of Paris a painting by Dauban of a stranger being received by s convent. It is a perfect interpretation of the 53rd chapter of the Rule, with a poignant beauty and a moral for all humanity.

Doubtless there were guests even among the primitive communities in the deserts of Nitria and the Thebaid, although such a specu Istion is beyond the scope the present essay. During the earlier history of the monasteries, the hd 12th centuries for example, hospitality was a sine qua non of monastic life. In some cases, in-deed, as of the abbeys of Reading and Battle, the foundation-charters indicated that the providing of such hospitality in the district was the motive of the founder.

The relationship between Church and State, between Church and Society, was then very different from what it is today. The Church was closely interwoven with the entire national fabric.