Publisher's Synopsis
GRACE is a supernatural and spiritual gift gratuitously bestowed by God, and by Him alone, through the merits of our Redeemer, to guide us to life everlasting. It is supernatural, because it is high above nature, and can come only from God, enabling us to perform actions deserving of a heavenly reward. It is spiritual, because it is inward and invisible. It is bestowed by God alone, inasmuch as "every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights." And it is given to us through the merits of our Redeemer, because He is the One Mediator beteeen God and man. What does grace do for us? It elevates us, from the moment of our baptism, above the natural order on to a plane immeasurably higher. It lifts us above nature, even nature the highest and most sublime, so that it is literally true to say that the lowest of God's children, in whose soul His grace resides, is incalculably above Angels, Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, when considered in their nature alone, and apart from the grace which has been given to them. Grace makes us children of God, brothers of His Divine Son, living temples of His Holy Spirit; and in very truth (as St. Peter says) "partakers of the Divine Nature." It endows us with the keenest spiritual insight, and makes us in a special way the beloved friends of God, on whom He looks with peculiar tenderness, and whom He watches over with constant and loving solicitude. "If men but knew!" If grace, and the effects of grace, are what has been feebly described above, how could any spiritually minded Christian, meditating or writing on " the things that belong to our peace," help steeping his mind or his pen in the marvels of this astonishing gift of God, which is the very keystone of the Christian life? Yet what are the facts? One takes up at random a modern "Manual of Christian Doctrine," which purports to expound in many pages-perhaps in several volumes- the complete science of the supernatural life: and what does one find about Divine Grace, its nature, its effects, its absolute necessity to the soul of man? Nothing, or very little. It all seems to be taken for granted. Are there no Pelagians or semi-Pelagians, no Manichceans, among us to-day?
