But again, Passion-week, and above all Good Friday, is a good time, because it teaches us, above all days, what it is to be good, and what goodness means.  Therefore remember this, all of you, and take it home with you for the year to come.  He who has learnt the lesson of Passion-week, and practises it; he and he only is a good man.

Nay more, Passion-week tells us, I believe, what is the law according to which the whole world of man and of things, yea, the whole universe, sun, moon, and stars, is made:  and that is, the law of self-sacrifice; that nothing lives merely for itself; that each thing is ordained by God to help the things around it, even at its own expense.  That is a hard saying:  and yet it must be true.  The soundest Theology and the highest Reason tell us that it must be so.  For there cannot be two Holy Spirits.  Now the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed himself upon the Cross is The Holy Spirit.  And the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ made all worlds is The Holy Spirit.  But the spirit by which He sacrificed Himself on the Cross is the spirit of self-sacrifice.  And therefore the spirit by which He made the world is the spirit of self-sacrifice likewise; and self-sacrifice is the law and rule on which the universe is founded.  At least, that is the true Catholic faith, as far as my poor intellect can conceive it; and in that faith I will live and die.

There are those who, now-a-days, will laugh at such a notion, and say—­Self-sacrifice?  It is not self-sacrifice which keeps the world going among men, or animals, or even the plants under our feet:  but selfishness.  Competition, they say, is the law of the universe.  Everything has to take care of itself, fight for itself, compete freely and pitilessly with everything round it, till the weak are killed off, and only the strong survive; and so, out of the free play of the self-interest of each, you get the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number.

Do we indeed?  I should have thought that unbridled selfishness, and the internecine struggle of opposing interests, had already reduced many nations, and seemed likely to reduce all mankind, if it went on, to that state of the greatest possible misery of the greatest number, from which our blessed Lord, as in this very week, died to deliver us.  At all events, if that is to be the condition of man, and of society, then man is not made in the likeness of God, and has no need to be led by the Spirit of God.  For what the likeness of God and the Spirit of God are, Passion-week tells us—­namely, Love which knows no self-interest; Love which cares not for itself; Love which throws its own life away, that it may save those who have hated it, rebelled against it, put it to a felon’s death.

My good friends, instead of believing the carnal and selfish philosophy which cries, Every man for himself—­I will not finish the proverb in this Holy place, awfully and literally true as the latter half of it is—­instead of believing that, believe the message of Passion-week, which speaks rather thus:  telling us that not selfishness, but unselfishness, mutual help and usefulness, is the law and will of God; and that therefore the whole universe, and all that God has made, is very good.  And what does Passion-week say to men?