The Holy Spirit has marked in infallible and incontestable characters certain moments of this vast duration, and gathered in the Scriptures some drops of this boundless ocean. We see therein the secret and hidden ways by which He has manifested Jesus Christ to the world. We can follow the channels and veins which, amid the confusion of the children of men, distinguish this Firstborn. The Old Testament is but a small portion of the innumerable and inscrutable ways of this divine work; it only contains what is necessary to reach Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit held the rest hidden in the treasures of His wisdom. And from out this vast sea of the divine action but a thread of water appears which reaches Jesus, loses itself in the Apostles, and is swallowed up in the Apocalypse. So that by our faith alone can we learn the history of this divine action which consists in the life which Jesus Christ leads, and will lead in just souls until the end of time.
To the manifestation of God’s truth by word succeeded the manifestation of His charity by action. The Holy Spirit continues the work of the Saviour. While He assists the Church in preaching the gospel of Christ, He Himself at the same time writes His own gospel in our hearts. Each moment, each act, of the Saints is the gospel of the Holy Spirit. Holy souls are the paper; their sufferings, their actions, are the ink. The Holy Spirit by the pen of His action writes a living gospel; but we can only read it on the last day, when it will be drawn from the press of this life and published.
Oh, the glorious history, the beautiful book, which the Holy Spirit is now writing! It is in press, holy souls; and not a day passes in which type is not set, ink applied, and sheets of it printed. But we are in the night of faith: the paper is blacker than the ink; the characters are confused; it is the language of another world; we understand it not; we shall only read its gospel in heaven. Oh, if we could but see this life of God in all creatures, in all things, and learn to regard them, not in themselves, but as the instruments of His will! If we could see how the divine action impels them hither and thither, unites them, disperses them, opposes them, and leads them by contrary ways to the same end, we should recognize that all things have their purpose, their reason, their proportion, their relations in this divine work. But how shall we read this book with its hidden, innumerable, contradictory, and obscure characters? If the combinations of twenty-seven letters are incomprehensible to us and suffice to form an unlimited number of different volumes, each admirable of its kind, who can express what God does in His universe? Who can read and comprehend a book so vast, in which there is not a letter which has not its own significance and does not contain in its littleness profound mysteries? Mysteries are neither seen nor felt; they are the subjects of faith. Faith judges their worth and truth only by their source, for they are so obscure in themselves that all their external appearances only serve to conceal them, and mislead those who judge by reason alone.