Page:Pastoral Letter Promulgating the Jubilee - Spalding.djvu/29

Rh to their inheritance; the trammels of the bondsman were loosed, and he was permitted to return in joyful freedom to his family.

Such were the beneficent provisions made by God Himself for the Jewish Jubilee. They looked, indeed, mainly to the temporal order, but they were well calculated to wean the hearts of the chosen people of the olden time from the perishing things of this world, and to turn them to God, upon whose bountiful and never-failing Providence all were made wholly to depend for subsistence every fiftieth year. The Jewish life thus moved in cycles of fifty years; at the close of each of which, there was a solemn pause, or Sabbath—a year of rest and remission—during which all were to repose from their cares and labors, and to turn with their whole hearts to the Lord their God.

It was a beautiful dispensation; yet withal as inferior to ours, as is the type to the prototype, the shadow to the reality; or, in other words, as is Judaism, with its imposing "shadow of the good things to come," to the vivid, life-giving, and splendid realities of Christianity. The Christian Jubilee is the fulfilment and realization of the Jewish. Its provisions contemplate the spiritual order, the relations of man to God and to eternity. The freedom which it promises, is that from the galling bondage of sin, it is "the liberty of the glory of the children of God." The rich inheritance to which it offers to restore us, is that of God's super-abounding grace here on earth, and of His glorious and eternal Kingdom hereafter in heaven: where "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man (to conceive,) what good things God hath prepared for them that love Him." It causeth the exuberant soil of the Church spontaneously to germinate, and to produce in abundance the richest plants of virtue and holiness, for the healing of the nations. Truly, then, We repeat, "now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation." Two hundred millions of Christians, of all nations and peoples and tongues, united in prayer! Only the Catholic Church can present a spectacle so sublime as this!