Christian people, even as far back as Sir John Bowring, Governor
of Hong Kong, and up to the present time, both at Hong Kong and
Singapore, have acquiesced in the false teaching that vice cannot be
put under check in the Orient, where, it is claimed, passion mounts
higher than in the Occident, and that morality is, to a certain
extent, a matter of climate; and in the p
There seems to be a misapprehension as to the status of these Chinese
prostitutes, to which the mind recurs again and again, in spite of
careful explanations. Some imagine that only those who are rescued,
or at least those who have managed to convey word to the missionaries
that they desire to be rescued, are the literal slaves, and that those
left behind are free. Such is not the case. We have already shown that
nearly all the Chinese
But God, not having desired to reveal these things to this people who were
unworthy of them and having, nevertheless, desired to foretell them, in
order that they might be believed, foretold the time clearly, and expressed
the things sometimes clearly, but very often in figures, in order that those
who loved symbols might consider them and those who loved what was
symbolised might see it therein.
All that tends not to charity is figurative.
The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.
All which tends not to the sole end is the type of it. For since there is
only one end, all which does not lead to it in express terms is figurative.
God thus varies that sole precept of charity to satisfy our curiosity which
seeks for variety, by that variety which still leads us to the one thing
needful. For one thing alone is needful, and we love variety; and God
satisfies both by these varieties, which lead to the one thing needful.
The Jews have so much loved the shadows and have so strictly expected them
that they have misunderstood the reality, when it came in the time and
manner foretold.
The Rabbis take the breasts of the Spouse for types, and all that does not
express the only end they have, namely, temporal good.
And Christians take even the Eucharist as a type of the glory at which they
aim.
671. The Jews, who have been called to subdue nations and kings, have been
the slaves of sin; and the Christians, whose calling has been to be servants
and subjects, are free children.
672. A formal point.--When Saint Peter and the Apostles deliberated about
abolishing circumcision, where it was a question of acting against the law
of God, they did