CITY OF VENICE.
Sabbath Morning--Beauty of Sunrise on the Adriatic--Worship in S.
Mark's--Popish Sabbath-schools--Sale of Indulgences for Living and
Dead--An Astrologer--How the Venetians spend their Sabbath
Afternoon and Evening--The Martyrs of Venice--A Young Englishman in
Trouble--The Doge's Palace--The Stone Lions--The Prisons of
Venice--The Venetians Discard their Old God, and adopt a New--The
Gothic Tower--The Academy of Fine Arts--The Moral of Venice--Why do
Nations Die?--Common Theory Unsatisfactory--History hitherto a
Series of ever-recurring Cycles, ending in
Barbarism--Instances--The "Three-score and Ten" of Nations--The
Solution to be sought with reference to the False Religions--The
Intellect of the Nation outgrows these--Conscience is
Dissolved--Virtue is Lost--Slavery and Barbarism
ensue--Christianity only can give Immortality to Nations--Decadence
of Civilization under Romanism--A Papist foretelling the Doom of
Popery.
The deep boom of the Austrian cannon awoke me next morning at day-break.
I remembered that it was Sabbath; and never had I seen the Sabbath dawn
amidst a silence so majestic. More tranquil could not have been its
first opening in the bowers of Eden. In this city of ocean there was no
sound of hurrying feet, no rattle of chariot-wheel, nor any of those
multitudinous noises that distract the cities of earth. There was
silence on the domes of Venice, silence on her seas, silence in the air
around her. In a little the sun rose, and shed a flood of glory on the
Lagunes. It would be difficult to describe the grandeur of the scene,
which has nothing elsewhere of the kind to equal it,--the white marble
city, serenely seated on the bosom of the Adriatic, with the Lagunes
outspread in the morning sun like a mirror of molten gold. But, alas! it
was only a glorious vision; for the power and wealth of Venice are
departed.
"The long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust.
* * * * *
Empty halls,
Thin streets and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls."
The gun which had awaked me reminds the Queen of the Adriatic every
morning that the day of her dominion and glory is over, and that the
night has come upon her,--a night, the deep unbroken shadows of which,
even the bright morning that was now opening on the Adriatic could not
dispel.
After breakfast I hurried to the church of S. Mark. Mass was proceeding
as usual; and a large crowd of worshippers,--spectators I should rather
say,--stood densely packed in the chancel. If I except the Madeleine in
Paris, I have nowhere seen in a Roman Catholic church an attendance at
all approximating even a tolerable congregation, save here. I remarked,
too, that these were not the beggars which usually form the larger
proportion of the attendance, such as it is, in Roman churches. The
people in S. Mark's were well dressed, though it was not easy to
conceive where these fine clothes had come from, seeing the sea has now
failed Venice, and land she never possessed. This was the first symptom
I saw (I met others in the course of the day) that in Venice the Roman
religion has a stronger hold upon the people than in the rest of Italy.
It is an advantage in this respect to be some little distance from Rome,
and to have an insular position. Besides, I believe that the priests in
Venetian Lombardy, and, I presume, in Venice also, are men of more
reputable lives than their brethren in other parts of the Peninsula.
Anciently it was not so. Venice was wont to be termed "the paradise of
monks." There no pleasure allowable to a man of the world was forbidden
to a priest. The Senate, jealous of everything that might abridge its
authority, encouraged this relaxation of the Church's discipline, in the
hope of lowering the influence of its clergy with the people.
S. Mark's is an ancient, quaint-looking pile, with the dim hoar light of
history around it. On its threshold Pope Alexander III. met the Emperor
Frederick in 1177, and, with pride unabated by his enforced flight from
Rome in the disguise of a cook, put his foot upon the monarch's neck,
repeating the words of the psalm,--"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and
adder." This high temple of the Adriatic is vast and curious, but
wanting in effect, owing to the low roof and the gloomy light. The
Levant was searched for columns and marbles to decorate it; acres of
gold-leaf have been expended in gilding it; and every corner is stuck
full of allegorical devices, some of which are so very ingenious, that
they have not yet been read. The priests wore a style of dress admirably
befitting the finery of the Cathedral; for their vestments were
bespangled with gold and curious devices. What a contrast to the simple
temple and the plain earnest worshippers with whom I had passed my
former Sabbath amid the Vaudois hills! But the God of the Vaudois,
unlike the wafer-god of the priests, "dwelleth not in temples made with
hands."
Passing along on the narrow paved footpaths which tie back to back the
long lofty ranges of the city,--the fronts being filled with the
ocean,--I visited several of its one hundred and twenty churches. I
found mass ended, and the congregation, if any such there had been,
dismissed; but I saw what was even more indicative of a reviving
superstition: in every church I entered I found classes of boys and
girls under instruction. The Sabbath-school system was in full operation
in Venice, in Rome's behalf. The boys were in charge of the young
priests; and the girls, of the nuns and sisters. In some cases, laymen
had been pressed into the service, and were occupied in unfolding the
mysteries of transubstantiation to the young mind. Seating myself on a
bench in presence of a class of boys, I watched the course of
instruction. Their text-book was the "Catechism of Christian Doctrine,"
which contains the elements of the Roman faith, as fixed by the Council
of Trent. The boys were repeating the Catechism to the teacher. No
explanations were given, for the process was simply that of fixing
dogmas in the memory,--of conveying as much of fact, or what professed
to be so, as it was possible to convey into the mind without awakening
the understanding. The boys were taught to _believe_, not _reason_; and
those who acquitted themselves best had little medals and pictures of St
Francis given them as prizes. I remarked that most of the shops were
shut: indeed, so little business is done in Venice, that this involved
no sacrifice to the traders. As it was, however, the city contrasted
favourably with Paris; than the Sabbaths of which, I know of nothing
more terrible on earth. I remarked, too, that if the trade of the
Adriatic is at an end, and beggars crowd the quays which princes once
trod, and gondolas, in funereal black, glide gloomily through those
waters which rich argosies ploughed of old, the spiritual traffic of
Venice flourishes more than ever. I read on the doors of all the
churches, "INDULGENCES SOLD HERE FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, AS IN
ROME." What matters it that the Adriatic is no longer the highway of the
world's merchandise, and that India is now closed to Venice? Is not the
whole of Peter's treasury open to her; and, to facilitate the enriching
commerce, have not the priests obligingly opened a direct road to the
celestial mine, to spare the Venetians the necessity of the more
circuitous path by the Seven Hills? Happy Venice! her children may be
starved now, but paradise is their's hereafter.
After noon each betook himself to what pastime he pleased. Not a few
opened their shops. Others gathered round an astrologer,--a personage no
longer to be seen in the cities of the west,--who had taken his stand on
the _Riva degli Schiavoni_, and there, begirt with zone inscribed with
cabalistic characters, and holding in his hand his wizard's staff, was
setting forth, with stentorian voice, his marvellous power of healing by
the combined help of the stars and his drugs. By the way, why should the
profession of astrology and the cognate arts be permitted to only one
class of men? In the middle ages, two classes of conjurors competed for
the public patronage, but with most unequal success. The one class
professed to be master of spells that were all-powerful over the
elements of the material world,--the air, the earth, the ocean. The
other arrogated an equal power over the invisible and spiritual world.
They were skilled in a mysterious rite, which had power to open the
gates of purgatory, and dismiss to a happier abode, souls there immured
in woe. The pretensions of both were equally well founded: both were
jugglers, and merited to have fared alike; but society, while it
lavished all its credence and all its patronage upon the one, denounced
the other as impostors. One colossal system of necromancy filled Europe;
but the age gave the priest a monopoly; and so jealously did it guard
his rights, that the conjuror who did not wear a cassock was banished or
burned. We can assign no reason for the odium under which the one lay,
and the repute in which the other was held, save that the art, though
one, was termed witchcraft in the one case, and religion in the other.
The one was compelled to shroud his mysteries in the darkness of the
night, and seek the solitary cave for the performance of his spells. The
arts of the other were performed in magnificent and costly cathedrals,
in presence of admiring assemblies. The latter were the licensed dealers
in magic; and, enjoying the public patronage, they carried their
pretensions to a pitch which their less favoured brethren dared not
attempt to rival. They juggled on a gigantic scale, and the more
enormous the cheat, the better was it received. They rapidly grew in
numbers and wealth. Their chief, the great Roman necromancer, enjoyed
the state of a temporal prince, and had a whole kingdom appropriated to
his use, that he might suitably support his rank and dignity as
arch-conjuror.
But to return to Venice;--the great stream of concourse flowed in the
direction of the _Giardini Pubblici_, which are a nook of one of the
more southerly islands on which the city stands, fitted up as a
miniature landscape, its lilliputian hills and vales being the only ones
the Venetians ever see. The intercourse betwixt Venice and the Continent
has no doubt become more frequent since the opening of the railway; but
formerly it was not uncommon to find persons who had never been on the
land, and who had no notion of ploughs, waggons, carts, gardens, and a
hundred other things that seem quite inseparable from the existence of a
nation. Twilight came, walking with noiseless sandals on the seas. A
delicious light mantled the horizon; the domes of the city stood up with
silent sublimity into the sky; and over them floated, in the deep
azure, a young moon, thin as a single thread, and bright as the polished
steel.
"A silver bow,
New bent in heaven."
When darkness fell on the Lagunes, the glories of the piazza of San
Marco again blazed forth. What with cafes and countless lamps, a flood
of light fell upon the marble pavement, on which some ten or twelve
thousand people, rich and poor, were assembled, and were being regaled
with occasional airs from a numerous band. The Sabbath closed in the
Adriatic not altogether so tranquilly as it had opened.
The Venetians have long been famous for their peculiar skill in
combining devotion with pleasure,--more devout than home in the morning,
and gayer than Paris in the evening. Such has long been the character of
the Queen of the Adriatic. She has been truly, as briefly described by
the poet,--
"The revel of the earth, the mask of Italy!"
Once a better destiny appeared to be about to dawn on Venice. In the
sixteenth century the Reformation knocked at her gates, and for a moment
it seemed as if these gates were to be opened, and the stranger
admitted. Had it been so, the chair of her Doge would not now have been
empty, nor would Austrian manacles have been pressing upon her limbs.
"The evangelical doctrine had made such progress," writes Dr M'Crie, "in
the city of Venice, between the years 1530 and 1542, that its friends,
who had hitherto met in private for mutual instruction and religious
exercises, held deliberations on the propriety of organizing themselves
into regular congregations, and assembling in public." Several members
of the Senate were favourable to it, and hopes were entertained at one
time that the authority of that body would be interposed in its behalf.
This hope was strengthened by the fact, that when Ochino ascended the
pulpit, "the whole city ran in crowds to hear their favourite preacher."
But, alas! the hope was delusive. It was the Inquisition, not the
Reformation, to which Venice opened her gates; and when I surveyed her
calm and beautiful Lagunes, my emotions partook at once of grief and
exultation,--grief at the remembrance of the many midnight tragedies
enacted on them, and exultation at the thought, that in the seas of
Venice there sleeps much holy dust awaiting the resurrection of the
just. "Drowning was the mode of death to which they doomed the
Protestants," says Dr M'Crie, "either because it was less cruel and
odious than committing them to the flames, or because it accorded with
the customs of Venice. But if the _autos da fe_ of the Queen of the
Adriatic were less barbarous than those of Spain, the solitude and
silence with which they were accompanied were calculated to excite the
deepest horror. At the dead hour of midnight the prisoner was taken from
his cell, and put into a gondola or Venetian boat, attended only,
besides the sailors, by a single priest, to act as confessor. He was
rowed out into the sea, beyond the Two Castles, where another boat was
in waiting. A plank was then laid across the two gondolas, upon which
the prisoner, having his body chained, and a heavy stone affixed to his
feet, was placed; and, on a signal given, the gondolas retiring from one
another, he was precipitated into the deep." "We can do nothing against
the truth," says the apostle. Venice is rotting in her Lagunes: the
Reformation, shaking off the chains with which men attempted to bind it,
is starting on a new career of progress.
Next morning, at breakfast in my hotel, formerly the palace of the
Giustiniani, I met a young Englishman, who had just come from Rome. He
had the misfortune to be of the same name with one on the "suspected
list," and for this offence he was arrested on entering the Austrian
territory; and, though allowed to come on to Venice, his passport was
taken from him, and his journey to England, which he meant to make by
way of Trieste and Vienna, stopped. The list to which I have referred,
which is kept at all the continental police offices, and which the eye
of policeman or sbirro only can see, has created a sort of inquisition
for Europe. The poor traveller has no means of knowing who has denounced
him, or why; and wherever he goes, he finds a vague suspicion
surrounding him, which he can neither penetrate nor clear up, and which
exposes him to numberless and by no means petty annoyances. I
accompanied my friend, after breakfast, to the _Prefecture_, to transact
my own passport matters, and was glad to find that the authorities were
now satisfied that he was not the same man who figured on the black
list. Still they had no apology, no reparation, to offer him: on the
contrary, he was informed that he must submit to a detention of two or
three days more, till his passport should be forwarded from the
provincial office where it was lying. His misfortune was my advantage,
for it gave me an intelligent and obliging companion for the rest of the
day; and we immediately set out to visit together all the great objects
in Venice. It would be preposterous to dwell on these, for an hundred
pens have already described them better; and my object is to advert to
one great lesson which this fallen city,--for the sea, which once was
the bulwark and throne of Venice, is now her prison,--teaches.
Betaking ourselves to a gondola, we passed down the Giudecca, Canal. We
much admired--as who would not?--the-noble palaces which on either hand
rose so proudly from the bosom of the deep, yet invested with an air of
silent desolation, which made the heart sad, even while their beauty
delighted the eye. We disembarked at the stairs of the _piazzetta_ of S.
Mark, and repaired to the Doge's palace,--the dwelling of a line of
rulers haughtier than kings, and the throne of a republic more
oppressive than tyrannies. We walked through its truly majestic halls,
glowing with great paintings from Venetian history; and visited its
senatorial chamber, and saw the vacant places of its nobles, and the
empty chair of its Doge. There was here no lack of materials for
moralizing, had time permitted. She that sat as a Queen upon the
waves,--that said, "I am of perfect beauty,"--that sent her fleets to
the ends of the earth, and gathered to her the riches and glory of all
nations,--alas! how is she fallen! "The princes of the sea" have "come
down from their thrones, and" laid "away their robes, and put off their
broidered garments." "What city is like" Venice,--"like the destroyed in
the midst of the sea!"
We passed out between the famous stone lions, which, even so late as the
end of the last century, no Venetian could look on but with terror.
There they sat, with open jaws, displaying their fearfully significant
superscription, "_Denunzie secrete_,"--realizing the poet's idea of
republics guarded by dragons and lions. The use of these guardian lions
the Venetians knew but too well. Accusations dropped by spies and
informers into their open mouths, were received in a chamber below. Thus
the bolt fell upon the unsuspicious citizen, but the hand from which it
came remained invisible. Crossing by the "bridge of sighs,"--the canal,
_Rio de Palazzo_, which runs behind the ducal palace,--we entered the
state prisons of Venice. In the dim light I could discern what seemed a
labyrinth of long narrow passages; traversing which, we arrived at the
dungeons. I entered one of them: it was vaulted all round; and its only
furniture, besides a ring and chain, was a small platform of boards,
about half a foot from the floor, which served as the prisoner's bed. In
the wall of the cell was a small aperture, by which the light might be
made to stream in upon the prisoner, when the jailor did not wish to
enter, simply by placing the lamp in an opposite niche in the passage.
Here crime, despair, madness, and sometimes innocence, have dwelt.
Horrible secrets seemed to hover about its roof, and float in its air,
and to be ready to break upon me from every stone of the dungeon. I
longed, yet trembled, to hear them. But silent they are, and silent they
will remain, till that day when "the sea shall give up its dead." There
are yet lower dungeons, deep beneath water-mark, but I was told that
these are now walled up.
We emerged again upon the marble piazzetta; and more welcome than ever
was the bright light, and the noble grace of the buildings. At its
southern extremity, where the piazzetta looks out upon the Adriatic, are
two stately granite columns; the one surmounted by St Theodore, and the
other by the lion of St Mark. These are the two gods of Venice. They
were to the Republic what the two calves were to Israel,--their
all-powerful protectors; and so devoutly did the Venetians worship them,
that even the god of the Seven Hills became jealous of them. "The
Venetians in general care little about God," says an old traveller,
"less about the Pope, but a great deal about St Mark." St Theodore
sheltered the Republic in its infancy; but when it grew to greatness, it
deemed it unbecoming its dignity to have only a subordinate for its
tutelar deity. Accordingly, Venice sought and obtained a god of the
first water. The Republic brought over the body of St Mark, enshrined it
in a magnificent church, and left its former patron no alternative but
to cross the Lagunes, or occupy a second place.
Before bidding adieu to the piazza of St Mark, around which there
hovers so many historic memories, and which every style of architecture,
from the Greek and the Byzantine down to the Gotho-Italian, has met to
decorate, and which, we may add, in point of noble grace and chaste
beauty is perhaps not excelled in the world, we must be allowed to
mention one object, which appeared to us strangely out of keeping with
the spot and its edifices. It is the tall Gothic tower that rises
opposite the Byzantine front of S. Mark's Cathedral. It attains a height
of upwards of three hundred feet, and is used for various purposes,
which, however, it could serve equally well in some other part of
Venice. It strikes one the more, that it is the one deformity of the
place. It reminded me of the entrance of a clown at a royal levee, or
the appearance of harlequin in a tragedy.
Betaking ourselves again to a gondola, and gliding noiselessly along the
grand canal,--
"For silent rows the songless gondolier,"
we visited the _Academia delle Belle Arte_. It resembled a great and
elaborately compiled work on painting, and I could there read off the
history of the rise and progress of the art in Venice. The several
galleries were arranged, like the successive chapters of a book, in
chronological order, beginning with the infancy of the art, and going on
to its full noon, under the great masters of the Lombard
school,--Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, and others. The pictures of
the inner saloons were truly magnificent; but on these I do not dwell.
Let us sit down here, in the midst of the seas, and meditate a little on
the great _moral_ of Venice. We shall let the poet state the case:--
"Her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased."
But now, after power, wealth, empire, have come corruption, slavery,
ruin; and Venice,--
"Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose."
But the course which Venice has run is that of all States which have yet
appeared in the world. History is but a roll of defunct empires, whose
career has been alike; and Venice and Rome are but the latest names on
the list. Egypt, Chaldea, Tyre, Greece, Rome,--to all, as if by an
inevitable law, there came, after the day of civilization and empire,
the night of barbarism and slavery. This has been repeated again and
again, till the world has come to accept of it as its established
course. We see States emerging from infancy and weakness slowly and
laboriously, becoming rich, enlightened, powerful; and the moment they
seemed to have perfected their civilization, and consolidated their
power, they begin to fall. The past history of our race is but a history
of efforts, successful up to a certain point, but only to a certain
point; for whenever that point has been reached, all the fruits of past
labour,--all the accumulations of legislators, philosophers, and
warriors,--have been swept away, and the human family have found that
they had to begin the same laborious process over again,--to toil
upwards from the same gulph, to be overtaken by the same disaster.
History has been simply a series of ever-recurring cycles, ending in
barbarism. This is a discouraging aspect of human affairs, and throws a
doubtful shadow upon the future; but it is the aspect in which history
exhibits them. The Etrurian tombs speak of an era of civilization and
power succeeded by barbarism. The mounds of Nineveh speak of a similar
revolution. The day of Greek glory sank at last in unbroken night. At
the fall of the Roman empire, barbarism overspread Europe; and now the
cycle appears to have come round to the nations of modern Europe. Since
the middle of last century there has been a marked and fearfully rapid
decline in all the States of continental Europe. The entire region south
of the Alps, including the once powerful kingdoms of Italy and Spain, is
sunk in slavery and barbarism. France alone retains its civilization;
but how long is it likely to retain it, with its strength undermined by
revolution, and its liberties completely prostrated? Niebuhr has given
expression in his works to his decided opinion, _that the dark ages are
returning_. And are we not at this moment witnessing an attempted
repetition of the Gothic invasion of the fourth century, in the
barbarian north, which is pressing with ever-growing weight upon the
feeble barrier of the East?
"Nations melt
From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go
Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt."
But why is this? It would almost seem, when we look at these examples
and facts, as if there were some malignant influence sporting with the
world's progress,--some adverse power fighting against man, baulking all
his efforts at self-advancement, and compelling him, Sysiphus-like, to
roll the stone eternally. Has the Creator set limits to the life of
kingdoms, as to that of man? Certain it is, they have seldom survived
their twelfth century. The most part have died at or about their twelve
hundred and sixtieth year. Is this the "three-score-and-ten" of nations,
beyond which they cannot pass?
The common explanation of the death of nations is, that power begets
wealth, wealth luxury, and luxury feebleness and ruin. But we are unable
to accept this as a satisfactory account of the matter. It appears a
mere _statement_ of the fact,--not a _solution_ of it. It is evidently
the design of Providence that nations should live happily in the
abundant enjoyment of all good things; and that every human being should
have all that is good for him, of what the earth produces, and the
labour of man can create. Then, why should affluence, and the other
accessories of power, have so uniformly a corrupting and dissolving
effect upon society? This the common theory leaves unexplained. There is
no necessary connection betwixt the enjoyment of abundance and the
corruption of nations. The Creator surely has not ordained laws which
must necessarily result in the death of society.
The real solution, we think, it is not difficult to find. All religions,
one excepted, which have hitherto appeared in the world, have been
unable to hold the balance between the _intellect_ and the _conscience_
beyond a certain stage; and therefore, all kingdoms which have arisen
hitherto have been unable to exist beyond a certain term. So long as a
nation is in its childhood, a false religion affords room enough for the
free play of its intellect. Its religion being regarded as true and
authoritative, the conscience of the nation is controlled by it. So long
as conscience is upheld, law has authority, individual and social virtue
is maintained, and the nation goes on acquiring power, amassing wealth,
and increasing knowledge. But whenever it attains a certain stage of
enlightenment, and a certain power of independent thinking, it begins to
canvass the claims of that religion which formerly awed it. It
discovers its falsehood, the national conscience breaks loose, and an
era of scepticism ensues. With the destruction of conscience and the
rise of scepticism, law loses its authority, individual honour and
social virtue decline, and slavery or anarchy complete the ruin of the
state. This is the course which the nations of the world have hitherto
run. They have uniformly begun to decline, not when they attained a
certain amount of power or of wealth, but when they attained such an
amount of intellectual development as set free the national conscience
from the restraints of religion, or what professed to be so. No false
religion can carry a nation beyond a certain point; because no such
religion can stand before a certain stage of light and inquiry, which is
sure to be reached; and when that stage is reached,--in other words,
whenever the intellect dissolves the bonds of conscience,--the basis of
all authority and order is razed, and from that moment national decline
begins. Hence, in all nations an era of scepticism has been
contemporaneous with an era of decay.
Let us take the ancient Romans as an example. In the youth of their
nation their gods were revered; and in the existence of a national
conscience, a basis was found for law and virtue; and while these lasted
the empire flourished. But by and by the genius of its great thinkers
leavened the nation; an era of scepticism ensued; that scepticism
inaugurated an age of feeble laws and strong passions; and the
declension which set in issued at length in downright barbarism.
Papal Rome has run the very same course. The feeble intellect of the
European nations accepted Romanism as a religion, just as the Romans
before them had accepted of paganism. But the Reformation introduced a
period of growing enlightenment and independent thinking; and by the end
of the eighteenth century, Romanism had shared the fate which paganism
had done before it. The masses of Europe generally had lost faith in it
as a religion; then came the atheism of the French school; an era of
feeble laws and strong passions again returned; the selfish and
isolating principle came into play; and at this moment the nations of
continental Europe are rapidly sinking into barbarism. Thus, the history
of the race under the reign of the false religions exhibits but
alternating fits of superstition and scepticism, with their
corresponding eras of civilization and barbarism. And it necessarily
must be so; because, these religions not being compatible with the
indefinite extension of man's knowledge, they do not secure the
continued action and authority of conscience; and without conscience,
national progress, and even existence, is impossible.
Is there, then, no immortality in reserve for nations? Must they
continue to die? and must the history of our race in all time coming be
just what it has been in all time past,--a series of rapidly alternating
epochs of partial civilization and destructive barbarism? No. He who is
the former of society is the author of the Bible; and we may be sure
that there is a beautiful meetness and harmony between the laws of the
one and the doctrine of the other. Christianity alone can enable society
to fulfil its terrestrial destiny, because it alone is true, and, being
true, it admits of the utmost advancement of the human understanding. In
its case the centrifugal force of the intellect can never overcome the
centripetal power of the conscience. It has nothing to fear from the
advance of science. It keeps pace with the human mind, however rapid its
progress. Nay, more; the more the human mind is enlarged, the more
apparent becomes the truth of Christianity, and, by consequence, the
greater becomes the authority of conscience. Under the reign of
Christianity, then, there is no point in the onward progress of society
where conscience dissolves, and leaves man and nations devoid of virtue;
there is no point where conviction compels man to become a sceptic, and
scepticism pulls him down into barbarism. As the atmosphere which
surrounds our planet supplies the vital element alike to the full-grown
man and to the infant, so Christianity supplies the breath of life to
society in all its stages,--in its full-grown manhood, as well as in its
immature infancy. There is more meaning than the world has yet
understood in the statement that the Gospel has brought "life and
immortality to light." Its Divine Founder introduced upon the stage that
system which is the _life_ of nations. The world does not furnish an
instance of a nation that has continued to be Christian, that has
perished. We believe the thing to be impossible. While great Rome has
gone down, and Venice sits in widowed glory on the Adriatic, the poor
Waldenses are still a people. The world tried but could not extinguish
them. Christianity is synonymous with life: it gives immortality to
nations here, and to the individual hereafter. Hence Daniel, when
unfolding the state of the world in the last age, gives us to understand
that, when once thoroughly Christianized, society will no longer be
overwhelmed by those periodic lapses into barbarism which in every
former age has set limits to the progress of States. "And in the days of
those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never
be destroyed." Unlike every preceding era, immortality will then be the
chief characteristic of nations.
But must it not strike every one, in connection with this subject, that
in proportion as Romanism developes itself, the nations under its sway
sink the deeper into barbarism? This fact Romanist writers now see and
bewail. What stronger condemnation of their system could they pronounce?
For surely if religion be of God, it must, like all else that comes
from Him, be beneficent in its influence. He who ordained the sun to
irradiate the earth with his light, and fructify it with his warmth,
would not have given a religion that fetters the understanding and
barbarises the species. And yet, if Romanism be divine, He has done so;
for the champions of that Church, compelled by the irresistible logic of
facts, now tacitly acknowledge that a decaying civilization is following
in the wake of Roman Catholicism in every part of the world. Listen, for
instance, to the following confession of M. Michel Chevalier, in the
_Journal des Debats_:--
"I cannot shut my eyes to the facts that militate against the influence
of the Catholic spirit,--facts which have transpired more especially
during the last third of a century, and which are still in
progress,--facts that are fitted to excite in every mind that
sympathises with the Catholic cause, the most lively apprehensions. On
comparing the respective progress made since 1814 by non-Catholic
Christian nations, with the advancement of power attained by Catholic
nations, one is struck with astonishment at the disproportion. England
and the United States, which are Protestant Powers, and Russia, a Greek
Power, have assumed to an incalculable degree the dominion of immense
regions, destined to be densely peopled, and already teeming with a
large population. England has nearly conquered all those vast and
populous regions known under the generic name of India. In America she
has diffused civilization to the extreme north, in the deserts of Upper
Canada. Through the toil of her children, she has taken possession of
every point and position of an island,--New Holland (Australia),--which
is as large as a continent; and she has been sending forth her fresh
shoots over all the archipelagos with which the great ocean is studded.
The United States have swollen out to a prodigious extent, in wealth
and possessions, over the surface of their ancient domain. They have,
moreover, enlarged on all sides the limits of that domain, anciently
confined to a narrow stripe along the shores of the Atlantic. They now
sit on the two oceans. San Francisco has become the pendant of New York,
and promises speedily to rival it in its destinies. They have proved
their superiority over the Catholic nations of the New World, and have
subjected them to a dictatorship which admits of no farther dispute. To
the authority of these two Powers,--England and the United
States,--after an attempt made by the former on China, the two most
renowned empires of the East,--empires which represent nearly the
numerical half of the human race,--China and Japan,--seem to be on the
point of yielding. Russia, again, appears to be assuming every day a
position of growing importance in Europe. During all this time, what way
has been made by the Catholic nations? The foremost of them all, the
most compact, the most glorious,--France,--which seemed fifty years ago
to have mounted the throne of civilization, has seen, through a course
of strange disasters, her sceptre shivered and her power dissolved. Once
and again has she risen to her feet, with noble courage and indomitable
energy; but every time, as all expected to see her take a rapid flight
upward, fate has sent her, as a curse from God, a revolution to paralyze
her efforts, and make her miserably fall back. Unquestionably, since
1789 the balance of power between Catholic civilization and non-Catholic
civilization has been reversed."