The Persecution Of The Church In The German Empire.
Concluded.
In the spring of 1870, whilst the discussion concerning the opportuneness
of defining the infallibility of the Pope was attracting the attention of
every one, and when the distant mutterings of the Franco‐Prussian war were
not yet audible, the leading organs of the Party of Progress in Berlin
sought to weigh the probable results of a definition, by the Vatican
Council, of the much‐talked‐of dogma. In case the Pope should be declared
infallible, the _Volkszeitung_, of Berlin, affirmed that many would favor
the interference of the government to prevent all further intercourse
between the bishops of Prussia and the Roman Pontiff, which would result
in the creation of a national church wholly independent of Rome.
But this organ of the Party of Progress openly avowed that there was not
the slightest probability that the state could, by any means at its
command, succeed in separating the Catholic Church in Prussia from
communion with the See of Peter; nor was there, it confessed with perfect
candor, a single bishop in Germany who would desire such a separation.
And yet, as we have shown in a former article, the task which the German
Empire has set itself is precisely the one which is here pronounced
impossible; and we propose now to continue the history of the tyrannical
enactments and harsh measures by which the worshippers of the God‐State
hope to destroy the faith of thirteen millions of Catholics. The project
of the Falk laws was brought before the Landtag on the 9th of January,
1873, and on the 30th of the same month the Catholic episcopate of the
kingdom of Prussia entered a solemn protest against this iniquitous
attempt to violate the most sacred rights of conscience and religion.
In the name of the natural law, of the historical and lawfully‐acquired
rights of the church in Germany, of the treaties concluded by the crown of
Prussia with the Holy See, and, in fine, in the name of the express
recognition of these rights by the Constitution, they protest against the
violation of the inalienable right of the Catholic Church to exist in the
integrity of its doctrine, its constitution, and its discipline.
It is of the duty and right of each bishop, they declare, to teach the
Catholic doctrine and administer the sacraments within his own diocese; it
is also of his duty and right to educate, commission, and appoint the
priests who are his co‐operators and representatives in the sacred
ministry; and it is of his duty and right to exhort and encourage them in
the fulfilment of their charge, and, when they obstinately refuse to obey
the doctrine and laws of the church, to depose them from office, and to
forbid them the exercise of all ecclesiastical functions; all of which
rights are violated by the proposed laws. As to the Royal Court for
Ecclesiastical Affairs, they affirm that they can never recognize its
competency, and that they can see in it only an attempt to reduce the
divinely‐constituted church to a non‐Catholic and national institution.
The Memorial concludes with the following noble and solemn words:
“Concord between church and state is the safeguard of the spiritual and
the temporal power; the indispensable condition of the welfare of all
human society. The bishops, the priests, the Catholic people, are not the
enemies of the state; they are not intolerant, unjust, rancorous towards
those of a different faith. They ask nothing so much as to live in peace
with all men; but they demand that they themselves be permitted to live
according to their faith, of the divinity and truth of which they are most
thoroughly convinced. They require that the integrity of religion and
their church and the liberty of their conscience be left inviolate, and
they are resolved to defend their lawful freedom, and even the smallest
right of the church, with all energy and without fear.
“From our inmost souls, in the interest of the state as much as of the
church, we conjure and implore the authorities to abandon the disastrous
policy which they have taken up, and to give back to the Catholic Church,
and to the millions of the faithful of that church who are in Prussia and
in the Empire, peace, religious liberty, and security in the possession of
their rights, and not to impose upon us laws obedience to which is
incompatible, for every bishop and for every priest and for all Catholics,
with the fulfilment of duty—laws, consequently, which violate conscience,
are morally impossible, and which, if carried into execution by force,
will bring untold misery upon our faithful Catholic people and our German
fatherland.”
The organs of the government declared that the Memorial was an
_ultimatum_, “a declaration of war”; that “it was impossible to keep the
peace with these bishops; and that they should be reduced as soon as
possible to a state in which they could do no harm.” Accordingly, the
discussion of the Falk laws was hurried up, and they were adopted in May
by a majority of two‐thirds.
In the meantime, the government continued to follow up its harsh measures
against the religious orders, going so far as to close the churches of
royal patronage in Poland, in order to prevent their consecration to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. It even forbade the children of the schools to
assist at the devotions of the Sacred Heart. The Catholic casinos were
closed; the Congregations of the Blessed Virgin, the Society of the Holy
Childhood, and other religious associations were suppressed. The Catholic
soldiers of the Prussian army had already been outraged by having their
church in Cologne turned over to the Old Catholics.
By the beginning of 1873 nearly all the Jesuits had withdrawn from the
territory of the German Empire, and taken refuge in France, England,
Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Indies, and the United States. Those who
still remained were interned, and, deprived of all means of subsistence,
placed under the supervision of the police. The government next proceeded
to take steps to suppress those religious orders which it considered as
_affiliated_ to the Jesuits. A mission which the Redemptorists were giving
at Wehlen, near Treves, was broken up by the police. Another mission which
they were about to open at Oberjosbach (Nassau) was interdicted; whilst
almost at the same time several Redemptorists were decorated “for services
rendered to the fatherland during the war.” A community of Lazarists at
Kulm was dissolved, and houses of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, of the
Sisters of Notre Dame, of the Sisters of Charity, and of the Sisters of S.
Charles were closed.
Von Gerlach, the President of the Court of Appeals of Magdeburg, himself a
Protestant, has informed us, in a pamphlet which he published about this
time, of the effect of these persecutions upon the Catholics of Germany.
“As for the Catholic Church,” he wrote, “persecutions strengthen her. In
fact, her moral power is increased under pressure. The Catholic Church is
to‐day more zealous, more compact, more united, more confident of herself,
more energetic, and better organized, than she was at the commencement of
1871. The Roman Catholics have good reason to be thankful that their
church has gained in faith, in the spirit of sacrifice and prayer, in
devoutness in worship, and in all Christian virtues.
“It is even evident that the interior force of the religious orders,
especially that of the Jesuits, has been proportionately augmented. Around
these proscribed men gather all those who love them to protect and help
them.”
The courageous conduct of the German bishops in taking a firm and decided
stand against the persecutors of the church met with the almost unanimous
approval of both priests and people. Dr. Döllinger and his sect were
forgotten. If there had ever been any life in the impossible thing, it
went out in the first breath of the storm that was breaking over the
church. All the cathedral chapters gave in their adhesion to their
respective bishops, and their example was followed by the pastors,
rectors, and vicars of the eleven Prussian dioceses. They repelled with
horror, to use the words of the clergy of Fulda, the attempt to separate
the members from the head, and to give to the priesthood tutors in the
person of a state official. Even the twenty‐nine deacons of the Seminary
of Gnesen entered their protest, recalling in their address to Archbishop
Ledochowski the beautiful words of S. Laurence to Pope Sixtus as he was
led to martyrdom: _Quo sine filio, pater?_
The Catholic nobility, in their meeting at Münster in January, 1873,
openly proclaimed their fidelity to the church and their firm resolve to
defend her rights and liberties; and the Catholic people began to organize
throughout the Empire.
“The Association of the Catholic Germans,” which now counts its members by
hundreds of thousands, was formed, with the motto, _Neither rebel nor
apostate_. Its _Wanderversammlungen_ (migratory reunions) spring up
everywhere, and become the centre of Catholic life. This association is
based upon the constitutional law, its acts are public, the means it
employs are lawful, and the end it aims at is distinctly formulated in its
statutes.
In this manner the Catholics of Germany prepared themselves, not to commit
acts of violence or to transgress the law, but to offer a passive
resistance to tyranny and oppression, to uphold liberty of conscience
against state omnipotence, and to suffer every evil rather than betray
their souls’ faith.
The Imperial government, on the other hand, showed no intention of
withdrawing its arbitrary measures, but through its organs openly declared
that “the execution of the clerical laws would form a clergy as submissive
and tractable as the Prussian army”; whilst Herr Falk proclaimed in the
Reichstag “that the government was resolved to make use of every means
which the law placed within its power; and if the present laws were not
sufficient, others would be framed to ensure their execution.”
The ukase, signed by Bismarck on the 20th of May, 1873, suppressed the
convents of the Redemptorists, of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost, of the
Lazarists, and of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart; and the members of these
orders were commanded to abandon their houses before the end of the
following November. The Ladies of the Sacred Heart were accused of
desiring to acquire “universal spiritual dominion.”
The bishops were called on to submit for the approval of the government,
in accordance with the tenor of the May laws, the plan of studies and the
disciplinary rules of their diocesan seminaries; which, of course, they
declined to do, whilst foreseeing that their action would bring about the
closing of these institutions. Herr Falk, the Minister of Worship, ordered
an examination into the revenues of the different parishes, without even
asking the co‐operation of the bishops; and the civil authorities were
warned of their duty to notify the government of any changes which should
be made in the body of the clergy. The police received orders to
interfere, at certain points, with Catholic pilgrimages, which, in other
instances, were positively interdicted.
The annual allowance of twelve hundred thalers to Mgr. Ledochowski,
Archbishop of Posen, was withdrawn, his seminary was closed, and all
teachers were forbidden to ask his permission to give religious
instruction. In November, 1873, the archbishop’s furniture was seized;
even his paintings were carried off. The people, gathering in crowds,
shouted after the officials: “Thief! thief!” On the 23d of the same month
Mgr. Ledochowski was condemned to pay a fine of five thousand four hundred
thalers, or, in default, to an imprisonment of two years, for having made
nine appointments to ecclesiastical offices contrary to the laws of May.
Before the end of December, the fines imposed upon the archbishop reached
twenty‐one thousand thalers. In January, 1874, he was cited before a
delegate judge of the Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs, but refused
to appear, since he could not, in conscience, recognize the competency of
a civil tribunal to pass sentence on the manner in which he had exercised
his pastoral functions. He moreover averred that, in case the threat to
drag him into court should be carried out, it was his firm resolve to say
nothing.
Several priests of the Diocese of Posen had already been incarcerated for
failure to pay the fines of the government, and on the 3d of last
February, at five o’clock in the morning, the archbishop was himself
arrested and carried off to prison in Ostrowo, a town of about seven
thousand inhabitants, chiefly Protestants and Jews.
The bishops of Prussia at once drew up a letter to the clergy and the
Catholic people of their dioceses, in which they declared that “the only
crime of Archbishop Ledochowski was that of having chosen to suffer
everything rather than betray the liberty of the church of God and deny
Catholic truth, sealed by the precious blood of the Saviour.”
The canons of the Chapter of Posen were ordered by the government to elect
a capitular‐vicar; and as they declined to give their approval to the
cruel and unjust imprisonment of their archbishop, a state official was
appointed to take charge of the affairs of the diocese.
Both the priests and people of Prussian Poland remain firm, and give noble
examples of steadfastness in the faith.
The history of the persecution in one diocese is, with a few unimportant
differences, that of all. More than a year ago, the annual allowance of
three thousand four hundred and seventy thalers made to the Theological
Seminary of Cologne was withdrawn. Archbishop Melchers and his vicar‐
general were cited before a civil tribunal for the excommunication of two
apostates. The Lazarists were driven from the preparatory seminaries of
Neuss and Münstereifel.
On the 22d of November, 1873, the archbishop was condemned to pay a fine
of twenty‐five hundred thalers for five appointments made in violation of
the May laws; and almost every week thereafter new fines were imposed,
until finally his furniture was seized on the 3d of last February, and in
a very short time the venerable prelate was incarcerated, not even his
lawyer being allowed to visit him. His prison‐cell was thought to be too
comfortable, and he was soon changed to one under the very roof of the
jail. A great number of pastors and vicars of his diocese were deprived of
their positions, and some of them imprisoned.
On the 20th of November, 1873, the priests of twenty‐eight towns and
villages of the Diocese of Treves were interdicted by the government, and
the bishop fined thirty‐six hundred thalers. The Theological Seminary was
closed, “not to be reopened until the bishop and rector should accept in
good faith the laws of May, 1873.” Any seminarians who might be found
there on the 12th of January, 1874, were to be forcibly ejected.
The 15th of this same month the professors were forbidden to instruct the
students of theology, under penalty of a fine of fifteen thalers or five
days’ imprisonment for each offence; and this prohibition is to remain in
vigor until the bishop accepts the Falk laws. On the 21st of January, an
inventory of the furniture of the episcopal palace was taken. The goods
were sold at public auction on the 6th of February; in a few days, Bishop
Eberhard was thrown into prison; and before the end of last August sixty
of his priests were confessing the faith in the dungeons of Treves and
Coblentz.
The old Dominican convent in Treves had been converted into a prison, and
it is there that the bishop and some thirty of his priests were
incarcerated. The prison discipline is rigid and harsh in the extreme.
These confessors of Christ are forced out of their beds at five o’clock in
the morning, and from this until they retire at nine in the evening they
must either walk to and fro in their cells, or sit upon stools, since
chairs are not allowed. If during the day they wish to lie down for a
moment, an official at once informs them that this is not permitted; if
they lean against the wall, the table, or the bed, they again receive the
same warning. A jailer accompanies them whenever necessity forces them to
leave their cells. All letters to and from the prison are read by the
officials, and, in case the slightest pretext can be found, are destroyed.
None save those who have voluntarily given themselves up, and who, after a
first imprisonment, have not received an ovation from the people, are
allowed to say Mass. The bishop is permitted to celebrate the Holy
Sacrifice, but no one is suffered to be present except the server and the
indispensable government official.
The food seems scarcely sufficient to sustain life. Three times in the
week, each of the prisoners receives a small piece of meat, and this is
the only change ever made in the bill of fare which we have just given.
What we have called “porridge” is known at Treves under the name of
_Schlicht_, and is a kind of flour‐paste. When we reflect that there are
in Germany to‐day not less than a thousand priests who are suffering this
slow and cruel martyrdom, we shall be able to realize that the present
pagan persecution may in all truth be compared to those which, in the
first ages of Christianity, gave to the church her legions of martyrs and
confessors. It is not necessary that we should enter into a detailed
account of the persecution in the other dioceses of Germany. The same
scenes are everywhere enacted—fines, citations, seizure of effects,
interdicts, and imprisonments, on the part of the government; whilst the
Catholics, standing in unshaken fidelity to God and conscience, suffer in
patience every outrage that their enemies can inflict, rather than betray
the sacred cause of the religion of Christ. The May laws of 1873 did not
prove sufficiently harsh or tyrannical to satisfy the Prussian infidels;
and they were consequently supplemented by clauses which passed both
houses of the Reichstag last May. In virtue of these amendments, the state
can decree the sequestration of the goods of an ecclesiastical post not
occupied in the manner prescribed by the Falk laws. In this case, these
goods are to be administered by a royal commissary.
The Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs receives the power to depose
bishops; and, this deposition being once pronounced, they are forbidden to
exercise any ecclesiastical functions in their respective dioceses, which
by this very fact are placed under interdict. When the bishop is deposed
by the Royal Court, the cathedral chapter is summoned to proceed to elect
his successor; and in case it fails to comply with this injunction within
ten days, all goods belonging to the episcopal see, as well as those of
the chapter of the diocese, and of the parishes, are sequestrated and
administered by the government.
This miserable legislation gives to the state the entire spiritual power,
and ignores alike the rights of God and those of the free Christian
conscience. Still, it is only the legitimate and logical expression of the
views and aims of the modern heathendom which is organizing throughout
Europe for the destruction of the religion of Christ.
The May laws of 1873 required the bishops to convert all the incumbents
having charge of churches into permanent and irremovable parish priests;
in consequence of which the position of twelve hundred and forty‐one
incumbents in the Rhine Province became illegal on the 11th of last May. A
general interdict was therefore expected, and even a process to compel the
bishop to comply with this clause was looked for; but Herr Falk seems to
have been frightened by his own legislation, since already, on the 8th of
May, he announced in the Reichstag that only those priests whom “the
government considered dangerous” would be notified of the proceedings
taken against the bishops, and that no others would be held to come under
the operation of the law. In this manner the Prussian Minister of Worship
avoided the odium of a general interdict, whilst by a slower process he
hopes eventually to bring about this result. The moment the incumbent of a
church receives official notification that his bishop has been put under
restraint, he is by the very fact forbidden to perform any ecclesiastical
function, and his post is considered vacant. The _Landrath_ then declares
this _vacancy_, and invites the parishioners to prepare for the election
of a successor to their former pastor.
That this election may take place, it suffices that ten men, who are of
age and in the full possession of their civil rights, put in an
appearance, that the person chosen by them and approved of by the civil
authority may be recognized as the lawful incumbent.
The evident aim of this law is to create a schism in every parish in the
German Empire, which, by fomenting divisions amongst the Catholics, would
greatly aid the government in its efforts to destroy the church. But this
is only one of innumerable instances in which the persecutors have been
wholly mistaken.
They counted first upon the weakness of the Catholic bishops; confidently
expecting that one or the other of them would place himself at the head of
the Old Catholics, and thus, whilst causing great scandal in the church,
give to that still‐born sect at least a semblance of respectability. But
not one of the German prelates wavered. They go to prison, like the
apostles, rejoicing that they are found worthy to suffer for Christ, and
declare that they are willing to shed their blood for the holy cause.
Their enemies are not more ready to inflict than they to bear everything
for the love of Jesus. Then, there was no doubt in the minds of the
Prussian infidels that large numbers of the clergy would take advantage of
the bribes offered by government to apostates to throw off the authority
of the bishops, and to constitute themselves into a schismatical body. On
the contrary, the persecution has only drawn tighter the bonds which unite
the priests with their chief pastors. In all Germany there have not been
found more than thirty rationalistic professors and suspended priests who
were willing to take sides with Döllinger in his rebellion; and the
juridically‐proven immorality of Bishop Reinkens will no doubt give us a
true insight into the characters of most of the men who have elected him
their ecclesiastical superior.
When the persecutors found that both bishops and priests were immovable in
their devotion to the church, they appealed to the Catholic people, and,
by the laws of last May, placed it in their power to create a schism, by
giving them the right to elect their own pastors, with the promise that
government would turn the churches over to them. But this attempt to show
that the bishops and priests of Germany have not the sympathy and
confidence of the laity has met with signal rebuke.
The elections for the Prussian Landtag in November, 1873, and those for
the Reichstag in January last, had not merely a political significance;
their bearing upon the present and future welfare of the church in the
German Empire is of the greatest importance. Opportunity was given to the
Catholic people to make a public confession of faith; to declare, in words
which could not be misunderstood, whether or not they were resolved to
stand firm in the struggle into which their leaders had been forced.
In the November elections, in spite of every effort of the government, the
Catholics increased their representatives in the Landtag from fifty‐two to
eighty‐nine; whilst in the Reichstag their members have grown from sixty‐
three to considerably more than one hundred.
The entire Rhenish Province elected Catholics. Cologne, Düsseldorf,
Treves, Coblentz, Aix‐la‐Chapelle, Crefeld, Bonn, Neuss, Düren, Essen,
Malmedy, Mülheim, all the cities of the Lower Rhine, made their vote an
act of faith. Windthorst, the leader of the Catholic party, was elected at
Meppen (Hanover) over Falk, the author of the May laws, by a majority of
nearly fifteen thousand. The entire vote for Falk was only three hundred
and forty‐seven.
The result of the elections undoubtedly startled the government, and
possibly shook Bismarck’s confidence in the power of persecution to
destroy Catholic faith; but the struggle had grown too fierce to allow him
to think of withdrawing.
On the contrary, the firmness of the Catholic people incited the
persecutors to still harsher measures; but nothing that they have done or
can do will succeed in breaking the combined passive opposition of the
clergy and the laity.
In the Vatican Council, the most determined resistance to the definition
of the infallibility of the Pope was made by the German bishops, who felt
no hesitation in openly declaring with what anxiety they regarded the
probable effects of such a definition upon the Catholics of their own
country. Divisions, apostasies, schisms, seemed imminent; and it is not
easy now to determine what might have been the result had not God’s
providence interfered.
In the first place, at the very moment when the definition was made, the
terrible conflict between France and Prussia broke forth, and raged so
fiercely that the loud earth was struck dumb, and men held their breath
till it should be ended. In the meantime, the angry feelings aroused by
the discussions in the Vatican Council had, in great measure, been calmed,
and it was possible to take a fairer and more dispassionate view of the
whole subject.
Then the attempt of the government to destroy the Catholic Church in
Germany, by tearing it away from its allegiance to the Pope, and debasing
it to a mere function of the state, roused those who might have been
disposed to waver, and brought about a universal reawakening of faith. It
is the fate of the enemies of God’s people to bless when they mean to
curse. In fact, when Catholics begin to suffer, they begin to triumph; and
hence even those who hate us have of nothing so great horror as of making
martyrs and confessors. They know the history of martyrdom—that in the
whole earth and in all ages it means victory.
The church, which sprang from the conflict of the God‐Man with death, like
him, in her greatest humiliation shows forth her highest power.
Her march through the world and through the ages is not along pleasant
roads and through peaceful prospects, or, if so, only at times and rarely.
If she move in pomp amid the acclamations of peoples, her triumphal
procession ends in sorrow. The bark of Peter must be storm‐tossed; and
when the angry waves would swallow it, the divine voice speaks the magic
word, and the quiet deep bears it up on her peaceful bosom.
The road wherein the progress of the church is most secure is the blood‐
stained way of the cross. When she is all bruised, and there is no
comeliness left in her; when her eyes are red with weeping, and the world,
beholding her agony, mocks and jeers and laughs her to scorn, then is she
strongest; for her strength comes from humility, from suffering, from the
cross. When she is humbled, God exalts her; when he permits her enemies to
entomb her in ignominy, he is near at hand to crown her with the immortal
glory of a new life. The word of Christ is: “You shall live in the world
in the midst of persecutions; but take heart: I have conquered the world.”
Within the memory of those who are still young, it was the fashion with
our enemies to proclaim that the church was decrepit, that she was dying,
that of her own weight she would fall to pieces in the new society that
was growing up around her: to‐day we hear that she is everywhere waxing
too strong, and men appeal against her to tyranny and to brute force.
The most powerful and the most thoroughly organized of the modern nations,
the great _Cultur‐Staat_ of the age, has confessed that it is unable to
check the growth of the church by legitimate means, and it has therefore
had recourse to the most arbitrary legislation and to the harshest
measures of compulsion and violence. This, of course, is the most explicit
avowal of its own impotence. We find also that the two nations which have
manifested the most supercilious indifference to the Catholic Church, as
being something which did not and could not concern them, now applaud this
Prussian tyranny, in spite of the pretence of the love of freedom and fair
play. The sympathy of the English press, and to a great extent of the
American press, in this struggle, is with the absolute and liberty‐
destroying government of Prussia. The favorite motto of “civil and
religious liberty all the world over” has been wholly lost sight of, and
Englishmen and Americans give moral aid to a state which wantonly tramples
upon both.
This, too, was a cherished watch‐word: The church is the friend of
absolutism, the enemy of freedom.
But to‐day we behold the Catholic Church, single‐handed, fighting again
the same battles of liberty which she fought and won in the early
centuries of Christianity. Now, as then, she opposes absolutism in the
state; denies, as she then denied, that Cæsar can lawfully lay claim to
“the things of God”; and protests, in the name of the outraged dignity of
human nature, that there is a freedom which transcends the sphere of all
earthly authority. Her children, when nothing else remains to be done,
utter the divine words: _Non possumus_—we cannot; we must obey God rather
than men.
Referring to this struggle, Bismarck has said, in a memorable speech, that
“it is the ancient contest for power, which is as old as the human race
itself—the contest for power between king and priest.” This is necessarily
the view which he takes, since he believes in nothing but force. But the
dualism here is not in the combatants alone; it is in the objects for
which they contend.
It is indeed the ancient contest between good and evil, between the spirit
and the flesh, between the Christ and the rulers of this world, which
makes life a warfare and the earth a battle‐field, and which must continue
until the end. Never has it been fiercer than in our day, and the battle
is yet hardly begun. But very few indeed understand, as yet, the nature of
the struggle, or are at all aware of the real principles and interests
which are at stake. Few men can see further than an hour or beyond the
little circle that bounds their private interests; but each day it is
becoming more evident that men must take sides; that not to be for Christ
is to be against him.
Twice in the last eighteen hundred years the church has been the ark of
the nations: she destroyed paganism; she converted and civilized
barbarism. Some historian will tell, in another age, how, when Christian
society, grown luxurious and corrupt, without God and without future hope,
was sinking back into the flesh‐worship and the death of ancient paganism,
she, gathering around her the remnant of her children, and fearlessly
facing the storm and the wrath of those who had ceased to know her, kept
her own pure and undefiled till the dawn of the brighter day, to become
the leaven of the social state that is to be.
Christmas‐Tide.
’Twas the hallowed Christmas even—
Christmas of the olden time,
Earth in snowy robes lay sleeping,
But there came a ringing chime
From the forest
Deck’d with glittering frozen rime.
Bright the golden stars were gleaming
Through the cloudless frosty air,
Like the tapers softly beaming
Round some holy shrine of pray’r,
And the night wind
Chants an anthem faint and rare.
Cheer’ly shone the Yule‐log, glowing
In an old baronial hall,
Ghost‐like shadows rose and faded
On the ancient panelled wall:
O’er my spirit
Mournful fancies seemed to fall.
Happy hearts were gathered round me—
Laughing childhood, free from stain;
Maidens, in their girlish beauty;
Manhood’s gaze, undimm’d by pain;
And the aged,
Who might never meet again.
Gathered on that Christmas even
In the old ancestral home,
Breathing words of hope and kindness,
’Neath that lofty arching dome,
Ere they parted
Through life’s thorny paths to roam.
Two beside the hearthstone lingered—
Aged sire, and lady fair;
He of life’s long journey weary;
But her softly waving hair
Graced a forehead
Yet unmarked by trace of care.
Spake then out that youthful mother
With her babe upon her knee
To the grandsire old and hoary,
Like a leafless forest tree:
“Tell me, father,
What thought Christmas brings to thee.”
Silently he gazed upon her,
On her brow so pure and white,
On her dark eyes, softly beaming
With affection’s holy light;
But a shadow
Lay upon his soul like night.
“Daughter, in life’s joyous morning
Christmas comes with merry cheer,
Fancy tints a glowing pathway
Bright’ning with each coming year:
On the picture
Falleth not a shade of fear.
“Childhood smileth in its gladness,
Archeth Hope her rainbow bright—
Ah! he strives to grasp the vision;
Fades it from his eager sight:
Soon around him
Closes Disappointment’s night.
“In the noontide, manhood kneeleth
Low before Ambition’s shrine,
Praying: ’Goddess, hear thy vot’ry,
I no altar seek but thine’:
Fame’s wan fingers
Withered chaplets for him twine.
“But when fall the length’ning shadows,
When life’s even stealeth on,
Memory opes her golden casket,
Counts her jewels one by one—
Earth’s dream fadeth;
Her bright smile remains alone.
“One by one my loved departed
To the far‐off spirit‐land—
One by one they crossed my threshold,
Till, the last of that bright band,
Sad and weary,
By a stranger hearth I stand.
“As the wand’rer homeward speeding
Marks the Southern Cross decline,
I am looking ever backward
To the stars that faintly shine;
But one beameth
With a radiance all divine.
“Star of Bethlehem! ere the sunlight
Of another Christmas blest
Rises in the glowing Orient,
Light, oh! light me to my rest!
I would slumber
Calmly in earth’s quiet breast.”
Slowly, slowly crept a Shadow
Through that silent, dark’ning room—
Softly loosed the cord of silver,
Led that soul from Sorrow’s gloom
To the valleys
Where the flowers immortal bloom.
The Veil Withdrawn.
Translated By Permission, From The French Of Madame Craven, Author Of “A
Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.