Is there any particular in which the Protestant Episcopal Church fairly

takes hold of the family? We have seen that she abandons to politicians

the sacred tie between the parents; what has she to do with the next

domestic concern--the education of the child? Dr. Wharton holds it to

be one of her distinguishing claims to public favor that she abandons

this duty also to the secular power. The right to control education,

according to him, is, like the right to sanction the marriage tie, one of

the insolent pretensions of the Vatican usurper. The state, he thinks,

is bound not only to educate all its subjects, but to decide what points

a secular education shall cover, while the church may only add to this

irreligious training such pious instruction as the child may have time

and strength to receive after the more serious lessons are over. “The

church,” he says, “concedes to the state the right and duty to require

a secular education from all, while for itself it undertakes, as a free

church in a free state, the right and duty to give a religious education

to all within its reach.” Expressed in somewhat plainer English, this

means that thirty hours a week ought to be given to the dictionary

and multiplication table, and one hour to the catechism and the ten

commandments. Send your children to schools all the week where they

will hear nothing whatever of religion, where that most vital of all

concerns will be a forbidden subject, where the idea will be practically,

if not in so many words, impressed upon their tender minds that it is

of no consequence whether they are Christians, or Jews, or infidels,

so long as they master the various branches of worldly knowledge which

promote success in the secular affairs of life; and then get them

into Sunday-school if you can, for a wild and ineffectual attempt to

counteract the evil tendencies of the previous six days’ teachings.

This is trying to give a Christian education without the corner-stone

of Christian doctrine; building a house upon the sand, and then running

around it once a week with a hatful of pebbles and a trowel of mud to

put a foundation under the finished structure. Dr. Wharton seems to

embody in his own person a surprising variety of the inconsistencies for

which the Protestant Episcopal Church has such a peculiar celebrity.

For here, after he has claimed credit for his church as the champion of

a secular education, he tells the Congress that secularism is one of

the great dangers of the age, against which the church must fight with

all her strength. “The battle with secularism has to be fought out.” It

must be fought “by the church, and eminently by our own church. Our duty

therefore is to fit ourselves for the encounter, and we must do this

with the cause of religion, undertaking in its breadth and embracing

all branches of religious, spiritual, and ethical culture.” Well, but,

dear sir, you have just said that during the most important period of

man’s intellectual development, when the mind is receiving impressions

which are likely to last through life, the church ought to stand aside

and let the state _teach_ secularism without hindrance. Are you going to

cultivate secularism in the young until it becomes firmly rooted, and

then fight against it with sermons and essays which your secularized

young men will not listen to? How do you expect to impart religious,

spiritual, and ethical culture when you have formally renounced your

inestimable privilege and your sacred duty as a guide and teacher of

children? You propose to wait until your boys have come to man’s estate

before you attempt to exercise any influence upon them; and then, when

they have grown up with the idea that religious influence ought to be

avoided as one avoids pestilence, you wonder and complain that they

are indifferent to the church and will not hear you. “The battle with

secularism has to be fought out.” Your way of fighting is to abandon the

outposts, leave front and rear and flanks unprotected, and throw away

your arms.

It was one of the peculiarities of the Congress that whatever error

was promulgated in the essays and debates, somewhere in the course

of the sessions an antidote was sure to be furnished--this being an

illustration, we suppose, of the extreme toleration of opinion to

which Bishop Clarke referred as “somewhat singular” in a church “so

fixed in its doctrines.” Hence we need not be surprised to find in

the second day’s proceedings a refutation of the educational theories

propounded during the first. Dr. Wharton made use of the principle of

secular schooling as a weapon of offence against the Vatican. But when

the delegates had relieved their minds and vindicated their Protestant

orthodoxy by giving the poor Pope about as much as he could stagger away

with, they turned their attention to their own condition, and one of

their first subjects of inquiry was what secular education had done for

them. The topic of consideration on the second morning was “The Best

Methods of Procuring and Preparing Candidates for the Ministry.” Dr.

Schenck of Brooklyn began by stating that the supply of candidates for

holy orders was not only inadequate to the needs of the church, but it

was falling off--a smaller number offering themselves to-day than six

or seven years ago. This, said he, should excite the gravest concern of

the church; and nobody seemed disposed to contradict him. Dr. Edward

B. Boggs indeed presented some uncomfortable statistics which tell the

whole story. In 1871, the number of resident presbyters of the Episcopal

Church in the United States was 2,566; in 1874, it was only 2,530. Here,

then while the population increases the clergy are diminishing. A great

many reasons were suggested for the phenomenon. One thought the question

of salary was at the bottom of the evil. Another blamed mothers for not

giving their boys a taste for the ministry while they were young. A third

believed the trouble was too little prayer and too much quarrelling

over candles and ecclesiastical millinery. And more than one hinted in

the broadest terms that the ministry was discredited by having too many

fools in it.[174] The truth, however, which had been vaguely suggested by

some of the earlier speakers, was plumply told by Dr. Edward Sullivan of

Chicago. “The church,” said he, “must learn to supply the ranks of the

ministry from her own material”--that is to say, by giving the children

of the church a Christian education. He lamented the exclusion of the

Bible from some of the common schools as a national calamity--not, if we

understand him, because he has any overweening faith in the efficacy of

Bible-reading _per se_, but because he knows that when positive religious

teaching is banished from the school, the children can hardly fail to

grow up without any religious feeling whatever. “_Until we establish

parochial church schools_,” he continued, “_we can never solve this

problem._” And he might have added that if the teaching of secularism

is to be continued for a generation or two longer, the problem will

solve itself: there will be no need of preachers when there cease to be

congregations.

If such an alarming phenomenon as an actual falling off in the numbers

of the clergy were noticed in our own holy church, it would perhaps

occur to good Catholics to inquire whether the bishops were doing all

that they ought to do for the souls of their people. But the Episcopal

Congress at Philadelphia seems to have been vexed with the idea that the

bishops were doing entirely too much. Looking at the assemblage from

the outside, we cannot pretend to see the under-currents of opinion, or

to comprehend the denominational politics; but it was plain both from

the tone of the addresses in the session set apart for considering the

“Nature and Extent of Episcopal Authority” and from the manner in which

some of the remarks of the speakers were received, that a jealousy of

episcopal authority prevailed with considerable bitterness. Dr. Vinton

of Boston drew a parallel between the government of the church and the

government of the state; both were ruled by executives appointed by

law and controlled by law, and in each case the chief officer acted by

the assumed authority of those he governed. The bishops therefore, we

infer, have just as much power as the people choose to give them, and

we see no reason why the congregations should not enlarge and restrict

that power at pleasure--make a new constitution, if they wish, every

year, and treat their prelates as the savage treats his idol, which he

sets upon an altar for worship in the morning, and if things go not well

with him, kicks into the kennel at night. Indeed, since the foundation

of the Anglican Church the episcopate has always been treated with scant

ceremony. Dr. Vinton tells us that it is a reflex of the political

organization, and as that has varied a great deal in England and America,

and is not unlikely in the course of time to vary a great deal more,

we must not be surprised to find the system undergoing many strange

modifications and holding out the promise of further change indefinitely.

In the primitive church, the episcopacy was a despotism. In the Anglican

Church, it is “merely an ecclesiastical aristocracy.” In the Protestant

Episcopal Church of America, where the exigencies of politics have to be

considered, it is--well, that is just what the Congress tried in vain to

determine. For one thing, Dr. Vinton and other speakers after him laid

great stress upon the fact that its authority was carefully circumscribed

by statute, and that the church was a corporation--though whence it

derived its charter nobody was good enough to tell us. In truth, we did

not find the day’s proceedings edifying. Dr. Vinton declared that an

organic evil of the church constitution, “boding more of mischief and

sorrow to the body of Christ than any or all of the evils besides that

our age makes possible,” was the liability of bishops to grow arrogant

of power, to make their authority troublesome, to put on idle pomp, and

set themselves “in conspicuous difference from the taste, the traditions,

the educated and intelligent convictions which the providence of God has

caused to rule in this land.” Dr. Fulton of Indianapolis inveighed with

warmth against any bishop who ventured to intrude into another man’s

diocese, and remarked that “some bishops were never at home unless they

were abroad.” A bishop, continued the doctor, is subject to civil law.

He should be tried for violation of the ninth commandment if he wilfully

slander a clergyman either in or out of his own diocese. Bishops must not

affect infallibility in doctrinal utterances. They must remember that in

more than one respect they and their presbyters are equals. A bishop who

would be respected must respect the rights of other bishops--not being

an episcopal busybody in other men’s sees. Dr. Goodwin of Philadelphia

thought that what our Lord meant to have was “a moderate episcopate.”

Dr. Washburn of New York believed that even the powers granted to the

apostles were not exclusive, and that ever since the apostolic age these

powers had been gradually more and more distributed, until now, we

should think, they must be so finely divided that no fragment of them is

anywhere visible in the Episcopal Church.

Dr. J. V. Lewis convulsed the house with laughter by a speech in which he

declared that the bishops had been so “tied hand and foot by conventions

and canons that it was wonderful they had time to do anything but find

out what they must not do”; and he called upon the church to “cut those

bands and let the bishops loose.” We quote from the report of his remarks

in the _Church Journal_: “What will they do? He would tell them what they

would do. He had at home in his yard six chickens about half-grown. He

had placed among them a turkey big enough to eat any of them up. But they

all flew at him. One little fellow pecked him and spurred him savagely.

The turkey looked on in perfect astonishment, apparently; but at length

he spread out his wings and literally _sat down_ upon him. From that day

to this, whenever that turkey stirs, these chickens cannot be kept from

following him. And this is just what will happen in the church, if we

will only let our bishops loose.” All this was the cause of much innocent

hilarity among the brethren; but we fear that it was to Dr. Lewis that

the _Churchman_ referred the next week in the following solemn strain:

“It is a sad circumstance that the ministry has in it, here and there,

a professional joker and cheap story-teller and anecdote-monger, one

of the most tedious and least estimable types of foolishness that try

Christian endurance and vex religious families. It is to be hoped no

such melancholy-moving buffoon will ever propose himself as clown to the

Church Congress; and, short of that, will it be wise to confer the award

of the heartiest and loudest applause on a sort of comic pleasantry and

‘jesting not convenient’ which, at best, is outdone in its own line in

whole columns of daily newspapers? We may smile, because it cannot be

helped, but we can surely reserve our plaudits--if they must be given at

all--for that species of superiority which manifests a chaste refinement

and suits tastes that are intellectual rather than jovial.”

Clearly there was a great deal more in these essays on the limitations

of episcopal authority than met the profane eye. Who are the trespassers

upon other men’s sheepfolds, and the busybodies, and the slanderers,

and the pompous bishops, and the infallible bishops, and the bishops

who think themselves better than their presbyters, it is not for us to

inquire. Neither perhaps would it be decorous to ask how the ten or

twelve bishops in the Congress--none of whom opened their mouths during

the debate--enjoyed the session. But there is excellent reason to believe

that the presbyters had a very pleasant day, singing the opening hymn

in the morning, “Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly dove,” with peculiar

unction, and joyously dismissing their right reverend fathers in the

afternoon with the verses, “Go forth, ye heralds, in my name.”

If the bishops are in disrepute and the inferior clergy are falling

away, it can hardly be necessary to tell us that the church has no real

hold upon the people; that follows as a matter of course. Accordingly,

the most interesting of the debates were on the best methods of giving

vitality to the work of the church--on ministrations to the laboring

classes, on free churches and free preaching, on the abuses of the new

system, and on the need of something equivalent to the preaching Orders

and Congregations of our own church. Of all the papers read at the

Congress the only one which was received with what we may fairly call

enthusiasm was an essay by Mr. Francis Wells, editor of the Philadelphia

_Evening Bulletin_, on the “Parochial System and Free Preaching,” at the

close of which one of the reverend delegates jumped upon a bench and led

the assembly in three cheers. We have seen no report which gives a fair

abstract of Mr. Wells’ paper, or even explains what practical suggestions

he had to offer, so that it is impossible to understand what it was that

moved the feelings of the Congress. But if he drew a faithful picture

of the average Episcopal Church of our day he may well have startled

his audience. “The chief trouble,” he said, “lies in the spirit of

exclusiveness which eyes the fashion of the dress and warns off strangers

with a cold stare.” He was quite right in holding that the renting of

pews and the expenditure of large sums of money for the adornment of the

house of God are not necessarily obstacles to the influence of the church

over the masses. Our own experience proves that. What poor and ragged

sinner was ever repelled from a Catholic Church by imposing architecture,

or gorgeous windows, or the blazing magnificence of lighted altars, or

the strains of costly music? The rich have their pews--at least in this

country, where it is only by pew-rents that we can meet the necessary

expenses of the parish--but the most wretched beggar feels that he is

welcome at all times in the splendid temple, and he may kneel there,

feasting the senses, if he pleases, as well as refreshing the soul,

without fear that his more comfortable neighbor will stare at his humble

garments. Whatever the character of our churches, it is always the poor

who fill them. It never occurs to a Catholic that the people who pay

pew-rents acquire any proprietorship in the house of God, or have any

better right there than those who pay nothing. The sermons are never made

for the rich, and the Holy Sacrifice is offered for all indiscriminately.

But in the Episcopal Church how different it is!

Imagine the feelings of a mechanic who approaches one of the luxurious

Fifth-Avenue temples in his patched and stained working trowsers and

threadbare coat. Carriages are setting down the _haut ton_ at the door,

every lady dressed in the extreme of fashion, every gentleman carefully

arrayed by an expensive tailor. A high-priced sexton, with rather more

dignity than an average bishop, receives the distinguished arrivals just

inside the lobby, and scrutinizes strangers with the air of an expert who

has learned by long experience in the highest circles just what kind of

company every casual visitor has probably been in the habit of keeping.

The interior of the church somehow suggests a Madison-Avenue parlor,

furnished in the latest style of imitation antique. The upholstery is

a marvel of comfort. The pleasantly subdued light suits the eyes and

softens the complexions of Christians who have been up late dancing. A

decorous quiet pervades the waiting congregation, broken only by the

rustle of five-dollar silks sweeping up the aisles. Such a handsome

display of millinery can be seen nowhere else for so little money. What

is a working-man to do in such a brilliant gathering as this? He looks

timidly at the back seats, and he finds there perhaps two or three old

women, parish pensioners, Sunday-school boys, or young men who keep

near the door in order to slip out quietly when they are tired of the

services, but nobody of his class. The prosperous people all around

him listen to the choir, and the reader, and the preacher, with an

indescribable air of proprietorship in all of them. The sermon is an

elaborate essay addressed to cultivated intellects, not to his common

understanding. He goes away with the uncomfortable consciousness that

he has been intruding, and feels like a shabby and unkempt person who

has strolled by mistake into the stockholders’ row at the Italian Opera,

and been turned out by a high-toned box-keeper. “It is indeed hard to

imagine,” said _The Nation_ the other day, “anything more likely to

make religion seem repelling to a poor man than the sight of one of the

gorgeous edifices in which rich Christians nowadays try to make their

way to heaven. Working out one’s salvation clothed in the height of

the fashion, as a member of a wealthy club, in a building in which the

amplest provision is made for the gratification of all the finer senses,

must seem to a thoughtful city mechanic, for instance, something in the

nature of a burlesque. Not that the building is too good for the lofty

purpose to which it is devoted, for nobody ever gets an impression of

anything but solemn appropriateness from a great Catholic cathedral, but

that it is the property of a close corporation, who, as it might be said,

‘make up a party’ to go to the Throne of Grace, and share the expenses

equally, and fix the rate so high that only successful businessmen can

join.”

But we heed not enlarge upon the prevalence of this evil. The speakers

at the Congress recognized it frankly, and they are undoubtedly aware,

though they may not have deemed it prudent to confess, that the case is

growing more and more serious all the time. As wealth concentrates in

the large cities and habits of luxury increase, the Protestant Episcopal

Church is continually becoming colder and colder towards the poor. No

remedy that has been proposed holds out the faintest promise of stopping

this alarming decline. No remedy proposed even meets the approbation of

any considerable number of the Episcopal clergy. One speaker proposes a

greater number of free congregations, and is met by the obvious objection

that the result would be a still more lamentable separation between

rich and poor, with a different class of churches for each set. Another

recommends the bishops to send missionary preachers into every parish

where there seems to be need of their labor, but does not tell us where

the missionaries are to be found, and forgets that almost every parish

in the United States would have to be supplied in this way before the

evil could be cured. A third advises the rich and poor to meet together,

and fraternize and help each other; and a fourth calls for more zeal

all around. All these proposals are merely various ways of stating the

disease; they do not indicate remedies. Perhaps it may occur to some

people that if the Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church correspond so

closely in their outward operations, both striving to celebrate divine

worship with all possible splendor, both building costly churches and

supporting them by pew-rents, both employing highly paid choirs, both

keeping up a system of parishes, and if all the while the one gathers

people of every rank and condition into her fold, offering health and

consolation to all alike, while the other is constantly losing the

affections of the multitude and becoming a lifeless creature of forms and

fashions, the explanation of the difference after all may be that the

Holy Ghost lives and works in the one, while the other is only the device

of man.

YULE RAPS.

_A CHRISTMAS STORY._

We once saw a picture of a wide, undulating snow-landscape, overspread

with a pale rosy tint from the west, and we thought it a fancy picture of

an Arctic winter. It hung in a pretty room in a Silesian country-house.

The weather was lovely, warm but temperate; it was mid-June, and the

woods were full of wild strawberries, and the meadows of forget-me-nots.

Yet that landscape was simply Silesia in the winter; the same place,

six months later, becomes a wilderness of snow. What shall we say of

Mecklenburg, then, so much farther to the north of Silesia? But even

there winter brings merriment; and as in these snow-bound countries there

is less work to be got through in the winter, their people associate the

ideas of pleasure and holiday with the cold rather than the warm weather.

In Mecklenburg spring, summer, and autumn mean work--ploughing, sowing,

haying, harvesting; winter means fun and frolic, peasants’ dances,

farmers’ parties, weddings, christenings, harvest-homes, Christmas, New

Year’s, and Epiphany presents, gatherings of friends, fireside talk,

innocent games, and general merriment.

In a little village in this province the house of Emanuel Köhler was

famous for its jollity. Here were old customs well kept up, yet always

with decorum and a regard to higher matters. Emanuel was virtually

master of the estate of Stelhagen, the absentee owner of which was a gay

young officer who never wrote to his agent, except for a new supply

of money. Clever and enlightened an agriculturist as old Köhler was,

it was sometimes difficult for him to send the required sums, and yet

have enough to farm the estate to his satisfaction. In the language of

the country, he was called the inspector, and his house, also according

to the local custom, was a kind of informal agricultural school. At

the time of our story he had four young men under him--who were in all

respects like the apprentices of the good old time--and two of his own

relatives, his son and his nephew. His only daughter was busy helping

her mother, and learning to be as efficient a housekeeper as the young

men to be first-rate farmers; and this nucleus of young society, added

to the good Köhler’s hearty joviality and the known good-cheer always

provided by Frau Köhler, naturally made the large, cosey, rambling

house a pleasant rendezvous for the neighborhood. The Köhler household

was a host in itself, yet it always loved to be reinforced on festive

occasions by the good people of the village and farms within ten miles

round. So also the children, whether poor or pretty well off, were all

welcome at old Emanuel’s, and knew the way to the Frau Inspectorin’s

pantry as well as they knew the path to the church or the school. All the

servant-girls in the neighborhood wanted to get a place in this house,

but there was scarcely ever a vacancy, unless one of the dairy-maids or

the house-girls married. Frau Köhler and her daughter did all the kitchen

work themselves, and the latter, a thoughtful girl, though she was only

fifteen, studied books and maps between-whiles. But her studies never

interfered with the more necessary knowledge that a girl should have

when, as Rika,[175] she has to depend upon herself for everything. In

the country, in the Mecklenburg of even a very few years ago, everything

was home-made, and a supply of things from the large town twenty or

thirty miles off was the event of a life-time. Such things came as

wedding-gifts; and though fancy things came every Christmas, even they

were carefully and sacredly kept as tokens of that miraculous, strange,

bewildering world outside, in which people wore their silk dresses every

day, and bought everything they wanted at large shops a few steps from

their own houses. Frau Köhler often wondered what other women did who

had no farm-house to manage, no spinning, or knitting, or cooking, or

dairy-work to do; and when her daughter Rika suggested that they probably

read and studied, she shrugged her shoulders and said: “Take care, child;

women ought to attend to women’s work. Studying is a man’s business.”

The honest soul was a type of many an old-fashioned German house-mother,

of whose wisdom it were well that some of our contemporaries could avail

themselves; and when Rika gently reminded her of the story of Martha and

Mary, she would energetically reply:

“Very well; but take my word for it, child, there was a woman more

blessed than _that_ Mary, and one who was nearer yet to her Lord; and

we do not hear of _her_ neglecting her house. I love to think of that

house at Nazareth as just a model of household cleanliness and comfort.

You know, otherwise, it could not have been a fitting place for _Him_;

for though he chose poverty, he must needs have surrounded himself with

spotless purity.”

And Rika, as humble and docile as she was thoughtful, saw in this

reverent and practical surmise a proof that it is not learning that comes

nearest to the heart of truth, but that clearer and directer knowledge

which God gives to “babes and sucklings.”

This particular Christmas there was much preparation for the family

festival. The kitchen was in a ferment for a week, and mighty

bakings took place; gingerbread and cake were made, and various

confectionery-work was done; for Frau Köhler expected a friend of her

own early home to come and stay with her this last week of the year.

This was the good old priest who had baptized her daughter; for neither

mother nor daughter were natives of Mecklenburg, though the latter had

grown up there, and had never, since she was six months old, gone beyond

the limits of the large estate which her father administered. Frau Köhler

was a Bavarian by birth, and had grieved very much when her Mecklenburg

husband had taken her to this northern land, where his position and wages

were so good as to make it his duty to abide and bring up his family. But

the worthy old creature had done a wonderful deal of good since she had

been there, and kept up her faith as steadfastly as ever she had at home.

Frederika had been her treasure and her comfort; and between the mother’s

intense, mediæval firmness of belief, and the child’s naturally deep and

thoughtful nature, the little farm-maiden had grown up a rare combination

of qualities, and a model for the young Catholic womanhood of our stormy

times. The old priest whom Frau Köhler had looked up to before her

marriage as her best friend, and whom Rika had been taught to revere from

her babyhood, had been very sick, and was obliged to leave his parish

for a long holiday and rest. His former parishioner was anxious that

he should see Christmas kept in the old-fashioned northern style, more

characteristic than the Frenchified southern manners would now allow,

even in her remote native village. Civilization carries with it the

pick-axe and the rule; and when young girls begin to prefer Manchester

prints and French bonnets to homespun and straw hats, most of the old

customs slip away from their homes.

In the sturdy Mecklenburg of twenty years ago, even after the temporary

stir of 1848, things were pretty much as they had been for centuries, and

it was Emanuel’s pride that his household should be, if needful, the last

stronghold of the good old usages. He heartily acquiesced in his wife’s

invitation to the southern guest, and resolved to have the best Christmas

that had been known in the country since he had undertaken the care of

the Stelhagen estate. In truth, he lived like a patriarch among his

work-people; his laborers and their families were models of prosperity

and content, and the children of all the neighborhood wished he were

their grandfather. Indeed, he was godfather to half the village babies

born during his stay there.

The sleighs of the country were the people’s pride. Some were plain

and strong, because their owners were not rich enough to adorn them,

but others were quite a curiosity to the visitor from the south. They

partook of the same quaintness as the old yellow family coaches that

took the farmers to harvest-homes and weddings before the early snows

came on. Lumbering, heavy-wheeled vehicles these were, swinging on high

like a cradle tied to a couple of saplings in a storm; capacious as

the house-mother’s apron-pockets on a baking day; seventy years old at

least, barring the numerous patchings and mendings, new lining or new

wheel, occasionally vouchsafed to the venerable representative of the

family dignity. The sleighs were much gayer and a little less antiquated,

because oftener used, and therefore oftener worn out; besides, there were

fashions in sleighs even in this remote place--fashions indigenous to

the population, each individual of which was capable of some invention

when sleighs were in question. On Christmas Eve, long before it grew

dark, many of these pretty or curious conveyances clattered up to the

farm-house door. Some were laden with children two rows deep, all wrapped

in knitted jackets, blankets, boas, etc., and here and there covered with

a fur cap or furred hood; for knitting in this neighborhood supplied all

with warm winter wraps, even better than woven or machine-made stuffs do

nowadays. There were no single sleighs, no tiny, toy-like things made

to display the rich toilet of the occupant and the skill of the fast

driver by her side; here all were honest family vehicles, full of rosy

faces like Christmas apples; hearty men and women who at three-score

were almost as young as their grandchildren on their bridal day; and

young men and maidens who were not afraid to dance and move briskly in

their plain, loose, home-spun and home-made clothes, nor to fall in

love with German downrightness and honest, practical intentions. Most

of these sleighs were red, picked out with black, or black liberally

sprinkled with red; some were yellow and black, some yellow and blue,

and in most the robe and cushions were of corresponding colors. Some of

these robes had eagles embroidered in coarse patterns and thick wool,

while others were of a pattern something like those used for bed-quilts;

and some bore unmistakable witness to the thrift of the house-mother,

and were skilfully pieced together out of carpet, curtain, blanket, and

dress remnants, the whole bordered with some inexpensive fur. One or two

sleighs bore a sort of figure-head--the head of a deer, or a fox, or a

hawk--carved and let into the curling part of the front; while one party,

who were gazed upon with mingled admiration and disapproval, went so far

as to trail after them, for three or four feet behind the sleigh, and

sweeping up the snow in their wake, a thick scarlet cloth of gorgeous

appearance, but no very valuable texture. This was the doing of a young

fellow who had lately been reading one or two romances of chivalry, and

been much pleased with the “velvet housings of the horses, sweeping the

ground as the knight rode to the king’s tournament.” His indulgent old

mother and admiring sisters had but faintly remonstrated, and this was

the consequence. The horses were not less bedecked than the vehicles.

Silver bells hung from their harness and belted their bodies in various

places; shining plates of metal and knobs driven into the leather made

them as gay as circus-horses; while horse-cloths of variegated pattern

were rolled up under the feet of their masters, ready for use whenever

they stopped on the road.

Emanuel himself had gone to the nearest town at which a stage-coach

stopped, to welcome his wife’s friend and special guest, and entertained

him with a flow of agricultural information and warm eulogy of the

country through which they were speeding on their way home. He arrived

at Stelhagen before the rush of country visitors, and was triumphantly

taken through every part of the well-kept farm, while his meal was

being prepared by Rika and the maids. But more than all, Frau Köhler,

in her delight, actually made him “free” of the sacred, secret chamber

where stood the _Christbaum_, already laden but unlighted, among its

attendant tables and dishes. The old man was as innocently charmed as a

seven-year-old child; it reminded him so of his own Christmas-tree in

days when the simple customs of Germany were still unimpaired, and when

it was the fashion to give only really useful things, with due regard to

the condition and needs of the recipients.

“But at the feasts to which my people ask me now,” said he, “I see

children regaled with a multitude of unwholesome, colored _bonbons_ in

boxes that cost quite as much as the contents, and servants given cheap

silks or paste jewelry, and the friends or the master and mistress

themselves loaded with pretty but useless knick-knacks, gilded toys that

cost a great deal and make more show than their use warrants. Times are

sadly changed, Thekla, even since you were married.”

“Well, Herr Pfarrer, I have had little chance, and less wish, to see

the change; and up here I think we still live as Noah’s sons after they

came out of the ark,” said good Frau Köhler, with a broad smile at her

own wit. As the day wore on, she and Rika left the _Pfarrer_ (_curé_)

to Emanuel’s care, and again busied themselves about the serious

coming festivity. She flew around, as active as a fat sparrow, with

a dusting-cloth under her arm, whisking off with nervous hand every

speck of dust on the mantel-piece or among the few books which lay

conspicuously on the table in the best room; giving her orders to the

nimble maids, welcoming the families of guests, and specially petting

the children. Emanuel took the men under his protection, and gave them

tobacco and pipes, and talked farming to them, while his own young

home-squad whispered in corners of the coming tree and supper.

At last Rika came out from the room where the mystery was going on, and,

opening the door wide, let a flood of light into the dark apartment

beyond. There was a regular blaze. The large tree stood on a low table,

and reached nearly up to the ceiling. There were only lights, colored

ribbons, and gilded walnuts hung upon it, but it quite satisfied the

expectation of the good folk around it. Round the room were tables and

stands of all kinds, crowded together, and barely holding all the dishes

apportioned to each member of the party. The guests had secretly brought

or sent their mutual presents; one family generally taking charge of its

neighbor’s gifts, and _vice-versa_, that none might suspect the nature

of their own. The tree, too, was a joint contribution of the several

families; all had sent in tapers and nuts, and this it was that made it

so full of bright things and necessitated its being so tall.

On the middle table, under the tree itself, were dishes for the Köhler

household, each one having a liberal allowance of apples, nuts, and

gingerbread. Besides these, there were parcels, securely tied, laid by

the dishes, and labelled with the names of their unconscious owners.

Köhler was seized upon by his wife and daughter before anyone else was

allowed to go forward--for in this old-fashioned neighborhood the head of

the house is still considered in the light of an Abraham--and a compact

parcel was put into his hands by Rika, while Thekla kissed him with

hearty loudness. Next came the guest, whom Rika led to the prettiest

china dish, and presented with a small, tempting-looking packet. Leaving

him to open it at his leisure, she joined her young friends, and a

good-natured scramble now began, each looking for his own name in some

familiar handwriting, finding it, and opening the treasure with the

eagerness of a child. It would be impossible to describe every present

that thus came to view; but though many were pretty and elaborate, none

were for mere show. Presently Frau Köhler was seen to take possession of

her husband, and, pulling off his coat, made him try on the dressing-gown

he had just drawn from his parcel. She turned him round like a doll, and

clapped her hands in admiration at the perfect fit; then danced around to

the other end of the room, and called out to the maids:

“Lina! Bettchen! it is your turn now; you have not been forgotten. Those

are your dishes where the silver dollars are sticking in the apples.”

The maids opened their parcels, and each found a bright, soft, warm

dress, crimson and black. Then came George, the man who did most of the

immediate work round the house, and found a bright red vest with steel

buttons in his parcel. Frau Köhler was busy looking at other people’s

things, when her husband slipped a neat, long packet on her dish, and,

as she turned and saw the addition, she uttered an exclamation of joy.

Rika helped her to unfold the stiff, rustling thing, when it turned out

to be a black silk dress. Not every housewife in those days had one, and

her last was nearly worn out. Then the old priest came forward to show

the company his Christmas box; and what do you think it was? There was no

doubt as to where it came from. It was a set of missal-markers, and in

such taste as was scarcely to be expected in that time and neighborhood.

Rika had designed it, and her mother had worked it; but many an anxious

debate had there been over it, as the Frau Inspectorin had been at first

quite vexed at what she called its plainness. It was composed of five

thick _gros-grain_ ribbons, two inches wide and fifteen long. There was

a red, a green, a white, a purple, and a black ribbon; and on each was

embroidered a motto--on the red and green, in gold; on the white, in red;

and on the black and purple, in silver. The letters were German, though

the mottoes were in Latin, and each of the five referred to one of these

events: our Lord’s birth, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the

Coming of the Holy Ghost. At the end of each ribbon, instead of fringe

or tassels, hung a cross of pure silver, into the ring of which the

ribbon was loosely gathered. Every one crowded round this novel Christmas

gift, and examined it with an admiration equally gratifying to the giver

and the receiver. But Emanuel’s jolly voice soon broke the spell by

saying:

“These fine presents are very delightful to receive, no doubt, and the

women-folk would not have been happy without some such thing; but we are

all mortal, and I have not forgotten that my guest has feet and hands,

and needs warmth and comfort as much as we of grosser clay.”

And with this he thrust a large parcel into the _Pfarrer’s_ arms. Every

one laughed and helped him to open it; every one was curious to see its

contents. They were, indeed, of a most substantial and useful kind: a

foot-muff of scarlet cloth, lined and bordered with fur, and a pair of

huge sealskin gloves.

Scarcely had the parcel been opened when a hum of measured sound was

heard outside, and presently a Christmas carol was distinctly audible.

Everyone knew the words, and many joined in the song before the singers

became visible. Then the door opened, and a troop of children came in,

dressed in warm white furs and woollen wrappings, and carrying tapers and

fir-branches in their hands. They sang a second carol, quaint and rustic

in its words, but skilfully set to anything but archaic music, and then,

in honor of their southern guest, they began _the_ song of the evening,

a few stanzas from the “Great Hymn” to the Blessed Virgin, by the

Minnesinger, Gottfried of Strasburg, the translation of which, according

to Kroeger, runs thus:

XXV.

“God thee hath clothed with raiments seven;

On thy pure body, drawn from heaven,

Hath put them even

When thou wast first created.

The first one Chastity is named;

The second is as Virtue famed;

The third is claimed

As Courtesy, well mated;

The fourth dress is Humility;

The fifth is known as Pity;

The sixth one, Faith, clings close to thee;

The seventh, noble Modesty,

Leads gratefully

Thee in the path of duty.

XXVII.

“Thou sun, thou moon, thou star so fair,

God took thee from his own side there,

Here to prepare

The birth of Christ within thee.

For that his loved Child and thine,

Which is our life and life’s sunshine,

Our bread and wine,

To stay chaste, he did win thee;

So that sin’s thorns could never touch

Thy fruitful virtue’s branches.

His burning love for thee did vouch,

He kept thee from all sins that crouch:

A golden couch,

Secured by his love’s trenches.

XLVII.

…

“Rejoice now, thou salvation’s throne,

That thou gavest birth to Him who won

Our cause, thy Son,

Our Saviour and our blessing.

…

XLVIII.

“Rejoice now, O thou sunshine mild,

That on thy blessed breasts there smiled

God’s little Child--

Its earthly destination.

Rejoice that then drew near to thee

From foreign lands the wise kings three,

Noble and free,

To bring their adoration

To thee and to that blessed Child,

With many a graceful off’ring.

Rejoice now, that the star beguiled

And to that place their pathway smiled

Where, with thy Child,

They worshipped thy sweet suff’ring.”

“You are not so utterly unknowing of all gentle and learned pursuits as

you would have had me believe,” said the _Pfarrer_ to Frau Köhler. “It

is not every child in Bavaria that could sing so well this Old-World

poem, so graceful in its rhyming and so devout in its allusions. Our

old XIIth-century poetry, the most national--_i.e._, peculiar to our

country--is too much superseded by noisy modern rhymes or sentimental

ballads copied from foreign models. Have you any unknown scholar among

your farmers and agents, who, you told me, made up a hearty but not a

learned society here?”

“Well,” said Frau Köhler, “there is the school-master, Heldmann, who is

always poring over old useless books, but never can have a good dinner

unless his friends send it to him, poor man! He is a bachelor, and

cannot afford to have a housekeeper. And then there is one of our young

gentlemen, who Köhler says is always in the clouds, and who spends all

his spare time with Heldmann, while the other boys spend theirs with

their pretty, rosy neighbors. By the way, Heldmann is coming to-night;

but he said he could not come till late, as he had some important

business which would detain him for an hour or two.”

“You forget our Rika, mother,” said Emanuel, not heeding the last part

of his wife’s sentence; “she is as wise as any of them, though she says

so little. She knows all the old legends and poetry, and more besides, I

warrant.”

“Rika designed that missal-marker,” said the Frau Inspectorin proudly

(she had found out, since it had been so admired, that her daughter’s

instinct had guided her aright in the design).

But Rika, hearing her name mentioned, had slipped away among the

white-wrapped children, and was laying their tapers and fir-branches

away, preparatory to giving them cakes and fruit. This was quite a

ceremony, and when they were ready Frau Köhler, handing the large dish

of nuts to the _Pfarrer_, begged him to distribute them, while she took

charge of the gingerbread and Rika of the apples.

It was funny to see the solemn expectancy with which the children

brought out dishes, mugs, pitchers, etc., in which to receive these

Christmas gifts. Some of the girls held out their aprons, as more

convenient and capacious receptacles than anything else they could lay

hands on. One boy brought a large birthday cup, and another a wooden

milk-bowl; another a small churn, while a fourth had carried off his

father’s peck-measure, and a fifth calmly handed up a corn-sack, which he

evidently expected to get filled to the brim. As Frau Köhler came to one

of the children, she said:

“Fritz, I saw you in the orchard last autumn stealing our apples. Now,

naughty boys must not expect to get apples at Christmas if they take them

at other times; so, Rika, don’t give him any. He shall have one piece of

gingerbread, though.” A piteous disclaimer met this sentence; but the

_Pfarrer_ thrust a double quantity of nuts into the culprit’s basket, and

passed on. Then once again Frau Köhler stopped and said; “Johann, didn’t

I see you fighting with another boy in the churchyard two weeks ago,

and told you that Santa Claus would forget you when he came to fill the

stockings on Christmas night? I shall not give you any gingerbread.”

“Franz knows we made it up again,” whined the boy, and Franz, with a

roguish look, peeped out from his place in the row and said: “Yes, we

did, Frau Inspectorin”; so both got their gingerbread. At last, this

distribution being over, the children, laden with their gifts, went home

to their own various firesides, not without many thanks to the “stranger

within the gates” and his parting reminder, as he showed them the stars:

“Look up at God’s own Christmas-tree, lighted up with thousands of

tapers, children, and at the smooth, white snow spread over the fields.

That is the white table-cloth which he has spread for the beautiful gifts

which spring, and summer, and autumn are going to bring you, all in his

own good time.”[176]

Then came another batch of visitors--the old, sick, and infirm people of

the village; the spinning-women, the broom-tyers, the wooden bowl and

spoon carvers, and the makers of wooden shoes; and some who could no

longer work, but had been faithful and industrious in their time. They

had something of the old costume on: the men wore blue yarn stockings and

stout gray knee-breeches (they had left their top-boots outside; for the

snow was deep and soft, and they needed them all the winter and through

most of the spring); and the women had large nodding caps and black silk

handkerchiefs folded across their bosoms. Each of these old people got a

large loaf of plain cake and some good stout flannel; and these things,

according to the local etiquette, the inspector himself delivered to

them as the representative of his young master. This distribution was

an old custom on the Stelhagen estate, and, though the present owner

was careless enough in many things, he wished this usage to be always

kept up. Even if he had not, it is not likely that as long as Köhler

was inspector the old people would not have been able to rely on the

customary Christmas gift. After this some bustle occurred, and two or

three people went and stationed themselves outside the door. Presently

the expectant company within were startled by a loud rap, and the door

flew open, a parcel was flung in, and a voice cried out:

“Yule rap!”

This was a pair of slippers for the inspector. No one knew where they

came from; no one had sent them. Yule raps are supposed to be magical,

impersonal causes of tangible effects; so every one looked innocent and

astonished, as became good Mecklenburgers under Christmas circumstances.

“Yule rap!” again, and the door opened a second time; a smoking-cap,

embroidered with his initials, was evolved out of a cumbrous packet by

one of the young apprentices, and scarcely had he put it on than another

thundering knock sounded on the door.

“Yule rap!” was shouted again, and in flew a heavy package. It was a

book, with illustrations of travel scenes in the East, and was directed

to Rika.

“Yule rap!”

This time it was only a little square envelope, with a ticket referring

Frau Köhler to another ticket up in the bureau drawer in her bedroom; but

when one of the boys found it, that referred again to another ticket in

the cellar; and when another boy brought this to light, it mysteriously

referred her to her husband’s pocket. Here, at last, the hidden thing was

revealed--an embroidered collar, and a pair of larger cuffs to match.

Köhler had no idea what sprite had put it there, so he said.

“Yule rap!” and this time it was for the guest--a black velvet skull-cap,

warm and clinging. Then came various things, all heralded by the same

warning cry of “Yule rap!” and a knock at the door, generally in George’s

strong voice. The two maids got the packages ready, and peeped in at

the keyhole to see when it was time to vary the sensation by throwing in

another present. Again, a breakfast-bell came rolling in, ringing as it

bounded on, with just a few bands of soft stuff and silver paper muffling

its sound. Once a large meerschaum pipe was laid gently at the threshold

of the door, and one of the apprentices fetched it as carefully. Then

a violin was pushed through the half-open door, and the eager face of

the one for whom it was intended peeped anxiously over his neighbor’s

shoulder, wondering if any one else were the happy destined one, and as

much surprised as delighted when he found it was himself. That violin has

since been heard in many a large and populous town, and, though its owner

did not become as world-known as Paganini or Sivori, he did not love his

art less faithfully and exclusively. We cannot enumerate all the gifts

which Yule brought round this year; but before the evening was over, a

different voice cried out the magic words, “Yule rap!” and the door being

slightly opened and quickly closed again, a tiny, white, silky dog stood

trembling on the carpet. Rika jumped up and ran to take it in her arms;

then pulling open the door, “Herr Heldmann! Herr Heldmann!” she cried. “I

know it is you!”

The schoolmaster came forward, his rough face glowing with the cold

through which he had just come.

“I promised you a dog, Rika,” he said rather awkwardly, “but they would

not let me have it till this very day, and I had no time to go for it but

this evening. I kept it under my coat all the time; so it is quite warm.

It is only two months old.”

Rika was in ecstasies. She declared this was worth all her Christmas

presents, and then rewarded Herr Heldmann by telling him how well

the children had done their part, and how delightfully surprised the

_Pfarrer_ had been. The two men were soon in a deep conversation on

subjects dear and familiar to both, and the company gradually dissolved

again into little knots and groups. Many took their leave, as their

homes were distant and they did not wish to be too late; but for all an

informal supper was laid in the vast kitchen, and by degrees most of

the good things on the table were sensibly diminished. The host’s wife

and daughter, and the Herr Pfarrer, with half a dozen others and a few

children, did not leave the Christmas-tree, whose tapers were constantly

attended to and replaced when necessary. Other “Christmas candles” were

also lighted--tall columns of yellow wax, made on purpose for this

occasion. As the household and its inmates were left to themselves,

the children began asking for their accustomed treat--the stories that

all children have been fond of since the world began. No land is so

rich in the romance of childhood as Germany, both north and south.

There everything is personified, and as an English writer lately said,

wonderful histories are connected with the fir-trees in the forests,

the beloved and venerated _Christbaum_. “Though it be yet summer,

the child sees in fancy the beautiful _Weihnachtsbaum_, adorned with

sparkling things as the Gospel, is adorned with promises and hopes; rich

in gifts as the three kings were rich; pointing to heaven as the angel

pointed; bright as those very heavens were bright with silver-winged

messengers; crowned with gold as the Word was crowned; odorous like the

frankincense: sparkling like the star; spreading forth its arms, full of

peace and good-will on every side, holding out gifts and promises for

all.”

_Weihnacht_, the blessed, the hallowed, the consecrated night, is the

child-paradise of Germany. That land of beautiful family festivals has

given Christmas a double significance, and merged into its memories all

the graceful, shadowy legends of the dead mythology of the Fatherland.

The German child is reared in the midst of fairy-tales, which are only

truths translated into child-language. Besides the old standard ones,

every neighborhood has its own local tales, every family its own new-born

additions or inventions. Every young mother, herself but a step removed

from childhood, with all her tender imaginations still stirring, and her

child-days lifted into greater beauty because they are but just left

behind, makes new stories for her little ones, and finds in every flower

a new fairy, in every brook a new voice.

And yet the old tales still charm the little ones, and the yearly coming

of King Winter brings the old, worn stories round again. So Emanuel

Köhler told the fairy-tale which the children had listened to every

Christmas with ever-new delight, about the journey of King Winter from

his kingdom at the North Pole, and how he put on his crown with tall

spikes of icicles, and wrapped himself in his wide snow-mantle, which to

him is as precious and as warm as ermine.

“And now,” said the host, “there is some one here who can tell you a far

more beautiful story than mine. Some One, greater than the Winter-King,

comes too every year--a snow-Child, the white Christ whom our ancestors,

the old Norse and Teutonic warriors, learned to see and adore, where

they had only seen and worshipped the God of War and the God of Thunder

before. Ask him to tell you a story.”

And the old, white-haired _Pfarrer_ stroked the head of the child nearest

to him, as the little one looked shyly up into his face, mutely endorsing

Emanuel’s appeal. He told them that they must already know the story of

the first Christmas night, and so he would only tell them how the news

that the angels told the shepherds on the hills came long centuries

after to others as pure-minded as the shepherds, and by means almost

as wonderful. He repeated to them from memory the words of an English

prose-poet, which he said he had loved ever since he came across them,

and which made the picture he best loved to talk on at Christmas-time:

“That little infant frame, white as a snow-drop on the lap of winter,

light almost as a snow-flake on the chill night air, smooth as the

cushioned drift of snow which the wind has lightly strewn outside the

walls of Bethlehem, is at this moment holding within itself, as if it

were of adamantine rock, the fires of the beatific light.… The little

white lily is blooming below the greater one; an offshoot of its stem,

and a faithful copy, leaf for leaf, petal for petal, white for white,

powdered with the same golden dust, meeting the morning with the same

fragrance, which is like no other than their own!”[177]

There was a more marvellous tale than any they had heard about

talking-flowers. The _Christkind_ was a flower, and his blessed Mother

was a flower--holy lilies in the garden of God, blossoming rods like

Aaron’s, fruitful roots, stately cedars, and fruit-giving palm-trees.

It was a very happy thing to know and feel all this, as we do; but

many millions of men know nothing of it, and centuries ago even our

forefathers in these forests knew nothing of it. “But,” he continued,

“there was a distant island, where men of our race lived, which did

not receive the faith till long after Germany and France and Britain

were Christian, and even had cathedrals and cloisters and schools

in abundance. It was two hundred years after Charlemagne, who was a

Frankish, and therefore a German, sovereign, founded the Palatine schools

and conferred with the learned English monk, Alcuin. This distant, pagan

island was Iceland. The Norsemen there were a wild, fierce, warlike

people, free from any foreign government, and just the kind of heroes

that their old mythology represented them as becoming in their future,

disembodied life. They had their scalds, or saga-men, their bards, who

were both poets and historians, who kept up their spirit by singing wild

songs about their ancestors and the battles they had won. They were all

pagans, and thought the forgiveness of injuries very mean. Well, one day,

the eve of Yule-tide, when it was terribly cold and cheerless, an old

scald sat in his rough hut, with a flickering light before him, chanting

one of his wild, heathen songs, and his daughter, a beautiful girl, sat

at the plank table near him, busy with some woman’s work. During an

interval of his song she raised her eyes and said to him:

“‘Father, there must be something beyond all that--something greater and

nobler.’

“‘Why, child,’ said the old man, with a kind of impatient wonder, ‘why

should you think so? Many things different there may be, just as there

are different kinds of men, and different kinds of beasts, and different

kinds of plants; some for mastery and some for thraldom; some for the

chase, and some for the kitchen or the plough; some for incantations

and sacrifices, and some for common food. But anything nobler than our

history there could not be; and as for our religion, if there were

anything different, or even better, it would not suit our people, and so

would be no concern of ours.’

“‘But if it were true, father, and ours not true, what then?’

“‘Why ask the question, child? What was good enough for the wise and

brave Northmen who fled here that they might be free to fight and worship

according to their fancy, is good enough for their descendants.’

“‘But you know yourself, father,’ persisted the maiden, ‘that those

whom our poetical traditions call gods were men, heroes and patriots

who taught our forefathers various arts, and guided them safely across

deserts and through forests in their long, long migration--but still

only men. Our chieftains of to-day might as well become gods to our

great-grandchildren, if the old leaders have become so to us. Wise as

they were, they could not command the frozen seas to open a way for their

ships, nor make the sun rise earlier in the long winter, nor compel the

cutting ice-wind to cease. If they could not do such things, they must

have been very far from gods.’

“‘It is true,’ said the old man, ‘that those great chieftains were, in

the dim ages we can scarcely count back to, men like us; but the gods

who taught them those very arts took them up to live with them as long as

their own heaven might last, and made them equal to themselves. You know

even Paradise itself is to come to an end some day.’

“‘So our legends say, father; but that, too, makes it seem as if these

gods were only another order of mortal beings, stronger but not better

than we are, and hiding from us the true, changeless heaven far above

them. For surely that which changes cannot be divine. And then our

legends say that evil is to triumph when heaven and earth come to an end.

True, they say there will be a renewal of all things after that, and

that, no doubt, means that good will be uppermost; very likely all the

things spoken of in our Eddas are only signs of other things which we

could not understand.’

“The daughter continued these questionings and speculations, the scald

answering them as best he could.

“He had listened with evident admiration and approval to her impassioned

speech, but he was willing to test her faith in her own womanhood to the

utmost. She now seemed wrapt in her own thoughts, but after a short pause

said:

“‘It would not be another’s inspiration in which I should believe; it

would be a message from Him who has put this belief already into my

heart. Some One greater than all has spoken to my inmost heart, and I am

ready to believe; but the messenger that is to put it into words and tell

me what to do has not come.’

“There was a silence, and the wind and the sea roared without. The

old man shaded the flickering light with his hand, and gazed at his

daughter, who was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap. He thought

that she herself must have received some divine illumination; for the

Norsemen believed in the prophetic gifts of some of their women. His

own mind, more cultivated than that of the warrior’s, saw through the

symbolic character of many of the very myths he sang, and tended vaguely

to belief in a higher and hidden circle of things infinite, true, and

eternal. But then the northern mind was naturally simple, not prone to

metaphysical distinctions, not analytical and subtle, dividing as with

the sword that pierceth between soul and spirit; and the old man saw no

use in raising theological problems for which he could offer no rational

solution, save through the dreams of a young girl. Presently the old man

rose, shaking off his meditations, and said:

“‘It is time for me to go to the Yule-night festival, and I shall have

a stormy trudge of it to the castle. I must leave you alone here till

to-morrow night. But, my child, I know that there is safety for the

scald’s daughter wherever she may be; the very sea would not hurt her,

and the wildest men would kneel before her; so farewell, and a father’s

blessing be upon you.’

“His daughter rose and fetched his cloak and staff, wrapped the former

around him, and fastened it over the rude musical instrument that

answered the purpose of lyre and harp; but I am not very learned in such

things, and cannot tell you exactly what it was. The young girl stood

long on the threshold of the hut, shading the light, and looking out

after her father into the darkness. The wind was sharp and icy, and

blew from the frozen sea. As she held the light, she thought she heard

a cry come from the direction of the sea. She lingered before closing

the door, although the wind was very chill; for the cry seemed repeated,

and she thought it was a human voice calling. A moment’s reflection told

her it could not be so; for the whole sea was frozen for miles outward,

and no boat or wreck could come so near land. She sat down again to her

work, and mused on the conversation she had held with her father. He had

studied their national books all his life, and she was not yet twenty. He

must know best. Was she likely to be right? She had little experience of

the way in which the old system worked; only her own dreams and fancies

showed her any other possibility; and yet--she could not shake off the

thought: she thirsted for another revelation. The far-off, unknown

Godhead must have some means of communicating with men; why should he not

speak to her, who so passionately and blindly longed for a message, a

command, from him?

“The cry from the sea sounded again. Surely, this time there could be

no mistake; the voice was human, and it had come nearer since she had

left the door. She took up the light again, and went outside, shouting

as loud as she could in return. She was answered, and a strange awe came

upon her as she heard this cry. Was it that of a man or a spirit? The

latter supposition seemed to her unsophisticated mind quite as likely

as the former, but it did not frighten her, as it would most of her

countrywomen. She went in again, wrapped a thick fur cloak around her,

and, taking another on her arm, sallied out once more with another

stronger light. It was barely possible to keep the resinous torch

alight, and she looked anxiously out towards the sea, to try and catch

some glimpse of a human figure. The cries came again at intervals; but

she knew that in the clear air a seemingly near sound might yet be far

distant. She had to walk briskly up and down the shore, in the beaten

path between walls of snow, to keep herself warm, and occasionally she

lifted the flaring torch and waved it as a signal. She could do no more,

but she longed to see her unknown visitor, and to go out to meet him on

the frozen waters. Was it some wrecked sailor, who had clambered from

ice-floe to ice-floe, in the desperate hope of reaching land before he

died of cold and hunger, or some unearthly messenger from an invisible

world? If he were a mere man, from what coast could he have drifted.

No Icelander would be out at this time and place; it was Yule-tide,

and there were no wandering boats out among the ice-cliffs and floes.

At last she thought she could discern a shadowy form, blacker than the

surrounding darkness, but surely no human form; it was like a moving

cross, one upright shape, and one laid across near the top, and both

dark and compact. But the cry was repeated, though in a more assured

and joyful tone, and the maiden waited with bated breath, wondering

what this marvel could mean. A field of unbroken ice stretched between

her and the advancing figure, which now hastened its steps, and came on

like a swift-sailing bird, cleaving the darkness. She thought she could

distinguish a human face above the junction of the two arms of the cross,

and she held up the light, still uncertain what kind of visitant this

approaching form might be. At last it flashed upon her that it was a

man bearing a child. But why so rigid? Why did he not hug him close to

his bosom to keep him warm, to keep him alive? Was the child dead? And

a shuddering awe came upon her, as she thought of its dead white face

upturned to heaven, and of the faithful man who had not forsaken it, or

left it to the seals and wolves on the ice, or buried it in the chill

waters beneath the ice-floes. What a cold it must have struck to the

heart of the man carrying it; how his hands must be well-nigh frozen in

supporting this strange burden!

“She hardly knew whether she was still imagining what might be, or

witnessing real movements, when the figure came straight up to her, and,

stooping, laid the child at her feet. She lowered the torch, and, as the

glare fell on the little face, she saw that it was no breathing one;

the man had sunk down beside it, hardly able to stir, now the supreme

effort was over and his end was accomplished. She dropped the cloak she

held over the little body, and caught up a handful of snow, wherewith

she energetically rubbed the face and hands of the stranger, then half

dragged, half supported him to the door of the hut. He had only spoken

once, just as he dropped at her feet, but she did not understand him:

he spoke in a foreign tongue. Once more she went out and brought in the

stiffened, frozen body of the child, which she laid on a fur robe just

outside the hut; for it was warm within the small, confined dwelling. It

was an hour before the stranger’s eye told her that her simple, quick

remedies had succeeded. He was not very tall, but immensely strong and

powerful, and there was a fire in his dark gray eye that gave the clew

to his strange, weird pilgrimage over the ice-floes. His hair was dark

brown, with a reddish tinge, but already mixed with a few gray streaks;

it had been shorn close to his head some time since, as appeared from its

irregular growth at present. Beneath his cloak he wore a long black robe,

with a leathern girdle round the waist. The child was very beautiful,

even in death; his eyes were closed, but his black, curling hair hung

round his neck, and the lips had a sweet though somewhat proud outline.

The scald’s daughter set some simple food before her silent guest, and

made him a sign to eat. He was evidently very hungry, but before he

began he moved his lips and made the sign of the cross on his forehead,

lips, and breast. She asked him in her own language what that ceremony

meant, not hoping to make him understand her speech, but trusting to her

inquiring looks for some explanatory sign that she might interpret as

best she could to herself. To her surprise, he answered in a few, slow,

labored words, not in Icelandic to be sure, but in some dialect akin

to it; for she could make out the meaning. It was, in fact, the Norse

dialect that was spoken in the Orkney Islands, but she did not know that.

As he spoke, her guest pointed upwards, and she knew that he referred

to God. A great longing came into her heart, and she asked again if his

God were the same the Icelanders worshipped. He shook his head, and she

eagerly questioned farther, but grew so voluble that he could not follow

her, and the conversation ceased. Then the stranger rose and went out

to the little corpse, which he addressed in impassioned terms in his

own language, making over it the same sign that had drawn the maiden’s

attention before. He then described to her--mostly in pantomime, and with

a few Norse words to help him on, and a few slowly-pronounced questions

on her part--how the boy and he had been in a boat that was wrecked many

days’ journey from their own country, and how he had carried him and fed

him for three or four days, and then seen him die in his arms. The boy

was the only son of a great chief, and he was taking him to his uncle in

the North of Scotland. His own country was south of Scotland, a large

island like Iceland, but green and beautiful, and there was no ice there.

“The girl made him understand that she was alone for a day or two, but

when her father came back he would help him. He evidently understood her

better than she did him.

“The next morning, when she again set food before him, she imitated his

sign of the cross, and said she wished to believe in the true God; and

if his God were the true one, she would believe in him. She looked so

earnest and anxious that he again began to try to explain; but the few

words he could command, though they sufficed to hint at his worldly

adventures, and made clear to her that he had been wrecked, were scarcely

adequate to tell her of the new religion she longed to understand.

“But at noon that day another guest and traveller passed by the scald’s

dwelling. He was hurrying to the same castle where the girl’s father had

gone in his capacity of minstrel, but a violent snow-storm had come on

that morning, and he had lost his way. He stopped a moment to refresh

himself, and noticed the stranger. He was himself known as a great

traveller, and the figure in the coarse black robe seemed not unfamiliar

to him. He addressed the stranger in the latter’s language, guessing him

at once to be an Irish monk. He said he had seen such men in the Scottish

islands, where he had been storm-driven with his ship two years ago, and

he had picked up a little of their speech. When the maiden discovered

that in this stray guest she had found an interpreter, she pressed him,

implored him, almost commanded him, to stay.

“‘I must ask him the questions my father could not solve yesterday,’ she

said; ‘and my father’s friend will not refuse to speak in my name, for I

believe that the unknown God has answered my prayer in sending this holy

man over the sea to my very feet.’ And she told him how the stranger had

come to her, out of the darkness, in the shape of a cross--the same sign

he made to propitiate his God.

“‘Ask him to tell us what he believes,’ she said impetuously; and the

interpreter, compelled by some instinct that he could not resist, began

his office willingly.

“‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that yesterday, before he came, I was all day

thinking that the high, true, unknown God had a message for me, and a

truer faith to teach me, because he had put into my heart a longing for

something higher than what our books and songs have taught us. And tell

him that I believe God sent him in answer to my doubts and prayers.’

“‘The traveller faithfully translated all this. The monk’s face glowed

as he replied, in his own language, which he used with the grace and

skill of a poet:

“‘Tell the maiden that she is right; the true God _did_ send me, and now

I know why such things happened to me; why I was wrecked with my lord’s

only son, a precious freight, a sacred deposit, which the Lord of lords

has now taken upon himself to account for to the earthly father, bereaved

of his one hope. But God sent me here because to this pure-hearted virgin

I was to explain the faith he had already put into her heart. It is not

I who bring her the true faith, but God himself who has spoken to her

and inclined her to believe; me he has sent to put this message into

practical form. Tell her that this is the birthday of the Lord, and that

a thousand years ago, almost at the same hour when I set my dead burden

at her feet, a living Child, God’s own Child, lay at the feet of a pure

Virgin in a little village far away in the land of the rising sun. And as

this maiden’s torch which I saw over the wild, frozen sea, and followed,

was an emblem of the faith that dwelt already in her heart, so, too, a

marvellous star led three wise men, the scalds of the East, to where this

Child lay, and the star was the emblem of their firm faith, which led

them to cross rivers and deserts to reach the Child. And tell her that

the way in which this wonderful birth was celebrated was by a song which

held all the essence of truth in it: “Glory to God on high, and on earth

peace to men of good-will.”’

“All this the interpreter told the maiden, and both marvelled at it. The

stranger told them more and more of that wonderful tale, so familiar

to us, but which once sounded to our warlike forefathers like the

foolishness of babes and sucklings, or at most like some Eastern myth

good enough for philosophers to wrangle over, but unfit for sturdy men

of the forest. To the Icelandic maiden it seemed but the fulfilment of

her own dreams; and as she listened to the story of the Child, grown to

be a wise but obedient Boy, and then a wandering, suffering Man, her

soul seemed to drink in the hidden grandeur of the relation, to pierce

beyond the human stumbling-blocks which confronted the wise and learned

of other lands, and go at once to the heart of the great mystery of love,

personified in the Man-God. All the rest seemed to her to be the fitting

garment of the central mystery, the crown of leaves growing from the

fruitful trunk of this one doctrine. All day long the three sat together,

the two Icelanders hanging on the words of the stranger; and so the

scald found them on his return. He, too, wanted to know the news which

the monk had brought; for he said he had always believed that behind

their national songs and hymns lay something greater, but perhaps not

expedient for Norsemen to know. He shook his head sadly when he learned

the monk’s precepts of love, peace, mercy, and forgiveness, and said he

feared his countrymen would not understand that, but for his part it was

not uncongenial to him. As the weather was such that no vessel could put

to sea before the ice broke up, he constrained the monk to stay the rest

of the winter with him, and in the spring promised to go over with him to

the nearest Scottish coast, and carry the body of his little charge to

the uncle to whom he had been on his way when he was wrecked.

“Before the New Year began, the monk baptized the first Icelandic

convert, the daughter of the scald, and gave her the name of the Mother

of the Babe of Bethlehem, Mary. Many others heard of the new religion

before he left, but that does not belong to my story. The new convert

and her father accompanied him to Scotland, and were present at the

burial of the Irish chieftain’s son at the castle of his Scottish

uncle. The latter’s son married the Norse maiden, but she never ceased

to lament that it had not been given to her to convert many of her own

countrymen, or at least shed her blood for her new faith. All her life

long she helped to send missionaries to Iceland; and when her son grew

up to manhood, the palm she coveted was awarded to him, for he went to

his mother’s native country, founded a monastery there, labored among

the people, converted many, and taught reading and the arts of peace as

well as the faith to his pupils; became abbot of the monastery, and was

finally martyred on the steps of the altar by a horde of savage heathen

Norsemen.

“This is the best Christmas story I know, children,” concluded the Herr

Pfarrer; “and you, Rika, I can wish you no better model than the fair

maiden of Iceland.”

It was nearly midnight when the old priest finished his tale, and Frau

Köhler, rising, and thanking him cordially for this unwonted addition to

ordinary Christmas stories, led him to a door which had been locked till

now. It opened into a room decked as a chapel, with an altar at the end,

which was now decorated with evergreens. A few chairs and benches were

ranged before it, and on a table at the side was everything in readiness

for saying Mass.

“It is long since I have heard a midnight Mass,” said the good hostess,

growing suddenly grave and reverential in her manner, “and my Rika never

has; and you know, Herr Pfarrer, I told you I had a greater surprise in

store for you yet, after all the local customs in which you were so much

interested.”

So the beautiful Midnight Mass was said in the Mecklenburg inspector’s

farm-house, and a more impressive one Frau Köhler had never heard in any

southern cathedral; for though there was no music and no pomp, there

brooded over the little congregation a spirit of reverence and peace,

which comes in full perfection only through a deep silence. The hostess

and her daughter received Communion together, and the attentive household

could not help thinking of the beautiful Icelandic convert when she came

back from the altar, her hands folded over her breast, and her long, fair

hair plaited in two plain, thick tresses.

Herr Heldmann had stayed too, and from that day he never ceased his

study of theological problems and his correspondence with the Herr

Pfarrer, till he became a Catholic, and was married to Rika in this same

little chapel-room a year later by the same kind old priest. One of

the young apprentices of Emanuel Köhler had been his secret rival; but

notwithstanding that Heldmann was ungainly, shy, and twice her age, Rika

decidedly thought that she had the best of the bargain.

And it was true; he had a heart of gold, and she made him a model wife.

CHRISTMAS CHIMES.

The clear starlight, of a southern night,

Shone in Judæa’s sky,

The angels sang, and their harp-strings rang

With “Glory to God on high.”

Through the pearl gates streamed, ere the morning beamed,

The radiance of Heaven’s day;

And the shepherds led to the lonely bed

Where the holy Child-God lay.

The Yule-log’s light gleams warm to-night

In many an English home,

And no spirits dare--so the wise declare--

In the light of its beams to come;

The weird mistletoe and the holly glow

On castle and cottage wall;

While the jest and song ring all night long,

Through the merry banquet-hall.

And in other climes at the ringing chimes

There are scenes of joy and mirth:

E’en round the dead is its beauty shed

Who at Christmas pass from earth.

On this holy day, so the old tomes say,

Heaven’s portals open wide,

And the soul glides in, freed from all its sin

By the birth of the Crucified.

In our own fair land there is many a band

Whose home is filled with glee,

Whose hearts beat high, as the fleet hours fly,

With thoughts of the Christmas-tree.

May the Christ-Child weave, on this Christmas eve,

New hopes as the years go by,

And around His throne may at last each one

Sing “Glory to God on high.”

ANGLICANS, OLD CATHOLICS, AND THE CONFERENCE AT BONN.

Under the title of _Anglicanism, Old Catholicism, and the Union of the

Christian Episcopal Churches_, an essay has recently been published by

the Rev. Father Tondini,[178] Barnabite, whose intimate acquaintance with

the respective languages of England, Germany, and Russia, as well as the

religious history and literature of those countries, peculiarly qualifies

him for dealing with the questions just now exciting so much attention in

Western Europe. We shall, therefore, not only make his treatise, which

merits more than ordinary notice, the basis of the present article, but

shall reproduce such portions of it as are particularly suggestive at the

present time, and conclude with some account of the Conference at Bonn

and the considerations it suggests.

In the Introduction to his treatise the reverend author gives the reasons

which called it forth, the last being the promise made on the tomb of a

friend[179] to leave nothing untried which might promote the return of

the Greco-Russian Church to Catholic unity; an unexpected opportunity

being given for fulfilling this promise by the reference made more than

once by Mr. Gladstone, in his recent publications, to the organization

of the Eastern as contrasted with that of the Catholic Church. Moreover,

the sympathy displayed by Mr. Gladstone for the Old Catholics and their

Conference at Bonn serves to complete the argument.

There are two passages in Mr. Gladstone’s _Vaticanism_ with which Father

Tondini has more especially dealt. One is the following:

“Of these early provisions for a balance of church power, and for

securing the laity against sacerdotal domination, the rigid conservatism

of the Eastern Church presents us, even down to the present day, with an

authentic and living record.”[180]

These valuable “provisions” are set forth at length in the second edition

of a former work by Father Tondini, _The Pope of Rome and the Popes of

the Oriental Church_.[181] In a special preface he there says: “There is

much to be learned from them, especially if we take into consideration

their recent date, and the ecclesiastical canons of which the Eastern

Church has not been indeed a rigid conservator.”

In the quotations there given at length from the original documents, we

find abundant evidence of the manner in which the ancient canons have

been set aside, wherever convenient to the czar, for his own regulations.

The second passage requiring comment is the following:

“The ancient principles of popular election and control, for which room

was found in the Apostolic Church under its inspired teachers, and which

still subsist in the Christian East.”[182]

This, as we shall see, is disposed of in the third chapter of the present

essay, into which has been collected trustworthy information as to the

non-popular mode of election of bishops resorted to in the Oriental

Orthodox Church.[183]

Towards the close of the Introduction the writer remarks that if the

statements made by Mr. Gladstone respecting the Catholic Church were

true, she could not be the true church of our Lord, and, if not, he

asks, where then is the true church to be found? The Oriental Church

could not solve the question, because she is in contradiction to the

doctrine contained in her own liturgy,[184] and also for other reasons,

to which for some years past he has been directing public attention.[185]

There remain to be considered the Anglican Establishment--this being the

church to which belongs the writer who accuses the Catholic Church of

having changed in faith, and deprived her children of their moral and

mental freedom--and the newest sect of all, namely, the so-called Old

Catholics, owing to the same writer’s admiration of those who figure in

its ranks.

Reason, so loudly appealed to by Mr. Gladstone, has been strictly adhered

to by Father Tondini in his careful examination of the credentials of

the two latter bodies, and we will give, in as concise a form as may

be consistent with clearness, the result of his inquiry. He especially

addresses those who admit the existence of a visible Church of Christ,

and still more particularly those who, rather than reconcile themselves

to the Catholic Church, say that neither the Roman Catholic Church,

nor the Anglican Establishment, nor the Old-Catholic Society, but the

Oriental Orthodox Church, is the true visible church of Christ.

I.

The claims of the Anglican Church are first examined, her vitality being

an argument that we are in presence of an institution adhered to, at

least by a large portion of her members, with conviction and devotedness,

as a valuable medium between unbelief and superstition, worldliness and

sanctity; and of a state church as solidly framed as human genius could

devise.

“Bodies,” says Mr. Gladstone, “are usually held to be bound by the

evidence of their own selected and typical witnesses.”[186] Now,

the selected and typical witnesses of the Church of England are the

sovereign, who is “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the

Church in her Dominions,” and the episcopate. If the whole clergy is

consulted, the evidence becomes as undeniable as it can possibly be.

This perfect evidence is found in the Thirty-nine Articles, which are

thus headed: “Articles agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops of

both provinces, and the whole clergy, assembled in convocation holden at

London in the year 1562, for the avoiding of diversities of opinions,”

etc., etc.

The Ratification is to the same effect, with the addition of the assent

and consent of the queen (Elizabeth), after their final rehearsal in the

General Convocation of bishops and clergy in 1571. They are, moreover,

reprinted in the _Book of Common Prayer_, with the Declaration of King

James I. affixed, and which runs as follows:

“Being by God’s ordinance, according to our just title, Defender of

the Faith and supreme governor of the church in these our dominions,

… we will that all curious search be laid aside, and these disputes

shut up in God’s promises as they be generally set forth in the Holy

Scriptures, and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of

England according to them; and that no man hereafter shall either print

or preach to draw the article aside any way, but shall submit to it in

the plain and full meaning thereof, and … shall take it in the literal

and grammatical sense.”

“Following this last admonition, and bearing in mind that the Church

of England considers herself to be a branch of the universal church of

Christ, we open the _Book of Common Prayer_, and turn to those among

the Articles which treat of the universal church, that we may see how,

without renouncing our Italian nationality--which to us is very dear--we

could belong to the universal church of Christ. We see an article headed

‘Of the Authority of General Councils,’ and, on reading it, find to our

astonishment the definition, not indeed of the infallibility of the Pope,

but of the fallibility, without any exception, of the universal church of

Christ! It is: Article XXI.--‘General Councils may not be called together

without the commandment and will of princes. And when they be gathered

together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not

governed with the spirit and word of God), they may err, and sometimes

have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained

by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority,

unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.’”

“Thus” (we give Father Tondini’s words) “the Church of England has

defined, in two plenary national councils, that the universal church of

Christ, even when assembled in a general council, may err, and ordain, as

necessary to salvation, things which have neither strength nor authority;

and a king, ‘Defender of the Faith,’ has declared that this is the true

doctrine of the Church of England, agreeable to God’s word, and required

all his loving subjects to submit to this article ‘in the plain and full

meaning thereof,’ and to take it ‘in the literal and grammatical sense’!

“We can hardly trust our own eyes. Again: What does the word ‘declare’

mean in the concluding words of the article? This word may convey two

senses--that of proving and of making a declaration.

“In the first case, _who_ is to offer the proofs that ‘the thing ordained

as necessary to salvation’ is taken out of Holy Scripture? This the

Church of England has forgotten to tell us!… Moreover, an authority

whose decrees, in order to have a binding power, must be proved to be

taken out of Holy Scripture, is by that very fact subordinate to those

who are called to examine the proofs.[187] The chief authorities of the

church assembled in a general council are thus rendered as inferior to

the faithful as the claimant is inferior to the judge who is about to

pronounce sentence upon his claims. The teaching and governing body

of the church is consequently no more than an assembly commissioned

to frame, ‘as necessary to salvation,’ laws to be submitted to the

approbation of the faithful!

“Is this serious? Is it even respectful to human intelligence?”

Again, if the word “declare” must be taken in the sense of a declaration,

Father Tondini asks: “But by whom is such a declaration to be made?

Assuredly not by the council itself--‘judice in causâ propriâ.’ An

authority liable to err, ‘even in things pertaining unto God,’ and to

ordain ‘as necessary to salvation’ things which have ‘neither strength

nor authority,’ is liable also to mistake the sense of Holy Scripture.

To seek such a declaration from this fallible authority would be like

begging the question.

“The declaration must, then, be made by some authority external to the

general council. But the ‘archbishops, bishops, and the whole clergy of

England’ have omitted to inform the faithful _where_ such an authority is

to be found. Moreover, since a general council--that is, the ‘selected

and typical witnesses’ of the whole Church of Christ--may err (according

to Article XXI.), it necessarily follows that portions of the whole

church of Christ may err also. In fact, this natural consequence is

explicitly stated in Article XIX. The zeal displayed by the Church of

England in asserting the fallibility, both of the whole church of Christ

and of portions of that church, may be said to rival that of the most

fervent advocates of the infallibility of the Pope.”

This XIXth Article modestly asserts that, “as the Churches of Jerusalem,

Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath

erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in

matters of faith.”

Whereupon “a legitimate doubt arises whether the Church of England, too,

might not have erred in issuing the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.

This doubt is very material. These Articles ordain several things as

‘necessary to salvation.’ Are they, or are they not, ‘taken out of Holy

Scripture’? Have they, or have they not, ‘strength and authority’?”

Shortly after their promulgation, we have it upon the authority of

King James I. himself that this doubt gave rise to “disputations,

altercations, and questions such as may nourish faction both in the

church and commonwealth,” and his majesty adds that “therefore, upon

mature deliberation,” etc., he “thought fit” to make the declaration

following:

“That the Articles of the Church of England … do contain the true

doctrine of the Church of England, agreeable to God’s Word, which WE do

therefore ratify and confirm.”

“May we” (with Father Tondini) “be allowed respectfully to ask whether

King James I. was infallible?”

And if so, why should Catholics be charged with having forfeited

their mental and moral freedom, etc., etc., because they admit the

infallibility of the Pope, which results, by the law of development, from

several passages of Holy Scripture; whereas, on the contrary, no “brain

power” will ever be able to discover a single word in Holy Scripture

which can, by the most vigorous process of development, bud forth into

the infallibility of a King of England?

On the other hand, if King James were _not_ infallible, by what right

could he then prohibit and _will_ in matters of faith for his subjects?

His only right was this: that the Church of England had been made a

powerful _instrumentum regni_ in the hands of her sovereigns,[188] just

as the Church of Russia is in the hands of her czars.

After this, observes the writer, no inconsistency ought to astonish us.

In Article XVIII. it is declared that “the body of Christ is given,

taken, and eaten in the [Lord’s] Supper _only after an heavenly

and spiritual manner_”; and again, at the end of the “Order of the

Ministration of the Holy Communion,” that “the natural body and blood

of our Saviour Christ are in heaven, _and not here_.” How can these

declarations be made to agree with the following, which is taught in the

Little Catechism?--“The body and blood of Christ are _verily and indeed

taken_ and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”

Again, in Article XI. we find: “That we are justified by faith _only_

is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort”; whereas in the

order for the visitation of the sick we read as follows:

“Here shall the sick person be moved to make _a special confession of his

sins_, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After

which confession the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily

desire it) after this sort,” etc., etc.

“But,” asks Father Tondini, “by what strange metamorphosis can the

above-quoted doctrine of justification _by faith only_, declared to be

‘most wholesome and very full of comfort’ while we are in good health,

cease to possess the power of comforting the conscience of a sick

person? And how can confession, which through life is to be considered

by Anglicans as ‘_grown of the corrupt following of the apostles_’ (see

Article XXV.), become suddenly so transfigured by the approach of death

as to obtain the power of relieving a conscience ‘troubled with any

weighty matter’?”

Although it may not be matter of much surprise that a church which has

so carefully defined her own fallibility should have one doctrine for

her children in their days of health and vigor, and another for the

time of their sickness and death, still it does surprise us that a man

of education like Mr. Gladstone should be so unconscious of his own

extraordinary inconsistency in appealing--as he does throughout his

attacks against Catholics and the Catholic Church--to “mental and moral

freedom,” “logic,” “consistency of mind,” “manliness of thought,” etc.,

etc.

Already arise from all sides echoes of the question singularly enough

asked by Mr. Gladstone himself: “Is the Church of England worth

preserving?”[189]

“The Church of England,” said Laud, “is Protestant.” And Mr. Gladstone,

true to “the church of his birth and his country,” protests, like her,

against the church which made his country a Christian nation. The

Ritualists, the latest sect within her, still boast that they “help

to keep people from the Church of Rome,” and reject the imputation of

sympathy with her as an insupportable calumny.[190] “They will give

communion in Westminster Abbey to an Unitarian, flatter Jansenists and

Monophysites, remain in communion with bishops whom they themselves

proclaim to be heretics; but one thing they will not do--tolerate the

creed of the church to which they owe every fragment and crumb of

truth that remains to them.” “Take the great Anglian divines,” writes

Mr. Marshall: “Bull scorned and preached against the Catholic Church;

Barrow wrote a book against it; Sandys called the Vicar of Christ ‘that

triple-crowned thief and murderer’; Hooker sent for a dissenter on his

death-bed; Morton, Bramhall, Andrews, and the rest avowed the opinion

that the Protestant sects of the Continent were as true churches as their

own. Episcopal ordination, as the late Mr. J. Keble confessed, was not

made a condition for holding Anglican preferment until the latter half

of the XVIIth century; and it was _then_ adopted as a weapon against the

growing power of the dissenters. _Then_ Anglicans who had always argued

as Protestants against the church began to argue as Catholics against

dissent.”

At the present time, however, the English episcopate seems veering round

again to the Protestant quarter, against the pseudo-Catholic innovations

of a portion of the clergy. The _Church Herald_, which, up to the time

when it ceased to exist, a few weeks ago, had been protesting for many

months previously, with good reason, against the implacable opposition

offered by the Anglican bishops to the so-called “Catholic revival,”

gravely told its readers, while asserting once more that “no one trusts

the bishops,” and that “of influence they have and can have next to

none,” nevertheless that “their claims as Catholic bishops were never

so firmly established.” (!) Certainly Anglican logic is peculiar. Their

bishops were never more vehemently opposed to the Catholic faith; but no

matter, “never were they more truly Catholic.” (!)

“I have very reluctantly,” says Dr. Lee (as reported in the _John Bull_),

“come to a conclusion which makes me melancholy--that the passing of

the Public Worship Bill has to all intents and purposes sealed the fate

of the Church of England.” Its end, he thinks, is very near, because

no church can last unless it be a true portion of the one family of

God--not a mere human sect, taking its variable opinion from the civil

government, and its practice from a parliamentary officer without the

faintest shadow of spiritual authority. “The point that gravely perplexes

me,” he writes, “with regard to the new law, is that our bishops, one

and all, have, with their eyes open and deliberately, renounced their

spiritual jurisdiction, which, for both provinces and every diocese, is

placed in the hands of Lord Penzance, ex-judge of the Divorce Court.” For

which reason certain Ritualist papers lament it as “strange and sad” that

Dr. Lee should say of the bishops and their bill exactly the same _after_

their victory as they themselves had said _before_ it. These papers,

after the example of some learned Anglican professors, etc., are ready

enough beforehand to threaten, in the event of such and such a decision,

to “reconsider their position.” The decision is made; they then discover

that, after all, it is not so very serious, and compose themselves, for

the third, or fourth, or fifth time, just where they were before.

It is stated that the first case under the Public Worship Regulations

Act is now being brought before Lord Penzance. It is a suit against the

Rev. J. C. Ridsdale, incumbent of S. Peter’s, Folkestone. According to

the new law, three inhabitants made a representation to the Archbishop

of Canterbury as to the manner in which the services were conducted at

S. Peter’s. A copy of the representation was forwarded to Mr. Ridsdale,

and, no agreement to abide by the decision of the archbishop having been

made, the proceedings will be determined by the judge, from whom there

is an ultimate appeal to her Majesty in council. There are, it is said,

three cases pending under the new law; and fresh proceedings are about

to be commenced against the clergy of S. Alban’s, Holborn. The bill bids

fair to be as one-sided in its application as it avowedly was in its

intention. “The Puritan triumph in the XVIIth century,” said the Bishop

of London, “would not be more disastrous than a pseudo-Catholic triumph

now,” and the rest of the episcopal bench are evidently of the same mind.

Nor can it be matter of much surprise that such repression should be

exercised against men, many of them truly earnest and self-denying, who

are the means of reviving a certain amount of Catholic doctrine as well

as practice (however illegal) in their communion, when Dr. Lee is able

to write as follows to an episcopal correspondent: “The Catholic faith,

Archbishop Tait, in the presence of his suffragans, frankly declared

that _neither he nor they believed_, and his grace--to give him all

credit--has done his worst to get rid of it.”

Here again can we wonder at the result, even to her highest dignitaries,

of the uncertain teaching of a church which, from its very beginning, was

intended to be a compromise?

And, again, how can a church which is essentially a compromise be

expected to sympathize with that unchanging church which is “the pillar

and ground of the truth”?

II.

To return to Father Tondini’s essay. We come now to consider the newest

among the sects, the so-called Old Catholics, who, after the manner of

many other schismatics, appropriate the name of “Catholic” with an affix

of their own, which is a proof that theirs is a base metal, unworthy of

the “image and superscription of the King” or his appointed vicegerent.

Mr. Gladstone’s judgment of these people is thus expressed: “When the

cup of endurance,” he says, “which had so long been filling, began, with

the Council of the Vatican in 1870, to overflow, the most famous and

learned living theologian of the Roman communion, Dr. von Döllinger, long

the foremost champion of his church, refused compliance, and submitted,

with his temper undisturbed and his freedom unimpaired, to the extreme

and most painful penalty of excommunication. With him many of the most

learned and respected theologians of the Roman communion in Germany

underwent the same sentence. The very few who elsewhere (I do not speak

of Switzerland) suffered in like manner deserve an admiration rising in

proportion to their fewness.

“It seems as though Germany, from which Luther blew the mighty trumpet

that even now echoes through the land, still retained her primacy in the

domain of conscience, still supplied the _centuria prærogativa_ of the

great _comitia_ of the world.”[191]

After giving this quotation, Father Tondini, in the exercise of his

“mental freedom,” proceeds to examine whether Old Catholics really

deserve this highly laudatory and enthusiastic passage, and in what their

merit consists.

Their merit consists “in having rebelled against the church to which they

previously belonged, on the ground that, in their conviction, she had

changed her faith.

“Not one single bishop, not one out of the teaching body of the

church, has expressed the same conviction. Old Catholics are, then, a

mere handful … protesting against the Pope and the whole episcopate,

preferring their own private judgment to that of the whole teaching body

of the Catholic Church, and fully decided to do everything in their

power to bring about the triumph of their private personal judgment.

Their first act was to raise a schism in the church. They had openly

and freely separated themselves from her long before the sentence of

excommunication was notified to them. They then became the occasion of a

severe persecution against their former fellow-Catholics; and now, whilst

the persecution is raging, and Old Catholics, supported by governments

and the press, have suffered neither in person nor property, nor in

their individual liberty, we are called upon to bestow upon those who

suffered ‘in like manner’ an admiration rising in proportion to their

fewness!”[192]

But why is this? and what is the _Expostulation_ itself but a cry of

alarm to prevent British Catholics from rebelling against the queen?

Why, then, is the rebellion of some private individuals to be extolled

in terms like these? Or if, indeed, strong private religious convictions

(taking it for granted that the Old Catholics have such) make it

praiseworthy to rebel against the church, why should not strong private

political convictions make it equally praiseworthy to rebel against the

state? The field of similar applications is fearfully wide, and many a

parental admonition to an indolent or disobedient child might be met by

the young rebel in Mr. Gladstone’s words, that “with temper undisturbed,

with freedom unimpaired,” he had no intention to do as he was bid.

The first official document of the Old Catholics is the “Declaration” of

Dr. von Döllinger and his adherents, dated Munich, June, 1871,[193] and

which bears the signatures of Dr. von Döllinger, sixteen professors or

doctors, seven magistrates, three private gentlemen, two manufacturers,

one “Maître royal des cérémonies,” and one “Intendant royal de musique au

théâtre de cour”--thirty-one signatures in all, to which was added later

that of the unhappy Loyson.

The second document is a French manifesto or appeal, “Aux fidèles de

l’Ancienne Eglise Catholique,” signed “E. Michaud, Docteur en Théologie,”

dated 1872, and widely circulated in France, with a request that every

reader will help to make it known and gain as many additional adherents

as possible.

The style of both documents is peculiar. They alike belong to those

literary productions which betray an almost feverish excitement of mind.

A small number of persons, till lately belonging to the Catholic Church,

declare themselves “determined” to do their utmost towards bringing about

“the reform of ecclesiastical affairs, so long desired and henceforth so

inevitable, in the organization as well as in the life of the church.”

In fact, the authors of both these documents show a faith in their

own infallibility, both doctrinal and practical, at least as strong as

their conviction of the fallibility of the Pope. They are peculiarly

unfortunate in their choice of the fathers they quote, as well as in

their appeal to the authority of S. Paul. Their style is certainly

wholly unlike that of this great apostle, who, with so much earnestness

and humility, begs the prayers of the faithful, while the necessity of

prayer for such an undertaking as that which the Old Catholics call

the “regeneration of the church” is not even once alluded to in their

manifestoes.

There is another consideration which presents itself. Every practical

man is careful to ascertain the competency, in any particular subject,

of those who give him their advice upon it. A sick man would not consult

a lawyer for his cure, nor an aggrieved man seek legal advice of his

baker or shoemaker. The distinguished magistrates who signed the German

Declaration must be supposed to have done so, not in consequence of

a clear and detailed knowledge of the grounds of the assertions it

contained, but in consequence of their confidence in Dr. von Döllinger,

which led them to adopt his views. In the same way must be explained

the adhesions given by the respectable manufacturers, “Maître royal

des cérémonies,” and “Intendant royal de musique au théâtre de cour”;

for though these pursuits need not be in themselves an obstacle to a

man being well acquainted with religious matters, still they are an

undeniable argument against his having made it the chief object of his

studies.

“Now,” continues Father Tondini, “the charges brought in the present

case against the Catholic Church are so heavy, and the mere probability

of their being founded on truth of such vital importance to the whole

Christian world, … that to require something more than the ordinary

amount of theological science which is in general to be found in men

involved in worldly affairs of the most distracting kind, is only acting

in accordance with the most ordinary laws of prudence. All this will

become evident if we only suppose that the ‘Declaration’ had appeared

without the signatures of Dr. von Döllinger and the above-mentioned

professors.” In looking over the latter we find that none of them can lay

any claim to the same scientific authority and repute as that which he

enjoys; and the same remark applies to all who have subsequently joined

the Old Catholics.

With regard to Dr. von Döllinger himself, he has till now, if we

are rightly informed, abstained from joining his fellow-subscribers

to the German “Declaration” in their submission to Mgr. Reinkens,

the Old-Catholic Bishop of Germany. “Thus the chief promoter of the

opposition to the Vatican Council stands apart, and we should be grateful

to any one who might tell us to what church he belongs and whom he

recognizes as his legitimate bishop. We cannot suppose that he whom Mr.

Gladstone calls ‘the most famous and learned theologian of the Roman

communion’ has the pretension of forming a church in his own person.”

Father Tondini next notices the remarkable phenomenon presented by Old

Catholicism during the first three years of its existence as body without

a head, and calls the reader’s attention to the following passage in the

French manifesto:

“If it be the will of God,” thus it runs, “that some Roman bishops have

the courage to return publicly to the profession of the ancient faith,

we will place them with joy at our head. And if none break publicly

with heresy, our church, though essentially episcopal, will not for

that reason be condemned to die; for as soon as it shall be possible to

regularize its situation in this respect, we shall choose priests who

will receive either in the West or in the East an episcopal consecration

of unquestionable validity.”

“These,” he remarks, “are plain words. It evidently results from

them that there was a time when the church, ‘unstained by any Roman

innovation,’ was still looking for a bishop--in other words, for a head,

which she did not possess as yet. How, in spite of this deficiency,

the Old-Catholic Church could be termed essentially episcopal we are

at a loss to understand. That which is essential to a thing is that

without which it cannot possibly exist for a single moment; but here

we are asked to believe in a miracle which at once destroys all our

physical and metaphysical notions of things. A new-born warrior fighting

without a head, and a being existing without one of its essential

constituents--such are the wonders which accompanied the genesis of the

so-called regenerated church of the Old Catholics.”

The German Declaration in like manner states the then headless condition

of the Old-Catholic body. Its subscribers, and among them Prof. Reinkens,

say they look forward to a time when “all Catholicity shall be placed

under the direction of a primate and an episcopacy, which by means of

science,” etc., etc., “and not by the decrees of the Vatican, … shall

approach the crowning object assigned to Christian development--we mean

that of the union of the other Christian confessions now separated from

us,” etc.

Such was their language in June, 1871, when they were already nearly a

year old. Their first bishop, Joseph Hubert Reinkens, was consecrated

in August, 1873. These dates are very important. No power on earth will

ever be able to annul them as historical facts, which prove that a body

calling itself the true church of Christ has existed some time without a

single bishop, although bishops are essential to the church of Christ, as

Scripture, tradition, history, all antiquity agree. S. Cyprian says:

“The church is the people in union with the bishop--a flock adhering to

its shepherd. The bishop is in the church and the church in the bishop.

He who is not with the bishop is not in the church.”[194] And again:

“He cannot be accounted a bishop who, in despite of the evangelic and

apostolic tradition, has, of himself, become one (_a se ipso ortus est,

nemini succedens_), and succeeds to none.”

Now, “to what bishop” (asks Father Tondini) “did Dr. Reinkens succeed?

His first pastoral letter, dated August 11, 1873, is addressed ‘to the

priests and faithful of Germany who persevere in the ancient Catholic

faith.’ Who ever heard of the bishop and diocese of Germany before

this letter?” Again: “That same Dr. Reinkens who in June, 1871, signed

the ‘Declaration’ in which the Christian confessions outside the Roman

Church were called ‘Christian confessions now separated from us,’ in

August, 1873, saluted with the title of ‘Old Catholics,’ the Jansenists

of Holland, and Mgr. Heykamp, the bishop by whom he was consecrated, with

that of ‘bishop of the Old Catholics’!”[195]

III.

We now come to the consideration of Old Catholicism as an instrument of

union between the Christian Episcopal churches. In accordance with their

“Declaration,” the Old Catholics insist upon its being one of their main

objects to reunite the Christian churches separated from Rome during

the VIIIth and IXth centuries, and complacently boast of the marks of

sympathy bestowed upon them by these churches.

From one of their manifestoes Father Tondini quotes the following

important statements:

“The bishops of the Oriental Orthodox Church”--thus runs the

manifesto--“and those of the Episcopal Church of England and the United

States of America (!) encourage Old Catholicism with their most profound

sympathy. Representatives of the Orthodox Church of Russia assist every

year at its congress.… The interest displayed for it by governments is

not inferior to that of the churches.… The governments of Russia and of

England are disposed to recognize its rights when it shall be opportune

to do so.”[196]

Upon which he points out the exceeding inexpediency, for their own sakes,

of these governments or their bishops having any participation in the

doings of Old Catholics; and this for the following reasons, which are

worthy of careful consideration by the two governments in question, and

which we give in his own words:

“In order, it would seem, to escape the stringent conclusion of S.

Cyprian’s words, ‘He who does not succeed to other bishops, but is

self-originated, cannot be reckoned among bishops,’ Mgr. Reinkens, in his

above-quoted pastoral letter, … authoritatively declared not only that

the ‘apostolic see of Rome was vacant,’ but that not one of the actually

existing Roman Catholic bishops was legitimate.

“In support of this assumption the Old-Catholic bishop invokes some

fathers of the church--not, indeed, what they said or did while living,

but what they would say or do if they were to return to life: ‘If the

great bishops of the ancient church were to return to life in the midst

of us,’ says Mgr. Reinkens, ‘a Cyprian, (!) a Hilary, an Ambrose, … they

would acknowledge none of the existing bishops of the Roman Catholic

Church as validly elected.’[197]

“So much for the fact. As it can only be ascertained when those great

bishops are restored to life, all we can do is to defer this verification

until the great day of judgment.

“Now comes the general principle on which the assumed fact is founded.

Let us listen again to Mgr. Reinkens: ‘They [the resuscitated bishops of

the ancient church] would not acknowledge any of the existing bishops of

the Roman Catholic Church as validly elected, because none of them were

appointed in conformity with the immutable rule of the fathers of the

church. Never! no, never! would they have received into their company,

in the quality of a Catholic bishop, one who had not been chosen by the

people and the clergy. This mode of election was considered by them as of

divine precept, and consequently as immutable.’”

“How many bishops are there in existence at the present day,” asks Father

Tondini, “either in the Anglican Church or in the Christian East, who

have been chosen by the people and the clergy?”

In answer to this question we have, respecting the non-popular mode of

election in the Oriental Orthodox Church, the following trustworthy

information: In the Orthodox Church of the Turkish Empire the election

of a patriarch is made by the members of its synod, which is composed of

metropolitans, of one of their own number, and this election “is then

made known to the people assembled in the atrium of the synodicon, who

give, by acclamation and the cry of ἄξιος (worthy), their assent to the

election.… This, however, is in fact an empty formality; the more so

as the election itself is the result of previous secret understandings

between the more influential members of the synod and the leading men

among the people.”[198]

“The three patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are elected

by their respective synods, composed of metropolitans.

“The metropolitans and bishops of each patriarchate are elected by the

respective patriarchs, together with their synods.”

Did the Patriarch of Constantinople, in agreeing, on the invitation of

Dr. von Döllinger, to send representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church

to the Old Catholic Church Congress at Bonn, forget that, according to

Mgr. Reinkens, all bishops who have not been elected by the clergy and

the people are illegitimate bishops, that their sees are all vacant, that

this mode of election is of divine precept, and consequently immutable?

“We know not,” says Father Tondini, “which of the two is more to be

wondered at: the boldness of the Old Catholics in inviting the patriarch

to be represented at the congress, or the logical inconsistency of the

patriarch in accepting the invitation.”

Next, with regard to the Orthodox Church of the Russian Empire.

No one who may have read “The Future of the Russian Church,” which

recently appeared in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD,[199] will need to

be told how little voice either the inferior clergy or people of Russia

have in the election of their bishops. The Most Holy Governing Synod

proposes to his majesty two persons (on an eparchy becoming vacant), and

that one of the two selected by the czar is chosen and consecrated.[200]

(See Consett, _Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great_.)

In the formula of the oath taken by the Russian bishops before being

consecrated, they engage themselves to yield true obedience to the Holy

Synod, “the legitimate authority instituted by the pious Emperor Peter

the Great of immortal memory, and confirmed by command of his (or her)

present imperial majesty,” and to obey all the rules and statutes made by

the authority of the synod agreeably to the will of his (or her) imperial

majesty, adding the following words: “Furthermore, I do testify that I

have not received this province in consideration of gold or silver given

by me, … but I have received it by the free will of our most serene and

most puissant sovereign (by name), and by the _election_ of the Holy

Legislative Synod.[201] Moreover, at the beginning of the ceremony the

bishop-consecrator thus addresses the newly-elected bishop: “Reverend

Father N., the Most Serene and Most Puissant Czar N. N. _hath commanded,

by his own singular and proper edict_, and the Holy Legislative Synod of

all the Russias gives its benediction thereto, that you, holy sir, be

bishop of the city of N.”; to which the future bishop is made to answer:

“Since the Most Serene, etc., Czar has _commanded_, and the … synod … has

judged me worthy to undertake this province, I give thanks therefor, and

do undertake it and in nowise gainsay.”[202]

After similarly disposing (with regard to the remaining Oriental

churches) of Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary assertion that “the ancient

principles of popular election and control exist in the Christian

East”--an assertion of which also he makes use as a weapon against the

Catholic Church[203]--Father Tondini passes on to the election of bishops

in the Anglican Church. With regard to this, the following abstract from

Stephen is amply sufficient to show how far “the principles of popular

election” prevail in the nomination of the bishops of the Establishment:

“By statute 25 Henry VIII. c. 20 the law was altered and the right of

nomination secured to the crown, it being enacted that, at every future

avoidance of a bishopric, the king may send the dean and chapter his

usual license to proceed to election, or _congé d’elire_, which is always

to be accompanied with a letter missive from the king, containing the

name of the person whom he would have them elect; and if the dean and

chapter delay their election above twelve days, the nomination shall

devolve to the king, who may by letters-patent appoint such person as

he pleases. This election or nomination, if it be of a bishop, must be

signified by the king’s letters-patent to the archbishop of the province;

if it be of an archbishop, to the other archbishop and two bishops, or

to four bishops, requiring them to confirm, invest, and consecrate the

person so elected; which they are bound to perform immediately, without

any application to the See of Rome. After which the bishop-elect shall

sue to the king for his temporalities, shall take oath to the king and to

none other, and shall take restitution of his secular possessions out of

the king’s hand only. And if such dean and chapter do not elect in this

manner by this act appointed, or if such archbishop or bishop do refuse

to confirm, invest, and consecrate such bishop-elect, they shall incur

all the penalties of a præmunire--that is, the loss of all civil rights,

the forfeiture of lands, goods, and chattels, and imprisonment during

the royal pleasure. It is to be observed, however, that the mode here

described of appointing bishops applies only to such sees as are of old

foundation. The five new bishoprics created by Henry VIII. … have always

been donatives, and conferred by letters-patent from the crown; and the

case is the same as to the bishopric of Ripon, now recently created”

(Stephen’s _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, vol. iii. p. 61).

In concluding his essay, Father Tondini repeats Mgr. Reinkens’ words:

“If the great bishops of the ancient church were to return to life in

the midst of us, … never! no, never! would they have received into their

company, in the quality of a Christian bishop, one who had not been

chosen by the people and the clergy; this mode of election was considered

by them as of divine precept, and consequently as immutable”; and then

asks: “How can the support given by the state churches and governments of

England and Russia to Old Catholicism be explained? Is it for the purpose

of declaring that all the episcopal sees, both of England and Russia, are

vacant and awaiting the choice of the people?”