"This monarch, so great, so powerful,
must die, must die, must die."
"Praise be to him who liveth for ever."
During that whole summer there was a quiet but potent influence
at work under Margaret Hamilton's superficial life; ever at work,
yet silently, scarcely recognized by herself. The spark struck
out by Mr. Southard in his anti-Catholic lecture was slowly
kindling in the depths of her being.
There was not a thought of controversy in her mind. As she read,
one doctrine after another appeared, and showed its harmony with
some need of hers; or if not needed, it was not antagonistic,
like the pleasant face of a stranger who may become a friend.
Fortunately, no person and no book had said to her, You
_must_ believe; and so awakened opposition. Or if the
obligation had been insinuated, she had not perceived it. She
felt that it was for her alone to say what she must believe, as
long as she invited truth generously, and was ready to accept it
when it appeared to her with a truthful face. Of course she was
not one to make syllogisms at every step, and, being a woman, was
not likely to think that necessary. She looked up to find one
truth after another standing smiling and confident on the
threshold of her heart, and as smilingly she bade them welcome.
Reason gave up the reins to intuition, and light came without a
cloud. She realized nothing, till, startled by some outside call
that woke a many-voiced stir of hitherto silent guests, she
opened her eyes, and found herself a Catholic.
The first emotion was one of incredulity; then followed delight,
mingled with a fear which was merely the shadow cast by old
bugbears that, looked at fearlessly in that new light, faded and
fled like ghosts at dawning. Then all surprise faded away. She
recognized her proper place. She was at home.
But how to tell Mr. Granger! For she must tell him without delay.
It was not an easy task. If he had suspected, perhaps she could
have spoken; but he never dreamed of the change in her. If the
subject had been introduced, she must have spoken; but for some
reason, the "papists" were allowed to rest unscathed in the
family conversations.
{312}
It was the war; it was General Sinclair, sabre in hand, riding
into battle as if it were a _féte_; it was the weather, a
whole month of persistent and most illogical rain, pouring down
through west winds, through dry moons, through red sunsets,
through every sign that should bring clear skies, Taurus being
clerk of the weather, they concluded; it was when they should go
back to town--" Not till the trees should resume specie payment,"
was Mr. Granger's professional dictum; it was any and everything
but theology. And so the weeks went past, and October came, and
the story was not told. But he must know before they returned to
town, for then she was to be baptized.
Her uneasiness did not escape Mr. Granger, and in some measure it
communicated itself to him. He perceived that she wished to say
something to him, yet was afraid to speak.
"After all," he thought, "why should I wait for her to begin? She
is as timid, sometimes, as much of a baby, as my Dora. I dare say
it is some foolish thing, only fit to laugh at. I must help her."
It was Sunday. Mr. Southard was in town, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and
Aurelia taking their farewell walk in the pine woods, for the
family were to leave the seashore that week, and Dora was in the
kitchen, hushing to sleep an interesting family of kittens. Miss
Hamilton walked up and down the piazza, and Mr. Granger sat just
inside one of the windows, looking at her. He saw that she
occasionally glanced his way, and hesitated, and that with some
suspense or fear her face had grown very pale.
He leaned on the sill, as she came past, and regarded her
anxiously.
"You are not looking well," he said. "I hope that nothing
troubles you."
She came to him immediately, eagerly; a faint smile just touching
her lips, and fading again.
"I wanted to tell you; but I was afraid," she said, speaking like
one out of breath.
"I am sorry that you are afraid of me. Have I ever given you
reason to be?"
Margaret could not look at him, but leaned against a pillar near
the window, and averted her face.
"I was afraid only because you might think--"
She stopped.
"My dear child, what a coward you are!" he exclaimed, half
laughing. "You are worse than Dora. She had not such an air of
terror when she broke my precious Palissy plate. Must I apply the
thumbscrew?"
She turned toward him suddenly, and with a look stopped his
raillery.
"Would you be much displeased, Mr. Granger, if I should be a
Catholic?" she asked; then held her breath while she awaited his
reply.
His first expression was one of utter astonishment.
"But you are not in earnest!" he said, after a moment. "This is
only a fancy."
"Don't believe that!" said Margaret. "I am so firmly a Catholic
that I would die for the faith. It has been growing in my mind a
long time; and now the work is finished. I could not go back,
even to please you, Mr. Granger. I must follow my convictions."
"Certainly," he said very quietly, looking down. "No one has a
right to interfere with your convictions. Do you intend to become
openly a Catholic, and leave your own church for that?"
"I do not know how to believe one thing and say another," she
replied. "I am to be baptized as soon as I go in town."
{313}
She seemed abrupt, almost defiant; but it was only because she
was weak.
Mr. Granger drew himself up slightly.
"Since your mind is so fully made up, and your arrangements
perfected, there is, of course, no more to be said about the
matter. I am surprised, since I have not been led to expect
anything of the sort; but I have neither the right nor the desire
to control your religious opinions. Fortunately, conscience is
free in this country."
"But you are displeased!" she exclaimed tremulously; for every
word had fallen like ice upon her heart.
"You cannot expect me to be pleased, since I am not a Catholic,"
was the reply.
Margaret sighed heavily under the first pressure of her cross.
"You wish me to go away?"
He looked at her in astonishment. "Certainly not! When I say that
I have no right or desire to interfere in your religion, I mean
that I am not to persecute you or to make any difference with you
on account of it. Nothing is to be changed unless you wish it."
She had expected him to ask some explanation; but not a word more
did he say. He seemed to think that the subject was disposed of.
His silence wrung her heart like the veriest indifference; but he
was not indifferent. He thought, "She has done all this without
confiding in me, and tells me only when she must. It is not for
me to question her. What I am to know she must communicate
voluntarily."
She waited a moment, then turned slowly away, went in at the
door, and up-stairs to her chamber.
When they met again, Mr. Granger tried to be quite as usual. He
was even more scrupulously respectful than formerly. But she felt
the chill of all that courtesy that had once been kindness. The
next day she went in town, and was baptized. The sooner the
better, she thought. But, if she had expected any delight or
conscious change to follow the reception of the sacrament, she
was disappointed. There was only that calm which follows the
consciousness of being in the right way. The baptism was strictly
private; no one present but the two necessary witnesses; and
after it was over, she took the cars back to the country.
"Everything is peaceful," she thought, walking through the silent
woods, now burning with autumn colors. "Everything is sweet," she
added, as, coming in sight of the house, she saw little Dora
running joyfully out to meet her.
"When you come back, I'm glad all over," said the child.
That evening Mr. Southard came home alone, and with a very grave
face. "I have bad news for you," was his first greeting on
entering the parlor.
Mrs. Lewis started up with a cry. Miss Hamilton sank back in her
chair.
"General Sinclair is killed."
"Thank God!" exclaimed both ladies.
They thought that some accident had happened to Mr. Granger or
Uncle Charles," explained Aurelia, seeing the minister's
astonishment.
"Some people never know how to tell bad news!" cried Mrs. Lewis,
her face still crimson with that first terrified leap of the
heart. "Can't you see, Mr. Southard, that you ought to have begun
by saying that our family were all well? Look at that girl! She
is like a snow image. Oh! well, excuse me; but you did give me
such a start. Now tell us the whole, please. I am very sorry."
{314}
Poor Mr. Southard took his scolding with the greatest humility,
but was so disconcerted by it that he could hardly finish the
recital.
Mr. Granger had received a telegram from Washington, and had gone
on immediately to bring the remains of his cousin home for
burial. He wished them to go into town, and have the house open
for the funeral. General Sinclair's wife was ill in Montreal, and
could not be present. Mr. Granger had telegraphed her before
starting.
They went to town the next day, and hastened to put the house in
order; and on the second day Mr. Granger arrived.
It was impossible to have a private funeral. Mr. Sinclair had a
host of friends, his reputation was a brilliant one, and he had
died in battle. Military companies offered their escort, and the
public desired to honor the dead by some demonstration. Finally,
Mr. Southard opened his church, and consented to preach the
sermon.
One would have thought that some public benefactor had died. The
church was crowded, and crowds lined the streets through which
the procession passed. Many a great and good man has died, yet
received no such ovation.
A military funeral is the sublime of mourning. We may not know
whose memory is thus honored, whose silence thus lamented; but
those wailing strains of music touch our heartstrings as the wind
sweeps the windharp, and tears start at the obsequies of him
whose name we never heard, whose face we never looked upon.
Perhaps it is that requiem music mourns not that one man is dead,
but that all men must die.
Mr. Southard had felt a temporary embarrassment as to the manner
in which he should treat his subject. He could not hold the dead
up as a model, for Mr. Sinclair had been an unbeliever and a man
of the world. There was but one way, and that one was congenial
to the speaker and welcome to the hearers. The man must be, as
much as was possible, ignored in the cause.
From the moment when the minister rose in the pulpit, the spirit
in which he would speak was plain to be seen. His mouth was
stern, there was a steel-like flash in his eyes, and his voice
was clear and ringing when he announced his text:
"_And he said to Zebee and Salmana: What manner of men were
they whom you slew in Thabor? They answered: They were like thee,
and one of them as the son of a king. He answered them: They were
my brethren, the sons of my mother. As the Lord liveth, if you
had saved them, I would not kill you. And he said to Jether his
eldest son: Arise, and slay them_."
There was a pause of utter silence; then the minister extended
his hands toward the open, flag-draped, flower-crowned coffin in
front of the pulpit, and exclaimed, "One of them as the son of a
king!"
Instantly every eye was turned on that white and silent face, and
the princely form extended there, superbly beautiful as a marble
god. It seemed regicide to kill such a man. After that look,
scarcely one present revolted at the tone of the sermon, which
echoed throughout the vengeful call, "Arise, and slay them!"
As the family sat that evening at home, trying to throw off the
gloomy impressions of the day, and to talk quite as usual, the
conversation, by some chance, turned on theology, and settled
upon Catholicism. Mr. Granger, who had been sitting apart and
silent, roused himself at that, and tried to introduce some other
topic, but without success. Miss Hamilton was mute, feeling that
her time had come. If only her friend were on her side, she would
not have cared so much; but he was far from her. The coldness
that had arisen between them at first had increased rather than
diminished. Perhaps it was partly her own fault; but it hurt her
none the less.
{315}
"The papists are certainly gaining ground in this country," Mr.
Southard said. "We have hard work before us. They know how to
appeal to the frivolous tastes of the times, as of old they
appealed to the superstitious. Their music pleases opera-goers,
and their ceremonies amuse the curious. Worse than that, their
sophistries deceive the romantic and the credulous."
"Oh! live and let live," interposed Mr. Granger hastily. "There
are a good many roads to heaven."
"The Son of God said that there was but one," replied the
minister.
"If there is but one," Mr. Granger said, rising, "he is a bold
man who will say that he is right, and all the others wrong."
"Are you a Catholic, Mr. Granger?" demanded Mr. Southard with
some heat.
"No," was the reply; "but some who are dear to me are Catholic."
Margaret's heart gave a bound. She breathed an aspiration. Her
time had come. She was sitting alone opposite them all, and they
all looked at her as she leaned forward with a slight gesture
that checked further speech.
"I am a Catholic, Mr. Southard," she said. "I was baptized this
week."
The minister started up with an exclamation, the others stared in
astonishment; but Mr. Granger took a step and placed himself at
Margaret's side.
O generous heart! She did not look at him, but she began to
tremble, as the snow-wreath trembles in the sun before it quite
melts away.
"You cannot mean it!" Mr. Southard found voice to say.
O joy! She wasn't afraid of him now.
"I am quite in earnest," she replied.
He leaned against the table near him, too much excited to sit,
too much overcome to stand unsupported.
"You mean that you are pleased with their ceremonies, that some
of their doctrines are plausible, not that you accept them all,
and pay allegiance to the pope of Rome. It cannot be!"
"I honor the pope as the head of the church, and I can listen to
no teacher of religion whom he does not approve," was the reply.
"My God!" muttered the minister. He stood one moment looking at
her as if he saw a spectre, then turned away with drooping head,
and went toward the door, staggering so that he had to put his
hand out for support. To that sincere but mistaken man it was as
if he had seen the pit open, and one he loved drawn into it.
The others sat silent and embarrassed, till Aurelia, bursting
into tears, started up and left the room.
Margaret glanced at Mrs. Lewis, and found that she had quite
recovered from her surprise.
"The programme seems to be flourish of trumpet, and _exeunt
omnes_," the lady said. "But I mean to stand my ground. I
don't find you in the least frightful. You look to me precisely
as you did an hour ago, only brighter perhaps. My only fear at
this instant is lest we may have to tie you up to keep you out of
a convent."
"I have no thought of a convent," said Margaret.
{316}
"Oh! well, I don't see but we can get along with everything else.
There's fish on Fridays, and the necessity of holding one's
tongue occasionally. I think we can manage. Mr. Lewis, can you
shut your mouth sufficiently to give an opinion?"
Thus called upon, Mr. Lewis found voice. "What in the world did
you want to go and turn Catholic for?" he demanded angrily.
"Couldn't you like 'em well enough at a distance, as I do? That's
just a woman's romantic, headlong way of doing things up to the
handle. You've upset your own dish completely. Nobody will marry
you now."
Miss Hamilton smiled. "That is a view of the matter which I never
thought to take," she said.
"But you must think of that," Mr. Lewis persisted, perfectly in
earnest.
"No, thank you; I won't," she replied, rising. "I thank you
all"--with downcast eyes and a little tremor in her voice--"I
thank you that you are not too angry with me for what I could not
help. I could not have borne--" There words failed her.
She glanced at Mr. Granger as she went out, and caught one of
those heartfelt smiles which lighted his face when he was
thoroughly friendly and pleased.
There was little rest for her that night. Hour after hour she
heard Mr. Southard's step pacing to and fro in his chamber
beneath, not ceasing till near morning. But after she went to
bed, Aurelia came softly in, and, bending, put her arms around
Margaret, and kissed her.
"I am sorry if I made you feel bad by going away so," she said in
a voice stifled by long weeping. "But you know I was so taken by
surprise. Of course we are all the same friends as ever.
Good-night, dear! Go to sleep, and don't worry about anything.
Mr. Granger and aunt and uncle told me to say good-night to you
for them."
"How good everybody is--God and everybody!" thought Margaret.
In the morning all appeared as usual, except that there was no
Mr. Southard at the table. Luncheon-time came, and Mrs. James
reported the minister to have locked his door and declined
refreshment. When the dinner-bell rang, still Mr. Southard had
not come down.
"If he doesn't come to dinner," Miss Hamilton thought, thoroughly
vexed, "I will send him a note which will give him an appetite.
This is sheer nonsense."
But as they entered the dining-room they heard his step on the
stairs, and he followed them in.
Hearing him greet the others quite in his usual manner, Margaret
glanced at him, and found him waiting to bow to her. He looked as
if he had had a long illness.
"What! you desert your seat too?" he said, seeing her go toward
the other end of the table.
"I thought you might be afraid to sit by me," she replied
pettishly. Then, as he dropped his glance and colored faintly,
she repented, and went back to her seat by him.
When they rose, he spoke to her aside. "May I see you in the
library now, or at your convenience? I would gladly speak with
you tonight."
"Now, if you please," she answered, thinking it best to have the
interview over at once, since it was inevitable.
It would be worse than useless to repeat the minister's
arguments. With more of patience and humility than she had
expected, he asked for and listened to the story of her
conversion. But his calmness deserted him more and more as he
perceived how firmly grounded was her conviction, and how hard
would be the task of reclaiming her.
{317}
Polemical discussions were always irritating, but not always
convincing, she insisted. She could not trust herself to engage
in them, even if she were capable. She did not want to be told
that such a man had been wicked, that such an abuse had existed.
When treason had found a place among the apostles, it might well
taint some of their successors. It mattered not; her faith was
not based on any individual. Let Mr. Southard take the doctrines
of the church, as she had learned them, from the church itself,
and then prove them false if he could. Let him take the books
that had satisfied her, and answer their arguments, theologian to
theologian. With her the contest would be unequal; but she would
gladly listen to his refutation, she assured him.
"What books have you read?" he asked, resting his head on his
hand, disconcerted to find that, instead of being opposed to an
uninstructed young woman, he was to have arrayed against him the
flower of Catholic theologians.
She named them, an imposing list, at the repetition of which a
slow red crept up into the minister's cheeks. Apparently the
young woman was not so uninstructed as he had thought.
"Mr. Southard," she concluded, "I have no desire but to know the
truth. If you can convince me that I am wrong, I will renounce my
errors as promptly as I adopted them. If you are thoroughly
convinced that you are in the right way, then you ought to be
fearless. But if it is too much trouble for you to study the
subject, if I am not worth it, then let the matter drop."
"I will read the books, and go over their arguments with you,"
the minister said, looking at her keenly as if he suspected some
hidden motive in her proposal.
"I am honest!" she said, hurt by his expression. "What have I to
gain, if not heaven? What have I not to lose? I feel surely that
our happy household will never again be the same that it has
been."
"I must believe you sincere," he replied. "But I cannot imagine
what should have set you, of all persons, on this track."
Miss Hamilton smiled as she rose. "It was you, sir. You should
beware of the flattery of abuse."
The next morning after breakfast the minister found on his study
table a pile of controversial works that the housekeeper had been
instructed to leave there for him. Beside them lay a crucifix. He
touched it, and it seemed to burn his fingers. He pushed it away,
and it burned his heart.
"After all, it is the image of my crucified Redeemer," he said;
and took it in his hand again. Looking at it a moment, his eyes
filled with tears.
To Be Continued.
-------
{318}
Good Old Saxon.
By An English Catholic.
During the last five years an admirable society, formed in
London, and called the Early English Text Society, has been
reproducing at a cheap rate a large number of curious and
valuable works written in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries. Many of these existed in manuscript
only, while others were out of print, and very difficult of
attainment. They range over a variety of different subjects, and
being beautifully printed, amply supplied with notes and
glossaries, and each edited by an accomplished Anglo-Saxon
scholar, they afford clergymen, antiquarians, and men of letters
in general an excellent opportunity of becoming familiar with the
earlier forms of the English language, and the best authors
during a literary period hitherto regarded as obscure.
These publications synchronize with, and have partly grown out
of, a movement which, though retrograde, has been really an
improvement and an advance--a movement, namely, from Latinized to
Saxon English. We may perhaps date its commencement from the time
when Dr. Johnson was approaching his sixtieth year. He had, for a
long time, been lending the weight of his great name to the
practice of using very long words, and those chiefly of Latin
origin. In doing this he had not merely followed a crowd of
classical English writers, but had put himself at their head. The
genius of the language was being lost, and when it seemed to be
gaining strength, it was in reality growing weaker. Its original
tendency had been toward words of one syllable, but under
Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and a multitude of essayists and
pamphleteers of the eighteenth century, it tended strongly toward
the use of words of many syllables. Thus sound was frequently
substituted for sense, and sentences, though they ran more
smoothly, had in them far less fibre. An air of pedantry was
thrown over expressions, when such a word as "tremulousness" was
substituted for "quivering," and "exsiccation" for "drying."
Mannerism was certainly the mildest epithet that could be applied
to such changes, when they became frequent and systematic. An
instance of the habit in question is often quoted from Johnson's
Dictionary, where, in defining "net" and "network," he calls the
first, "anything made with _interstitial vacuities_," and
the second, "anything _reticulated_ or _decussated_, at
equal distances, with _interstices_ between the
_intersections_."
Yet Johnson himself had, in the grammar prefixed to his
Dictionary, pointed out clearly how very monosyllabic English was
originally, how "our ancestors were studious to form borrowed
words, however long, into monosyllables;" how they cut off
terminations, cropped the first syllable, rejected vowels in the
middle, and weaker consonants, retaining the stronger, which seem
"the bones of words." Thus, from "excrucio" they made "screw;"
from "exscorio," "scour;" from "excortico," "scratch;" from
"hospital," "spittle;" and the like.
{319}
By such processes, performed not according to rule, but by the
unconscious working of national instincts, our forefathers
produced a wonderful agreement between the sound of their words
and the thing signified. _Squeak, crush, brawl, whirl, bustle,
twine,_ are but a few among a multitude of instances which
will occur to any one who gives attention to the subject. Wallis,
indeed, a writer often quoted in the grammar referred to,
establishes the fact of a great agreement subsisting between even
the letters, in the native words of our language, and the thing
signified; and his analysis of the meaning conveyed by sn, str,
st, thr, wr, sw, cl, sp, and other combinations is highly
ingenious and, on the whole, satisfactory. He comes to the
conclusion that one of our monosyllable words "emphatically
expresses what in other languages can scarce be explained but by
compounds, or decompounds, or sometimes a tedious
circumlocution."
But although Dr. Johnson, like Wallis, appreciated highly the
Saxon origin and character of English, though he fully recognized
the strength which it derives from its native sources as opposed
to southern innovations, his own practice was eminently faulty,
and sure, in the hands of his imitators, to degenerate into
pedantry and stilts. It was well, therefore, that when his career
was drawing to a close, an obscure but highly gifted boy in
Bristol ransacked the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe's
Church, and found, or pretended to have found, in its old chests,
the poems of Rowley, who was said to have written in the time of
Edward III. The poems were not without merit in themselves, but,
when Chatterton had, amid the pangs of hunger, put an end to his
short and weary existence, they attracted attention in
consequence of the antiquated form in which they appeared. They
were like the fossil remains of extinct animals, and spoke of a
literary period little known at that time even to the best
English scholars. They breathed the language and the spirit of
Chaucer; and from the moment of their appearance may be traced
the reaction in favor of Saxon phraseology which marks the
literature of the present day. The boy-author saw by intuition
what Dr. Wallis had reduced to rules. Perhaps he had never
analyzed very closely his own reasons, nor traced attentively the
process of nature in the formation of words, so as to produce in
them an agreement between the sound and the thing signified; but
his youthful ear was charmed with the native energy of what Byron
called our "northern guttural," and he loved to imitate, in such
lines as these, the rugged sweetness of the early English poets:
"The rodie welkin sheeneth to the eyne;
In dasied mantles is the mountain dight,
The neshe young cowslip bendeth with the dew."
In these lines, all the words are of the pure Saxon type; and the
same may be said of almost every stanza in Chaucer's Tales.
"The flowrs of many divers hue
Upon their stalkis gonin for to spread,
And for to splay out their leavis ill brede,
Again the sun, gold-burned in his sphere,
That down to them y-cast his beamis clear.'
And again, as we read in "The Clerke's Tale:"
"And whanne sche com hom sche wolde brynge
Wortis and other herbis tymes ofte,
The which sche shred and seth for her lyvyng
And made her bed ful hard, and nothing softe."
This, as regards language, is the mould in which the Tales are
cast. The same Saxon stamp imprinted on the verse of Spenser,
though the _Fairie Queen_ came two centuries after the
_Canterbury Tales_. One stanza shall suffice as a specimen:
{320}
"Then came the jolly summer, being dight
In a thin silken cassock coloured greene,
That was unlyned all, to be more light;
And on his head a girland well beseene
He wore, from which as he had chauffed been
The sweat did drop; and in his hand he bore
A bow and shaftes; as he in forrest greene
Had hunted late the libbard or the bore
And now would bathe his limbs with labor heated sore."
The habits and tastes of Ben Jonson and of Milton were largely
influenced by their classical studies. The best authors of
ancient Greece and Rome filled their memories, and it was only
natural that their writings should betray at every turn the
sources from which they had been fed. Yet a multitude of passages
might be cited from these poets in which the genuine ring of the
early English rhymers only is heard. Thus Ben Jonson, in a
favorite piece of advice to a reckless youth, says:
"Nor would I you should melt away yourself
In flashing bravery; lest, while you affect
To make a blaze of gentry to the world,
A little puff of scorn extinguish it,
And you be left like an unsavoury snuff
Whose property is only to offend."
The last line has more than one word of Latin origin; but in
Milton's _Mask of Comus_ we find long passages entirely free
from the foreign element. Thus, Sabrina sings:
"By the rushy-fringed bank
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agat, and the azure sheen
Of turkis blue and em'rald green,
That in the channel strays;
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head
That bends not as I tread."
Now it must not be supposed that in calling attention to the
Saxon character of English as opposed to, or distinct from, its
Latin and Norman aspects, we are advocating any exclusive system.
We rejoice in our language being a compound; and as some of the
most exquisite perfumes are produced by distilling a variety of
different flowers and leaves, so languages formed by the mixture
of several races, and influenced by numerous changes and chances
in the history of the people who speak them, are often, in their
way, as vigorous and beautiful as any of more simple origin. This
is especially the case with that tongue which, being our own, is
dearer to us than all besides. But because it consists, and must
ever consist, of various elements, there is no reason why we
should be indifferent to the relative proportions in which these
elements are mixed together; nor is it by any means superfluous
to inquire whether the tendency of a compound language may not,
at any particular period, be toward corruption and decay, and, at
another time, toward health, consistency, majesty, melody, and
strength.
We have assumed that Saxon is the basis of English, and that of
late years there has been among English writers a tendency to
reascend the stream to its source, to freshen and invigorate
their diction by the use of native, as distinct from foreign
words. We have mentioned Chatterton as being, perhaps
unconsciously, a leader in this movement; and we would add that
Burns also fostered the reviving taste for pure English; for,
though he wrote in the Scottish dialect, that dialect had, and
has still, a thousand points of contact with our language in the
days of its youth. Though its peculiarities were of Gaelic rather
than Saxon origin, yet they resembled old English in this, that
they were marked by short words and many consonants. Hence Robert
Burns's verse revolts instinctively from the many liquid
syllables of the South, and is wild and ragged as the crags and
glens which were his favorite haunts. So far as it influenced our
literature, it recalled it from the smoother and less vigorous
course of Latinized or Johnsonian English to the sharper,
simpler, and clearer notes of less artificial times.
{321}
"Your critic-folk may cock their nose
And say, How can _you_ e'er propose,
_You_ who ken hardly verse frae prose,
To mak a sang?
But, by your leaves, my learned foes,
Ye're may be wrang."
The touch and racy dialect of the _Border Minstrelsy_, which
Walter Scott edited, Mr. Evans's _Collection of Old
Ballads_, and Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry_, guided public taste into a direction opposed to the
tame mediocrity of the imitators of Dryden and Pope. The ear and
the mind alike were charmed by the exceeding simplicity of the
style of these old ballads, and their almost exclusive use of
monosyllables.
Here are a few notes from one of those Jacobite songs which
resounded so freely among the Highlands when Prince Charles
Edward came to recover the crown of his fathers. Walter Scott
compares such ballads to the "grotesque carving on a Gothic
niche:"
"It's nae the battle's deadly stoure
Nor friends pruived fause that'll gar me cower,
But the reckless hand o' povertie,
Oh! that alane can daunton me!
"High was I born to kingly gear,
But a cuif came in my cap to wear,
But wi' my braid sword I'll let him see
He's nae the man will daunton me."
The Lake school of poetry, being founded in a deep love of nature
and a close scrutiny of her works, had a concurrent influence in
restoring the liberal use of the older forms of speech. Writers
like Charles Lamb, whose minds were richly stored with the
treasures of Elizabethan lore, were sometimes accused of
affectation in employing archaisms, but "the old words of the
poet," as the author of "Summer Time in the Country" observes,
"like the foreign accent of a sweet voice, give a charm to the
tone, without in any large degree obscuring the sense." Indeed,
if the most popular passages in Wordsworth, and in his great
master Shakespeare, be examined, they will be found to answer on
the whole to that ideal of English phraseology which is here
formed--one, namely, in which the Saxon element largely
predominates. Thus, almost at random, we quote from _The
Midsummer Night's Dream:_
"What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?"
And from Wordsworth's "Idle Shepherd Boys:"
"Beneath a rock, upon the grass,
Two boys are sitting in the sun;
Boys that have had no work to do,
Or work that now is done.
On pipes of sycamore they play
The fragments of a Christmas hymn;
Or with that plant which in our dale
We call stag-horn or fox's tail,
Their rusty hats they trim:
And thus, as happy as the day,
Those shepherds wear the time away."
Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab, in _Romeo and
Juliet_, may also be pointed out as a signal example of pure
Saxon English throughout; but it is too long and too familiar to
our readers to be quoted here.
There are not wanting men of talent and research, who have
remarked the change which has come over the national literature
in its rebound toward Saxon diction, and who have recommended it
very distinctly. Dean Swift, though in point of time he preceded
the movement, held as a principle that no Saxon word should be
allowed to fall into disuse. Dean Hoare has, in our own time,
expressed his decided conviction that those speakers and writers
impart most pleasure whose style is most Saxon in its character;
and this remark applies, as he believes, especially to poetry. It
is in accordance with the spirit of the age that we recoil from
that "fine writing" which is generally mere declamation.
{322}
In proportion as we become practical, the racy style--pointed,
suggestive, and curt--rises in value. By the exercise of thought
and cultivation of science we become exact, and through plenty of
business we become brief-spoken. Vague talking and writing is now
at a discount, and persons express themselves with more substance
and strength because they are trained in the love of truth,
historic and scientific, and have contracted a hatred of shams of
every kind. Directness of statement is what is now most valued in
a writer, and such men as Dr. Newman among Catholics, and Carlyle
and Emerson among non-Catholics, have contributed in an immense
degree to promote reverence for this quality. Circumlocution and
over-expansion are faults which no one will now tolerate, and
this jealousy for the clear and ready conveyance of ideas has a
great deal to do with recurrence to the pregnant monosyllables,
the picture-words, the gnarled and knotted strength of Saxon
English.
It is, however, to Tennyson, more than to any other modern
writer, that the public owes the more frequent use of short and
sinewy words already known to most readers, and the enrichment of
the language by the revival of many words which had become
obsolete. Enoch Arden, though a poem consisting of two thousand
lines, contains scarcely a word that is not of Saxon origin. It
is, as far as language is concerned, simplicity almost in excess.
Thus, to take but one example, it is not till we reach the last
word of the following passage that we are reminded of the partly
Latin origin of our tongue:
"For in truth
Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil
In ocean-smelling osier, and his face,
Rough-reddened with a thousand winter-gales,
Not only to the market-cross were known,
But in the leafy lanes behind the down,
Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp,
And peacock-yewtree of the lonely hall,
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering."
In this passage all the words are in common use, but in other
parts of the same volume, and, indeed, in all which the laureate
has published, we perceive a strong tendency to antique and
grotesque forms of speech, derived from long and devoted
attachment to the old writers. If they were introduced by design,
simply because they are archaisms, the artifice would be
apparent, and the pedantry complete. But when they form a genuine
part of the author's inner life of thought and memory, the case
is different, and what would have been formal and stiff becomes
natural and easy. They comport well with the idea one forms of a
great thinker, and indicate a thorough mastery over the mother
tongue. They might, no doubt, easily degenerate into affectation,
but when employed with judgment and skill, they are like fossils
in a well-arranged cabinet, or old china in a well-furnished
room. Resembling, as they do, the tough, tortuous olive-tree,
they are valuable signs of a people's mental vigor; for as surely
as the "soft bastard Latin" of the Apennines indicates a
population less martial than the Romans of old--as surely as the
soft and sibilant Romaic tells of a race fallen from the higher
walks of Grecian philosophy, history, science, and song--so
surely would Latinized English be a sign that the people writing
and speaking it, were falling away from the marked character of
their forefathers, and contrasting with them as strongly as the
silken senators whom Chatham denounced contrasted with the iron
barons of the days of King John.
-------
{323}
Waiting.
Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
Though flushing day
Is mounting into heaven, it cannot shame
The weakest rush-light burning in his name
Who soon will say,
"Peace to this house!" Consoling word,
Which patient ones have heard,
Then meekly sighed,
"Now let thy servant, Lord, depart in peace!"
And, granted swift release,
Next moment died.
Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
No garish day can shame
Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!
Close, giddy honeysuckles, clambering free,
Close your moist petals to the wandering bee.
That with your cloistered dews you may adore
My Lord, when he shall enter at the door.
O blossoming sweet-brier!
Now flushing like a seraph with desire
To do him homage, send abroad
Your aromatic breath, and thus entice,
With innocent device,
His quickening steps unto my poor abode.
Calm lilies for his tabernacle sealed,
O spicy hyacinths! now yield
Your odors to the waiting air
His welcome to prepare;
Nor fear that by my haste
Your perfumes you will waste;
For each expectant sigh
Is dearer, to the Holy One so nigh,
Than all your honeyed nectaries exhale.
Young rose and lilac pale,
And every flow'ret fair,
Incense the blissful air,
And bid him, hail!
{324}
Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
No garish day can shame
Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!
Sing, lark and linnet, sing
The graces of this King,
Who, in such meek array,
Will visit me to-day:
Young swallows, twittering at my cottage eaves,
Shy wrens, close-nested in the woodbine leaves,
Blithe robins, chirping on the open gate,
Upon his coming wait:
Glad oriole, swinging with the linden bough,
I do entreat you, now
With gushing throat
Repeat your most ecstatic note.
Afar I hear,
With instinct quick and clear,
His step who bears, enshrined upon his breast,
The God who soon within my own will rest.
Angelic choirs
Are touching their exultant lyres:
Sing, lark and linnet, sing,
And with your artless jubilations bring
Their joy to earth; and you, melodious thrush,
While my glad soul keeps hush,
Attune your song
My silent rapture to prolong.
Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
No garish day can shame
Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!
-------
{325}
From The Rivista Universale, Of Genoa.
The Supernatural.
By Cesar Cantu.
Petulant tyranny of science! It will not allow us to say that two
and two are three; that there can be more than the sum of two
right angles in a triangle; or that the radii of a circle are not
equal. What arrogance thus to confine my liberty; to deny me
leave to assert that there is an exact relation between the
diameter and circumference of a circle; that the duplication of
the cube is possible, the trisection of an angle, and perpetual
motion! Why should not error have the same rights as truth?
Reason is mistress of the world; unlimited mistress of herself.
She can prove that yes is identical with no; that being and
nothing are all one. Why tire ourselves with the science of
ultimate reasons? We must regard the effects without ascending to
the causes; we accept only what can be felt and seen. What is
substance? What is cause? What are ideas? Let them pass; we hold
only to phenomenon and effect.
All would not dare to express these assertions with such
boldness, and yet they are necessary inferences from the current
sophisms and phrases of a science which stains its tyranny by
petulance and bald negations. _Experience! Experience!_ it
cries daily, and proceeds to invent theories on the formation of
the universe which will never meet the approval of experience; it
repudiates every truth _a priori_, and yet establishes, _a
priori_, that faith is contradictory to reason. In the name of
free-will it demands the destruction of free-will; as if man were
more free while seeking than after having found the truth; as if
true liberty did not consist in willing what is right.
And nowadays a multiform war is waged against ancient belief by a
contracted and intolerant science, and a system of retrogressive
and egotistical politics. Arguments and buffoonery, decrees and
violences, alternate, not only against the priests, but against
Christ. Some disfigure dogmas, and then throw them to the fishes,
or abandon them to the anger of a mob dressed in black waistcoats
or in red caps. Some resuscitate ancient errors under modern
phraseology, or excite the demon of curiosity. Some, faithful to
the system of defamation and intimidation, libel as clericals or
obscurantists those Christians who loved liberty when it was not
a mere speculation, if they are unwilling to believe that the
Italy of the future must deny the Italy of the past, to become
strong. One party in the name of authority attacks its chief
source. Some drag into the lists a conventional nationality and
an exclusive patriotism, against the universality of faith and
charity, and hurt the partial reasons of a state against
ecumenical reason. Some fight in the garb of doctors, striving to
apply the methods of observation to what is super-sensible,
confounding the proximate with the first cause, and thus arriving
at scientific scepticism, positivism, which repudiates ideas, or
at a criticism which considers generations as succeeding each
other without a connecting law--by mere evolution--without
seeking what absolute truth corresponds to the successive rise of
nations, or clearing up the future by the past--that which is
going to happen with what is permanent.
{326}
And thus they whirl in a pantheism which either accepts no God
but the human mind, or makes everything God except God himself;
leaving him the splendor of his idea, the sovereignty of his
name, but depriving him of the reality of his being and the
consciousness of his life.
There are others who, with frivolous argumentation, produce
excellent pillows for doubt, and refuse to examine, contenting
themselves with repeating the affirmations of the most accredited
organs of the press. Let us pass over those who flatter the
animal instincts of nature by writings and images which Sodom
would condemn, and proclaim the divine reign of the flesh,
saying, with Heine, "The desire of all our institutions is the
rehabilitation of matter. Let us seek good in matter; let us
found a democracy of terrestrial gods, equal in happiness and
holiness; let us have nectar and ambrosia; let us desire garments
of purple, delights of perfumes and dances, comedies and
children."
Hence comes the deplorable degradation of minds plunged not only
in ignorance but in base adulations to slaves and to the slaves
of slaves, to the rabble hailed by the people, to a debasement
called progress, to a freedom which consists in robbing others of
liberty.
II.
In such a state of affairs, what ought a priest or Christian to
do who reserves to himself the right of not calling evil things
good? Grow low-spirited, reproach the century, grow timorous of
science, groan like Jeremias over the woe of Jerusalem, and await
the rock which is to crush the clay-footed colossus? It looks
like compelling Providence, when we refuse to co-operate with it
in the conflict between good and evil, unless on conditions which
suit our little egotism, or please our frivolous vanity. The
timid compromise their character with strange conventions between
truth and error, by shameful oscillation between liberty and
despotism, resigning themselves to tyranny as a hypocrite may act
toward an atheist.
Christ came to carry the sword, and the time has come when he who
has one should draw and brandish it. Certainly, God will save his
church. He alone will have the glory, but will man have the merit
of it? Where silence is, there is death; and, outside of what
directly touches revealed truth, discussion is useful, even when
held with those who err; it teaches us, at least, how we are not
to act or think, if nothing else.
Some say, "It is enough to preach morality. What have rigorous
truths to do with good sentiments? the aspirations of the heart
with the deductions of cold reason?"
Superficial questions! As if one should say, "What has the soul
to do with the soul?" Do not ethics depend on dogma? do not our
actions follow from metaphysical conditions? Every doctrine
becomes an element of life or a principle of death for the soul.
A sophist may, indeed, boast of a new code of ethics, or a new
law; as if truth could be contingent and relative as well as
universal, eternal, necessary, and, as such, not produced by man,
who is mortal and limited. International associations, conspiring
to assassinate Christian civilization, will soon respond with
consequent acts to such inconsequences of literature.
{327}
When the system of attack is changed, we must change the system
of defence. Preaching can no longer be confined to mere prones,
or exhortations to the good and inculcating the _fides
carbonaria_; [Footnote 66] but we must gird on the sword of
science and eloquence, and attack resolutely those who assail us
resolutely. Truth can be saved only by victory; and in this case,
as in war, _the best defence is an attack_.
[Footnote 66: The faith of the coal-heaver who believes
without science.]
If errors fortify themselves in the newspapers, and come on in
serried ranks, protected by gazettes, decrees, arts, and
sciences, we must meet them with the same means, humble them with
the truths rejected or distorted by the sophists, turn their own
weapons against them; for error, which is a stumbling-block for
the incautious, may become a ladder for the wise to ascend
higher. Nowadays, when all the arguments of unbelief are allied
in an invisible church which has fraternities, missionaries,
sacrifices, and even martyrs, to assault the visible church in
the name of progress, enlightenment, morality, reason, and the
future, we must draw out all the reasons of belief in opposition.
The manifestation of truth, even though it may not destroy error,
weakens its power. It is not enough to show that our adversaries
are wrong; we must be right ourselves. Let us not allow men to
think that there are truths incompatible with faith, or outside
of its dogmas; but that, notwithstanding exaggerations,
absurdities, erroneous and culpable notions, those truths obtain
from faith all their reality, vitality, and durability; and that
he who looks well will see that every incontestable and positive
progress comes from the organization of Christian society.
In this labor, can reason ask the aid of revelation? And why not?
The rationalists might complain if we attempted to overwhelm the
question with the weight of revealed authority; but when
revelation is united to reason, the power of the latter is
doubled. Mysteries are above reason, not contrary to it. Faith is
only the most sublime effort of reason, which is persuaded to
believe by arguments, convinced of its impotence without faith,
as well as of its greatness with faith. Faith is a grace, because
it is not sensible certainty. It springs from the desire of a
pure heart and of a right mind that the harmonious structure of
revelation should be true. Reason by itself cannot obtain the
knowledge of a mystery, any more than it can comprehend a mystery
when revelation makes it known. Reason, however, understands that
a mystery is above it, but not opposed to it; and recognizes the
necessity of the supernatural to explain even the mysteries of
nature. In like manner, though we cannot look at the sun, yet by
its light we see all things.
Some, seeing our adversaries use the sciences and politics
against religion, work with the arts, speak with ability, begin
to vituperate civilization, attack its acts and writings, deplore
the times, deny the stupendous progress of the age--the fruit of
so much study, fatigue, and genius.
This is not only an evil; it is a danger. Instead of repudiating
natural truths, we must seek to reconcile them with the
super-sensible, show ourselves just toward what is new, use it to
rejuvenate the decrepit, and apply it to the branches which have
lost vitality. The time will never come when all objections will
be conquered. They will always arise with new forms and new
phases.
{328}
Great thinkers give the word of command for new revolts against
truth; it is therefore necessary for great theologians to combat
them. Every Catholic is not fit to enter the list as a champion,
but every Catholic ought to know why faith is necessary in
general, and what he ought to believe in particular. The least
that can be expected of him is not to be less ignorant than the
curious, the learned, and the railers who, on every side, pick up
arguments for not believing. And how few know their religion, not
only among the common people, but even among the educated
classes! The fault lies in the fact that, while we Catholics are
so superior to our adversaries, we do not know how to use our
advantage, because we know not in what this superiority consists.
Otherwise, every educated person would find by himself as many
new, ingenious, and brilliant proofs to defend the religion of
his ancestors as others invent to destroy it--original, personal
proofs, as light, perhaps, as the objections, but sufficient for
the discussion of circles, to answer presumptuous contempt, false
ideas, and false principles, which are published in seductive
garb, with specious propositions, audacious negations, and
intrepid affirmations, [Footnote 67] and which penetrate into
politics, science, art, repugnant not only to logic, but even to
the instincts of common sense.
[Footnote 67: See a golden work of the Princess Wittgenstein
Iwanowska, _Simplicité des Colombes, Prudence des
Serpents_, where she refutes the most common objections,
and exhorts especially ladies to prudence and simplicity in
controversy and conduct.]
But, moreover, who does not feel the deficiency in scientific and
really practical education in that science which satisfies the
reason, the heart, and faith.
The religious element should form a great part in education, and
it would suffice to change the tone of controversy, from being
sour, contemptuous, diffident, discourteous, provoking, and
partial, the result of the usual impoliteness of journalists, to
a courageous yet prudent, conscientious as well as learned,
indulgent yet immovable, method; abandoning a phraseology which
did not formerly shock men's feelings, those sarcasms which
neither heal nor console, and remembering that our adversaries
are probably men of high intelligence, in error precisely on this
account; perhaps persons of right mind, unimpeachable morals, and
even of delicate sensibility.
This is the arena of _conférences_. Fraysinnous began the
work of uniting religion with science in the pulpit. Those of
Wiseman did better at Rome. Then arose the famous names of
Lacordaire, Ravignan, and now of Fathers Felix and Hyacinthe,
[Footnote 68] and in Italy, Fathers Maggio, Fabri, Rossi,
Giordano, and others. Among these must be named Alimonda, provost
of the cathedral of Genoa, who gave a course of lectures, all
depending on one proposition, and has just published them in four
volumes, with the title _Man under the Law of the
Supernatural_. Genoa, 1868.
[Footnote 68: At this time Father Hyacinthe is treating of
"The Church under her most general aspect," in Notre Dame, at
Paris. He treats of the providence of God.]
But four volumes cost more than a box of cigars! How much time it
takes to read them! some will exclaim who have, perhaps, read
_Les Miserables_ of Hugo, or _La Stella d'Italia;_ have
a copy of Thiers; subscribe for four or five magazines, and who
require a hundred or a hundred and fifty pages to be printed on a
question of finance or railroads, but find that number too great
where the discussion is about man's being, or his power of
working, on the essence of God, the immortality of the soul, the
necessity of virtue, and the necessity of religion to create it,
the divinity of Christianity, or belief in its dogmas.
{329}
But those who do not merely aspire to cloud the human intellect,
and repress sublime desires under the weight of self-interest,
passion, and the tyranny of prejudice, and who exclaim, with
Linnaeus, _"Oh! quam contemta res est homo nisi super humana se
erexerit,"_ [Footnote 69] know that to follow great ideas
becomes a nobler habit, as trivialities become common; and that
essential truths, which are never out of place or time, are based
on the same systematic method which seemed to deny them entirely.
[Footnote 69: "Oh! how contemptible a thing is man if he
cannot arise above what is human!"]
III.
Scientific atheism asserts that "common sense is the test of
belief in the supernatural," and that the greatness of every
religious conception referable to this standard is
counterbalanced by the greatness of scientific conceptions on
nature and the universe. Whoever, then, does not belong to the
party of those who presume to differ with the atheist, can easily
perceive how unacceptable a treatise on the supernatural must be;
since Alimonda began by demonstrating that it is true, and
credible; and that it imports us not only in the next life but
even in this to believe it. To desire to invent a mechanical
theory of the universe, a material origin of human intelligence
and liberty, originates the anarchical conception of giving the
explanation of the cosmological whole by means of every special
science. Büchner and Vogt modified the Cartesian ideas by
teaching "that there is no force without matter, no matter
without force; that matter thinks as well as moves; and that all
things are but dynamic transformations of matter." Hence comes
intelligent electricity, cogitating phosphorus; and Moleschott
was invited to teach in our universities that "thought is a
motion of cerebral matter, and conscience a material property."
Rognero taught that "conscience dwells in the circulatory
system." These doctrines have been preached in every
revolutionary tavern with all that personal exaggeration which we
always find in those who retail second-hand dogmas.
Well! granted these hypotheses, we still ask, What is this force?
What is this primary motion? Where is the mover? Would an
activity anterior to existence have ever created itself imperfect
and subject to evil? Can the relation of necessary succession be
confounded with the relation of causality? Does the metaphysical
conception of cause remain indistinct from the conditions of
existence? If the order of ideas be distinguished from the order
of facts, everything leads us to a first cause, to the most real
of realities, to the will of a supreme artificer which determined
inert matter to motion rather than to rest.
If, then, this motion endures with fixed laws; if, in so great a
diversity of infinite bodies, I recognize a system according to
which no one interferes with the other, but all agree in a
supreme harmony of mode; if, for instance, the destruction of one
of the celestial bodies would discompose the marvellous structure
of the universe; if from the alteration of the orbit of a planet
the man of science can conclude the existence of another,
thousands of miles distant, it is not the holy fathers but
Voltaire who will exclaim, "If the clock exists, there must
necessarily be a clock-maker." It is impossible to kill a moral
being, a universal sentiment, by arms, or books, or declamations.
{330}
The Deity does not offer himself to sensation, observation, or
experience; hence the sensists and perceptionists see in him but
a hypothesis, and reject all theology and all metaphysics. They
abuse the method of observation by applying it to what is not
observable. No object of experiment can be God; nor can any
perception reach him in this world, since he can only manifest
himself to us ideally; that is to say, by the reflection of
thought on itself, under the pure form of an idea; and an idea
necessarily supposes an existence. Reason must come to God
through the medium of the idea of God: whence an illustrious
writer defending religious philosophy adopted the appropriate
title of "IDEA OF GOD."
Nowadays, when the series of generations are brought to laugh and
dance at the funeral of God and the evaporation of Christ, it is
not superfluous to accumulate psychological and social proofs on
the existence of a first necessary Cause, on its reality, and on
its divine life reverberating in the great labor of creation; on
those laws of phenomena which others call the ideas of nature,
and we call the Creator. The word must be personified, and
substantiated to express something real.
Among these laws I have always found that those regarding the
origin of language had great influence on me and are of great
help against the atheists. The more we study, the more we are
convinced that the languages have a common source. How did man
ever discover that ideas could be represented with sounds, or
real thought by the medium of words, and then invent symbolical,
phonetic, or alphabetic signs to represent both ideas and sounds?
Or is the word only the means of expressing our thoughts, or the
essential form of them, the indispensable condition necessary to
our having them? Can sensation draw anything out of a word but a
material sound? How is it that all the human races--Iranic,
Semitic, Gallic, or Black--speak, and only men speak? How is it
that although there is a common element in all languages, yet
such diversity exists among certain groups? The more we study
this indispensable complement of creation, this condition of our
intellectual development, the more we are led to confess that
there are mysteries in the human word as well as in the divine
word; and all this reveals the name of God.
When we have proved the reality, we must investigate the essence
of God. And here we meet the mystery of unity and trinity, which,
considered in itself, explains being; considered outside of
itself, explains beings. Because, if we repudiate a supernatural
God, we must substitute another in his place--a being of reason
and abstraction, or a material god, or a god of pleasure. But
these insane hypotheses must be made to explain the existence of
the universe. They are either the eternity of matter or
emanatism. Life put into matter we know not how; born, we know
not how, we have spontaneous productions, or transformations of
species, as Lamarck and Darwin maintain; but the learned show
that these theories are impossible both as to soul and body. And
then no one of these naturalists explains the end of man, nor his
most precious gift--liberty.
{331}
The God of the Bible alone contains the true explanation of man
and the universe. He who, spontaneously putting his omnipotence
into activity without material elements, drew the world out of
nothing; and this because he is good, and wills the good and the
beautiful.
IV.
The most prodigious part of creation is man, destined for
eternity; nor could there be in him a tendency without a scope,
an end without a means, nor a merit without a recompense. The
world is for his use, but he must not forget that eternity is his
destiny. For the purpose of proving the material origin of the
human intellect philosophers reject all who would give to life a
distinct principle, isolated from organism, supposing that life,
at least in its rudimental form, could spring from the bosom of
organic liquids. Virchow praised the little cell, the only one of
the anatomic elements which Milne-Edwards called organical, and
which is a nucleus of various forms, surrounded by a protoplasm
of organic matter without figure. From the cell are formed the
embryos, which gradually become perfect and form animals, until
the ape changes into man.
Finally, on interrogating life in its unity, in its harmonies, in
its cause and end, in its full and substantial reality, we find
that it does not contain in itself a causal unity which is
sufficient for it; and the great modern physiologist Bernard
says: "The problem of physiology does not consist in pointing out
the physico-chemical laws which living beings have in common with
inorganic bodies, but in discovering the vital laws which
characterize them." By studying mental diseases, and perceiving
that atrophy of a certain part of the brain will cause the loss
of certain faculties, and that the injection of oxygenated blood
will reawaken them, and with similar experiments, it has been
attempted to prove the materiality of cogitation, and to show
that the soul is a chimera. These are irrational materialistic
interpretations of physiological facts, for the cause of the fact
is confounded with the conditions of the phenomenon.
This same Virchow, who seemed to have discovered such a powerful
argument against spiritualism in his theory of the cell, cannot
explain with physics and optics alone the phenomena of vision;
becomes confounded before the mystery of life, and declares:
"Nothing is like life, but life itself. Nature is twofold.
Organic nature is entirely distinct from inorganic. Although
formed by the same substance, from atoms of the same nature,
organic matter offers us a continued series of phenomena which
differ in their nature from the inorganic world. Not because the
latter represents dead nature--for nothing dies but what has
lived; even inorganic nature possesses its activity, its
eternally active labor--but this activity is not life except in a
figurative sense." [Footnote 70]
[Footnote 70: "The Atom and the Individual," a discourse
pronounced at Berlin in 1866.]
We do not think it superfluous to oppose these reflections, added
to those of Alimonda, to the negations of the materialists, which
have weight only because they have been often repeated; and we
conclude with Alimonda that man is an inexplicable mystery if we
do not accept the other mystery of original sin. Hence the
conflict between reason and the passions; the inclination to evil
and bloodthirstiness; the necessity of wars and prisons.
{332}
If we admit the intrinsic goodness of man, there is no guilt and
there can be no chastisement; society can institute no tribunals,
but only hospitals to cure diseases. This has been said in our
age; and common sense rejected it. The primitive fall and
successive activity show how man progresses indefinitely,
according to nature, not according to socialistic utopias. This
explains the inequality of the faculties and of labor, and hence
of goods, of property, which otherwise would be a theft.
The whole of ancient society attests this degradation; but a
Redeemer was promised; he was confusedly expected by all nations;
he was clearly predicted by the prophets of Judea, in order to
console mankind, that they might believe in him to come, hope in
him, and love him by anticipation.
These promises, and the figures which personified them, are
deposited in the Bible; that divine history which clears up the
origin of humanity and the changes of civilization, and whose
witnesses, though apparently contradictory, only make the thesis
and the antithesis of a great synthesis, interpreted by an
infallible authority. The unity of the human species asserted in
that book has been proved by the sciences, even by paleontology,
which some pretended to arm against the biblical affirmations;
and while the frivolity of the last century thought it had
mockingly dissipated truth, we have scientific progress proving
the Bible to be wonderfully in accord with the least expected
discoveries.
The continual intervention of Providence in the Bible is
repugnant to human pride, which would be the centre and creator
of all events; yet this providence it is which satisfies, at the
same time, the wants of the human heart, gives a legal
constitution to society, a sanction to human acts, without which
we should only have cutthroats and the gallows.
V.
Thus far we nave presented man in relation to God; let us
consider man in relation to Jesus Christ, a theme by far more
important, as we can say with the psalmist: "_Convenerunt in
unum adversus Dominum et adversus Christum ejus._" [Footnote
71] In this most corrupt world reparation was expected from
humanity, but who could fulfil it but the incarnate Word? Greater
than all the great ones of the earth, he established his
providential kingdom, making it the social centre of men and
centuries.
[Footnote 71: "They assembled together against the Lord and
his Christ."]
Our first parents aspired to become gods, and their pride was
transmitted to their posterity; but behold how God really unites
himself to man!
Men felt a secret want of expiation, expressed by their
sacrifices and mortifications; and Christ satisfied their desire
by uniting in himself the two natures, and by fecundating with
holy merits the sufferings of individuals and of nations.
Yet men wish to make a myth of him! And after the encyclopaedists
have derided him, now they hypocritically try to crown him with
human greatness and beauty, to rob him of his divinity! But how
can you explain his influence on the most cultivated nations,
lasting so many centuries, and through an incessant war from
Simon Magus to Renan? Is not his immeasurable influence over the
human race divine? With the light of his doctrine he created the
life of intelligence and of conscience. His is no hidden and
recondite word, but common and popular; not methodized into a
philosophical system, equipped with proofs; not even robed in
eloquence.
{333}
His scope is not to invent, but to _reveal_--that is, lift
the veil which covered primitive truths, and excite to good. He
is virtue personified, the model of men, with grace through which
charity triumphs over egotism--_grace_, the most profound
and most beautiful word in the dictionary of religion. But here
human pride rebels, because Christ taught mysteries.
What, then, are mysteries but our ignorance, and the
insufficiency of our reason? Thus the vulgar believe that the sun
goes around the earth because the senses show it; thus a silly
man would deny the existence of the imponderable fluids because
he does not see or touch them, although he feels their effects.
Three temples rise in the world: of nature, of reason, and of
religion; and in all there are mysteries. There are mysteries in
space, atoms, divisibility, forces, life, thought, the cell,
sensation, idea, limits: in everything under the form which
passes away there is a mystery which remains. If a miracle is
humanly conceivable, it ought to be divinely possible.
If you exclude the idea of the supernatural, nothing is left but
nature, with the character of necessity which reason denies it;
with a series of monstrous and gratuitous affirmations which
constitute pantheism.
But some will say, "Yes, there is a God distinct from nature; he
is self-conscious and free, but he is immutable: while the
supernatural represents him as changeable and arbitrary."
Thus reason those who, led by anthropomorphic illusions, subject
the action of God to succession. The acts of man, who is
ephemeral and localized, are necessarily successive; and because
the results of divine activity are manifested to our eyes in time
and space, they seem new and wonderful. But God is not limited by
time or space; his act is one, eternal, immanent like his will;
everything which proceeds from that act is the act itself, one,
eternal, and immanent, and thus the differences between the
natural and supernatural disappear.
To defend the idea of the supernatural is not, therefore, to
attack science or smother intelligence; but to defend the idea of
God, who is the hinge of all science. This, indeed, banishes the
supernatural from its domain; but if every reality is not
reducible to nature, it is impossible not to admit a higher
principle of the laws which nature reveals, and of which nature
is not the necessary principle. Christianity pronounces nothing
on the science of nature, except that the supernatural is above
natural laws; that there is a God, as St. Augustine says,
"_pater luminum et evigilationis nostrae_." [Footnote 72] Is
this a mystery? But is not everything which exists an
incomprehensible manifestation of the supernatural? Is not the
free-will of man an incomprehensible mystery?
[Footnote 72: "The Father of lights and of our awaking."]
But revealed mysteries, much more than dry theorems which
restrain reason, are fruitful in meditation, humility, gratitude,
and aspiration after a life of bliss: they are light to the
intellect, motives for virtue; all have a comprehensible side;
they have their wherefore; and this is sufficient for the
happiness of individuals, and works efficaciously on the whole of
society.
{334}
Miracles, which are extraordinary to man, are natural to God, and
he uses them to manifest Christ the Redeemer. But the diminishers
of great things wish to make Christ a mountebank, or a magician
working by natural means like the mesmerizers, in whom they
believe rather than in Christ. They deny Christ and offer incense
to Hegel, who said that "_the universe_ is a simple
negation." Every religious, moral, or political doctrine must
stand the test of actualization: the idea must be realized; the
thought must become life; and the result is the criterion. But
the greatest miracle of Jesus Christ was the establishment of the
new kingdom of grace on the ruins of the kingdom of the world; to
substitute the eternal edifice of the church for corrupt
institutions; instead of proud science, to put the holy word of
the apostolate; charity, generous even to martyrdom, in the place
of brute force. Martyrdom! this is another word which shocks the
free-thinkers who retail cheap heroes, and deafen us with hymns
to the martyrs of fatherland, ennobling with this title assassins
on the scaffold. Christ is a martyr for humanity; he is a God of
order, wisdom, and charity.
But here they stop us again, and pretend that he aimed at an
impossible perfection, and was a utopist; and as such, they
reject him, although they are admirers of such dreamers as More
or Giordano Bruno, Fourier or Saint-Simon.
But is it true that Christ's doctrine cannot be realized? There
are precepts and counsels in it; and you, by confounding them,
condemn Christianity, as if it commanded all to observe what is
counselled only to a few exceptional existences called by God. To
observe the counsels special virtue is required, and those monks
who deserved so well even of society practised them. Rather than
deride and destroy them, they diffused the evangelical counsels
which they practised in their own lives--obedience, abstinence,
purity; those virtues which would give that _facilitas
imperii_--that self-control--which is so hard to keep; that
virtue which is the order of love. Those monks peopled the
Thebaid, lived in the poverty of St. Francis, in the austerities
of St. Bruno, awaited death in caverns, and ate only herbs;
others fled the world to pray for it, but the church never gave
them pharisaical faces; life, soul, talents, imagination
characterized them; the happiness of their existence was
increased by the blessing of the church; feasts, music, and
sacred rites abounded; social, domestic, and scientific life were
nourished by Christian virtue and education; patriotism had its
hymns if fortunate; audits, litanies, if unsuccessful; art and
poetry became incorporated with worship; admiration for natural
beauties was aroused; activity and prudence stimulated and
eulogized, progress approved, and civilization encouraged.
Yet the rationalists would give the glory of this civil society
of which we boast to man alone, while it is in fact the work of
the supernatural gospel. In this we find light, virtue, harmony;
that is, power, subjection, and agreement. The gospel establishes
a respected and vigilant authority in face of a policy which
traffics in opinions. Kings are bound by the same morality as the
least subjects. Rulers swear to observe the law of God; that is,
never to become tyrants. Power is exercised after the example set
by God; and the head of the state is the first-born among
brothers. Subjects are children who obey not _propter timorem
sed propter conscientiam_--not from fear but for conscience'
sake; an obedience to God rather than to men. Christianity
asserted the true doctrine of equal rights with inequality of
rank when it proclaimed that we are all brothers; it broke the
chains of the slave; abolished hereditary enmity between nations,
and all superiority save that of merit.
{335}
To deny that these advantages are derived from Christianity would
now be stupidity; but they say that while it formerly worked
wonders, there is no longer any necessity for religion, the
priest, or Christ: morality has become acclimated; necessary
truths are acquired; and so man can progress with laws,
tradition, and social organization.
Those who speak in this way do not comprehend the connection
between metaphysical and practical truth; do not realize that the
most common maxims which we drink in with our mother's milk would
become gradually obscured by separation from their source; as the
necessary sanction would be wanting to them.
Between the merely honest man and the Christian, there will
always be the difference which exists between the bird that can
only hop and the full-fledged bird which flies. Let us suppose,
even, that the learned of the future will govern themselves
better than the philosophers of antiquity; still it is only
religion that can say to the multitude, "Hope always and never
obtain." If there is no heaven, if gold and pleasure are the only
aspirations, why not enjoy them? Let a revolutionist arise and
promise them, he will obtain a hearing much more readily than the
philosopher who can promise only a doubtful eternity. But then
what will become of society? If you preach resignation to the
poor without giving them hope, will not hope arise without
resignation?
It was the gospel which humanly unfettered the child, woman, and
the poor. By it alone were exposed children and orphans gathered
together; it founded hospitals and pious retreats for every
disease of the body and mind. Vincent of Paul, Girolamo Miani,
Calasanctius, and a host of others never ceased in the church;
and even the world blesses their name, blesses their work, that
of the holy infancy, and that for the education of Chinese
children, and for the redemption of captives among the Moors.
Entire religious congregations have been founded to save children
from death, from penury, and from ignorance; so that at the
destruction of these religious orders, we ought to say, as Christ
to the mothers of Jerusalem, "Weep not over me, but over your
children." We should weep the more when we see their intellects
and souls entrusted to state officials who fashion them to suit
their masters.
And woman? From what base degradation and turpitude has she been
raised by Christianity. But the state law wills that she should
be thus addressed: "Thou hast been brought up to purity; to avoid
every impure act and look; but henceforth I, the mayor, command
thee to give thyself up to the man whom I, the mayor, designate
as thy husband." On the other hand, the socialists wish to take
her out of the domestic sanctuary to take part in business, in
government, in war; she must become a woman of letters, a
politician and a heroine. Ah! the heroism of woman consists in
fulfilling her domestic duties, in the apostleship of doing good;
let her have the heroism of faith and virtue, and she will save
the world, as she helped so much to do in the person of Mary over
eighteen centuries ago.
"Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God," said
Christ; and his chief followers took care of the poor, instructed
them, supplied their wants with alms; made them noble with
blessings; and, since it is necessary to suffer, the poor were
taught to bear their ills with the hope of immortal recompense.
{336}
But the strong-minded of this age fiercely scream about the
rights of the poor; and yet rob spontaneous and virtuous charity
of the means of supplying the wants of the poor. The necessity of
official aid is created, and thus pride and rancor against the
rich are excited, while suffering remains without consolation.
VI.
All these points have their objections and suitable answer well
developed in our orator's work. Alimonda examines man in relation
to the church and shows how human reason, while it strives to
rebel against her, is obliged to bless her, even by the mouth of
her most determined enemies, as happened to the prophet Balaam.
This church was not established by the power of man or by
progressive development; she was born beautiful and perfect, the
same in the upper room at Jerusalem as in the Council of Trent;
she underwent every species of hostility, violent and puerile, of
kings and people, of rogues and editors, and yet always remained
whole and alive.
While human institutions regulate man, the church aspires to the
government of souls. Although she aimed at so much, she was
listened to; she defined what good meant; restricted authority;
gave the law of work; and was believed. Even the ancient churches
by their very nature were spiritual societies; but they exercised
no influence on consciences, little on men's conduct, less even
than the schools of philosophy. Later heresies and schisms could
not spread or establish themselves, except by force and war, or
by allowing every one to be the judge of his own conscience and
reason; that is, heresy did not pretend to direct souls. Our
church has a perfect and unchangeable order for the government of
conscience, an order which does not vary according to opinion.
The latter will say with Thierry that the conquered are always
right; with Cousin and Thiers, that it is the conqueror who is is
always right. Which is one to believe? It will be said that the
voice of the people is the voice of God, and that common sense
ought to be the rule of our actions. Well, suppose it is; how can
we interrogate it? Where is its decision? Where its organ? They
will tell us to-day it is "universal suffrage." We shall not
dwell on such nonsense: we merely inquire, must I ask its advice
in reference to my private actions? I need for these safe, well
expressed, and efficacious principles.
The church answers every question; and her answers are always the
most generous, the most human, and the most kind to the weak. She
has a mixed government--monarchical, aristocratic, and
democratic; her aristocrats are poor fishermen. By this she is
the type of modern governments which have the representative
system. Rationalism wants to substitute revolution for this;
takes away from the people the good conditions peculiar to them,
acquired by them, legitimate and independent of governments; and
makes atheism the lever with which to subvert politics. The
apostles of rationalism adore liberty, provided they are her
priests and sacrificators; create a new author of
civilization--the rabble; oblige kings to divide their authority
with the mob; the mob upsets its creatures; kings run away; good
men hide; the owners of property, menaced by the dogma of
plebeian avidity, oppose the bayonet to the knife of the rabble
until these are overcome.
{337}
Precisely because the temporal mission of the church is great as
the mistress and legislator of nations, precisely because she is
authority, the impotent violently, and the powerful foolishly,
attack her at a time when men want rights without duties, the
husband as well as the citizen, the laborer as well as the
legislator.
The church alone has saints; she is universal, perpetual,
irreformable: characters which manifest her divine origin and
divine actuation.
This divinity of the church is found in Catholicism, not in
Protestantism. Catholicity alone has positive unity of faith,
love, civilization; that is, light, sacrifice, virtue, which
Protestantism lacks. All history and statistics, not
systematically false or officially disfigured, which looks
further than merely a few years, show that civilization does not
progress so well with Protestantism. The Catholic Church had
conquered the world and formed modern civilization before the
unity of faith and charity was broken; and she would have done
more had there been no rupture; and had not the religious wars
impeded her power, menaced Europe with a new barbarism, subjected
it again to the scourge of armies and conquests, which prevent us
even yet from considering our age superior to the most deplorable
of past centuries.
VII.
The Catholic Church established her primacy in Rome by three
miracles, by conquering Rome when she was mistress of the whole
world; by using Rome, her language, civilization, and
legislation, to defend Christianity; and by perpetuating the
primacy in Rome. Everything that exists has a reason for
existence; resurrection is a proof of divinity. Christian Rome,
though often driven to agony, has always revived. Exiled kings
die in banishment, abandoned and despised; this is a daily
spectacle to our age; the popes become more glorious with
persecution; a pope in exile at Avignon or in a prison at Savona
is as powerful as in the Quirinal palace. If the most powerful
emperor, the most iron will of our century, like the acrobat who
kicks away the ladder after using it to ascend, robbed the pope
who assisted him to rise, insulted and imprisoned him, all
Europe--Catholic, Protestant, and schismatic--took arms to
restore the pontiff. Thrones crumble, dynasties disappear; but
the old man always returns to his seat, from Avignon or Salerno,
from Fontainebleau or from Gaeta.
Modern servility may grow indignant to see Henry V. at the feet
of Gregory VII.; but it could not see Pius VI. kiss the hand of
emperors, as Voltaire did with Catharine or with Frederic of
Prussia; in vain will it hope to see Pius IX. at the feet of
diplomatists or demagogues; but he will say with St. Augustine,
_Leo victus est saeviendo; Agnus vicit patiendo_. [Footnote
73]
[Footnote 73: The lion was conquered by fury; the lamb
triumphed by suffering.]
The church lives immortal, neither in nor above but with the
state. Her relation with the state may be either of protection,
limitation, or separation. Protected as in the beginning and as
she was often under the ancient kings, the church would not be
degraded. She had her autonomy in her laws, ordinances, and
hierarchy; she was, not the slave or the flatterer of the power
under which she lived.
She does not seek limitation or restrictions, but supports them
without changing her nature. By degrees, as kings prevailed in
modern society, and abridged the power of the people, of the
lords and corporations, they became jealous of the authority of
the church, restricted her action and obstructed her freedom.
Powerful in armies, money, and slaves, kings imposed on the
church; she became resigned, sacrificed some minor points in
order to guard the chief ones in tact; but notwithstanding all
the chains of concordats, she remained sovereign in her freedom.
{338}
Separation from the state is like the separation between soul and
body; hence the church is opposed to a state that is unchristian.
The church, destined to illuminate the world with her divine
light, and not to govern it politically, is by nature
conservative. She was so even when the Roman emperors oppressed
her; when they went away from Rome, she respected them at
Constantinople, until she found it necessary for her defence and
for the cause of national freedom to withdraw herself and Italy
from imperial control. When she absolved nations from their oaths
of allegiance, it was in the name of morality, and not of a
political or social idea; to preserve for God what belongs to
him, and not to deny to Cesar what belongs to him. [Footnote 74]
[Footnote 74: By the recent work, _Religious and Civil
History of the Popes_, of Wm. Audisio, published at Rome
in 1868, many precious facts have been recalled to my mind.
One is that Gregory XVI., while Portugal was divided between
Don Pedro and Don Miguel, tried to settle the dispute by
recalling the ecclesiastical tradition, to render civil
obedience to him who governs in fact: _Qui actu ibidem
summa rerum potiatur_. In this he wished to settle the
dispute between the contending parties; for the church seeks
_qua Christi sunt, qua, ad spiritualem aeternamque
populorum felicitatem facilius conducant_, ("those things
which are of Christ, which conduce to the spiritual and
eternal happiness of peoples.") The other in which Pius VII.,
in the consistory of July 28th, 1817, authorized the oath of
allegiance to be taken to the constitution and laws, because
this oath did not oblige in reference to laws which kings
might make in spiritual matters; laws which are null of
themselves, for kings have no right to make them. This
decision regarding France was repeated October 2d, 1818, in
regard to Bavaria.]
Thus although we may find no constitution which abolishes
slavery, no one will deny that it ceased through the influence of
Christianity, which modified customs and habits, and these
influenced the laws. Thus the time will come when all that is
good in modern society will be assured to it; and then the
influence of Christianity will be made manifest in purifying and
consecrating all that came from its teachings, or from needs
which it caused to be felt; so that the so-called liberals will
see that it is not necessary to attack Christianity in order to
defend the acquisitions of their age, nor will the faithful
attack the age as an irreconcilable enemy. Does not everything
happen by the will or permission of God? Are not all political
changes and social transformations providential facts? If the
Christian cannot praise them, he becomes resigned to them; he
does not increase the evil by anger; he trusts in God, who can
change the stones into children of Abraham; and we, separating
ourselves from those whose patriotism consists in denouncing
others as enemies of their country, say to the men of good-will
of our day:
"O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum)
O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem." [Footnote 75]
_AEneid_, lib. I.
[Footnote 75: "Companions! we have borne evils before this;
ye who have suffered worse, remember that God will put an end
even to these woes."]
How can you who have learned the watchwords of "Progress," and
"Go-ahead," expect hasty "progress" at Rome, so slow in her
motions?
Napoleon boasted that he had done in three hours what men
formerly took three months to execute. Yes, he ran from
Alexandria to Vienna, to Madrid, to Moscow, and--to St. Helena;
while Rome remained at her post. Those who do not look
superficially admit that she showed splendidly her wisdom in
certain circumstances by not closing the way to future wisdom. In
the modern exuberance of fungous intelligence, new systems easily
sprout up, die in a few years; and the heroes of to-day become
the objects of hatred to-morrow.
{339}
Rome, eternal guardian of truth, cannot make and unmake in haste,
take up and lay down, like human societies; but she proceeds
slowly and patiently, yet she advances.
Certainly the church will find a new field in which she can
co-operate with the state to preserve for humanity, no longer the
antique forms or the mere letter given by Catholics alone, but
the Christian spirit; a new method of protecting Catholic truth
in countries open to every people, and every worship; deprived of
the help of force and decrees, she will have no other support but
truth; and since this is greater and more secure in Catholicism,
it will always succeed in propagating itself. Will not this be
the object of the approaching Council? The General Council will
not have to destroy what is irremovable, or what derives
necessarily from eternal truth; but it will help us worldlings to
separate, in principle, the substance from the form, the essence
from the application.
Certainly the hate which inspires men in these times against true
liberty, makes governments justify and praise every attack
against the church, and deprive her of every right, even when
they pretend to protect her.
Do these governments want to form national churches? This would
be to go back in civilization, which progresses toward union; to
deny catholicitv or the universality of the race; to give up
souls as well as bodies to the power of kings, as before
Christianity; to give the direction of consciences and the
judgment of morals to the civil power, which should rule only
bodies.
Some would tolerate Catholicity provided there be liberty of
conscience and of worship; let there be no temporal power in the
church; no religious corporations; and let the secular clergy be
raised to the height, as they say, of the age.
What is meant by liberty of conscience has been sufficiently
explained by the pamphleteers, and the popes have given solemn
decisions on the subject. Conceive a society in which it would be
unlawful to expel those who violate its laws or disturb its
order! The church simply expels from the communion of prayers and
sacrifice those who are obstinate in violating her dogmas. How!
You insult our community; refuse to communicate in our rites; you
will not accept the pardon which the church always offers you;
and yet you pretend to force her to comfort your last moments
with sacraments which you repel and deride even then; to force
her to bless your corpse, and bury it in the holy ground where
repose those with whom you refused to associate during life!
As to temporal goods or the right to possess them, and as for
religious corporations--that is, the liberty of community life,
of prayer, benevolence, of wearing a peculiar dress, and of
worshipping according to your conscience--what could Alimonda say
which had not been said by all the independent men of our
century?
As to those who assert that the clergy are not educated up to the
standard of modern civilization, we need only appeal to those who
have any knowledge to see if the ecclesiastics do not rank high
in every part of the encyclopedia; nor do we hesitate to say that
the most educated man in every village is ordinarily the priest;
the priest who is compelled to make a regular course of study, to
pass repeated examinations, and assist at conferences.
{340}
VII.
It is very strange that at a time when the love of show has
become a mania; when kings, ministers, journalists, and myriads
of ephemeral heroes are honored with canticles, poems, and
ovations; when some button-holes have more decorations than our
altars; when there is hardly a name to which pompous titles are
not appended, it should be deemed necessary for the benefit of
religion to abolish external worship in our churches. Is not our
century especially vain of its investigations in matter? Is not
the aspiration of the age after physical comfort? Why, then, try
to restrict religion to the spiritual, to prevent the erection of
temples which would please the senses of that double being--man?
When Constantinople, austerely interpreting the evangelical
ordinances, attempted to destroy reverence for holy images, the
church fought for the right to cultivate the fine arts; and
sustained martyrdom and exile to maintain the privilege of
guarding the fine arts in her sanctuaries. When the reform of the
sixteenth century called the Catholic Church Babylon, because she
asked Michael Angelo and Raphael to immortalize the grandeurs of
Christianity, she resisted again--knowing how to distinguish the
exceptional life of the voluntary anchorite from the social life
of the merely honest man; exacting virtues from all her children,
but virtues suitable to their state, to the mystic life of Mary
and to the external life of Martha, to the viceroy Joseph and to
the shoemaker Crispin.
The same church defends, to-day, love and art from the modern
iconoclasts and spurious Puritans.
Discoursing about worship, our author begins by that of Mary,
showing it to be a religious principle in accord with reason; a
public fact, approved by history; a most tender affection,
sanctioned by the heart. It is not long since the chief of the
English ritualists, Doctor Pusey, made the most honorable
admissions in reference to the Catholic dogmas and ceremonies,
excepting, however, the reverence which Catholics have for the
Mother of God. Archbishop Manning's [Footnote 76] reply is one of
the most beautiful and rational apologies for this worship for
which Italy is so remarkable. For all republics were consecrated
to her; she was the chosen patroness of our chief cities; her
likeness was impressed on our coins and seals; our first poets
sang her praises, and their echoes have not yet died; our
painters could find no higher or sweeter model; our architects
competed in erecting grand temples to her honor; our musicians to
compose canticles to her praise; great expeditions were
undertaken in her name; colonies were consecrated to her, where
now Italian power, but not Italian influence, has ceased. And it
is Mary who will save our Italy from humiliations, and from that
degradation which seems to be the only aspiration of her
intolerant sons. [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 76: Probably a mistake for Dr. Newman.]
[Footnote 77: I may be permitted to refer the reader to the
fifty-fourth chapter of my _Heretics of Italy_, in which
the respect due to saints and to Mary is discussed.]
The intolerant repeat that laws, decrees, and social organization
are sufficient to regulate civil society.
They are sufficient; but they require science to prepare them and
virtue to apply them; both to be invoked from on high. The safety
of one's country, the fulfilment of its aspirations, the triumph
of justice, must come from heaven. Formerly the Italians marched
to battle under the standard of the saints or of the cross; the
heroes of Legnano, of Fornovo, and of Curzolari prostrated
themselves in prayer before fighting; and the Italians of those
times conquered and gave thanks to God for having given to them a
beautiful, great, and prosperous country. But now we have popular
tumults and the ravings of newspapers.
{341}
Our strong-minded heroes consider it degrading to bow before the
Author of all things. Yet, passing over all the wise men of
antiquity, the most free nation in Europe opens its parliaments
with prayer, and obeys the orders of the queen to fast in time of
disaster, or feast in time of great success. The President of the
United States, no matter what may be his creed, orders a day of
thanksgiving to God, and he is obeyed. When the telegraph from
America was able to carry a message to Europe on August 17th,
1858, the first words which leaped along the wire were, "Europe
and America are united. Glory to God in the highest; peace on
earth; to men, good-will." "What grander spectacle can there be
than to see a whole people united in the duties imposed by its
religion in celebrating great anniversaries? What heroic
outbursts, how many noble sacrifices, were expressed in the
monologues of holy days! What high thoughts and magnificent
conceptions arose in the souls of philosophers and poets! How
many generous resolutions were taken! When the observance of the
Sunday was neglected, the last spark of poetic fire was
extinguished in the souls of our poets. It has been truly said,
without religion there is no poetry. We must add, without
external worship and feast days there is no religion. In the
country, where the people are more susceptible of the religious
sentiment, the Sunday still keeps a part of its social influence.
The sight of a rustic population united as one family by the
voice of its pastor, and prostrated in silence and recollection
before the invisible majesty of God, is touching and sublime; is
a charm which goes to the heart."
Who speaks in this way? Proud hon. [sic] And Napoleon says, "Do
you want something sublime? Recite your _Pater noster_."
The most sublime prayer is the mass--the culminating point of
worship; the perennial expiation of perennial faults. From the
mass Alimonda passes to confession; then to communion; and thence
to the responsibility of present life. He exhorts all to
_understand_ and _believe_. This is the creed of the
Christian: _Credere et intelligere_.
VIII.
We have thus far followed the illustrious Alimonda, repeating or
developing his arguments. Let us now examine his manner of
treating the questions which he discusses.
The classic Greek orators had wonderful simplicity of style, in
which the familiarity of their expressions ennobled their
sentiments and gave force to their reasoning. The Eastern fathers
followed in their footsteps. The Latins ornamented eloquence so
as to make it a special art, assigning it a measured cadence, a
peculiar intonation of voice, a system of position and gesture.
Hence, the Latin fathers studied speech even to affectation,
sought after rhetorical figures, yet always more attentive to the
practical than to the abstract. The French formed themselves
rather according to the Greek models; and the noble simplicity of
Bossuet, Massilon, and Fénélon renders them still models for one
who would discourse before a polished people.
The Italians, if you except some of the very earliest preachers,
preferred to ornament their speeches and indulge in artificial
figures. In the ages of bad taste, the worst display of metaphors
disgraced the pulpit; whence the custom passed to the bar and
parliament, where there have been and still are so many examples
of unnatural oratory.
{342}
Hence, in so great an abundance of literature, we have no good
preachers except Legneri. In modern times, the style of the
pretentious Turchi has been changed to that of the academic
Barbieri; but that style of preaching "whose father is the
Gospel, and whose mother is the Bible," is rarely heard in our
pulpits. Our very best eloquence, that of the pastorals and
homilies of our bishops, is spoiled by too frequent citations,
and is often devoid of that sentiment which comes from the heart
and goes to it. We do not want to borrow the French style. It is
a mistake to steal the language of another nation, either in
writing or preaching. Peoples have different dispositions. It
would not do to address the Carib in the same way as the
Parisian, or the contemporaries of Godfrey as the subjects of
Napoleon.
Our author, beside being familiar with the first propagators and
defenders of Christianity, is highly educated in the classics,
and has always ready phrases, hemistichs, and allusions which
display his erudition. His method is prudent, his divisions
logical, and the train of ideas well followed up; his language
correct, and the clearness and marvellous beauty of his style
show him to be a finished orator.
He draws an abundance of materials from the most diverse and
recondite sources. He adduces the most recent discoveries of
science regarding the essence of the sun, nebula, aerolites, and
on the nature of matter. Without mentioning the biblical and
legendary portions of his work, there are in it traces of every
part of both ancient and modern history: Camoens and Napoleon,
Abelard and Renan, Isnard and Jouffroy, Donoso Cortes and
Cagliostro, Marie Antoinette and Madame de Swetchine, Ireland and
Poland, the discourses of Napoleon III. and of Cavour. The author
brings us through the byways of London to the prison of Thomas
More, to the solitude of St. Helena, and to the lands where the
missionaries are laboring. He quotes even the heroes of romance:
"Renzo" and the "Unknown," Renato, Werter, St. Preux, the Elvira
of George Sand, Wiseman's Fabiola, and Victor Hugo's Valjean.
With the spoils of the Egyptians Alimonda builds a tabernacle to
the living God. Who will censure him, since our Holy Father, in a
brief of September 20th, 1867, approves his labor?
The nineteenth century can be saved only by means suitable to the
nineteenth century; and Simon Stylites or Torquemada, the
Crusaders or the Flagellants, would be as much out of place
to-day as catapults or the theory of uncreated light. We must
fight with modern weapons.
"Clypeos, Danaumque insignia nobis aptemus." [Footnote 78]
[Footnote 78: "We must use the weapons and dress of the
Greeks." _AEneid_, lib. ii.]
We must study Catholicity in all its bearings, and reconcile
divine and human traditions with modern exigencies; authority
established on an immovable pedestal, with liberty which is
always developing.
Courage! Let us arouse ourselves from lethargy, and not suffer a
condition of affairs for which we are responsible. Let us
remember, with Bacon, that prosperity was the boon of the Old
Testament; adversity, of the New; persuaded, with Donoso Cortes,
that "it is our duty, as Catholics, to struggle, and that we
should thank God who has chosen us to fight for his church," let
us display that energetic will which is so rare among good
people. With charity and faith, by association and perseverance,
we can conquer hatred and unbelief, the divisions of sects, and
the onslaughts of error on the strongholds of Catholic truth.
-------
{343}
Two Months In Spain During
The Late Revolution.
Seville, Fonda De Paris.
September 23, 1869.
The train leaves Cordova at six A.M., and we are delighted to be
again on our journey. The route proves of little interest between
Cordova and Seville; the Guadalquivir is first on one side of us
and then on the other; the hills and mountains bound each side of
the plain, where are olive groves, and peaceful flocks, and
ploughmen, as if no revolution were occurring around them. At
Almovar, (situated on a high hill,) we see the ruins of a Moorish
castle where that half-Moor, Peter the Cruel, confined his
sister-in-law, Doña Juana de Lara. Carmona is another town which
has the same celebrity. Here he imprisoned many of his female
favorites when tired of them. We grow very hungry in spite of
these tragic histories, and our young gentleman buys a great
melon _de Castile_, which, proving very delicious, we make a
good breakfast _à l'espagnol;_ but are not sorry to see the
towers of the Giralda, and soon after we enter Seville--the most
charming of all Spanish towns; the city of Don Juan and Figaro;
the gayest, the most celebrated for its beautiful women, its
graceful men, its bull-fights, its gypsies, its tertulias, its
fandangos, its cachuchas, its Murillos, its cathedral, (said to
rival St. Peter's,) and its Alcazar, which is almost as wonderful
as the Alhambra.
After dinner, we hasten to the cathedral through busy, crowded
streets, by handsome shops; passing occasionally a pretty
Sevillian whose black dress, bare arms and neck seen through the
black lace mantilla, with the dainty pink rose peeping from
beneath it, harmonize exactly with one's idea of the Spanish
woman. And presently, upon a terrace ascended by several steps,
we see before us this wonderful pile of buildings: the Giralda
(Moorish tower) on one side; the Sagrario (the parish church) on
the other; the chapter house, and offices facing the cathedral;
and in the centre of all these the court of oranges! The
cathedral is entered from this court by nine doors. We scarcely
know how to describe this magnificent gothic building, which has
affected us more than any we have ever seen. Coming upon us so
immediately after the mosque of Cordova, (each of these a perfect
specimen of its kind,) one sees in each the reflection of the
different faiths they represent. The graceful, elegant mosque
seems to appeal more to the senses, to speak of a faith which
promises material joys, while the grand and majestic gothic
cathedral carries one's heart to the heaven in which these lofty
arches seem to be lost. In despair of being able to do justice to
so high a theme, I must borrow from O'Shea's guide-book the
following description of this building:
"The general style of the edifice is gothic of the best period
of Spain, and though many of its parts belong to different
styles, these form but accessory parts, and the main body
remains strictly gothic. Indeed all the fine arts, and each in
turn, at their acme of strength, have combined to produce their
finest inspiration here.
{344}
The Moorish Giralda, the Gothic cathedral, the Greco-Roman
exterior, produce variety, and repose the eye. Inside, its
numerous paintings are by some of the greatest painters that
ever breathed; the stained glass, amongst the finest known; the
sculpture, beautiful; the jewellers' and silversmiths' work
unrivalled in composition, execution, and value. The cathedral
of Leon charms us by the chaste elegance of its airy structure,
the purity of its harmonious lines; the fairy-worked cimborio
of that at Burgos, its filagree spires, and pomp of
ornamentation are certainly more striking; and at Toledo, we
feel already humbled and crushed beneath the majesty and wealth
displayed everywhere. But when we enter the cathedral of
Seville, there is a sublimity in these sombre masses and
clusters of spires whose proportions and details are somewhat
lost and concealed in the mysterious shadows which pervade the
whole, a grandeur which quickens the sense, and makes the heart
throb within us, and we stand as lost among these lofty naves
and countless gilt altars, shining dimly in the dark around us,
the lights playing across them as the rays of the glorious
Spanish sun stream through the painted windows. Vast
proportions, unity of design, severity and sobriety of
ornament, and that simplicity unalloyed by monotony which
stamps all the works of real genius, render this one of the
noblest piles ever raised to God by man, and preferred by many
even to St. Peter's at Rome."
It is said that the canons and chapter resolved to make this
church the wonder of the world; and with this view, sent for the
most celebrated architects and artists of the world to adorn it,
denying themselves almost the necessaries of life to accomplish
the great work.
The pillars are one hundred and fifty feet high; the church, four
hundred feet long, two hundred and ninety-one wide, with
ninety-five windows and thirty-seven chapels; and nearly each one
of these contains some pictures of Murillo, Cespedes, Campana,
Roelas, or some Spanish painter of celebrity. We go from chapel
to chapel, gazing upon these, lingering before the altar "Del
Angel de la Guarda," where is Murillo's exquisite picture of the
guardian angel with the young child by the hand (so often
reproduced,) and lost in awe before his grand picture of St.
Anthony of Padua, to whom the infant Jesus descends, amidst
angels and flowers and sunbeams, into the arms ecstatically
extended toward him. In a little chapel we come upon a lovely
Virgin and Child, by Alonso Caño, called N. S. de Belem,
(Bethlehem.)