remember always 'God sees me.' To have a tender love for
the holy Catholic Church. To unite my actions to those of
Jesus Christ. To keep alive in my heart the desire of
heaven. To beg of God the faith and the constancy of the
martyrs. To have an unwavering confidence in the efficacy
of prayer. To succor the poor for the love of God. To watch
and pray. To do good to all. To obey my father and mother.
To be gentle and docile to my teachers. To be silent as
soon as I perceive in my heart the first motions of anger.
Never to read a doubtful book. To have a scrupulous regard
to truth. Never to speak ill of any one. To view in the
best light the actions of others. To subdue all feelings of
envy. To pray often for humility. Never to slight God's
holy inspirations. To work and study diligently. Frequently
to raise my heart to God. To forgive all, at all times and
in all things. To seek my happiness in the performance of
Christian duties. To do whatever is my duty, and for the
rest trust to the goodness of God. To fear sin more than
death. To ask for the sacraments at the beginning of a
serious illness. To speak to God as a tender and beloved
father. To unite my death to that of Jesus Christ."]
May 30.
No affection which has not its source in the love of God can ever
make us happy. Let us be well convinced of this, and let us
dedicate our whole life to Him who has done all for us. As for
me, I believe that just as the external pomp of worship is
valueless in the sight of God if it is separated from interior
devotion, so works can do nothing to merit grace unless they are
inwardly animated by a pure intention and the desire of pleasing
God alone. We must, then, always pass from what is without to
what is within, and it is this that I mean when I tell you that I
often seek in visible things a lever to raise me toward the
invisible; discerning in all that meets my eyes here below an
image of that Eternal Beauty which unveils itself only to the
intelligence and to the heart. Thus nothing remains mute to me.
{371}
How many things the mountains tell me, and the stars, and the
sea, and the trees, and the birds!--things which I should not
have known if this mighty voice of nature had not taught them to
me. Oh! how admirable is the goodness of God, who thus by a
thousand ways leads back our souls to the thoughts and the holy
affections for which they were created.
I have been reading in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, this
beautiful idea of Jean Paul Richter: "When that which is holy in
the soul of the mother responds to that which is holy in the soul
of the son, their souls then understand each other." This thought
has made a great impression on me; and it seems to me to contain
a grand lesson for all mothers engaged in the religious education
of their sons. It shows us, moreover, the nature of those close
ties which unite us to our relations and our friends. And,
indeed, why do we love one another with such a true and constant
love? Because what is sacred to your soul is sacred also to mine.
Why am I so deeply moved when I hear of some noble action? when I
contemplate the greatness of this world's heroes, and, above all,
the greatness of the saints and martyrs? Why do I weep as I think
of the sacrifices they made with such self-devotion and
fortitude? Because what they held sacred I also hold sacred.
Could more be said in so few words? Yes, every man ought to keep
alive that celestial fire which God has kindled in his heart.
Unhappy he who lets it languish and die out! He loses it for
himself, and is himself lost for his brethren, since he has
broken the bond of love which would have united him to them for
ever. As the flame ascends on high,
"Which by its form upward aspires,"
SO by nature our souls tend to rise toward God, and if they
return again toward earth, there can be no longer for them either
hope of peace or hope of happiness.
July 10.
Let us not be discouraged, Gaetano, let us always hope; our good
God will help us to become better; for, if we lack strength, at
least we are not wanting in good desires. They are a gratuitous
gift of him who wills our good; of him who has given us the most
living example of humility; of him who knows, and will pardon,
the weakness of our poor nature, if only we will combat with that
perseverance which alone has the promise of victory. Ah! if we
truly loved the Lord, we should think of him alone--of him who is
holy and perfect, instead of always thinking of ourselves, weak
and miserable creatures; and we should end by forgetting
ourselves, by losing ourselves, to live only in him so worthy of
our love; and then we should indeed begin to know that we are
nothing, and that he is all.
Jesus wishes us to be gentle with ourselves, and would not have
us fall into dejection when, through the frailty of our nature,
we fail in our good resolutions. At times when we are too much
dejected at the sight of our miseries, Jesus Christ seems to say
to us, as to the disciples going to Emmaus: "What are these
discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are
sad?" He who is called the Prince of Peace would have us pacific
toward ourselves, and full of compassion for our own infirmity.
When, therefore, we are seized with sadness at sight of our
poverty and of the dryness of our souls, let us say simply and
humbly this little prayer of St. Catharine of Genoa: "Alas! my
Lord, these are the fruits of my garden! Yet I love thee, my
Jesus, and I will strive to do better in future."
{372}
July 19, (Feast of St Vincent de Paul.)
Do you know what we ought to desire? Neither honors, nor riches,
nor any such earthly vanities, which could add nothing to our
peace. Do you know to what end our will, strengthened by love,
ought to turn? Yes, you know it well, and often have you taught
it me; we ought both to aim at realizing in our life something of
that perfection which, after all, can be but partially obtained
on earth. We ought to look at the things that are immortal and
eternal, rather than at those that are temporal and subject to
change, living in such a manner that a true love of God may
actuate our hearts and our thoughts, develop our sentiments
toward what is good, and direct all our actions to a holy end.
How many touching examples of virtues are recalled to our minds
by this day and the festival which it brings! What indefatigable
and universal charity in St. Vincent de Paul! What lively and
ardent piety! What unbounded compassion for all the errors, all
the faults, all the misfortunes, all the sufferings, physical and
moral, of men! What exhaustless patience! And who among us will
dare to say that he cannot reproduce in himself some shadow of
those beautiful virtues? If we cannot, like this illustrious
saint, relieve the sufferings of a great number of our
fellow-beings, at least we can be humble, patient, and animated
by that true religion which is ever forgiving, ever loving,
because it loves Him who is all mercy and all love.
To Be Continued.
--------------
The Episcopalian Confessional.
It is with great satisfaction that Catholics behold the adoption
by any class of Protestants of their peculiar rites or
ceremonies. It is an indication of an approach to the doctrines
so vehemently renounced at the Reformation, and ought, by strict
logic, to result in the return of many to the old faith. And
though, unfortunately, there are men who play with religious
doctrines as if they were of no practical consequence, there are
always some who are in earnest, and are found ready to make
sacrifices for the sake of truth. From the use of Catholic
ceremonies, which are really all founded on vital doctrine, some
conversions must certainly flow; and the Protestant Church, which
moves in such a direction, is drifting from its old moorings, and
floating toward the safe waters where the bark of St. Peter rides
out every storm.
If there be any of our practices which are essentially a part of
our religious system, surely that of confession is one which is
absolutely _peculiar_ to the Catholic Church. It cannot
lawfully exist without the faith which we hold, and when used, it
drags along with it, irresistibly, our whole moral system. It is
hard to see how any one can confess his sins to a priest, without
accepting the sacerdotal and sacramental system, which can have
no life out of the Catholic communion. Besides, the practical
influence of such confessions leads directly to those habits of
devotion which have no home in Protestantism.
{373}
In the few remarks we are now to make, we do not intend to lose
sight of these convictions, while it is our object to consider
briefly the adoption of the confessional in the Protestant
Episcopal Church, the logical consequences which flow from it,
and even the dangers which attend it. Surely the subject is one
of great moment. If it be of any importance at all, it is of
_vital_ importance. It is either necessary to the soul, or
it is an assumption of powers prejudicial to the interests of
true religion. It cannot be looked upon as an indifferent matter,
which may be used or neglected, according to the taste of the
individual. To a few reflections, therefore, upon it, we
earnestly invite the attention of the honest reader.
1. There is no doubt that there is quite a party in the Episcopal
Church which upholds the practice of auricular confession, and
seeks to extend it. There are ministers of that communion who are
anxious to set up the confessional, and disposed to teach its
necessity. In the city of New York, it is well known that the
clergy of St. Albans' are solicitous to hear confessions and love
to be styled _Fathers_, on account of their spiritual
relation to their penitents. The Rev. Dr. Dix, the respected
rector of Trinity Church, the oldest and most influential
corporation of his denomination, is said to have quite a number
of penitents, and to be the most popular confessor, especially
among the higher class. We presume he makes no secret of his
practice, while his position as the spiritual director of the
"Sisters of St. Mary" is notorious. How general is the custom of
confession in Trinity parish we have no means of knowing, nor do
we know how many of the assistant ministers follow in the wake of
their rector. We have heard of one or two others who are disposed
to be confessors, and there are probably many such ministers
whose names are not brought before the public. We cannot suppose
that any high-minded clergyman would be willing to hear
confessions in an under-hand or secret manner, and we must
believe that they who do so are not ashamed of it, nor unwilling
to have their practice made public. No offence is therefore
intended by the mention of names, and we will rest satisfied that
none is given. How many of the bishops favor auricular confession
does not appear. So far as we have heard, no one has openly
recommended it; but the Right Reverend Dr. Potter, of New York,
has allowed a manual to be dedicated to him, in which the
practice is strongly urged, and devotions for its use are
extracted from Catholic prayer-books. While he has rebuked the
Rev. Mr. Tyng for preaching in a Methodist church, he goes openly
to St. Alban's, and, to say the least, gives sanction to
Ritualistic performances. We have a right, then, to conclude that
he favors the confessional, and is willing to see it set up in
the churches which he superintends. It will be observed that this
confession in the Episcopal Church, is not simply consulting a
clergyman in a private conversation about spiritual matters, but
the humble acknowledgment of sins in detail, in order to receive
absolution from one who thinks himself authorized by Almighty God
to give it. It is certainly a sacrament in the true definition of
the term, an outward sign of an inward grace, administered by one
pretending, at least, to bear a commission from Christ. Those who
go to the Episcopalian ministers to confess their sins, surely go
under this belief, and no argument is necessary to show that they
would not go, unless under the conviction that their offences
against God could be forgiven in no other way.
{374}
The Ritualists have made of this a most important matter in their
devotional books, where can be found questions for examination of
conscience, tables of sins, and prayers to excite contrition and
improve the great gift of absolution. When, then, we speak of the
confessional in the Protestant Episcopal communion, we are not
drawing upon fancy, but touching upon a fact which must have an
important effect upon the body which it especially interests.
2. The first remark we have to make upon this acknowledged fact
is almost a truism. It is, that auricular confession is not a
Protestant practice, but quite the contrary; and that they who
adopt it cut themselves off from all sympathy with the doctrines
of the reformation. We hardly need to prove that there is not one
Protestant church which approves of the custom of which we speak,
or believes that its ministers have the power to remit and retain
sin. If the Church of England be adduced against us, we have only
to point to the incontrovertible fact, that she declares that
penance is not a sacrament, and therefore conveys no inward
grace. The absolutions left in her daily services are only
declaratory of God's willingness to forgive the repentant sinner,
and could be as well used by a layman as by a minister. For who
cannot say that "God pardoneth and absolveth all who are truly
penitent"? And as for the absolution in the office of the
visitation of the sick, we have only to say that it is a relic of
by-gone days which is seldom used, and that whatever be its
meaning, it cannot, contrary to the article, be presumed to
confer grace. The English Church certainly did never consider it
a matter of any necessity, otherwise it would have said so. The
Episcopalians in the United States have not this form to refer
to; for the compilers of their liturgy have expunged it
altogether, at the same time that they omitted the Athanasian
creed. In the form of the ordination of priests, a substitute was
also provided for the old words, "Receive the Holy Ghost; whose
sins you shall remit, they are remitted unto them." The reason of
this substitution we leave the honest reader to imagine. We are
informed that very few of the bishops are willing to use the old
form, and an Episcopal minister of Puseyitical views once told us
that he was very anxious to have the bishop who ordained him use
it, but was restrained from asking this favor by the assurance of
one of the prelate's intimate friends that, if he said anything
about it, he would get a flat refusal, together with a good
scolding. While thus the articles of faith in the Episcopalian
body deny the power of absolution, the practice of that
denomination of Christians is entirely against it. The ministers
who hear confessions and the people who make them, live in a
"dreamland," about which once we read a very pretty piece of
poetry. This "dreamland" is not very extensive or tangible here,
and we wonder if now there are any somnambulists in or about
Buffalo. We yield the right to every man to do as he pleases, and
call himself what he likes, only we object to his having two
contradictory characters at the same time. It is not quite
reasonable; and we say, with the good common sense of mankind,
"My dear friend, choose for yourself, but please be either one
thing or the other."
{375}
But we go further, and assert that the practice of confession is
the assumption of a sacerdotal power which was the very first
point attacked by the reformation, and which is really the
central point of the Catholic system. Once admit the great power
of absolution, and you receive at the same time logically the
doctrine of priesthood as it is held by the Church. This doctrine
does not and cannot stand alone; it brings with it the church in
her unity, and the necessary safeguards which divine wisdom has
thrown around the exercise of so great a gift. Who has the power
to forgive sins? Not every man, nor every one who may choose to
call himself a priest. There must be some external call to so
high an office; and as it is Christ's priesthood which is
exercised, there must be some way of authenticating the power
delegated, and articulating it to the great head of Christianity.
The Catholic Church alone maintains the practice of confession,
and if she is good for this, she is good for everything.
Eclecticism may be advisable in matters of science, but in divine
revelation it is both absurd and impossible. The foundation of
faith is in the word of God. The church is no teacher if she be
not guided by supernatural light; and if she be thus guided, her
authority is universal. Episcopalians may believe that their
ministers can forgive their sins, but they have no reason for
such a belief. Their own church surely does not say so, while the
Catholic voice expressly denies it. It will be hard to see how
they can prove it from Scripture as applied to their particular
communion. Not only is the unity of the church connected
logically with the idea of priesthood, but also that of
sacrifice, and of sacramental grace. And these doctrines bring
with them the Tridentine system of justification, which is
diametrically opposed to the Lutheran theory which underlies all
consistent Protestantism. We do not believe that any one can go
to confession for any length of time, and not feel the truth of
these remarks. He will be irresistibly borne to the gates of the
Catholic Church with whose faith his religious life will be in
sympathy, and he will, day by day, lose his love and respect for
his own communion.
3. So far, therefore, we have reason to rejoice in the adoption
of the confessional by the Episcopalians, and to renew our
prayers for their conversion to that truth which at a distance
proves so attractive to them. Yet there are dangers in regard to
which the sincere ought to be forewarned, and serious evils to
many souls may result from the incapacity of confessors who have
never been trained for this most delicate and difficult work. It
is in the spirit of Christian charity that we revert to these
dangers.
In the first place, we hardly need say that no one but a duly
authorized priest of the Catholic Church has the power to give
absolution. As we are addressing chiefly those who believe in
some ecclesiastical system, we have only to advert to the fact,
that to such a power both orders and jurisdiction are necessary.
The Episcopal Church does not admit the existence of this power,
and the whole Christian world which does accept it, unites in the
opinion that the Episcopalian clergy have no orders whatever, any
more than the Methodists or Presbyterians. Any layman is as good
a priest as the most distinguished Anglican minister. Such is the
decision of the Catholic Church, and of every sect which has
retained the apostolical succession. Is this decision of no
consequence to the Ritualists who pretend to believe in authority
and antiquity? But orders are not sufficient for the exercise of
the power of absolution.
{376}
Jurisdiction is also required, because they who believe in the
priesthood must also believe that Christ has left this great
office in order, and not in confusion. The bishop is the supreme
pastor of his diocese, and no priest, without his permission, can
validly either hear confessions or give absolution. This
principle of jurisdiction is one which does not seem to penetrate
the heads of High-Church Episcopalians; but if they will reflect
for a moment, they will see its absolute necessity to the
existence of the church. Suppose that valid orders are alone
required to the exercise of the priesthood, and the communion of
the faithful, and what is to prevent any priest from going off at
any time, and carrying with him all the essentials of the church?
Then there would be as many churches as there are dissenting
priests.
No intelligent man would form a society on such principles, and
surely our Lord Jesus Christ did not do so foolish a thing as
found a church containing in itself the very seeds of
self-destruction. We have heard that an excommunicated priest,
who bears, to his sorrow, the ineffaceable character of
priesthood, is willing to hear confessions since his apostasy.
But though he has valid orders, he is no more able to give
absolution than his associate ministers who have never been
ordained, because he has no jurisdiction from Christ. What do
these "Fathers" among the Episcopalians pretend? Do they ask
jurisdiction from their own bishops, who, having none, have none
to give? Or do they profess to have the whole Catholic Church in
their own persons? If so, history has seen nothing so strange in
all its curious record of ecclesiastical devices.
It is then a sad thing for a man to confess his sins and go
through the humiliation of opening his whole life to another; and
then receive no pardon for the sins he so anxiously confesses. We
beg the attention of such earnest hearts to this point, and say
to them, "If you really wish to confess, why not go at once where
there is no doubt that Christ has left the power of forgiveness?"
Secondly, there is danger in the way and manner in which we are
told that the Episcopalian ministers hear confessions. They
ought, for their own sake, and for the sake of their penitents,
to adopt the rules and safeguards which the experience of the
church has thrown around so important a work. It is not prudent
to hear the confessions of ladies in the minister's private room.
The presence of a plain cross, or crucifix, does not remove the
objection. It is too much of a burden to expect a lady to go
through with all this unnecessary trial, especially when she has
the additional conviction that she is doing something which she
would not wish the world to know, or which she would not be
willing to tell her husband or friends. The Catholic Church has
wisely provided that the priest shall sit where he need neither
see nor distinguish the penitent, and this is a safe rule to be
imitated. The same objection arises to the method, said to be in
vogue at St. Alban's, where the minister sits in the chancel, and
the penitent kneels at his back. If there be others in the
church, there is too much exposure, and if the church is locked,
there is too much privacy. The Episcopalian clergy who become
confessors ought to erect confessionals in their churches, and
sit there at given hours publicly and openly.
{377}
We understand, also, that in some cases, at least, the penitent
is obliged to write out his confession in full, and we consider
this a dangerous and far too painful practice. We have been
informed that Dr. Pusey wishes the general confessions which he
hears to be written out carefully and left with him for his
private study some days before the confession is made. We are
certain that such a course has been sometimes imitated in this
country, much to the disgust of ladies, who have even spoken to
us of it. A sinner will do much, no doubt, in the fervor of
penitence, but no such thing as this ought to be done. It is
against the practice of the Catholic Church, and in violation of
instinctive delicacy and propriety. No one is obliged to expose
himself, even to obtain the pardon of sin.
Again, it is unfortunate for the Protestant clergy that they hear
confession only by reason of their _personal_ influence over
their penitents; that they do not understand the nature of the
seal of secrecy; and that they have no fixed system by which to
direct their penitents. The same results follow, as if a doctor
should essay to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith a dentist.
Personal influence is, no doubt, an instrument of much good; but
when it alone or principally governs the relations of confessor
and penitent, serious dangers may be imminent. Most of those who
go to confession in the Episcopal Church are led to this step by
reason of their confidence in the individual to whom they go, and
through the attraction of his piety or zeal. They would hardly go
to any one else, and if he were to die or be removed, they would
be left without a director. It is not so much the priest to whom
they unburden their conscience, as the favorite preacher whose
good qualities have made strong impressions upon them. This is
not a healthy state of things, and leads to sentimentality, which
is often mistaken for piety. In the Catholic Church, the habit of
confession is as universal as prayer, and the priestly character
overshadows the individual. Among Protestants the contrary is
notoriously true, and this difficulty in the way of the
Protestant confessor can hardly be removed until he shall have
brought about in his communion the state of feeling which is
second nature to Catholics. This he can never do. He may lead
individuals to the church; he cannot convert the whole body with
which he is identified.
With the best intentions in the world, he does not and cannot
understand the seal of secrecy which for ever closes the lips of
the priest. He is disposed as a man of honor not to betray
confidence, but experience teaches us that very few human secrets
have been kept. He has not been taught the sacred nature of his
obligation, nor the various ways by which he may expose his
penitent, and as he has assumed an office to which his church did
not call him, he stands or falls in human strength. No motive
higher than that of honor binds him, and complicated as he is
with the world, and generally with matrimonial relations, he
really does not know how to act. The Catholic priest not only is
bound by the fear of terrible sin, but is also aided by the
system which surrounds him, in which he is trained and by that
supernatural power which we know upholds the seven sacraments. He
is not an individual resting upon his unaided powers, but the
creature of his church, the agent and representative of a vast
power which girdles the Christian world. Years of study and
discipline have taught him the nature of his obligations, while
he himself is as much bound to confess his sins as to hear the
burden of other consciences.
{378}
What an anomaly, for a man who never confesses his own faults, to
undertake to listen to the accusations of others! If they need
the confessional, much more does he need it. Is it not
Pharisaical to bind burdens upon others, which we touch not with
one of our fingers?
Let men say what they will, we believe, and from experience we
know, that God upholds the confessor in his difficult task; that
he gives him superhuman wisdom; that within the tribunal of
penance a divine shield is over him to protect him against the
weakness of humanity, that he may walk unharmed where otherwise
angels would fear to tread. Here we pity the poor and isolated
Ritualist, going forth upon a dangerous sea, in a frail bark,
with no trust but the strength of his own arm. Cast out by his
own church, and refusing communion with the great Catholic heart,
how long will he stand the fury of the storm?
Finally, how shall he direct his penitents, and by what system
form their spiritual character? Moral theology is an extensive
and subtle science. The infallible church has given clear
decisions upon all essential points of fact and morals, and her
doctors, by years of patient labor and centuries of experience,
have matured the colossal system which has such mighty influence
over the religious heart. But what is all this to the Protestant
confessor? He cannot avail himself of this without confessing the
authority of the church; and if he begins with such a confession,
where must he conscientiously guide his penitents? If he deny
this authority, and by his own fallible wisdom choose the
principles of his morality, in what respect is his opinion worth
more than that of the humblest layman? Can there be a more
pitiable spectacle, than that of a Protestant minister with St.
Liguori as his guide in leading the souls of others? His
spiritual life is surely made up of contradictions which must vex
and perplex his conscience if he be an honest man. And will he
not unavoidably make grievous mistakes, in the use of tools
without experience, in the details of a work for which he has had
no preparation?
Moreover, there are often decisions which have to be made, and in
these he must either be a despot, or he must make equivocal
answers. If a Catholic accuses himself of unbelief or doubt, the
reply is easy; for God's revelation is, according to our faith,
in and through an unerring church. If the Protestant falls into a
like danger, how shall he find direction, since for him there is
no infallible church? Must he not go on his weary way of
investigation, and is not, by his principles, doubt his normal
state? If a Catholic doubts the truth of any decision of his
church, he commits a sin against his own creed; but since the
Episcopal communion openly disclaims infallibility, how shall the
Episcopalian confessor tell his penitent not to doubt his church
which herself tells him he ought to doubt her? Then it comes to
this, that he will either make him no reply, or rule him with a
rod of iron, and bind him by his inflexible _ipse dixit_.
What has been the result, in more cases than one, of this
arbitrary despotism in the hands of individuals who neither by
their own church, nor by any other, have the right to direct
souls? Loss of the moral sense, failure to discern the first
inspirations of faith, and, sometimes, insanity. We draw from the
testimony of facts. It is bad enough to be under a civil despot,
but it is worse to be under a religious autocrat.
{379}
Then in the choice of penances we have heard of most frightful
mistakes, where the good of the penitent was in no way consulted,
but the vindication of the absolutism of the confessor. Think of
a penance to blood for one lie, or for the great error of
attending Mass in a Catholic Church. Think of penances which
cover months and burden years with the chains of obligatory
prayers and exercises. But all this is really nothing compared to
the morbid and unhealthy religious life which they engender, in
which slavish fear of God is the principal ingredient, where
sighs and solemn faces, instead of cheerfulness and natural
joyousness, are the exhibitions of their piety. To us, (and we
have had occasion to know the interior of more than one,) they
seem to be perpetually toiling up a steep ascent under the weight
of heavy burdens from which it would be wrong to expect relief.
Forced to confess their sins as if doing some stealthy action,
they kill in their souls the bright light and, elasticity of
spirit which the great Creator gave them. God is not a tyrant,
but a merciful and beneficent father, whose smiles of love are
ever around his children, and his priesthood are agents in the
work of love to bring into even the erring heart the sunlight of
a father's truth and mercy. The confessor is no minister of
justice, but like his Master, the good Samaritan to bind up the
wounds of the broken heart, to preach deliverance to the captive,
and joy to the mourner.
In what we have said, we make no accusations against the good
intentions of these Protestant confessors, for whom we especially
pray. We believe that they mean well, and that they hope to
sanctify their people by borrowing fruit from the garden of the
church, and transplanting it where it cannot and will not grow.
And as their only friends--for in their own communion they have
few friends--we warn them of the risk they run, and of the
dangers to which they expose their penitents. It is a fearful
responsibility for them, for which they must answer alone, and in
which no church will shield them. Some will, through their
incapacity, lose their hold upon all religion, and either live
without hope or die without consolation. Others will shut their
eyes to the plainest deductions of reason, and having eyes, will
see not, having ears, will hear not. Many through divine grace,
and the honest heart which pursues principles to their legitimate
results, will find their way to that one faith where all things
are in harmony, where the aspirations of the soul are met with a
full answer, and the needs of the heart are filled from God's own
fulness. O children of men! how foolish it is to enter upon the
province of God, and by human hands to make a religion, when the
all-merciful Father, who alone knoweth our frame, has made one
for us, which in its completeness answereth to every want of our
being.
--------
{380}
Sketches Drawn From The Life Of St. Paula,
By The Abbe Lagrange, Vicar-general Of Orleans.
In Three Chapters.
Chapter I.
"If all the members of my body should be changed into as many
tongues, and should assume as many voices, I should still be
unable to say enough of the virtues of the saintly and venerable
Paula."
It is in these words of pious enthusiasm that St. Jerome, himself
so holy a man, and accustomed to the guidance of so many noble
souls, begins his biography of Paula, when, at the instance of
her daughter, Eustochium, and to dry her tears, he undertook to
record her mother's virtues.
Placing himself with awe in the presence of God and his angels,
St. Jerome says: "I call to witness our Lord Jesus Christ and his
saints, and the guardian angel of this incomparable woman, that
what I say is simple truth, and that my words are unworthy of
those virtues celebrated throughout the world, which have been
the admiration of the church, and which the poor yet weep for.
Noble by birth, more noble still by her holiness; powerful in her
opulence, but more illustrious afterward in the poverty of
Christ; of the race of the Scipios and of the Gracchi; heiress of
Paulus Emilius, from whom she takes her name of Paula; direct
descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, who was wife to the
conqueror of Perseus, and mother of the second Scipio Africanus;
she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and the humble roof of a poor
dwelling to the gilded palaces of her ancestors."
Paula was born in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century,
the 5th of May, of the year 347, in the reign of Constantius, and
of Constans, the sons of Constantine, seven years after the death
of the latter prince. Julius was then Pope at Rome. Paula
belonged, through her mother, Blesilla, to one of the most
ancient and illustrious families of Rome; and it seemed as if
Providence wished to unite all earthly distinctions in this
child, for the purest blood of Greece mingled in her veins with
the noblest blood of Rome. At this time nothing was more common
than alliances between the Roman and Greek families, as is proved
by the Greek names which we find in the Roman genealogies. The
father of Paula, Rogatus, was a Greek, and claimed royal descent
from the kings of Mycaenas; and Agamemnon himself is said to have
been his direct ancestor.
St. Jerome gives no further detail of the family of Paula,
excepting that he mentions casually that their possessions were
vast, including very important estates in Greece near Actium,
besides their domain in Italy. "If," says St. Jerome, "I take
note of her opulence and wealth, it is not that I attach
importance to these temporal advantages, but in order to show
that the glory of Paula in my eyes was not in having possessed
them, but in having laid them at the feet of Jesus Christ."
{381}
A more real advantage of her birth was, that her noble family
were Christians, although a portion of them still remained
pagans. This intermingling of creeds must not surprise us; for
the resistance to conversion was great, and throughout the fourth
century it was a common thing to see worshippers of the true God
and of Jupiter under the same roof.
Rome, in truth, presented then a great contrast. Christian Rome
and pagan Rome stood face to face, and pagan Rome, as yet
untouched by barbarians, still wore an imposing aspect. The
Capitol still stood in pride, crowned with the statues and
temples of the heathen gods. Opposite, on the Palatine, stood the
ancient dwelling of the Caesars, with its marble porticoes; and
at the foot of the two hills the old Forum surrounded with pagan
temples. Further still, and separated from the Forum by the
Sacred Way and the Amphitheatre of Flavius, rose the immense
Colosseum; and at the other extremity the great circus and the
aqueducts of Nero. On the borders of the Tiber was the mole of
Adrian, the mausoleum of Augustus, with temples, theatres, baths,
porticoes, etc., on every side; indeed, every monument of luxury
and superstition, showing how deeply rooted paganism still was in
the capital of the empire.
Nevertheless, by more than one sign it was easy to recognize that
all this pagan grandeur was fast fading away before another
power; and if polytheism still found strong support in old
traditions and customs, institutions and monuments, it was the
influence of the past, which was lessening every day. The future
belonged to the church, and Christianity was daily gaining the
upper hand. The pagan temples which were still standing were
empty, the crowd now disdaining sacrifices. Silence and solitude
reigned around the gods, while the new faith, spreading out its
magnificence in broad daylight, covered Rome with superb
basilicas. At the same time, Rome, deserted by the emperors for
political reasons, which served the divine purpose, seemed given
up to the majesty of pontifical rule; and the popes, brought out
from the Catacombs and placed by Constantine in the imperial
palace, already gave a foreshadowing to the world of the glory
which should henceforth invest the Holy See.
At this time there sprang from the bosom of the church a soul who
was destined to exercise a vast influence upon the religious
orders throughout the universe.
The blood of the martyrs and early Christians had not been shed
in vain. It was just at this epoch in the history of Christianity
that Providence gave being to a child destined by her holiness to
be one of the marvels of the age.
We have sufficient data to know what her education was and under
what influences she grew up to womanhood. The old Roman spirit
and the Christian spirit were both fitted to form a character of
the highest order. Austere honor, severe self-respect, noble
traditions of ancient customs, were early inculcated in the mind
of Paula. She came of a race of whom St. Jerome said: "Remember
that in your family a woman very rarely, if ever, contracts a
second marriage." Besides the holy books which were her first
studies, her reading was vast and extended, embracing both the
literature of Greece and Rome. We shall see how in after-life
this early culture developed in her the rich gifts of nature,
establishing equilibrium between her intellect and her character.
{382}
Paula was brought up by her mother with that ardent love for the
practice of her religion, which in all its perfection belonged
especially to the days when persecution made these observances
most precious to the early Christians. She followed Blesilla to
the basilicas and to all feasts of the church, and also to visit
the tombs of the martyrs and to the Catacombs. This last devotion
was peculiarly dear to the Christians of the fourth century. They
sought to glorify those victorious soldiers. "See," cried St.
Chrysostom, "the tomb of the martyrs! The emperor himself lays
down his crown there, and bends the knee."
There was not, perhaps, a family of Christians in Rome, which did
not have some loved member among the glorious dead lying in the
long galleries of the Catacombs. Saint Jerome speaks of the pious
attraction of these sanctified asylums in the great city of the
martyrs.
In this atmosphere of love for the church, and of faith in Christ
and in the divine origin of Christianity, young Paula grew up. It
was in those days the custom for the daughters of noble houses in
Rome to marry young; and when Paula was fifteen years of age, her
parents gave her in marriage to a young Greek whose name was
Toxotius.
He belonged, on his mother's side, to the ancient family of the
Julians, which boasted, as we know, of going back to the time of
AEneas:
"Julius, à magno dimissum nomen Iülo."
_Virgil's AEneid._
Toxotius did not have the faith of his bride. These mixed
marriages were not rare in those days; witness Monica and
Patricius, the parents of St. Augustine.
Christianity had tolerated such marriages from the beginning, in
the hope that the infidel husband might be won by the wife to her
belief. When, robed in a white tunic of the finest wool,
according to custom, her brow covered with the _flammcum_,
Paula laid her trembling hand in that of Toxotius, who can tell
with what holy emotion, what elevation of thought, what purity of
feeling and of hope, her soul was filled! On the other hand,
Toxotius does not seem to have been unworthy of his Christian
bride, and the uncommon affection Paula bore him ever afterward,
her inconsolable grief for his loss, all proves that their
marriage was among those which the world calls happy. God blessed
this union. Four daughters were successively born to them.
The eldest, called Blesilla after her grandmother, seemed gifted
with a vivacious and most interesting character; her health was
delicate, but her full, rich nature gave early promise of that
rare beauty of mind and soul, which developed perfectly in
after-years to the joy of Paula.
Paulina, the second, had also a fine nature, but the very
opposite of Blesilla's. Her light was not like her sister's, a
shining flame; but with less brilliancy of wit, and less vivacity
of character, she possessed great good sense and solid judgment,
giving promise of being as strong in character as her sister was
brilliant.
As for the third of these young girls, called by the graceful
name of Eustochium, borrowed from the Greek, and meaning
_rectitude_ or _rule_, she was a gentle child, modest,
reserved, timid. One would say she was like a flower hiding
within herself her own perfume; but this perfume was sweet, and
on a nearer view one could not avoid seeing in this young soul
all the treasures which would one day flower and bloom. It is
difficult to picture to ourselves Rufina.
{383}
She appears but once in the history of her mother, at the moment
of the departure of Paula for the east, sad, bathed in tears, and
yet silent and resigned; stamped, even in childhood, with that
painful charm which belongs particularly to those beings not
destined by providence to mature, but to fall away and die young.
Paula's married life was passed in the midst of all the
magnificence which marked the decline and fall of the empire. She
passed through the streets of Rome, as did the other patrician
ladies, in a gilded litter, carried by slaves. She would have
feared to put her dainty feet on the earth, or to touch the mud
of the streets. The weight of a silk dress was almost too much
for one so sensitive to carry; and had a ray of sunshine intruded
into her litter, it would have seemed to her a _fire_.
"_Et solis calor incendium,_" etc., etc.
_Epist. ad Pammachium_.
In those days she used rouge and cereum, like other women of her
rank; she passed much of her time at the bath, which consumed so
great a part of life in Rome; she spent the winter, according to
usual custom, at Rome, and the summer in some villa in the
country, passing her time most agreeably between her books and a
chosen circle of friends.
In the midst of all this luxury, leading a life far removed from
the virtues which she practised later, Paula was yet known and
respected as a woman of great dignity of character and
irreproachable conduct. And if, during these happy years, the
young wife of Toxotius did not always sufficiently bear in mind
the maxim of the apostle, which teaches us to use the things of
this world, without giving them our affections inordinately; if
she tasted too freely of its pleasures and dangerous vanities, in
the trials which she was soon to encounter, there was
compensation to be made for this self-indulgence, and, in her
austere penance, a super-abundant expiation. Saint Jerome tells
us that Paula had none of the barbaric arrogance common to the
Roman women--that which made them purse-proud, cruel to their
slaves, passionate, and impatient, which Juvenal describes so
admirably in his imperishable satires. In Paula all these bad
passions gave place to gentleness, softness, goodness. "This
wealthy daughter of the Scipios," says St. Jerome, "was the
gentlest and the most benevolent of women--to little children, to
plebeians, and with her own slaves. She possessed that excelling
goodness, without which noble birth and beauty are worthless, and
which is especially characteristic of a lofty nature. This
sweetness of mind, combined with her austere sense of honor, were
the two features of her soul which, by their contrast, made her
countenance most charming.
It is easy to conceive how such a woman performed the delicate
social duties that devolved upon her. Her associations were of
two kinds. She was intimate with all the celebrated women in the
church, such as Manilla and Titiana; at the same time the pagan
relations of Toxotius all loved her, and she received them
frequently at her house, bearing in mind the duty of the
Christian woman to let them see her religion in such a light as
would lead them to respect and honor it. And so it was that, by
her fireside, Paula was the happiest of wives and of mothers. Her
young family grew up joyously around her, filling her with bright
hopes for the future.
She had long wished to give her husband a son and heir. Her
prayer was answered; and she gave birth to a son, her last child,
who received the name of Toxotius, after his father.
{384}
This is all that history tells us of the first phase in the life
of Paula. We see her thus with every happiness at once, "the
pride," says St. Jerome, "of her husband, of her family, and of
all Rome."
We know no more of her life up to the age of thirty. The Paula of
history, the saint whom God was to give as an example to souls,
is not the woman of the world, nor the happy woman; she is the
woman struck as if by lightning, blasted in her happiness; and
from this trial rising up generously, and by a great flight
soaring far above common virtues and the ordinary condition of
pious souls, up to those heroic acts which only emanate from
great sorrows. It would seem as if God had been pleased to
accumulate upon her, for thirty years, all the felicity of
earth--to adorn, as it were, this victim of his love, and to make
us comprehend the better by the subsequent destruction of this,
how vain is earthly happiness.
It is here that the historian takes hold of Paula, and that the
veil is lifted from her. Now begins her true history, the history
of her soul.
Paula was only thirty-one years of age when Toxotius died and she
became a widow. The blow to her was terrible. In the first
moments of her grief she was completely stunned and powerless. It
was feared by her friends that she would not long survive the
shock. Nothing could stop her tears. She could not be comforted.
From day to day the void was growing deeper and deeper into her
heart.
There is a decisive turning-point in the life of every one, on
which the future depends. This moment had now come for Paula. Two
ways lay open before her--the world on one side, God on the
other. She determined, in her sorrow, to give up the world, to
lead for ever afterward the life of a Christian widow, and to
seek for consolation in this resolution.
After the first outburst of grief, when she came to herself, her
decision was irrevocably made. Human things were never more to
regain the hold they had had over her up till now. She understood
what God wanted of her; namely, "to accept the sacrifice and
change her whole life." So, as St. Francis de Sales tells us,
"the heart of a widow who could not give herself all to God
during the lifetime of her husband, flies in search of celestial
perfumes, when he has been taken from her."
Paula was surrounded with many noble examples. Marcella lived in
her palace on Mount Aventine, where she had gathered together a
band of widows and virgins from amongst the noblest families of
Rome, who gave great edification by their virtue and charity. How
and for what purpose had Providence permitted this community to
be formed, which gave such an impetus to the religious life? It
is necessary that we should answer in some detail, for this is
the key to the whole life of Paula.
The church, resting from the earlier persecutions, which inflamed
zeal and devotion, was now in great peril from the growing
influence of security and wealth, in spreading a pagan and Roman
love of indolence and indifference. The empire was declining, and
its moral fall was hastened by political troubles. The degenerate
Romans consoled themselves for their abasement, by the melancholy
enjoyments of luxury and vice. Luxury and debauchery were already
creeping into the Christian lines, thus attacking the most vital
parts of the church. False widows and virgins no longer scrupled
to show light conduct beneath the veil.
{385}
There must be a remedy found equal to the evil. God failed not to
bring succor to his church, and the spirit of holiness became all
the more manifest in her faithful children, in proportion as the
peril was great.
The reaction commenced in the east, with the great monastic
foundations, which rose up in opposition to the world, performing
prodigies in the way of austerities and moral improvement. At
Rome, strange to say, the reform began where it was least to have
been expected, namely, in the midst of the patricians. The signal
was given by women. They threw themselves with ardor into the
heroic path, and soon their husbands followed them. This
regeneration was one of the most memorable in history, as well as
in the annals of the church. It was started by St. Athanasius,
who brought it with him from the east. Thrice exiled by Arian
persecution, the great patriarch three times sought refuge in
Rome. He had brought with him the revelation of the wonders
realized by the fathers in the deserts of Egypt and on the banks
of the Nile. His biography of the great Anthony took hold of
every imagination, and gave new zeal to monastic life. Athanasius
had passed seven years in the Theban deserts; he had known
Anthony, Ricomius, and Hilarius, and told of the astounding
graces of their supernatural life.
In one of these journeys of Athanasius to Rome, a noble Christian
widow, named Albina, had the honor of receiving him as her guest.
Albina had a daughter, Marcella, on whose noble soul the
conversation of the great bishop made an extraordinary
impression. Seated at his feet, the young girl drank in every
word that fell from his lips. Some months after, out of deference
to her mother's wishes, Marcella consented to marry; but when, at
the end of seven months, she became a widow and was free, she
made up her mind never to contract a second marriage, but to
devote herself in Rome to the humble imitation of those virtues
which Athanasius had taught her to venerate and admire.
Nevertheless, her youth, her wit and great beauty drew around her
many admirers. Amongst others was Cerealio, of high birth and
large fortune. "I will be more her father than her husband," said
he to Albina, who greatly desired the marriage, "I will leave her
all my wealth, being already advanced in years." But Marcella was
inflexible. "If I wished to marry again," said she to her mother,
"I would marry a husband, and not an inheritance."
Cerealio was refused, and this discouraged all other suitors.
Marcella now gave up the world and made a desert of her
magnificent palace. There she lived austerely, doing good works.
She bid farewell to jewels, and even laid aside the seal ring
always worn by the patrician women; and rising above their
prejudice against the religious state, and particularly the
coarse garb of the monks, she was the first who dared to assume
the abased dress, and publicly imitated what St. Athanasius had
taught her to believe good in the sight of God. The example soon
became contagious, giving her many followers, who astonished Rome
by their austerities and penances.
There was also at Rome, at this time, a young patrician lady
whose name was Melanie. Suddenly, when only twenty-two, she lost
her husband and two children, and laid them in one tomb on the
same day. Accepting this dispensation of the divine will, Melanie
resolved to devote her whole life to the shining virtues of which
Marcella was so bright an example.
{386}
To increase her faith further, she started on a pious pilgrimage
to the east, where Athanasius still lived. She saw him at
Alexandria shortly before his death. After having visited the
monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Land, Melanie was unwilling to
return to Rome and its corruptions. She therefore founded for
herself a monastery on the Mount of Olives, where she lived an
austere and good life.
This example still further inflamed the souls of the Roman women,
and numberless were those now in search of perfection; some
remaining at home in their own houses, like the virgins and
widows of the first centuries; others preferring to congregate
together, and, without any fixed rule, make the trial of
community life. The centre of all this movement was Marcella, who
possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of attracting
others to her. She was truly the standard-bearer of this noble
band, of whose hearts grace had taken possession. The venerable
Albina was like the revered ancestress of the little community
formed on Mount Aventine. The most prominent of those who joined
Marcella were Sophronia, Felicitas, and Marcellina. The latter
was daughter of an ancient governor of the Gauls. Outside of
Marcella's house, the names best known among those who had
devoted themselves to a life of austerity and virtue, were Lea, a
holy widow whom the church has canonized; the admirable Asella,
and Fabiola, who was of the ancient family of Fabius. All this
movement toward religious life was greatly encouraged by the
pious pontiff who then filled St. Peter's chair. At the time
Paula became a widow. Pope Damasus was nearly seventy-five years
of age. He was one of the noblest of the early popes, and one of
those who did most for Christianity and for the development of
Christian piety. He had a sister named Irene, who, consecrating
herself to God, died at the age of twenty, in honor of whom he
composed a most touching epitaph.
Such was the group of souls and the array of virtue which Paula
had around her, and which attracted her, when she became a widow,
to seek a more perfect life.
In the words of St. Jerome, Marcella, like an incendiary, blew
upon these lighted cinders and set them in a blaze. She found
words to bid those eyes, so dimmed by tears, to turn to heaven;
and she urged that bruised spirit to rise up and seek God. All
this Marcella did with a sister's tenderness. Her solicitude
extended to the children of her friend, and she begged that
Eustochium, who already showed a predilection for the religious
life, might be confided to her care. Paula acceded to this wish
with joy, keeping with her Blesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and
Toxotius. Then she began with ardor and faith the new life she
had marked out for herself, and she soon outshone all others in
virtue. There was a sudden and admirable expansion of greatness
in her soul. With her this rupture with the world was but a
higher flight toward God.
Her first step in advance was a new and great love of prayer; for
so it is, that the more the heart is closed to earth, the more it
opens to heaven. Her love of God and of celestial things grew
stronger each day. She lived most austerely, practising every
Christian mortification. All the habits of luxury of other days
were thrown aside, and the very comforts of life diminished. She
slept on the bare floor, and rivalled in abstinence and fast the
ascetics of the desert. She often wept over the thought of the
self-indulgence of her former worldly life.
{387}
These tears, together with those which she shed for her husband,
Toxotius, flowed so constantly and so abundantly, that her eyes
were injured, and her sight endangered. Paula was the pale one,
pale with fasting and almost blinded by tears.
Paula's heart was inflamed with charity. She found in the poor
another outlet of love for an ardent nature; and as she surpassed
Marcella and all others in austerities, so she also surpassed
them in charities. All her income was given in alms, and "never,"
says St. Jerome, "did a beggar come away from her empty-handed."
It was now two years since Paula had lived in this holy way, when
great news reached the little community of Aventine. In 382, Pope
Damasus called to Rome the Catholic bishops in council, and many
venerable bishops were expected there from the east. The object
of the council was to decide several questions of faith, as well
as to put an end to the long pending schism of Antioch. A few
bishops only answered the call of the Roman pontiff, the greater
part excusing themselves in a letter which is celebrated in
ecclesiastical history. Among those who came were Paulinus, one
of the bishops of Antioch, and St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamina
in the island of Cyprus.
It is easy to imagine the emotion produced among these recluses
by the arrival in Rome of such personages as these holy bishops,
who came from the mysterious east where the Catholic faith had
been cradled. They had seen Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they
knew the fathers of the desert, whose fame filled the world. What
lessons of wisdom would they not be able to gather from such
visitors!
Paula obtained from Pope Damasus the honor of having St.
Epiphanius as her guest, and it was in her daily interviews with
him, as well as with Paulinus, that the desire to see the east,
which she was one day to realize, first sprung up in her mind.
History has preserved few details of this council of the year
382. The great work to be brought about by these eastern bishops
at Rome was the new impetus which their presence was to give to
religion among the Christians of Rome already in the way of life
and truth. There came from the east, in company with the holy
bishops, a man destined to exercise great influence over the
future life of Paula and her friends. This man was St. Jerome. We
must pause a moment and not pass by one who is perhaps the most
striking, the most original, and the grandest figure of the
fourth century. He stands alone in his strength--different from
St. Hilarius of Poitiers, the profound theologian; from Ambrose,
the sweet orator; from Augustine, the great philosopher, or
Paulinus, the Christian poet. His features are marked and stern,
his character is austere and ardent; the burning reflection from
an eastern sky rests upon him; he is laden with the learning of
the Christian and the pagan world; the indefatigable athlete of
the church, he whose powerful voice moved the old world when they
listened to his pathetic lament over the fall of Rome, and which
moves us still when we read it now after the lapse of centuries!
Such was Jerome; yet is this picture incomplete, for we have not
mentioned his special gift for the direction of souls. He was
their guide, their father. He it was who began this divine
guidance, entrusted afterward to St. Bernard, and by him to St.
Francis de Sales, from St. Francis de Sales to Bossuet and
Fénélon, and so on down to our own times. It is this special gift
which gives him so prominent a part in the history of Paula.
{388}
Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of
the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the
holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from
all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and
discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up
between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the
holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of
nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his
letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say,
when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet,
that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."
After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and
Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the
Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted
them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He
would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners
were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly
strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks,
sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep
voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.
He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus
was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening
such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.
Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the
Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and
perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him
feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the
entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that
time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine,
among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later,
with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of
Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters
to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful
direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us
of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in
which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is
marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed
to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these
high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and
fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.
This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of
Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble
example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good
works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.
"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost
entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I
say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor
beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed
by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and
ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry
had already found assistance before hers."
{389}
This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and
corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism
burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and
pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan
families.
To Be Continued.
----------------
Bound With Paul.
The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to
the prison. "'_O caro Duca mio_,' is there an inscription
over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and
will not let it go."
Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used
to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her
pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For
education had emphasized the difference which nature had
pronounced between these two--a difference which William Blake
has defined in a word: the man looked _with_ his eyes, the
woman looked _through_ hers.
Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied.
The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had
finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within
the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish
streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different
shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them--an Acheron, in
which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached,
unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been
scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men
hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives.
Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain,
their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An
occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.
"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on
the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm.
"Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go
into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty;
his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years
for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to
stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name,
and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been
pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors.
When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to
California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a
month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be
up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty
behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his,
Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the
strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the
matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should
never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it,
he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called
the church some ugly name or other, then he
knew that it was a sin for him to listen.
{390}
I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to
chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst
rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all
at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who
murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the
house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when
the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe.
But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily
bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be
trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for
conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but
I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be
influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."
The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud
make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she
said.
At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came
winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into
detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest
climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers.
The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold,
whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by
one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in
rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over
in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled
away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors,
each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face
behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell.
The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers
were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and
straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar
against which it rested--a dogged hand. "You think that the
dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.
The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex
calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question
was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he
said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you
can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may
lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from
under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as
he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the
cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."
"No!"
"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."
The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed
eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had
requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the
upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by
him.
The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall,
thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish
head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square
jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his
mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the
straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or
blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The
well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for
firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and
rather small.
{391}
Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so
good, he would not have been so bad.
This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little
whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his
attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually
accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid,
the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes
fixed--locked, rather than lost in thought.
He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a
soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for
her to speak.
After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her
errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke
kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such
a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any
punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she
concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the
decision must be the same in both cases."
He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with
quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any
trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear
Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a
church than a barnacle is a ship."
"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what
the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go.
You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your
own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the
more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should
listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith
is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and
with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the
crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a
Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."
She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was
unmoved.
"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her
sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."
This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not
soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened,
and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.
"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said.
"You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own
thoughts and say your own prayers."
As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging
and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened
as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from
nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth
open. But at length he spoke.
"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is
obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition--obedience
in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a
man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is
not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."
He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived
that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of
authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.
{392}
Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings,
her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun
by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition;
it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine
him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the
captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of
returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated,
and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking
after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly
voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place,
and too precious to be willingly relinquished,
"The days must seem long to you," she said.
She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are
long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was
the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be
drunkard, and this put a stop to it."
As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of
sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes
began to kindle.
"Have you a family?" the lady asked.
He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of
thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent
a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty
softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked
down again. "There's Larry," he said.
"And who is Larry?"
The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And,
indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had
not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am,"
he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own
mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the
lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then,
and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better
here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't.
Shame never touched one of us at home."
"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.
"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my
arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the
table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string.
For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a
tether."
"He must have been a great care," she said.
"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.
"No."
"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a
picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like
gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every
morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist.
Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in
the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take
him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and
when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I
ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him
picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live
with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding
when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best,
as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he
would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that
minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her
know the next day.
{393}
That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off
at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of
snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me
crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out
for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little
fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute
I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I
couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay
and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man
when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would.
And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep
in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man,
whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's
blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."
The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the
convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much
needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its
rock.
"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.
The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came
here," he said.
"Who is Mary?"
"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.
"You hear from them?"
"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his
last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of
my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will
send me the money."
The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he
had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a
touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out
of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."
He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if
involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather
ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see,
ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the
sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago
there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to
catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I
could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the
high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."
"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches
are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to
see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."
"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly,
his eyes beginning again to kindle.
"What do you mean?"
He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether
she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.
Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving
out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He
is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own
name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."
"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling
slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came
here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy;
but by and by I got reconciled.
{394}
You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as
well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether
God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might
be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you
happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening.
The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me,
and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as
he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and
I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight.
It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the
light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the
wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened
out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on
the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces
began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it
was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till
they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it
was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart,
that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin
with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me
and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"
"How probable that would sound if it were related as having
happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady
thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of
the speaker.
"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at
highway robbery. How did it happen?"
Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or
anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I
know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the
lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd
have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made
me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the
lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at
our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk
together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out
with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being
too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of
woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he
was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught
throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I
was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so
they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike
Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that
lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and
a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard
that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife
with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and
that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she
was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got
to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself,
she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her.
Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he
meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature
with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but
milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict
concluded, giving a short laugh.
{395}
"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now
they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be
free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."
"I shall not go," he replied.
She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and
stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long
before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old
way?" the speaker had asked.
"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed
impatiently. "Those _bizarre_, uncompromising virtues of the
antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not
offend against _les bienséances_, though all the saints
should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a
little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For
you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to your _moutons_,
and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a
quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"
To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday
and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.
A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison,
and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise
perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an
oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid
iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened
it, and called Dougherty.
Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck
her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so
as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large
enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.
"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the
convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next
Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give
you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."
"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet
way; "but I can't go to chapel."
"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and
water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and
breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.
"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.
"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison
are children of the devil!" she said.
"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is
right."
"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we
haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."
Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work
again after three days, that being the longest time the rules
allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.
Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest
in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she
would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and
more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said.
"I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to
Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last
strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service.
{396}
At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the
sick, and that troublesome _protégé_ of hers. "I won't go
near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five
minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.
Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but
one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open
door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan.
Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings"
was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to
a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the
floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on
his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up,
while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the
first sign of submission or of fainting.
The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down
his face.
"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the
deputy.
"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"
Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.
The moans became fainter.
"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your
grit, and that is enough."
"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.
"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.
"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.
"No, madam; he has fainted."
They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led
him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair
by the open window.
"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr.
Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.
"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't
it?"
"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next
Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's
sleeve.
He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like
one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of
God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with
difficulty.
"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"
He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon
the cross will strengthen me."
"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.
"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon
the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am
not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor
advice from me. Go your own way."
Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend
chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him
for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he
was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.
"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a
fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he
likes."
"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a
free man."
Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet
on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till
he gets shut up in a place like this."
"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you
have suffered teach you to resist temptation."
{397}
The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of
surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed
about to speak, but checked himself.
"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't
believe you would be dishonest when sober."
The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.
The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day
he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled
fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were
larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a
convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of
him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.
But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it
found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a
slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became
a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck,
wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a
brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat
fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him
to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on
her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But
he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in
that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight
passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of
imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of
man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the
embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to
prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last
flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed
how he had been consumed inwardly.
It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two
narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the
convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls
and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine,
and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the
windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that
stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and
then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would
put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the
convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in
return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no
noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to
what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a
conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned,
there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor,
and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the
convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and
seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit
of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying
motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she
touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What
does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one
forgot it was but a whisper.
{398}
"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently.
"I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."
A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids
quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.
"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it
is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to
choose."
He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept
silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears
starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and
the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few
simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his
feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream
of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest
gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and
sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple
hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's
heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.
Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"
"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"
"You want me to write to him?"
"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was
comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to
tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened
to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd
feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously
in the lady's face.
"I won't forget," she said.
He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my
last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and
never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my
sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked
Larry best."
The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his
fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for
true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."
"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some
are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives
to all."
The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man.
Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still
lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent,
who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.
"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.
The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful
eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich!
It is for him to pity us."
She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor.
"Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He
reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I
hate to disturb a man who is dying."
The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just
given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His
confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much
more. How does his brother appear?"
"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could
hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the
guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should
have become quiet."
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"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.
The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy
Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward
him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and
very well dressed."
The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be
admitted without delay."
She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He
looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine;
and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."
"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow
morning if he behaves himself."
Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently
he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you,
ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."
"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to
you?"
He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand--a note which,
in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated
her to take up to his brother.
"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward
her.
"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.
Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he
asked tremulously.
"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he
feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he
shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."
Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady
unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a
change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note,
looked at the man who lay there dying before her.
He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything
but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.
She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother
John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to
California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking
care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for
me, going to prison for my crime."
The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper
from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't
know what he was writing!"
She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat
rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on
hers, a deathly pallor in his face.
"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.
"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.
He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he
said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O
ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do,
and have just about finished?"
It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his
permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.
"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink
did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that
night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning
Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand.
I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."
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He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his
strength.
"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a
spoonful of cordial.
But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he
spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here.
He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides,
Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid
Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they
asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not
guilty;' and it was true."
She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing
that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them,
then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.
He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You
promise?"
"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did
you know it?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow
morning."
"Yes!"
Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a
while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse
out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a
word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound
of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then
silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet,
breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read
by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and
calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his
ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to
entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent
fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises
with an iron grasp.
That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be
presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a
love that was entirely human?
"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God.
Perhaps you loved your brother too well."
"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm
reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."
"Do not be too sure," she said.
"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how;
and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman;
and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I
would scorn to do?"
"Are you not afraid of presumption?"
"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."
"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.
"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.
While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore
slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping
down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting
out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid
crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning
twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the
dawn.
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As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer,
lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull
eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a
solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.
"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in
chains? I would rather have been Peter!"
----------
Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles.
The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.
Childhood and the grave! Should these two words be placed
together? Must flowers fall before bearing fruit, and children
also die? This is what mothers think, and the church thinks as
they do, because the church is a mother. In her view children do
not die; they are born again, they are transfigured; and the
grave in which cold death places them resembles the white bed,
whereon, perhaps the day before, you saw them open their eyes to
the sunlight. Do you recollect the ode in which a poet, at the
time eminent, celebrated in beautiful verses the entrance of
Louis XVII. into the heavenly palace to which his father had gone
by the rough road of martyrdom? According to Catholic belief, all
those little beings who die before making a name or obtaining a
place in this world, are also young princes, heirs-apparent of a
kingdom more beautiful than that of France, and who, like Louis
XVII., fall asleep in a prison to awake upon a throne.
This is why the church has no prayers of grief at their burial.
Assured of their happiness, she laments not, but gives praise. By
the grace given at baptism, they are received into glory. She
covers their remains with white drapery, which calls to mind the
vestment which she put over them at the baptismal font. Instead
of mourning, she invites the children of heaven to unite in
praises, _Laudate, pueri!_ The Virgin, who was herself a
mother, receives them at her altar, where the triumphant
procession congratulates the Queen of angels that her empire is
enriched by one more subject--_Ave, Regina caelorum! Ave,
Domina angelorum!_ The funeral mass for little children is
only a thanksgiving to God, who has reserved a favored space for
those _blessed_ beings, _Venite, benedicti Patris_.
Having read the gospel of our Lord, who blessed and caressed
those to whom he promised the kingdom of heaven, the last prayer
of the church which throws a little earth upon the body that is
to rise again, is that we, adult sinners, may one day rejoice
with them in the same kingdom. Read again this funeral service,
and if you have a mourning mother among your friends and
relatives, (who does not know one?) give her these consolations.
She will believe that she hears the voice of God, who stopped the
coffin of the widow's only son and restored him to her.
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But these are, if I may speak thus, only the first caresses of
religion of the remains of children; the honor which she accords
to them is perpetuated in the worship with which she surrounds
their graves.
Paganism took little care of the tombs of those who had not
furnished to their country a citizen or a soldier. We know that
they considered a child's life very unimportant. Virgil alone,
among the poets, uttered a cry for the souls of young infants,
whom he represents as being cut down before the eyes of their
mothers. In those family sepulchres, called by the Romans
_columbaria_, I found several little busts in marble,
representing children, by the side of which were funeral urns,
containing at the bottom several pinches of ashes. This was all
that remained. Among the innumerable inscriptions which cover the
walls of the immense gallery of the Vatican, I saw several
epitaphs coldly stating that Junius Severianus had lived two
years; that Octavius Liberalis died when he was five years four
months and four days old; that Steteria Superba had departed life
at the age of eighteen months. But there was no wish or hope of
meeting them again, and no religious emblem to console the
mourners.
Elysium did not exist for those shades without a name, as they
were called, _sine nomine manes_, and their sepulchre closed
without hope and without glory. The position of children in
heathen times was revealed to me by an epitaph which I found at
Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, to which the fashionable Romans
came to enjoy the fine coast and a sunny sky. A stone detached
from the ruins of a theatre, now almost entirely destroyed by the
action of the weather and the sea, had the following inscription:
"To the divine shades of Septentrion, a child of twelve years,
who danced two days in the theatre and pleased the people"!
[Footnote 83] They made the poor slave-boy contribute for two
days to their delight; but he was overcome, and they applauded--
_saltavit et placuit_. See, then, what society made of this
child--a plaything and a victim! Meditating upon this, I recalled
to mind the time when another infant of twelve years of age
glorified God in the temple at Jerusalem, and also when the
Saviour took the hand of the dying girl and saying unto her,
"Arise!" restored her to her father. I was obliged to leave these
cursed ruins and enter for a moment into the temple of that God
who, to save these little ones, took upon himself the form of a
child--_Custodiens parvulos Dominus_.
[Footnote 83: "Diis Manibus pueri Septentrionis, annorum
duodecim, qui biduo saltavit in theatro et placuit."]
II.
Jesus Christ was born, was an infant; and since that time a
revolution in favor of children began, which is perceptible in
the epitaphs upon their graves. The child becomes a king, almost
a god. It is at least a soul called to heaven and expecting us;
and what new regards surround it for the future in that lapidary
style, which says so much in so few words.
I was at Avignon, and visiting the museum of that city, my
attention was attracted to a grave-stone of one of the first
Christian centuries. It contained the following words:
"_Florentiola, pax tecum!_" Florentiola, peace be with
thee!" By the side was the monogram of Christ, surrounded with
glory. Who was this little Florentiola? The tender diminutive
proved plainly that she was an infant, and a beloved one. The
wish expressed and the sign of Christ the Redeemer gave evidence
that she was also a Christian.
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This little name brought to mind another inscription which I
found somewhere in one of our cemeteries, upon the sepulchre of a
young woman: "She bloomed, blossomed, and died." Of these three
periods of life, Florentiola had passed through only the first;
but the last words expressed the hope that, as she had given to
this world the blossom, she would yield the fruit in another:
"_Pax tecum!_"
But one must go to the catacombs in Rome, and read, in that great
Christian city of death, the delicacies of the affections of
earth, and the hopes of a resurrection, which are radiant upon
the graves of little children. In the cemetery of St. Priscilla,
I observed two epitaphs distinguished above all others by their
brevity. One of them consists only of a single melancholy word,
"_Libera_" that is to say, free. A dove flying away,
carrying an olive-branch, explains the meaning, which to me
appeared sublime.
This captive soul which had passed through the prison of earth
was free at last! The church conveys a similar idea at the
funeral obsequies of little children: "_Anima nostra, sicut
passer, erepta est de laqueo venantium. Laqueus contritus est, et
nos liberati sumus._" (Psalm cxxiii.) "Our soul is escaped as
a bird out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and
we are delivered."
The other one, which I remarked at the same place, containing
only a word, was quite as beautiful and more
Christian--"_Redempta_," redeemed. This was also expressive
of liberty, but it was a freedom which had been acquired as the
price of a ransom which was the blood of God: _Redempta!_
This last expression alludes to the grace given by baptism, which
liberates the soul held in bondage by the demon. The children's
epitaphs have it often, and prove that the church had conferred
the sacraments upon them at the most tender age. You can find for
instance, in the museum of the Lateran: "Paulina, neophyte of
eight years; Candida, neophyte, twenty-one months old; Zozima,
neophyte, five years, eight months, and thirteen days; Matronata
Matrona, neophyte, one year, fifty-two days."
Upon a grave in the catacomb of Saint Calista, a Grecian
inscription was found by the Canon Profili, consisting of the
following words:
"Dionysius, newly illuminated, one year and four months." This
title of enlightened was given only to those who came into
possession of it by baptism. Saint Chrysostom mentions the
enlightened in no other way.
This one, collected in the cemetery of the new road Salaria, and
preserved at the Lateran, is more explicit:
"Florentius dedicates this inscription to his well-beloved son,
Apronianus, who lived one year, nine months, five days. He was
loved by his grand-mother, and seeing that he was nigh unto
death, she asked the church to make him a Christian before he
should leave the world." [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: "Florentius filio suo Aproniano fecit titulum
benemerenti qui vixit annum et menses novem, dies quinque.
Cum amatus fuisset à majore suâ et vidit hunc morti
constitutum esse, petivit de ecclesiâ ut fidelis de seculo
recessisset."]
Baptism, which was conferred upon the newly-born, was a great
consolation to those who witnessed their departure from this
world. "O Magus, innocent child!" said an inscription at the
museum of the Lateran, "thou hast gone to live among the
guiltless. How much more endurable is life! With what joy the
church, thy other mother, received thee, when thou didst leave
the world for her. We will suppress the murmurings of our hearts
and restrain the tears from our eyes." [Footnote 85]
[Footnote 85: "Magus puer innocens, esse jam inter innocentes
coepisti. Quàm staviles (stabilis) tivi (tibi) haec vita est!
Quàm te laetum excipet (excepit) mater ecclesia edeoc (de
hoc) mundo revertentem. Comprimatur pectorum gemitus,
struatur (destruatur) fletus oculorum."]
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Expressions of the most ingenious tenderness are shown in the
last farewell to creatures of whom only smiles are known.
"Cyricus, dear soul, peace be with thee! He lived a year and
sixty-two days!" [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 86: Cyricus, anima dulcis in pace, vixit annum i.
dies lxii.]
"Here reposes our dear soul, named Quiriace, an innocent child,
beautiful and good, who lived three years, three months, eight
days." [Footnote 87]
[Footnote 87: Hic posita est anima dulcis, innoca sapiens et
pulcra, nomine Quiriace, quae vixit annos iii. menses iii.
dies viii.]
The word _soul_, in the Latin language, is a term of great
tenderness. It signifies life as it is visible. But in the
Christian language it has a more spiritual signification. As the
poet says:
"Thou callest me thy life; call me thy soul!
I wish a name more lasting than a day.
Life is of little value, a breath extinguishes the flame;
But the soul is immortal as our love."
Maternal affection creates, in Christianity, a name for children
which becomes as the family name for those beings who pass from
earth, having only glanced at its sorrows. The mother remembers
that the Lord said, the angels of these little ones behold the
face of the Father who is in heaven. This was enough to make so
many angels of those innocent babes by an intentional confusion.
This is hereafter to be their title: and where is now the
afflicted mother who, at the death-bed of her son, has not seen,
like the poet, the radiant face of the angel bending over and
calling the child who resembles him? Primitive epigraphy goes to
show the cause of this synonymy upon the graves of children.
"_Angelica, bene in pace_." "Angelica, child, be happy in
peace," was one inscription of the Catacombs.
Upon another was written:
"Laurentius to his beloved son Severus, who lived four years,
eight months, and five days, and was called by the angels on the
7th of January." [Footnote 88]
[Footnote 88: "Severo filio dulcissimo Laurentius pater
benemerenti qui vixit annos iv. menses viii. dies v.
accersitus ab angelis, vii. idus Januarii."]
One is pleased to recognize in these funereal places, the
remembrances of school days, being the only ones that the
departed youths have left in life. In several catacombs, near the
Cubicula, where the faithful ones assembled for prayer, large
halls can be seen, which have neither altar nor pictures, and no
other embellishment than banks made in the turf, mostly
terminated by one or two elevated seats. It is presumed that the
antiquarians assembled children in school, and instructed them in
the catechism. Near one of these halls can be read the following
epitaph in the catacomb of Saint Priscilla:
"Obrimos to Palladios, his beloved cousin and schoolmate, as a
remembrance."
In the catacomb of the new Via Salaria the school-teacher united
with the mother to write an epitaph upon his pupil, whom he had
adopted in his heart.
"With a holy and pure spirit, this grave has been made to
Florentius, a child of thirteen years, by Coritus, his teacher,
who loved him more than a son, and by Corda, his mother."
[Footnote 89]
[Footnote 89: "In spiritu sancto bono, Florentio qui vixit
annis xiii. Coritus magister qui plus amavit quam proprium
filium, et Cordeus mater filio benemerenti fecerunt.']
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