physiologists that when a ray of light falls upon the retina, the
impression it produces remains for a definite period, according to
calculation about the _third of a second_. It is this fact which is
used to explain why a burning brand, when twirled rapidly round, gives
the appearance of a ring of light. But till quite recently it had not
been shown whether the different colors of light had the same degree
of persistence upon the retina. The subject has quite lately been
taken up by the Abbé Laborde, who shows that, just as the prism
separates the colors at different angles, so the retina absorbs the
callers, or the impressions produced thereby, in different times. In
conducting his experiment to prove this, the abbé receives the
sunlight through an aperture in a shutter into a darkened chamber. The
aperture is about three millimetres wide by six high. In the course of
the beam and in the middle the chamber there is placed a disk of
metal, the circumference of which is pierced by apertures
corresponding to the aperture in the shutter. This disk is caused to
revolve by clockwork. Behind the disc is placed a plate of ground
glass to receive this spot of light. The disk being then caused to
revolve rapidly, the spot appears at first white, but as the
revolution become more rapid the borders of the spot and the colors
which successively appear are in their order of succession as follows:
blue, green, red, white, green, blue.--_Comptes Rendus_.
_The Origin of Diamonds._--a curious, and it seems to us very
improbable, theory of the origin of diamonds was put foreword by M.
Chancourtios in an essay published in the _Comptes Rendus_ for June
25th. The author tries to show in this that diamonds have been
produced by and incomplete oxidation of the carbides of hydrogen, in
pretty much the same fashion as the sulphur in the _Solfatara,_
described by Professor Ansted in one of our late numbers, results from
an incomplete oxidation of sulphuretted hydrogen, all of whose
hydrogen is converted into water, while only a part of the sulphur is
changed into sulfurous acid. It is by a similar process that petroleum
has given rise to bitumen, and this again two graphite. "If, then"
says the author, "a mixture of hydrocarbon gases and vapor of water be
submitted to slow oxidation, diamonds may possibly be obtained." It is
even possible, he observes, that the tubes which convey common
coal-gas along the streets of Paris may contain such artificial
diamonds in abundance.--_Popular Science Review_.
------
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns. By Alice Carey, 8vo., pp. 333. New York:
Hurd Houghton. 1866.
Literature knows no sex, but critics do, and in courtesy we must say
to Miss Carey, we think better of her than of her book; and while
judging what is before us purely on its aesthetic merits, we incline
to believe that the selections here compiled do not show her at her
best. This book might just possibly {573} have been good, only it is
not. It appears to consist of gatherings from the grist of a
respectable and old-established mill, whose brand is familiarly known
wherever mild magazines and sensation periodicals have penetrated. The
most prominent quality it demonstrates is the tireless industry--or
the well-oiled machinery--of the fair miller. The style throughout is
just of the kind to be the first in a "Poet's Corner;" best
characterized, perhaps, by the word "unexceptionable," as used by the
domestic critic, if one there be, of Frank Leslie or the Ledger.
Generally, there is nothing whenever to quarrel with--grammatically,
socially, theologically, or practically. We should not be in the least
surprised if Miss Carey's manuscripts even came in accurately
punctuated. The whole book is like the perfection of a gentleman's
toilet; every constituent part is so correctly "got up," that once out
of sight, we cannot recall a single thing beyond the impression of the
_tout ensemble_.
There is considerable thinking, without any notable novelties in
thought. The fact is, no one who has not tried can appreciate the
difficulty of finding something salient to fasten an opinion on. The
main impression of the serious and heavy parts of the volume on our
mind was that the authoress loved God, meant to be religious and
tender-hearted, and thought the world cold and the sectarians
narrow-minded: laudable conclusions all, which we rather agree with on
the whole, but which do not show cause why they should exist in such
splendid binding.
If this were all; if the book consisted utterly, as it does mainly,
of versified unremarkableness, all were well enough. It would sell all
the same, and descend in its due course to the limbo of respectable
mediocrity, which cannot be damned because it never had a chance to be
saved. But there are gleams amid the commonplace that make it, to our
mind, one of the saddest books we ever opened--said with the
unfulfilled promise of a busy yet wasted life. While there is not, we
believe, a single true poem in her book, we do think Miss Carey might
once have written poetry. There are traces of talent, like the
abrasions on the high Alpine ridges where avalanches or glaciers went
by them that are long since melted into the valley below, and gone to
join the sea. We do not think Miss Carey ever had a very great supply
of poetic power--never so much as Phoebe Carey, who has enough poetry
in her to equip any ten of the other lady contributors whose versicles
pay as well as hers; but what there was has been sapped and drained
off as fast as it accumulated, in a thousand paltry rillets of verse
that at most can only be silver threads in the passing sunshine. Had
she ever been suffered to let her thoughts and fancies gather and
mingle, perhaps she could have written well. She has not only
considerable command of language, but some character: there has always
been something respectable about Miss Carey that set her apart,
somehow, from the other newspaper writers of miscellaneous verses, and
to it she probably owes the present distinction of being the only one
whose productions are thought worth making a book from. But the woman
has never had a chance. As fast as an idea budded, it was contracted
for in advance and plucked long before ripeness, for the greedy
children that will have their green fruit. If a fancy strayed into her
brain, it was not hers to do with as she liked. It must be carved and
served up in as many different styles as possible; made into a long
poem for one paper and a short poem for another, and dashed into a
third as a flavoring ingredient for a string of hired rhymes. Now, is
there not a strange pathos in the idea of making a life-long business
of doing that ill which one might do well, and which is only worth
existence when well done; of dribbling and frittering away every finer
impulse; of chipping the heart's crystals up into glaziers' diamonds;
of subsisting on oneself, Prometheus and vulture in one? And how
infinitely sadder with the consciousness all the while that if one
could but get a respite, this same work, wrought in freedom, might win
all that hope asks?
Consciously or unconsciously, this, we believe, is the discipline
through which Miss Carey has passed. We think so from the manner, and
from the places, in which we come upon the fragments of promise that
shine here and there. They are often repeated in other
lines--sometimes verbatim; they are not the substance but always the
sauce of the poem; they are never sustained or developed. Everything
goes to show that she has reached that fatal state of enervation when
the mind, from long desuetude, {574} and from never having a fair
chance to think out anything, he comes next to incapable of any
continued political thought at all. The exertion of developing a happy
idea into its best form is too much for the unused and enfeebled
imagination.
So much for the conjectural inside view of these verses, the actual
outside view remains. Whether it be a sad fact or simply a fact, there
is nothing to read twice in the book. It is not poetry, but it is a
piece of very good judgment on the part of the publisher--just what
they want. And if we understand their motives, we shall earn their
good will by saying that this is a safe, trustworthy, and entirely
harmless work, innocuous to families and schools, superbly bound,
finished, and printed, and fit, beyond almost any work we know of, for
a present from very affectionate young men to very amiable young
ladies.
BEETHOVEN'S LETTERS. (1790-1836.) From the collection of Dr. Ludwig
Nohl; also his Letters to the Archduke Rudolph, Cardinal-Archbishop of
Olmutz, from the collection of Dr. Ludwig Ritter von Kochel.
Translated by Lady Wallace; with a portrait and facsimile. 2 vols.,
12mo. Hurd & Houghton.
These letters of the illustrious _maestro_ are arranged under three
heads: Life's Joy a and Sorrows, Life's Mission, Life's Troubles and
Close. They are of quite a miscellaneous character, and refer to every
conceivable event of life, displaying much good humor and not a little
ill humor in their short, quick, impatient sentences. As a
letter-writer he is far inferior to Mozart, with whom the reader comes
at once into sympathy, and of whose letters very few indeed are
wanting in sentiments of universal interest. On the contrary, a very
large number of these letters of Beethoven will be read simply because
Beethoven wrote them, and will not bear a reperusal Yet they will, no
doubt, find a welcome place beside those of his great brother artist
on the table of every admirer of the grand music or these two grand
geniuses. His enthusiastic, and we may add, somewhat imaginative
editor and compiler, Dr. Nohl, is perhaps better qualified to form a
judgment upon the general tenor and worth of these letters than we
are, and we therefore quote the following from his preface to the
present work: "If not fettered by petty feelings, the reader will
quickly surmount the casual obstacles and stumbling-blocks which the
first perusal of these letters may seem to present, and quickly feel
himself transported at a single stride into a stream where a strange
roaring and rushing is heard, but above which loftier tones resound
with magic and exciting power. For a acute year life breathes in these
lines; and under-current runs through their apparently unconnected
import, uniting them as with and electric chain, and with firmer links
than any mere coherence of subjects could have effected. I experienced
this myself to the most remarkable degree when I first made the
attempt to arrange, in accordance with their period and substance, the
hundreds of individual pages bearing neither date nor address, and I
was soon convinced that a connected text (such as Mozart's letters
have, and ought to have) would be here entirely superfluous, as even
the best biographical commentary would be very dry work, interrupting
the electric current of the whole, and thus destroying its peculiar
effect."
The volumes are published in scholarly style, and present a very
readable and attractive page.
LONDON POEMS. By Robert Buchanan 12 mo, pp. 272. Alexander Strahan,
London and New-York.
The elegant dress of this volume, so characteristic of Mr. Strahan's
publications, is calculated to make one shy of saying anything
derogatory to its character; but we are held to say that we decidedly
object to Mr. Buchanan's poetry in any dress. The greater part of
these poems are to us positively repulsive. They are but little more
than rudely hand sketches of certain phases of low life in London,
immoral and irreligious in tone, and utterly wanting in that spiritual
expression which invests the true poet with the mantle of inspiration.
The poet may describe vice if he will, but let him not dare to excuse
it or throw a charm about it if he would not raised a storm of
indignation in the bosoms of the virtuous and the truthful. Poetry is
a divine art; the poet must discharge at once the high office of
teacher as well as psalmist, and every {575} line should bear the
impress of divine truth nobility, and purity. That which is false,
base, boorish, and obscene is none the less detestable for being put
in rhythm.
FREDERICK THE GREAT AND HIS COURT. An historical novel. By L.
Mühlbach. Translated from the German by Mrs. Chapman Coleman and
daughters. 12mo. New-York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.
The rapidity with which the novels of Miss Mühlbach have risen into
popularity in this country is a pretty good indication of their merit.
They are free from the false sensationalism which furnishes the spice
of the lower school of modern fiction; and they treat of historical
subjects and characters with an honest intention to exhibit historical
truth, and not as a mere framework for the display of a trashy story.
Many of the scenes are drawn with a fidelity and an effectiveness
which show at the same time a close familiarity with the times and
persons with which the novel is concerned and a very considerable
literary skill; but the dialogues are not always well managed, the
diction being sometimes too trivial and sometimes too stilted. Despite
this minor defect, the book is full enough of interest: and our wonder
is, considering the great and long-established popularity of Miss
Mühlbach in Germany, that her writings were not translated into our
language long ago. It is a singular fact that the present work, and
some other historical novels from the same pen which D. Appleton & Co.
have now in press, were translated and first printed in the
Confederate States during the late rebellion.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
By Emily Davies. 16mo, pp. 191. London
and New-York: Alexander Strahan. 1866.
This is a well-written plea for reform in the present system of female
education; not for a reform which would ignore the difference in the
character and duties of the two sexes, but one which would open to
women various callings for which nature has specially fitted them, but
which they are now shut out either by defective training or by the
prejudices of society. Miss Davies's little treatise is an appropriate
companion work for a volume of similar essays by Miss Parkes which we
noticed two or three months ago; and though both of them are more
applicable to the state of things in England than to the better
condition of women in our own country there is much in both which
deserves our serious consideration.
A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH,
from the commencement of the Christian Era until the present time. By
M. l'abbé J. E. Darras. Vol. IV. New-York: P. O'Shea. 1866.
The fourth volume of this highly esteemed work completes the
publication of the original history of M. Darras. It comprises the
last, and to us for many reasons the most interesting period of the
history of the church; that which begins with the rise of
Protestantism down to the pontificate of Gregory XVI. To this volume
is added as an appendix a very concise and valuable historical sketch
of the origin and progress of the Church in the United States by the
Rev. Dr. C. I. White, of Washington City. We have already warmly
commended this work to our readers. It will take its place, of course,
in all our colleges and literary societies, and become as familiar to
our American as it is already to all French students; but we wish for
it also a wide distribution in the family circle. There is no reason
why such useful and entertaining works as this should not be kept at
hand and under the eye of our youth at home. A good knowledge of the
church's life, labors, trials, and victories is necessary to every
Catholic in our day, both for an intelligent appreciation of his faith
as well as to be able to combat the attacks that faith receives
through misrepresentation of the facts of history, and the unblushing
falsehoods concerning the Papacy, which are so foul a blot upon the
pages of history and controversy written by Protestant and infidel
enemies of the church. The present work is the best history of the
church we possess in the English language. It is such a one as we have
needed a long time, and we again thank the enterprising publisher for
the boon he has thus conferred upon the Catholic public.
{576}
THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS.
by Father Thomas of Jesus. Reprinted from the last London Edition. New
York: P O'Shea, 27 Barclay st. 1866.
This is a work composed by a great saint, and justly deserving of the
great reputation it has always enjoyed as one of the best of spiritual
books. It contains an inexhaustible mine of meditation, sufficient to
last a person during his whole life, and just as new and fresh after
the hundreds perusal as during the first. It is as a book for
meditation that it should be used, and for this purpose it cannot be
too highly recommended to religious communities or to devout persons
in the world who desire and need a guide and model for the practice of
meditation.
THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF MEN.
An essay. by John Young LL.D. Edin. Strahan.
Dr. Young was formerly a Presbyterian minister, but resigned his
position on account of his inability to believe the Presbyterian
doctrines, especially that of the vicarious atonement and imputed
righteousness of Christ. The present work is leveled against this
doctrine. The author has tolerably clear views of the Incarnation, and
some other Catholic doctrines. His learning appears to be
considerable, the tone of his mind very just and moderate, and his
intellectual and literary ability of no mean order. He is one instance
among a thousand others, of a noble, religious mind striving to rise
above the common Protestant orthodoxy without floating away into
rationalism. We recommend his book to our Calvinistic friends. What
the excellent author is yearning after is Catholic theology. This, and
this alone, would satisfy him, for it alone can satisfy any mind that
wishes to believe in the Christian revelation and at the same time the
rational.
THE LIFE OF ST. VINCENT DEPAUL, AND ITS LESSONS.
A lecture. By Rev. T. S. Preston, R. Coddington.
The publication of this lecture will gratify many who were not able
to be present at its delivery. The orator gives a short account of the
life and great labors of the apostle of charity, and then shows the
difference between charity as a Christian virtue and simple, natural
philanthropy, both in principle and their means and plans of action.
In works of benevolence, that which the Christian saint is careless
about and avoids to the utmost of his power, is considered by the
world as of vital necessity to secure success, the approval and
applause of men. This truth is well brought out in the lecture, and is
one which it is necessary to keep before our minds in this puffing
age. The proceeds of the sale of the lecture is accredited to the
benefit of the conference of St. Vincent de Paul, attached to St.
Ann's Church in the city.
ALTE UND NEUR WELT. Benziger Bros. New York.
This is a Catholic monthly magazine in the German language, enriched
with copious illustrations. The type and paper are of very superior
quality, and the contents very various and, we should think,
well-chosen. The illustrations are by far the best which can be found
in any periodical published in America, and many of them equal to
those of the best European magazines. The work as a whole reflects the
greatest credit on its conductors, and deserves the most extensive
patronage from our numerous and intelligent German Catholic
population. We recommend it also to those who are studying the German
language, or interested in German literature. The illustrations alone
are worth the price of subscription, which is $4.00 a year.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
From D. & J. Sadlier & Co. New York. The denouncement; or, the Last
Baron of Crana, and The Boyne Water. By the Brothers Banim. 2 vols.
12mo, pp. 448 and 559; Parts 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 and 36 of
D'Artaud's Lives of the Popes.
From Ticknor & Fields, Boston. How New York is Governed. By James
Parton, reprinted from the North American Review. Pamphlet.
From P. O'Shea, New York. The Purgatorian Manual; or, a Selection of
Prayers and Devotions with appropriate reflections for the use of the
members of the Purgatorian Society in the Diocese of New York, and
adapted for general use. By Rev. Thomas S. Preston, pastor of St.
Ann's and Chancellor of the Diocese. Approved by the most Rev. John
McCloskey, D.D., archbishop of New York, pp. 452; The Imitation of
Christ in Two Books, translated by Richard Challoner, D.D. 48mo, pp.
308; Instructions on the Commandments of God, and Holy Sacraments. By
St. Alphonsus Liguori. 48mo, pp. 288. The Spiritual Combat; or, the
Christian Defended against the Enemy of his Salvation. 48mo, pp. 256;
Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, in Latin and English. 12mo, pp.
178.
We have received an Oration delivered before the members of St. Mary's
Orphan Association of Nashville, Tenn., July 4th, 1866, by Rev. A. J.
Ryan, author of The Concord Banner, etc.
------------
{577}
THE CATHOLIC WORLD
VOL. IV., NO. 23--FEBRUARY, 1867.
THE POPE AND THE REVOLUTION
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
[This sermon is given to the world in consequence of its having been
made the subject in the public prints of various reports and
comments, which, though both friendly and fair to the author, as far
as he has seen them, nevertheless, from the necessity of the case,
have proceeded from information inexact in points of detail.
It is now published from the copy written beforehand, and does not
differ from the copy, as delivered, except in such corrections of a
critical nature as are imperative when a composition, written
_currente calamo_, has to be prepared for the press. There is one
passage, however, which it has been found necessary to enlarge, with
a view of expressing more exactly the sentiment which it contained,
namely, the comparison made between Italian and English Catholics.
The author submits the whole, as he does all his publications, to
the judgment of Holy Church.]
October 13, 1866.
The church shone brightly in her youthful days,
Ere the world on her smiled
So now, an outcast, she would pour her rays
Keen, free, and undefiled;
Yet would I not that arm of force were mine,
To thrust her from her awful ancient shrine.
'Twas duty bound each convert-king to rear
His mother from the dust;
And pious was it to enrich, nor fear
Christ for the rest to trust:
And who shall dare make common or unclean
What once has on the holy altar been?
Dear Brothers! hence, while ye for ill prepare,
Triumph Is still your own;
Blest is a pilgrim church! yet shrink to share
The curse of throwing down.
So will we toll in our old place to stand,
Watching, not dreading, the despoiler's hand.
_Vid_. Lyra Apostolica.
SERMON.
This day, the feast of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has
been specially devoted by our ecclesiastical superiors to be a day of
prayer for the sovereign pontiff, our holy father, Pope Pius the
Ninth.
His lordship, our bishop, has addressed a pastoral letter to his
clergy upon the subject, and at the end of it he says: "Than that
festival none can be more appropriate, as it is especially devoted to
celebrating the triumphs of the Holy See obtained by prayer. We
therefore propose and direct that on the festival of the Rosary, the
chief mass in each church and chapel of our diocese be celebrated with
as much solemnity as circumstances will allow of. And that after the
mass the psalm {578} _Miserere_ and the Litany of the Saints be sung
or recited. That the faithful be invited to offer one communion for
the Pope's intention. And that, where it can be done, one part at
least of the rosary be publicly said at some convenient time in the
church, for the same intention."
Then he adds: "In the sermon at the mass of the festival, it is our
wish that the preacher should instruct the faithful on their
obligations to the Holy See, and on the duty especially incumbent on
us at this time of praying for the Pope."
I. "Our obligations to the Holy See." What Catholic can doubt of our
obligations to the Holy See? especially what Catholic under the shadow
and teaching of St. Philip Neri can doubt those obligations, in both
senses of the word "obligation," the tie of duty and the tie of
gratitude?
1. For first as to duty. Our duty to the Holy See, to the chair of St.
Peter, is to be measured by what the church teaches us concerning that
Holy See and of him who sits in it. Now St. Peter, who first occupied
it, was the Vicar of Christ. You know well, my brethren, our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, who suffered on the cross for us, thereby bought
for us the kingdom of heaven. "When thou hadst overcome the sting of
death," says the hymn, "thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to those
who believe." He opens, and he shuts; he gives grace, he withdraws it;
he judges, he pardons, he condemns. Accordingly, he speaks of himself
in the Apocalypse as "him who is the holy and the true, him that hath
the key of David (the key, that is, of the chosen king of the chosen
people), him that openeth and no man shutteth, that shutteth and no
man openeth." And what our Lord, the supreme judge, is in heaven, that
was St. Peter on earth; he had the keys of the kingdom, according to
the text, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind
upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on earth, be loosed also in heaven."
Next, let it be considered, the kingdom which our Lord set up with St.
Peter at its head was decreed in the counsels of God to last to the
and of all things, according to the words I have just quoted, "The
gates of hell show not prevail against it." And again, "Behold I am
with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." And in the
words of the prophet Isaias, speaking of that divinely established
church, then in the future, "This is my covenant with them, My spirit
that is in thee, and my words which I have put in thy month, shall not
depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of
the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for
ever." And the prophet Daniel says, "The God of heaven will set up a
kingdom that shall never be destroyed . . . and it shall break in
pieces and shall consume all those kingdoms (of the earth, which went
before it), and itself shall stand for ever."
That kingdom our Lord set up when he came on earth, and especially
after his resurrection; for we are told by St. Luke that this was his
gracious employment, when he visited the apostles from time to time,
during the forty days which intervened between Easter day and the day
of his ascension. "He showed himself alive to the apostles," says the
evangelist, "after his passion by many proofs, for forty days
appearing to them and speaking of the kingdom of God." And
accordingly, when at length he had ascended on high, and had sent down
"the promise of his Father," the Holy Ghost, upon his apostles, they
forthwith entered upon their high duties, and brought that kingdom or
church into shape, and supplied it with members, and enlarged it, and
carried it into all lands. As to St. Peter, he acted as the head of
the church, according to the previous {579} words of Christ; and,
still according to his Lord's supreme will, he at length placed
himself in the see of Rome, where he was martyred. And what was then
done, in its substance cannot be undone. "God is not as a man that he
should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should change. Hath he said
then, and shall he not do? Hath he said then, and will he not fulfil?"
And, as St. Paul says, "The gifts and the calling of God are without
repentance." His church, then, in all necessary matters, is as
unchangeable as he. Its framework, its polity, its ranks, its offices,
its creed, its privileges, the promises made to it, its fortunes in
the world, are ever what they have been.
Therefore, as it was in the world, but not _of_ the world, in the
apostles' times, so it is now; as it was "in honor and dishonor, in
evil report and good report, as chastised but not killed, as having
nothing and possessing all things," in the apostles' times, so it is
now; as then it taught the truth, so it does now; and as then it had
the sacraments of grace, so has it now; as then it had a hierarchy or
holy government of bishops, priests, and deacons, so has it now; and
as it had a head then, so must it have a head now. Who is that visible
head? who is the vicar of Christ? who has now the keys of the kingdom
of heaven, as St. Peter had then? Who is it who binds and looses on
earth, that our Lord may bind and loose in heaven? Who, I say, is the
successor to St. Peter, since a successor there must be, in his
sovereign authority over the church? It is he who sits in St. Peter's
chair; it is the Bishop of Rome. We all know _this_; it is part of our
_faith_; I am not proving it to you, my brethren. The visible headship
of the church, which was with St. Peter while he lived, has been
lodged ever since in his chair; the successors in his headship are the
successors in his chair, the continuous line of Bishops of Rome, or
Popes, as they are called, one after another, as years have rolled on,
one dying and another coming, down to this day, when we see Pius the
Ninth sustaining the weight of the glorious apostolate, and that for
twenty years past--a tremendous weight, a ministry involving momentous
duties, innumerable anxieties, and immense responsibilities, as it
ever has done.
And now, though I might say much more about the prerogatives of the
Holy Father, the visible head of the church, I have said more than
enough for the purpose which has led to my speaking about him at all.
I have said that, like St. Peter, he is the vicar of his Lord. He can
judge, and he can acquit; he can pardon, and he can condemn; he can
command, and he can permit; he can forbid, and he can punish. He has a
supreme jurisdiction over the people of God. He can stop the ordinary
course of sacramental mercies; he can excommunicate from the ordinary
grace of redemption; and he can remove again the ban which he has
inflicted. It is the rule of Christ's providence, that what his vicar
does in severity or in mercy upon earth, he himself confirms in
heaven. And in saying all this I have said enough for my purpose,
because that purpose is to define our obligations to him. That is the
point on which our bishop has fixed our attention; "our obligations to
the Holy See;" and what need I say more to measure our own duty to it
and to him who sits in it, than to say that, in his administration of
Christ's kingdom, in his religious acts, we must never oppose his
will, or dispute his word, or criticise his policy, or shrink from his
side? There are kings of the earth who have despotic authority, which
their subjects obey indeed and disown in their hearts; but we must
never murmur at that absolute rule which the sovereign pontiff has
over us, because it is given to him by Christ, and, in obeying him, we
are obeying his Lord. We must never suffer ourselves to doubt, that,
in his government of the church, he is guided by an intelligence more
than human. His yoke is the yoke of Christ, _he_ has the
responsibility {580} of his own acts, not we; and to his Lord must he
render account, not to us. Even in secular matters it is ever safe to
be on his side, dangerous to be on the side of his enemies. Our duty
is, not indeed to mix up Christ's vicar with this or that party of
men, because he in his high station is above all parties, but to look
at his acts, and to follow him whither he goeth, and never to desert
him, however we may be tried, but to defend him at all hazards, and
against all comers, as a son would a father, and us a wife a husband,
knowing that his cause is the cause of God. And so, as regards his
successors, if we live to see them; it is our duty to give _them_ in
like manner our dutiful allegiance and our unfeigned service, and to
follow them also whithersoever they go, having that same confidence
that each in his turn and in his own day will do God's work and will,
which we felt in their predecessors, now taken away to their eternal
reward.
2. And now let us consider our obligations to the sovereign pontiff in
the second sense, which is contained under the word "obligation." "In
the sermon in the mass," says the bishop, "it is our wish that the
preacher should instruct the faithful on their obligations to the Holy
See;" and certainly those obligations, that is, the claims of the Holy
See upon our gratitude, are very great. We in this country owe our
highest blessings to the see of St. Peter--to the succession of
bishops who have filled his apostolic chair. For first it was a Pope
who sent missionaries to this island in the beginning of the church,
when the island was yet in pagan darkness. Then again, when our
barbarous ancestors, the Saxons, crossed over from the continent and
overran the country, who but a Pope, St. Gregory the First, sent over
St. Augustine and his companions to convert them to Christianity? and
by God's grace they and their successors did the great work in the
course of a hundred years. From that time, twelve hundred years ago
our nation has ever been Christian. And then in the lawless times each
followed, and the break-up of the old world all over Europe, and the
formation of the new, it was the Popes, humanly speaking, who saved
the religion of Christ from being utterly lost and coming to an and,
and not in England only, but on the continent; that is, our Lord made
use of that succession of his vicars to fulfil his gracious promise,
that his religion should never fail. The Pope and the bishops of the
church, acting together in that miserable time, rescued from
destruction all that makes up our present happiness, spiritual and
temporal. Without them the world would have relapsed into
barbarism--but God willed otherwise; and especially the Roman
pontiffs, the successors of St. Peter, the centre of Catholic unity,
the vicars of Christ, which primarily related to the Almighty Redeemer
himself: "I have a lead help upon one that is mighty, and I have
exalted one chosen quote of the people. I have found David my servant,
with my holy oil have I anointed him. For my hand shall help him, and
my arm shall strengthen him. The enemy shall have no advantage over
him, nor the son of iniquity have power to hurt him. I will put to
flight his enemies before his face, and them that hate him I will put
to flight. And my truth and my mercy shall be with him, and in my name
shall his horn be exalted. He shall cry out to me, Thou art my Father,
my God, and the support of my salvation. And I will make him my
first-born, high above the kings of the earth. I will keep my mercy
for him for ever, and my coveted shall be faithful to him."
And the Almighty did this in pity toward his people, and for the sake
of his religion, and by virtue of his promise, and for the merits of
the most precious blood of his own dearly beloved Son, Whom the Popes
represented. As Moses and Aaron, as Josue, as {581} Samuel, as David,
were the leaders of the Lord's host in the old time, and carried on
the chosen people of Israel from age to age, in spite of their enemies
round about, so have the Popes from the beginning of the gospel, and
especially in those middle ages when anarchy prevailed, been faithful
servants of their Lord, watching and fighting against sin and
injustice and unbelief and ignorance, and spreading abroad far and
wide the knowledge of Christian truth.
Such they have been in every age, and such are the obligations which
mankind owes to them; and, if I am to pass on to speak of the present
pontiff, and of our own obligations to him, then I would have you
recollect, my brethren, that it is he who has taken the Catholics of
England out of their unformed state and made them a church. He it is
who has redressed a misfortune of nearly three hundred years'
standing. Twenty years ago we were a mere collection of individuals;
but Pope Pius has brought us together, has given us bishops, and
created out of us a body politic, which, please God, as time goes on,
will play an important part in Christendom, with a character, an
intellect, and a power of its own, with schools of its own, with a
definite influence in the counsels of the Holy Church Catholic, as
England had of old time.
This has been his great act toward our country; and then specially, as
to his great act toward us here, toward me. One of his first acts
after he was Pope was, in his great condescension, to call me to
Rome; then, when I got there, he bade me send for my friends to be
with me; and he formed us into and oratory. And thus it came to pass
that, on my return to England, I was able to associate myself with
others who had not gone to Rome, till we were so many in number that
not only did we establish our own oratory here, whither the Pope had
specially sent us, but we found we could throw off from's a colony of
zealous and able priests into the metropolis, and establish there,
with the powers with which the Pope had furnished me, and the sanction
of the late cardinal, that oratory which has done and still does so
much good among the Catholics of London.
Such is the Pope now happily reigning in the chair of St. Peter; such
are our personal obligations to him; such has he been toward England,
such toward us, toward you, my brethren. Such he is in his benefits,
and, great as are the claims of those benefits upon us, great equally
are the claims on us of his personal character and of his many
virtues. He is one whom to see is to love; one who overcomes even
strangers, even enemies, by his very look and voice; whose presence
subdues, whose memory haunts, even the sturdy resolute mind of the
English Protestant. Such is the Holy Father of Christendom, the worthy
successor of a long and glorious line. Such is he; and great as he is
in office, and in his beneficent acts and virtuous life, as great is
he in the severity of his trials, in the complication of his duties,
and in the gravity of his perils--perils which are at this moment
closing him in on every side; and therefore it is, on account of the
crisis of the long-protracted troubles of his pontificate which seems
near at hand, that our bishop has set apart this day for special
solemnities, the feast of the Holy Rosary, and has directed us to
"instruct the faithful on their _obligations_ to the Holy See," and
not only so, but also "on the duty especially incumbent on us at this
time of _praying_ for the Pope."
II. This, then, is the second point to which I have to direct your
attention, my brethren--the duty of praying for the Holy Father; but,
before doing so, I must tell you what the Pope's long-protracted
troubles are about, and what the crisis is which seems approaching, I
will do it in as few words as I can.
More than a thousand years ago, nay, near upon fifteen hundred, began
that great struggle, which I spoke of {582} just now, between the old
and the new inhabitants of this part of the world. Whole populations
of barbarians overrun the whole face of the country, that is, of
England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the re«t of Europe. They
were heathens, and they got the better of the Christians; and religion
seemed likely to fail together with that old Christian stock. But, as
I have said, the Pope and the bishops of the church took heart, and
set about converting the new-comers, as in a former age they had
converted those who now had come to misfortune; and, through God's
mercy, they succeeded. The Saxon English--Anglo-Saxons, as they are
called--are among those whom the Pope converted, as I said just now.
The new convert people, as you may suppose, were very grateful to the
Pope and bishops, and they showed their gratitude by giving them large
possessions, which were of great use, in the bad times that followed,
in maintaining the influence of Christianity in the world. Thus the
Catholic Church became rich and powerful. The bishops became princes,
and the Pope became a sovereign ruler, with a large extent of country
all his own. This state of things lasted for many hundred years; and
the Pope and bishops became richer and richer, more and more powerful,
until at length the Protestant revolt took place, three hundred years
ago, and ever since that time, in a temporal point of view, they have
become of less and less importance, and less and less prosperous.
Generation after generation the enemies of the church, on the other
hand, have become bolder and bolder, more powerful, and more
successful in their measures against the Catholic faith. By this time
the church has well-nigh lost all its wealth and all its power; its
bishops have been degraded from their high places in the world, and in
many countries have scarcely more, or not more, of weight or of
privilege than the ministers of the sects which have split off from
it. However, though the bishops lost, as time went on, their temporal
rank, the Pope did lose his; he has been an exception to the rule;
according to the providence of God, he has retained Rome, and the
territories around about Rome, far and wide, as his own possession
without let or hindrance. But now at length, by the operation of the
same causes which have destroyed the power of the bishops, the Holy
Father is in danger of losing his temporal possessions. For the last
hundred years he has had from time to time serious reverses, but he
recovered his ground. Six years ago he lost the greater part of his
dominions--, all but Rome and the country immediately about it,--and
now the worst of difficulties has occurred as regards the territories
which remain to him. His enemies have succeeded, as it would seem, in
persuading at least a large portion of his subjects to side with them.
This is a real and very trying difficulty. While his subjects are for
him, no one can have a word to say against his temporal rule; but who
can force a sovereign on people which deliberately rejects him? You
may attempt it for awhile, but at length the people, if they persist,
will get their way.
They give out then, that the Pope's government is behind the age--that
once indeed it was as good as other governments, but that now other
governments have got better, and his has not--that he can either keep
order within his territory, nor defend it from attacks from
without--that his police and his finances are in a bad state--that
his people are discontented within--that he does not show them how to
become rich--that he keeps them from improving their minds--that he
treats them as children--that he opens no career for young and
energetic minds, but condemns them to inactivity and sloth--that he is
an old man--that he is an ecclesiastic--that, considering his great
spiritual duties, he has no time left him for temporal concerns--and
that a bad rebellious government is a scandal to religion.
{583}
I have stated their arguments as fairly as I can, but you must not for
an instant suppose, my brethren, that I admit either their principles
or their facts. It is a simple paradox to say that ecclesiastical and
temporal power cannot lawfully, religiously, and usefully be joined
together. Look at what are called the middle ages--that is, the period
which intervenes between the old Roman empire and the modern world; as
I have said, the Pope and the bishops saved religion and civil order
from destruction in those tempestuous times--and they did so _by
means_ of the secular power which they possessed. And next, going on
to the principles which the Pope's enemies lay down as so very
certain, who will grant to them, who has any pretension to be a
religious man, that progress in temporal possessions is the greatest
of goods, and that everything else, however sacred, must give way
before it? On the contrary, health, long life, security, liberty,
knowledge, are certainly great goods, but the possession of heaven is
a far greater good than all of them together. With all the progress in
worldly happiness which we possibly could make, we could not make
ourselves immortal--death must come; that will be a time when riches
and worldly knowledge will avail us nothing, and true faith and divine
love and a past life of obedience will be all in all to us. If we were
driven to choose between the two, it would be a hundred times better
to be Lazarus in this world than to be Dives in the next.
However, the best answer to their arguments is contained in sacred
history, which supplies us with a very apposite and instructive lesson
on the subject, and to it I am now going to refer.
Now observe, in the first place, no Catholic maintains that that rule
of the Pope as a king, in Rome and its provinces, which men are now
hoping to take from him, is, strictly speaking, what is called a
theocracy, that is, a divine government. His government, indeed, in
spiritual matters, in the Catholic Church throughout the world, might
be called a theocracy, because he is the vicar of Christ, and has the
assistance of the Holy Ghost; but not such is his kingly rule in his
own dominions. On the other hand, the rule exercised over the chosen
people, the Israelites, by Moses, Josue, Gideon, Eli, and Samuel, was
a theocracy: God was the king of the Israelites, not Moses and the
rest--_they_ were but vicars or vicegerents of the Eternal Lord who
brought the nation out of Egypt. Now, when men object that the Pope's
government of his own states is not what it should be, and that
therefore he ought to lose them, because, forsooth, a religious rule
should be perfect or not at all, I take them at their word, if they
are Christians, and refer them to the state of things among the
Israelites after the time of Moses, during the very centuries when
they had God for their king. Was that a period of peace, prosperity,
and contentment? Is it an argument against the divine perfections,
that it was not such a period? Why is it, then, to be the condemnation
of the Popes, who are but men, that their rule is but parallel in its
characteristics to that of the King of Israel, who was God? He indeed
has his own all-wise purposes for what he does; he knows the end from
the beginning; he could have made his government as perfect and as
prosperous as might have been expected from the words of Moses
concerning it, as perfect and prosperous as, from the words of the
prophets, our anticipations might have been about the earthly reign of
the Messias. But this he did not do, because from the first he made
that perfection and that prosperity dependent upon the free will, upon
the cooperation of his people. Their loyal obedience to him was the
condition, expressly declared by him, of his fulfilling his promises.
He proposed to work out his purposes through them, and, when they
refused their share {584} in the work, everything went wrong. Now they
did refuse from the first; so that from the very first, he says of
them emphatically, they were a "stiff-necked people." This was at the
beginning of their history; and close upon the end of it, St. Stephen,
inspired by the Holy Ghost, repeats the divine account of them: "You
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist
the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do you also." In consequence
of this obstinate disobedience, I say, God's promises were not
fulfilled to them. That long lapse of five or six hundred years,
during which God was their king, was in good part a time, not of
well-being, but of calamity.
Now, turning to the history of the papal monarchy for the last
thousand years, the Roman people have not certainly the guilt of the
Israelites, because they were not opposing the direct rule of' God;
and I would not attribute to them now a liability to the same dreadful
crimes which stain the annals of their an ancestors; but still, after
all they have been a singularly stiff-necked people in time past, and
in consequence, there has been extreme confusion, I may say anarchy,
under the reign of the Popes; and the restless impatience of his rule
which exists in the Roman territory now is only what has shown itself
age after age in times past. The Roman people not seldom offered
bodily violence to their Popes, killed some Popes, wounded others,
drove others from the city. On one occasion they assaulted the Pope at
the very altar in St. Peter's, and he was obliged to take to flight in
his pontifical vestments. Another time they insulted the clergy of
Rome; at another, they attacked and robbed the pilgrims who brought
offerings from a distance to the shrine of St. Peter. Sometimes they
sided with the German emperors against the Pope; sometimes with other
enemies of his in Italy itself. As many as thirty-six Popes endured
this dreadful contest with their own subjects, till at last, in anger
and disgust with Rome and Italy, they took refuge in France, where
they remained for seventy years, during the reigns of eight of their
number. [Footnote 170]
[Footnote 170: I take these facts as I find them in Gibbon's
History, the work which I have immediately at hand; but it would not
be difficult to collect a multitude of such instances from the
original historians of those times.]
That I may not be supposed to rest what I have said on insufficient
authorities, I will quote the words of that great saint, St. Bernard,
about the roman people, seven hundred years ago.
Writing to Pope Eugenius during the troubles of the day, he says:
"What shall I say of the people? why, that it _is_ the Roman people. I
could not more concisely or fully express what I think of your
subjects. What has been so notorious for ages as the wantonness and
haughtiness of the Romans? a race unaccustomed to peace, accustomed to
tumult; a race cruel and unmanageable up to this day, which knows not
to submit, unless when it is unable to make fight. . . . I know the
hardened heart of this people, but God is powerful even of these
stones to raise up children to Abraham. . . . When will you find for
me out of the whole of that populous city, who received you as Pope
without bribe or hope of bribe? And then especially are they wishing
to be masters, when they have professed to be servants. They promise
to be trustworthy, that they may have the opportunity of injuring
those who trust them. . . . They are wise for evil, but they are
ignorant for good. Odious to earth and heaven, they have assailed both
the one and the other; impious towards God, reckless toward things
sacred, factious among themselves, envious of their neighbors, inhuman
toward foreigners, . . . . they love none, and by none are loved. Too
impatient for submission, too helpless for rule; . . . importunate to
gain an end, restless till they gain it, ungrateful when they have
gained it. They have taught {585} their tongue to speak big words,
while their performances are scanty indeed." [Footnote 171]
[Footnote 171: St. Bernard is led to say this to the Pope in
consequence of the troubles created in Rome by Arnald of Bresela.
"Ab obitu Caelestini hoc anno invalescere coepit istiusmodi
rebellio Romanorum adversus Pontficem, eodemque haeresis dicta
Politicorum, sive Arnaldistarum. Ea erant tempora infelicissime,
cùm Romani ipsi, quorum fides in universo orbe jam à tempore
Apostolorum annunciata semper fuit, resilientes modo à Pontifice,
dominandi cupidine, ex filiis Petri et discipulis Christi, fiunt
soboles et alumni pestilentissimi Arnaldi de Brixiâ. Verùm, cùm tu
Romanos audis, ne putes omnes eâdem insaniâ percitos, nam
complures ex nobilium Romanorum familiis, iis relictis, pro
Pontifice rem ageoant, etc." Baron. Annal. in ann. 1144. 4.--_De
Consid_. iv. 2.]
Thus I begin, and now let us continue I parallel between the
Israelites and the Romans.
I have said that, while the Israelites had God for their king, they
had a succession of great national disasters, arising indeed really
from their falling off from him; but this they would have been slow to
acknowledge. They fell into idolatry; then, in consequence, they fell
into the power of their enemies; then God in his mercy visited them,
and raised up for them a deliverer and ruler--a judge, as he was
called--who brought them to repentance, and then brought them out of
their troubles; however, when the judge died, they fell back into
idolatry, and then they fell under the power of their enemies again.
Thus for eight years they were in subjection to the king of
Mesopotamia; for eight years to the king of Moab; for twenty years to
the king of Canaan; for seven years to the Madianites; for eighteen
years to the Ammomites; and for forty years to the Philistines.
Afterward Eli, the high priest, became their judge, and then disorders
of another kind commenced. His sons, who were priests also, committed
grievous acts of impurity in the holy place, and in other ways caused
great scandal. In consequence a heavy judgment came upon the people;
they were beaten in battle by the Philistines, and the ark of God was
taken. Then Samuel was raised up, a holy prophet and a judge, and in
the time of his vigor all went well; but he became old, and then he
appointed his sons to take his place. They, however, were not like
him, and everything went wrong again. "His sons walked not in his
ways," says the sacred record, "but they turned aside after lucre, and
took bribes, and perverted judgment." This reduced the Israelites to
despair; they thought they never should have a good government while
things were as they were; and they came to the conclusion that they
had better not be governed by such men as Samuel, however holy he
might be, that public affairs ought to be put on an intelligible
footing, and be carried on upon system, which had never yet been done.
So they came to the conclusion that they had better have a king, like
the nations around them. They deliberately preferred the rule of man
to the rule of God. They did not like to repent and give up their
sins, as the true means of being prosperous; they thought it an easier
way to temporal prosperity to have a king like the nations than to
pray and live virtuously. And not only the common people, but even the
grave and venerable seniors of the nation took up this view of what
was expedient for them. "All the ancients of Israel, being assembled,
came to Samuel, . . . and they said to him . . . Make us a king to
judge us, as all nations have." Observe, my brethren, this is just
what the Roman people are saying now. They wish to throw off the
authority of the Pope, on the plea of the disorders which they
attribute to his government, and to join themselves to the rest of
Italy, and to have the King of Italy for their king. Some of them,
indeed, wish to be without any king at all; but, whether they wish to
have a king or no, at least they wish to get free from the Pope.
Now let us continue the parallel. When the prophet Samuel heard this
request urged from such a quarter, and supported by the people
generally, he was much moved. "The word was displeasing in the eyes of
Samuel," says the inspired writer, "that they should say, Give us a
king. And Samuel prayed to the Lord." {586} Almighty God answered him
by saying, "They have not rejected thee, but me;" and he bade the
prophet warn the people, what the king they sought after would be to
them when at length they had him. Samuel accordingly put before them
explicitly what treatment they would receive from him. "He will take
your sons," he said, "and will put them in his chariots; and he will
make them his horseman, and his running footmen to go before his
chariots. He will take the tenth of your corn and the revenue of your
vineyards. Your flocks also he will take, and you shall be his
servants." Then the narrative proceeds, "But the people would not hear
the voice of Samuel, and they said, Nay, but there shall be a king
over us. And we also will be like all nations, and our king shall
judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles for us."
Now here the parallel I am drawing is very exact. It is happier, I
think, for the bulk of a people to belong to a small state which makes
little noise in the world than to a large one. At least in this day we
find small states, such an Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, have
special and singular temporal advantages. And the Roman people, too,
under the sway of the Popes, at least have had a very easy time of it;
but, alas that people is not sensible of this, or does not allow
itself to keep it in mind. The Romans have not had those civil
inconveniences which fall so heavy on the members of a first-class
power. The pontifical government has been very gentle with them; but,
if once they were joined to the kingdom of Italy, they would at length
find what it is to attain temporal greatness. The words of Samuel to
the Israelites would be fulfilled in them to the letter. Heavy taxes
would be laid on them; their children would be torn from them for the
army; and they would incur the other penalties of an ambition which
prefers to have a share in a political adventure to being at the head
of Catholic citizenship. We cannot have all things to our wish in this
world; we must take our choice between this advantage and that;
perhaps the Roman people would like both to secure this world and the
next, if they could; perhaps, in seeking both, they may lose both; and
perhaps, when they have lost more than they have gained, they may wish
their old sovereign back again, as they have done in other centuries
before this, and may regret that they have caused such grievous
disturbance for what at length they find out is little worth it.
In truth, after all, the question which they have to determine is, as
i have intimated, not one of worldly prosperity and adversity, of
greatness or insignificance, of despotism or liberty, of position in
the world or in the church; but a question of spiritual life or death.
The sin of the Israelites was not that they desired good government,
but that they rejected God as their king. Their choosing to have "a
king like the nations" around them was, in matter of fact, the first
step in a series of acts which at length lead them to their rejection
of the Almighty as their God. When in spite of Samuel's remonstrances
they were obstinate, God let them have their way, and then in time
they became dissatisfied with their king for the very reasons which
the old prophet had set before them in vain. On Solomon's death, about
a hundred and twenty years after, the greater part of the nation broke
off from his son on the very plea of Solomon's tyranny, and chose a
new king, who at once established idolatry all through their country.
Now, I grant, to reject the Holy Father of course is not the sin of
the Israelites, for they rejected Almighty God himself: yet I wish I
was not forced to believe that a hatred of the Catholic religion is in
fact at the bottom of that revolutionary spirit which at present seems
so powerful in Rome. Progress, in the mouth of some people--of a great
many people--means apostasy. Not that I wouldn't deny that {587} there
are sincere Catholics so dissatisfied with things as they were in
Italy, as they are in Rome, that they are brought to think that no
social change can be for the worse. Nor as if I pretended to be able
to answer all the objections of those who take a political and secular
view of the subject. But here I have nothing to do with secular
politics. In a sacred place I have only to view the matter
religiously. It would ill become me, in my station in the church and
my imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case, to speak four or
against statesmen and governments, lines of policy or public acts, as
if I were invested with any particular mission to give my judgment, or
had any access to sources of special information. I have not here to
determine what may be politically more wise, or what may be socially
more advantageous, or what in a civil point of view would work more
happily, or what in an intellectual would tell better; my duty is to
lead you, my brethren, to look at what is happening, as the sacred
writers would now view it and describe it were they on earth now to do
so, and to attempt this by means of the light thrown upon present
occurrences by what they actually have written, whether in the Old
Testament or the New.
We must remove, I say, the veil off the face of events, as Scripture
enables us to do, and try to speak of them as Scripture interprets
them for us. Speaking then in the sanctuary, I say that theories and
schemes about government and administration, be a better or worse, and
the aims of mere statesmen and politicians, be they honest or be they
deceitful, these are not the determining causes of that series of
misfortunes under which the Holy See has so long been suffering. There
is something deeper at work than anything human. It is not any refusal
of the Pope to put his administration on a new footing, it is not any
craft or force of men high in public affairs, it is not any cowardice
or frenzy of the people, which is the sufficient explanation of the
present confusion. What it is our duty here to bear in mind is the
constant restless agency over the earth of that bad angel who was a
liar from the beginning, of whom Scripture speaks so much. The real
motive cause of the world's troubles is the abiding presence in it of
the apostate spirit, "The prince of the power of this air," as St.
Paul calls him, "The spirit that now worketh on the children of
unbelief."
Things would go on well enough but for him. He it is who perverts to
evil what is in itself good and right, sowing cockle amid the wheat.
Advance in knowledge, in science, in education, in the arts of life,
in domestic economy, in municipal administration, in the conduct of
public affairs, is all good and from God, and might be conducted in a
religious way; but the evil spirit, jealous of good, makes use of it
for a bad end. And much more able is he to turn to his account the
designs and measures of worldly politicians. He it is who spreads
suspicions and dislikes between class and class, between sovereigns
and subjects, who makes men confuse together things good and bad, who
inspires bigotry, party spirit, obstinacy, resentment, arrogance, and
self-will, and hinders things from righting themselves, finding their
level, and running smooth. His one purpose is so to match and arrange
and combine and direct the opinions and the measures of Catholics and
unbelievers, of Romans and foreigners, of sovereigns and popular
leaders--all that is good, all that is bad, all that is violent or
lukewarm in the good, all that is morally great and intellectually
persuasive in the bad--as to inflict the widest possible damage, and
utter ruin, if that were possible, on the church of God.
Doubtless in St. Paul's time, in the age of heathen persecution, the
persecutors had various good political arguments in behalf of their
cruelty. Mobs indeed, or local magistrates, might be purposely cruel
toward the Christians; but the great Roman government {588} at a
distance, the great rulers and wise lawyers of the day, acted from
views of large policy; they had reasons of state, as the Kings of the
earth have now; still our Lord and his apostles do not hesitate to
pass these by, and declare plainly that the persecution which they
sanctioned or commanded was the word, not of man, but of Satan. And
now in like manner we are not engaged in a mere conflict between
progress and reaction, modern ideas and new, philosophy and theology,
but in one scene of the never-ending conflict between the anointed
Mediator and the devil, the church and the world; and, in St. Paul's
words, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities and powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness,
against the spirits of wickedness in the high places."
Such is the apostle's judgment; and how, after giving it, does he
proceed? "Therefore," he says, "take unto you the armor of God, that
you may be able to resist in the evil day and to stand in all things
perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and
having on the breast-plate of justice, and your feet shod with the
preparation of the gospel of peace; in all things taking the shield of
faith, whereby you may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the
wicked. And take unto you the helmet of salvation and the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God." And then he concludes his
exhortation with words which most appositely bear upon the point
toward which all that I have been saying is directed--"praying at all
times with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching
therein with all instance and supplication for all the saints, and for
me," that is, for the apostle himself, "that speech may be given me,
that I may open my mouth with confidence to make known the mystery of
the gospel."
Here, then, we are brought at length to the consideration of the duty
of prayer for our living apostle and bishop of bishops, the Pope. I
shall attempt to state distinctly what is to be the _object_ of our
prayers for him, and secondly, what the _spirit_ in which we should
pray, and so I shall bring my remarks on this great subject to and
end.
1. In order to ascertain the exact _object_ of our prayers at this
time, we must ascertain what is the _occasion_ of them. You know, my
brethren, and I have already observed, that the Holy Father has been
attacked in his temporal possessions again and again in these last
years, and we have all along been saying prayers daily in the mass in
his behalf. About six years ago the northern portion of his states
threw off his authority. Shortly after, a large foreign force,
uninvited, as it would scene, by his people at-large--robbers I will
call them--(this is not a political sentiment, but a historical
statement, for I never heard any one, whatever his politics, who
defendant their act in itself, but only on the plea of its supreme
expedience, of some state necessity, or some theory of patriotism)--a
force of sacrilegious robbers--broke into provinces nearer to Rome by
a sudden movement, and, without any right except that of the stronger,
got possession of them, and keeps them to this day. [Footnote 172]
{589} Past outrages, such as these, are never to be forgotten; but
still they are not the occasion, nor do they give the matter, of our
present prayers. What that occasion, what that subject is, we seem to
learn from his lordship's letter to his clergy, in which our prayers
are required. After speaking of the Pope's being "stripped of part of
his dominions," and "deprive of all the rest, with the exception of
the marshes and deserts that surround the Roman capital," he fastens
our attention on the fact, that "now at last is the Pope to be left
standing alone, and standing face to face with those unscrupulous
adversaries, whose boast and whose vow to all the world is not to
leave to him one single foot of Italian ground except beneath their
sovereign sway." I understand, then, that the exact object of our
prayers is, that the territory still is should not be violently taken
him, as have been as larger portions of his dominions of which I have
already spoken.
[Footnote 172: The following telegram in The Times of September
13th, 1860, containing Victor Emmanuel's formal justification for
his invasion and occupation of Umbria and the Marches in a time of
peace, is a document for after-times:
TURIN, Sept. 11, evening.
The king received to-day a deputation from the inhabitants of Umbria
and the Marches.
His majesty granted the protection which the deputation solicited,
and orders to have been given to the Sardinian troops to enter those
provinces by the following proclamation:
"Soldiers! You are about to enter the Marches and Umbria, in order
to establish civil order in the towns now desolated by this rule,
and to give to the people a liberty of expressing their own wishes.
You will not fight against the armies of any of the powers, but will
free those unhappy Italian provinces from the bands of foreign
adventurers which infest them. You do not go to revenge injuries
done to me and Italy, but to prevent the popular hatred from
unloosing itself against the oppressors of the country.
"By your example you will teach the people forgiveness of offenses,
and Christian tolerance to the man compared the love of the Italian
fatherland to Islamism.
"At peace with all the great powers, and holding myself aloof from
any provocation, I intend to read Central Italy of one continual
cause of trouble and discord. I intend to respect the seat of the
chief of the church, to whom I am ever ready to give, in accordance
with the allied and friendly powers, all the guarantees of
independence and security which his misguided advisors have made
hope to obtain for him from the fanaticism of the wicked sect which
conspires against my authority and against the liberties of the
nation.
"Soldiers! I am accused of ambition. Yes; i have one ambition, and
it is to re-establish the principles of moral order in Italy, and
preserve Europe from the continual dangers of revolution and war."
The next day The Times, in a leading article, thus commented on the
above:
"Victor Emmanuel has in Garibaldi a most formidable competitor. . . .
[Piedmont] must therefore, at whatever cost or risk, make herself
once more mistress of the revolution. She must lead that she may not
be forced to follow. She must revolutionize the Papal States, in
order that she may put herself in a position to arrest dangerous
revolutionary movement against Venetia. . . . These motives are
amply sufficient to account for the decisive movement of Victor
Emmanuel. He lives in revolutionary times, when self-preservation
has superseded all other considerations, and it would be childish to
apply to his situation the maxims of international law which are
applicable to periods of tranquility.
"These being the motives which have held Piedmont to draw the sword,
we have next to see what are the grounds on which she justifies the
step. These grounds are two--the extraordinary misrule and
oppression of the Papal government, and the presence of large bands
of foreign mercenaries, by which the country is oppressed and
terrorized. The object is said to be to give the people an
opportunity of expressing their own wishes and the re-establishment
of civil order. The king promises to respect the seat of the chief
of the church--Rome, we suppose, and it's immediate environs; but,
while holding out this assurance, the manifesto speaks of the Pope
and his advisers in terms of bitterness and acrimony unusual in the
present age, even in a declaration of war. He will teach the people
forgiveness of offenses, and Christian tolerance to the Pope and his
general. He denounces the misguided advisors of the pontiff, and the
fanaticism of the wicked sect which conspires against his authority
and the liberties of the nation. This is harsh language, and is not
inconsistently seconded by the advance into the States of the Church
of an army of 50,000 men."
It was the old fable of the Wolf and the Lamb.]
[End footnote 172]
This too, I conceive, is what is meant by praying for the Holy See.
"The duty of every true child of Holy Church," says the bishop, "is to
offer continuous and humble prayer for the Father of Christendom, and
for the protection of the Holy See." By the Holy See we may understand
Rome, considered as the seat of pontifical government. We are to pray
for Rome, the see, or seat, or metropolis of St. Peter and his
successors. Further, we are to pray for Rome as the seat, not only of
his spiritual government, but of his temporal. We are to pray that he
may continue king of Rome; that his subjects may come to a better
mind; that instead of threatening and assailing him, or being too
cowardly to withstand those who do, they may defend and obey him;
that, instead of being the heartless tormentors of an old and
venerable man, they may pay a willing homage to the apostle of God;
that instead of needing to be kept down year after year by troops from
afar, as has been the case for so long a time, they may, "with a great
heart and a willing mind," form themselves into the glorious bodyguard
of a glorious master; that they may obliterate and expiate what is so
great a scandal to the world, so great an indignity to themselves, so
great a grief to their father and king, that foreigners are kinder to
him than his own flesh and blood; that now at least, though in the end
of days, they may reverse the past, and, after the ingratitude of
centuries, may unlearn the pattern of that rebellious people, who
began by rejecting their God and ended by crucifying their Redeemer.
2. So much for the _object_ of our prayers; secondly, as to the
_spirit_ in which we should pray. As we ever say in prayer, "Thy will
be done," so {590} we must say now. We do not absolutely know God's
will in this matter; we know indeed it is his will that we should ask;
we are not absolutely sure that it is his will that he should grant.
The very fact of our praying shows that we are uncertain about the
event. We pray when we are uncertain, not when we are certain. If we
were quite sure what God intended to do, whether to continue the
temporal power of the Pope or to end it, we should not pray. It is
quite true indeed that the event may _depend upon our prayer_, but by
such prayer is meant perseverance in prayer and union of prayers; and
we never can be certain that this condition of numbers and of fervor
has been sufficiently secured. We shall indeed gain our prayer if we
pray enough; but, since it is ever uncertain what is enough, it is
ever uncertain what will be the event. There are Eastern
superstitions, in which it is taught that, by means of a certain
number of religious acts, by sacrifices, prayers, penances, a man of
necessity extorts from God what he wishes to gain, so that he may rise
to supernatural greatness even against the will of God. Far be from us
such blasphemous thoughts! We pray to God, we address the Blessed
Virgin and the holy apostles, and the other guardians of Rome, to
defend the holy city; but we know the event lies absolutely in the
hands of the All wise, whose ways are not as our ways, whose thoughts
are not as our thoughts, and, unless we had been furnished with a
special revelation on the matter, to be simply confident or to predict
would be presumption. Such is Christian prayer; it implies hope and
fear. We are not certain we shall gain our petition, we are not
certain we shall not gain it. Were we certain that we should not, we
should give ourselves to resignation, not to prayer; were we certain
we should, we should employ ourselves, not in prayer, but in praise
and thanksgiving. While we pray, then, in behalf of the Pope's
temporal power, we contemplate both sides of the alternative his
retaining it and his losing it; and we prepare ourselves both for
thanksgiving and resignation as the event may B. I conclude by
considering each of these issues of his present difficulty.
(I.) First, as to the event of his retaining his temporal power. I
think this side of the alternative (humanly speaking) to be highly
probable. I should be very much surprised if in the event he did not
keep it. I think the Romans will not be able to do without him; it is
only a minority even now which is against him; the majority of his
subjects are not wicked, so much as cowardly and incapable. Even if
they renounced him now for awhile, they will change their minds and
wish for him again. They will find out that he is their real
greatness. Their city is a place of ruins, except so far as it is a
place shrines. It is the tomb and charnel-house of pagan impiety,
except so far as it is sanctified and quickened by the blood of
martyrs and the relics of saints. To inhabit it would be a penance,
were it not for the presence of religion. Babylon is gone, Memphis is
gone, Persepolis is gone; Rome would go, if the Pope went. Its very
life is the light of the sanctuary. It never could be a suitable
capital of a modern kingdom without a sweeping away of all that makes
it beautiful and venerable to the world at large. And then, when its
new rulers had made of it a trim and brilliant city, they would find
themselves on an healthy soil and a defenceless plain. But, in truth,
the tradition of ages and inveteracy of associations make such a vast
change in Rome impossible. All mankind are parties to the inviolable
union of the Pope and his city. His autonomy is a first principle in
European politics, whether among Catholics or Protestants; and where
can it be secured so well as in that city which has so long been the
seat of its exercise? Moreover, the desolateness of Rome is as
befitting to a kingdom which is not of this world as it is {591}
incompatible with a creation of modern political theories. It is the
religious centre of millions all over the earth, who care nothing for
the Romans who happen to live there, and much for the martyred
apostles who so long have lain buried there; and its claim to have an
integral place in the very idea of Catholicity is recognized not only
by Catholics, but by the whole world.
It is cheering to begin our prayers with these signs of God's
providence in our favor. He expressly encourages us to pray, for
before we have begun our petition, he has begun to fulfil it. And at
the same time, by beginning the work of mercy without us, he seems to
remind us of that usual course of his providence, namely, that he
means to finish it with us. Let us fear to be the cause of a triumph
being lost to the church, because we would not pray for it.
(2.) And now, lastly, to take the other side of the alternative. Let
us suppose that the Pope loses his temporal power, and returns to the
conation of St. Sylvester, St. Julius, St. Innocent, and other great
Popes of early times. Are we, therefore, to suppose that he and the
church will come to naught? God forbid! To say that the church can
fail, or the see of St. Peter can fail, is to deny the faithfulness of
Almighty God to his word. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
To say that the church cannot live except in a particular way, is to
make it "subject to elements of the earth." The church is not the
creature of times and places, of temporal politics or popular caprice.
Our Lord maintains her by means of this world, but these means are
necessary to her only while he gives them; when he takes them away,
they are no longer necessary. He works by means, but he is not bound
to means. He has a thousand ways of maintaining her; he can support
her life, not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of
his mouth. If he takes away one defence, he will give another instead.
We know nothing of the future: our duty is to direct our course
according to our day; not to give up of our own act the means which
God has given us to maintain his church withal, but not to lament over
their loss, when he has taken them away. Temporal power has been the
means of the church's independence for a very long period; but, as her
bishops have lost it a long while, and are not the less bishops still,
so would it be as regards her head, if he also lost his. The eternal
God is her refuge, and as he has delivered her out of so many perils
hitherto, so will he deliver her still. The glorious chapters of her
past history are but anticipations of other glorious chapters still to
come. See how it has been with her from the very beginning down to
this day. First, the heathen populations persecuted her children for
three centuries, but she did not come to an end. Then a flood of
heresies was poured out upon her, but still she did not come to an
end. Then the savage tribes of the north and east came down upon her
and overran her territory, but she did not come to an end. Next,
darkness of mind, ignorance, torpor, stupidity, reckless corruption,
fell upon the holy place, still she did not come to an end. Then the
craft and violence of her own strong and haughty children did their
worst against her, but still she did not come to an end. Then came a
time when the riches of the world flowed in upon her, and the pride of
life, and the refinements and the luxuries of human reason; and lulled
her rulers into an unfaithful security, till they thought their high
position in the world would never be lost to them, and almost fancied
that it was good to enjoy themselves here below; but still she did not
come to an end. And then came the so-called reformation, and the rise
of Protestantism, and men said that the church had disappeared and
they could not find her place. Yet, now three centuries after that
even, _has_, {592} my brethren, the Holy Church come to an end? has
Protestantism weakened her powers, terrible enemy as it seemed to be
when it arose? has Protestantism, that bitter, energetic enemy of the
Holy See, harmed the Holy See? Why, there never has been a time, since
the first age of the church when there has been such a succession of
holy Popes, as since the reformation. Protestantism had been a great
infliction on such as have succumbed to it; but it has even wrought
benefits for those whom it has failed to seduce. By the mercy of God
it has been turned into a spiritual gain to the members of Holy
Church.
Take again Italy, into which Protestantism has not entered, and
England, of which it has gained possession. Now I know well that, when
Catholics are good in Italy, they are very good; I would not deny that
they attain there to a height and a force of saintliness of which we
seem to have no specimens here. This, however, is the case of souls
whom neither the presence nor the absence of religious enemies would
affect for the better or the worse. Nor will I attempt the impossible
task of determining the amount of faith and obedience among Catholics
respectively in two countries so different from each other. But,
looking at Italian and English Catholics externally and in their
length and breadth, I may leave any Protestant to decide, in which of
the two there is at this moment a more demonstrative faith, a more
impressive religiousness, a more generous piety, a more steady
adherence to the cause of the Holy Father. The English are multiplying
religious buildings, decorating churches, endowing monasteries,
educating, preaching, and converting, and carrying off in the current
of their enthusiasm numbers even of those who are external to the
church; the Italian statesman, on the contrary, in all our bishop's
words, "imprison and exile the bishops and clergy, leave the flocks
without shepherds, confiscate the church's revenues, suppress the
monasteries and convents, incorporate ecclesiastics and religious in
the army, plunder the churches and monastic libraries, and exposed
religion herself, stripped in bleeding in every limb, the Catholic
religion in the person of her ministers, her sacraments, or most
devoted members, to be objects of profane and blasphemous ridiculed."
In so brave, intelligent, vigorous-minded a race as the Italians, and
in the nineteenth century not the sixteenth, and in the absence of any
formal protest of classes or places, the act of the rulers is the act
of the people. At the end of three centuries Protestant England
contains more Catholics who are loyal and energetic in word and deed
then Catholic Italy. So harmless has been the violence of the
reformation; it professed to eliminate from the church doctrinal
corruptions, and it has failed both in what it has done and in what it
has not done; it has bred infidels, to its confusion; and, to which
dismay, it has succeeded in purifying and strengthening catholic
communities.
It is with these thoughts then that, my brethern, with these feelings
of solemn expectation, of joyful confidence, that we now come for our
God and pray him to have mercy on his chosen servant, his own vicar,
in this hour of trial. We come to him, like the prophet Daniel, in
humiliation for our own sins and the sins of our kings, our princes,
our fathers, and our people in all parts of the church; and therefore
we say the _Miserere_ and the Litany of the Saints, as in the time of
fast. And we come before him in the right and glad spirit of soldiers
who know they are under the leading of an invincible king, and wait
with beating hearts to see what he is about to do; and therefore it is
that we adorn our sanctuary, bringing out our hangings and multiplying
our lights, as on a day of festival. We know well we are on the
winning side, and that the prayers of the poor and the weak and
despised can do more, when offered in a true spirit, then all the
wisdom and all the resources of the world. This seventh of October is
the very {593} anniversary of that day on which the prayers of St.
Pius, and the Holy Rosary said by thousands of the faithful at his
bidding, broke forever the domination of the Turks in the great battle
of Lepanto. God will give us what we ask, or he will give us something
better. In this spirit let us proceed with the holy rites which we
have begun--in the presence of innumerable witnesses, of God the judge
of all, of Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, of his mother Mary
our immaculate protectress, of all the angels of holy church, of all
the blessed saints, of apostles and evangelists, martyrs and
confessors, holy preachers, holy recluses, holy virgins, of holy
innocents taken away before actual sin, and of all other holy souls
who have been purified by suffering, and have already reached their
heavenly home.
----------
From Chambers's Journal.
THE SOURCE OF LABOR.
Science has taught us that the processes going on around us are but
changes, not annihilations and creations. With the eye of knowledge we
see the candle slowly turning into invisible gases, nor doubt for an
instant that the matter of which the candle was composed is still
existing, ready to reappear in other forms. But this fact is true not
only of matter itself, but also of all the influences that work on
matter. We wind up the spring of a clock, and, for a whole week, the
labor thus stored up is slowly expended in keeping the clock going.
Or, again, we spend five minutes of hard labor in raising the hammer
of a pile-driver, which, in its fall, exerts all that accumulated
labor in a single instant. In these instances, we easily see that we
store up labor. Now, if we pat a dozen sovereigns in a purse, and none
of them be lost, we can take a dozen sovereigns out again. So in
labor, if no labor be lost, as science asserts--for the inertia of
matter, its very deadness, so to speak, which renders it incapable of
spontaneously producing work, also prevents its destroying work when
involved in it--we should be able to obtain back without deduction
all our invested labor when we please.
Imagine a mountain stream turning an overshot wheel. It thus falls
from a higher to a lower level. A certain amount of labor would be
required to raise the water from the lower level to the higher; just
this amount of labor the water gives out in its fall, and invests, as
it were, in the wheel. If, however, when arrived at the lower level,
the water were to demand of the wheel to be pumped up again, the
slightest trial would show that it would ask more than it could
obtain, though not more than it had given. The wheel, if questioned as
to the cause of its inability, must reply as others have done, that it
has shut up part of the labor in investments which it cannot realize.
The reason, as commonly stated, is, that friction has destroyed part
of the labor. The labor is not, however, destroyed. Science has shown
that heat and labor are connected; labor may be turned into heat, and
heat into labor. The labor absorbed by friction is but turned into
heat. If, however, we try to extract labor from the heat thus diffused
through the different parts of the water-wheel, and make it available,
we find ourselves quite at a loss. The heat gradually diffuses itself
through surrounding bodies, and, so far as we {594} are concerned, the
labor is wasted, though it still exist, like Cleopatra's pearl
dissolved in the cup of vinegar.
If no labor is lost, so neither is any created. The labor we exert is
but the expenditure of labor stored up in our frames, just as the
labor invested in the wound-up spring keeps the clock going. Whence,
then, does all this labor originally come? We see the waste--how is
compensation made? The answer is simple and easy to give. All the
labor done under the sun is really done by it. The light and heat
which the sun supplies are turned into labor by the organizations
which exist upon the earth. These organizations may be roughly divided
into two classes--the collectors and the expenders of the sun's labor.
The first merely collect the sun's labor, so as to make it available
for the other class; while, just as the steam-engine is the medium by
which the steam gives motion, so this second class is the medium by
which the sun's heat is turned into actual labor.
Still, the sun does not work only through organized labor: his mere
mechanical influence is very great. With the moon--the only second
post he deigns as to fill--he produces the tides by his attraction on
the sea. But for the friction of the earth and the sea, the tides,
once set in motion, would rise and fall without any further effort;
but the work done in overcoming the friction is, though due to the sun
and moon, not extracted from them, but by them from the earth. For it
would make a vast effort to cause the earth to cease rotating. All
this effort is, as it were, stored up in the revolving earth. as the
tidal waters, then, rub along the bed of the sea, or the waters on
which they rest and the adjacent coasts, this friction tends to make
the earth move faster or slower, according to the direction in which
the tidal flow is. The general effect is, however, that the friction
of the tides makes the earth revolve more slowly; in other words, that
part of the energy of rotation of the earth, so to speak, is consumed
in rubbing against the title waters. All the work, therefore, that the
tides do in undermining our cliffs and washing away our beaches, is
extracted by the sea and moon from the work stored up in the rotation
of the earth. The diminution of rotation, indeed, is so small as
scarcely to be perceived by the most refined observation, but the
reality of it is now generally recognized; and this process, too, will
apparently go on till the earth ceases to rotate on its axis, and
presents one face constantly to the sun.
Thus we see that the destruction of the land by the sea, so
interesting in a geological point of view, is partly due to the sun's
action. Not only is he the source of the light and the heat we enjoy,
but he aids in forming the vast sedimentary beds that form so large a
part of the crust of the earth, mixing the ingredients of our fields
and moulding our globe.
By heating the air, the sun produces winds, and some of the labor
costs expended is made use of by man in turning his windmills and
carrying his wares across the sea. But there is another expedient of
the sun's heat more immediately useful to man. By evaporating the sea
and other bodies of water, he loads the air with moisture, which, then
in contact with cold mountain-peaks or cold masses of air, loses its
heat, and, being condensed, falls as rain or snow. Thus the rivers are
replenished, which for a long time supplied the greater part of the
labor employed in manufacturers, though the invention of the
steam-engine is fast reducing relatively the value of this supply of
labor.
But vast as the sun's power thus exerted is, and useful as it is to
man, is surpassed in importance by his his labor exerted through
organized beings. The above named agents have one defect; on the
whole, they are incapable of being stored up to any great degree; we
must employ them as nature gives them to us. Organized existence,
however, possesses the power of storing up labor to a very high
degree. {595} The means it adopts are not mechanical, but chemical.
The formation of chemical compounds is attended with the giving out of
heat, which, as we have said before, is equivalent to labor, and if of
sufficient intensity, can by us be made available as labor, as in the
steam-engine. Now we take iron ore, consisting of iron in combination
with other substances. By means of great heat the iron is set free in
the smelting-furnace. The iron, then, in its change of form has, as it
were, taken in all this heat. If, now, we take this iron, and keeping
it from the influence of the air, reduce it to a very fine powder, and
then suddenly expose it to the air, by the force of natural affinity
it will absorb the oxygen of the air, and in so doing give out the
heat before required to set it free from the oxygen; and if the iron
be in small enough portions, so that the process is sufficiently
rapid, we may see the iron grow red hot with the heat thus disengaged.
Now, plants and trees, by the aid of the solar light and heat, remove
various substances, carbon especially, from what seem to be their more
natural combinations, and in other combinations store them up in their
structures. Take a young oak-tree with its first tender leaves; if
deprived of the sun's light and heat, its growth would be stayed, and
its life die out. But with the aid of the sun's rays, it absorbs
carbon from the gases in the air, each particle of carbon absorbed
being absorbed by the power of the sun, through the agency of the
plant; and with each particle of carbon stored up is also, as it were,
stored up the labor of the sun by which that particle was set free
from its former fetters. The sap of the plant thus enriched returns in
its course, and by some mysterious process is curdled into cells and
hardened into would. But the work by which all this was accomplished
lies hid in the wood, and not only is it there, but it is there in a
greatly condensed state. To form a little ring of wood round the tree,
not an eighth of an inch across it, took the sunshine of a long
summer, falling on the myriad leaves of the oak.
Lemuel Gulliver, at Laputa, was astonished by seeing a philosopher
aiming at extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Had he but rightly
considered the thing he would have wondered at any one's troubling to
make a science of it. The thing has always been done. From Adam and
Eve in the garden of Eden eating sweet fruits, through the
onion-eating builders of the pyramids, down to the flesh-eating
myriads of our land, this process has always been going on. The active
life of reasoning man, and his limitless powers of invention, need for
their full development a vast supply of labor. By means of the
vegetable kingdom, the sun's work is stored up in a number of organic
substances. Man takes these into his system, and in the vessels and
fibres of his body they resume their original combinations, and the
labor of the sun is given out as muscular action and animal heat. To
allow a larger supply of labor for man's intellect to work with,
Providence created the herbivorous races. Some of these further
condense the work of the sun involved in plants, by taking these
plants into their systems, and storing up the work in them in their
flesh and fat, which, after some preparation, are fit to be received
into the frame of man, there, as the simpler vegetable substances, to
supply heat and labor. Others, extracting work from the vegetable
kingdom, just as man does, and mostly from parts of the vegetable
kingdom that are not suited to the organs of man, are valuable to man
as sources of labor, since they have no power to invent modes of
employing this labor to their own advantage. Man might have been
gifted with a vaster frame, and so with greater power of labor in
himself, but such a plan had been destitute of elasticity; and while
the savage would have basked in the sun in a more extended idleness,
the civilized man had still lacked means to execute his plans. {596}
So that good providence which formed man devised a further means for
supplying his wants. Instead of placing him at once on a new-formed
planet, it first let the sun spend its labor for countless ages upon
our world. Age by age, much of this labor was stored up in vast
vegetable growths. Accumulated in the abysses of the sea, or sunk to a
great depth by the collapse of supporting strata, the formations of a
later age pressed and compacted this mass of organic matter. The beds
thus formed were purified by water, and even by heat, and at last
raised to within the reach of man by subterranean movements. From this
reservoir of labor man now draws rapidly, driving away the frost of
today with the sunshine of a million years ago, and thrashing this
year's harvest with the power that came to our earth before corn grew
upon it.
Such are the processes by which the sun's power is collected and
stored up by the vegetable kingdom in a form sufficiently condensed to
be available for working the machinery of the bodies of men and
beasts, and also to assist man in vaster expenditures of labor. It is
most interesting to trace such processes, and not only interesting,
but also instructive, for it shows us in what direction we are to look
for our sources of labor, and will at once expose many common
delusions. One hears, perhaps, that something will be found to
supplant steam. Galvanism may be named; yet galvanism is generated by
certain decompositions--of metal, for instance--and this metal had
first to be prepared by the agency of coal, and in its decomposition
can give out no more labor than the coal before invested in it. It is
as if one should buy a steam-engine to pump up water to keep his
mill-wheel going. The source of all labor is the sun. We cannot
immediately make much use of his rays for the purposes of work; they
are not intense enough; they must be condensed. The vegetable world
alone at present seems capable of doing this; and its past results of
coal, peat, petroleum, etc., and present results of wood and food, are
ultimately all we have to look two.
To say that man will ever be dependent upon the vegetable world for
all his work may be considered bold, but there is certainly great
reason to believe it. The sun's labor being supplied in such a diluted
form, each small quantity continually supplied must be packed in a
very small space. Now, man can only subject matter to influences in
the mass. The little particle of carbon that the plant frees each
instant is beyond his ken. The machinery he could make would not be
fine enough; it would be like trying to tie an artery with the biggest
cable on board the Great Eastern. Organized existence possesses
machinery fine enough to effect these small results, and to avail
itself of these little installments of labor. At present, this
machinery is beyond our comprehension, and possibly will ever remain
so. Nature prefers that her children should keep out of the kitchen,
and not pry into her pots and pans, but eat in thankfulness the meal
she provides.
Some interesting results follow from what has been stated above. One
is, that we are consuming not only our present allowance of the sun's
labor, but also a great deal more, unless the formation of coal in our
age equals its consumption, which is not probable. Mother earth will
certainly, so far as we can see, some day be bankrupt. Such a
consummation is pointed to, however, in other quarters. The sun's
heat, unless miraculously replenished, must gradually be dissipated
through space. There are reasons for thinking that the planets must
ultimately fall into the sun. These things, however, possess to us no
practical physical interest. Such countless ages must elapse ere they
affect man's material condition upon the earth that we hardly can
gravely consider them as impending. The chief interest they excite is
moral. Like the man's hand that appeared to the revelling king, they
write, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" (weighed, measured, limited,
doomed) on our material world, and dimly point to some power that
stands, as it were, hidden from our view behind the screen of matter,
that shall make things new.
--------------
{597}
ORIGINAL.
POEM.
BY E. HOWARD.
While wandering by the mountains
And musing by the streams,
I asked myself if ever thus
My life would pass in dreams.
I gathered the little pebbles
The waves threw on the sand:
The rippling waters seemed to say,
"There is a better land!"
And while thus my steps were straying,
Above, in azure far,
I saw a beacon's streaming light--
The glorious evening star!
My soul, enraptured, then exclaimed:
"Hail, beauteous star of even!
Wilt thou, while speeding into dawn,
Bring me the will of heaven?"
I watched it in its onward course,
Until its golden glow
Was lost behind the western clouds.
And left me wrapped in woe.
I struggled hard to free my soul
From brooding thoughts of care.
Till morning broke, when, with the star,
These words fell on the air:
"No more let earthly passion move.
Nor wearied hopes bemoan,
A life that has a God to love,
A heaven to call its own!"
The star had kindled hope
And raised my soul in prayer;
The clouds that rolled between
Foretold a life of care.
I bowed my head, and humbly knelt,
Submissive to his will.
Who, when the waves were troubled most,
Said, "Peace!" and all was still.
--------
{598}
ORIGINAL.
THE GODFREY FAMILY; OR, QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.