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Remaining transcriber's notes are at the end of the text.
* * * * *
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOL. X.
OCTOBER, 1869, TO MARCH, 1870.
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
126 Nassau Street.
1870.
S. W. GREEN,
PRINTER,
16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.
CONTENTS.
Angela, 38, 161, 293, 471, 617.
An October Reverie, 186.
British Premiers in Relation to British Catholics, 674, 826.
Bach, Friedemann, 805.
Contradiction, An Imaginary, 1.
Council of Trent, The, 24.
Christian Women, An Appeal to, 71.
Church in Paris and France, 95.
Catholicity and Pantheism, 118.
Council, The, and the Roman Congregations, 170.
Church Music, 402, 598, 743.
Catholic Church in New York, Early History of, 413, 515.
Council, Matters Relating to, 420.
Church Door, At the, 651.
Chess, 683.
Council of the Vatican, The First Oecumenical, 693, 841.
Civil and Political Liberty, 721.
Christ of Ausfeldt, The, 774.
Devious Ways, Through, 550.
Eclipse of August Seventh, 106.
Foreign Literary Notes, 135, 422, 705.
Father Faber, Life of, 145.
Free Religion, 195.
Ffoulkes, The Letter of E. S., 631.
Gallicanism, The True Origin of, 527.
Gordian Knots, Untying, 589, 735.
Greek Schism, The, 758.
Hero, or a Heroine? 232, 346, 497.
Hecker, Father, Farewell Sermon of, 289.
Harwood's, Dr., Price Lecture, 312.
Haydn's Struggle and Triumph, 326.
History of the Catholic Church in New York, 413, 515.
Hurston Hall, 449.
Hints on Housekeeping, 610.
Irish Volunteers, A Sketch of, 276.
Immutability of the Species, 252, 332, 656.
Irish Land Tenure, History of, 641.
Iron Mask, The, 754.
Lost and Found, 84.
Life of Father Faber, 145.
Liberty, Civil and Political, 721.
Labor Movement, Views of the, 784.
Lucifer's Ear, 856.
Memento Mori, 206.
Music and Love, Haydn's First Lessons in, 267.
Music, Church, 402, 598, 743.
Matters Relating to the Council, 420.
Miscellany, 564.
New York City, Sanitary Topography of, 362.
Paganina, 13.
Priory, St. Oren's, 56.
Prisons, Religion in, 114.
Presbyterian Reply to the Pope's Letter, 216.
Protestantism and Catholicity, The Future of, 433, 577.
Putnam's Defence, 542.
Polish Patriotic Hymn, A, 548.
Poland, Present Condition of, 799.
Rome, Morality of, 50.
Roman Congregations and the Council, 170.
Species, Immutability of, 252, 332, 656.
Sermon, Father Hecker's Farewell, 289.
St. Peter, Basilica of, 374.
St. Augustine, The Philosophical Doctrines of, compared with the
Ideology of the Modern Schools, 481.
Schism, The Greek, 758.
Seton, Mrs., 778.
Trent, The Council of, 24.
The Seven Bishops, 130.
Vansleb, The Oriental Scholar and Traveller, 459.
Vatican Council, The, 841.
Women, An Appeal to Young Christian, 71.
Wayside Reminiscence, 84.
POETRY.
Ambition, Sacred, 12.
A Christmas Hymn, 526.
A Convert's Prayer, 614.
December 8, 1869, 457.
In Memoriam of Rev. F. A. Baker, 597.
"It's Wrong," 825.
Lines on the Pontifical Hat, 134.
Matthew xxvii, 37.
My Christmas Gift, 496.
Nazareth, On a Picture of, 757.
Prayer, 331.
Sacred Ambition, 12.
St. Peter Delivered from Prison, 824.
The Chapel, 655.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Alcott's Hospital Sketches, 143.
A Little Boy's Story, 426.
Auerbach's German Tales, 427.
Almanac, Catholic Family, 574.
Andersen's Improvisatore and Two Baronesses, 575.
Acta ex iis Decerpta, etc., etc., 720.
Alexander, J. A., Life of, 856.
An American Family in Paris, 858.
Bayma's Elements of Molecular Mechanics, 288.
Bonaventure's Parables and Stories, 575.
Bushnell's Woman's Suffrage, 715.
Cantarium Romanum, 427.
Caseine, 431.
Cooley's Text-Book of Chemistry, 432.
Columbus, Lorgne's Life of, 574.
Curtis's Life of Webster, 714.
Creation a Recent Work of God, 855.
Diomede, 142.
Dorie, Henry, Life of, 144.
Evans's Autobiography of a Shaker, 143.
Emerald, The, 144.
Edgeworth's Tales and Parent's Assistant, 430.
Elm Island Stories, 860.
Ffoulkes's Letter, A Critique on, 287.
Ffoulkes's Roman Index and its Late Proceedings, 709.
Formby's Life of Christ, 719.
Fair Harvard, 858.
Frontier Stories, 860.
Giles's Lectures and Essays on Irish Subjects, 138.
Gilmour's Bible History, 143.
Gallitzin's Life and Character, 426.
Gasparini's Attributes of Christ, 857.
Henry Crabbe Robinson's Diary, Correspondence, etc., 141.
Heady's Seen and Heard, 288.
Horace, The Works of, 288.
Hadley's Elements of the Greek Language, 288.
Hagenbach's History of the Church, 718.
Hefele's Council of Constance, 719.
Hill's Titania's Banquet, etc., 856.
Hedge's Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, 858.
In Heaven We Know Our Own, 139.
Intelligence of Animals, 288.
Ireland, Patriot's History of, 432.
Janus on the Pope and the Council, 712.
Jarves's Art Thoughts, 717.
Kerney's First Class Book of History, 431.
Kickham's Sally Cavanagh, 720.
Neal's Great Mysteries and Little Plagues, 720.
Lacordaire's Sketch of the Order of St. Dominic, 429.
Lange's Commentary on Romans, 430.
Lorimer's Among the Trees, 718.
Library of Good Example, 719.
Lange's Commentary on the Old Testament, 857.
La Salle, Life of the Venerable J. B. de, 857.
Lady Fullerton's Mrs. Gerald's Niece, 859.
Marshall's Order and Chaos, 138.
Mopsa and the Fairy, 140.
Madame Swetchine, Writings of, 285.
Mangin's Mysteries of the Ocean, 428.
Meunier's Great Hunting-Grounds of the World, 428.
Mangin's Desert World, 428.
Minor Chords, 431.
Manual of Third Order of St. Francis, 431.
Manning's Pastoral on the Council, 569.
Missale Romanum, 715.
Mommsen's History of Rome, 715.
McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, Poems of, 854.
Nampon's Catholic Doctrine, as Defined by the Council of Trent, 286.
Nolan's Byrnes of Glengoulah, 720.
Patty Gray's Journal from Boston to Baltimore, 142.
Placidus on Education, 143.
Potter's Pastor and People, 573.
Pumpelly's Across America and Asia, 711.
Prentiss's Nidworth, 716.
Preston's Christ and the Church, 718.
Particular Examen, 857.
Reiter's Ecclesiastical Map of the U. S., 142.
Ryder's Critique on Ffoulkes's Letter, 287.
Robertson's Sermons, 432.
Smith's Pentateuch, 429.
Sargent's Woman who Dared, 571.
Spielhagen's Through Night to Light, 576.
Sadlier's Almanac and Directory, 718.
Sybaris and other Poems, 859.
Two Years before the Mast, 140.
The Two Women, 144.
Thompson's Man in Genesis and Geology, 287.
The Two Cottages, 576.
The Lost Rosary, 576.
The Life of Blessed Margaret Mary, 576.
Tennyson's Holy Grail, 855.
The Cabin on the Prairie, 860.
The Sunset Land, 860.
Upton's Letters of Peregrine Pickle, 859.
White's Elements of Astronomy, 141.
Whipple's Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, 283.
Wood's Bible Animals, 716.
White's Ecce Femina, 857.
Wiley's Elocution and Oratory, 859.
Wonders of Pompeii, 860.
Young's Office of Vespers, 144.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 55.--OCTOBER, 1869.
AN IMAGINARY CONTRADICTION.[1]
We notice in this review the article on the _Spirit of Romanism_
for a single point only, which it makes, for as a whole it is not
worth considering. Father Hecker asserts in his _Aspirations of
Nature_, that, "Endowed with reason, man has no right to surrender
his judgment; endowed with free-will, man has no right to yield
up his liberty. Reason and free-will constitute man a responsible
being, and he has no right to abdicate his independence." To this and
several other extracts from the same work to the same effect, the
_Christian Quarterly_ opposes what is conceded by Father Hecker and
held by every Catholic, that every one is bound to believe whatever
the church believes and teaches. But bound as a Catholic to submit
his reason and will to the authority of the church, how can one
assert that he is free to exercise his own reason, and has no right
to surrender it, or to abdicate his own independence? Father Hecker
says, "Religion is a question between the soul and God; no human
authority has, therefore, any right to enter its sacred sphere." Yet
he maintains that he is bound to obey the authority of the church,
and has no right to believe or think contrary to her teachings and
definitions. How can he maintain both propositions?
What Father Hecker asserts is that man has reason and free-will,
and that he has no right to forego the exercise of these faculties,
or to surrender them to any human authority whatever. Between this
proposition and that of the plenary authority of the church in all
matters of faith or pertaining to faith and sound doctrine, as
asserted by the Council of Trent and Pius IX. in the _Syllabus_,
the _Christian Quarterly_ thinks it sees a glaring contradiction.
Father Hecker, it is to be presumed, sees none, and we certainly
see none. Father Hecker maintains that no _human_ authority has any
right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, that man is accountable
to no man or body of men for his religion or his faith; but he does
not say that he is not responsible to God for the use he makes of
his faculties, whether of reason or free-will, or that God has no
right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, and tell him even
authoritatively what is truth and what he is bound to believe and
do. When I believe and obey a human authority in matters of religion,
I abdicate my own reason; but when I believe and obey God, I preserve
it, follow it, do precisely what reason itself tells me I ought to
do. There is no contradiction, then, between believing and obeying
God, and the free and full exercise of reason and free-will. Our
Cincinnati contemporary seems to have overlooked this very obvious
fact, and has therefore imagined a contradiction where there is none
at all, but perfect logical consistency. Our contemporary is no doubt
very able, a great logician, but he is here grappling with a subject
which he has not studied, and of which he knows less than nothing.
It is a very general impression with rationalists and rationalizing
Protestants, that whoso asserts the free exercise of reason denies
the authority of the church, and that whoso recognizes the authority
of the church necessarily denies reason and abdicates his own
manhood, which is as much as to say that whoso asserts man denies
God, and whoso asserts God denies man. These people forget that the
best of all possible reasons for believing any thing is the word,
that is, the authority of God, and that the highest possible exercise
of one's manhood is in humble and willing obedience to the law or
will of God. All belief, as distinguished from knowledge, is on
authority of some sort, and the only question to be asked in any case
is, Is the authority sufficient? I believe there were such persons
as Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV.,
Robespierre, and George Washington, on the authority of history, the
last two, also, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, or persons who
have assured me that they had seen and known them personally; yet in
the case of them all, my belief is belief on authority. On authority,
I believe the great events recorded in sacred and profane history,
the building of the Temple of Jerusalem in the reign of Solomon,
the captivity of the Jews, their return to Judea under the kings of
Persia, the building of the second temple, the conquest of Jerusalem
by Titus and the Roman army, the invasion of the Roman empire by the
northern barbarians, who finally overthrew it, the event called the
reformation, the thirty years' war, etc. Nothing is more unreasonable
or more insane than to believe any thing on no authority; that is,
with no reason for believing it. To believe without authority for
believing is to believe without reason, and practically a denial of
reason itself.
Catholics, in fact, are the only people in the world who do, can,
or dare reason in matters of religion. Indeed, they are the only
people who have a reasonable faith, and who believe only what they
have adequate reasons for believing. They are also the only people
who recognize no human authority, not even one's own, in matters of
Christian faith and conscience. Sectarians and rationalists claim to
be free, and to reason freely, because, as they pretend, they are
bound by no human authority, and recognize no authority in faith but
their own reason. Yet why should my reason be for me or any one else
better authority for believing than yours? My authority is as human
as yours, and if yours is not a sufficient reason for my faith, how
can my own suffice, which is no better, perhaps not so good? As a
fact, no man is less free than he who has for his faith no authority
but his own reason; for he is, if he thinks at all, necessarily
always in doubt as to what he ought or ought not to believe; and
no man who is in doubt, who is unable to determine what he is or is
not required to believe in order to believe the truth, is or can be
mentally free. From this doubt only the Catholic is free; for he only
has the authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived,
for his faith.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the Catholic believes what
the church believes and teaches on any human authority. To assume
it begs the whole question. The act of faith the Catholic makes is,
"O my God! I believe all the sacred truths the Holy Catholic Church
believes and teaches, _because_ thou hast revealed them, who canst
neither deceive nor be deceived." The church can declare to be of
faith only what God has revealed, and her authority in faith is the
authority not of the law-maker, but of the witness and interpreter
of the law. In faith we believe the word of God, we believe God on
his word; in the last analysis, that God is true, _Deus est verax_.
Better authority than the word of God there is not and cannot be,
and nothing is or can be more reasonable than to believe that God is
true, or to believe God on his word, without a voucher.
That the church is a competent and credible witness in the case, or
an adequate authority for believing that God has revealed what she
believes and teaches as his word, can be as conclusively proved as
the competency and credibility of a witness in any case in court
whatever. She was an eye and ear-witness of the life, works, death,
and resurrection of our Lord, who is at once perfect God and perfect
man; she received the divine word directly from him, and is the
contemporary and living witness of what he taught and commanded. The
church has never for a moment ceased to exist, but has continued from
Christ to us as one identical living body that suffers no decay and
knows no succession of years; with her nothing has been forgotten,
for nothing has fallen into the past. The whole revelation of God is
continually present to her mind and heart. She is, then, a competent
witness; for she knows all the facts to which she is required to
testify. She is a credible witness; for God himself has appointed,
commissioned, authorized her to bear witness for him to all nations
and ages, even unto the consummation of the world, and has promised
to be with her, and to send to her assistance the Paraclete, the
Spirit of Truth, who should recall to her mind whatsoever he had
taught her, and lead her into all truth. The divine commission or
authorization to teach carries with it the pledge of infallibility
in teaching; for God cannot be the accomplice of a false teacher,
or one who is even liable to err. What surrender is there of one's
reason, judgment, free-will, manhood, in believing the testimony of a
competent and credible witness?
In point of fact, the case is even stronger than we put it. The
church is the body of Christ, and in her dwelleth the Holy Ghost.
She is human in her members, no doubt; but she is divine as well as
human in her head. The human and divine natures, though for ever
distinct, are united in one divine person by the hypostatic union.
This one divine Person, the Word that was made flesh, or assumed
flesh, for our redemption and glorification, is the person of the
church, who through him lives a divine as well as a human life. It
is God who speaks in her voice as it was God who spoke in the voice
of the Son of Mary, that died on the cross, that rose from the dead,
and ascended into heaven, whence he shall come again to judge the
quick and the dead. Hence, we have not only the word of God as the
authority for believing his revelation, but his authority in the
witness to the fact that it is his revelation or his word that we
believe. We may even go further still, and state that the Holy Ghost
beareth witness within us with our spirits in concurrence with the
external witness to the same fact, so that it may be strengthened by
the mouth of two witnesses. More ample means of attesting the truth
and leaving the unbeliever without excuse are not possible in the
nature of things.
It is not, then, the Catholic who contradicts himself; for between
the free exercise of reason and complete submission to the authority
of the church, as both are understood by Catholics, there is no
contradiction, no contrariety even. Faith, by the fact that it is
faith, differs necessarily from science. It is not intuitive or
discursive knowledge, but simply analogical knowledge. But reason
in itself cannot go beyond what is intuitively apprehended, or
discursively obtained, that is, obtained from intuitive data either
by way of deduction or induction. In either case, what is apprehended
or obtained is knowledge, not belief or faith. To believe and to
know are not one and the same thing; and whatever reason by itself
can judge of comes under the head of science, not faith; whence
it follows that reason can never judge of the intrinsic truth or
falsehood of the matter of faith; for if it could, faith would
be sight, and in no sense faith. If we recognize such a thing as
faith at all, we must recognize something which transcends or does
not fall under the direct cognizance of reason; and therefore that
which reason does not know, and can affirm only as accredited by
some authority distinct from reason. The Catholic asserts faith
on authority, certainly, but on an authority which reason herself
holds to be sufficient. True, he does not submit the question of its
truth or falsehood to the judgment of reason; for that would imply a
contradiction--that faith is not faith, but sight or knowledge. This
is the mistake of sectarians and rationalists, who deny authority in
matters of faith. They practically deny reason, by demanding of it
what exceeds its powers; and faith, by insisting on submitting it
to the judgment of reason, and denying that we have or can have any
reason for believing what transcends reason. It ill becomes them,
therefore, to accuse Catholics of contradicting themselves, when they
assert the rights of reason in its own order, and the necessity of
authority in matters of faith, or matters that transcend reason. They
themselves, according to their own principles, have, and can have
no authority for believing; and therefore, if they believe at all,
they do and must believe without reason; and belief without reason is
simple fancy, caprice, whim, prejudice, opinion, not faith.
But the _Christian Quarterly_ is not alone in imagining a
contradiction between reason and authority. The whole modern
mind assumes it, and imagines a contradiction wherever it finds
two extremes, or two opposites. It has lost the middle term that
brings them together and unites them in a logical synthesis. To
it, natural and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith,
science and revelation, liberty and authority, church and state,
heaven and earth, God and man--are irreconciliable extremes; and not
two extremes only, but downright contradictions, which necessarily
exclude each other. It does not, even if it accepts both terms,
accept them as reconciled, or united as two parts of one whole; but
each as exclusive, and warring against the other, and each doing its
best to destroy the other.
Hence the modern mind is, so to speak, bisected by a painful dualism,
which weakens its power, lowers its character, and destroys the
unity and efficiency of intellectual life. We meet every day men
who, on one side, assert supernatural faith, revelation, grace,
authority, and, on the other, pure naturalism, which excludes every
thing supernatural or divine. On the one side of their intelligence,
nothing but God and grace, and on the other, nothing but man and
nature. Indeed, the contradiction runs through nearly the whole
modern intellectual world, and is not encountered among the heterodox
only. We find even men who mean to be orthodox, think they are
orthodox, and are sincerely devoted to the interests of religion,
who yet see no real or logical connection between their faith as
Catholics and their principles as statesmen, or their theories as
scientists.
The two terms, or series of terms, of course, must be accepted,
and neither can be denied without equally denying the other. The
objection is not that both are asserted, but that they are asserted
as contradictories; for no contradiction in the real world, which is
the world of truth, is admissible. The Creator of the world is the
Logos, is logic in itself, and therefore, as the Scripture saith,
makes all things by number, weight, and measure. All his works are
dialectic, and form a self-consistent whole; for, as St. Thomas says,
he is the type of all things--_Deus est similitudo rerum omnium_.
There must then be, somewhere, the mediator, or middle term which
unites the two extremes, and in which their apparent contradiction
is lost, and they are opposed only as two parts of one uniform whole.
The defect of the modern mind is that it has lost this middle term,
and men retain in their life the dualism we have pointed out, because
they do not see that the conflicting elements are not harmonizable
in their intelligence; or, because they have lost the conception of
reality, and are false to the true principle of things.
In the early ages of the church, the fathers had no occasion to
take care that reason and nature should be preserved, for no one
dreamed of denying them. All their efforts were needed to bring out
and vindicate the other series of terms, God, the supernatural,
revelation, grace, faith, which was denied or perverted by the
world they had to war against. The ascetic writers, again, having
for their object the right disciplining of human nature through
grace, which includes revelation and faith, as well as the elevation
and assistance of nature and reason, had just as little occasion
to assert reason and nature, for they assumed them, and their
very labors implied them. Grace, or the supernatural, was rarely
exaggerated or set forth as exclusive. The danger came chiefly from
the opposite quarter, from Pelagianism, or the assertion of the
sufficiency of nature without grace.
When, however, the reformers appeared, the danger shifted sides.
The doctrines of the reformation, the doctrines of grace, as they
are called by evangelicals, were an exaggerated and exclusive
supernaturalism. The reformers did not merely assert the
insufficiency of reason and nature, but went further, and asserted
their total depravity, and utter worthlessness in the Christian
life. They made man not merely passive under grace, but actively and
necessarily opposed to it, resisting it always with all his might,
and to be overcome only by sovereign grace, the _gratia victrix_ of
the Jansenists. The church met this and its kindred errors in the
holy Council of Trent, and while affirming the supernatural element,
and defining the sphere and office of grace, rescued nature and
reaffirmed its part in the work of life. But error has no principle
and is bound to no consistency, and the Catholic has ever since
had to defend nature against the exclusive supernaturalists, and
grace against the exclusive naturalists; reason, for instance,
against the traditionalists, and revelation and authority against
the rationalists. To do this, it has been and still is necessary to
distinguish between the two orders, nature and grace, natural and
supernatural, reason and faith.
But we find a very considerable number of men who are not exclusively
supernaturalists, nor exclusively rationalists, but who are
syncretists, or both at once. They accept both orders in their mutual
exclusiveness, and alternately, rather, simultaneously, assert
exclusive supernaturalism, and exclusive rationalism. This is the
case with the great mass of Protestants, who retain any reminiscences
of grace, and even with some Catholics in countries where Jansenism
once had its stronghold, and where traces of its influence may still
be detected with people who deny its formally heretical propositions,
and accept the papal constitutions condemning them. The two extremes
are seen, and both are accepted; but the mediator between them,
or the truth which conciliates or harmonizes them, seems to be
overlooked or not understood. Of course, Catholic theology asserts
it, and is in reality based on it; but, some how or other, the age
does not seize it, and the prevailing philosophy does not recognize
it.
The problem for our age, it seems to us, is to revive it, and show
the conciliation of the two extremes. The labor of theologians and
philosophers is not, indeed, to find a new and unknown truth or
medium of reconciliation, as so many pretend, but to bring out to the
dull and enfeebled understanding of our times the great truth, always
asserted by Catholic theology, which conciliates all extremes by
presenting the real and living synthesis of things. This Father Hewit
has attempted and in great part achieved in his _Problems of the Age_.
There can be no question that the dominant philosophy, especially
with the heterodox, does not present the conditions of solving
this problem, and the scholastic philosophy, as taught in Catholic
schools, needs to be somewhat differently developed and expressed
before the age can see in it the solution demanded. According to
the philosophy generally received since Des Cartes, the natural and
supernatural are not only distinct, but separate orders, and reason
without any aid from revelation is competent to construct from her
own materials a complete science of the rational order. It supposes
the two orders to be independent each of the other, and each complete
in itself. Reason has nothing to do with faith, and faith has nothing
to do with reason. The church has no jurisdiction in philosophy, the
sciences, politics, or natural society; philosophers, physicists,
statesmen, seculars, so long as they keep in the rational order, are
independent of the spiritual authority, are under no obligation to
consult revelation, or to conform to the teachings of faith. Hence
the dual life men live, and the absurdity of maintaining in one order
what they contradict in another.
This, we need not say, is all wrong. The two orders are distinct,
not separate and mutually independent orders, nor parallel orders
with no real or logical relation between them. They are, in reality,
only two parts of one and the same whole. We do not undertake to
say what God could or could not have done had he chosen. If he
could have created man and left him in a state of pure nature, as
he has the animals, we know he has not done so. He has created man
for a supernatural destiny, and placed him under a supernatural or
gracious providence, so that, as a fact, man is never in a state of
pure nature. He aspires to a supernatural reward, and is liable to
a supernatural punishment. His life is always above pure nature,
or below it. The highest natural virtue is imperfect, and no sin
is simply a sin against the natural law. The natural is not the
supernatural, but was never intended to subsist without it. The
supernatural is not an interpolation in the divine plan of creation,
nor something superinduced upon it, but is a necessary complement of
the natural, which never is or can be completed in the natural alone.
In the divine plan, the two orders are coeval, always coexist, and
operate simultaneously to one and the same end, as integral parts
of one whole. The natural, endowed with reason and free-will, may
resist the supernatural, or refuse to co-operate with it; but if it
does so, it must remain inchoate, incomplete, an existence commenced
yet remaining for ever unfulfilled, which is the condition of the
reprobate. A true and adequate philosophy explains man's origin,
medium, and end; and no such philosophy can be constructed by reason
alone; for these are supernatural, and are fully known only through a
supernatural revelation.
The natural demands the supernatural; so also does the supernatural
demand the natural. If there were no nature, there could be nothing
above nature; there would be nothing for grace to operate on, to
assist, or complete. If man had no reason, he could receive no
revelation; if he had no free-will, he could have no virtue, no
sanctity; if not generated, he could not be regenerated; and if not
regenerated, he could not be glorified, or attain to the end for
which he is intended. To deny nature is to deny the creative act of
God, and to fall into pantheism--a sophism, for pantheism is denied
in its very assertion. Its assertion implies the assertor, and
therefore something capable of acting, and therefore a substantive
existence, distinguishable from God. The denial of God, as creator,
is the denial alike of man, the natural, and the supernatural. To
solve the problem, and remove the dualism which bisects the modern
mind, it is necessary to study the Creator's works in the light of
the Creator's plan, and as a whole, in the whole course or itinerary
of their existence, or in their procession from him as first cause,
to their return to him as final cause, and not piecemeal, as isolated
or unrelated facts. If we know not this plan, which no study of the
works themselves can reveal to us, we can never get at the meaning
of a single the smallest part, far less attain to any thing like
the science of the universe; for the meaning of each part is in its
relation to the whole. What is the meaning of this grain of sand
on the sea-shore, or this mosquito, this gnat, these animalculæ
invisible to the naked eye? Have they no meaning, no purpose in the
Creator's plan? What can you, by reason, know of that purpose or
meaning, if you know not that plan? Your physical sciences, without a
knowledge of that plan, are no sciences at all, and give you no more
conception of the universe than a specimen brick from its walls can
give you of the city of Babylon.
Though that plan is and can be known only as revealed by God himself,
yet when once known we may see analogies and proofs of it in all
the Creator's works, and study with profit the several parts of the
universe, and attain to real science of them; for then we can study
them in their synthesis, or their relation to the whole. We may then
have rational science, not built on revelation, but constructed by
reason in the light of revelation. We do not make revelation the
basis of the natural sciences. They are all constructed by reason,
acting with its own power, but under the supervision, so to speak, of
faith, which reveals to it the plan or purpose of creation, to which
it must conform in its deductions and inductions, if they are to have
any scientific value. If it operates in disregard of revelation,
without the light radiating from the Creator's plan, reason can know
objects only in their isolation, as separate and unrelated facts or
phenomena, and therefore never know them, as they really are, or in
their real significance; because nothing in the universe exists in
a state of isolation, or by and for itself alone; but every thing
that exists, exists and is significant only in its relation to
the whole. It is a mistake, then, to assume that the church, the
witness, guardian, and interpreter of the faith or revelation, has
nothing to say to philosophy, or to the physical sciences, cosmogony,
geology, physiology, history, or even political science. None of
them are or can be true sciences, any further than they present
the several classes of facts and phenomena of which they treat in
their respective relations and subordination to the divine plan of
creation, known only by the revelation committed to the church.
The principle of the solution of the problem, or the middle term
that unites the two extremes, or the natural and the supernatural,
in a real and living synthesis, or reconciles all opposites, is the
creative act of God. The supernatural is God himself, and what he
does immediately without using any natural agencies; the natural is
what God creates with the power to act as second cause, and what he
does only through second causes, or so-called natural laws. Nothing
is natural that is not explicable by natural laws, and nothing so
explicable is properly supernatural, though it may be superhuman. A
miracle is an effect of which God is the immediate cause, and which
can be referred to no natural or second cause; a natural event is one
of which God is not the direct and immediate cause, but only first
cause--_Causa eminens_, or cause of its direct and immediate cause.
The copula or _nexus_ that unites the natural and supernatural in
one dialectic whole, is the creative act of the supernatural, or
God, which produces the natural and holds it joined to its cause.
Creatures are not separable from their Creator; for in him they
live and move and are, or have their being; and were he to separate
himself from them, or suspend his creative act, they would instantly
drop into the nothing they were before he produced them. The relation
between them and him is their relation of entire dependence on him
for all they are, all they have, and all they can do. There is, then,
no ground of antagonism between him and them. If man aspires to
act independently of God, he simply aspires to be himself God, and
becomes--nothing.
But we have not exhausted the creative act. God creates all things
for an end, and this end is himself; not that he may gain something
for himself, or increase his own beatitude, which is eternally
complete, and can be neither augmented nor diminished, but that he
may communicate of his beatitude to creatures which he has called
into existence. Hence God is first cause and final cause. We proceed
from him as first cause, and return to him as final cause, as we have
shown again and again in the magazine with all the necessary proofs.
Between God as final cause, and his creatures, the mediator is the
Incarnate Word, or the man Christ Jesus, the only mediator between
God and men. In Christ Jesus is hypostatically united in one divine
person the divine nature and the human, which, however, remain for
ever distinct, without intermixture or confusion. This union is
effected by the creative act, which in it is carried to its summit.
The hypostatic union completes the first cycle or procession of
existences from God as first cause, and initiates their return to him
as final cause, as we have said in our remarks on _Primeval Man_. It
completes generation and initiates the regeneration, or palingenesiac
order, which has its completion or fulfilment in glorification,
the intuitive vision of God by the light of glory, or, as say the
schoolmen, _ens supernaturale_.
Theologians understand usually, by the supernatural order, the order
founded by the Incarnation or hypostatic union, the regeneration
propagated by the election of grace, instead of natural generation.
But between the natural and the supernatural, in this sense, the
_nexus_ or middle term is the creative act effecting the hypostatic
union, or God himself mediating in his human nature. The Incarnation
unites God and man, without intermixture or confusion, in one and
the same divine Person, and also the order of generation with the
order of regeneration, of which glorification is the crown. But
as the two natures remain for ever distinct but inseparable in
one person, so, in the order of regeneration, the natural and the
supernatural are each preserved in its distinctive though inseparable
activity.
These three terms, generation, regeneration, glorification, one in
the creative act of God, cover the entire life of man, and in each
the natural and supernatural, distinct but inseparable, remain and
co-operate and act. There is no dualism in the world of reality,
and none is apparent--except the distinction between God and
creature--when the Creator's works are seen as a whole, in their real
relation and synthesis. The dualism results in the mind from studying
the Creator's works in their analytic divisions, instead of their
synthetic relations; especially from taking the first cycle or order
of generation as an independent order, complete in itself, demanding
nothing beyond itself, and constituting the whole life of man,
instead of taking it, as it really is, only as the beginning, the
initial, or the inchoate stage of life, subordinated to the second
cycle, the teleological order, or regeneration and glorification, in
which alone is its complement, perfection, ultimate end, for which
it has been created, and exists. Our age falls into its heresies,
unbeliefs, and intellectual anarchy and confusion, because it
undertakes to separate what God has joined together--philosophy from
theology, reason from faith, science from revelation, nature from
grace--and refuses to study the works and providence of God in their
synthetic relations, in which alone is their true meaning.
The Positivists understand very well the anarchy that reigns in the
modern intellectual world, and the need of a doctrine which can unite
in one all the scattered and broken rays of intelligence and command
the adhesion of all minds. The church, they say, once had such a
doctrine, and for a thousand years led the progress of science and
society. Protestants, they assert, have never had, and never, as
Protestants, can have any doctrine of the sort, and the church has it
no longer. It is nowhere set forth except in the writings of Auguste
Comte, who obtains it not from revelation, theology, or metaphysics,
but from the sciences, or the positive facts of nature studied in
their synthetic relations. But unhappily, though right in asserting
the necessity of a grand synthetic doctrine which shall embrace all
the knowable and all the real, they forget that facts cannot be
studied in their synthetic relations unless the mind is previously
in possession of the grand synthetic doctrine which embraces and
explains them, while the doctrine itself cannot be had till they are
so studied. They must take the end as the means of gaining the end!
This is a hard case, for till they get the synthetic formula they can
only have unrelated facts, hypotheses, and conjectures, with no means
of verifying them. They are not likely to succeed. Starting from
anarchy, they can only arrive at anarchy. Only God can move by his
Spirit over chaos, and bring order out of confusion and light out of
darkness.
Moreover, the Positivists do not reconcile the conflicting elements;
for they suppress one of the two series of terms, and relegate God,
the supernatural, principles, causes, and supersensible relations
into the region of the unknowable, and include in their grand
synthesis only positive sensible facts or phenomena and their
physical laws. They thus restrict man's existence to the first
cycle, and exclude the second or palingenesiac order, in which alone
reigns the moral law. The first or initial cycle does not contain the
word of the _ænigma_. It does not exist for itself, and therefore is
not and cannot be intelligible in or by itself. If they could succeed
in removing the anarchy complained of, they would do so by ignorance,
not science, and harmonize all intelligences only by annihilating
them.
Nor is it true that the church has lost or abandoned her grand
synthetic doctrine, or that her synthesis has ceased to be complete,
or sufficiently comprehensive. Her doctrine is Christianity; and
Christianity leaves out no ancient or modern science; has not
been and cannot be outgrown by any actual or possible progress of
intelligence; for it embraces at once all the real and all the
knowable, _reale omne et scibile_. If the church fails to command
the adhesion of all minds, it is not because any minds have advanced
in science beyond her, or have attained to any truth or virtue she
has not; but because they have fallen below her, have become too
contracted and grovelling in their views to grasp the elevation and
universality of her doctrine. She still leads the civilized world,
and commands the faith and love of the really enlightened portion of
mankind. The reason why so many in our age refuse her their adhesion
is not because her doctrine or mode or manner of presenting it are
defective, but because they are engrossed with the development and
application of the physical or natural laws, or with the first or
initial cycle, and exhaust themselves in the production, exchange,
and accumulation of physical goods, which, however attractive to
the inchoate or physical man, are of no moral or religious value.
The cause is not in the church but in them; in the fact that their
minds and hearts are set on those things only after which the heathen
seek; and they have no relish for any truth that pertains to the
teleological or moral order.
The church does not object to the study of the natural or physical
sciences, nor to the accumulation of material wealth; but she does
object to making the initial order the teleological, and to the
cultivation of the sciences or study of the physical laws for their
own sake; for, with her, not knowledge but wisdom is the principal
thing. She requires the physical and psychological sciences to
be cultivated for the sake of the ultimate end of man, and in
subordination to the Christian law which that end prescribes. So of
material wealth; she does not censure its production, its exchange,
or its accumulation, if honestly done, and in subordination to the
end for which man is created. What she demands of us is that we
conform to the Creator's plan, and esteem things according to their
true order and place in that plan. She tolerates no falsehood in
thought, word, or deed.
The natural is not suppressed or injured by being subordinated to the
supernatural, for it can be fulfilled only in the supernatural. We
find the indications of this in nature herself. There are, indeed,
theologians who talk of a natural beatitude; but whether possible
or not, God has not so made us that we can find our beatitude in
nature; that is, in the creature or a created good. He has made us
for himself, and the soul can be satisfied with nothing less. This
is the great fact elaborated by Father Hecker in his _Questions of
the Soul_, and his _Aspirations of Nature_. In the first work, he
shows that the soul asks questions which nature cannot answer, but
which are answered in the supernatural; in the second, he shows
that nature desires, craves, aspires to, and has a capacity for, the
supernatural; that the soul is conscious of wants which only the
supernatural can fill. Man has, as St. Thomas teaches, a natural
desire to see God in the beatific vision; that is, to see him as he
is in himself; to be like him, to partake of his divine nature, to
possess him, and be filled with him. This alone can satisfy the soul,
and hence holy Job says, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy
likeness."
There can be no real antagonism between the natural and the
supernatural; for there can be none between nature and its Creator,
and equally none between it and its fulfilment, or supreme good.
There is none, we have shown, between reason and faith, any more
than there is between the eye and the telescope, which extends its
range of vision, and enables it to see what it could not see without
it. There can be none between science and revelation; when the
science is real science and is cultivated not for itself alone, but
as a means to the true end of man; and there can be none between
earth and heaven, when the earth is regarded solely as a medium and
not confounded with the end. There can be none between liberty and
authority; for man can be man, possess himself, be himself, and
free only by living in conformity to the law of his existence, or
according to the plan of the Creator; and finally there can be none
between church and state, if the state remembers that it is in the
teleological order, and under the moral law, therefore subordinated
to the spiritual order.
We have passed over a great number of important questions, several
of which, on starting, we intended to consider, and some of which we
may take up hereafter; but we have given, we think, the principle
that solves the problem of the age, and shows that the dualism which
runs through and disturbs so many minds has no foundation either
in the teaching of the church or in the real order. The Creator's
works all hang together, are all parts of one uniform plan, and
the realization _ad extra_ of one divine thought, of which the
archetype is in his own infinite, eternal, and ineffable essence. The
trouble with men is, that many of them do not see that the church
is catholic, even when professing to believe it; because their own
minds are not catholic. They often suppose they are broader than the
church, because they are too narrow to see her breadth. They also
fancy that there are fields of science which they may cultivate which
lie beyond her catholicity, and concerning which they are under no
obligation to consult her. This shows that they understand neither
her catholicity nor the nature, conditions, and end of science. They
contract the church to their own narrow dimensions.
We conclude by saying that the men who undertake to criticise the
church, and to unchurch her, are men who want breadth, depth, and
elevation. They are mole-eyed, and have slender claims to be regarded
as really enlightened, large-minded, large-hearted men.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] _The Christian Quarterly._ Cincinnati: Carroll & Co. July, 1869.
Art IV. Spirit of Romanism.
SACRED AMBITION.
Hast thou indeed
Sacred ambition,
In word and deed
Based on contrition?
Pray low and long,
Sowing and weeping;
Promises strong
Pledge thee thy reaping.
Thus hast thou prayed?
Wait then contented;
Blessings delayed
Are blessings augmented.
Every thing proves
Holy ambition
Is what God loves
Next to contrition.
TRANSLATED FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.
PAGANINA.
XVIII.
We must not conclude that Master Swibert gave only a musical
education to his child. His instruction was solid, and intended,
beyond every thing, to develop in her a religious sentiment.
For metaphysics he had a love that years had not lessened. His
philosophy was very simple; a few lines could comprise it--only what
he took a liking to; and he never pretended to have invented it.
His soul exercised itself in applying every creature as a connection
with the Infinite. He said summarily that if a thinker could not so
comprehend things, he retarded his progress and lost his end.
Paganina could not always understand her father, but this did not
distress him. Like the good laborer, he sowed thickly the land he had
prepared, knowing well that much would be lost; but knowing, too,
that he would come, some day, and find the luxuriant verdure that
would repay his pains.
The young girl adopted with eagerness all that could elevate
character and ennoble life. Happy to repose in the artistic emotions
that shook her so deeply, she relaxed into the serene contemplation
of the truth toward which her father conducted her.
XIX.
Such, in its principal characteristics, is the life Paganina led
until she was twenty-two years of age. Her beauty had developed
radiantly. She held her head aloft, as one who looks on high; and
her eyes so sought the distance that she won the name of proud from
the good women who met her in their daily walks.
She never was without her father, and the contrast between the two
was painful. He was an old man--more from the effect of sickness than
old age; and although he appeared active, it was easy to see that,
undermined by an inward malady, he would soon be completely wrecked.
He felt it himself, and employed all his strength to instruct and
enlighten his daughter.
Without saddening her in advance, by announcing his approaching
malady, he endeavored to accustom her to a future separation, but she
could not comprehend it. The last thing in which youth can believe is
the rupture of holy affections. It never learns that such love can be
interrupted.
One day, Master Swibert and his daughter were seated at the turn
of the road, where they generally rested in their daily walk. The
organist returned to the subject with which his mind was always
preoccupied--that future in which he had no part--and finished by
saying, "My daughter, your cousin loves you. What he felt for you
here he has not lost by separation; his heart is devotedly yours. You
are all in all to him, and I have long understood his affection for
you. I should feel happy to know you returned his love."
Paganina, surprised, replied, "I love but you, my father; must
you leave me?" The organist replied by this verse of St. Paul,
"_Insipiens: tu quod seminas, non vivificatur, nisi prius moriatur_",
and Paganina, who did not know Latin, began to weep.
From this day, Master Swibert declined rapidly. He made what he
called his will; his last instructions, only to arm his daughter
for the struggles of life. He urged her to see, through him,
the immortality of the soul; so especially visible in the early
Christians, in the mournful hour when, their bodies, falling to ruin,
betrayed the interior flame that disengaged them from earth, to shine
for ever among the stars in unfading lustre.
After several days of agony, the good musician found his peroration.
He died.
It was morning. He had talked a long time with his daughter, and
the peace he enjoyed announced the end of the struggle. His large,
troubled eyes looked once more toward the mountain, on her, and on
his crucifix, then closed for ever.
XX.
The world--even the best of it--don't like to be entertained with the
sufferings of others; so I will not stop to relate those of Paganina.
I will pause longer on the chapter of her consolations. She drew
these from two sources, her memories and her labors.
Her memories were realities. She felt that her father had never
left her; and lived in his presence, meditating on and practising
his lessons. Her ardor for the study of her art redoubled. Often in
the silence of the night, at a late hour, her voice was heard by an
admiring crowd beneath her window. The young artist, without knowing
or desiring it, became popular.
She had other joys, too, which helped her to live her isolated
life. It is not of those of love I speak. Paganina did not know the
passion. She lived apart from the world, and her character became
half legendary. Fancy held play where love was excluded; and in the
regions of the ideal grew her immortal works, and their imperishable
beauty, to be shed on humanity.
Perhaps the memory of such things should only be intruded on the very
few; for it is said that often a ray from on high illuminated the
chamber where the young girl sat, and in that moment she felt a new
world tremble in her heart.
XXI.
Happiness is not the guest of earth. The miserable and deceptive
pleasure that pretends to this glorious name is a bait rather than
a food, and never nourishes any body. Therefore such moments as we
have spoken of are fugitive, and are mostly followed by exhaustion
and bitter disgust, which would be a good price for them, could such
moments be paid for. Paganina experienced the common law. She could
not live on ecstasy. Her days, therefore, were mingled and diverse.
I must relate the crisis of her life; but I turn with regret to
the chamber that sheltered her genius and her innocence. I see in
spirit--shut in this place--a treasure that no one was permitted to
contemplate; for Paganina bloomed in the shade, and reserved for her
solitude her beauty and the perfume of her loveliness.
Sometimes, only when debauch slept and idleness prolonged its useless
repose, the beautiful young girl appeared before her opened window.
Robed with the reflection of the aurora, she saluted the growing
day; and, as the antique statue, she exhaled divine harmony by
contact with its earliest rays.
XXII.
Having, not without success, terminated his musical studies, André
quitted Naples. His affection for his cousin had greatly increased.
Love sang in his heart; for, if we may borrow such an expression from
the poetical vocabulary, it assuredly belongs to a musician.
From the day he was free, he had but one desire--to see Paganina. He
set out with this intention, and restless regarding his reception.
Indeed, his future depended upon it.
During the journey, his thoughts went ahead, and heaped up every
imaginable supposition on the manner in which his cousin would
receive him; but she did not receive him at all. He entered a
deserted mansion.
He wandered among the deserted places, where every thing recalled the
days of his childhood. Death had passed by, and left, perhaps, some
unknown scourge. In his poignant distress, he imagined the worst.
Perhaps he did not deceive himself. Paganina was to appear the next
day at the theatre of Milan.
I must add that she was always worthy of her father, in the strictest
sense of the word; though for three months, it is true, in order
to prepare herself for the stage, she had mixed in the world of
the theatres, and, what is far worse, in the world of parasites,
insinuating themselves by every means and with every end. She
breathed a poisoned air in the incense of impure flatteries. Her
bitter contempt prevented its injuring her; but as soon as she was
free, she ran to conceal her wounds in a retreat where no one could
discover her.
XXIII.
Extract from the _Gazette of Lombardy_, the 20th of September,
18--.
"Her father was German, her mother an Italian; her father belonged
to the church, her mother to the theatre. Both were superior
musicians. Such a birth could promise her a more than common
destiny, and this birth had a singular predestination. She was
born in the side-scenes of the theatre during a _soirée_, the
memory of which is still fresh among us. Her first cries were
drowned in the passionate strains of the violin of Paganini, and
the bursts of admiration from his auditory. The little creature,
as if in reply to the powerful invocation of the master, appeared
before the hour fixed by nature.
"This is all her history. From that hour she disappeared. Without
doubt, the new-born vestal sought the retreat of the sacred fire.
"To-day she returns to the place of her birth. The words are
literally true; we will hear her this evening in La Scala.
"I have desired to announce this _fête_. Let no one fail to be
there, for I predict it will be an event.
"My task is finished. I would like to describe this cantatrice,
but she belongs to no formula. It would require two to express the
dualism of which her person and character bear the imprint.
"She seems to have received from her parents two natures which by
turns inspire her. Even now we hear her pure and original voice
mount to heaven; no breath of human passion seems to agitate it.
We listen enchanted, lifted far above ourselves, and share the
serenity, the peace she inspires; suddenly the air changes, the
color mounts to her cheeks, passion absorbs her, and she bursts
out in its most marvellous tones. I could see the spectre of the
old Paganini grimacing by the side of his beautiful god-child, and
goading on her enchained genius."
XXIV.
The result was as predicted. The young cantatrice excited immense
enthusiasm.
The Italians are quickly roused, and never sell the evidences of
their admiration. To show more than ordinary emotion, they invent
unheard-of and extravagant expressions.
When Paganina could withdraw from these ovations, the night was far
advanced; she took refuge in solitude.
Let us follow her. It will be curious to observe in her the
intoxication of applause, and see how she bore her first triumph--she
who had elicited such flattering testimony of love and admiration.
She wept, but not with happy emotions.
"My father," she cried, "my father, you are already revenged. To
punish me, you have fulfilled my desires. I wished for the clatter
of applause, for the tumult of bravos. I am satisfied already. Is it
for this, great God, that I have deserted thy ways? Is it for such
fugitive pleasure, whose bitterness I have known before even I have
tasted it? O happiness of solitude! ineffable family joys! where have
you fled?
"Those who have just applauded me little know the inexpressible
sadness that overcame me. For a moment despair drew tears to my
eyes. They thought it the triumph of my art--but I wept for thee,
my father; for thee, my childhood--and the peace of the old, happy
hours."
André at this moment appeared.
XXV.
He watched her in silence--he on the threshold, and she half turning
toward him proudly in her surprise.
André was the first to break the silence.
"Paganina," said he, "I come from the home that you have left. I
found the house deserted, and I went to seek you at the tomb of your
father."
"Yes," she replied with bitterness, "and you find me here in the garb
of a comedian. What do you wish with me?"
"I wish to snatch you from this cursed place; to fly with you so far
that you may forget this fatal evening, and again become obedient
to the voice of your father. Come, I will be your protector, your
guardian, your slave--until the day," he added in a lower voice,
"when I dare breathe to you my secret, and tell you that I love you."
"André, listen to me. I will speak to you sincerely. I wish to love
you. I swear to you I wish it. To quit this country, fly with you, go
into Germany and inhabit the house of my father, and there raise a
family, would be my happiness; but it can never be."
"The love I bear you, Paganina, has taken deep root. Near you alone
am I happy; but if it must be so, speak! If you have given your heart
to a man worthy of you, tell me, and destroy in me all hope for ever.
For you I can bear any thing. But if it is not so, do not answer me
yet. Wait; my humility may disarm you, and some day my patience may
end in moving your heart."
"No! my heart is but ashes; no affection blooms nor will bloom within
it. It is too late."
"Do not speak so, I beg of you. You do not know what the future has
in store for you, nor see the Providence that watches over you. It
has sent me to you, and with me the remembrance of happy years and
the presence of your father."
"The angel itself is not yet arrested in its fall. Go! let me hang
suspended between the heaven that is shut against me, and the abyss
whose depths I seek."
She burst into tears. André, after a silence, approached her.
"Paganina," said he, "do not weep. Come; see! the dawn already
whitens the fields. Let the God of the morning comfort you. The wind
rises forerunner of a new day. Bathe your forehead in its breath,
and respire with its penetrating odors the forgetfulness of your
sufferings. To-day, perhaps, will bring us back peace and happiness."
"No, to-day will be fatal. The beauty of the morning moves me no
longer; for me the evening fires, the flames of the foot-lights, the
_éclat_ of triumph. I will go from _fête_ to _fête_, from ovation
to ovation. I want the whirlpool of the world to seize and carry me
until I lose my health--and forget every thing. Immediately I set out
for the Château Sarrasin."
"Ah! this, then," cried André with a sudden explosion of passion,
"this, then, is the secret of your resistance and the avowal of your
shame. The public cry that brought me here had already warned me. I
refused to listen to it. Well, go; but fear every thing. You have
roused in me a monster that I knew not of."
And raising his hands to heaven, the unhappy one fled.
XXVI.
Paganina was calumniated by her cousin; she was pure, though it is
true she slid on a fatal declivity. Already appearances were against
her reputation. André was deceived; but he was not the only one;
and from thence the reports to which he had made allusion, and the
pretext of which will be explained.
The Count Ludovic, proprietor of the Château Sarrasin and actual
head of the house of the Ligonieri, inscribed in the golden book of
European aristocracy, was a man of proud appearances, endowed with
masculine beauty quite in accordance with his character; for he was
superior to his race, and possessed many noble qualities.
His life was not without stain; but even his faults bore that
chivalrous character that renders them honorable in the eyes of the
world. We well know that the code of the world is not that of the
saints.
And the Count Ludovic, who willingly mingled with the people of the
theatre, had known Paganina while she was preparing for her _début_.
At the first glance he had rightly judged the soul of the young
artist, and saw her superior to her companions.
His heart was touched. Penetrated with sincere sentiments, he
preserved in her presence an attitude of reserve and respect, and
his influence was secretly employed to isolate and protect her.
His manner toward her was observed; for it was not his usual way
of adding to the conquests for which he was famous. It might have
been believed a mutual admiration; but it is not well to credit the
judgments of one's neighbors.
The Count Ludovic wished to celebrate the _début_ of Paganina by one
of those _fêtes_ that an ostentatious tradition had preserved in his
family. He made important preparations at the Château Sarrasin and
sent out his invitations.
The delicate point was to gain for his project her who was the soul
of it; so he proposed it to her at the moment when she received
her first applause, trusting, no doubt, to her excitement and wish
for future conquests. He knew his auditory would be of the first
distinction; he knew his motive--but no matter.
The young girl, warned as if by instinct, feeling herself at the
fatal point of her destiny, made him no reply. The next day, under
the influence of her bad angel, she consented.
XXVII.
They set out alone in an open chariot. The Count Ludovic had proposed
for himself a gallant _tête-à-tête_, without, however, the desired
success; for all day long Paganina spoke not a word. Her wandering
looks were on the horizon, perhaps there to discover the mysterious
and avenging power with which she believed herself menaced.
Toward evening they arrived at Arèse. The young cantatrice was
recognized and applauded; but she appeared totally unconscious of
sight or sound, and maintained her obstinate silence. The count had
long since renounced all effort at conversation. He rather liked the
oddity of the adventure, and dreamed of the legend where the paladin
carried away his bride and wondered she was pale--so pale that she
was dead.
Meanwhile, the carriage labored on the declivity of the road to
Germany. The heat was excessive, not a breath stirred the air; but a
dull and heavy murmuring announced that the midday wind was pent up
in the higher mountain regions. The setting sun was red as blood. At
a turn of the road, Paganina shuddered, for she saw André on a rock
above them; she could never explain by what energy of passion he had
reached this point.
When the carriage neared him he seized the branch of a tree, and,
throwing it before the horses' feet, cried out, "Paganina, stop! or,
by the soul of thy father, be cursed for ever!" The Count Ludovic had
some difficulty in managing his frightened horses; he did not observe
that his companion was as pale as the bride of the paladin.
A little further on, in returning, he saw the same man in the same
place, illuminated by the burning sky, and pointing with the laugh of
a madman to the black mass of the Château Sarrasin.
The adventure was becoming more and more singular. The count
wondered what part this man took in this unheard-of drama.
He was too much the gentleman to betray any surprise; but he profited
by the incident to renew his efforts at conversation. "Do you know,"
he said to Paganina, "that these slight accidents might have had a
tragical ending? The horses we drive have already caused the death
of a man, and, like those of the fable, may be said to feed their
ferocity on human blood. The whip has never touched them. If it
had not been my pride to place at your disposal the most beautiful
equipage in the world, I should have hesitated to trust you to them."
Still she did not reply. But the moment was approaching when she
would speak, and in terrible words reveal her anguish.
The carriage entered the road that ended at the Château Sarrasin.
As we said before, this road descends by a steep and dangerous
declivity, and on the very edge of the precipice. The horses walked
quietly. Seizing the whip, Paganina struck them violently, crying out,
"Go on, then! Is it not said that you can lead to death?"
"To death, indeed!" cried the count, surprised and alarmed. "In this
road, and at this hour, a miracle only can save us."
The horses, breathing fire, made frightful bounds, leaving starry
tracks behind them. The stones rolled heavily into the abyss. The few
inhabitants of these solitudes, stopping on the borders of the road,
looked on pale and as in a dream, to see this fantastic chariot drawn
by such furious horses, while a young girl, standing, and her hair
flying in the wind, lashed them on to desperation.
If it needed a miracle to save them, this miracle took place. The
team stopped; upset the carriage on the steps of the château. One
of the horses was killed, the carriage broken to pieces. The count
sprang up safe and sound, his first inquiry for Paganina.
"I am here," she replied; "the hand of God has led us hither."
With her intention, such words were blasphemy; but she spoke in
delirium.
XXVIII.
Paganina, leaning on the arm of the count, promenades with him the
highest terrace. The guests, in groups at a distance, regard them
with hungry eyes.
A hot and violent wind agitates the half-stripped trees. The clouds
traverse the sky hurriedly and quickly, and their moving shadows rest
on the mountains. The moon, disengaging itself here and there, throws
its pure light on the white form of the young girl. She seems to grow
in the estimation of the admirers who seek her.
The Count Ludovic is strangely moved. His sincere sentiments are
rekindled by the newness of the situation, and the strangeness of
the adventure. He thanks his companion for having, at one stroke,
played with their two lives. Exalted and nervous, enervated with the
perfume of the life that she had so nearly lost only a few moments
before, Paganina replies to him. The observers of the scene listen
attentively. Detached from the murmur of the distant storm, their
words are heard for a moment, but the tempest again arises and
carries them away in its roar. Yes, ardent and mysterious breath,
bear away these words of irony, of revolt, and of despair--bear afar
the bitter laugh that accompanies them.
For a long time, O powerful voice! have men listened to your painful
harmony. Long have you roamed the earth, picking up the notes of
grief, the cries of the new-born, the sobs of mothers, the sighs of
the dying, and the groaning of the crowds who groan and groan on. But
never, never have you borne away any thing more sad or desolate than
the laugh of this unhappy child.
XXIX.
The night advances. Already the moon has commenced to decline. Some
of the invited ones have retired; others, grouped here and there,
seated or half-extended, are sleeping in the hot breath of the storm.
There are two powers that watch--Paganina and the tempest, and the
thunder rolls and shakes the mountains.
Silent and isolated, Paganina looks at the shadow of the Château
Sarrasin. She sees it advance and recede. She thinks of the legend of
this cursed place--so fatal to the honor of women. And yet fate has
led her there--the gulf is yawning for her. She advances; she will
enter never there.
A cry is heard; the sleepers, wakened suddenly, run to and fro, pale
and frightened. They find Paganina fainting and covered with blood.
A deep wound is found in her throat. The count sustains her, and in
a voice thundering above the tempest orders his people to seize the
assassin.
The assassin was André!
When they wished to carry the wounded one into the Château Sarrasin,
she could not speak, but betrayed, in signs of such mortal terror,
her repugnance to enter, that they were obliged to relinquish the
idea.
She said since, at the moment that the doors opened to make way
for her, she again saw the scene which, several years before, had
so forcibly struck her. Nothing was wanting; the brightness of the
light, or the luxury of the dress. All the actors were there,
all--but they were hideous skeletons; they still made gestures of
applause, while above them, the woman with the green diamond showed a
livid face, the eyes extinct, and an open mouth, from which no sound
proceeded.
Paganina was laid on a litter and carried to Arèse.
André followed her, chained, and guarded from sight. They arrived
next morning.
It is said the infuriated crowd rushed upon the assassin and his
guard, and obliged them to fly for their lives. Paganina had him
brought to her, took him by the hand, and so passed through the moved
and disarmed assemblage.
XXX.
For a long time her life was despaired of. A burning fever consumed
her. Her sufferings were such as belonged to her thirsty nature. She
experienced the most terrible of earthly tortures; and prayed in her
delirium for a stream of water to flow into her parched lips.
Her moral sufferings were still greater. Every evening she became the
prey to a terrible hallucination, that she regarded as the punishment
of her wish for popularity; she saw herself raised far above an
immense crowd, and this crowd becoming by turns insulting and
mocking. Its waves of fury flowed and reflowed at the feet of their
victim, and covered her with their froth. Paganina, in despair, would
have thrown herself into this shoreless tide; but in vain; she felt
herself enchained to her height, and obliged to wait for the rays of
morning to dissipate her phantoms.
These two features suffice to characterize her malady, which was
moral as well as physical. Its intensity lasted during the winter
months. In the spring only she appeared to be restored to health, but
the blow had been a severe one, and the rest of her life was merely a
prolonged convalescence.
XXXI.
But suffering in silence accomplished its work. Her long confinement
had curbed if not wholly subdued her ardent nature, and those who
thought to find the revived Paganina on the declivity where they had
left her, were greatly mistaken.
Their surprise was greater, too, as no indication had prepared them
for the change. The work in her soul was well and firmly done, and
she remained calmly impenetrable to her friends, until there escaped
from her, in spite of herself, a jet of revealing flame.
The Count Ludovic had never ceased his attentions during her illness.
His passion, far from weakening, had grown stronger during his
separation. When he could be admitted to her presence, he expressed
his sentiments, perhaps, too tenderly; he who knew her, knew of what
sudden movements and prompt returns she was capable, strove with
all his energy, but remained confounded. Not without reason, for so
Paganina answered him:
"Since the day when I first heard all you have just repeated to me,
I have stood on the borders of eternity. New lights have been shed
on all things since then; do not be surprised that my language is no
longer the same.
"It must be true that you place yourself in very high and me in very
low esteem! Do you consider my honor a worthy prey for your vanity?
Do you not think that a few days of pleasure might be too well paid
for by my past and my future? What, then, do you wish? You ask that
I abjure the past, that I sacrifice to you my whole future, and even
more! My immortal soul is what you would wish to debase. And in a few
days you would give me, in exchange, your contempt, to run, freer and
more honored than ever, into new pleasures. This is what you wish,
and yet you say you love me.
"Good God! what might I have been to-day, if heaven had not arrested
me--and what am I now?
"Ah! forgive me; I have lost the right to be severe. Words of blame
or bitterness should not come from my lips. No, it is myself I
despise; and this contempt, to which I am consecrated, plunges into
my heart a poisoned iron. It oppresses, it stifles me, and leaves for
my punishment the life I hate.
"Count Ludovic, you are the son of chevaliers. I know at the bottom
of your heart is the nobility of your ancestors. Adieu; we have met
for the last time."
And the count, retiring on this command, lost his reputation for a
man of gallantry.
XXXII.
It was Easter-Sunday, the feast of eternal life. The sun shed through
the clouds its humid rays, the trees--clothed in new verdure and
brightly agitated--sent forth their sweet and subtle perfumes.
Paganina, still weak, was placed by the open window; she turned
toward the church her eyes, grown larger in suffering, and listened
to the notes of the feast, weakened by the distance. When Faust heard
such songs the poisoned cup fell from his hands. In his desperation
he believed no longer in God. The earth had reclaimed him. Heaven was
going to reconquer Paganina.
The angels, approaching her, brought back a world of innocent and
gentle memories; she wept.
At this moment the bells, pealing their joyous notes, announced the
end of the ceremony.
The virgins, clothed in white, quitted the church in silent swarms.
Paganina saw them pass before her in a vision, for they appeared
in groups of such supernatural beauty that she was thrown into an
ecstasy.
She saw them leave the second banquet--some retiring sweetly within
themselves, as slender stalks bending under the weight of the
heavenly dew; others, pale, with foreheads high and open, and eyes
pure and ardent. They crossed their arms on their breasts, the better
to guard their treasure. All wore the trace of that fire which for
eighteen hundred years has marked the victory of the virgins and the
martyrs. The ray of divine beauty which fell on these figures was
reflected back on Paganina; her soul was transfixed and vanquished
for ever.
She rose, and standing, pale as her long white vestments, she prayed:
"Thou seekest me again, my God; behold! I come. To thee I return,
and with the frightful experience of the darkness of oblivion, and
penetrated with the horror of those places where thou art not.
"Thou art witness that, before I abandoned the heights where thou
residest, I sustained an infernal struggle. That day my vision was
lowered, the dragon of the abyss mounted toward me, to drag me to its
depths.... Thy angels have fallen, my God! But while they are lost
for ever, why, why am I reclaimed?
"I come trembling in thy light. Do not reject thy victim; acknowledge
the blood-stain with which thou hast marked me to save me, I hope;
let me again contemplate thy eternal beauty. Thy beauty, my Lord, I
must see. I thirst for it; one of its bright rays has shone before
me, and the world has nothing more to offer.
"My last hour will be the hour of my deliverance; I wait for it.
Accept the offering of a broken life, whose failing forces will be
employed to repair the evil I have done. And thou, my father, I bless
thee, because I may yet sleep again in thy bosom."
XXXIII.
The day fixed for the trial of André having arrived, a great mass of
people pressed around the court of justice. In the memory of man, no
celebrated cause had ever attracted so great a multitude. At every
hour, the waves of the crowd mounted higher and higher against the
walls of the palace. When it was known that Paganina would appear
to give her testimony, such tumult and agitation arose that the
judges were obliged to suspend proceedings. Calm being somewhat
reëstablished, the president called Paganina to testify against the
assassin. Then, without raising her eyes, in a low and trembling
voice, which ran shuddering through the crowd, she answered, "He
saved my honor!" Twice she said it, and when the president, renewing
his interrogation, menaced her with the penalties of the law if she
refused her testimony, she fixed upon him a steady gaze and repeated
in a strong voice,
"He saved my honor!"
At these words there was a shout of enthusiasm. Men threw their caps
into the air, and cried, "Hurrah!" Women wept and were agitated; and
André, sobbing aloud, held out to her his trembling hands.
It is easily known he was acquitted.
XXXIV.
Soon after, a strange, unheard-of rumor was afloat. They said the
Count Ludovic asked Paganina in marriage. The Count Ludovic! This
flower of nobility, this last of an antique chivalry, condescend to
propose to an actress, and tarnish his escutcheon! It was not to be
believed. But the evidence was excellent. He said so himself, and
even rudely, to the unlucky flatterers who thought to make capital
out of the enormity of the story.
We can conceive the emotion was great, and spread rapidly.
Things stood so, when two other pieces of news, following closely on
this, caused it to be forgotten.
And these were, first, that the demand of the Count Ludovic was
not acceded to; the second, that his preferred rival was André, an
obscure musician with a weak brain; and, even worse than that, that
all his merit rested in his attempt at the assassination of the
object of his passion.
I give the facts in their entire simplicity. Truth is worth more
than its resemblance; so any extenuation, any covering of phrases,
would be useless, and neither make them accepted nor understood
by practical people--those who judge every thing from their own
stand-point, and name it so well "common sense."
Paganina wished to repair the evil of which she was the cause. She
found "at her hand" the sacrifice she desired.
From the terrible night passed at the Château Sarrasin, André had
never resumed the complete use of his reason. To have the right
to devote herself to him, his cousin married him; surrounded him
with every care, and watched over the flame of his vacillating
intelligence with a love more maternal than conjugal. In our
existence, many things are strange. She never seemed the wife of
André. She lived with him as a sister. And can you imagine what
was her life, _tête-à-tête_ with an idiot? Calculate the energy to
sustain, and the patience to calm him.
When the spectres of madness approached the poor invalid, warned by
his cries of terror, Paganina ran to him. Her presence, and the sound
of her voice, dispelled the phantoms. Delivered from his terrors, he
threw himself at her feet, covered her hands with kisses and tears,
and invoked her as his angel, swearing to her inviolable obedience.
Since King David's time, we all know the power of music to dispel the
spirits of darkness. Paganina made use of it, and found consolation
in the mingled studies that brought her cousin such relief. So even
they had hours of happiness.
The genius, too, of Paganina was not entirely lost to her
contemporaries. She was heard once in Milan, in a religious ceremony;
and once again in Germany, where she had gone, nearly two years after
her marriage, to make, with André, a pilgrimage to the house of her
father. For her it was the song of the swan, for her exhausted and
uncertain life went out soon afterward.
This song of songs will reveal her last thoughts and conclude her
history.
XXXV.
In one of those festivals which are the noble pleasure and the glory
of Germany, an oratorio was to be given for the first time, the
expectation of which excited a passionate impatience.
This composition, called _The Angels' Fall_, is due to a musician
whose name will descend to the latest posterity, carried onward by
the tempests his genius has evoked.
The part of the archangel Lucifer was awarded to Paganina. These
phlegmatic Germans, when they give themselves to enthusiasm, lose all
bounds; and Paganina might have been satisfied could she have known
her success; but her soul was elsewhere.
This oratorio was divided into three parts. The first expressed
heaven. If there is any thing in this world that can make man see
what his eyes cannot, and understand what his ears have never heard,
it is music; for the true musician knows that such harmony, quitting
earth, mounts to the vaults of paradise, where it wakens the echoes
that have nothing of earth, and falls again on us--the messenger of
hope and consolation.
Paganina's _rôle_, in this part, was less important than in that
which followed. Her voice was rarely detached from the whole; but now
and then two or three dazzling notes rose through the harmony, and
the transported auditors believed they saw the fluttering wings of
the archangel already hovering on the eternal heights.
I will say nothing of the second part, although several found it
superior to the two others, on account of the sombre energy, the
terrible power with which is rendered the insurrection of the rebel
angels.
Paganina should have been perfectly at her ease, to display here the
richness of her voice--this voice which, in other parts, rang as a
trumpet of gold and brass. But these accents of revolt choked her,
and here she was unequal. She would soon surpass herself in the last
air.
The composer, by one of those happy mistakes from which the best
works grow, forgot the tradition. His angels were not thunder-struck
in their pride, and shrieking in blasphemy; but vanquished. They
were condemned, and wept. They weep for the heaven they have lost.
Admiration believed there was nothing more to expect; but here
the master recalls his power, reanimates his genius, and finds an
inspiration supreme to chant the farewell to infinite happiness of
the guilty phalanx.
The sobs of the orchestra and chorus are heard alternately, and the
voice of the archangel rises once again. At this moment, Paganina
sang her last air on earth with an intensity of love and grief that
cannot be described.
No, Paganina! one who can so weep has not lost heaven.
Those who saw her then will never forget her. In this high-vaulted
room, lofty as a church, she stood above the others, in a long black
robe covered with stars. Her beauty was that of an archangel.
As she finished, a ray of sunlight, streaming through the red glass,
and sparkling as the flaming sword that forbade the entrance into
Eden, rested a moment at her feet and expired.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.
Now that the attention of the Catholic world is directed to the
coming Ecumenical Council, and various questions are asked about
the nature and the probable effects of such a meeting, one's eyes
naturally turn to the latest general synod of the church. The history
of the Council of Trent is, indeed, of great interest. "Than it,"
says its accomplished historian, Pallavicini, "no preceding council
was more distinguished for length of duration, for the definition of
important dogmas, for the efficient reformation of manners and laws;
none hindered by greater obstacles, none more patient and accurate
in discussion, none more highly praised by friends, or more bitterly
censured by opponents."[2] A review of the history of this great
council, its work, and its results, will not be out of place, at this
time and in these pages.
The so-called Reformation was different from any other heresy that
had attacked the church of God in this, that it impugned the vital
principle of church authority. Other heresiarchs had denied one or
another dogma; Luther and his followers denied the existence of any
authority to define dogmas. Other schismatists had rebelled against
the governing power, but, even in their rebellion, had admitted
its existence, though they might wish to curtail its powers, or to
dispute its legitimate possession; the reformers declared that there
was no external authority appointed of God to govern the spiritual
affairs of men. "The combat," says D'Aubigné, "was to be to the
death. It was not the abuses of the pontiff's authority Luther had
attacked. At his bidding, the pope was required to descend meekly
from his throne, and become again a simple pastor or bishop on the
banks of the Tiber." And his pastoral or episcopal charge was not
to be recognized as delegated from God, but given to him by the
consent of the faithful. Real church authority was utterly denied;
it was not its exercise, but its very existence that was brought
into question. As Dr. Ewer puts it, "This was the meanest mode of
attack" to Christianity. "Protestantism made an ally of the Bible,
and with it flew at the church to destroy her. Satan ... picked his
men.... Protestantism, making an ally of the Bible, succeeded not
in reforming the church, but in attacking and destroying her in
many lands."[3] Against such a rebellion the church had to put on
her strongest armor. No mere outworks were attacked; the strongest
citadel, the key to the whole position, was the object of deadly
assault. The lines of attack were twofold. It was said that the
church, under the guidance of the pontiffs of Rome, had fallen away
from the true faith, and proposed superstitious errors and mere human
inventions to the belief of her children. It was furthermore charged
that she had become horribly deformed in morals, a very sink of
iniquity, instead of that spotless and stainless bride whom Christ
had laved in his blood. The intricate and difficult questions of
original sin, its nature, its effects, its remedy--the justification
of the sinner--were again opened and discussed with force and
acrimony, if not with discretion and candor. The whole sacramental
system was practically denied; the altar and the priesthood removed;
and the church, as it is seen by the eyes of men, reduced to a mere
voluntary association of believers, for which indefectibility,
infallibility, or authority could not by any means be claimed. The
Bible was appealed to in support of these novel statements, and to
each one's private judgment was generously granted the privilege of
securely interpreting the sacred page. The new doctrine flattered
the vanity of the human intellect; and there were found many not
unwilling to sit as judges where they had before stood as hearers;
to leave the humble bench of the scholar for the magisterial chair
of the religious teacher. The constant attacks on real or pretended
abuses added greatly to the temporary success of the reformers.
Against these (to borrow an expression from Hallam) "Luther bellowed
in bad Latin." That there was much to be reformed, the numerous
decrees of the Council of Trent leave us no room to doubt. It is
also clear that it would have been well for the church had prompter
remedies taken away in advance the specious pretext of the turbulent
Augustinian. But it pleased her Divine Head to permit that the wrong
should continue to thrive, and, when the time of trial came, many
gave as an excuse for their falling off, the scandals which they
alleged could no longer be endured. A glance at the history of the
times will, however, show how flimsy was such a pretext. The scandals
of the lives of the seceders and their immediate followers contrast
darkly with the honest reforms of Trent, and the dissoluteness which
was the immediate result of the revolution, taken in connection
with the acknowledged improvement inside of the church, would lead
one to suppose that the authors and abettors of the real abuses had
abandoned the ancient fold, and betaken themselves to freer and more
congenial pastures. Of his own party, Luther, as quoted by Döllinger,
said:
"Our evangelicals are now sevenfold more wicked than they were
before. In proportion as we hear the Gospel, we steal, lie, cheat,
gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven
out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from
the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants,
their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of
his menaces."
Of the old church, Henry Hallam says:
"The decrees of the Council of Trent were received by the
spiritual princes of the empire in 1566, 'and from this moment,'
says the excellent historian who has thrown most light on this
subject, 'began a new life for the Catholic Church in Germany.'...
Every method was adopted to revive an attachment to the ancient
religion, insuperable by the love of novelty or the force of
argument. A stricter discipline and subordination was introduced
among the clergy; they were early trained in seminaries, apart
from the sentiments and habits, the vices and the virtues of the
world. The monastic orders resumed their rigid observances."[4]
Luther, anticipating his condemnation by Pope Leo X., appealed in
1518 to a general council, a course, we may remark, frequently
taken by heretics, if for nothing else, at least to gain time to
enroll followers, and thus increase in importance, before the
final condemnation. The diet of Nuremberg, in 1522, in answer to
the conciliatory and truly apostolic communication of Pope Adrian
VI., through his nuncio, Cheregat, requested his holiness to call a
council in some city of Germany, with the double object of a thorough
reformation, and of devising means of resistance to the menacing
advances of the Turkish power. Adrian died before he could take any
action on the subject, and the new pontiff, Clement VII., did not
receive the proposal with favor. According to Pallavicini, he feared
that under the actual circumstances the council would only aggravate
the evil, especially if the fathers should revive the pretensions
of their predecessors of Constance and Basle, an apprehension very
prevalent at that time at Rome, and, it must be admitted, not
altogether groundless; besides, the war then raging between Charles
V. and Francis I., from whose dominions most of the bishops were to
come, rendered the possibility of a successful convocation almost
hopeless; and, lastly, the demand was for a council which would
satisfy Luther and his party; namely, one in which any one that
might choose, even laymen, should be allowed to take part, and the
pontiff should lay aside his high prerogatives, and sit as a simple
bishop. He consequently instructed his legate, Campeggi, that it was
impossible to call a council until the conclusion of peace between
the two great princes of Europe, offering, at the same time, to carry
out the measures of reform decreed by the council of Lateran, held
not long before by Leo X., and to provide by his own authority proper
remedies on other points. The unfortunate war in which Clement became
afterward involved with Charles V. delayed for some time all question
of holding a council; but, with the return of peace, the negotiations
were resumed, and at a consultation held in Bologna, in 1533, between
the pontiff and the emperor, the former agreed to convoke the council
within six months from the acceptation of certain very equitable
conditions by all interested. But the Protestant princes of Germany,
in a meeting at Smalcald, (1533,) refused to accept the two first
conditions, "that the council should be free, and be held after the
manner of the ancient general councils; and that those who wished to
take part in it should promise beforehand to obey its decrees;" a
refusal which justified, in part at least, the fears of the pontiff.
He did not, however, desist, and was engaged in negotiations on the
subject until his death, (September 25th, 1534.) His successor, Paul
III., had never shared his fears, and, soon after his elevation,
sent nuncios to the various princes to promote the speedy convocation
of the council. In point of fact, he did convoke it, appointing
Mantua, which had been agreed on by the emperor and the Catholic
princes of Germany, as the place, and the 23d day of May, 1537,
as the time, of the meeting. It is useless minutely to detail the
obstacles placed in the way of the great event by the Duke of Mantua
and others, the selection of Vicenza, the suspension of the council,
and the bootless legation of Contarini to the diet of Ratisbon. At
last, as the pontiff himself says, in his bull of convocation:
"While we awaited the hidden time, the time of thy good pleasure,
O God! we were compelled to say that when we take counsel
concerning things sacred, and pertaining to Christian piety, every
time is pleasing to God. Wherefore, seeing, to our great sorrow,
that the condition of Christendom was every day becoming worse,
Hungary oppressed by the Turks, the Germans themselves in danger,
and all the rest of Europe seized with fear and sadness--we
determined no longer to wait on the consent of any prince, but
to regard solely the will of Almighty God and the good of the
Christian commonwealth."
To satisfy the Germans, he selected Trent as the place of meeting,
though he himself would have preferred some city of Italy nearer
Rome. But new obstacles arose, and the council, though convoked
for the feast of All Saints, (November 1st, 1542,) was not opened
until December 13th, 1545. Even then, it was necessary to commence
with a very small attendance of prelates. At the first session
there were present, besides the legates of the apostolic see
and the Cardinal Bishop of Trent, only four archbishops, twenty
bishops, and five general superiors of religious orders.[5] But it
was thought better to make a beginning, even though the number
of fathers was lamentably small, especially since, according to
ancient ecclesiastical usage, a council, legitimately convoked by
the apostolic see, legitimately celebrated under its presidency, and
approved by its authority, is ecumenical, even though many of the
bishops called to it were either unable or unwilling to take part in
its deliberations.
Bishops in greater number gradually found their way to the assembly,
and seven sessions were held in succession, the last on March 3d,
1547, so that the deliberations of this period of the council lasted
over fourteen months. The work of reformation was commenced, together
with the dogmatical definitions, and the same plan was followed
throughout. On March 11th, the eighth session was held; but the
only business transacted was the passing of a decree transferring
the council to Bologna, the reason assigned being an epidemic, the
existence of which in Trent was declared to be a matter of notoriety,
and which had already caused some prelates to leave that city, others
to protest against a further sojourn. Many fathers obeyed the decree,
and the congregations were held regularly in Bologna. The Emperor
Charles V. did not, however, relish this transfer from a city of his
dominions to one under the temporal jurisdiction of the pope, and
he detained at Trent the prelates from his states. The result was
that, after two formal sessions, the synod was prorogued, "at the
pleasure of the Sacred Council," on September 14th, 1547, and the
remainder of the pontificate of Paul III. was spent in fruitless
negotiations for its resumption. Paul died on November 10th, 1549, of
whom Pallavicini says: "By his inordinate affection for his family,
he showed himself to be only a man; for the rest, he has deserved in
the church the name of hero."[6] His successor was Julius III., who
as Cardinal del Monte had presided over the council in the quality
of first legate apostolic. His first care was to reopen the sacred
synod, and he immediately sent nuncios to the emperor and the French
king, to bring about this desired result. The stand taken by Charles
for Trent made it advisable again to select that city, and Julius
was enabled, on December 1st, 1550, to publish a bull appointing
the first day of May of the ensuing year for the reassembling of
the council. The first session (eleventh of the whole series) was
accordingly held on that day, but, to give time to the Germans to
arrive, no business was transacted, September 1st being appointed for
the next session. Meanwhile, the preparatory work went on, and on
the appointed day, the archbishop, electors of Mayence and Treves,
and many other prelates being present, another session was held, in
which it was determined to wait until October 11th, for other bishops
of Germany and other nations, who were known to be on their way. The
thirteenth session was celebrated on this day, and it was followed
by three others, in all of which important canons and decrees were
passed. But civil war had broken out in Germany, and Maurice of
Saxony, at the head of a Protestant army, in league with the French
king, had occupied Augsburg and menaced Innspruch, where Charles
held his court, and whence he soon afterward retired. It was not to
be wondered at that the fathers in the neighboring city of Trent
should wish to shun a danger before which even the great emperor was
obliged to retreat, and, in the sixteenth session, held on April
28th, 1552, a decree was passed suspending the celebration of the
council for two years, providing, however, that in case of a speedy
return of peace it might be resumed sooner. Pressed by his enemies,
Charles agreed to the pacification of Passau, which promulgated a
kind of toleration of both the old and the new religion. It also
provided for a diet of the empire, in which the question was to be
discussed whether an ecumenical council, or a national synod, or
a conference, or an imperial diet, afforded the surest method of
settling the existing religious differences. This, of course, put
off the council again. Meanwhile, Julius III. died on March 23d,
1555. His former colleague in the apostolic legation to the council
under Paul III., Cardinal Cervini, succeeded him in the pontificate;
but death summoned him on the twenty-second day of his reign. The
austere, zealous, but by no means prudent Cardinal Caraffa was the
next choice of the Sacred College. The career of Paul IV. affords a
singular example of the fallacy of human expectations. Before his
election, he was a subject of the emperor, (he was a Neapolitan
by birth;) in the pontificate, he waged war against Charles, son
and successor; himself pure and above all suspicion, his reign
was disgraced by the worst form of nepotism, so that, under his
successor, his nephews, one of them a cardinal, died the death of
malefactors; a great and really zealous promoter of reform, he took
no steps to reassemble the council. Nor indeed could he. He was for
the greater part of his reign at war with Philip II., successor of
Charles V., in the latter's hereditary dominions, and he would never
recognize Ferdinand as Charles's legitimate successor in the empire,
on account of the part taken by that prince in the pacification of
Passau. Yet so opposed was he to heresy, that he had recalled from
England the gentle and prudent Cardinal Pole, and was about to
summon him to Rome to purge himself of the suspicion of heresy, and
he actually imprisoned, on a similar suspicion, Cardinal Morone, who
was destined to be the moving spirit, as he was the actual president
of the last sessions of the great council. Paul died on August 18th,
1559. He was an excellent ecclesiastic, conspicuous for learning and
virtue, and in less troubled times would have been a successful, as
he was a holy pontiff. But, to quote Pallavicini, "he was braver
in punishing crime, no matter how high the criminal, than prudent
in preventing it. He took the amplitude of his sacred power as the
proper measure of its exercise."[7] He waged war, however, on abuses,
and was a severe ecclesiastical disciplinarian. His whole pontificate
is a proof of the uselessness, not to say positive evil, in persons
in high position, of determination, zeal, vigor, unless tempered by
discretion, prudence, and meekness. His successor, Cardinal Medici,
who took the name of Pius IV., a learned and virtuous prelate,
though not so remarkable for natural parts or austere asceticism,
accomplished much more for the glory of God and the good of Holy
Church.
The new pontiff immediately turned his attention to the council. He
had three princes of first class to deal with--the Emperor Ferdinand,
and the kings of France and Spain. This last and the emperor desired
the council to be reassembled at Trent; but the French sovereign
objected to this place on account of its want of accommodations and
unhealthy air, but especially because the Protestants had already
commenced to hate the name, and proposed Constance. But at last
the pontiff obtained the unanimous consent of all the Catholic
princes of Europe for Trent, and on November 29th, 1560, issued a
bull appointing Easter Sunday of the coming year for the reopening
of the council. He sent his legates to Trent, and many prelates
soon arrived; the congregations and other preparatory meetings were
held; but the troubles in France, on the succession of Charles IX.,
prevented the arrival of the French bishops. At last, on January
18th, 1562, was held, with unusual solemnity, the first session
under Pius IV., (seventeenth of the whole series,) at which there
were present, besides the apostolic legates and the Cardinal of
Trent, one hundred and six bishops, four mitred abbots, and four
generals of religious orders. From this happy day, the council went
on with its appointed work without any interference. There were
grave discussions, sometimes warm and prolonged, but always ending
in peace and harmony. The French bishops arrived, before the end of
the year, under the leadership of the illustrious Charles of Guise,
Cardinal of Lorraine. At last, to use the words of Jerome Ragazzoni,
Bishop of Nazianzen, and coadjutor of Famagosta, orator at the last
session, "the day arrived which Paul III. and Julius III. had yearned
for, but which it was not given to them to see--a gladness reserved
to Pius IV.--on which the Council of Trent, commenced long before,
often interrupted, and sometimes transferred, was at last, thanks to
God's great mercy, happily ended, to the great and unspeakable joy
of all classes of men." The twenty-fifth and last session was held
on December 3d and 4th, 1563. There were present at it four cardinal
legates of the apostolic see, two other cardinals, those of Trent and
Lorraine, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, one hundred and
sixty-eight bishops, thirty-nine procurators of prelates legitimately
absent, seven abbots, and seven generals of religious orders--making,
in all, two hundred and fifty-five prelates, whose signatures are
attached to the decrees. Amid the festive acclamations, composed
and intoned by the Cardinal of Lorraine, tears of joy testified the
gladness of all hearts; opponents embraced one another, no longer
rivals, but brethren; the _Te Deum_ was sung with feelings of the
deepest gratitude; and as the first legate, Morone, having given his
solemn blessing to the fathers, bade them, in the name of the supreme
pontiff, go in peace, the last solemn act of the great council was
performed. The whole time, from the first session under Paul III. to
the last under Pius IV., was within a few days of eighteen years;
but that actually occupied by the council was four years and about
eight months. The canons and decrees, both in faith and discipline,
were solemnly approved, at the request of the fathers, by "the most
blessed Roman pontiff," Pius IV., as the council styled him, on
January 25th, 1564; and, by a subsequent bull, they were declared
obligatory on the whole church, from the first day of May of the same
year.
This historical sketch will serve to give some idea of the
difficulties the work of the council had to encounter. Whatever may
be said in the abstract of the union of church and state, their
relations in the sixteenth century were very unsatisfactory. Popes
Paul III., Julius, and Pius wanted a general council; but it was
very difficult so to arrange matters as to obtain the necessary
consent of all the Catholic powers, and this difficulty always
afforded an excuse for delay when delay was really desired. Then
there were courtiers at Rome "to whose ears the word reform sounded
harsh," as Pallavicini says; and who were suddenly animated by the
most ardent zeal in defence of the prerogatives of the holy see,
which, they alleged, would be unduly curtailed by the council. But
the firmness of the pontiffs, under the grace of God, which never
abandons his church, brought these machinations to nought. They
refused to interfere to save their dependents from a thorough reform;
and Pius IV., especially, declared that he left full liberty to
the fathers in the matter. And in a discourse in the Consistory of
Cardinals, on December 30th, 1563, he expressly thanked the fathers
"for the religious zeal and resolute freedom with which they had
spared no labor, no care, to remove all heresies and corruptions."
"We are also," he continued, "not a little indebted to them for
having been so moderate and indulgent in the work of reformation, in
regard to our own affairs, (that is, the papal court,) that, had we
preferred to take this duty on ourselves, and not commit it to their
discretion, we should certainly have been more severe. Wherefore, as
salutary measures have been adopted, it is our firm determination
forthwith to carry the reform into effect by the observance of the
decrees of the sacred synod. We shall rather, when necessary, make up
by our own diligence for the moderation and leniency of the fathers;
so far are we from wishing to neglect or diminish one iota."[8] And
he appointed Cardinals Morone and Simonetta, both legates to the
council, to see that nothing was done by any of the papal officials
in contravention of the so lately approved decrees. The courtiers
had to submit, and the court of Rome since that day has given little
or no occasion for serious complaint, and certainly no pretext for
a schism under the name of reform. Another difficulty arose from
the multitude of counsellors, and the liberty left in discussion.
Now that the council has passed into history, it is pleasant to see
that such ample freedom was allowed; but it must have been sometimes
a sore task for the legates to keep order. They well deserved
the encomium of Ragazzoni, "You have been our excellent leaders
and directors in action. You have used incredible patience and
diligence in guarding against any violation of our liberty, either
in speaking or in legislating. You have spared no bodily labor, no
mental exertion, to bring the undertaking to its desired end." But
the principal difficulty arose from the Protestants themselves. They
had asked for the council, but when it was assembled they would have
nothing to do with it. Three different safe conducts were issued for
them--one under Paul III., another under Julius III., and the last
under Pius IV.--all of them as ample as could be desired; but to no
purpose. They did not really want a council, but an ecclesiastical
mob without a head; in other words, they wanted the main question
of church authority to be decided in advance in their favor. Their
course was substantially that of all former heretics; first, to
appeal to the council, to gain time and cause trouble; then, after
their condemnation, to abuse the council as much as they had formerly
abused the pope. It would be difficult to determine which is to-day
the greater bugbear of the average Protestant, the Council of Trent
or the holy see.
Few, if any, assemblages have received such praise for learning,
moderation, and zeal--not only from friends, but from candid
opponents--as that of Trent. We will give as a sample the judgment
of Hallam, himself not at all well disposed toward Catholic dogma.
His testimony is the more valuable that he acknowledges to have
taken his facts from the disingenuous account of the more than half
Protestant, Fra Paolo Sarpi,[9] and never to have read the able and
exhaustive history of Pallavicini:
"It is usual for Protestant writers to inveigh against the
Tridentine fathers. I do not assent to their decisions, which
is not to the purpose, nor vindicate the intrigues of the papal
party. But I must presume to say that, reading their proceedings
in the pages of that very able and not very lenient historian to
whom we have generally recourse, an adversary as decided as any
that could have come from the reformed churches, I find proofs of
much ability, considering the embarrassments with which they had
to struggle, and of an honest desire of reformation, among a large
body, as to those matters which, in their judgment, ought to be
reformed."[10]
Again:
"It will appear, by reading the accounts of the sessions of
the council, either in Father Paul, or in any more favorable
historian, that, even in certain points, such as justification,
which had not been clearly laid down before, the Tridentine
decrees were mostly conformable with the sense of the majority
of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation; and
that upon what are more usually reckoned the distinctive
characteristics of the Church of Rome, namely, transubstantiation,
purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin, they
assert nothing but what had been so engrafted into the faith of
this part of Europe as to have been rejected by no one without
suspicion or imputation of heresy. Perhaps Erasmus would not have
acquiesced with good-will in _all_ the decrees of the council; but
was Erasmus deemed orthodox?... No general council ever contained
so many persons of eminent learning and ability as that of Trent;
nor is there ground for believing that any other ever investigated
the questions before it with so much patience, acuteness, temper,
and desire of truth. The early councils, unless they are greatly
belied, would not bear comparison in these characteristics.
Impartiality and freedom from prejudice, no Protestant will
attribute to the fathers of Trent; but where will he produce these
qualities in an ecclesiastical synod? But it may be said that they
had only one leading prejudice, that of determining theological
faith according to the tradition of the Catholic Church, as handed
down to their age. This one point of authority conceded, I am
not aware that they can be proved to have decided wrong, or at
least against all reasonable evidence. Let those who have imbibed
a different opinion ask themselves whether they have read Sarpi
through with any attention, especially as to those sessions of the
Tridentine Council which preceded its suspension in 1549."[11]
To the praise of ability, industry, and fairness, all of the highest
order from a natural point of view, Hallam unconsciously adds a
still greater, in the eyes of any true Catholic, namely, that the
council, on controverted dogmatic points, adhered to the tradition
of the Catholic Church. And this on the authority of the carping
Sarpi! What more could the greatest admirer say? Right in its view of
dogma from the traditional--the true Catholic--stand-point, honest
and unswerving in reforming abuses, patient in discussion, diligent
in research, calm in decision--such is the substantial verdict of a
Protestant writer, in the nineteenth century, on the great council of
the sixteenth.
If we consider the variety of matters treated of in the council,
its work will appear immense. The following accurate synopsis is
taken from the oration of Ragazzoni, at the last session, which
we have quoted before. In matters of faith, after the adoption of
the venerable creed sanctioned by antiquity, the council drew up a
catalogue of the inspired books of the Old and New Testament, and
approved the old received Latin version of the Hebrew and Greek
originals. It then passed to decide the questions that had been
raised concerning the fall of man. Next, with admirable wisdom and
order, it laid down the true Catholic doctrine on justification.
The sacraments then claimed attention, and their number, their
life-giving power through grace, and the nature of each one were
accurately defined. The great dogma of the blessed eucharist was
fully laid down; the real dignity of the Christian altar and
sacrifice was vindicated; and the moot question of communion under
one or two kinds settled both in theory and practice. Lastly,
the false accusations of opponents were dispelled, and Catholic
consciences gladdened by the enunciations on indulgences, purgatory,
the invocation and veneration of saints, and the respect to be paid
to their relics and images. The decision on so many important and
difficult questions was no light task, and of the utmost importance.
A "hard and fast line" was drawn between heresy and truth; and if
the wayward were not all converted, the little ones of Christ were
saved from the danger of being led astray. In her greatest trial,
the church gave no uncertain sound. Nations might rage, and the
rulers of the earth meditate rash things; but the truth of God did
not abandon her, and she fearlessly proclaimed it in her council.
In regard to some abuses in practical matters, dependent on dogma,
from which the innovators had seized a pretext to impugn the true
faith, a thorough reform was decreed. Measures were taken to prevent
any impropriety or irreverence in the celebration of the divine
sacrifice, whether from superstitious observances, greed of filthy
lucre, unworthy celebrants, profane places, or worldly concomitants.
The different orders of ecclesiastics were accurately distinguished,
and the exclusive rights and duties of each one clearly defined; some
impediments of matrimony, which had been productive of evil rather
than good, were removed, and most stringent regulations adopted to
prevent the crying wrongs to which confiding innocence and virtue
had been subjected under the pretext of clandestine marriages.
All the abuses connected with indulgences, the veneration of the
saints, and intercession for the souls of purgatory, were fully and
finally extirpated. Nor was less care taken in regard to purely
disciplinary matters. Measures were taken to insure, as far at least
as human frailty would permit, the elevation of only worthy persons
to ecclesiastical dignities; and stated times were appointed for
the frequent and efficient preaching of the word of God, too much
hitherto neglected, the necessity of which was insisted on with
earnestness and practical force. The sacred duty of residence among
their flocks was impressed on bishops and all inferiors having the
care of souls; proper provision was made for the support of needy
clergymen, and all privileges which might protect heresy or crime
were swept away. To prevent all suspicion of avarice in the house
of God, the gratuitous administration of the sacraments was made
compulsory; and measures were taken to put an effectual stop to the
career of the questor, by abolishing the office. Young men destined
for the priesthood were to be trained in ecclesiastical seminaries;
provincial synods were restored, and regular diocesan visitations
ordered; many new and extended faculties were granted to the local
authorities, for the sake of better order and prompter decision;
the sacred duty of hospitality was inculcated in all clerics; wise
regulations were passed to secure proper promotions to ecclesiastical
benefices; all hereditary possession of God's sanctuary prohibited;
moderation prescribed in the use of the power of excommunication;
luxury, cupidity, and license, as far as possible, exiled from the
sanctuary; most holy and wise provisions adopted for the better
regulation of the religious of both sexes, who were judiciously shorn
of many of their privileges, to the proper development of episcopal
authority; the great ones of the world were warned of their duties
and responsibilities. These, and many other similar measures, were
the salutary, efficient, and lasting reforms with which God, at
last taking mercy on his people, inspired the fathers of Trent,
legitimately congregated under the presidency and guidance of the
apostolic see. Such was the great work done by the council--so great
that even this summary review makes our wonder at the length of its
duration cease. One remark seems worthy of special notice. The usual
complaint of Protestants against the council was, and is, that it was
too much under papal influence. Now, one of the most notable features
of its legislation is the great increase of the power of bishops.
Not only was their _ordinary_ authority confirmed and extended, but
they were made in many cases, some of them of no little importance,
perpetual delegates of the apostolic see, so that Philip II. of Spain
is reported to have said of his bishops, that "they went to Trent as
parish priests, and returned like so many popes."[12] So groundless
is the statement that the papal jealousy of episcopal power prevented
any really salutary reforms.
Such was the great work of the Council of Trent. But a tree is best
judged by its fruits, and this test will give us even a better idea
of its importance and magnitude. Perhaps the best encomium of the
council is that the Catholic of to-day reads with astonishment of
abuses and measures of reform in the sixteenth century. The prophecy
of Ragazzoni, in his often-quoted oration, has been literally
fulfilled--the names of many of the evils of that period have been
forgotten. Thank God! to understand the work of Trent, we have to
study the internal troubles of the church of those days in the pages
of history, for we do not find them in our own time. They have
utterly disappeared. We have already quoted Hallam on the revival
of faith and piety in the church that was the immediate effect of
the council. All historians agree that the triumphs of Protestantism
closed with the first fifty years of its existence. After that it
gradually declined. "We see," says Macaulay in his famous _Edinburgh
Review_ article on the papacy, "that during two hundred and fifty
years Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we
believe that as far as there has been a change, that change has been
in favor of the Church of Rome." Hallam has noticed the same fact,
and assigned its real causes; we shall give his words, as, with a
few obvious exceptions, they might have been written by a Catholic:
"The prodigious increase of the Protestant party in Europe, after
the middle of the (sixteenth) century, did not continue more than
a few years. It was checked and fell back, not quite so rapidly or
completely as it came on, but so as to leave the antagonist church in
perfect security." He goes on to give the causes of the reaction. The
influence of the Council of Trent in its reform of the clergy, both
secular and regular, (we have already given his words,) is mentioned
as the principal cause; and, "far above all the rest," he says, "the
Jesuits were the instruments of regaining France and Germany to the
church they served." "They conquered us," says Ranke, "on our own
ground, in our own homes, and stripped us of a part of our country."
The following passages will give some idea of the extent and causes
of the change:
"Protestantism, as late as 1578, might be deemed preponderant
in all the Austrian dominions, except the Tyrol. In the Polish
diets, the dissidents, as they were called, met their opponents
with vigor and success. The ecclesiastical principalities were
full of Protestants; and even in the chapters some of them might
be found. But the contention was unequal, from the different
characters of the parties; religious zeal and devotion, which,
fifty years before, had overthrown the ancient rites in northern
Germany, were now more invigorating sentiments in those who
rescued them from further innovation. In religious struggles,
where there is any thing like an equality of forces, the question
soon comes to be, which party will make the greatest sacrifice for
its own faith? And, while the Catholic self-devotion had grown
far stronger, there was much more secular cupidity, lukewarmness,
and formality in the Lutheran Church. In a very few years the
effects of this were distinctly seen. The Protestants of the
Catholic principalities went back into the bosom of Rome. In the
bishopric of Wurtzburg alone, sixty-two thousand converts are
said to have been received in the year 1586. The Emperor Rodolph
and his brother archdukes, by a long series of persecution and
banishment, finally, though not within this century, almost
outrooted Protestantism from the hereditary provinces of Austria.
It is true that these violent measures were the proximate cause
of so many conversions; but if the reformed had been ardent
and united, they were much too strong to be thus subdued. In
Bohemia, accordingly, and in Hungary, where there was a more
steady spirit, they kept their ground. The reaction was not less
conspicuous in other countries. It is asserted that the Huguenots
had already lost more than two thirds of their number in 1580;[13]
comparatively, I presume, with twenty years before; and the change
in their relative position is manifest from all the histories
of this period. In the Netherlands, though the seven united
provinces were slowly winning their civil and religious liberties
at the sword's point, yet West Flanders, once in great measure
Protestant, became Catholic before the end of the century; while
the Walloon provinces were kept from swerving by some bishops of
great eloquence and excellent lives, as well as by the influence
of the Jesuits planted at St. Omer and Douay. At the close of this
period of fifty years, the mischief done to the old church in its
first decennium was very nearly repaired; the proportion of the
two religions in Germany coincided with those which had existed
at the pacification of Passau. The Jesuits, however, had begun to
encroach a little on the proper domain of the Lutheran church.
"This great revival of the papal religion, after the shock it had
sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for
ever to restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our
ears.... In the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless
anticipated the overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have
found little else to warrant hope than their trust in heaven. The
late rush of many nations toward democratical opinions has not
been so rapid and so general as the change of religion about that
period. It is important and interesting to inquire what stemmed
this current. We readily acknowledge the prudence, firmness,
and unity of purpose that for the most part distinguished the
court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the severity of
intolerant laws, and the searching rigor of the Inquisition, the
resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic faith, the
influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either existed
before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand
an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that
there was a principle of vitality in that religion, independent
of its external strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its
relaxation of morality, there had always been an intense flame
of zeal and devotion. Superstition, it might be, in the many,
fanaticism in a few; but both of these imply the qualities which,
while they subsist, render a religion indestructible. That revival
of an ardent zeal, through which the Franciscans had, in the
thirteenth century, with some good and much more evil effect,
spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more displayed
in counteraction of those new doctrines that themselves had drawn
their life from a similar development of moral emotion."[14]
In the Council of Trent were again fulfilled the words of the prophet
concerning the Messiah: "Behold, he cometh ... like a refining fire,
and like the fuller's herb; and he shall sit refining and cleansing
the silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine
them as gold, and as silver; and they shall offer sacrifices to the
Lord in justice; and the sacrifice shall please the Lord, as in the
days of old, and in the ancient years."[15]
The zeal of the fathers did not, it is true, succeed in bringing back
all the Protestants; but neither did the Council of Nice succeed
with the Arians, or that of Ephesus with the Nestorians, or that of
Chalcedon with the followers of Eutyches. But they kept the Catholic
faith pure; they sternly applied the pruning-hook to the numerous
excrescences which had been allowed to accumulate. God blessed their
work; and the tree of life, planted by running waters, again produced
new flowers and fruits of holiness.
Though from the moment the decrees were solemnly approved by the holy
see, with the exception of that on clandestine marriages, for which
special provision had been made, they commenced to be obligatory
on the whole church; yet it was thought well to obtain a special
promulgation in the different Catholic countries of Europe. The
republic of Venice and the king of Portugal first gave the example;
Philip II. of Spain followed, and was imitated, after some little
delay in the hope of reconciling the Protestants, by the German
emperor. France, then governed by Catharine of Medici, alone, of
Catholic countries, refused. The excuse given was, principally, the
turbulence of the Huguenots; the real reason, the desire to preserve
certain royal prerogatives in church matters,[16] with which the
reforms of the council interfered. So, in the name of Gallican
liberties and royal privileges, the disciplinary portion was not
published in France. Most of the measures were actually adopted by
the bishops in provincial councils; but the seed of great evils
was sown. These same liberties, so called, rendered possible the
chicanery by which the Jansenists subsequently sought to elude the
solemn condemnations of the holy see; and at the revolution gave the
idea of the civil constitution of the clergy, rather than accept
which so many noble bishops and priests gladly met death. But the
French Church has tired of them; a terrible experience has taught
her that the only true safeguard of her liberty is, in a close union
with the see of him to whom Christ confided the duty of strengthening
his brethren. In regard to the decrees on faith, there was never any
hesitancy in France; and we owe some of our very best apologetic
or controversial works against Protestantism to zealous and learned
writers of that nation.
One remarkable consequence of the council was a great outpouring
of the spirit of sanctity. St. Charles Borromeo, as prime minister
of his uncle, Pius IV., contributed greatly to its successful
termination. Afterward, as archbishop of Milan, he set an example
of enforcing its decrees which has ever since served as a rule for
zealous bishops. He changed the face of affairs in Lombardy, and may
be said to have led the way in practically carrying the reforms into
effect. Numbers of holy bishops aided him, or imitated his example;
and before he died the new discipline was well established. At Rome,
St. Philip Neri excited in a wonderful way the spirit of zeal in the
clergy, and of piety in the laity; and his work and example remain to
this day. It is impossible not to be struck with the new spirit that
had seized the papal court. The popes themselves were men not only
of blameless lives, but zealous and active for the good of religion.
A glance at Ranke's history--especially the notes at the end--will
satisfy the reader of this; while Catholic works abound in edifying
accounts. Such men as Baronius and Bellarmine were ornaments of the
Sacred College, not only for their learning, but for their solid,
extraordinary piety, which has barely failed of obtaining the honors
of the altar. The Society of Jesus, and other religious orders,
were seminaries of virtues, of zeal, of missionary spirit; and the
heralds of the cross went to the very ends of the earth to bring
the glad tidings of salvation to those sitting in darkness. Every
state and condition of life has its saints of this period. St. Mary
Magdalen di Pazzi, the nun; St. Francis Borgia, the rich man who
gave up all for Christ; St. Felix of Cantalice, the unlettered lay
brother; St. Aloysius, the pattern of youth; St. Francis Xavier, the
apostle; St. Charles, the model bishop; St. Philip Neri, the perfect
secular priest; St. Pius V., the pope who added to his triple crown
the fourth, and greatest, of sanctity; and many others, whose names
are not so well known to the world. It was emphatically the age of
saints: war always produces heroes.
There have been shortcomings since Trent, because the church has
her human as well as her divine element, and heresies and scandals,
it was foretold by her divine Founder, must come; but, by far, not
so many as before it. The contrast between the ease with which Pius
IX. convokes a general council and the difficulties with which his
predecessors had to contend in the sixteenth century, is so plain
as to require no comment, and, at the same time, affords striking
evidence of the efficacy of the work done at Trent. It was a great
work, in every sense of the word. It met from the beginning with
great difficulties, which were overcome by equal constancy; it was
devised and executed by men great in learning, prudence, and zeal; it
effected a reaction in favor of Catholicity than which there never
occurred "one on a larger scale in the annals of mankind;"[17] it
thoroughly purified the church from wretched and inveterate abuses;
it revived a spirit of sanctity that emulated the palmiest days of
the church; and it has handed down to us the boon of pure faith and
strict observance which our unfortunate opponents cannot but admire,
even though they attempt to decry it. While Protestantism was pulling
down, the council built up on a sure foundation; and its work has
been lasting.
Through the lapse of three centuries the grateful church has ever
re-echoed, as she re-echoes at this day, the acclamation of the
Cardinal of Lorraine, "The sacred ecumenical Council of Trent--let
us profess its faith; let us always observe its decrees. _Semper
confiteamur, semper servemus._"
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Pallavicini. _Historia Conc. Trid. Apparatus._ Chap. 1, § 4. We
quote from the Latin translation of F. Giattini, S.J.
[3] _Sermons on the Failure of Protestantism._ Sermon v.
[4] Introd. to _The Literature of Europe_. Part ii. ch. 2, §§ 7, 8.
[5] Pallav. Lib. v. c. 17, § 8.
[6] Lib. xi. c. 6, § 4.
[7] Lib. xiv. c. 9, § 5.
[8] Pallav. Lib. xxiv. c. 9, § 5.
[9] We append the estimate which Hallam himself forms of the
Catholicity of this unfortunate friar: "Dupin observes that the
long list of errors imputed by Pallavicini, which are chiefly in
dates and such trifling matters, make little or no difference as
to the substance of Sarpi's history; but that its author is more
blamable for a malicious disposition to impute political motives to
the members of the council, and idle reasonings which they did not
employ. Ranke, who has given this a more minute scrutiny than Dupin
could have done, comes nearly to the same result. Sarpi is not a
fair, but he is, for those times, a tolerably exact historian....
Much has been disputed about the religious tenets of Father Paul: it
appears to me quite out of doubt, both by the tenor of his history,
and still more unequivocally, if possible, by some of his letters
that he was entirely hostile to the church, in the usual sense,
as well as to the court of Rome; sympathizing in affection, and
concurring generally in opinion, with the reformed denomination."
(_Lit. of Europe_, Part iii. ch. 2, § 3.) "This confirms the
principal points in Pallavicini's main charge, that Sarpi was hostile
to the church, and substituted his own malicious conjectures for the
truth of history." (See _Apparatus_, ch. 1.)
[10] _Literature of Eur._ Part i. ch. 6, § 25.
[11] _Literature of Europe_, Part ii. ch. 2, § 18, note.
[12] Pallav. _Hist. Appar._ ch. 9, § 4.
[13] In a note, quoting Ranke as authority, he adds, "The number is
rather startling."
[14] _Lit. of Europe_, Part ii. c. 2, §§ 14, 15.
[15] Mal. iii. 2-4.
[16] One of these was the power of giving regular benefices _in
commendam_, that is, conferring the style, title, rank, and revenues
of abbot, or other religious superior, on some one not a member
of the religious community, who enjoyed the advantages but never
performed the duties of his office. Two evils followed: 1. An
ecclesiastical benefice was a mere matter of political patronage, and
liable to be conferred on unworthy persons. 2. Owing to the absence
of the chief superior, discipline became very relaxed in religious
communities so afflicted. At least one regular congregation, in
France, entirely died out on this account.
[17] Hallam. _Lit. of Eur._ Part ii. ch. 2, § 6.
MATTHEW XXVII.
"And He answered them nothing."
O mighty Nothing! unto thee,
Nothing, we owe all things that be.
God spake once when He all things made,
He saved all when He nothing said.
The world was made of nothing then;
'Tis made by nothing now again.
CRASHAW.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.
ANGELA.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BUREAUCRAT AND THE SWALLOWS.
Herr Frank returned to the city. Before he went he took advantage
of the absence of Richard, who had gone out about nine o'clock, to
converse with Klingenberg about matters of importance. They sat in
the doctor's studio, the window of which was open. Frank closed it
before he began the conversation.
"Dear friend, I must speak to you about a very distressing
peculiarity of my son. I do so because I know your influence over
him, and I hope much from it."
Klingenberg listened with surprise, for Herr Frank had begun in great
earnestness and seemed greatly depressed.
"On our journey from the city, I discovered in Richard, to my great
surprise, a deep-seated antipathy, almost an abhorrence of women. He
is determined never to marry. He considers marriage a misfortune,
inasmuch as it binds a man to the whims and caprices of a wife. If I
had many sons, Richard's idiosyncrasy would be of little consequence;
but as he is my only son and very stubborn in his preconceived
opinions, you will see how very distressing it must be to me."
"What is the cause of this antipathy of your son to women?"
Herr Frank related Richard's account of his meeting with Isabella and
his knowledge of the unhappy marriage of his friend Emil.
"Do you not think that experiences of this kind must repel a
noble-minded young man?" said the doctor.
"Admitted! But Isabella and Laura are exceptions, and exceptions by
no means justify my son's perverted judgment of women. I told him
this. But he still declared that Isabella and Laura were the rule
and not the exception; that the women of the present day follow a
perverted taste; and that the wearing of crinoline, a costume he
detests, proves this."
"I know," said the doctor, "that Richard abominates crinoline. Last
year he expressed his opinion about it, and I had to agree with him."
"My God!" said the father, astonished, "you certainly would not
encourage my son in his perverted opinion?"
"No," returned the doctor quietly; "but you must not expect me to
condemn sound opinions. His judgment of woman is prejudiced--granted.
But observe well, my dear Frank. This judgment is at the same time
a protest of a noble nature against the age of crinoline. Your son
expects much of women. Superficiality, vanity, passion for dress,
fickleness, and so forth, do not satisfy his sense of propriety.
Marriage, to him, is an earnest, holy union. He would unite himself
to a well-disposed woman, to a noble soul who would love her husband
and her duties, but not to a degenerate specimen of womankind. Such
I conceive to have been the reasons which have produced in your son
this antipathy."
"I believe you judge rightly," answered Frank. "But it must appear
clear to Richard that his views are unjust, and that there are
always women who would realize his expectations."
The doctor thought for a moment, and a significant smile played over
his features.
"This must become clear to him--yes, and it will become clear to him
sooner, perhaps, than you expect," said the doctor.
"I do not understand you, doctor."
"Yesterday we met Angela," said Klingenberg. "This Angela is an
extraordinary being of dazzling beauty; almost the incarnation of
Richard's ideal. I told him of her fine qualities, which he was
inclined to question. But happily I was able to establish these
qualities by facts. Now, as Angela lives but a mile from here and as
the simple customs of the country render access to the family easy,
I have not understood the character of your son if he does not take
advantage of this opportunity to become more intimately acquainted
with Angela, even if his object were only to confirm his former
opinions of women. If he knew Angela more intimately, it is my firm
conviction that his aversion would soon change into the most ardent
affection."
"Who is this Angela?"
"The daughter of your neighbor, Siegwart."
Frank looked at the doctor with open mouth and staring eyes.
"Siegwart's daughter!" he gasped. "No, I will never consent to such a
connection."
"Why not?"
"Well--because the Siegwart family are not agreeable to me."
"That is no reason. Siegwart is an excellent man, rich, upright, and
respected by the whole neighborhood. Why does he happen to appear so
unfavorably in your eyes?"
Frank was perplexed. He might have reasons and yet be ashamed to give
them.
"Ah!" said the doctor, smiling, "it is now for you to lay aside
prejudice."
"An explanation is not possible," said Frank. "But my son will rather
die a bachelor than marry Siegwart's daughter."
Klingenberg shrugged his shoulders. There was a long pause.
"I renew my request, my friend," urged Frank. "Convince my son of his
errors."
"I will try to meet your wishes," returned Klingenberg. "Perhaps this
daughter of Siegwart will afford efficient aid."
"My son's liberty will not be restricted. He may visit the Siegwart
family when he wishes. But in matters where the mature mind of the
father has to decide, I shall always act according to my better
judgment."
The doctor again shrugged his shoulders. They shook hands, and in
ten minutes after Herr Frank was off for the train. Richard had
left Frankenhöhe two hours before. He passed quickly through the
vineyard. A secret power seemed to impel the young man. He glanced
often at Siegwart's handsome dwelling, and hopeful suspense agitated
his countenance. When he reached the lawn, he slackened his pace.
He would reflect, and understand clearly the object of his visit.
He came to observe Angela, whose character had made such a strong
impression on him and who threatened to compel him to throw his
present opinions of women to the winds. He would at the same time
reflect on the consequences of this possible change to his peace and
liberty.
"Angela is beautiful, very beautiful, far more so than a hundred
others who are beautiful but wear crinoline." He had written in his
diary:
"Of what value is corporal beauty that fades when it is disfigured
by bad customs and caprices? I admit that I have never yet met
any woman so graceful and charming as Angela; but this very
circumstance warns me to be careful that my judgment may not
be dazzled. If it turns out that Angela sets herself up as a
religious coquette or a Pharisee, her fine figure is only a
deceitful mask of falsehood, and my opinion would again be
verified. I must make observations with great care."
Frank reviewed these resolutions as he passed slowly over the lawn,
where some servants were employed, who greeted him respectfully as he
passed. In the hall he heard a man's voice that came from the same
room he had entered on his first visit. The door was open, and the
voice spoke briskly and warmly.
Frank stopped for a moment and heard the voice say,
"Miss Angela is as lovely as ever."
These words vibrated disagreeably in Richard's soul, and urged him to
know the man from whom they came.
Herr Siegwart went to meet the visitor and offered him his hand. The
other gentleman remained sitting, and looked at Frank with stately
indifference.
"Herr Frank, my esteemed neighbor of Frankenhöhe," said Siegwart,
introducing Frank.
The gentleman rose and made a stiff bow.
"The Assessor von Hamm," continued the proprietor.
Frank made an equally stiff and somewhat colder bow.
The three sat down.
While Siegwart rang the bell, Richard cast a searching glance at the
assessor who had said, "Angela is as lovely as ever."
The assessor had a pale, studious color, regular features in which
there was an expression of official importance. Frank, who was a
fine observer, thought he had never seen such a perfect and sharply
defined specimen of the bureaucratic type. Every wrinkle in the
assessor's forehead told of arrogance and absolutism. The red ribbon
in the button-hole of Herr von Hamm excited Frank's astonishment. He
thought it remarkable that a young man of four or five and twenty
could have merited the ribbon of an order. He might infer from this
that decorations and merit do not necessarily go together.
"How glad I am that you have kept your word!" said Siegwart to Frank
complacently. "How is your father?"
"Very well; he goes this morning to the city, where business calls
him."
"I have often admired your father's attentions to Dr. Klingenberg,"
said Siegwart after a short pause. "He has for years had Frankenhöhe
prepared for the accommodation of the doctor. You are Klingenberg's
constant companion, and I do not doubt but such is the wish of your
father. And your father tears himself from his business and comes
frequently from the city to see that the doctor's least wish is
realized. I have observed this these last eight years, and I have
often thought that the doctor is to be envied, on account of this
noble friendship."
"You know, I suppose, that the doctor saved my father when his life
was despaired of?"
"I know; but there are many physicians who have saved lives and who
do not find such a noble return."
These words of acknowledgment had something in them very offensive
to the assessor. He opened and shut his eyes and mouth, and cast a
grudging, envious look at Richard.
The servant brought a glass.
"Try this wine," said Siegwart; "my own growth," he added with some
pride.
They touched glasses. Hamm put his glass to his lips, without
drinking; Frank tasted the noble liquor with the air of a
connoisseur; while Siegwart's smiling gaze rested on him.
"Excellent! I do not remember to have drank better Burgundy."
"Real Burgundy, neighbor--real Burgundy. I brought the vines from
France."
"Do you not think the vines degenerate with us?" said Frank.
"They have not degenerated yet. Besides, proper care and attention
make up for the unsuitableness of our soil and climate."
"You would oblige me, Herr Siegwart, if you would preserve me some
shoots when you next trim them."
"With pleasure. I had them set last year; they shot forth fine roots,
and I can let you have any number of shoots."
"Is it not too late to plant them?"
"Just the right time. Our vine-growers generally set them too early.
It should be done in May, and not in April. Shall I send them over?"
"You are too kind, Herr Siegwart. My request must certainly destroy
your plan in regard to those shoots."
"Not at all; I have all I can use. It gives me great pleasure to be
able to accommodate a neighbor. It's settled; I'll send over the
Burgundies this evening."
It was clear to Hamm that Siegwart desired to be agreeable to the
wealthy Frank. The assessor opened and shut his eyes and mouth, and
fidgeted about in his chair. While he inwardly boiled and fretted, he
very properly concluded that he must consider himself offended. From
the moment of Frank's arrival, the proprietor had entirely forgotten
him. He was about to leave, in order not to expose his nerves to
further excitement, when chance afforded him an opportunity to give
vent to his ill-humor.
Two boys came running into the room. They directed their bright eyes
to Siegwart, and their childish, joyful faces, seemed to say,
"Here we are again; you know very well what we want."
One of them carried a tin box in his hand; there was a lock on the
box, and a small opening in the top--evidently a money-box.
"Gelobt sei Jesus Christus," said the children, and remained standing
near the door.
"In Ewigkeit," returned Siegwart. "Are you there again, my little
ones? That's right; come here, Edward." And Siegwart took out his
purse and dropped a few pennies into the box.
"A savings-box? Who gave the permission?" said the assessor in a tone
that frightened the children, astonished Richard, and caused Siegwart
to look with embarrassment at the questioner.
"For the pope, Herr von Hamm," said Siegwart.
The official air of the assessor became more severe.
"The ordinances make no exceptions," retorted Hamm. "The ordinances
forbid all collections that are not officially permitted." And he
eyed the box as if he had a notion to confiscate it.
Perhaps the lads noticed this, for they moved backward to the door
and suddenly disappeared from the room.
"I beg pardon, Herr Assessor," said Siegwart. "The Peter-pence is
collected in the whole Catholic world, and the Catholics of Salingen
thought they ought to assist the head of their church, who is so
sorely pressed, and who has been robbed of his possessions."
"I answer--the ordinances make no exceptions; the Peter-pence comes
under the ordinances. I find myself compelled to interpose against
this trespass."
"But the Peter-pence is collected in the whole country, Herr von
Hamm! Why, even in the public journals we read the results of this
collection, and I have never heard that the government forbade the
Peter-pence."
"Leave the government out of the question. I stand on my
instructions. The government forbids all collections unless
permission is granted. You must not expect an official to connive at
an open breach of the ordinances. I will do my duty and remind the
burgomaster of Salingen that he has not done his."
The occurrence was very annoying to Siegwart; this could be seen in
his troubled countenance. He thought of the reproof of the timid
burgomaster, and feared that the collection might in future be
stopped.
"You have the authority, Herr Assessor, to permit it; I beg you will
do so."
"The request must be made in written official form," said Hamm. "You
know, Herr Siegwart, that I am disposed to comply with your wishes,
but I regret I cannot do so in the present case; and I must openly
confess I oppose the Peter-pence on principle. The temporal power of
the pope has become unnecessary. Why support an untenable dominion?"
"I consider the temporal power of the pope to be a necessity," said
Siegwart emphatically. "If the pope were not an independent prince,
but the subject of another ruler, he would in many things have to
govern the church according to the mind and at the command of his
superior. Sound common sense tells us that the pope must be free."
"Certainly, as far as I am concerned," returned Hamm. "But why
drain the money out of the country for an object that cannot be
accomplished? I tell you that the political standing of the bankrupt
papal government will not be saved by the Peter-pence."
"Permit me to observe, Herr Assessor, that I differ with you
entirely. The papal government is by no means bankrupt--quite the
contrary. Until the breaking out of the Franco-Sardinian revolution,
its finances were as well managed and flourishing as those of any
state in Europe. I will convince you of this in a moment." He went to
the bookcase and handed the assessor a newspaper. "These statistics
will convince you of the correctness of my assertion."
"As the documents to prove these statements are wanting, I have
great reason to doubt their correctness," said Hamm. "Paper will not
refuse ink, and in the present case the pen was evidently driven by a
friendly hand."
"Why do you draw this conclusion?"
"From the contradictions between this account of the papal finances
and that given by all independent editors."
"Permit me to call that editor not 'an independent,' but a 'friend of
the church.' The enemies of the church will not praise a church which
they hate. The papal government is the most calumniated government on
earth; and calumny and falsehood perform wonders in our times. The
Italian situation furnishes at present a most striking illustration.
The king of Piedmont has been raised to the rulership of Italy by the
unanimous voice of the people--so say the papers. But the revolution
in the greater part of Italy at the present time proves that the
unanimous voice of the people was a sham, and that the Piedmontese
government is hated and despised by the majority of the Italians. It
is the same in many other things. If falsehood and calumny were not
the order of the day, falsehood and calumny would not sit crowned on
the throne."
"Right!" said Richard. "It is indisputable. It is nothing but the
depravity of the times that enables the emperor to domineer over the
world."
Siegwart heard Frank's observation with pleasure. Hamm read this in
the open countenance of the proprietor, and he made a movement as
though he would like to tramp on Frank's toes.
"I admit the flourishing condition of the former Papal States," said
Hamm, with a mock smile. "I will also admit that the former subjects
of the pope, who have been impoverished by the hungry Piedmontese,
desire the milder papal government. 'There is good living under the
crozier,' says an old proverb. But what does all this amount to?
Does the beautiful past overthrow the accomplished facts of the
present? The powers have determined to put an end to papal dominion.
The powers have partly accomplished this. Can the Peter-pence change
the programme of the powers? Certainly not. The papal government
must go the way of all flesh, and if the Catholics are taxed for an
unattainable object, it is, in my opinion, unjust, to say the least."
The proprietor shook his head thoughtfully. "We consider the question
from very different stand-points," said he. "Pius IX. is the head of
the church--the spiritual father of all Catholics. The revolution
has robbed him of his revenues. Why should not Catholics give their
father assistance?"
"And I ask," said Hamm, "why give the pope alms when the powers are
ready to give him millions?"
"On what conditions, Herr Assessor?"
"Well--on the very natural condition that he will acknowledge
accomplished facts."
"You find this condition so natural!" said Siegwart, somewhat
excited. "Do you forget the position of the pope? Remember
that on those very principles of which the pope is the highest
representative, was built the civilization of the present. The pope
condemns robbery, injustice, violence, and all the principles of
modern revolution. How can the pope acknowledge as accomplished
facts, results which have sprung from injustice, robbery, and
violence? The moment the pope does that, he ceases to be the first
teacher of the people and the vicar of Christ on earth."
"You take a strong religious position, my dear friend," said Hamm,
smiling compassionately.
"I do, most assuredly," said the proprietor with emphasis. "And I am
convinced that my position is the right one."
Hamm smiled more complacently still. Frank observed this smile; and
the contemptuous manner of the official toward the open, kind-hearted
proprietor annoyed him.
"Pius IX. is at any rate a noble man," said he, looking sharply at
the assessor. "There exists a critical state of uncertainty in all
governments. All the courts and principalities look to Paris, and
the greatest want of principle seems to be in the state taxation.
The pope alone does not shrink; he fears neither the anger nor the
threats of the powers. While thrones are tumbling, and Pius IX.
is not master in his own house, that remarkable man does not make
the least concession to the man in power. The powers have broken
treaties, trampled on justice, and there is no longer any right
but the right of revolution--of force. There is nothing any longer
certain; all is confusion. The pope alone holds aloft the banner
of right and justice. In his manifestoes to the world, he condemns
error, falsehood, and injustice. The pope alone is the shield of
those moral forces which have for centuries given stability and
safety to governments. This firmness, this confidence in the genius
of Christianity, this unsurpassed struggle of Pius, deserves the
highest admiration even of those who look upon the contest with
indifference."
Siegwart listened and nodded assent. Hamm ate sardines, without
paying the least attention to the speaker.
"The Roman love of power is well known, and Rome has at all times
made the greatest sacrifices for it," said he.
The proprietor drummed with his fingers on the table. Frank thought
he observed him suppressing his anger, before he answered,
"Rome does not contend for love of dominion. She contends for
the authority of religion, for the maintenance of those eternal
principles without which there is no civilization. This even Herder,
who is far from being a friend of Rome, admits when he says, 'Without
the church, Europe would, perhaps, be a prey to despots, a scene
of eternal discord, and a Mogul wilderness.' Rome's battle is,
therefore, very important, and honorable. Had it not been for her,
you would not have escaped the bloody terrorisms of the power-seeking
revolution. Think of French liberty at present, think of the large
population of Cayenne, of the Neapolitan prisons, where thousands of
innocent men hopelessly languish."
"You have not understood me, my dear Siegwart. Take an example for
illustration. The press informs us almost daily of difficulties
between the government and the clergy. The cause of this trouble is
that the latter are separated from and wish to oppose the former. To
speak plainly, the Catholic clergy are non-conforming. They will not
give up that abnormal position which the moral force of past times
conceded to them. But in organized states, the clergy, the bishops,
and the pastors should be nothing more than state officials, whose
rule of conduct is the command of the sovereign."
"That is to make the church the servant of the state," said Siegwart.
"Religion, stripped of her divine title, would be nothing more than
the tool of the minister to restrain the people."
"Well, yes," said the official very coolly. "Religion is always
a strong curb on the rough, uneducated masses; and if religion
restrains the ignorant, supports the moral order and the government,
she has fulfilled her mission."
The proprietor opened wide his eyes.
"Religion, according to my belief, educates men not for the state but
for their eternal destiny."
"Perfectly right, Herr Siegwart, according to your view of the
question. I admire the elevation of your religious convictions, which
all men cannot rise up to."
A mock smile played on the assessor's pale countenance as he said
this. Siegwart did not observe it; but Frank did.
"If I understand you rightly, Herr Assessor, the clergy are only
state officials in clerical dress."
The assessor nodded his head condescendingly, and continued to soak a
sardine in olive-oil and take it between his knife and fork as Frank
began to speak. The fine-feeling Frank felt nettled at this contempt,
and immediately chastised Hamm for his want of politeness.
"I take your nod for an affirmative answer to my question," said he.
"You will allow me to observe that your view of the position and
purpose of the clergy must lead to the most absurd consequences."
The assessor turned an ashy color. He threw himself back on the sofa
and looked at the speaker with scornful severity.
"My view is that of every enlightened statesman of the nineteenth
century," said he proudly. "How can you, a mere novice in state
matters, come to such a conclusion."
"I come to it by sound thinking," said Frank haughtily. "If the
clergy are only the servants of the state, they are bound in the
exercise of their functions to follow the instructions of the state."
"Very natural," said the official.
"If the government think a change in the church necessary, say the
separation of the school from the church, the abolition of festivals,
the appointing of infidel professors to theological chairs, the
compiling of an enlightened catechism--and all these relate to the
spirit of the times or the supposed welfare of the state--then the
clergy must obey."
"That is self-evident," said the assessor.
"You see I comprehend your idea of the supreme power of the state,"
continued Frank. "The state is supreme. The church must be deprived
of all independence. She must not constitute a state within a state.
If it seems good to a minister to abolish marriage as a sacrament,
or the confessional, or to subject the teaching of the clergy to
a revision by the civil authority, because a majority of the
chambers wish it, or because the spirit of the age demands it, then
the opposition of the clergy would be illegal and their resistance
disobedience."
"Naturally--naturally," said the official impatiently. "Come, now,
let us have the proof of your assertion."
"Draw the conclusions from what I have said, Herr Assessor, and you
have the most striking proof of the absurdity and ridiculousness of
your gagged state church," said Frank haughtily.
"How so, how so?" cried Hamm inquiringly.
"Simply thus: If the priest must preach according to the august
instructions of the state and not according to the principles of
religious dogma, he would then preach Badish in Baden, Hessish in
Hesse, Bavarian in Bavaria, Mecklenburgish in Mecklenburg; in short,
there would be as many sects as there are states and principalities.
And these sects would be constantly changing, as the chambers or
ministerial instructions would command or allow. All religion would
cease; for it would be no longer the expression of the divine will
and revelation, but the work of the chambers and the princes. Such a
religion would be contemptible in the eyes of every thinking man. I
would not give a brass button for such a religion."
"You go too far, Herr Frank," said Hamm. "Religion has a divine
title, and this glory must be retained."
"Then the clergy must be free."
"Certainly, that is clear," said the assessor as he arose, and, with
a smiling face, bowed lowly. Angela had entered the hall, and in
consequence of Hamm's greeting was obliged to come into the room. She
might have returned from a walk, for she wore a straw hat and a light
shawl was thrown over her shoulders. She led by the hand her little
sister Eliza, a charming child of four years.
The sisters remained standing near the door. Eliza looked with
wondering eyes at the stranger, whose movements were very wonderful
to the mind of the little one, and whose pale face excited her
interest.
Angela's glance seemed to have blown away all the official dust that
remained in the soul of Hamm. The assessor was unusually agreeable.
His face lost its obstinate expression, and became light and
animated. Even its color changed to one of life and nature.
To Richard, who liked to take notes, and whose visit to Siegwart's
had no other object, the change that could be produced in a
bureaucrat by such rare womanly beauty was very amusing. He had
arisen and stepped back a little. He observed the assessor carefully
till a smile between astonishment and pity lit up his countenance.
He then looked at Angela, who stood motionless on the same spot.
It seemed to require great resignation on her part to notice the
flattering speech and obsequious attentions of the assessor. Richard
observed that her countenance was tranquil, but her manner more
grave than usual. She still held the little one by the hand, who
pressed yet closer to her the nearer the wonderful man came. Hamm's
voice rose to a tone of enthusiasm, and he took a step or two toward
the object of his reverence, when a strange enemy confronted him.
Some swallows had come in with Angela. Till now they were quiet and
seemed to be observing the assessor; but when he approached Angela,
briskly gesticulating, the swallows raised their well-known shrill
cry of anxiety, left their perches and fluttered around the official.
Interrupted in the full flow of his eloquence, he struck about with
his hands to frighten them. The swallows only became the noisier, and
their fluttering about Hamm assumed a decidedly warlike character.
They seemed to consider him as a dangerous enemy of Angela whom they
wished to keep off. Richard looked on in wonder, Siegwart shook his
head and stroked his beard, and Angela smiled at the swallows.
"These are abominable creatures," cried Hamm warding them off.
"Why, such a thing never happened to me before. Off with you! you
troublesome wretches."
The birds flew out of the room, still screaming; and their shrill
cries could be heard high up in the air.
"The swallows have a grudge against you," said Siegwart. "They
generally treat only the cats and hawks in this way."
"Perhaps they have been frightened at this red ribbon," returned
Hamm. "I regret, my dear young lady, to have frightened your little
pets. When I come again, I will leave the object of their terror at
home."
"You should not deprive yourself of an ornament which has an
honorable significance on account of the swallows, particularly as
we do not know whether it was really the red color that displeased
them," said she.
"You think, then, Miss Angela, that there is something else about me
they dislike?"
"I do not know, Herr Assessor."
"Oh! if I only knew the cause of their displeasure," said Hamm
enthusiastically. "You have an affection for the swallows, and I
would not displease any thing that you love."
She answered by an inclination, and was about to leave the room.
"Angela," said her father, "here is Herr Frank, to whom you are under
obligations."
She moved a step or two toward Richard.
"Sir," said she gently, "you returned some things that were valuable
to me; were it not for your kindness, they would probably have been
lost. I thank you."
A formal bow was Frank's answer. Hamm stood smiling, his searching
glance alternating between the stately young man and Angela. But in
the manner of both he observed nothing more than reserve and cold
formality.
Angela left the room. The assessor sat down on the sofa and poured
out a glass of wine.
Eliza sat on her father's knee. Richard observed the beautiful child
with her fine features and golden silken locks that hung about her
tender face. The winning expression of innocence and gentleness in
her mild, childish eyes particularly struck him.
"A beautiful, lovely child," said he involuntarily, and as he looked
in Siegwart's face he read there a deep love and a quiet, fatherly
fondness for the child.
"Eliza is not always as lovely and good as she is now," he returned.
"She has still some little faults which she must get rid of."
"Yes, that's what Angela said," chattered the little one. "Angela
said I must be very good; I must love to pray; I must obey my father
and mother; then the angels who are in heaven will love me."
"Can you pray yet, my child," said Richard.
"Yes, I can say the 'Our Father' and the 'Hail Mary.' Angela is
teaching me many nice prayers."
She looked at the stranger a moment and said with childish simplicity,
"Can you pray too?"
"Certainly, my child," answered Frank, smiling; "but I doubt whether
my prayers are as pleasing to God as yours."
"Angela also said we should not lie," continued Eliza. "The good God
does not love children who lie."
"That is true," said Frank. "Obey your sister Angela."
Here the young man was affected by a peculiar emotion. He thought of
Angela as the first instructor of the child; placed near this little
innocent, she appeared like its guardian angel. He saw clearly at
this moment the great importance of first impressions on the young,
and thought that in after life they would not be obliterated. He
expressed his thoughts, and Siegwart confirmed them.
"I am of your opinion, Herr Frank. The most enduring impressions
are made in early childhood. The germ of good must be implanted in
the tender and susceptible heart of the child and there developed.
Many, indeed most parents overlook this important principle of
education. This is a great and pernicious error. Man is born with
bad propensities; they grow with his growth and increase with his
strength. In early childhood, they manifest themselves in obstinacy,
wilfulness, excessive love of play, disobedience, and a disposition
to lie. If these outgrowths are plucked up and removed in childhood
by careful, religious training, it will be much easier to form the
heart to habits of virtue than in after years. Many parents begin to
instruct their children after they have spoiled them. Is this not
your opinion, Herr Assessor?"
Hamm was aroused by this sudden question. He had not paid any
attention to the conversation, but had been uninterruptedly stroking
his moustache and gazing abstractedly into vacancy.
"What did you ask, my dear Siegwart? Whether I am of your opinion?
Certainly, certainly, entirely of your opinion. Your views are always
sound, practical, and matured by great experience, as in this case."
"Well, I can't say you were always of my opinion," said Siegwart
smiling; "have we not just been sharply disputing about the
Peter-pence?"
"O my dear friend! as a private individual I agree with you entirely
on these questions; but an official must frequently defend in a
system of government that which he privately condemns."
Frank perceived Hamm's object. He wished to do away with the
unfavorable impressions his former expressions might have made on
the proprietor. The reason of this was clear to him since he had
discovered the assessor's passion for Angela.
"I am rejoiced," said Siegwart, "that we agree at least in that most
important matter, religion."
Frank remembered his father's remark, "The Siegwart family is
intensely clerical and ultramontane." It was new and striking to
him to see the question of religion considered the most important.
He concluded from this, and was confirmed in his conclusions by the
leading spirit of the Siegwart family, that, in direct contradiction
to modern ideas, religion is the highest good.
"Nevertheless," said Siegwart, "I object to a system of government
that is inimical to the church."
"And so do I," sighed the assessor.
Richard took his departure. At home, he wrote a few hasty lines in
his diary and then went into the most retired part of the garden.
Here he sat in deep thought till the servant called him to dinner.
"Has Klingenberg not gone out yet to-day?"
"No, but he has been walking up and down his room for the last two
hours."
Frank smiled. He guessed the meaning of this walk, and as they both
entered the dining-room together his conjecture was confirmed.
The doctor entered somewhat abruptly and did not seem to observe
Richard's presence. His eyes had a penetrating, almost fierce
expression and his brows were knit. He sat down to the table
mechanically, and ate what was placed before him. It is questionable
whether he knew what he was eating, or even that he was eating. He
did not speak a word, and Frank, who knew his peculiarities, did not
disturb him by a single syllable. This was not difficult, as he was
busily occupied with his own thoughts.
After the meal was over, Klingenberg came to himself. "My dear
Richard, I beg your pardon," said he in a tone of voice which was
almost tender. "Excuse my weakness. I have read this morning a
scientific article that upsets all my previous theories on the
subject treated of. In the whole field of human investigation there
is nothing whatever certain, nothing firmly established. What one
to-day proves by strict logic to be true, to-morrow another by still
stronger logic proves to be false. From the time of Aristotle to the
present, philosophers have disagreed, and the infallible philosopher
will certainly never be born. It is the same in all branches. I would
not be the least astonished if Galileo's system would be proved to
be false. If the instruments, the means of acquiring astronomical
knowledge, continue to improve, we may live to learn that the earth
stands still and that the sun goes waltzing around our little planet.
This uncertainty is very discouraging to the human mind. We might
say with Faust,
'It will my heart consume
That we can nothing know.'"
"In my humble opinion," said Frank, "every investigator moves in a
limited circle. The most profound thinker does not go beyond these
set limits; and if he would boldly over-step them, he would be thrown
back by evident contradiction into that circle which Omnipotence has
drawn around the human intellect."
"Very reasonable, Richard; very reasonable. But the desire of
knowledge must sometimes be satiated," continued the doctor after
a short pause. "If the human mind were free from the narrow limits
of the deceptive world of sense, and could see and know with pure
spiritual eyes, the barriers of which you speak would fall. Even the
Bible assures us of this. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says,
'We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, but then face to
face; now I know in part, but then I shall know as I am known.' I
would admire St. Paul on account of this passage alone if he never
had written another. How awful is the moral quality of the human soul
taken in connection with its future capacity for knowledge. And how
natural, how evident, is the connection. The human mind will receive
knowledge from the source of all knowledge--God, in proportion as it
has been just and good. For this reason our Redeemer calls the world
of the damned 'outer darkness,' and the world of the blessed, the
'kingdom of light.'"
"We sometimes see in that way even now," said Frank after a pause.
"The wicked have ideas very different from those of the good. A
frivolous spirit mocks at and derides that which fills the good with
happiness and contentment. We might, then, say that even in this life
man knows as he is known."
The doctor cast an admiring glance at the young man. "We entirely
agree, my young friend; wickedness is to the sciences what a
poisonous miasma and the burning rays of the sun are to the young
plants. Yes, vice begets atheism, materialism, and every other
abortion of thought."
Klingenberg arose.
"We will meet again at three," said he with a friendly nod.
Richard took from his room _Vogt's Physiological Letters_, went into
the garden, and buried himself in its contents.
TO BE CONTINUED.
MORALITY OF THE CITY OF ROME.[18]
We promised in our last number to pay our respects to an infamous
calumny about Rome, the capital of the Christian Church, and seat of
the Sovereign Pontiffs, Vicars of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth.
This calumny has been extensively circulated. We have found it in
each one of the works at the head of this article, and we suppose
it has been repeated in many others which have not fallen under
our observation; for our "evangelical" journals, as they style
themselves, and a large portion of the secular press, seem to
have very loose notions of morality where the Catholic Church is
concerned. Every story to her disadvantage will be sure to please
their public, or to supply the want of argument, and therefore it
is seized upon with eagerness and repeated over the length and
breadth of the land. It matters little to them whether it be true or
not, so long as it answers the purpose. It is enough for them that
somebody or other has started it, without inquiring who it was, or
whether he had any right to make such a statement. It is also quite
immaterial how improbable the story may be, or what contradictions
it may involve, or out of what ingenious inferences, by putting this
and that together, it may be constructed; it suffices that it be
something injurious to the Catholic religion, and at once the end
sanctifies the means; and God, they seem to think, will easily wink
at any breach of the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbor," when that neighbor is only a papist. Besides,
the appetite of the public for this sort of thing seems to be so
insatiable that they are deemed ready to swallow any thing, however
it may outrage common sense or probability; and therefore they do not
fear any loss of reputation if they are detected in the circulation
of the falsehood. Corporations are said to have no souls, and the
reverend editor of a religious periodical easily seems to absolve
himself from any obligation which Christian charity or even decency
would seem to impose upon him, in regard to the papist, whom he
readily classes with the infidel or the pagan.
The calumny we are about to refute furnishes us with an apt
illustration of these remarks. It wears on its face an air of extreme
improbability. It is to this effect: that in Rome nearly three
fourths of all the children born are illegitimate.
This is simply incredible. When we read of half the children in
Stockholm, in Protestant Sweden, or in Vienna, in Catholic Austria,
being illegitimate, we can scarcely believe the naked statement.
Without disputing the official figures, we look to see if there is
no way of explaining this anomalous state of things--if the reality
corresponds with the appearance. The large excess in the number of
births in proportion to the population, and the existence of a large
foundling hospital, as in Vienna, used by the poorer inhabitants of
the country around even to a considerable distance, would lead us
to a sounder conclusion in regard to its social state than the bare
inspection of the figures. But the supposition that three fourths
of all the children born in Rome or any other city, Protestant or
Catholic, are illegitimate, is too exaggerated to be entertained for
a moment. It seems to find ready credence, however; probably through
some such mental process as this: "Catholics are corrupt and vicious.
Rome is the chief of all Catholic cities, and therefore the most
corrupt and vicious of all, and no story of its corruption is too big
for belief. The more incredible for any other place, the more worthy
of belief for Rome."
But let us come more to details about this statement in regard to
Rome. We quote from Mr. Seymour's book:
"In the Italian statistics of Mittermaier we have the number of
exposed infants received in Il S. Spirito, Il Conservatorio, and
other establishments of this class. The number received during
a series of ten years amounts to 31,689. This total distributed
among the ten years gives as the mean, the number of 3160 infants
exposed annually in the city of Rome."
He goes on to say that according to Bowring, an agent of the British
government, the population of Rome was 153,678, and the total number
of births was 4373. Hence we have,
Total number of births, 4373
Total number of foundlings, 3160
And we are left to infer that there were only 1213 lawful children
born in Rome in that year.
To make a still closer deduction from his premises, we should take
his remark that the population of Rome should be taken at the mean of
130,000, instead of 153,678. The mean number of births corresponding
to this would be 3700; hence, in strictness, we should have,
Total number of births, 3700
Total number of foundlings, 3160
----
Total number of lawful children, 540
This is indeed a state of things described by Mr. Seymour as
indicating "a frightful number of illegitimate births, and a number
without parallel of cruel and unnatural mothers." And we may add, it
indicates an unparalleled amount of gullibility in any one who will
entertain for a moment such an absurd statement. It would be more
creditable to Rev. Mr. Seymour and his friend Rev. L. W. Bacon and
_The New Englander_, before circulating the story, to inquire who
Mittermaier is; whether he has said exactly what he is quoted to say;
whether he was misled about his statements; whether some one else has
not altered what he said; whether some word has not been used in a
double sense, to carry a wrong impression, or some word slipped into
the general statement to put the reader on the wrong track; in short,
to pay great attention and be extremely cautious in a matter which
wears so great an improbability on its face.
The story is an absurd fabrication, and very clumsily put together
at that. "The number of exposed infants in Il S. Spirito, Il
Conservatorio, and other establishments of this class, according
to Mittermaier, amounts to 31,689 in ten years." Mittermaier, or
whoever else wrote this, proves conclusively that he knew very
little of what he was writing about. There is no such establishment
as Il Conservatorio in Rome. This is not the name of a particular
place, but a general term signifying about what we mean by the term
"asylum." There are more than a dozen asylums for children in Rome,
but only one is a foundling hospital, that of Il S. Spirito. The
conservatorios or asylums are not "of this class," but of a different
class altogether. There may have been 3160 children provided for,
annually, in Il S. Spirito and all the different establishments for
children, for what we know, and we see no reason to dispute the
statement; but this is the aggregate of children of all ages and
all sorts, of the sick and destitute, and by no means the number of
foundlings received, or even the number of orphans received within a
single year.
There are over 400 children in one orphan asylum in Fiftieth street
in this city, and the aggregate for ten years would be over 4000, but
to say that over 4000 children were _received_ there in ten years
would be an outrageous statement. To obtain the real number, we
should also ascertain the average number of years each child remains
in the institution.
The hospital of Il S. Spirito is the only "foundling hospital" in
Rome. It receives all the infants brought there, and if the person
who brings them is unwilling to answer, he can refuse to do so. It is
amply sufficient to accommodate all left there; has revenue enough,
and, in short, renders the existence of "any other establishment
of the sort" entirely superfluous. There are branches of this
institution to which "foundlings" are transferred as they grow older.
The institution looks out for them until they can look out for
themselves; but there is only one place where they are received.
The total number of foundlings received in Rome is about 900
annually.[19] Maguire says:
"The number of 900 may seem very great as representing the annual
average received; but it should be stated that the hospital
of Santo Spirito affords an asylum not only to the foundlings
of Rome, but to those of the provinces of Sabina, Frosinone,
Velletri, and the Comarca, and also districts on the borders of
Naples."
This number of foundlings does not represent the amount of
illegitimacy, for very many of the foundlings are lawful children.
Maguire says:
"If it happen, as it often does with people in the humblest
condition of life, that their family exceed their means of
support, one of the children is committed to the wheel of the
foundling hospital of Santo Spirito--it might be, with some mark
on its dress by which its identity would be afterward proved and
it be reclaimed by its parents, a thing of no uncommon occurrence.
Another frequent cause of having recourse to this institution is
the delicacy of the mother, or of the child. The mother has no
nourishment to give the infant, and she bears it to the hospital
to be provided for. Or it is a rickety, miserable thing from
its birth, stunted, malformed, or so delicate that in the rude
hut of its parents it has no chance of ever doing well; then
too, in its case, the wheel of the hospital is a safe recourse,
and with parents of hard hearts takes the place of many an evil
suggestion, such as is often present in the homes and the breasts
of the destitute. Frequently the parent is known to argue that
the infirm or malformed child, who is thus got rid of, has the
best chance of recovery, and certainty of being provided for,
where eminent medical attendance is always to be had, and where
the greatest care is taken of the training and future interests
of the foundling. It may be said that this facility of getting
rid of legitimate offspring leads to a disregard of the manifest
obligations of a parent's duty; but to this fair objection I can
only offer a preponderating advantage, that it does away with
that awful proneness to infanticide which distinguishes other
countries, but pre-eminently England."
This estimate of Maguire's is confirmed by a statement taken from
the records of the hospital for May, June, and July, 1868, and
transmitted to us by an American clergyman residing in Rome. Of the
total number, some were of legitimate births, as shown by authentic
parish certificates; others of doubtful or uncertain birth; as
follows:
Foundlings Of legitimate Uncertain.
received. birth.
In May, 38 46
In June, 25 51
In July, 29 49
-- ---
92 146
This would give us an aggregate of 952 for the year, of which 584
would be of uncertain birth. A large proportion came from the
provinces around Rome, and there is no reason to suppose all the
uncertain births to be illegitimate; therefore we shall make a
liberal allowance if we take the total number of foundlings of
illegitimate birth, belonging to Rome itself, at 400. The real number
is quite as likely to be below as above it.
When Mittermaier, whoever he was, stated the annual number of
foundlings in Rome to be 3160, the mean population of that city was
stated to be 130,000. It is now 215,573. By Mittermaier's proportion
the annual number of foundlings should now be 5226. Are we called
on to believe this, and to hang our heads in shame at this enormous
number of 5226 illegitimates each year in the capital of the Catholic
world? And this, when we know that the actual number of foundlings
from Rome is not over 900, and the actual number of illegitimate
children is about 400.
A small discrepancy, no doubt; a little peccadillo in the figures!
We hope we have not shown any undue warmth in exposing it; for who
knows, our "evangelic" friends may feel themselves insulted, and
entirely absolved from any obligation of refuting us; our unchristian
warmth of temper and vituperative manner being enough--to use the
expression of Rev. L. W. Bacon, in _The New Englander_--"to discredit
without any particular refutation" whatever we assert in this
article.
But whence come the three thousand one hundred and sixty foundlings
of "Mittermaier" annually received in Rome? Without doubt, from
adding up all the inmates of the different asylums for children in
Rome, and the foundlings of S. Spirito, and representing the total as
an aggregate of _foundlings received_.
"Il Conservatorio and other establishments of this class" in Rome are
as follows:
Asylums for children of all ages, with schools attached:
S. Maria, in Aguiro, 50
S. Michael, 200 boys.
S. Michael, 240 girls.
Divine Providence, 100 girls.
S. Mary of Refuge, 50 girls.
S. Euphemia, 40 girls.
Tata Giovanni, over 100 boys.
Quatro SS. Giovanni, 12 girls.
Zoccoletti, 60 girls.
{number boys
S. Maria del Angeli, { not and
{stated. girls.
S. Caterina, " girls.
Trinitarians, " girls.
St. Pietro, " girls.
Il Borromeo, " girls.
Mother of Sorrows, " girls.
These are institutions of which Dr. Neligan, who visited them,
gives an account in his _Rome_, published by Messrs. Sadlier; and
to these must be added the department of S. Spirito, where female
foundlings, after being nursed, are received back--if not otherwise
provided for--and taken care of for life, or until they marry or
get a situation; this numbers about six hundred, according to
Maguire. If we add all the numbers together, and also the children
under the care of the foundling hospital out at nurse, or being
brought up in private families; in short, all the recipients of
charity of the different institutions of Rome, we might approach a
number corresponding to the three thousand one hundred and sixty of
Mittermaier.
We can see by this "how the noble and Christian charity of Rome,
excelling that of any other city of its size on the earth, is," by a
base and groundless falsehood, sought to be turned into a means of
holding her up to the scorn and indignation of the whole world.
We can show, also, in an entirely different way, by the official
census of Rome, the absurdity of the statement of Seymour, and that
in the most conclusive manner. In the _Civilta Cattolica_ of 21st of
December, 1867, we have the census of the population and the number
of births for the year 1866; also a tabular statement of those for a
period of ten years, ending 21st of April, 1867.
From these we find the present population to be 215,573; the number
of the legitimate births for the year from Easter, 1866, to Easter,
1867, was 5739, and adding thereto the still-born, 6120. The average
annual number of births in an average population of 197,737,
excluding the still-born, was 5657 legitimate, for the decennial
period. Adding the still-born, we have an annual average of over 6000
legitimate births.
Now, if we consider that in Rome there is a large class of the
population who belong to the clergy, who do not marry; a large body
of military; the Jews, whose children of course do not appear in any
baptismal register, from which the number of annual births is made
out; we may set down the average productive part of the population,
corresponding to the population of any other city, at an average of
not more than 175,000. From this number, according to the general
vital statistics of the civilized world, we must look for from 6300
to 6400 annual births. Take from this the number of annual legitimate
births stated above, and there remains no margin for any large
number of illegitimate births. Any one can see that it is a moral
impossibility that they should exceed three or four hundred.
The same thing can be made out by means of the number of the married,
which is accurately taken every year. In April, 1867, there were
30,471 married women in Rome. Now, how many children could be
expected to be born annually from that number? We can approximate
very nearly to this by considering the census of the kingdom of
Italy, as given in the _Civilta Cattolica_ of 20th of June, 1868.
From this we find that for about 4,297,346 married women there were
about 900,000 births, which gives us one yearly for every five
married women, very nearly. Applying this proportion to Rome, we
should have of 30,471 married women, 6094 births. The actual number,
including still-born, was, as we have seen, 6120.
The _Civilta Cattolica_ says, "This proportion of 28.3 of legitimate
births for every one thousand of the population speaks very well
for a capital city." And so it does; it shows, what we have always
understood them to be, that the Romans are as virtuous and moral as
any people of the world.
In passing, we commend to the Rev. Mr. Bacon the figures of the
official census of the kingdom of Italy, from which we find the
percentage of illegitimacy for 1863 to have been 4.8; for 1864, 5. It
is to be observed that there is somewhat of a deterioration in this
last year, perhaps owing to the success of the efforts of the Bible
and tract societies to throw the pure light of "gospel truth" on this
hitherto benighted land. The rate of illegitimacy in Scotland, which
Mr. Laing, in his _Notes of a Traveller_, calls the most religious
Protestant country in Europe, is double that of Italy, the country
most thoroughly Catholic.
And we ask, moreover, of Mr. Bacon, the direct question, What is the
honesty of representing the relative chastity of England and Italy as
5 to 21, when the real proportions are 6.4 to 5? It may do very well
to charge Brother Hatfield and Brother Prime, when you have your own
good name to vindicate against their charges, with gross unfairness
in controversy; but we consider your adroit shirking of all the
statements of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, on the plea of an error found in
a quotation from _The Church and World_, as quite as dishonorable
as any thing you have charged against them. Your persistence in
repeating calumnious statements, and spreading them out as you do
among readers who will not see the refutation, will give you and your
friend, Mr. M. Hobart Seymour, an unenviable notoriety among the
worst calumniators of the Catholic religion who have as yet appeared.
You have repeated, some time ago, that most infamous calumny of the
_Tax-book of the Roman Chancery_, so amply refuted by Bishop England;
but although it has been called to your notice, you have never had
the grace to apologize. The old maxim seems to have been, "Lie as
hard as you can, and lay it on thick, for it will all be believed,"
and hence we had our Maria Monks and our Brownlees. Now the tactics
are to be changed, and the maxim seems to be, "Let there be some
semblance of truth mixed with the lie, so that it may sink deeper;
let the calumny be sugared over with professions of 'fair play,' and
it will work with better effect;" and hence come such things as the
_Moral Results of Romanism_, by Messrs. Seymour and Bacon, the "model
controversialists."
To come back to Rome. The _Civilta Cattolica_ tells us that the
census has been taken in the same way since the sixteenth century.
The total number of births, 4373, of Bowring, were then the total
of legitimate births, not the absolute total. The number of 3160
_foundlings received_ turns out to be the number of orphans--some of
them 80 years old, for all we know; for some are cared for as long as
they live--and other destitute or abandoned children. And thus this
beautiful piece of "mosaic work," intended to exhibit the horrible
vice of Rome to the gaze of an admiring and astonished public, falls
to pieces. Instead of the anomalous state of things in which each
married couple in Rome would have on an average one child in the
space of 25 years, they are found to be quite as prolific as other
people, and quite as virtuous. Rome, in respect to offences against
chastity, is probably the most orderly and decent city of its size in
the world. Maguire says:[20]
"The returns (criminal) embrace all kinds of crime.... And among
the rest they comprehend a class of offenders who, in some
countries--for instance, in France--are under the control as
well as sanctioned by the police authorities, and in others defy
almost all authority or restraint whatsoever. I allude to women
of depraved character, not one of whom is to be met with in the
streets of Rome, which may accordingly be traversed with impunity
at any hour of the evening or night by a modest female without the
risk of having her eyes and ears offended, as they are in too many
cities of our highly civilized empire. Offenders of this class
are at once made amenable to the law, and committed either to the
Termini, or to the institution of the Good Shepherd, where the
most effectual means of reformation are adopted, and in very many
instances with success--both institutions being specially under
the care and control of religious communities."
It is the fashion to decry Rome--to represent her population as cowed
down and discontented with their government; to this the reception
which Garibaldi with his war-cry of "Rome or death"--though he lived
to see another day, after all--met with from the Roman people, is a
sufficient reply: or to say that they are miserably poor or degraded;
to this, Count de Reyneval, in his report to the French minister for
foreign affairs, says:
"The condition of the population is one of comparative ease.... An
appearance of prosperity strikes the eyes of the least observant.
Gaiety of the most expansive kind is to be traced in the faces of
all. It may be asked whether this can be the people whose miseries
excite to such a degree the commiseration of Europe?"[21]
Rome, then, with a garrison of over 7000 soldiers, and with an
immense influx of visitors from all parts of the world, and
particularly of wealthy pleasure-seekers from England and America;
with a stern suppression of prostitution and public vice, still shows
a rate of illegitimacy less than six per cent; a rate lower than that
of England, or any Protestant country which has published statistics
on the subject.
We have thus given this matter as thorough and complete an
investigation as has been possible under the circumstances. We have
given the reasons for all we have stated, and the reader can see for
himself the force of our arguments. We neither desire to misrepresent
nor to be misrepresented; and we would not make one misstatement to
the disadvantage of any one, be he Protestant or any thing else; or
conceal any thing which has a bearing on the question, even if it
should put our side of it in an unfavorable light. If we have done
any of these things, it is unconsciously to ourselves; and therefore
we feel, perhaps too warmly and indignantly, this trickery, when it
is attempted to make us the victims of it.
From our previous experience, we look for a more active circulation
of this calumny, from our refutation of it; but we console ourselves
with the reflection that there is a God in heaven who watches over
all, and who will make the truth apparent in due time. At any rate,
no such consideration shall hinder us a moment from exposing error
and deception, so far as our occupations and duties shall afford us
the leisure to do so.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] _Evenings with the Romanists._ Rev. M. Hobart Seymour. Carter &
Brothers. New York.
_New Englander._ July, 1869. New Haven.
_American Churchman._ Chicago.
_Is Romanism the best Religion for the Republic?_ Pamphlet. Pott &
Amery. New York.
_Good News._ October, 1868. P. S. Wynkoop & Son. New York.
_Fair Play on Both Sides._ Pamphlet. New Haven. Rev. L. W. Bacon.
_Watchman and Reflector._ Boston, August 12.
_London Examiner._
[19] _Rome._ By John Francis Maguire, M.P.; p. 169.
[20] _Rome_, p. 458.
[21] Maguire's _Rome_, p. 444.
ST. OREN'S PRIORY;
OR, EXTRACTS FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN AMERICAN IN A FRENCH MONASTERY.
"Pour chercher mieux."--_Device of Queen Christina of Sweden._
PART II.
I entered the novitiate on the 22d. The _Veni sponsa Christi, accipe
coronam quam tibi Dominus præparavit in æternum_ has been sounding
in my heart ever since like a war-cry, animating me to the interior
combat. For the cloister is that oasis in the great desert of the
world where is carried on a vital combat between nature and grace,
more furious than that between Christian and Paynim in the Diamond
of the desert. I have been much happier since I entered upon my new
life, and am glad I can go out no more. I love the solitude
and calmness of the cloister, which at last extends to the heart; I
love the shrines "where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep;" I love
the companionship of those who seem unsullied by earthly passions;
and I love this release from all earthly care, with no thought for
what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or wherewithal we shall be
clothed. Is it not better than the bustle and vanity of the world,
which almost efface the thought of God?
And then, you know, I have always believed that there are some
who are called to perpetuate the glorious fellowship of Christ's
sufferings; to share, as members of his body, the pains and sorrows
of the great Head of the church; and to make reparation to heaven
for the constant outrages against the Divine Majesty. As Faber says,
"Nuns are the turtle-doves of the church, who have to mourn in a
spirit of loving sorrow and sweet reparation over the wrongs of their
heavenly Spouse."
The heart of St. Augustine was so full of the love of God and the
sense of what is his due, that he is always represented holding it
all aflame in his hands. Old legends tell us how an angel bore it
away to a sanctuary, where it will still tremble in its crystal
case if an unbeliever enters the church where it is exposed. So
tremulously alive to the honor and glory of God should be the hearts
that are gathered together in the cloister. How many souls fly
thither to make up, as it were, to God what is wanting on the part of
their sinful brethren! _Apropos_, I must tell you about one of our
nuns, who is full of holy fervor. In the late retreat, the director
asked her the subject of her particular examen. "Self-abnegation,"
was the reply. "Do you find many occasions for practising it?"
inquired the _père_. "Not as many as I could wish." "What is the
virtue which you particularly ask of our Lord in your devotions, and
by the actions of each day?" "I ask for no virtue, _mon père_." "With
what intention, then, do you offer them?" "For the conversion of
sinners, and the greater glory of God."
Is not this admirable? I am sure many Protestants could hardly
comprehend a piety so disinterested as to lose sight, in a measure,
of one's own profit in zeal for God's cause.
The facilities are also great in the cloister for the frequent
reception of the sacraments, which quicken the moral circulation.
The pulsations of the soul are more healthful after the infusion of
divine grace through them. I went to holy communion this morning. The
Divine Host seemed to me a burning coal from off the altar of God,
and the priest, the angel who placed it on my lips. "Our God is a
consuming fire." I prayed that he might consume every affection in
my heart that was not centred in him; and, as I felt the torrent of
divine flame circulating in my veins, every earthly desire, every
human passion, seemed to die away within me. For a moment, at least,
I felt the signification of the words of the great apostle of the
Gentiles, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who liveth in me."
Might such moments be perpetuated! But it is of faith that those who
have partaken of Christ's body and blood remain in him, and he in
them, as long as they are in a state of grace. It is this interior
presence of the divinity which animated the saints to the sacrifice,
and made even this world, amid all their privations and austerities,
a very foretaste of heaven. What sweet solemnity and thoughtfulness
reign in the heart sensible of this divine presence! In its light the
soul,
"Like the stained web that whitens in the sun,
Grows pure by being purely shone upon."
As you say, a great deal does depend upon the influences that
surround us, especially with weak souls like me. I envy those men
who are as gods, in spite of temperament, or clime, or any outward
influence; who go on unchecked from one degree of glory to another,
to the very heights of sanctity. I am always drifting along, awaiting
the impulse of the sacraments, or the helping hand of some stronger
friend, too glad if I do not recede. Ah! solitude brings us face
to face with ourselves, and reveals to us our _moral littleness_!
Nothing is more humbling than this revelation. Nothing makes us more
distrustful of ourselves, and more willing to accept the appointed
means of perfection. The life our director thinks the safest is a
common life, lived in an _uncommon_ manner; that is, while we do the
same things as those around us, it is with motives so holy that each
action is rendered in a degree supernatural. This is the great secret
of the hidden and interior life, which the saints of all ages have
loved and of which St. Joseph is the type.
I have been reading _Fioretti; or, the Little Flowers of St. Francis
d'Assisi_--a collection of the sayings of the first Franciscans,
with a rare bloom on them. These mediæval flowers, so long shut
up in a foreign tongue, have a delicious fragrance, and while I
inhaled their odor I forgot that I belonged to an incredulous age.
There is a simplicity truly poetical in this collection, which is
admirable. One little remark of Friar Egide struck me: "_La voie la
plus directe pour nous sauver, c'est de nous perdre._" This loss,
this annihilation of self, on the ruins of which must be built up the
great edifice of our perfection, is what I daily sigh after, and
what I ask for you. The Père Milley, a Jesuit, speaks much of "_le
pays des âmes perdues_"--a country to which all my desires tend.
It is a promised land which I see afar off; another Canaan, which
I hardly dare hope to enter, though I look wistfully on those who
are lost in God--that ocean without limit, where our littleness is
swallowed up in immensity, and we almost forget our fears and our
frailties; we know not whether we suffer or are consoled; conscious
only of the divine atmosphere--conscious only that we love!...
Our novitiate is a large apartment with five immense windows in it.
(When you are taxed for windows, you may as well have large ones,
and the French love the air and live in it.) No matter how cold it
is, the windows are always open--and when I say _open_, I mean the
_whole_ window; for, as I have already remarked, they swing open
like folding doors. On cold days a few _mottes_ are burning in the
fireplace, around which a folding screen is drawn. These mottes are
mostly of tan, pressed into flat round cakes like a small cheese.
They give out strong heat. Wood is very scarce here, and consequently
dear, and I have never seen coal. As for lights, we burn linseed-oil,
which gives a clear yellow light, and the odor is not offensive like
whale-oil. Each sister has a little coil of yellow wax-taper to light
when she wishes to go about the monastery in the evening.
The floor is paved with square red tiles, as in all the houses here,
but we have little mats to protect our feet from the chill. Each
novice has her table and writing-desk, at which she studies or sews.
At one end of the room is an altar, and the walls are adorned with
engravings of a religious character. Leading from the novitiate
is the _chambrette_ of the mistress of novices, in which is the
novices' library. It is always open to us, and we like an excuse for
entering it.
Our manner of spending the day is nearly unvaried. We rise at
half-past four, and, after completing our toilettes, (for even nuns
have toilettes; one's garments must be put together somehow,) we
descend to the chapel. The choir is impenetrably dark most of the
year at this early hour. Only the little lamp is twinkling near the
tabernacle! One by one the nuns come noiselessly in, like so many
shadows. This hour of morning meditation is delicious. The perfect
stillness, in which you can hear your own heart beat, disposes you to
reflection. The soul becomes steeped in the spirit of the place and
the hour passes too quickly away. Then we say the hours. The morning
sacrifice follows with its awful mysteries, which are ever fresh and
wonderful.
When we issue from the chapel, after our exercises of more than two
hours, we go one by one, when we choose, to the refectory, for there
is no breakfast, properly speaking. The nuns take a piece of dry
bread, with perchance some fruit, and eat it, as the children of
Israel ate the passover, standing and ready girded for the labors of
the day, for which we are all ready at eight. That would be called
a fast in America. But when a sister is delicate, she can have some
coffee or chocolate. The world used to cry out against the good
living of monastic orders; now it says their austerities are fatal to
the health. It is always the way with the world--now, as in the days
when John the Baptist came "neither eating nor drinking."
The French know nothing of the cup that cheers but does not
inebriate. They only take tea medicinally, and seem to have no idea
of how it should be prepared. It is a prevalent belief here that
every Englishman in his travels carries his tea-kettle with him, and
they suppose the whole race partial to the beverage. So, by way of a
_fête_, they proposed regaling me with some the other day. I accepted
what was no luxury to me. A good sister brought me what she styled
_soupe au thé_, consisting of an abundance of milk and water, with
a dash of tea. (I rely on the veracity of the _cuisinière_ for this
last item.) Into this, bread was sliced, and the whole served up in
a soup-plate! Confucius himself would have laughed. I am sure I did
till I cried, to the great scandal of all the nuns, who were gravely
listening to some holy legend as they ate. Shall I tell you what I
did with my _soupe au thé_? I hope I am not vain of the heroic act,
but I--ate it!
Fifteen minutes before dinner we have examination of conscience.
We go to the table saying, "_De profundis clamavi_" and leave it
reciting, "_Miserere Domine!_" We eat in silence, listening to the
gospel of the day, the lives of the saints, or some other religious
book, read by one of the sisters from a high pulpit. After dinner is
a reunion, when we come together with our sewing or other handiwork,
and have the privilege of talking, and sometimes we make _la cour
du roi Pétaud_, I assure you. At one o'clock the lay sisters come
in, while we read aloud for half an hour, if no chapter has been
convoked. They too bring their work. One old sister always brings
her spindle and distaff, and twirls away, sitting bolt upright,
and looking so grim that she always seems to me one of the Fates
lengthening out the thread of life. At three we have vespers, and
then make half an hour's meditation. From compline we go to supper
at six, after which we walk in the garden or assemble together
within doors. At eight o'clock is read the subject for the next
morning's meditation, and we go to the choir to say the office, and
for night prayers. Thus closes the day with prayer, as it began. We
all light our little tapers and go silently to our cells for the
night. Such is the outline of our life, which is so well filled up
that we have few leisure moments. We hear of lazy monks and nuns,
but there are no drones in our busy hive, with our boarding-school,
day and free schools, with their hundreds of pupils, and this vast
building to keep in order. Night comes before we know it, and another
day is gone. There is one day less in which to struggle with self,
and, alas! one day less in which to sacrifice something for God! You
ask for the shadow in the picture of my life. There is ever one dark
spot in our existence, the shadow of ourselves, which follows us
wherever we go.
But we have one grievance just now. _Finisterre_ is the name of the
portal that separates us from the world, but it cannot wholly exclude
its sounds. I will explain. The city rises so abruptly behind our
monastery that the garden of the Count de T----, on the opposite side
of the street, is on a level with our second story. And the street
that separates us is one of those dim, narrow streets found only in
old cities of the south, where it is desirable to exclude the heat.
For several nights past when we have come from our dear quiet chapel,
with our hearts all subdued and thoughtful, and pondering on the
subject for the next morning's meditation, a "_toot, tooting_," is
heard from the garden opposite that is enough to distract a saint.
It is a French horn, or some other wind instrument, surely meant for
some vast campagna. But, essayed in a small garden, with a hill in
the rear to aid the reverberation, the whole volume of sound comes
pouring across the corridor into our cells, the very embodiment of
worldly discord and tumult. "_Pazienza!_" we say to ourselves, and
try to turn a deaf ear. I dare say the performer has some idea of
enlivening the poor recluses, who have no other wish but to be left
to their own reveries, save that the time of the vintage may soon
come when he can awaken the echoes of the vineyard.
* * * * *
It is the festival of the Assumption. While I write, all the bells of
the city are ringing, statues and banners of Mary are borne through
the streets by the clergy, followed by a long procession of people.
The deep-toned "_ora pro nobis_" breaks in upon the stilly air.
Each invocation seems like a cry of agony, which goes heavenward
from hearts weary of the world and the things of the world. These
processions are made throughout France in memory of the celebrated
vow of Louis XIII., who consecrated France to the Virgin. It is also
a national holiday in honor of Napoleon I., being his birthday. "St.
Napoleon's Day," say the people with a smile!
I saw a pretty picture last evening--Sister Rose standing on a stool
near the fountain of the court, surrounded by a group of gay young
ladies, to whom she was preaching. She looked like a statue of St.
Angèle. Sister Rose is a lay sister, wholly uneducated, but with
a certain piety of a mystical nature which has given her quite a
reputation for sanctity. She has an oval face of pale olive hue, jet
black eyes with an indrawn look as if conscious of some interior
Presence, and regular features, with a delicacy and refinement quite
remarkable considering her laborious life. She never meets you
without a smile and a "word for Jesus," as she says. The young ladies
of the boarding-school love and revere her so much that they often
lay violent hands upon her and force her to preach to them, which
she does with a smile and the same inward look, and with a grace of
gesture peculiar to her country. As her discourse was in _patois_,
(one of the _langues d'Oc_, and the tongue of Jasmin, who lives at
Agen,) which all understand here, I was not benefited thereby; but
her appearance and her saintly face, with its gentle, serious smile,
were impressive. The exuberance of her audience was soon subdued.
There are a good many Spaniards in this city who are exiled on
account of their political opinions, being Carlists. They had a
solemn mass of requiem chanted in our chapel, the other day, for the
repose of the soul of Don Carlos. Nearly thirty Spanish gentlemen
and some ladies were present. A bier was placed in the centre of
the chapel and surrounded by lights, as if the body were there, and
on the pall was placed a wreath of laurel. The officiating priest,
too, was a Spaniard. I looked with interest on these exiles from
their native land, and my heart grew warm toward them; they were
extremely devout during mass, and I saw many of them wipe away their
fast-falling tears. I could not repress my own; for separation from
the fatherland seemed a bond of sympathy I could not resist. Thus,
when I am gone, and my remains lie in a foreign land, may some kind
souls gather together in the sanctuary of God to chant the _Requiem
æternam_ for my tried soul!
Once a month we meditate particularly on death, and offer all our
devotions as a preparation for our last end. When mass is over, and
the thanksgiving for our communion is ended--no, not ended, for it
can never end; but while it is still ascending from our hearts, our
dear mère, who is as pale as the wife of Seneca, goes forward and
kneels before the grate that separates the choir from the chancel,
and says in earnest tones the litany for a happy death. Her voice
trembles as she repeats the awful petition: "When my eyes, obscured
at the approach of death, cast their dying looks toward thee, O
merciful Jesus! and when my lips, cold and trembling, pronounce for
the last time on earth thy adorable name--" "Merciful Jesus, have
pity on me!" sighs every heart in response. The impression of these
prayers pursues the mind all day. "Lord, in that strait, the Judge!
remember me!"
* * * * *
On St. Andrew's day we buried one of the nuns, who was about ninety
years of age and quite superannuated. This death did not affect me
so much as that of Sister Sophie. The transition from old age to
the grave seems so natural that it excites less horror than when
one dies in the full vigor of life. Mère Ste. Ursule was of a noble
family of La Vendée. At the age of sixteen she entered a community
of Poor Clares, one of the most rigid orders of the church; but,
during her novitiate, the great French Revolution swept away nearly
every vestige of religion, and the nuns of St. Clare were driven out
from their quiet cells into the world. When the _gendarmes_ forced
them to leave the convent, these emissaries desecrated every thing
and broke and threw out the sacred emblems. As Sister Ursule, who
had a most tender devotion to her whom Châteaubriand styles "the
divinity of the frail and the desolate," was leaving the cloister
she had loved so much, she turned to give it a last look, and saw a
small statue of Notre Dame de Grâce standing on the convent wall.
She said to one of her sister nuns, "It seems as if the Blessed
Virgin reproaches me for leaving," and she turned back to save the
statue from insult. The _gendarmes_ did not oppose the design of the
young novice, and this _bonne Vierge_ was for more than sixty years
the ornament and tutelary genius of the cell of Mère Ste. Ursule,
after her re-entrance into religion. With all the fervor of southern
devotion toward Mary, she used to prostrate herself daily before this
statuette, and when fallen into second childhood she would pour out
her heart in effusions of child-like simplicity at once charming and
poetic. She often said to her novices: "When I am dying, place my
_bonne Vierge_ on my bed beside me."
After the Revolution, the more rigid orders were not restored, and
Mère Ste. Ursule, despairing of the re-establishment of the Poor
Clares, joined the Ursulines, and was for a long time mistress of
novices at the priory. In her last days she did nothing but pray and
adorn the altar in her cell. She knew the office by heart, and always
recited it at the canonical hours. Her beads were told many times
a day, and she never failed to use the discipline with severity. I
often went to see her and her _bonne Vierge_. She died suddenly of
old age. Being somewhat more feeble than usual, one of the sisters
remained with her during the night. Mère Ste. Ursule said her office
and rosary, but did not sleep. Toward day the sister perceived the
approach of death; she took down the statue of Notre Dame de Grâce
and laid it in the arms of the aged nun, whose spirit instantly fled
to the presence of Mary in heaven. It was at the hour of dawn. The
first beam of the dayspring from on high carried her soul away from
earth.
Again those solemn funeral services! I cannot tell you the effect
they have on me.
* * * * *
A friend sent me a curious pear to-day, said to be peculiar to this
city. It is called the _Bon Chrétien_, but very different from the
one we called so at home. It is a large, coarse-grained pear, but
juicy and toothsome, and has no seeds; that is, as every one says,
those that grow within the limits of the city have none, while those
that are found in the country are seedy enough. Old legends connect
this peculiarity with St. Oren's miraculous powers.
* * * * *
_December 8._--This is the festival of the Immaculate Conception, the
patronal feast of the chapel of the priory. For nine days past the
convent bell has rung out a joyful peal at the hour of the novena to
Maria Immaculata, when her litany was chanted to a beautiful Spanish
air which completely melts the heart. Unusual pomp has been given
to this _fête_ on account of the expected decision respecting the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception at Rome. This morning we had more
than a dozen masses, for the clergy love to come to this antique
chapel on the feasts of Mary. At ten o'clock, about twenty priests
came to sing high mass, and again this afternoon for vespers. The
chapel was crowded with people from the city. Thus for centuries have
the faithful congregated on this same day. The Blessed Sacrament
was exposed all day. I passed hours in its presence, bearing in my
heart all my innumerable wants, and those of my friends afar off.
How like heaven is our dear chapel when the Lamb of God is thus
exposed to our adoration! In a niche over the altar gleams the
holy image of Mary. The Divinity is enshrined in light beneath her
maternal eye, the air filled with incense, as if fanned by adoring
angels. The arches are full of harmony. Every power of body and mind
is captivated, and one abandons one's self to the impressions of
the moment. It gives one a peculiar emotion to hear men chant the
praises of Mary. What a reverence they must have for womanhood! Their
_Miserere nobis_ in the litany was the very cry of a contrite heart.
I should have thought myself in paradise had not the supplicatory
tones of the clergy announced a felicity still imperfect.
All this is infinitely beautiful and poetic, apart from every
sentiment of religion. Every day of my life would seem to you a
chapter full of poetry; but I have become so accustomed to what I
once thought belonged to a bygone age of mystery and romance, that
it all seems the natural order of events. And one soon learns to
rise above the mere ceremonials of religion, which are so full of
enjoyment to some natures, to that which they typify. Such is the
design of Holy Church--to lead the heart up to God, its true centre.
Perhaps, too, she wishes that every power of our being should be
enlisted in his service; the imagination as well as reason.
After vespers we had a fine sermon from the Abbé Lassale upon the
invocation: _Regina sine labe concepta, ora pro nobis!_ It is the
custom here now, as, from the sermons of Bossuet, we see it was in
the time of Louis XIV., for the preacher, after invoking the Holy
Spirit, to present a plan of his discourse, make some introductory
remarks, and then stop. Both preacher and audience kneel in silence
for the space of an Ave Maria, then all rise and the sermon is
continued. The custom is quite impressive.
* * * * *
_December 15._--Owing to the antiquity of our chapel, long since
dedicated to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, the archbishop
permitted us, as a particular favor, to celebrate the octave of this
great festival of Mary with a sermon and benediction every evening.
The whole chapel was daily illuminated, and the effect was magical
when it was lighted up. Imagine arches of light, pillars wreathed
in flame, altar covered with flowers and brilliant with immense wax
candles; while in the midst gleamed the Virgin in a perfect bower
of pure white lilies. And, just as the imagination is fired with
so much brilliancy and taste, _Kyrie eleison!_ floats up with the
incense in the most plaintive, heart-rending tones--a very tear of
the heart dropped at the feet of Mary! It is the commencement of
the litany of Maria Immaculata, chanted by the nuns in choir, and
responded to by the crowds that fill the chapel without. Light and
music are the two ideas of which Dante's Paradise is composed; and
I felt with what true poetic instinct, when kneeling before that
shrine of light, my ears listened to harmonies approaching those that
swell for ever before the throne of God! This struck me from the
first; and I have since found my thoughts expressed by another far
better than I could express them. Leigh Hunt says: "It is impossible
to see this profusion of lights, especially when one knows their
symbolical meaning, without being struck with the source from which
Dante took his idea of the beatified spirits. His heaven, filled with
lights, and lights, too, arranged in figures, which glow with lustre
in proportion to the beatitude of the souls within them, is the
sublimation of a Catholic church. And so far it is heavenly indeed;
for nothing escapes the look of materiality like fire. It is so airy,
joyous, and divine a thing, when separated from the idea of pain and
an ill purpose, that the language of happiness naturally adopts its
terms, and can tell of nothing more rapturous than burning bosoms and
sparkling eyes. The seraph of the Hebrew theology was a fire."
* * * * *
_Christmas._--Yesterday was spent in retreat, by way of preparing our
hearts for the solemnities of the nativity; and I have kept a real
old-fashioned vigil--a vigil of the middle ages. I wish you could
have heard the joyful ring of all the bells of the city as midnight
approached. At the cathedral, the clear tones of the smaller bells,
like the voices of nuns in choir, and the great Bourdon among them,
"like the chanting of a friar," as Longfellow says; the _carillon_,
too, from St. Pierre; and then all the convent bells sounding from
Carmel, the Oratory, the Filles de Marie, and La Miséricorde, and
those of the Hospital, Le Grand Séminaire, etc., etc., are infinitely
impressive in the stillness of the night--the prelude of a great joy,
breaking in upon our meditation on the birth of Christ. When the
bells were all hushed, the priest stood at the foot of the blazing
altar; all the rest of the chapel was in darkness--not a taper in the
choir. There was not a sound but the night wind. The saints on the
walls, half revealed in their dim recesses, looked like the spirits
of the old monks come forth at this mystic hour to guard the chapel
their hands once raised.
It was the second time I ever communicated at midnight mass, and
I imagined my heart the manger in which the Infant Jesus came
to repose. I thought, as I returned from the holy table to my
_prie-dieu_, of the first tears of the Divine Babe, and that he
bewailed my continued imperfections. "Ah! why should not thy tears,"
I exclaimed, "wash away my sins, that thou be not forced to shed
also thy most precious blood! I, too, weep. I, who deserve to weep,
join my tears to thine. O Virgin Mother! take back thy child! His
presence makes me an object of horror to myself. His tears scald my
very heart. His caresses are like arrows that pierce my soul. Thou
alone canst console him; only clean hands and a pure heart should
embrace spotless innocence. My spiritual vision is too weak to bear
the Orient from on high. Yes, Mary, thou alone canst console him; for
thou art immaculate. Embrace him for me--those hands and feet which
will be pierced for me; and wipe away the tears that have commenced
to flow but too soon."
"Oh! blissful and calm was the wondrous rest
That thou gavest thy God in thy virginal breast.
For the heaven he left he found heaven in thee;
And he shone in thy shining, sweet Star of the sea!"
After hearing three masses, we went to visit the manger. A kind of
tent had been erected in the upper choir. In it was a statue of St.
Joseph, the Blessed Virgin, an ox, an ass, and in the centre on the
straw lay the new-born Infant with its little arms outstretched.
Above hovered the angels. Though rudely cast, their effect was good
in the dim light. We knelt around, and the novices sang out joyfully
a Christmas carol, the chorus of which was "_Jésus est né!_"--Christ
is born! All this gave a certain vividness to the festival which it
never had before; and I enjoyed it much. True, our manger is too
homely to bear the criticisms of the scoffer. St. Joseph, for a
carpenter, is rather gaudily dressed out in a scarlet robe, purple
mantle, ruffle-bosomed shirt, with a breast-pin; and the Virgin
hardly does credit to her reputation for beauty and grace; but the
eye of faith looks beyond and reads only the lesson of child-like
simplicity and humility--nowhere so well learned as at Bethlehem.
"I adore thee, O Infant Jesus! naked, weeping, and lying in the
manger. Thy childhood and poverty are become my delight. Oh! that
I could be thus poor, thus a child like thee. O eternal wisdom!
reduced to the condition of a little babe, take from me the vanity
and presumptuousness of human wisdom! Make me a child with thee.
Be silent, ye teachers and sages of the earth! I wish to know
nothing but to be resigned, to be willing to suffer, to lose
and forsake all, to be all faith! The Word made Flesh! now _is_
silent, now has an imperfect utterance, now weeps as a child! And
shall I set up for being wise? Shall I take a complacency in my
own schemes and systems? Shall I be afraid lest the world should
not have an opinion high enough of my capacity? No, no; all my
pleasure shall be to _decrease_--to become little and obscure, to
live in silence, to bear the reproach of Jesus crucified, and to
add thereto the helplessness and imperfect utterance of Jesus, a
child."[22]
The manger remains till Epiphany. It is gotten up by the scholars,
who delight in it, especially the younger ones, who go to present
the Infant Jesus with fruit, nuts, _bonbons_, money, and whatever
their childish hearts suggest. These things are for the Holy Infant
in the person of poor children among whom they are distributed, that
they too may have some pleasure at Christmas-tide. I find it a pretty
custom, as well as beneficial; for piety should not all evaporate in
sentiment, but, even in children, ought to be embodied in some good
deed, or prompt to some act of self-denial. The children of France
take much pleasure in making little sacrifices of pocket-money (not
in the spirit of Mrs. Pardiggle's unfortunate children!) for the
association of the _Sainte Enfance_, the funds of which are destined
to rescue hundreds of little children, who are exposed to death in
China by their parents, and even to buy those who are exposed for
sale, that they may be reared as Christians. Last year, four hundred
thousand children were thus baptized--an angelic work, worthy of
young and pure hearts. Our scholars embroider collars and do a
variety of fancy work for a fair among themselves, by which they
amass quite a sum in the course of the year. The French children
are exceedingly volatile, but there is a great deal of piety among
them. During Passion-time a little girl of nine or ten, belonging to
the poor scholars, undertook to meditate fifteen minutes a day, for
a certain number of days, on the sufferings of Christ. One of the
nuns asked her how she employed the time, so long for a child. She
replied, _naïvement_, "I thought each thorn that pierced the head of
Christ was one of my sins!"
After our nocturnal devotions, we novices returned to the novitiate,
where the Yule log was blazing. By way of a rarity, we all had coffee
to refresh us after our vigil, and we sat around the fire chatting in
a home-like manner, and repeating Christmas carols.
"He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall;
He neither shall be rocked
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle
That rocks upon the mould."
In the country, on Christmas eve, the young peasants go about from
house to house, singing Christmas carols, expecting some treat in
return.
I saw to-day a little picture of the Child Jesus making crosses in
the work-shop of his foster-father. Perhaps it was one of these that
the poets tell us the little St. John contended for:
"Give me the cross, I pray you, dearest Jesus!
Oh! if you knew how much I wish to have it,
You would not hold it in your hand so tightly.
Something has told me, something in my breast here,
Which I am sure is true, that if you keep it,
If you will let no other take it from you,
Terrible things I cannot bear to think of
Must fall upon you. Show me that you love me;
Am I not here to be your little servant,
Follow your steps and wait upon your wishes?"
At four o'clock in the morning we returned to the choir. I stationed
myself before the manger to make my meditation on the mystery of the
day. Of course Christmas is not very merry after such a vigil, but
who can tell the holy joy of such a night--worth all the gayeties of
the world!
FOOTNOTE:
[22] Fénélon.
* * * * *
I read in the refectory for the first time to-day. When I returned to
the novitiate after my dinner the good mother said, "You have read so
well, you merit a recompense." I glanced at the mantel and saw the
American stamps with the benign faces of Washington and Franklin, so
welcome in this far-off land....
I hope you will never speak of burdening me with an account of your
infirmities, whether bodily or spiritual. I love that loving command
of the apostle, to bear one another's burdens; for we are never more
Christ-like than when we forget our own trials to bind up the wounds
of a fellow-sufferer. Be assured I pray for you without ceasing. I
never enter the presence of the Blessed Sacrament without invoking
a blessing on you and on my dear country. I never communicate or
perform an act of penance without desiring that you may participate
in the grace I receive. Oh! that by my fidelity to God I might draw
down the blessings I daily implore for you and for all who are dear
to me! O my God! spare me not. Let _me_ suffer mental and bodily
trials, let _me_ be the victim of thy justice; but spare my loved
ones! If I cannot labor _directly_ for thee, I can at least suffer
for thee, for them, and for the whole world. Thy victim, O God! thy
victim. The name befits me better than that of thy spouse.
* * * * *
I have read somewhere that the ropes in the English navy are so
twisted that a red thread runs through them all, in such a way that
the smallest pieces may be recognized as belonging to the crown. So
through our lives should run a thread, coloring its whole woof--a
love for God interwoven with the very thread of existence, and
inspiring every act of our lives. St. Francis de Sales said if he
knew that the least fibre of his heart did not beat with love for God
he would pluck it out. O love that transcends all others! how did
we once exist without thee? O days without a sun! O nights rayless
and dark! how happy are we who have escaped from your gloom! How
different is the divine friend from our earthly one. When once we
have studied a person and penetrated his individuality, the charm of
his presence is gone. We have squeezed him dry. But the friend that
sticketh closer than a brother, he is unfathomable and ever new. The
heart is never weary of divine companionship. On the contrary, the
more completely we give ourselves up to it, to the exclusion of every
other, the more we feel that _God alone_ can satisfy the cravings of
our hearts.
_Dieu seul_ was the device a holy American bishop gave me on the
day of my confirmation. The signification of these words has been
growing upon me ever since. They have expanded till they have filled
the whole heavens, and lit up my life with wondrous splendor. There
is no spot on my horizon where they do not shine out. Every object
unmarked by them seems to fade out of view. All knowledge, all
science grows pale before their significance, and every wound of the
heart finds a balm in their healing ray. "_Paix! paix!_ DIEU SEUL
_est la paix_!" says Fénélon.
* * * * *
_February._--The day on which Pius IX. added the crowning star of
immaculate purity to the coronet of Mary was the cause of great
rejoicing throughout France. All the principal cities have been
illuminated. At Toulouse, the sides and roof of St. Saturnin's
cathedral were covered with lights, and another church had fifteen
thousand lamps upon it. Ours was not least among the cities in her
joy, and it did the soul good to witness such a display of Catholic
piety and enthusiasm, worthy of the ages of faith. As soon as the
bull of promulgation arrived from Rome, Monseigneur ordered the _Te
Deum_ to be chanted with the utmost pomp in all the churches of the
diocese. The same evening the whole city was illuminated. Nothing had
been seen like it since the visit of Napoleon I. to this city. At
the grand portal of the priory were several hundred lamps, forming
a monogram of Mary, over a beautiful transparency of the _Vierge
Immaculée_. The belfry, tower, and all the windows of this immense
establishment were lighted up, and many windows were like chapels of
the Virgin all aflame. The top of the convent walls was one long line
of light, so closely were the lamps placed upon it. Pennons with the
colors of the Virgin were placed at uniform distances among these
lights, and one floated from the stone cross on the chapel. The whole
scene was magical. From the tower we could see much of the city,
which was so universally illuminated and adorned that it looked like
that city of jewels
"In fairy land whose streets and towers
Are made of gems, and lights, and flowers."
All was so still that no one would have suspected the intense
enthusiasm that reigned in every heart. Only from before a little
statue of the Madonna, in the convent garden, rose a sweet song to
the Virgin, Ave Sanctissima! which floated up through the damp night
air from the lips of the spouses of Christ with a sound as plaintive
as the voice of past times.
Even the poorest people in the city--and you know not how poor are
the poorest in this old country--had their candles and a picture
of the Virgin at the window. One poor woman begged enough to buy a
wax candle, which she cut in three pieces to light up her wretched
abode. The towers of the cathedral looked like the jewelled turrets
of Irim. All the public buildings were also lighted up. I wonder
when the civil authorities of the United States will order a general
illumination in honor of the Virgin Mary! On the top of the hospital
was a _Vierge en feu_. Even one window of the prison tower, which
looms up behind the cathedral--a huge quadrangular monument, dark and
forbidding as a donjon keep of ages past--was brilliant with lights,
while far up in the very highest window gleamed one bright solitary
lamp, like the last ray of hope in the heart of the captive. That
light pierced me to the heart.
And all this in honor of a once obscure virgin of Judea. One can well
sing "_Exaltavit humiles_." In the streets were arches of triumph,
and at most of the windows were Madonnas, crosses, monograms, flags,
etc., etc. The streets were crowded with people as on Holy Thursday,
for every body went to visit the different churches and monasteries,
and thousands came in from the country. But all were so quiet and
thoughtful that one felt it was a religious festival. The _Rue du
Prieuré_ was crammed, but so subdued were the voices that we should
hardly have been aware of it, had we not seen the people from the
grated windows above. Such thoughtfulness was truly edifying.
* * * * *
Holy Week has just passed again with its touching ceremonies, which
recall so many overwhelming mysteries of faith. What a feast for the
soul on Maunday Thursday, when the Divine Host remained all day and
night on the altar amid a blaze of lights, and the perfume of flowers
and incense, exposed to the eyes of his adorers! Who could tear
himself away from that altar? Who could hunger after earthly aliment
when that Living Bread was replenishing the hungry soul? Ah! what are
the pleasures of the world compared with those found in thy presence,
O Incarnate Word! I read the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel,
those tender words of our Saviour before his crucifixion, and
meditated on them for hours.
Many of the nuns remained all night before the Blessed Sacrament. We
novices made the holy hour together--that midnight hour of union with
the Saviour's agony in the garden. "Couldst thou not watch one hour
with me," he seemed to say. Such an hour is an eternity for the heart
that loves.
"O God!" I say constantly, "the Catholic Church alone knows how to
honor thee with due worship." I wish I could define all the emotions
of the past few days, when the sufferings of Christ were renewed in
our hearts. I thought my very heart would break on Holy Thursday
during the _Stabat Mater_. The words and the music are the very
embodiment of sorrow, and I felt myself with Mary at the foot of the
cross, sharing the pain from that sword of grief.
The ceremonies of this holy time are, of course, far more simple in
our chapel than at the cathedral, but perhaps not less touching.
Nothing could be more so than, at the veneration of the cross on
Good Friday, to see the long train of nuns reverently lay off their
shoes, and, all enveloped in their long black veils, and bowed down
by sorrow of heart, approach the crucifix, prostrating themselves
to kiss the sacred wounds; and then the three hours agony, when the
heart is full of anguish on Calvary.... Several of us remained a part
of Good Friday night to grieve with _Marie désolée_ over the traces
of her crucified Son. There is a whole existence in such days and
nights, and when we come back to ordinary life we are oppressed by
the heaviness of the atmosphere.
"How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?"
Our whole Lent was uncommonly solemn. I never entered so fully into
the spirit of the church, never meditated so much on the sufferings
of Christ. They so occupied my mind during the hours of meditation,
the _via crucis_, which we make so often, and even during the
ordinary duties of our life, that I felt bowed down by a weight of
inexpressible sorrow, which the alleluias of Easter and the joyful
"_Regina Coeli lætare_" have hardly dissipated. Oh! why are you not
sharing all these impressions? But then you have what perhaps is
better--the cross, which is our portion everywhere. "_Souffrir et
mourir, c'est toute la vie._"
I was struck with a little picture I saw to-day: the picture of a
cross with cords extending from one of the arms to the foot, like a
harp. A person stands leaning on it, his hands touching the strings;
and our Saviour was near him; his holy hands uplifted to bless.
Every cross would thus be to us a divine lyre with a capability of
wonderful harmony, had we the courage to learn to draw it forth. May
my hand yet acquire the skill of producing this heavenly music, my
ears quick to catch the vibrations of this wonderful instrument, and
my soul attuned to its harmony! O wonderful science of the cross! how
varied are the lessons the loving heart may learn therefrom. When St.
Thomas of Aquin was asked whence he drew the inspiration that fed his
wonderful genius, he pointed to his crucifix as its only source. Ah!
could we only learn to know "Jesus Christ and him crucified!" May you
have the grace to bear your cross with patience, and learn therefrom
its wonderful lore. The cross imposed by Almighty God is far more
meritorious, far more beneficial to our souls, than any of our own
choice; for he alone knows how to crucify. I constantly feel this
more and more, that _he alone_ knows how to crucify.
* * * * *
_May 11._--This is one of the Rogation days. Curé and flock go in
procession around the country chanting the Litany of the Saints to
implore the blessing of God on the fruits of the earth. At these
times the _propriétaires_ erect huge crosses on their land by the
highway, adorn them with garlands, and place at the foot an offering
for the curé, perhaps of provisions. The procession passes from one
cross to another. All kneel around the emblem of our salvation to beg
the divine blessing on the basket and store of him who erected it. It
is a beautiful ceremony, at which the peasantry assist with great
faith and devotion. It is an expression of dependence on the Giver of
all good for every blessing.
Thursday will be the feast of the Ascension. The paschal candle, in
whose sacred light we have loved to linger since Easter, is again
to be extinguished, and the ten succeeding days we are to pass in
retreat and prayer, like the disciples in the upper chamber awaiting
the feast of Pentecost.
* * * * *
_June._--Yesterday I had been writing for some time in my cell,
when I heard an unusual bustle of nuns going to and fro in the long
corridors, as if something had happened. Going to the window, I
saw the river had risen to an alarming height. An inundation was
expected, owing to the sudden melting of snow in the Pyrenees.
We all went to clear the chapel. A priest came to transport the
blessed sacrament to the upper choir. The _quais_ were crowded with
spectators, and the _gendarmes_ were among them keeping order.
Masseube is said to be under water. Several of the nuns watched all
night. This morning less danger is apprehended, though the river is
very high, and the water is coming into the chapel. "_Le bon Dieu
est irrité contre nous_," say the nuns, as they tell their beads to
deprecate the wrath of Heaven. Every thing is depressing to-day. Dark
clouds hang over us heavy with rain. The cathedral bell is tolling
for some funeral. The trees seem to shiver in the winds that come
cold from the snowy Pyrenees. And the dying-away tones of some chant
afar off is the very voice of sorrow, and only adds to the impressive
gloom.
* * * * *
On Trinity Sunday, the whole country was inundated in the valleys
of the Garonne, the Adour, and the Gers, causing an immense loss
of property. Such a flood has not been known for a hundred years.
Some villages are nearly destroyed, many lives lost, the produce of
the farms all washed away, and the meadows nearly ruined. The whole
country was in consternation. As we are on the banks of the river,
we are sufferers of course. It was fortunate we had the precaution
to have the blessed sacrament transported to the upper choir, as the
next morning there were six or eight feet of water in the chapel,
lower choir, and sacristy. It was pitiful to look down from the upper
choir on the sanctuary. Notre Dame de Bon Secours was washed down
from her niche into the middle of the church, and lay floating on the
water flat on her back. The garden was overflowed and nearly ruined;
the kitchen, refectory, etc., were invaded. Most of the nuns were up
all night carrying things into the second story. All was confusion
for some days. We ate what we could and where we could in primitive
style--a complete subversion of monastic regularity. The weather
had been gloomy for days, but Sunday was one of the brightest,
clearest days of June. I went to the tower to see the whole valley
covered with water. The effect was fine. The vast expanse of water
was sparkling in the sun. The trees and groves were like islets in
the midst of a glittering lake. The rapid current swept oceanward,
carrying down houses, furniture, bridges--every thing that offered
resistance. Crowds of people were out, giving animation to the scene.
All this brilliancy was in striking contrast with the wretchedness
produced by such a flood! The air was so clear that the Pyrenees
seemed very near us, and they gleamed in their snow-clad summits
above the verdure and desolation and activity of the world, like the
Bride of Heaven in her veil of purity; but they looked cold and
cheerless even in the morning sun--and so near heaven!
At Condom, (a village not far off, and remarkable for nothing but
that Bossuet was its bishop before he was transferred to Meaux,
though he never saw the place,) at Condom more than thirty houses
were destroyed--a great number, considering that all the houses here
are of stone and very solidly built. Had not our monastery been on
a strong foundation, we should now be uncloistered. The chapel is
not yet dry, so we have mass still in the upper choir. We are thus
brought close to the feet of our Lord. During the office I stand
or kneel not two steps from the altar on which is the tabernacle.
What bliss! We seem more closely united to Him who is our life, our
consolation, our _all_, and for whom we have left all!
Having mass in the choir obliges the priest to enter the cloister
every morning, which seems strange, as ordinarily he never enters
except to administer the consolations of religion to the sick. The
cloister is very strict here. Our parlors have the blackest of
grates, beyond which no visitor comes, and through which we talk to
our friends. I love this barricade against the world, which says,
"Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." There is also a grating
in the sacristy through which the _sacristaine_ can attend to the
wants of the chaplain. Even the choir is separated from the chapel by
a grate; the body of the church being for the world.
* * * * *
Having a private opportunity of sending a package to America, I
shall despatch my note-book to you, all full of odds and ends as it
is. Caught up in my few spare moments, it only contains fragments
of what was in my heart. The young missionary who is to take it is
only twenty-five years old, and has just been ordained. He is full
of enthusiasm for the missionary life. He belongs to a noble family
in Auvergne, and is a relative of our dear Sr. St. A----'s. He is
the youngest of a patriarchal family of eighteen, six of whom are in
heaven. Of the remaining twelve, nine are consecrated to God--two are
Jesuits, two Visitandines, one a lady of the Sacred Heart, two devote
themselves to the care of the insane, and the ninth is in some other
order of charity. This young _père_ has been thirteen years with the
Jesuits, six as a pupil, and since as a member of the order. His
first mass was at Christmas, and was served by one of the children of
La Salette, to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared. The next day
his mission to America was assigned him. He seems full of zeal and
piety.[23]
I must close my long journal. It is a piece of my heart which I send
across the waters, while I remain here. Good-night, my friend. I
extend my arms across the wide ocean to embrace you. I never retire
to rest without throwing open my casement to look at "the cloistered
stars that walk the holy aisles of heaven." They alone are familiar
to me in this strange land. I have loved them from my infancy, and
I fancy they look down tenderly and tearfully upon me. The thought
brings tears to my eyes. Oh! shine as gently on those I love. Let
each bright beam be a holy inspiration in their hearts--each tearful
ray carry consolation to the soul troubled and in sorrow. A passage
from the German says, "I know but two beautiful things in the
universe--the starry sky above our heads and the sense of duty within
our hearts." I leave the one and return to the other.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] This priest has since died in a Southern diocese.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.
APPEAL TO YOUNG CHRISTIAN WOMEN.
BY MARIE DE GENTELLES.
BRIEF OF HIS HOLINESS PIUS IX.
PIUS IX. POPE, TO HIS BELOVED DAUGHTER IN CHRIST, MARIE DE GENTELLES:
Beloved daughter in Christ, grace and apostolic benediction.
In these days when the peril of souls is continually growing greater,
we have always directed our efforts particularly to the extirpation
of the roots of evil, among which not the least pernicious is female
extravagance. Hence, last October, when we spoke of the respect due
to the holiness of our churches and of certain disorders which had
begun to appear among the people of Rome, we took occasion to speak
likewise of this destructive pestilence which is spreading in every
direction, and of its remedies.
We were much pleased, therefore, to see, beloved daughter in Christ,
that you have not only followed our advice yourself; but, being
deeply impressed with its force and importance, have written a book
in which you depict the sad consequences of extravagance, and call
upon the women of the present day, and particularly those who belong
to the societies of the Christian Mothers and the Daughters of Mary,
to unite against this pernicious evil, which is so destructive to
morals and to the welfare of the family.
Female extravagance wastes, in superfluous adornment of the body, and
in frequent attention to the toilette, time which should be given to
works of piety and mercy, and to the care of the household; it calls
its votaries from home to brilliant assemblages, to public places,
and to theatres; it causes them, under pretext of complying with the
requirements of society, to pay numerous visits, and thus to waste
hours in news-seeking and in scandalous conversation; it attracts
sinful desire; it wastes the patrimony of children and deprives
poverty of needful assistance; frequently it separates those who are
married; more frequently, it prevents marriages, for there are but
few men who are willing to incur such heavy expenses. As Tertullian
wrote, "In a little casket of jewels women display an immense
fortune; they place on a single string of pearls ten millions of
sesterces; a slender neck upbears forests and islands; beautiful ears
expend the income of a month; and every finger of the left hand plays
with the contents of a bag of gold. Such is the strength of vanity;
for it is vanity that enables the delicate body of woman thus to walk
beneath the weight of enormous wealth." Experience shows that this
aversion to marriage fosters and increases immorality. In the family,
it is almost impossible in the midst of so many distracting vanities
to cultivate domestic love by means of domestic intercourse, or to
give to religion even what ordinary custom requires.
The education of children is neglected, household affairs do not
receive proper attention and fall into disorder, and the words of the
apostle become applicable, "If any one have not care of his own, and
especially of those of his household, he hath denied the faith, and
is worse than an infidel."
As a city is composed of families, and a province of cities, and a
country of provinces, the family thus vitiated disorders the whole
of society, and step by step brings upon us those calamities which
to-day we behold on every side.
We trust, therefore, that many will unite with you to remove from
themselves, their families, and their fatherland the cause of so
many evils. We trust, also, that their example will induce others
to lay aside whatever goes beyond the just limits of neatness. Oh!
that women would believe that the esteem and love of their husbands
is to be won, not by magnificent dress or costly adornments, but by
cultivation of the mind and of the heart and of every virtue. For
the glory of woman is from within, and she that is holy and modest
is grace added unto grace, and she alone shall receive praise who
feareth the Lord.
We trust and believe, therefore, that your undertaking will meet with
the happiest success. As a presage of which, and a pledge of our
paternal good will, with the tenderest affection, we impart to you
our apostolic benediction.
Given in Rome, at St. Peter's, on the eighth day of July, 1868, in
the twenty-third year of our pontificate.
PIUS IX. _Pope_.
On occasions rendered doubly solemn by their infrequency, the
common father of the faithful raises his voice to warn the entire
world either against abuses which threaten society, or against
those perverse doctrines which would attempt the annihilation of
the kingdom of truth. These sacred words, coming from the lips of
him to whom Jesus Christ has entrusted the care of his church, are
always received by the whole of the immense Catholic family with that
respect and submission which are due to a father.
A few months ago, Pius IX. suggested the establishment of a society
of ladies who by their example and influence might succeed in
moderating that extravagance which is the ruin of families, and one
of the principal causes of immorality. "In order to accomplish this
most difficult undertaking," adds his Holiness, "we must remind
women that if in every place it is unbecoming modesty to endeavor
to attract attention by extravagance and strangeness of dress, in
the sacred church where God dwells and sits upon a throne of mercy
to receive the prayers and adorations of the faithful, it is a true
insult to him in whose eyes pride, pomp, and the desire of pleasing
men are hateful."
These words of the Holy See, we may rest assured, are more applicable
to us women of France than to the ladies of the Roman nobility, who
are more grave, more pious, and more reserved, whatever may be said
to the contrary, than the women of our land.
When travelling through England, Germany, or Russia, have we not
sometimes felt a foolish pride on seeing that everywhere the most
elegant robes and head-dresses were styled "modes de Paris." It is
true that whatever in dress is new or elegant is imported from the
capital of France, or is made after our Paris fashions. But we have
no reason to be proud of this frivolous and dangerous supremacy; for
if it is universally said that the French woman is truly elegant in
matters of dress, we should, for that reason, feel under obligation
to undertake the reform of an abuse which we aid if we do not
originate.
Already, for several years, not only has the Catholic pulpit spoken
with serious severity against the extravagance of our sex, but even
the government has been aroused by these abuses which are every day
producing the most evil results; and we have not forgotten the severe
words of President Dupin to the Senate in June, 1865. To-day, things
have assumed a still graver aspect, for the Holy Father has called
our attention to this deplorable abuse.
The time, then, has come to undertake a crusade, as it were, against
an enemy whom we shall not have to cross the seas to seek, because he
has cunningly penetrated to our firesides, there to sit beside us and
to disturb and destroy the peace of the family.
This necessary reform must be inaugurated by the young women of
France; those of a mature age will encourage and aid our efforts;
but it will be for us who cannot be accused of envy or of jealousy
to raise aloft the standard of the holy league, to put limits to
extravagance, and to say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther."
Extravagance in dress, and the point it has at present attained, is
simply ridiculous folly, and at the same time, what is more to be
lamented, it is in direct opposition to the spirit of Christianity.
We are thinking creatures, rational and intelligent. It is evident,
and there are those of our sex who have proved that we are capable of
feeling the noble joy which is found in the study of literature and
the sciences, and in the cultivation of the arts. How comes it, then,
that we are content with those frivolous occupations in which most of
us squander our time?
To rise as late as possible, to make some calls, to drive to the Bois
de Boulogne, to visit some fashion emporiums, to consult for whole
hours on the arrangement of a lace flounce or the trimming of a gauze
dress; to return home, dress for dinner; dress again for a soirée, a
concert, or a ball; to pass a number of hours in exhibiting our own
toilettes and in finding fault with those of others, and, finally,
to retire to rest when the sun is on the point of rising--frankly,
is not this the history of day after day? When do we take a book
into our hands, unless perhaps it be some new romance, of which the
style is as frivolous as the matter is pernicious. But a book, a true
book, can one be seen on the table of our boudoirs? Some journals of
fashion may be there; a review perhaps, cut only where some romantic
story is found. What care we for the rest? As to standard literary
works, and historical studies, how can we think of them?
We never have a moment to ourselves, and we often say with an
affected sigh, "Alas! the world is a cruel tyrant; it takes up all
my time, my days, my nights." And we might add, "My life and my
intelligence;" for are not many among us what Tertullian would style
"gilded nullities"?
While I was still a child, I happened to meet with a charming young
woman, twenty-two years of age, who, on recovering from an illness
which had nearly proved fatal, was seized with a singular mania. She
used to play with dolls.... Isabel had remained very gentle. Her
friends at first endeavored to drive away this unaccountable mania;
but as soon as they took her dolls from her, she seated herself in a
corner of the apartment, wept, refused all nourishment, and would not
speak.
In accordance with the advice of physicians, her family had then
yielded to her childish tastes, and she passed her whole time in
dressing and undressing her daughters, as she called the dolls.
Nothing could be more pitiful than to see this tall, beautiful girl,
surrounded by her toys, and amusing herself like a child of six years.
Well! do we not resemble poor Isabel somewhat, and, like her, would
we not be capable of weeping and giving ourselves up to despair if
our playthings were taken from us?
Oh! yes, insanity, real insanity, is that foolish extravagance which
consists in a constant changing of the shape, material, and pattern
of our clothing. And is not insanity a stranger to wisdom?
To be wise is to give to each object in life that place which
reasonably belongs to it. It is to have for all our actions a special
and determined end. If we see a man devoting his whole time, his
fortune, his researches, to the formation of some strange and perhaps
eccentric collection--of shoes, for instance, from every country--we
smile and say to one another, "He is out of his senses!" Out of
his senses! and why? Is it because he has but one thought, but one
ambition--to augment, to increase his collection at any price? We are
more foolish than this collector of old shoes, for many of us have
but one fixed thought, one only desire, dare I acknowledge it, one
sole aim in life--to adorn ourselves! And no collection will remain
after us.
We might attempt to acquire an honorable position in society by our
virtues, or by the superiority of our minds; but we merely desire
to attract attention by the extravagance of our dress, to cause
ourselves to be remarked and admired, and if possible, to humble
our rivals. Do not think I exaggerate, because such is really the
case, with an infinite variety of shades; for in every woman whose
exclusive occupation is the toilette, there inevitably exist a desire
to please and jealousy. You enter a parlor in the evening wearing a
new robe, (and when you go into company your toilettes are always
new, since you never appear twice in the same dress;) well! you are
not satisfied until you observe some admiring glances directed toward
you, until you perceive some expressions of annoyance and envy on the
countenances of the young women who surround you. Having returned to
your homes, what occupation precedes your sleep? What interrupts,
what destroys it? You think over in your mind all the ladies you
met at the ball; and if one of them had a dress more beautiful than
yours, flowers more gracefully arranged, or diamonds more sparkling,
you are discontented. You are _jealous_. Then what plans you make not
to be eclipsed another time, but to be the most beautiful. It is not
enough that we are admired; our happiness is in reigning alone.
We often shelter ourselves behind this singular excuse, "I do not
wish that my husband should be ashamed of me. I endeavor to present a
fine appearance, but it is entirely for his sake."
If we would occasionally condescend to ask the advice of our
_masters_, if we would do so particularly with our dry-goods or
millinery bills in our hands, I think they would be more likely
to advise simplicity in our toilettes than to express themselves
satisfied with their extravagant elegance. Now frankly, do you
believe these gentlemen so simple as to desire that every glance may
be directed to the dress of their young wife, or to the garland of
flowers which adorns her hair?
I was present one day, in the house of a friend, at an amusing
contradiction given to assertions of this sort.
Madame de G----, assisted by her maid, was trying on a rose-colored
satin dress which had just been sent home from the dressmaker's, and
which she was to wear at a grand official ball the same evening.
She turned round and round before the mirror of the room, and her
immense trail appeared to her much too short. What distressed her
particularly was that the corsage was not _low enough_. I asked in
astonishment how low she wanted it.
"Mariette," said she to her maid, "this must be cut several inches
lower all round."
And turning to me, "My husband does not like such high-necked
dresses," she said.
While the lady was occupied with some other detail of her charming
toilette, the door opened and the husband to whom she so generously
sacrificed the requirements of modesty entered. He examined his
wife's toilette. He had the right to do so, since he would have to
pay for it. He thought the rose color a little too lively, the trail
a little too long, and, above all, the corsage much, very much too
low.
"My dear child," said he, "your dressmaker is incorrigible; she has
not the least judgment; you must procure another. You cannot appear
in company so uncovered. Arrange matters as best you can, but this
dress must be altered."
"Why! every one dresses this way. Is it my fault if you do not
understand these things, Adrian? However, I shall not contradict you.
I will have a puff of tulle put around the corsage. It is going to
make the dress horribly high, and all its style will be lost."
Such is the opinion of a husband, heard by chance; it is what is
sometimes said and what is always thought.
Let us then appeal to the husbands!
Undoubtedly, to clothe one's self is a necessity; to make her
garments becoming is, I might almost say, woman's marriage portion;
and I would not dare to assert that our ancestors, the Gauls, did not
seek and discover the means of wearing in a graceful manner the skins
of wild animals which protected them from the inclemencies of the
seasons, just as the women of the present day have learned to clothe
themselves with elegance in the rich fabrics of India or in clouds of
exquisite lace.
But between the former and the latter what a distance! What a broad
gulf!
There is something peculiar to the toilettes of the present
century; a desire for unceasing change which exceeds the bounds of
eccentricity and even of extravagance. The Greek wife or Roman matron
desired but one thing--garments which would enhance their beauty.
Undoubtedly they admired rich and costly goods; but I do not believe
that the day after they had imported, at a great expense, robes of
the finest linen or silken tunics of brilliant colors, they would
declare that fashion would not permit a garment so cut or a head
dress arranged in such a manner.
And without going back so far, what would our ancestors of two
centuries ago say, if they saw the decided repugnance we feel to
appearing twice in society with the same toilette?
Their dresses, so rich, so graceful, so sparingly adorned, were
handed down almost from generation to generation; and surely those
celebrated women of the eighteenth century were not less beautiful
than we, as their admirable portraits which adorn our parlors clearly
show. I lately saw three pictures of the same marchioness, taken at
different periods of life--as a very young woman, at thirty-five or
forty years of age, and at a more advanced period of life; and I
found her in the three portraits wearing the same robe of brocade,
only the rose-colored ribbon which adorned her hair and her corsage
in the first two pictures had been replaced in the third by a bow of
a more sombre color.
How astonished would those ladies of the court of Louis XIV. have
been, if it had been predicted that their great-grand-daughters
would change the style of their apparel or the dimensions of their
head-dresses every year, and that a hundred different publications
would carry every week from one end of France to the other the
inventions, more or less happy, more or less singular, of some
fashion-maker of the capital. For let us remark, and it is a
sufficiently striking fact, that in the continual changes of fashion
we who at times find it so difficult to yield our wishes to those of
a husband whom we have sworn before the altar to obey, are always
ready to yield obedience to a milliner or a mantua-maker, whose only
desire is to sell their goods. And in truth they succeed in doing
this very well. Have you never remarked a very curious circumstance,
and one which deserves to be related in the history of the costumes
of the nineteenth century? To-day, fashion passes from one extreme
to another, so that what was worn last year is not permitted this
year. And now do you understand this apparently strange custom?
A robe is graceful in style and trimming; it is very becoming to
you; the color harmonizes well with your complexion and your hair;
your mirror has told you so. The fashion changes; your face, your
style of beauty, if beauty you possess, remain the same; yet you
do not hesitate to discard your becoming attire for something so
ridiculous, so extravagant, so frightful perhaps, as to make you
appear ungraceful or even ugly; but you have obeyed the mandates of
fashion. Certainly the extravagances and caprices of the present day
amply prove the truth of what I have said.
Even if past forty, we will wear short dresses, round hats, curls,
and high-heeled boots. Even if tall and slender, no one will wear
narrower skirts. Even if possessed of a full rounded form which we
vainly deplore, we will pick out white corsages, light dresses, and
the smallest of hats, because our greatest, or rather our only,
fear is lest people should say that we wear things which are out of
fashion.
Fashion! Let us throw off its shameful yoke. Instead of accepting,
let us make its laws. This is reasonable ambition. Why not form a
committee, and every year, or at the beginning of every season, pass
judgment on the important question of the transformation of our
toilettes? Why not submit the laws made by this female assembly to
a committee composed of our husbands; and finally, promulgate and
introduce them to the notice of all whom they concern by a special
and duly authorized publication?
I commend this project to the serious consideration of our young
women. All will admit that it would be less humiliating for us to
submit to the dictates of fashion under such, than under present
circumstances.
Clothing has a twofold end: to cover us and protect us from the
inclemencies of the seasons, to supply the place of the beautiful fur
or the brilliant plumage which forms the natural covering of beasts
and birds. I will return later to the question of woman's clothing
considered in a religious and moral point of view. At present, I
shall treat of it only as it regards health. Do our dresses cover us?
By a strange reversion of common _sense_, it is during the severity
of winter we most willingly expose our arms and necks. You smile?
The parlors are warm. But are our carriages, are the streets of
our large cities? You would shudder if I should present to you the
frightful statistics of the young women who have fallen victims to
such imprudences. Every religion has its martyrs. Do you wish to be
martyrs to fashion?
The second end of our apparel is to indicate the respective positions
of persons in society. Thus, the Roman senators had the privilege of
wearing the white tunic ornamented with purple. So also, in our own
time, the uniform of the army reveals at a glance the rank of the
wearer. Alas! in this respect, of how much use is it to us at the
present day? The sumptuary laws, the edicts of Louis XIII. and Louis
XIV., are entirely forgotten.
There was a time when each class of society had its special dress.
Furs, silk, gold, and silver could be worn only by persons of a
certain rank in society. What a frightful revolution would break
forth among the women of France if to-day the ruling sovereign should
attempt to regulate the width of our laces or the number of our
jewels! In the present age extravagance tends, on the contrary, to
confound all ranks of society. From the servant girl to the fine
lady there is but one desire, one ambition--to appear what one is
not. Yes, to appear what one is not; let us acknowledge it to our
shame. Is not the fashion of our garments imitated, often invented by
women to whom we would not speak? And around the lake of the Bois de
Boulogne have we not sometimes mistaken the Marchioness de ---- for
Mlle. X----, or Mlle. Z---- for the Countess de ----?
I feel rather ashamed to mention such things; but addressing my own
sex, it is allowable; the truth is often severe; but it is always
useful. I saw a lovely young woman in a saloon one evening covered
with confusion at these few words addressed to her by the Ambassador
de ----.
"I admired exceedingly, madame, that elegant yellow dress you wore
this afternoon in the park."
"I!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "My dear count, you are mistaken.
I was in blue, and the yellow dress was worn by ----."
"You are right. But pardon my mistake; both ladies wore the same kind
of head-dress."
See to what our round hats, little bonnets, and red locks lead.
What folly to keep ourselves continually in a false position by our
extravagant outlays; to be reduced to have recourse to a thousand
petty means of freeing ourselves from the embarrassments in which our
love of dress has involved us.
To-day it is a lie.
"How much did this dress cost you?" asks a husband, a little uneasy
at the prodigality of his young wife.
"Two hundred francs," she replies without hesitation, while she is
fully aware that double or triple that amount would scarcely suffice
to pay for it.
And when the time arrives for paying these formidable bills, how
difficult to procure the thousands of francs represented by a few
yards of lace or faded silk. How we stoop from the rightful dignity
of our position when we condescend to beg for time and favor of a
tradesman, or dressmaker, or milliner, after confessing that we have
not the necessary sum at our disposal.
In a certain city that I could name a linen-draper had sold goods
on credit to a young woman to the amount of forty thousand francs.
Fearing that she would never pay him, he sacrificed the interest and
accepted this singular promissory note: "To receive from my estate
forty thousand francs." The lady's heirs will find her elegant
dresses and fine laces rather costly.
O folly, folly! Our lives pass away amidst such trifles. We are
seeking happiness; it is here at our hands. We could not only be
happy in the bosom of our families by fulfilling our duties, but we
could, moreover, render those around us happy. We foolishly prefer
to cast aside these true enjoyments and fill up our lives with empty
appearances of pleasure.
We forget how swiftly time flies. To-day we are young, and the world
welcomes us; but our bloom, our beauty, which to us is every thing,
will soon fade; it will vanish, and what is more melancholy than old
age for many women? To know how to grow old,... it is knowledge which
the wise alone possess.
The Holy Scripture, in addressing the daughters of Sion, pictures
with striking truth the kind of punishment which God reserves for
them. The Holy Spirit adopts, in some measure, the language of the
worldly woman herself, and it seems to me that these words might be
addressed to each one of us:
"Because the daughters of Sion are haughty, and have walked with
stretched-out necks, and wanton glances of their eyes, and made a
noise as they walked with their feet, and moved in a set pace:
"The Lord will make bald the crown of the head of the daughters of
Sion, and the Lord will discover their hair.
"In that day the Lord will take away the ornaments of shoes, and
little moons,
"And chains and necklaces, and bracelets, and bonnets,
"And bodkins, and ornaments of the legs, and tablets, and
sweet-balls, and ear-rings,
"And rings, and jewels hanging on the forehead.
"And changes of apparel, and short cloaks, and fine linen, and
crisping-pins.
"And looking-glasses, and lawns, and head-bands, and fine veils.
"And instead of a sweet smell there shall be stench, and instead
of a girdle a cord, and instead of curled hair baldness, and
instead of a stomacher hair-cloth."[24]
In these words we are threatened with old age; with that old age
which is daily drawing nearer; which awaits but the moment to seize
upon its prey; which makes the woman who leads a life of gayety that
which you well know.
Oh! those women who remain beautiful in spite of old age, with their
white hair, their wrinkles undisguised, their cultivated minds, and
their winning kindness. These are not the women who in earlier life
placed all their happiness in following, even to the most minute
details, the frivolities of fashion. I am, moreover, convinced that
if the woman of the world of twenty or thirty years ago was fond of
dress, she was far from devoting her whole time to it. Fashion was
not then so variable. The outlay for clothing was evidently a much
smaller item in the family expenses. In a word, if this folly was
sometimes seen, it was an isolated case.
In these latter days only has the contagion spread in an alarming
manner.
So much for the human side of the question. Permit me now to enter
into a more elevated circle of ideas, and to remark that hitherto I
have appealed neither to conscience nor to religion. I have addressed
myself to women of the world; I now turn to young Christian women; to
those whose tender years were watched over by pious mothers, whose
youth was formed by a truly religious education; to those whose lives
have not been blighted by any of those errors which banish a woman
from her position in society, but who, on the contrary, have remained
unsullied in the eyes of the world and have no cause to blush beneath
its gaze. Here I feel at my ease, since it is permitted me to make
use of the language of faith. This faith we still possess, but it
slumbers in the depths of our souls; undoubtedly it will awaken in
the hour of trial; the death of a darling child, a sudden change of
fortune; less than that even--a single deception may suffice, and
we shall feel that God is our father; and we shall see things in
their true light; that poisonous cloud which surrounds the woman of
the world will be instantly dispelled, and the mysteries of life
and death will be unfolded to our astonished gaze. But until that
time shall come, our life is consumed in a strange and dangerous
illusion. A few religious practices of which we have retained the
habit, perhaps because they were fashionable, make us believe, and
therefore cause others to believe, that we are still real Christians.
Meanwhile, carried away by the round of pleasure which we call
legitimate enjoyment, we live on, without troubling ourselves to
inquire whither we are hastening. Days follow days, years succeed
years; from time to time one among us is missing. God has called her
away; but we did not hear her last words; we did not see the despair
of that poor young woman when she found herself in the presence of
her Judge with her hands empty. And hence we continue in our mode
of life. Hours and days of weariness, of sadness occasionally steal
in upon our worldly lives. Some new pleasure claims us, and in its
presence past bitterness is soon forgotten. Thus are spent the best
years of our lives, lost--religiously speaking--lost for ever. Our
actions are useless, our thoughts frivolous, our existence devoid
of all merit. And yet ought not our constant aim be to secure the
happiness of our husband, and the salvation of his soul as well as of
our own? to bring up our children in a Christian manner, and to edify
the world by our example?
This point presents a fit subject for religious moralizing, which,
however, comes neither within my aim nor my ability. It is for
voices possessing greater authority than mine to treat of such grave
matters in a becoming manner. The ministers of the church, both by
preaching and the pen, have shown us our duties with a clearness and
a correctness before which we humbly bow. But as to a question of
detail, especially when, as at present, it concerns extravagance of
dress, I believe I am right in thinking that one of yourselves can,
better than any one else, treat a subject so distinctively pertaining
to woman.
Let me remark in the beginning that I wish to condemn in our toilette
nothing save what is contrary to propriety or modesty. I am not
opposed to crinoline, to trails, to diamonds, nor to rubies. Rose
color, blue, white, and black are alike to me. Whether linen, silk,
or wool serve by turn to cover us, is a matter of indifference.
Moreover, it is evident that woman, whatever her age or condition,
should endeavor to render her attire suitable and becoming. St.
Francis of Sales desires that a wife should adorn herself to please
her husband; and a maiden, with a view to a holy marriage.
The woman who betrays an absolute negligence in her toilette, who
would willingly appear in a torn dress or a faded bonnet, when her
position in society requires something better, is almost as much to
blame as those who spend their whole time in dressing and undressing.
That which we ought to possess, that which should regulate our dress,
as well as all our actions, is a clear comprehension of our duties.
We should appeal to our conscience, scrutinize our intentions and our
desires, and then regulate and reform wherever there is need.
We do not deny that this world is a place of pilgrimage, and life
a season of trials; that they are foolish indeed who think only of
culling flowers from the road-side while time flies and eternity
approaches. We often experience within ourselves a certain opposition
between our convictions and our conduct. Our life is not regulated as
it ought to be. It is not tending to its end, which is our eternal
salvation. We have acknowledged these truths when, on leaving
the church where we had listened to some celebrated preacher, we
confessed to ourselves that our mode of life was not sufficiently
serious, and that it ought to be reformed.
Strange to say, I feel, I see, many women in like manner feel and
see, that the love of dress, the importance we attach to every thing
connected with fashion, is the principal cause of the frivolity and
inutility of our lives. But there we stop. What! you will say, has
a ribbon, a flower, a piece of velvet or satin so great an influence
with us? Try, then, to maintain the contrary with your hand upon your
conscience, and you will see that I have not gone too far.
Much is said about woman's mission! It is constantly repeated that
the future of society depends on us. If we occasionally forget this,
we should certainly not suffer others to doubt it. We wish--and we
are right in doing so--we wish to occupy an important position in the
family and in society; we struggle vigorously against those who would
assign to us a secondary position; we boast that we exercise a great
influence over men. This idea flatters our self-love.
But let us not forget that this circumstance becomes for us a source
of strict obligations. Man is nurtured in our arms, and grows up
at our side. He is, we may say, whatever we make him. That primary
instruction which it is our duty to impart to him, exercises the
greatest influence on his after life. His mother! He will always
remember her, and her example, good or evil, will leave an indelible
impression on his soul. And our husbands, our fathers and brothers!
We know our power over them, and we sometimes use it in matters
which are not really worth all the diplomacy we employ. That mission
of mother, of wife! Have we forgotten that it is the end of our
life, the reason of our creation? God, who has established laws for
the material world, laws from which even a slight derogation would
produce a great catastrophe, has likewise marked out for each one of
us her place here below. He has not placed us in this world without a
definite end in view. Woman has serious duties to perform, of which
she must one day render a strict account to her Creator.
Have these duties, these obligations which our Lord has imposed upon
us, been hitherto our principal concern? Has our worldly life, with
its numerous preoccupations, left us time to be true wives and true
mothers? Alas! the world and its requirements take up all our time.
And yet the duties to which we are bound by this twofold title,
although differing with our different positions in the world, oblige
equally the wife of the mechanic, the merchant, the officer, and the
prince, before both God and society. Here, then, is the pith of this
question; it may be summed up in a single word: are we wives and
mothers, or are we merely women of the world?
Those children whom God has confided to our care, and of whom we
shall have to render an account, do we suppose that we have done our
duty toward them when we have procured tutors for them, or when we
have placed them in an academy?
How many among us, alas! find it difficult to see our children for
even a few minutes during the course of the day. We have not the
time to attend to them, we say. We have not the _time_! To whom
does our time belong, if not to these little ones who call upon us
by the sweet name of mother? Let us not plead our position. I know
women who mingle a great deal in society, who have a great number of
servants to be looked after, who yet manage their time so well that
they are enabled to spend the greater part of the day with their
children. They have hours set apart for conversing with them, for
informing themselves of their progress--in a word, for attending to
their education. These mothers are happy. The gratitude of their
young families, the affection which surrounds them, the sense of
duty performed--shall we dare compare these true and noble enjoyments
with the empty pleasures which the exhibition of a new dress or even
an eulogium passed on our beauty procures us? And, candidly, is it
not more worthy, more sensible, to say, "I have not time to go to the
park," than to allege that we have not time to love and to care for
our children?
And our husbands--do we devote our time to them any more than to our
children?
Ah! you will perhaps reply, my husband has very little need of my
society; he lives for himself; I live for myself. If I have my
toilettes, my drives, and my friends, he has his horses, his friends,
and his club.
There is the misfortune; and the question is, are we not, to a
considerable extent, responsible for this deplorable habit of, so to
speak, separate existences? Do you not think, then, that the majority
of husbands would prefer a different kind of life? That it would be
more agreeable to them to enjoy oftener the pleasures of home, in
your company, surrounded by their children?
You do not believe it? Be it so; but have you ever tried the
experiment? Have you not yourselves created a necessity for this
life of continual agitation and excitement? Have you ever reserved
time to be devoted to your husband? And is it not your desire that
things should remain just as they are--you with your liberty and
your husband with his? Do you not prefer to squander (for that is
the word) your hours and your days, rather than face the _ennui_
that your own worldly tastes would cause you to experience in the
retirement of a serious, and, in comparison, solitary home?
But it is not our time alone that we thus waste. We waste likewise a
fortune which in reality is not ours.
We are born rich, while all around us the poor--children of the same
God--are without bread to eat, and ready to die of hunger, perhaps
under the same roof.
We forget that, according to the designs of Providence, we have a
duty to discharge toward the suffering and the needy! It is not for
ourselves alone that God has given us riches. He wishes us to be his
almoners, and the practice of charity is a strict duty.
The bestowing of alms is not only an evangelical counsel; it is
often a precept. If the divine Ruler employs the most tender images
in describing the merit of charity and the clearest and strongest
promises when speaking of its reward, he has for the one who refuses
to assist a brother, and leaves him in want, the severest of
condemnations. Consider the parable of Lazarus and the rich sinner,
but especially those terrible words: "I was hungry, and you gave me
not to eat.... Depart into everlasting fire."[25]
Will a few gold pieces ostentatiously dropped each year into the
collection boxes, a few contributions to other charities, which we
are ashamed to refuse, suffice to save us from a similar sentence?
What has become of that pious custom of tithes for the poor formerly
found in rich families?
If, before entering the establishment of the fashionable jeweller,
we would ascend to the garret of the indigent--we should often
purchase fewer bracelets. It is not heart that is wanting in us, but
reflection.
A young woman of whom some one was asking assistance for a family
which had fallen into misery, and whose sufferings they were
picturing to her, exclaimed with a simplicity which was her only
excuse:
"Why, are there people who are poor? I did not know it!"
We know that there are poor people, but we too often forget it.
Love of dress and the voice of vanity smother in us the love of the
suffering members of Jesus Christ and render us deaf to the appeal of
our unhappy brethren.
If we would only consider that by sacrificing a few yards of lace, or
by consenting to appear twice during a season in the same dress, we
might with the money thus saved assist several families each winter,
we would more frequently be kind and charitable.
And that we may not forget the necessities of our brethren, let us
assist them directly. Does not history tell us of more than one queen
fashioning with her own hands garments for the poor, and laying aside
the grandeur of her position to distribute them herself?
Ball-rooms, theatres, and the public drives are, unfortunately, not
the only places in which we make a display. Fashionable dressing has
become such a habit, such a necessity with us, that, as the Sovereign
Pontiff remarked with sorrow, our holy temples often present the
sad spectacle of women who call themselves Christians, and believe
themselves such, coming to these holy places rather to rival one
another in extravagance of attire than to excite to piety. Alas! what
influence will our supplications have, if humility, that essential
condition of prayer, be wanting. Ah! let us rather remain at home
than go to the foot of the altar with the guilty desire of being
admired.
I have yet another part of this important subject to treat: the
impropriety, the indecency, why not say the word, of certain
fashions?
I turn in shame from the thought of them. Let each one of us descend
to the very depths of our conscience, let us scrutinize our hearts,
bearing in mind this terrible utterance: "He that shall scandalize
one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned
in the depth of the sea."[26]
How, then, are we to remedy so great an evil? How oppose a barrier
to this ever-increasing tide of luxury and of prodigality? The Holy
Father points out the way in a few plain and simple words. To form
among ourselves an association--a holy league, if I may thus express
myself--to have our laws and regulations, and, with the zeal and
determination which characterize us when we wish to attain any end,
to pursue this one without truce or mercy.
But what promises could and should be made by the members of this
sacred league? They will have to be determined by the brave champion
who shall bear the standard in this war against extravagance.
I do not think, however, any difficulty will be found in their
determination. We should begin by promising to examine seriously
before God what are the motives which actuate us in the adornment
and embellishment of our persons; to purify our intentions, and to
entertain none that would cause a blush if revealed.
To please our husbands, to support our position in society, to remain
within the bounds of a just elegance, these are motives which we can
without shame avow. But to seek in the toilette a means of being
remarked, or admired, or loved, outside of our home circle; a means
of humiliating other women, of surpassing them, of reigning without
a rival; in a word, of eclipsing all others--all this would be
entirely contrary to the spirit of the association.
As to the engagements, in some sort material, to be entered into by
the members, I think they might be limited to three.
We should first determine in advance, and in the most positive
manner, the amount to be expended each year on our toilette; which
amount we should never exceed. From this sum we should deduct a
portion for the poor, and increase the amount as much as possible by
accustoming ourselves to sacrifice from time to time our wish for
some novelty, in order that we may relieve our unfortunate brethren,
upon whom we should bestow our charities in person.
Finally, and here is a very essential point, we should never
purchase any thing without paying for it immediately; or if, in some
circumstances, this is impossible, we should lay aside the price of
the dress, the bonnet, or the cashmere we have selected.
Oh! if we could well understand how much there is of order and of
good sense in those two words so little known to most women--_cash
payments_! Try this plan, if only for a year, or even six months, and
you will see the truth of my assertion.
I have finished; pardon me for having dared to raise my voice, not
to give you advice, I have neither the right nor the intention to do
so, but only to communicate to you ideas which have been suggested to
my mind by the admonitions of the highest of authorities, and by the
resolutions which I have taken, and which I trust I shall have the
courage to keep.
My object is, to ask of you in this matter that union in which is
found strength, and to remind you that God is in the midst of those
who fight for a holy cause. May my voice be heard! May the young
women of our beloved France arouse themselves at the thought of a
danger which threatens the dignity of our sex! May this new and holy
war be soon inaugurated in which we shall be both combatants and
conquerors!
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Isaias, iii. 16, and following.
[25] St. Matt. xxv. 42.
[26] St. Matt. xviii. 6.
LOST AND FOUND. A WAYSIDE REMINISCENCE.
What woman, travelling alone, has not encountered the embarrassment
of entering a car already nearly filled with passengers? Perhaps the
awkwardness of the situation may not be as keenly felt by those who
frequently meet it, and who are accustomed to the manifold jostlings
of this busy world, as by a recluse like myself. However this may be,
I can testify from experience that the ordeal is a painful one to a
sensitive and shrinking nature. So it chanced that, upon discovering
this condition of affairs as I entered a car at Prescott, on a fine
morning in June, 1867, I dropped into the first vacant place my eye
detected, by the side of an elderly lady dressed in deep mourning.
The first glimpse of her face and manner satisfied me that she also
was from the "States," and I felt quite at home with her at once.
We soon fell into conversation, and I found my companion most
agreeable, quiet, and intelligent. We beguiled the monotony of a
railway journey by pleasant chat upon the scenery through which we
were passing, and such other topics as came uppermost. I noticed, as
we stopped a few minutes at Brockville, that she seemed to scan all
that could be seen from the car with deep interest; and again, as we
pursued our course up the river in sight of the Thousand Islands, she
was quite absorbed in her observation of the scenery.
"Beautiful islands," I remarked; "I would like nothing better than to
occupy some days in exploring their fairy haunts."
"You would find many of them beautiful indeed!" she replied.
"They are very dear to me; for my early life was passed in their
neighborhood, and I retain for them much of the affection that clings
to the memory of dear friends, though I have not seen them before for
many years. What frequent merry-makings and picnic festivals did the
young people from the American shore and those of Brockville enjoy
together among the windings of their picturesque labyrinth, long
ago!" she added with a sigh.
She then informed me that she was now on her way to Illinois, to
visit her children there, and had chosen this route, that she might
catch a passing glimpse of scenes most interesting to her, from their
connection with memories of the past.
Time and space passed almost imperceptibly to us, as we were engaged
in discussing one subject after another of general interest, until
some time in the afternoon, when, clatter! clatter! thump! thump!
a jolt and a bounce, brought every man in the car to his feet, and
caused every woman instinctively to settle herself more firmly
in her place, while a volley of exclamations, "What can it be?"
"There's something wrong!" "Cars off the track!" "We shall be down
the embankment!" burst from every quarter, the swaying, irregular
movement preventing the possibility of reaching the door, to
discover the cause of all this disturbance. The time seemed long,
but in reality occupied only a few seconds, before the motion ceased
suddenly, with a hitch, a backward jerk, and a concussion, which had
well-nigh thrown us all upon our faces; and the conductor appeared
for a moment in the door, uttering with hasty tremor, "Don't be
alarmed, ladies and gentlemen--no danger! axle broke--cars off the
track. We shall be detained here some time." And away he went.
This announcement was met, I am sorry to say, with more murmurs
at the detention than thanks for our providential escape from
imminent peril. "How unfortunate!" cried one. "And in this lonely,
disagreeable place too!" added another. A third wondered where we
were, when one of the company familiar with the route volunteered the
information that we were not many miles from Toronto.
Now, from the moment I sat down by my new acquaintance, I had
divined--by that sort of mysterious sympathy, impossible to define,
but which will be understood by all converts to the Catholic
faith--that she was, like myself, of this class; and she had formed
the same conjecture in relation to me; which was, perhaps, the
cause of our having formed a sudden intimacy not quite in keeping
with the native reserve, not to say shyness, of both. Our first and
simultaneous act, upon the occurrence of the incident recorded--in
fortifying ourselves with the blessed sign of benediction and
protection so precious to all Catholics--had confirmed the mutual
conjecture, and established a strong bond of sympathy between us.
As we left the cars together, I observed that she still scanned
the surrounding localities with an earnestness that did not seem
warranted by any claims they possessed to notice; for a more tame and
uninteresting region can scarcely be imagined than that in which we
so reluctantly lingered.
"What wonderful changes forty years will make in the face of a new
country!" she at length exclaimed. "I passed this way, going and
returning, in 1827, at an age when the deepest impressions are
received, and upon an errand so peculiar in its nature as to make
those impressions indelible. I have always carried the picture of
the route, slowly traversed at that time, in my memory; but the
transformation is so complete that I look in vain for one familiar
feature."
After walking for some time in silence, she resumed: "It is strange
how vividly the most minute details of that journey and the incidents
connected with it return to me, now that we are so singularly
detained in the vicinity of the scenes I then sought, though there is
nothing in the aspect of the country to bring them back!"
By this time we had loitered into a shady nook, at no great distance
from the disabled car; and its coolness inviting us to remain after
we had seated ourselves upon a rock overgrown with moss, I begged
that she would while away the time of our detention by giving me a
history of those incidents.
"The narrative may not prove very interesting to you," she replied.
"The recollection of events that took place around us in youth has
more power to move ourselves than others. But of this you shall judge
for yourself.
"In 1826, I was visiting a dear friend who lived on St. Paul street,
in Montreal. It was a pleasant evening in June, the close of one
of those very warm days so common in the early part of a Canadian
summer, where the interval between the snows and frost of winter
and the fervid heat, the verdure and bloom, of summer, is often so
marvellously short as to astonish a stranger.
"I was sitting in my room, at an open window that looked out on a
narrow back-court, the opposite side of which was bounded by a row
of low-roofed tenant-houses parallel with the bank of the river,
and over these, upon a magnificent view of the St. Lawrence rolling
grandly down past the city, at which I was never tired of gazing. I
had been contemplating the mighty flood for some time, my thoughts
wandering sorrowfully far up its waters and the stream of time to
tranquil scenes now closed to me for ever, when the words, 'Ah,
Donald! that I should live to see this day! Do not ask me to sing the
hymn we love this night, when my heart is sae sair that it is like to
break! I canna, canna sing the sangs o' Zion i' this strange place,
and in our sharp, sharp griefs!' came floating to my ear on the
evening breeze, from an open balcony along the rear of the tenements
mentioned.
"There was a depth of anguish in the tones that touched the tenderest
chord of sympathy in my heart, which was then writhing under the
pangs of a recent sore bereavement.
"My childhood had been passed near settlements of the Lowland Scotch
in St. Lawrence County, New York, and I was therefore familiar with
their dialect, the use of which added to my interest in the speaker,
and I listened eagerly for further sounds. For some time I heard
only a suppressed sobbing, and the low tones of a manly voice that
seemed to be soothing an outburst of grief which was overwhelming his
companion. At length I heard him say, with an accent that betokened a
tongue accustomed to the use of the Gaelic dialect,
"'It would drown the sorrows of my gentle Maggie, if she would only
strive to sing. Let us not forget the dolors of our Blessed Mother in
the agonies of our ain grief. I will sing, and mayhap she will join
me.'
"Presently a singularly wild and plaintive air was borne to my ear
upon the flowing cadences of a man's voice, as soft and musical as
any to which I had ever listened. The words were in Gaelic, but the
refrain at the close of each verse '_Ora, Mater, ora_'--revealed
their religion, and that it was a hymn of the Blessed Virgin to which
I was listening. Before the close of the first verse, he was joined
by a voice, low and clear as the tones of a flute, bearing upon every
strain the fervent outpourings of tender piety, though tremulous with
emotion.
"Soon after it ceased, they retired within the open door of their
room, and I heard them reciting alternately, in a low voice,
that treasured devotion of the Catholic heart--of which I was
then entirely ignorant, but which has since (thank God!) become
inestimably precious to me--the beads of the Holy Rosary.
"Their evening prayers being over, they walked for some time on the
balcony in silence, when she said in a trembling voice,
"'It is a month to-morrow, Donald, a month to-morrow, sin' God took
awa' our darlings; and och! wha wad hae thought I could bide sae lang
i' this cauld warld without a sight o' their bonnie faces! I dinna
ken why I live, when my sweet bairnies are buried far awa' i' their
watery grave!'
"'Ah Maggie! why wad ye not live for your poor Donald? He mourns
for the bonnie bairnies too; but he does not wish to leave his
Maggie because God has ta'en them from her. Cast awa' these repining
thoughts, my own love, and let us go to the church thegither
to-morrow morning, and lay all our griefs before the altar of our
God.'
"I heard no more; but resolving to accompany them to church, I
arose very early the next morning, and preparing myself, watched an
opportunity to join them, as they passed from the street where they
were stopping into St. Paul street.
"We walked on in silence after I joined them, and I saw that he was
a tall, athletic young Highlander, of dark complexion, and with soft
black eyes; whose remarkably fine face glowed with intelligence and
mildness. Her beauty was more conformed to the Lowland type; her eyes
being of a deep clear blue, her hair 'flaxen,' and her complexion
exceedingly fair, while her teeth of snowy whiteness had a little
prominence that caused them to be slightly revealed between her
rose-bud lips, even when her countenance was in repose. Her form
was very slender, and her beautiful face so youthful as to seem
child-like. I never saw such a perfect expression of soul-absorbing
yet patient and subdued sorrow as lingered upon every line of those
youthful features.
"We entered the old Recollet church, and I remained near them during
the service. It was my first visit to a Catholic church, and I had
never before been present at the offering of the holy sacrifice.
"Soon after our entry, I noticed that first one of them and then the
other passed for a brief space of time into a little curtained box
at the side of the aisle; but being ignorant of Catholic usages, I
did not know for what purpose, though I was deeply impressed by their
solemn, reverent manner, and the peaceful expression of their faces.
During the progress of the service, which commenced soon after, I saw
them approach the rail before the altar, and knew it was to receive
holy communion. The sweetly serene and pensive light that rested upon
their features after that solemn act is still vividly before me,
notwithstanding the lapse of years.
"When they left the church, I followed closely, determined to learn
something, if possible, of their history. At the church door the man
parted from her, and went away in an opposite direction from that by
which we had come, leaving her to walk back alone. As I walked by her
side, I addressed some casual remark to her, and then, confessing
the interest I felt in them on account of what I had accidentally
overheard the evening before, begged her to tell me, as her sister in
affliction, of the griefs which were oppressing her.
"We sauntered slowly down the narrow streets from the Recollet church
to our places of abode, and our young hearts being drawn together by
the bonds of sorrow, I mingled my tears in sympathy with hers while
she related her artless story.
"She was the only child of a minister of the Scottish Kirk, whose
name was Lauder, and who died when she was quite young. Her mother,
being left in feeble health, and destitute of any means of support,
gladly accepted the home offered by her sister, who was married some
years before to a Highland gentleman by the name of Kenneth McGregor,
and who became a Catholic soon after her marriage.
"They were welcomed to the home of her aunt with true Scottish
hospitality; and the most devoted and delicate attentions which
affection could devise were lavished upon her heart-broken mother, to
soothe and comfort her, while the little Maggie became at once the
pet of a large household of cousins older than herself, who regarded
her ever after as a dear sister. So kind were the whole family to
her, that she was not permitted to feel the loss of her father in
the sense most chilling and painful to the heart of the orphan, that
of being an object of indifference and neglect. They went frequently
to visit their Lowland friends, and kept up an intercourse with them
during the life of her mother.
"When she had reached her twelfth year, the minister of the kirk
which they had attended since their removal to the Highlands, with
several of his small congregation, among whom were her mother and
herself, made their profession of the Catholic faith; soon after
which event her mother died.
"When Maggie was in her fourteenth year, she became acquainted with
Donald Macpherson, whose father was a warm friend of her uncle
Kenneth. A strong attachment soon grew up between the young people,
and when she was sixteen she was married to Donald. When they had
been married about six years, and had three children--the oldest of
them a daughter five years old and named for herself, and the others
boys--Donald thought best to join a colony (among whom were two of
her cousins and their families) who were preparing to depart for one
of the new and remote districts of Upper Canada. Donald, as the one
best fitted by education for that purpose, was appointed surveyor of
the wild lands, and to lay out roads in the wilderness.
"They suffered much in parting with home and friends, but alas!
subsequent floods of affliction obliterated all traces of those
lighter griefs.
"Their voyage was long and stormy, and when they were at length in
sight of Newfoundland, and hoped they were about to reach the end of
it in safety, a storm in the Gulf of St. Lawrence drove their vessel
upon the rocks in the darkness of evening, and it was wrecked. The
poor young parents lashed their little Maggie firmly to a plank, and
committed her to the waves; then taking each a child, and imploring
the aid of heaven for themselves and their little ones, they plunged
into the water. The mother was soon exhausted with the buffeting of
the waves; her child was borne from her arms, just before she was
thrown within the reach of friendly hands, and taken up unconscious.
Donald was dashed against the rocks, and caught from the receding
waters of an immense wave, shortly after, by those who were on
the shore watching to render aid to the sufferers, insensible and
apparently lifeless. The child he had was also lost.
"They were taken to a fisherman's hut, and by the persevering efforts
of those in attendance animation was restored, though it was some
days before they recovered their consciousness, only to find that
their children and their relations had perished. But a small number
of their companions on the voyage survived. Their goods and clothing,
with the exception of what they wore, were all lost; but this was too
trifling to be thought of in comparison with their other misfortunes.
"As soon as they were able, they proceeded to Montreal, in company
with the survivors of the wreck, and Donald showed the certificate
of his appointment as surveyor--which he fortunately carried in his
vest-pocket--to the mayor of the city, who provided comfortable
quarters for them, and advised him to remain there until he should
receive remittances from Scotland, for which they sent immediately
after their arrival in Montreal.
"They had not yet decided whether they would return when these funds
should arrive, or go on to the place for which they had started, as
their companions were anxious to have them do.
"She expressed entire indifference as to going on or returning; her
children being gone, she did not care where she was. The terrified,
imploring look of her darling Maggie, as she was dashed from them
on her frail support, amid the merciless buffetings and boiling
surges of the furious waves--her eyes straining to catch a glimpse
of them, and her dear little arms extended so pitifully to them for
protection--haunted the imagination of the broken-hearted mother,
and, she assured me, had not been absent from her thoughts one moment
since, sleeping or waking.
"My sincere and fervent sympathy seemed to afford her some comfort,
and it was freely and heartily offered; for I was myself, as I have
hinted, at that time a mourner over the recent loss of the kindest
and best of fathers, whose only daughter and cherished pet I had ever
been. His death, when I was yet but a child in years, was followed
by severe pecuniary reverses, which had driven us from our home and
involved our hitherto affluent and most happy family in difficulties
and poverty. In my ignorance of sorrow and of the religion which
alone can sustain the afflicted, I had thought there could be none
so unhappy and unfortunate as ourselves. I could not then believe
the truth of the assurance, which was the solace of my invalid
mother, that 'The Lord loveth whom he chasteneth.' I could not see
the tender mercy and love that had inflicted this cruel bereavement
and surrounded our helpless family with such calamities, in the clear
light with which his grace afterward made it manifest to me.
"But here was an instance far more inscrutable and heart-rending.
Strangers in a strange land; the broad Atlantic rolling between them
and every heart upon which they had any special claim for sympathy;
their children relentlessly torn from them; and all their worldly
substance buried in the consuming deep! Why had they thus been
singled out as marks for such a shower of fatal arrows? I pondered
much upon it, and my eyes were opened to see the mercies that had
been mingled with the chastisements of a loving Father in our own
case. We had numerous and kind friends, whose sympathy had poured
balm upon our wounded spirits, and whose generous hands had been
opened to aid us in our necessities. Of these, the dear friends
with whom I was then staying had been among the first, and their
assistance and advice at that dark period of my life have ever been
remembered with gratitude.
"While my new acquaintances remained in Montreal, I passed much time
with poor Maggie, to the entire satisfaction of my friends, to whom
I communicated the sorrowful story on the day I heard it, and whose
active sympathy contributed much toward the relief and comfort of the
youthful mourners.
"When they at length received the expected funds from Scotland, they
decided to comply with the wishes of their surviving fellow-sufferers
in exile and affliction, by accompanying them, according to their
original intention, to Upper Canada. Our parting was very affecting.
They had learned to look upon my friends as kind benefactors, while
they regarded me as a sister. I felt very lonely after they were
gone; but the lesson I had learned from my intercourse with them was
never forgotten. Their united and unquestioning acquiescence with the
will of God, and the persistent patience with which every action of
their daily lives expressed, 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in
him,' made a permanent impression on my mind.
"At the invitation and by the advice of my friends, I remained much
longer in Montreal than I at first intended, in order to learn the
French language, and to acquire the knowledge of some other branches,
for which superior facilities were presented by the Sisters of the
Congregation of Notre Dame, and which were necessary to advance my
education sufficiently to fit me for teaching, the object I then had
in view.
"Nearly a year had passed since our parting with the Macphersons,
when some friends from Vermont arrived on a visit to those with whom
I was staying. I was requested, in consequence of the indisposition
of the lady of the house, to accompany them to several places of
interest in the city, which they wished to see. Among these was the
house of the 'Gray Nuns,' a sisterhood devoted to the care of a great
number of foundlings. In passing through the rooms appropriated to
the children, I was particularly attracted by the face and attitude
of a delicate-looking little girl of surprising beauty, who was
sitting on the floor and devoting herself to the care and amusement
of a little boy about two years old, whose beauty equalled her own,
though entirely different in character. She was fair as a lily;
her large blue eyes were shaded by drooping lids and long silken
lashes, which imparted a touching pensiveness to their expression,
while her golden hair floated in shining curls to her shoulders. The
little boy's complexion was dark and clear, his black eyes soft and
brilliant. The startled timidity combined with searching earnestness
in their expression as he raised them to mine and encountered my
admiring gaze, (for I was always passionately fond of children,)
thrilled my very soul, and, turning to the good sister who was
conducting us, I exclaimed with enthusiasm, pointing to them,
"'What beautiful children!'
"'Yes,' she said with fond pride, and evidently flattered by our
notice of her pets, 'they are indeed beautiful; and alas! their
misfortunes are as striking as their beauty. They belonged to a
Scotch family on board a vessel that was wrecked off Newfoundland,
and their parents perished. Mr. Ferguson, a Scotch gentleman in very
infirm health, from our city, was visiting some friends in that
vicinity, and happened to be passing in a carriage with one of them
on the evening of the storm and the shipwreck, when, noticing the
torches and bustle on the shore, they stopped to inquire the cause
and to render assistance, if possible, to those who were washed
ashore. This little girl had been lashed to a plank, and, by a
wonderful providence, when the baby was borne away from his mother,
the same wave carried him within reach of his little sister, who
seized and clung to him as with a dying grasp, until she was snatched
insensible by Mr. Ferguson from the top of a wave which rolled far
up on the shore, and would have hurried them back in its receding
surf but for a powerful effort on his part, which had nearly cost
him his life; for he received injuries in the attempt, by severe
sprains and otherwise, that rendered him almost helpless for some
weeks. His friend took the children and himself in the carriage to
his residence, over two miles distant--it being the nearest house
on that unfrequented part of the coast, with the exception of some
fishermen's huts at some distance in the opposite direction. Mr.
Ferguson was unable to leave his bed for some weeks. Unfortunately,
the physician of that neighborhood was absent on a visit to a distant
city.
"'It was long before they succeeded in restoring any sign of life
to either of the children, and when their efforts were at length
rewarded by faint evidences of returning animation, they had to exert
themselves to the utmost for many days to keep alive the vital spark,
which had been so nearly extinguished. When they began to revive and
recover strength, another difficulty met the devoted friends of the
little unfortunates. The nerves of the little girl had sustained so
severe a shock that she could not be aroused to a sense of any thing
around her. She was constantly struggling fearfully with imaginary
billows, or settled in a kind of idiotic vacancy. When the physician
returned, he gave but little hopes of her recovery, as he feared her
brain was so far affected as to unsettle reason permanently.
"'As soon as the gentleman who had taken them to his house dared
to leave them and Mr. Ferguson so long, he went to inquire after
the survivors of the wreck, and found they had departed in a vessel
bound for Montreal. Mr. Ferguson was confined, as I have said, for
many weeks at the house of this friend, and before he could return
to Montreal he had become so much attached to the little treasures
he had snatched from a watery grave, that he could not be persuaded
to leave them, (although he was a bachelor,) but brought them to us,
that they might be where he could sometimes see them.
"'The little girl recovered but slowly. After some time she began
to have lucid intervals, from which she would sink into mental
apathy. Her sleep was for a long time broken by dreams of agonizing
struggles, from which she would awake screaming, and so terrified
that it required our most anxious and tender efforts to soothe and
quiet her. She has, however, recovered almost entirely from these,
and her mind is quite clear, though physically she is still a very
delicate child, and we fear her constitution has encountered a shock
from which it will never recover. During the first of her lucid
intervals, she told us her name, and what she could of her parents.'
"While the good sister was reciting this little history, I stood like
one in a maze, half unconscious of the bewildering conviction which
was stealing over me that these were two of the children whose loss
my poor friends, the Macphersons, were bemoaning; and when at length
she closed the narrative, by saying that the child had revealed her
name, I seized her arm with such a sudden and convulsive grasp as
called attention for the first time to the fact that I had become
pale as death, and whispered huskily,
"'What did she say was her name?'
"'Maggie Lauder Macpherson,' replied the sister, as I tottered to
the nearest seat, almost fainting under the intense excitement. She
hastened to bring me some cold water and other restoratives; after
taking which I explained to her, and to my astonished companions,
the cause of my agitation in few words, and that the parents still
lived. When I sank into the chair, little Maggie had risen, and,
approaching timidly, stood watching me with great anxiety. As soon
as the momentary faintness passed, I drew her closely to my heart,
and--still trembling with agitation--whispered fondly and gently,
"'My dear little lassie, I knew and loved your mother!' Looking up
most wistfully in my face, she asked,
"'Where?'
"'Here in Montreal,' I replied.
"'That canna be!' she murmured with plaintive softness, and as if
half-musing, while the very expression of her mother's own serene
resignation, mingled with a shade of disappointment, passed over her
lovely features.
"'That canna be, gentle leddy, for my mither (and she shuddered as
she uttered it) was buried in the cauld waves!'
"'No! my child,' I said softly; 'your father and mother both escaped,
and are living, though a great ways from here.'
"It would be useless for me to attempt a description of what
followed, as the truth of my assurance took possession of her mind;
but the excitement of the sudden and joyful surprise--which we feared
might injure her--seemed to restore the elasticity of her youthful
spirit; a result that all other appliances had failed to secure. It
was then discovered that the depressing consciousness of their orphan
and destitute condition had so weighed upon her sensitive young
heart, as to affect her delicate frame and prevent her restoration to
health.
"I immediately sought my friends, and told them of the discovery;
after which we went together to see Mr. Ferguson. It was agreed
between them, at once, that I should accompany the children to Upper
Canada and deliver them to their parents, as a privilege to which I
was especially entitled on account of the interest I had taken in the
family. They furnished all necessary means for defraying the expenses
of the journey.
"I set out with my little treasures the next morning, under charge
of an old gentleman who was going to that vicinity on business. Our
course lay up the St. Lawrence, and through a considerable portion
of Lake Ontario. When we landed and left its shores, our journey
continued through a rugged wilderness country of great extent, to
regions, then wilder still, in the interior of Upper Canada, where
settlements of Scotch had been located. We stopped at a rude log
cabin that aspired to the dignity of an inn, at the settlement where
the route of our stage-wagon terminated, and which was only a few
miles distant from the place we were in search of.
"While the gentleman who had the care of us was out looking for a
carriage to take us on, I thought I heard a familiar voice outside,
and, stepping to the window, looked from it just in time to see
Donald Macpherson himself, in the very act of driving away from the
door, at which he had stopped a moment to speak to a man there. I
tapped loudly on the window, he turned his head, and, throwing the
reins to the hostler, in another moment rushed into the room, just as
I had succeeded in hiding the children in an adjoining bedroom, and
closing the door.
"'Is it possible, then,' said he, 'that it is indeed yoursel' I saw!
What in the name of gudeness could hae brought you (the last one I
should have thought of seeing) to this awfu' wild region! But I am
that glad, any how, to see your dear face that I could cry, as Maggie
will, I'm sure; but they will be right joyful tears she'll shed, for
you will go with me this very hour to our home in the woods. But what
could have brought you to face the fatigue of this rough journey?'
"'I came,' I replied as calmly as I could, 'on business that nearly
concerns you and Maggie, and I am so glad to meet you here! I am sure
Providence must have sent you; for I have been trying all the way to
think how I could manage the business on which I came, without being
able to settle upon any plan. Breathe a prayer to Heaven, Donald
Macpherson, as fervently for strength to bear your joy, as I have
heard you utter under the pressure of crushing griefs, while I tell
you,' I said slowly, and fixing my eyes upon his face, 'that Almighty
God has sent two of your lost children back to you by my hands--your
little Maggie and your baby boy!'
"Never can I forget the expression that stole over his features--now
white as the sculptured marble--when I succeeded in finishing what I
had to say! He lifted his hands and eyes reverently to heaven, and
murmured a prayer in his native dialect. Then looking at me as if
awe-struck, he exclaimed,
"'Can it be that heaven has again employed you, the former messenger
of its mercies to us, to bring this crowning one to our stricken
hearts and desolated hearth? It is not possible! It must be some wild
dream!' and he passed his hand over his head as if bewildered. As he
said it, I drew him gently to the door of the bedroom, opened it, and
rushed out of the room. I could not stay to witness that meeting,
and I knew that the father would wish to be alone with his recovered
treasures.
"After some time I went back to the happy group, but it was
long before we could speak. Such joy seemed too sacred for the
interruption of words.
"When we had sufficiently recovered from the blissful agitation of
the scene, we set about concerting measures for breaking the joyful
news to Maggie.
"He decided that he would go home and bring her with him in a double
wagon--the one he had being single--to accompany me to their home;
pleading my fatigue after my journey as the reason why I did not
go with him at once. On the way he was to prepare her for the glad
meeting, as well as he could.
"I will not dwell upon the raptures of the young mother when she
received her children who had 'been dead, but were alive again--had
been _lost_, but were _found_!'--only to remark that she who had
borne grief so calmly and patiently met the elevation also of this
sudden transport in the same edifying spirit, and with many soft
and tender ejaculations of the gratitude with which her heart was
overflowing.
"The possibility of their children's escape had never for one
moment occurred to the minds of the parents, and in the confusion
and darkness of the shipwreck scene on the coast their recovery
was unnoticed. Their condition, and that of Mr. Ferguson, their
being consequently hurried away so suddenly from the vicinity, and
remaining so long unconscious, together with the absence of the
physician, had prevented any communications of a kind which might
have led to the disclosure of their escape.
"The glad tidings soon spread through all the settlements, and the
house was thronged early and late, with people of high and low
degree. Rich and poor, Canadians, emigrants, and 'Americans,' came
from all parts of the country to offer their congratulations--where
their sympathies had before been freely bestowed--over the _Lost and
Found_.
"I formed many agreeable acquaintances during the few weeks to which
I was persuaded to prolong my visit in that part of the country.
"The vicissitudes of a changeful life--the lapse of forty years,
during which I have stood by many graves of my nearest and
dearest--have not been able to obliterate my fond recollections of
the Macphersons, and have served only to engrave more and more deeply
in my heart the lessons I learned from them, and my conviction that
those upon whom God designs to bestow his richest spiritual gifts
must go up, as did Moses of old, to 'meet him in the cloud!'"
We sat for some time in silence after she closed, and I then asked,
"Did you ever see or hear from them after your departure?"
"Cars ready! Hurry up, ladies and gentlemen! Hurry up!"
And groups of loungers, starting from every direction, hastened
gladly to take their places and resume their broken journey.
When we were again seated in the car, I repeated my question, "Did
you ever see or hear from them again?"
"I never saw them again," she replied, "but we kept up a
correspondence for a long time. The example of their lovely and pious
lives exerted a wide-spread influence in Canada. Some years after the
events I have related, a large estate in Scotland was left to them,
from a distant relative, and they returned to that country. Their
departure was deeply deplored by all their neighbors in the land of
their adoption, and I have heard that since their increased means
they have been active in advancing every good work, both in their
Canadian home and in that to which they have returned."
I parted with sincere regret from my new friend at Toronto, which was
the limit of my excursion.
Her wayside story had so impressed my memory that I indulged my pen
in transcribing it. If it yields half the interest to others, at
second hand, with which I received it from the actual participant, my
labor will be amply rewarded.
THE CHURCH IN PARIS AND FRANCE.
Though France is a Catholic country, the humiliating fact that a
considerable portion of its male population manifests a certain
religious apathy, cannot well be disguised. This estrangement from
the church is due to various causes, but mainly to the training
received by the youth educated at those public institutions which
monopolize the government patronage. The University of Paris largely
influences all the public schools, and its authority extended at one
time even over the establishments for bringing up infants. The female
schools have, for various reasons, formed, to a limited extent, an
exception, chiefly for the want of lay instructresses, which rendered
it absolutely necessary to grant to the numerous orders of nuns more
extensive privileges. The university, originally half Christian and
half deistic, has lately sunk into the lowest materialism. Even
among the teachers of the elementary schools there are many who have
discarded, more or less openly, the Christian faith, and thereby set
the pupils a most pernicious example. The secret and avowed foes of
religion preponderate in the educational domain, and it is only with
the utmost difficulty that Christians, or even deists, can be found
for the different scientific faculties. In other respects, a marked
improvement has, however, taken place since 1850, when the church was
first allowed to exercise a more direct influence over the public
schools, and some of the most obnoxious opponents of Christianity
were removed from their educational trusts. Still more beneficial
has been the concession of greater school facilities. The public
institutions superintended by religious have doubled in numbers and
extent, being at present attended by over 1,200,000 girls and 250,000
boys. In 1854, there were in France 825 private institutions, with
42,462 pupils, presided over by laymen; and 256 institutions, with
21,195 pupils, under the charge of religious. In 1865, the number of
lay institutions amounted to only 657, with 43,007 pupils, while the
religious had increased to 278, with 34,897 pupils. While the former
gained, therefore, within eleven years only 545 pupils, the latter
gained 13,702. Nor is this all. The schools conducted by laymen have
advanced equally in a religious and a scientific point of view, and
are now no longer so inferior as formerly to those conducted by
religious. The decided progress which the church has made in France
during the last ten or twelve years is principally owing to the
growth of religious instruction Unfortunately, the university still
remains unchanged, and many a pious youth is lost when he enters
one of the faculties. It is otherwise with reference to the lyceums
and colleges, where the religious have secured a greater influence
over the pupils, though rationalists and sceptics still continue to
fill some of the chairs. Three years ago, 29,852 pupils attended the
lyceums, and 32,495 the colleges--a total of 62,347, which shows a
gain of 19,228 pupils since 1854. This increase is accounted for by
the support which these institutions receive from the state. In 1854,
the number of lyceums was 53; in 1865, it was 86.
In about the same period of time, the Brothers of the Christian
Schools (_Frères de la Doctrine Chretiènne_) had founded 864
educational establishments in France, 16 in the States of the Church,
13 in Italy, 42 in Belgium, 2 in Switzerland, 2 in Austria, 3 in
Prussia, 2 in England, 2 in Egypt, 4 in Turkey, 19 in Canada, 29 in
the United States, 8 in India, and 2 in Ecuador--making a total of
1043 establishments with 8822 brothers. This number has multiplied
since. In France alone, there are now over 900 establishments and
6000 brothers. In more recent days, many similar orders have been
organized, like that founded by Lammenais, the brother of the
apostate priest, which is exclusively intended for the agricultural
education of boys, and counts already thirty-odd schools in Brittany.
France has 18,000 male ecclesiastics, and of these the greater half
are engaged in training the rising generation. Of the 90,000 female
members belonging to the various religious orders, one third are
employed in the same way. Out of the whole number of religious, no
less than 72,000 are computed to devote themselves to education, to
the care of the orphans, the sick, and the aged. The pupils, the
orphans, the invalids, the incurables, the helpless, the poor under
the charge of the different religious societies and orders number
over two millions. These are startling figures for a land where the
church had been blotted out of existence eighty years ago, and where
religion has ever since had to contend against special legislation,
unfriendly government, and a whole host of powerful foes, never very
scrupulous in the choice of their weapons.
Another cause of the religious apathy is to be found in the
desecration of Sunday, which has become very general in France,
especially in the larger cities. The revolution suppressed Sunday
by brute force, and the law has ever since afforded the greatest
possible latitude to all who were inclined to disregard its
obligations. Sunday labor came thus to be gradually sanctioned
by custom and countenanced by law. Under Louis Philippe, the
_bourgeoisie_ managed to turn this laxity to account, and even
to this day the work on the public improvements proceeds without
reference to the festivals of Holy Church or Sundays. At first the
laborer, tempted by the offer of higher wages, consented to work
on Sundays for the sake of gain. Now stern necessity compels the
majority of laborers to do this, and yet they barely manage to
support life. Once men desecrated the Sunday out of avarice; now they
desecrate it to satisfy their hunger. Such is the condition to which
irreligion has reduced the French working-man. The capitalist who
introduced this desecration can, however, afford better than ever to
rest each day of the week.
The amount of evil which the desecration of Sunday has sown can
hardly be conceived. Hundreds and thousands of those honest laborers
who flock to Paris and to the great manufacturing centres from the
provinces have been morally and physically destroyed by it. Not only
has the discharge of all religious obligations become impracticable,
but there being no longer a day on which the family finds itself
united, every thing like the love of home has been destroyed. The
tenderest and most holy ties have been broken, the unity of family
interests has ceased, and each member of the household has been left
to pursue his own course. But as the human body requires some rest,
the mind some relaxation, so men by way of compensation drink and
dissipate, which speedily destroys their love for the fireside. On
Sunday afternoons and evenings, the working-men exchange the shop
only for the tavern, and they soon learn to find their relaxation
and amusement there even on week-days. The consequence is, that the
working-men have become demoralized; they think of nothing but work,
or rather of the means by which they may procure that which will
enable them to minister to their depraved appetites.
In this manner the wants of these men multiply in an inordinate
degree, their minds and tastes are debased, and all their earnings
soon cease to suffice for even the most indispensable articles of
food and raiment. Those who break the Lord's day, though they seem
to earn better wages, look wretched, and have rarely a decent coat
to their backs. If the weather, or some other unforeseen cause,
prevents them from working, they resort to the tavern and spend there
their Sunday gains. It is notorious that exactly in those work-shops
where the Sunday is habitually ignored, the hands are the most
dissipated and shiftless. Even from a purely material stand-point the
non-observance of Sunday is therefore a fearful social evil which has
unhappily made serious progress, even in the rural districts, and
especially in those immediately surrounding Paris.
This pagan system of civil legislation interferes very materially
with the religious life. The French code robs the father of nearly
all authority over his grown children; for instance, a son eighteen
years of age may legally mortgage half the property which he is to
inherit, even though it may have been earned by the parent's personal
industry. Husband and wife hold their property separately, neither
being liable for the debts of the other. In this way the members of
the same family are invested with such widely diverging rights that
they can have no interests in common. The effect of this arrangement
upon the domestic relations, upon the harmony, unity, and morals of
the family will be readily conceived. It is therefore to be regarded
at once as a wonder and a proof of the power of the Catholic Church
that there should still exist so many exemplary households in France.
Wretchedness in all its forms naturally goes hand in hand with these
false principles of legislation. Thanks to the boasted progress of
modern days, there is more suffering and misery in Paris than in any
other city on the continent of Europe. Those who speak from personal
observation of the social condition in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris,
acknowledge that pauperism is most gigantic in the latter capital. In
the year 1866, Paris contained 1,791,980 inhabitants, of whom 105,119
were paupers, or 40,644 families who received aid from the municipal
authorities. This gives one pauper to every seventeen inhabitants;
but the number of destitute who stand in need of help is at least as
large again. The Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, the many other
charitable societies, and the pastors, support and succor quite as
many more families, the greater portion of whom are also dependent on
the public. And with all this, most societies are compelled to turn
away nearly as many destitute as they can relieve. It is therefore
not too much to assume that one tenth of the Parisians are reduced
to the verge of absolute poverty. And how inadequate, at the best,
is the relief doled out by the municipality to the poor! A couple of
pounds of bread each week, a few cast-off garments, occasionally some
bedding, is about all which a family can usually expect to receive
from this source. In 1866, the city disbursed, by way of relief, four
millions of francs among 40,644 families, which gives forty-eight
francs and sixty-five centimes per year for each family, or eighteen
francs and sixty-five centimes per head. But it should be borne in
mind that bread sells at one fourth of a franc per pound, which shows
how insignificant the relief is which the otherwise so extravagant
Paris municipality bestows on its destitute. And it should be further
remembered that a family has to pay an average annual rental of one
hundred and forty-one francs and twenty-five centimes--which average
was only one hundred and thirteen francs and forty-five centimes
prior to the year 1860. These statistics sufficiently demonstrate the
grave importance which the solution of the social problem threatens
to assume in France.
But there is at least an equally large number of families who,
though they may not be regular applicants for municipal and other
charity, are yet unable to get on without undergoing greater or less
privations and self-denials. It can hardly be believed how much
this wide-spread distress tends to the demoralization of the poor.
Without education, without intellectual incentive, without religious
consolation, and even without a day of rest; constantly fighting for
bare existence; weighed down by bodily suffering, the better feelings
of these unfortunates have become so blunted that they think only of
gratifying their unceasing, never quite satisfied material wants. The
disuse of the Sunday solemnities has weaned them even from bestowing
a proper care on their persons. They rarely possess any other dress
than the one worn in the work-shop. Still worse, if possible, is the
state of the quarters, or holes, in which they are domiciled. Besides
a wretched couch, an old table, some broken chairs and crockery,
one meets there nothing but filth and offensive odors. Parents and
children sleep in one close room; the children run wild in the
streets, and thus deteriorate morally and mentally before they perish
physically.
Such an element of the population can only be redeemed morally and
religiously by relief of their material misery. No amelioration of
their condition is otherwise possible. Wherever the church desires
to interfere, she must be prepared with material aid--must send
the Sister of Mercy as well as the priest. A sort of brutishness
has been engrafted on this pauperism, and until it is eliminated
no improvement can be seriously attempted. When modern science,
therefore, represents man as a purely animal organism, the conclusion
is perhaps not so very illogical after all. By systematically
degrading the disinherited working classes into a race of human
beings inferior in many essential features to the savage, modern
political economy has to a certain extent furnished this theory with
an illustration. The savage still experiences the necessity of
prayer, a want which the modern proletarian has long ceased to feel;
the religious necessity is either dulled or destroyed in him, because
the religious sentiment has been torn from his heart. For this reason
also the reconciliation of the proletarian with Christianity is
frequently surrounded by far greater difficulties than the conversion
of the downright heathen. The Christian, corrupted by our so-called
progress, stands perhaps lowest in the scale of humanity.
On the other hand, the craving for sensual indulgences seems to
have become so general among the higher class of working-men that
there are few who lead a well-regulated, frugal, quiet life. It is,
no doubt, difficult to resist the manifold temptations which Paris
presents, and which are intensified by the frequent financial and
industrial revulsions. All the more remunerative trades are subject
to periods of stagnation, during which numbers of operatives are
thrown out of employment, or work only half-time. The self-denial
which they have then to practise leads them afterward to make up
for it by dissipation, and they thus contract habits which end in
ruin. Here we see again, and most distinctly in Paris, what immense
influence a nation's political economy exerts on its religious and
moral character. Nowhere are the fruits of the mischief committed
by the politico-economical theories now ascendant in France to be
observed more plainly than in the metropolis, a city in which at
least one half of the population, if not permanently in want, are
certainly always in danger of it.
Under these circumstances, it is all the more cheering that so large
a number of working-men's families should have preserved their
Christian faith and still attend to their religious duties. A more
than ordinary amount of virtue and self-denial is required for it,
and those who practise them amidst the vicissitudes of life are truly
noble souls. Yet there exist many such even among the poorest and
lowliest. Another guarantee of a brighter future is that nearly all
working-men appear fully convinced of the necessity of an education,
and that they therefore rarely object to having their children
instructed. Even the most irreligious among them manifest an implicit
confidence in the clergy, and prefer to have their children attend
the schools controlled by the religious. Though pretending to care
nothing for the church themselves, they deem religion an excellent
thing for their families. With the steady improvement in the system
of popular education, and with the diffusion of schools superintended
by the church, a corresponding advance in the religious and moral
condition of the masses may be expected, and is indeed already
apparent. There are in Paris 53 schools for boys attended by 17,360
pupils, which are managed by the different religious orders, and 63
schools for boys attended by 16,750 pupils, conducted by laymen. Of
the schools for girls 68, with 19,720 pupils, are controlled by the
sisters, and 57, with 12,630, by lay instructresses. The elementary
Protestant establishments are included in the above figures. A
similar ratio exists between the intermediate and the higher schools.
To form an adequate idea of the superior advantages which the
different religious orders possess as educators, it should be known
that, while the city of Paris pays its elementary lay teachers yearly
from 2000 fr. to 3000 fr. salary, besides giving them lodgings and a
retiring pension, the brothers have only 950 fr., lodgings, but no
pension. The female lay teachers, mostly single, receive from 1800
fr. to 2400 fr. per annum, while the sisters have only 800 fr. In
this comparison we made no mention of the difference in the expense
of the lodgings, which is much larger in the case of laymen, most of
whom have families. The city of Paris could therefore well afford,
without incurring the reproach of any especial extravagance, to
present the church with a large piece of ground and a sum of money
for a building where the superannuated brothers could pass the rest
of their days. The evening classes for adults, which have been opened
under the auspices of the church, are quite a success.
The chair rent exacted in the French churches is no doubt a
disadvantage to religion; for it always thins the audience more or
less. Though the sum collected is a trifle, and especially when we
consider the recklessness with which the Parisians spend their money,
many good and thoughtful men object to the practice on principle.
Indeed, the tide of popular opinion seems set against the tax, and
it certainly suggests to the sceptic an unpleasant parallel between
the theatre and the sanctuary. Those who cannot afford the expense of
hiring a chair during the service must stand up, or kneel, or occupy
one of the benches fastened to the walls. The poor man goes, however,
to church to forget the outside world. And yet it is there, in the
very place where all should be equal, where rich and poor, high and
low, should be esteemed alike, that his poverty is thrust into his
face, that he is again reminded of the difference between him and his
more fortunate fellows. There are many so extremely poor in Paris
that even a few sous are an object to them. This explains why the few
mission churches, in which no charge is made for chairs, attract
such large crowds, principally composed of working-men, who are
otherwise rarely, if ever, seen at worship. On this account, several
of the parish churches in Paris have lately been so arranged that no
rent is exacted. To do away with the system entirely is, however,
not feasible at once. Some provision will first have to be made to
replace the considerable revenue which accrues from this source not
only to the parishes, but also to the dioceses. If the obstacles in
the way to the acquisition of property by the church, the acceptance
of legacies, and the accumulation of means from similar sources,
were less formidable, this reform might perhaps be introduced in a
comparatively brief period. But owing to legislative restrictions,
bequests and other love-gifts can only be accepted by the church
after long-protracted and expensive proceedings ingeniously invented
for the benefit of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Had Napoleon III.,
instead of spending many hundreds of millions on the metamorphosis of
his capital, devoted only one hundred millions to the erection of a
dozen large parish churches and the endowment of the rest, he might
have obtained a more substantial guarantee for the preservation of
his throne and dynasty than the strategic streets which now traverse
Paris. At any rate, this much is certain: with the abolition of
chair-rent in the churches the attendance at divine service, and
consequently the religious sentiment, might be greatly stimulated. It
is also to be hoped that juster views in relation to the restoration
of the sanctity of Sunday may obtain the ascendency in due time. As
regards the latter subject, the example set by the government in
suspending hereafter all public works on holidays and Sundays would
of itself have a very happy influence on the national morality.
Inasmuch as the church chairs are rented to families and paid for
yearly or half-yearly, this evil is less glaring in the provinces.
The wealthier parishioners there usually try to secure places in
front, often at high rents, which renders it possible to let the
remainder more cheaply, sometimes at mere nominal prices, to the
poorer classes.
What we have stated above applies, in many respects, equally to the
larger provincial cities, among which Lyons, Marseilles, Nantes,
and Toulouse deserve special mention for their religious zeal. Nor
are Rouen, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Lille, and Metz indifferent to
the success of the church. The other large and small cities may be
judged according to the state of their respective provinces. One
thing may, however, be safely depended upon, namely, that every
city contains a circle of laymen which sets a praiseworthy example
in religious conduct and social Christian deportment. The women
cling, nearly everywhere, with deeper devotion to the church than
the men, and in the provinces even more than in Paris. The most
devout of spirit are the German provinces, Alsace, Lothringen, and
Flanders, as well as Brittany, Auvergne, Limouisin, Dauphiné, and the
provinces south and west, where most if not all the adults fulfil the
precept of Easter communion. Least devout are perhaps the provinces
in the vicinity of Paris, Normandy, Champagne, Picardie, Orleans,
down into the very heart of France, as far as Tours and Bourges.
Within a radius of about sixty miles from Paris, the condition of
the villages is truly deplorable, and in the towns, the religious
sentiment is only very slowly awakened. There are localities where
Sunday is even more habitually disregarded than at the capital; and
if the men go occasionally to church, they rarely partake of the Holy
Sacrament. This state of things is, however, an exceptional one, and
especially in the villages near Paris which send their vegetables,
flowers, fruits, and other produce to market. The daily contact of
the peasantry with metropolitan life has had a bad effect on their
morals. At these points the church is chiefly attended by Parisians
who spend a portion of the year at their villas.
But while we feel constrained to admit that there is a great deal
of religious indifference among the male population, it is pleasant
to feel justified in saying that France is able to boast of a large
body of ecclesiastics whose zeal and piety must command the genuine
admiration of the Catholic world. In the year 1865, there were only
837 vacancies in the 31,388 parishes into which France is divided.
The budget for 1869 appropriates salaries for the incumbents of 106
new parishes, and 50 new vicarages. The ecclesiastics in France
number 45,000--a very high percentage in a population of thirty-eight
millions, of whom about a million are non-Catholics. At the same
time, the pay is very small. Not half the parish priests have an
income exceeding 1500 francs per annum, while several thousands have
no more than 1200, (two hundred and forty dollars in gold.) Only the
incumbents of the comparatively few parishes of the first and second
classes--numbering little above 3000 all told--have an addition of
from 1200 to 1500 francs yearly from the state. The income of the
canons varies from 1600 to 1800 francs, rarely reaching 2400, and
this leaves them partly dependent on mass stipends and casuals.
Many bishops are obliged to make extra allowances out of their own
pockets to the canons of their cathedrals. The archbishops, who
are also senators and cardinals with extra pay attached to these
dignities, enjoy large revenues, ranging from 120,000 to 150,000
francs, all of which they sorely need. Mons. Morlot, the late
Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, imperial land almonier and peer of
France, had an annual income of 230,000 francs. Of this sum he had,
however, set aside from the beginning 30,000 francs for distribution
among the Paris poor. Although this estimable prince of the church
enjoyed his income for several years, he left not enough at his
death to bury him, and the expenses of his funeral had to be paid by
the emperor. The demands on the purses of these high ecclesiastics
are so heavy that they are constrained to practise the most rigid
economy, unless they possess independent fortunes. The household of a
French bishop or archbishop usually consists of a private secretary,
a coachman, a man-servant, and a cook, who is generally the wife of
the coachman or servant. His house, furniture, carriage, are all of
the plainest description. A bishop does not entertain what is called
company. On special occasions he may invite some clergymen to his
table, but nothing more. If business calls him to Paris, or some
other place outside of his diocese, he takes his secretary with him,
and puts up at one of those quiet hotels patronized by religious.
When away from home, he always appears in public either on foot or
in some hired conveyance. Now and then he accepts an invitation
from some Christian family, and calls on Catholic laymen who have
attested their zeal by word or deed. The most distinguished prelates
often love to surprise the offices of the Parisian journals, such
as the _Monde_ and the _Univers_, by a visit, when they request
the different writers to be presented to them, throw out valuable
suggestions, and converse with the greatest freedom and _bonhomie_.
This cordial intercourse between bishops, priests, and laymen
has contributed no little toward the glory of the church and the
efficiency of the Catholic press. Except in the sanctuary itself, the
Catholic Church in France is utterly devoid of pomp and splendor,
and by far the largest part of her resources is set aside for the
maintenance of numerous educational, charitable, and other benevolent
establishments, at which it may be interesting in this connection to
cast here a brief glance.
First in importance and influence are the Conferences of St. Vincent
de Paul, founded at Paris in the beginning of the third decade of the
present century. In the metropolis alone are eighty odd conferences,
one for each parish, besides some national and special ones connected
with various other religious institutions and associations. Among
the national conferences may be instanced a Polish, a Flemish, an
Italian, an English, and two German. The most prominent of the
special conferences are the Cercle du Luxembourg, formed by the
Catholic students, and the Cercle de la Jeunesse, formed by the
youth of the higher schools. The total number of members is probably
over 4000. In addition to this, many other religious associations
have been directly and indirectly promoted by the Conferences of
St. Vincent de Paul: for instance, the patronages for promoting
the physical and spiritual welfare of apprentices; the work-shops
for young girls belonging to the working classes, who are not
only furnished with employment, but instructed in their religious
duties; the society for the relief of the Faubourgs, managed by
women whose object is the education of the children of laboring
people who reside in the wretched hovels of the remoter suburbs.
The Société Maternelle, established in 1788, which has in every
quarter of the city its female agent to relieve working-women who
cannot afford to remain at home to nurse their infants. This society
expends over 60,000 francs a year, and relieves nearly a thousand
mothers. A similar society is that of the Crèches, where infants
under three years of age are taken care of while their mothers earn
their daily bread. One of the greatest evils of our modern system
of economy is the compulsory labor of females. There are in Paris
106,300 working-women who earn on an average only 1 franc and 10
centimes per day, (twenty-two cents in gold,) and have to support a
family on this pittance. Very excellent institutions are the Salles
d'Asiles, play-schools for children aged from two to six years, which
already number over 4000 in France, and are attended by hundreds
and thousands of children. The Child's Friend Society is designed
to save those children who are in danger of being demoralized by
the evil example of their parents. The Société de St. François
Regis aims to counteract the illicit relations but too frequently
entered into between the opposite sexes. It labors to supply the
poor who flock to the capital from every part of the provinces with
the documents which the law requires for the solemnization of a
legal marriage. The advocates of the civil marriage contract may
learn from this the beauties of the system which they praise so
highly. Nothing can be more expensive, troublesome, or attended with
greater loss of time, than the legalization of the different papers
required to be produced before a marriage can be ratified by the
civil authorities. On the other hand, the church exacts only a few
and simple formalities to unite a pair in the bonds of holy wedlock.
This society was founded in 1826, and in 1866 it brought about the
marriages of no less than 43,256 couples, who had previously lived
together without being married.
Paris contains fifty-eight nunneries, the greater part of which make
the education of the young and the care of the infirm and the aged
their main occupation. The nuns also tend the sick in twenty-four
out of the thirty-six public hospitals in Paris. An order of more
modern origin, but one that has already accomplished much good, is
that of the Sisters of St. Paul, for the blind of their own sex.
Most of its members are blind themselves; but their proficiency in
all domestic employments is such that their pupils are taught to
excel in them. The founder of this order, a Parisian widow, has done
for this class of the afflicted what the famous Abbé de l'Grée has
done for the deaf and dumb. The sisters are principally taken from
the ranks of the pupils who cannot be otherwise provided for. This
institution is already self-supporting. The Little Sisters of the
Poor, founded in 1840, at St. Servan, near St. Malo, in Brittany,
have in Paris alone five large establishments with 1700 sisters,
where they support in comfort 11,006 aged poor. Its members solicit
broken victuals in the kitchens of the rich, and unsold vegetables
from the market-hucksters, which they take home in small carts drawn
by donkeys. They also take up collections on stated days at the
doors of the churches. Not content with constituting themselves the
guardians of the helpless, they also relieve them of the trouble and
humiliation of soliciting alms. Is not this conduct worthy of the
best days of Christianity? Though not yet quite thirty years old,
the Little Sisters of the Poor are already widely known and honored.
Recruited at first from the lowest classes of society, many women
of the higher have latterly joined the order, though the majority
of the sisters are still working-women and servant-girls. We would
here incidentally remark that the French servant-girls rank far above
those of the other continental countries in a moral and religious
point of view. This is mainly due to the strictness with which good
behavior and chastity are enforced in all French households, where no
promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is countenanced. However
indifferent master and mistress may themselves be to religion, they
nevertheless invariably insist that their servants should be regular
communicants and church-goers. The status of the female domestics
is therefore higher than that of the average working-woman, whose
independence of control but too often proves her ruin. This also
explains why servant-girls should be so much more eagerly sought in
marriage than working-girls. In France, the domestic, and especially
the female one, is treated almost as a member of the family. The
difference between master and servant is not so marked, and the
result is that the latter has more self-respect and pride. Indeed,
the manner in which servants are treated by their employers in France
is a highly creditable feature in the national character.
But to return to the religious and other societies. A very useful
association is a woman's society founded by a dozen ladies, "Invalid
Working-Woman's Aid Society," which numbers in 27 parishes 600
members, and cordially co-operates with the sisters of St. Vincent
de Paul in visiting and tending the sick in their own habitations. In
1865, its members had paid 158,368 sick calls to 52,748 sufferers.
Another female society attends the sick poor in the public hospitals,
and seeks to assist feeble convalescent girls and boys in procuring
employment. "The Church Aid Society" furnishes churches destitute
of means with vestments worked by the hands of its members. Still
another society of women keeps on hand stocks of clothing for the
needy, its members sewing for this purpose several hours each day.
One society has set itself the laudable task of returning to their
relatives and friends the destitute and forsaken orphans who have
come with their families to the city from the provinces. Several
orphan schools have been opened for the same purpose by laymen and
the rural clergy in different parts of France. Many of the orders
labor to a similar end, especially that of the Trappists, who own
now twenty-two extensive agricultural settlements, mostly in France,
some of them with a hundred brothers. Some of the most barren and
unhealthy districts were taken in hand by the Trappists, and the
results which they there achieved are really marvellous. At the abbey
of Staoueli, in Algeria, they fed during the last famine 600 Arabs a
day for several months, without materially lessening the provisions
sent for sale to the markets. Though the brothers work from ten to
twelve hours daily, besides devoting several hours at night to their
religious duties, they eat nothing but bread, (1-1/2 lbs. per diem,)
vegetables seasoned with salt, and drink only water. The Bernhardines
also follow agriculture; but their rules are less severe, for they
are permitted to use milk, fish, and a little wine. Four flourishing
settlements have been established by this order in the most sterile
districts of Southern France. The Brothers of the Holy Ghost (Frères
du Saint Esprit) make foreign missionary enterprises and the
amelioration of the condition of the convicts their specialty. The
Brothers of St. Joseph educate the deaf and dumb, and the Brothers
of St. Gabriel vagrant boys. The Oeuvre des Campagnes is a society
which strives to provide for the spiritual and material wants of
the poorer rural parishes. Its main object is to awaken the dormant
religious feelings by popular missions, devotional works, etc.
Several societies have been organized in Paris and the provinces for
the better observance of Sunday. The societies called "Reunion of the
Holy Family" consist of the poor who meet on Sundays in chapels and
halls for mutual instruction and prayers. A special society under the
patronage of St. Michael has charged itself with the distribution of
pious publications, tracts, etc. The colossal missionary enterprise
of France is well known. No nation furnishes so many missionaries,
gives such large contributions as the French, a people among whom a
century ago the Catholic religion was, during several years, formally
abolished. Of the 8000 missionaries distributed over the globe
more than one third are Frenchmen. The Lyons-Paris Society for the
Propagation of the Faith extends all over the earth, and possessed in
1867 an income of 5,149,918 fr., of which sum 3,582,659 fr. had been
collected in French dioceses. During the preceding year the Society
of the Holy Infancy could afford to disburse 1,603,200 fr. for 59
missions supported by it alone. It has baptized 383,206 children, and
educated 41,226 more.
A separate mission exists for the Holy Land and the Orient,
(_Oeuvre des Ecoles d'Orient_.) The society mainly applies itself
to supplying the missions established in these regions by the
Franciscans and Lazarists with money and other aid. The return of the
Nestorians, Armenians, and other eastern schismatics to the bosom of
the mother church is one of its principal objects, and has already
made considerable progress.
It must seem almost incredible that the greater number of these
benevolent and religious societies should enjoy no fixed or only very
inadequate revenues. Yet such is actually the fact. Except their
buildings, many of which are heavily mortgaged, very few of the
societies have any property or capital. Under these circumstances
it naturally requires the most untiring exertions and the closest
economy to sustain themselves. Aside from the regular collections in
the churches, these organizations are mainly dependent on the charity
sermons, by which funds are raised, as well as on the lotteries
and bazaars gotten up for religious and charitable purposes. We
see therefore that they have had a severe struggle for existence.
The church is the only institution in France which can never be
centralized, and the future belongs for this reason all the more
surely to her.
These results show the great and many-sided activity of the French
Catholics. There is no known ailing or misery, no human evil, caused
by our short-sighted legislation or social policy, which is not met
and alleviated by the church and her servants. These efforts may
not be crowned with the desired success in all instances; but when
we consider the opposition which every religious project encounters
in France, it must be confessed that the church has accomplished
more in that country than in any other. Nor should it be forgotten
that this is largely owing to a fact which neither the sophistries
of modern scepticism nor the equality of all denominations under
the constitution of the empire can do away with, namely, that the
Catholic Church still remains the national one. For the same reason
we venture to predict that the occurrence of any extraordinary
events, of any great public calamity, would rather tend to promote
than retard the growth of the religious sentiment among the masses.
It is a remarkable circumstance that in times of national distress
and suffering, the attachment to the church is strengthened.
Never were the sanctuaries so crowded as during the disturbances
of 1848 and 1849. How many of those who had until then worked for
the overthrow of church and state were not converted when they saw
whither their principles led them? Will this not again be the case at
the next revolution? It often requires such violent shocks to check
the baneful passions and to open the eyes of the people.
THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF AUGUST SEVENTH.
The recent solar discoveries, of which mention has been made in past
numbers of this magazine, have on the whole increased the interest
attached to the observation of eclipses, though in some respects
the importance of these phenomena as opportunities of extending our
knowledge of the constitution of the sun has been diminished. It
will be remembered that immediately after the total eclipse of last
year in India, it was found that the great prominences on the rim of
the sun which are never seen with any ordinary appliances, except on
these occasions, could be observed at any time with the spectroscope,
and that by means of this admirable instrument their shape as well
as the spectral lines indicating their chemical composition could be
determined; and since that time many observations of them have been
made, and interesting conclusions arrived at on both these points, as
stated in the article translated in the last number. The principal
ones as yet established with certainty are, that they are gaseous,
and mainly composed of hydrogen, and that they change their shape
with astonishing rapidity, some of their particles perhaps moving
with the inconceivable velocity of one hundred miles a second. At any
rate, immensely energetic forces and rapid movements must be required
to change essentially the shape and position of these masses--which
often have ten times the diameter, or a thousand times the volume of
the earth--in a quarter of an hour.
So we are not now obliged to wait a year or more and travel several
thousand miles to observe for a few minutes these peculiar and still
somewhat mysterious bodies; still, it does not follow that they
cannot be better examined at the time of an eclipse, or that new
appearances may not be noticed on such occasions, now that we are
accustomed to these, from which the other more startling phenomena
for a long time diverted attention. Success has excited hope of yet
greater successes; and eclipses, though affording but a short time
for actual observation, are undoubtedly the best occasions for the
observer to learn in what direction his labors should be turned.
There are also other things, such as the corona, Baily's beads,
possible new planets inside of the orbit of Mercury, etc., which can
only be seen at these times.
The eclipse of this year, therefore, was by no means neglected by the
scientific men of the United States; in fact, it was felt that the
reputation of the country depended upon the skill shown in preparing
for and in observing it, and a large number of parties were formed,
to be stationed at various points of the path of the moon's shadow
or line of totality, so that if clouds should prevent success at one
place, it might be obtained at another.
The first point touched by the shadow proper, and at which
consequently a total eclipse occurred, was in longitude 165° west
from Washington, latitude 53° north, being in Siberia; the last, in
longitude 10° east, latitude 31° north, being off the coast of North
Carolina. At the former the sun rose totally obscured at half-past
four, at the latter it set in that condition, at a quarter to seven;
and at the intermediate points the eclipse took place at all the
intermediate hours of the day. It is rather singular that, owing to
the necessary skip of a day in going round the world, it was _Sunday_
morning in Siberia, but _Saturday_ afternoon in the United States;
so that the eclipse may be said to have been one of the longest on
record. Its actual duration was, however quite short, half-past four
A.M. in Siberia, and a quarter to seven P.M. at the ending point,
being about four and half-past six P.M. respectively in New York;
giving an interval of two and a half hours in which the shadow
passed over the long line connecting these points, which it will be
perceived are nearly opposite in longitude.
If it had travelled by the shortest route, it would have passed
within three degrees of the north pole, and the eclipse would have
been invisible in this country; but, fortunately, it lengthened
its course, reaching its highest latitude near Behring's Straits,
which it crossed, and then swept to the south-east, crossing the
territories of Montana and Dakota, and the States of Minnesota, Iowa,
Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina.
It could hardly have taken a better route for us.
The length of the line was over seven thousand miles, and the
consequent average velocity in passing over it about fifty miles
a minute, though in the United States it exceeded that amount
considerably. The breadth of the belt traversed was somewhat
variable; in this country it was about one hundred and fifty miles.
Of course, the sun was partially hidden by the moon over a very large
portion of the globe; but the region from which its light was at any
time completely excluded was comparatively quite small.
Observers stationed themselves at numerous points, even as far west
as Alaska and Siberia; but of course most chose positions within
the United States. The writer was connected with a party which was
established at Shelbyville, Kentucky.
The general diffusion of intelligence, both subjective and objective,
as we may say, had of course excited great interest in the eclipse
among the people, especially in that part of the country actually
within or bordering upon the limits of totality; and though, of
course, the nature of the expected event was fully understood by all
the educated portion of the community, and by many of the uneducated,
still there were some, especially in the rural districts, who
vaguely apprehended some great event, to be probably of a disastrous
nature, (a hailstorm was the most popular;) and perhaps were as much
terrified in anticipation as any entirely ignorant people have ever
been at the actual occurrence of this most impressive and sublime
spectacle.
Of course, excursions were planned by railroad companies and others
to points on the line of the shadow, the usual directions for
observing were extensively circulated, and the eclipse was made the
catch-word for many advertisements whose substance had no connection
with it. We are afraid that many persons may have lost the most
beautiful features of the scene by a too persistent use of smoked
glass, which of course was not necessary during or even near the time
of the total obscuration.
The weather for some days previous was not very promising--not
on account of too much rain, but owing to the absence of it; and
every evening the sun set in a bank of haze, which each day seemed
to increase, and no storm occurred to clear the air of the burden
accumulated by the drought. This was particularly unpromising for the
photographers, who needed really clear air for good work; the times
of beginning and ending, to which, formerly, great importance was
attached, could probably have been observed nearly or quite as well
through haze, or even thin cloud.
We have just implied that less consequence is now attached to
the time observations than was formerly the case; this is due to
the great perfection which the lunar and solar theories have now
attained, which is such that the prediction of the positions of the
sun and moon, and even of the beginning and ending of an eclipse, can
be made with greater accuracy, perhaps, than almost any one observer
could note them. Still, by combination of all the results, some
slight corrections to the tables now used may perhaps be deduced, and
on the present occasion this portion of the work was not disregarded,
but provided for with all the appliances of modern science.
The recording of time is now usually made by the electric method,
which may be here described briefly, though many are probably
familiar with it. The principle is the following, subject to
various modifications in the particular form of apparatus: A line
is described by a pen made to move uniformly over the paper by
means of clock-work. That this line may be indefinitely prolonged
without retracing, it is usual to make it a spiral round a horizontal
cylinder, which revolves, say, once a minute, while the marking-pen
(otherwise stationary) moves slowly from one end of the cylinder to
the other, perhaps requiring several hours for the complete passage.
The pen making this line is held in its place by the action of
an electro-magnet pulling against a spring; the circuit through
this magnet is broken every second by the escapement of a clock
or chronometer; the magnet then for an instant ceases to act,
and the spring pulls the pen aside, making a break in the line
at regular intervals corresponding to every second of time. The
same interruption of the circuit can also be made by an observer
provided with a key like those used by telegraph operators, and the
time of his observation thus registered on the chronograph, as the
instrument is called. For identification of the clock-mark preceding
his observation, mechanical arrangements can easily be devised, by
which the first second in each minute shall be omitted, the circuit
not being broken; so that it will be known what second of every
minute each mark corresponds to; and the fraction of the second
elapsed from this clock-mark to his own can easily be estimated by
the eye, or measured more carefully. The reading of the record is,
of course, facilitated by having the cylinder revolve once a minute,
so that all the clock-marks answering to any particular second (as
the twenty-third, for example, of each minute) will come in the same
horizontal row; and the marks are not made on the cylinder itself,
but on a sheet of paper fastened round it, which can be detached when
filled.
Instruments of this character were used at Shelbyville, and also
at the border stations near the edge of the path of the shadow,
but inside of it, one of which was at Falmouth, about thirty miles
south of Cincinnati, the other at Oakland, near the Mammoth Cave.
The observations of time were especially important at these places,
since, as will readily be seen, the length of time required for a
circular or elliptical shadow to pass a point near its edge will vary
very rapidly for a slight change in the size of the shadow, or a
slight shifting of its path toward or from the point selected. Even
rough observations, merely of the duration of the eclipse, made at
two such stations on opposite sides of the central line, suffice to
determine with great accuracy the dimensions and precise track of the
shadow, and thus give the elements of the moon's motion.
We have just spoken of the shadow as being elliptical; this was of
course the case, the sun being quite low at the time, so that the
round cone of darkness, technically known as the umbra, was cut very
obliquely at the earth's surface. To realize the amount of this
ellipticity or distortion, one would only need to hold some spherical
body so as to cast a shadow on the ground about an hour and a half
before sunset. The elongation was also continually increasing as the
sun sunk toward the horizon, and its direction changed as the sun
at the same time changed its direction or bearing, the longer axis
of the ellipse always pointing toward the sun. This axis was, in
Kentucky, about three hundred miles long; the shorter ninety; and
this elliptical patch of darkness was moving in a course some thirty
degrees south of east, or about twenty-three degrees south of its own
longer diameter; its speed was about seventy-five miles a minute, or
more than the average on the whole track, as before stated, and it
required rather less than three minutes to pass any given point on
the central line; this was consequently the duration of the totality;
and short enough it certainly was, for the amount of work which was
to be done by the observers.
For the stations on or near the central line, it was important to
obtain the absolute times of the contacts, and for this purpose
transits were observed, to get the error and rate of the chronometer,
for some time before and after the eclipse. The border observations
locate the path on which the shadow travels, and determine its
breadth; but to obtain the position of the shadow on this path at
any fixed time, the true times of its arrival and departure at fixed
points must be observed. But on the border no such preparations were
necessary, only the interval being required; and a simple pendulum,
without clock-work, was set up for this purpose, which broke the
circuit at each second, and thus left its record, serving to count
the number of seconds and the fraction between the beginning and end
of the totality, which were observed and similarly recorded by means
of a break-circuit key. This pendulum was so arranged as to break the
circuit on the main telegraph line, and thus to be heard, and record
its beats at a number of stations in different towns; but the main
circuit did not itself mark upon the registers used by the observers,
but mechanically (by means of what is called a relay magnet) broke
short circuits set up at their stations, which could also be broken
in another place by their own keys, without, of course, interfering
with the main circuit itself; so that every observer could receive
the pendulum beats upon his own record, without receiving those made
by observers at other stations.
On Thursday afternoon, the 5th of August, some showers occurred,
but not sufficient, according to ordinary experience, to have much
effect in clearing the atmosphere; and on Friday morning the sky
became overcast with mackerel clouds of a most unpromising character.
All the preparations were, however, hopefully continued, and the
photographer, Mr. Whipple, of Boston, took on that day some very
successful views of Shelbyville, of the college buildings, and of the
party of observers. The principal station had been established in the
grounds of the college, the instruments being protected by a large
tent; close by was the Coast Survey station, where the chronographs
just described for recording time, as well as a transit instrument
for observing it, had been placed.
Friday evening was cloudy at Shelbyville, but without rain, and the
chance seemed to be gradually diminishing of any thing like a good
observation of the eclipse.
The plans for photographing the successive phases were most perfect.
The movement of the sun from east to west of course made it necessary
that the plate should also move correspondingly, but this was
readily accomplished by connecting it with a telescope mounted on
an axis parallel to the earth's equator, which axis is itself fixed
to another at right angles to it, or parallel to that of the earth;
this second axis being turned by clock-work once in twenty-four hours
in a direction opposite to that of the earth's rotation, all the
parts of the instrument evidently follow the movement of the heavens
or of any celestial object to which the telescope may be directed.
The axis around which the telescope turns can be rotated by hand or
clamped in position, and in connection with the other, which can be
disengaged from the clock-work, enables the instrument to be pointed
in any direction at pleasure. This style of mounting is known as the
equatorial, and is almost always used for astronomical telescopes. It
is similar to the ordinary tripod used for small instruments, except
in the addition of clock-work, and in having the principal axis
inclined toward the pole-star instead of being vertical.
But it was necessary not only to take photographs, but to know the
time at which they were taken, that they might accurately measure the
movement of the lunar disc over that of the sun. This might have been
secured by simply noting them from the face of the chronometer; but
the object was more neatly and certainly attained by having the slide
itself, as it dropped at the end of the exposure, break the electric
circuit, and record its own time on the chronograph.
The spectroscopic work was the most difficult and important of all.
Professor Winlock, the director of Harvard College Observatory and
chief of the party, had charge of this. Though, as above stated, it
has been found that the prominences can be seen with the spectroscope
at any time, still the probability that they could be better observed
at the time of the eclipse than at other times made it a duty to try
the experiment, and the result has, as will soon be seen, proved
that such is the case. Another observation was obtained with a
spectroscope at Bardstown.
A large number of persons had come in, some from considerable
distances, to observe the expected phenomenon. Among them was Mr.
Frankenstein, of Springfield, Ohio, an artist, who hoped to paint
the appearance of the eclipse and its effect on the landscape. This
seemed an admirable idea, and it is quite remarkable that attempts
of this kind have not been previously made; as they have not, at
least to our knowledge. The circumstances of the present one made it
eminently suitable for pictorial effect, owing to the small altitude
of the sun; and the landscape, seen from the point selected, (some
high hills east of the town,) is certainly one of great beauty.
The clouds broke away at about midnight and the thermometer fell
considerably, reading about 59 at sunrise. The observing party
improved the opportunity for final adjustments of instruments and
preparatory observations, and hope revived in the hearts of all.
The sun rose unobscured on the morning of the 7th, and the day was
cloudless till about ten o'clock, when some small cumuli drifted for
about an hour across the sky, which then resumed its unbroken blue.
The weather was also delightfully cool with a light breeze, which
increased in the afternoon, and at four was blowing quite freshly.
There were no signs of the predicted hailstorm, and strong faith
would certainly have been needed for one to retain a belief of its
arrival.
As the prospect of fine weather improved, and in fact seemed
almost certain, the people, citizens and strangers, assembled on
the observatory hill, and a rope was drawn round the tent where
the instruments were mounted, to prevent a natural but dangerous
curiosity on the part of those not immediately engaged in the special
observations.
Every one now felt that they would be fully repaid for the time and
labor devoted to the journey.
At about half-past four the edge of the sun was visibly indented;
some persons maintained that they could see the moon some time
previous to the contact; but this must probably be ascribed to a
lively imagination. Smoked glass now came into demand, and all eyes
were anxiously watching the rapidly decreasing orb. I had secured,
through the kindness of an influential friend, an excellent position
on the court-house, itself a high building and situated on the
highest point in the town, commanding a fine view in all directions,
particularly toward the north-west, from which quarter the shadow was
sweeping toward us at the rate of more than a mile every second.
Some five or six gentlemen had followed me to the roof of the
building, after which the ladder leading to the cupola was drawn
up, to prevent a general ascent by the crowd below. At a quarter or
twenty minutes past five, the wind began to abate, and the darkness
was quite noticeable, and of course from that time continually
increased, the general effect being like that of moonlight some time
before the totality. The darkness was much more striking than at any
time during the annular eclipse of 1854; this was probably owing
to the total absence of any cloud, which would have reflected and
multiplied the light of the unobscured portion of the sun, as on that
occasion.
A minute or so before the totality, the complete circle of the moon
was easily visible, with faint brushes of light streaming from it in
all directions, which were soon to assume much larger dimensions,
and, apparently, though not really, a greater brilliancy.
I cast now my eyes to the north-western horizon, and saw a brick-red
tinge on the sky evidently caused by the rapidly approaching umbra.
The long-expected moment had come; the last direct beam from the
sun vanished, and a magnificent corona of rays, faint, of course,
compared with the solar light, but bright in the prevailing gloom,
shot out round the disc of the moon. These rays were prolonged
in four directions at right angles to each other much more than
elsewhere; having in these directions a length about equal to the
sun's diameter, making the corona or aureola obviously cruciform in
its shape.
Venus and Mercury appeared conspicuously on opposite sides of the
moon, and Regulus could be seen, though with some difficulty.
Several other first magnitude stars appeared in other parts of
the sky, Arcturus, Vega, and Saturn being specially noticed by
the observers at my side; and undoubtedly fainter ones could have
been easily discerned, could one have been willing to divert his
eyes from the beautiful sight placed before them, which seemed to
surpass the expectations of every beholder. To all our party, I
think, it conveyed little or no idea of horror or dread, but only
of inexpressible beauty. The moon was at about one sixth of the
distance to the zenith above the horizon, so that no straining of
necks was necessary to look at it, as it hung over the darkened
landscape. Certainly, as it so hung or floated, surrounded by the
irrepressible splendor of the great source of light which lay behind
it, and attended by its two bright planetary companions, one on each
side, it was no unfit type of the glorious mystery which the church
had just commemorated on the preceding day. The darkness was not so
great as that of moonlight, but of course of a somewhat different
character, the light not coming from one definite direction. I think
it probable that no shadows were cast, but was too much occupied in
other observations to be sure of this point. The birds around the
building flew about wildly; and it was said that the fowls went to
roost, and the cows started for home, and that the cocks crowed on
the reappearance of the sun.
The eclipse had not lasted many seconds when I saw, without specially
looking for it, a bright light red or orange drop on the lower edge
of the moon, which of course was one of the famous protuberances. It
was easily seen with the naked eye, though probably many who had not
heard of these appearances did not notice it. Before the end of the
obscuration, another appeared on the right where the sun was about
to emerge. A third was also visible to the telescope above. Possibly
they may have had some connection with the long rays of the corona.
Before we had fairly begun to satisfy our curiosity, a well-marked
boundary between the general darkness and a bright portion of sky
to the north-west gave warning of the end of the eclipse, and
immediately afterward the sun flashed out on the right.
The separation of the discs of the sun and moon during the following
hour was probably carefully observed by few except the astronomers
and photographers; the moment of interest had passed, and few cared
to do more than exchange congratulations on the success of the
display. I forgot to notice whether the corona and prominences were
visible after the totality; the latter were still seen, according
to accounts received from elsewhere, and I met with one gentleman
some days afterward who had seen the great protuberance on the lower
edge of the sun at Shelbyville, Indiana, a point some fifteen miles
from the outside line of totality; he had, of course, no previous
suspicion of its existence.
The eclipse was naturally the principal topic of conversation during
the evening, and every one was anxious to report his own observations
and learn those of others. I found that eleven spectral lines had
been seen by Professor Winlock in the great prominence, some of them
characteristic of the metal magnesium. He saw only three before and
after totality; thus confirming the idea previously entertained,
that solar eclipses, though not the only occasions on which these
interesting objects may be seen, are, with our present apparatus, far
the best. The photographers had taken some eighty pictures, several
during the totality, and the times of beginning and ending had been
accurately observed both at Shelbyville and, as we afterward learned,
also at the stations on the border line, Falmouth and Oakland; which
border observations give the position and breadth of the path of the
shadow within some eight or ten rods; the southern edge can even be
determined with much greater accuracy, owing to a fortunate selection
of the station, which proved to be extremely near it. The precise
amounts by which these results differ from the previous computations
have yet to be determined; but it is probable that the corrections
to the tables now used will be very small.
An ingenious method of observing the time of the external contacts,
or beginning and end of the whole eclipse, was, as I heard, devised
by a gentleman at another station. These phenomena, especially
the first, are very difficult to observe accurately, owing to the
invisibility of the moon when off of the sun's disc, and the waviness
of the sun's limb, making it doubtful that an indentation has been
made in it till it has become quite deep, which is, of course, some
time after the actual meeting of the two bodies. He observed it with
the spectroscope by noting the time of disappearance of one of the
lines only visible on the extreme edge of the sun's disc.
Every one not engrossed in some special work had, of course, seen
the planets Venus and Mercury; and many had seen others of the
first magnitude. The darkness was not so great as was hoped for by
those who were searching for intra-Mercurial planets; no candle
was necessary for examining the charts which had been prepared.
One observer at Shelbyville reported having seen a star of the
third magnitude with the naked eye, and as he had no previous
knowledge of the existence of such a star in the place in which
he was looking, the fact seems indubitable. Dr. B. A. Gould, of
Cambridge, who observed at Burlington, Iowa, has since informed me
that he saw a star of the fifth magnitude, with a telescope of five
inches aperture, near the sun; the star is a well-known one, and the
observation shows that, had any planets of that brilliancy (about one
fiftieth of that of Mercury) been within three degrees of the sun,
within which limits he was restricted in his search by the shortness
of time, he would not have failed to detect them.
"Baily's beads" do not appear to have been considered as
extraordinary by any of the observers. The limb of the sun just
before the totality was of course more or less broken up by the
irregularities of that of the moon; but the fragments had no
remarkable appearance; and this phenomenon, which has been the
subject of so much discussion, seems probably due to irradiation
and the difficulty of determining the precise shape of small and
brilliant objects.
An able astronomer, who was the chief of the party at Oakland, and
who owing to his station being very near the southern edge of the
shadow, saw them for fifteen or twenty seconds, says that they
presented most clearly the phenomena which he should expect to be
caused by the irregular contour of the moon, when its indentations
were exaggerated by irradiation.
No discoveries of equal importance with M. Janssen's last year have
yet been reported; but as no eclipse has ever been so thoroughly
observed, the results cannot fail, when thoroughly collected and
compared, to be of great scientific value.
RELIGION IN PRISONS.[27]
For the last quarter of a century, a society has existed in this
city entitled the "Prison Association of New York." It counts among
its members a large number of the wealthy and influential men of the
State. Its object is to improve our prison systems and to effect as
far as possible the permanent reformation of our criminals. With so
humane and Christian an object we most heartily sympathize.
Its Twenty-fourth Annual Report, which we recently received, is a
very interesting and comprehensive document. Accompanying it is a
circular in which we are told that the association desires "that the
public attention may be directed to this question, and the public
sentiment in relation to it enlightened and invigorated, so that
our prison systems and our administration of criminal justice may
everywhere be improved and brought into harmony with the advancing
civilization of the age."
We shall, therefore, offer a few suggestions on this subject.
A criminal is a man morally diseased. As such he should be
considered--as such be treated. In a right prison system, the
punishment of past offences should be but the secondary object; the
prevention of future offences, the main one. No permanent outward
change can be effected till an inward reformation has been wrought;
and that reformation must come through mental but especially through
moral development.
We learn from this report, with much pleasure, that, in the prisons
of the chief States, libraries have been established; and that, in
many of them, instruction is regularly imparted to the inmates,
through classes and lectures. Ignorance is a fruitful source of
vice. The Catholic Church, which alone raised the world from the
intellectual darkness into which, at the fall of the Roman empire,
the inpouring of northern barbarians had plunged her, stands to-day
the foremost champion of enlightened Christian education. She regards
knowledge as an aid to virtue. She courts the light of science,
that in its beams the truth of her dogmas may appear with brighter
resplendence.
But experience has clearly shown that virtue is not a necessary
consequence of education--that moral does not always follow mental
development. To prove this, we need not go outside of this report, in
which, page 373, we read the following words of Amos Pilsbury, "the
Nestor of jailers on this continent; an officer whose name is almost
as well known in Europe as it is in America":
"Experience has, unhappily, demonstrated that the possession of
education is not incompatible with the commission of crimes of every
kind; and we have seen many melancholy examples of very highly
educated men falling victims to drunkenness and other degrading
vices." Daniel Webster therefore truthfully said: "Man is not only
an intellectual, but he is also a moral being; and his religious
feelings and habits require cultivation. Let the religious element in
man's nature be neglected; let him be influenced by no higher motive
than low self-interest, and subjected to no stronger restraints than
the limits of civil authority, and he becomes the creature of selfish
passions and blind fanaticism. The cultivation of the religious
sentiment represses licentiousness, incites to general benevolence
and the practical acknowledgment of the brotherhood of men; inspires
respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social
fabric; at the same time it conducts the human soul upward to the
Author of its being."
After quoting these words, Rev. David Dyer, chaplain of the Albany
Penitentiary, adds, page 348: "Of all the attributes of man, the
moral and religious are the most important and influential. They,
by divine arrangement, have this precedency. They are designed to
be the mainspring of thought and action, the director of the whole
man. Let them be neglected, debased, or treated as of secondary
importance, and the whole system will be deranged. Readjustment and
reformation will be impossible. There may, indeed, be induced, under
the power of seclusion or physical force, a servile fear; perverse
passions may, for a time, be checked, and the developments of a
depraved will may be staid; but let these appliances be removed, and
it will soon become apparent that instead of promoting reformation
they have induced spiritual hardness, recklessness, and hate, and
made the man a more inveterate slave to his passions and a greater
injury to the state. The moral and religious improvement of convicts
should, therefore, be the first and constant aim of all to whose
care they are committed. Their chief efforts should be directed to
the sanctification of the springs of thought and action; and this
secured, through the benediction of God, those objects of Christian
solicitude will go forth to exemplify in virtuous lives the wisdom
and utility of these efforts."
It being plain, therefore, that upon religious and moral influences
chiefly we must rely for the reformation of criminals, the question
next arises, What should be the nature of those influences? Should
they be in accordance with the conscience of the criminal or not?
Should the clergyman who is to minister to his spiritual wants,
possess his confidence, and lead him to good, be a clergyman of
his own church, or of a church from which the prisoner was, is, and
will be throughout life, fundamentally separated, in thought and
feeling? Should the books which are placed in his hands, with a view
to his moral improvement, be such as will attract, because written in
accordance with the principles of his church, and recommended by its
teachers, or such as will raise suspicion, if they do not actually
repel, because coming from a doubtful source, and full, perhaps, of
expressions and statements at variance with his religious sentiments?
The proper answer to these questions is, we think, self-evident. No
man who has to build a house on a foundation already laid begins by
attempting to weaken that foundation.
Last year, in the city of New York, 46,476 were committed to prison.
Of this number, 28,667, nearly two thirds, were of foreign birth.
A statistical view of all the prisoners of the United States, page
149, shows that twenty-seven per cent of the inmates belong to the
same class. A large share of these are undoubtedly Catholics. So,
likewise, are many who are put down as of native birth.
Now, we ask, how much is done to bring to bear on these unfortunates
the salutary influences of their own religion?
How many prisons in the United States have Catholic chaplains? In how
many is a priest invited to minister at stated times to the spiritual
wants of this great number of inmates? In how many cases, not so much
in this as in other parts of the country, is the priest not only not
invited, but with difficulty allowed, if allowed at all, to say mass
and administer the sacraments of penance and the eucharist to the
prisoners who are of his own faith?
We read in this report, with much pleasure, that libraries have
been established in our chief prisons; that "the aggregate number
of volumes is 15,250;" that "in some States, a fixed annual sum is
appropriated of the increase of the prison libraries; in others,
additions are made by special grants. New York appropriates for her
three prisons, $950; Pennsylvania, for her two, $450; Michigan,
$300; Massachusetts, $200; Connecticut, $200." Of this large and
annually increasing supply of books, intended as an aid in the moral
reformation of criminals, of whom probably one third are Catholics,
what portion is written by Catholics? What portion is Catholic,
either in its tone or in its teaching? How many of these books
are not more or less _anti-Catholic_, and hence repulsive to the
religious feelings of those for whose benefit they are intended?
We have no desire to make proselytes in our prisons. We do not wish
to interfere with the religious convictions of prisoners who do
not belong to our faith; but we claim as a right, and maintain in
the name of justice and of philanthropy and of true statesmanship,
that our Catholic criminals should, as far as possible, be attended
by Catholic clergymen and be supplied with Catholic books. As the
Russian Count Sollohub says, page 572, in his paper on "The Prison
System of Russia," "Religion is, beyond contradiction, the first
principle of all human perfection. It is this alone which consoles,
this alone which replaces the passions by humility, and a disordered
life by a life without reproach. But every religion has its forms.
Let Catholicism pursue its propagandism (?) in the prisons--nothing
better; for this it has its orators. Let Puritanism shut up its
criminals and cause them to enter into themselves by the reading of
the Bible; it has for that the education which it gives." And again,
page 573, "Missionaries, special brotherhoods, the enthusiastic
propagandists of Bible societies, and prison visitors are certainly
worthy of the most respectful sympathy; but they belong to a
different order of ideas."
In reading the article on "Religion in Prisons," by the Corresponding
Secretary of the Association, Mr. E. C. Wines, we were much struck by
the following words, page 390: "The benefit to convicts is obvious
and incalculable of frequent conversation with an earnest, kind,
godly, sympathizing, and judicious chaplain, when the prisoner
can express his feelings and the pastor can give his counsels
and admonitions, with no one by to check the free outpourings of
the heart on either side. One special reason for such visits and
conversations is, that the chaplain is thereby enabled the better to
direct his inquiries and instructions to each prisoner's particular
case."
Here the gentleman has, perhaps without knowing it, clearly depicted
a _Catholic confession_. Catholic prisoners will thus open their
hearts to a Catholic priest and to a Catholic priest only; and from
his lips words of counsel and of kindness will have vastly more
weight than when they come from any other source whatsoever.
Of Mettray, in France,[28] a Catholic institution, and the model
reformatory of the world, we read, page 258, that "the church doors
stand always open, and whoever seeks an opportunity for private
prayer is free to enter," and, page 259, "the founders of the
institution have laid great stress on the influence of religion as
affording the only solid foundation for the reformation of criminals;
and the words, '_Maison de Dieu_,' are inscribed in front of the
church as an acknowledgment that, unless the Lord build the house,
their labor is but lost that build it. The proportion of communicants
is considerable, and it is noticeable that on the approach of the
great festivals, there is always a marked diminution in the number of
infractions."
The necessity of bringing Catholic religious influences to bear on
Catholic prisoners has been acknowledged in the Irish prison system,
which is considered of all prison systems the most perfect; for we
are told, page 336, that, besides the Protestant, there are Catholic
chaplains who "say mass daily, and hold religious services twice on
Sunday."
In the most friendly spirit, we respectfully recommend the
consideration of these facts and suggestions to the Prison
Association of New York, and to all, throughout the country, who
take an interest in our prison system and desire the reformation and
welfare of our unfortunate criminals. They are generally the victims
of ignorance and wretchedness. Had they been willing to exchange
faith for falsehood, and to barter their birthright for a mess of
pottage, they might now be prosperous in their native land. Thus is
a certain glory found even in their shame. For the sake of principle
they have embraced poverty and exile. They are poor; and the poor sin
publicly and are punished. Surrounded by countless temptations, when
they fall they are more to be pitied than blamed. We could not disown
them if we would, and we would not if we could. The church never
disowned them. On the contrary, she has performed miracles of mercy
in their favor. The Saviour never disowned them, for we read that he
ate with publicans and sinners.
Much has been done toward reforming this unfortunate class. Much
more may yet be done. Their souls are not dead but sleeping! Let
the Prison Association of New York see that the influences of
their own religion are brought to bear upon them. Wherever there
is a considerable number of Catholics confined in any prison,
penitentiary, reform-school, or school-ship, let a Catholic priest
be invited to administer to their spiritual wants and to perform
the religious service of their church. Let the association see that
in the selection of books for prison libraries, a fair share are
Catholic books; not dry theological treatises, nor dull books of
piety, but books such as are calculated to divert, to instruct, to
elevate; to make better men, better citizens, and better members of
society; to strengthen conscience and loyalty to the great principles
of divine religion and eternal right.
We entirely agree with the association as to the end to be attained,
and we have endeavored, in a few words, to point out the means best
calculated for the attainment of that end with a very large part of
our criminals. We trust that our ideas will receive a trial, and that
narrow-minded and bigoted intolerance will not be allowed to put
obstacles in the way.
Catholic criminals can be permanently reformed only by Catholic
religious influences.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] _Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the
Prison Association of New York, and accompanying Documents, for
1868._ Transmitted to the Legislature Jan. 13th, 1869. Albany: The
Argus Company, Printers. 1869.
[28] See CATHOLIC WORLD, January, 1869.
CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NUMBER EIGHT.
UNION BETWEEN THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE, OR FIRST MOMENT OF GOD'S
EXTERNAL ACTION
The result of our preceding article was a supreme duality--the
infinite and the finite. The one absolutely distinct in nature from
the other. The first self-existing, necessary, eternal, immutable,
infinitely perfect, and absolutely complete and blessed in his
interior life; the other, created, contingent, mutable, imperfect,
and on the way to development. How can this duality, so marked and so
distinct, the terms of which are so infinitely apart, be harmonized
and brought together into unity?
Such is the fifth problem which pantheism raises, and which it
undertakes to solve.
Let us investigate more deeply the nature of the problem.
We do not now inquire whether there be any kind of union between the
infinite and the finite, because they are already united by means of
the creative act.
The infinite creates the finite, sustains and directs it, three
moments which constitute the finite and cause it to act. This is the
first and fundamental union between the infinite and the finite.
After what union, then, do we seek when the problem is raised, Is
there a union between the infinite and the finite already perfect as
to being, or, in other words, between the infinite and the finite
already united by the creative act?
We inquire after a union which may mark and express the highest
possible elevation of perfection which the cosmos, or the assemblage
of all finite beings, may attain; and as the finite, as we shall see,
cannot acquire its highest possible perfection except by a union with
infinite perfection, it follows that the problem inquires after the
highest possible union between the infinite and the finite.
We shall, according to our wont, give the pantheistic solution of the
problem, and then subjoin the answer of Catholicity. The pantheistic
solution is as follows: The infinite is the highest possible
indetermination and indefiniteness in the way to development. It
becomes definite and concrete in the finite, and this by a gradual
process.
First, it assumes the lowest possible form of existence in the
mineral kingdom. Then it begins to show life in the vegetable
kingdom. It acquires sensation and perception in the animal, and
shoots up into intelligence and consciousness in humanity. Yet is
this intelligence and consciousness essentially progressive, and
begins from the minimum degree to rise to the highest. This principle
explains all the stages of more or less civilization of which history
makes mention. At first the infinite acquires those faculties in
humanity which border on and are more akin to the senses, such as the
imagination and the fancy; hence the primitive state of nations is
marked with very imperfect development of the reasoning faculties,
and with a superabundance of imagination; consequently, this
primitive state abounds in national bards, who discharge all those
offices which, in nations more civilized, are fulfilled by others,
such as historians, orators, etc. It is also the age of myths, when
people with young and robust fancy are apt to give flesh and blood
and personality to any striking legend in vogue, until the legend, so
dressed up and personified, is misunderstood for a historical fact
and real person. Then, in proportion as the development advances, the
infinite acquires a better explication of the reasoning faculties,
and hence the ages of philosophy. Of course the development is
gradual and slow, and is perfected by time and continued development,
until the infinite arrives not only to the fullest explication of
the reasoning faculties, but also to the full consciousness of its
infinity, and of its eternal duration.
The infinite, arrived at the fullest explication of its intelligence,
and to the full consciousness of its infinity, is humanity, or the
cosmos arrived to the highest possible perfection. This humanity,
dressed up by the imagination of the people, with individuality and
personal traits, is the Christ, or the myth which Christians adore.
"The subject of the attributes," says Strauss, "which the church
predicates of Christ, is not an individual, but a certain idea,
though real, and not void of reality, like the Kantian ideas. The
properties and perfections attributed to Christ by the church, if
considered as united in one individual, the God-man, contradict each
other, but may be reconciled in the idea of the _species_. Humanity
is the collection of two natures, or God made man; that is, the
_infinite spirit transformed into a finite nature who is conscious
of his eternal duration_. This humanity is begotten from a visible
mother and an invisible father, that is, spirit and nature. It is
that which performs miracles, enjoys impeccability, dies, and rises
again, and goes up to heaven. Man, believing in this Christ, and
especially in his death and resurrection, may acquire justification
before God."[29]
According to pantheism, then, the infinite, acquiring the full
consciousness of his infinite perfections in humanity, is the highest
possible perfection of the cosmos, and the union, therefore, between
the two is the union of _identity_.
We are dispensed from attempting any refutation of this theory,
seeing that it rests on premises which we have already demonstrated
to be false and absurd. We only beg the reader to observe how utterly
futile and useless is this theory for the solution of the problem
which has called it forth. The problem is, how to raise the cosmos to
the highest possible perfection, or, in other words, how to establish
the highest possible union of the finite and the infinite, from which
the highest possible perfection of the finite may result.
Pantheism answers by proclaiming the absolute identity of the
infinite and the finite, by marking the highest possible perfection
on the cosmos, when the infinite in its finite form of development
acquires a consciousness of its infinity. Now, it is evident in this
answer that one term of the problem is swept away, that no real
cosmos exists, that it is but a phenomenon of the infinite, and that,
consequently, in the pantheistic solution the problem of the highest
possible union of the infinite and the finite cannot exist, because
the second term of the union does not really exist.
In the preceding article we raised the question, Is there a means
by which to raise the cosmos to the highest possible perfection, a
perfection almost absolute and beyond which we cannot go? And we
answered that the problem cannot be solved by human reason, being
altogether super-intelligible, and that the solution of it must be
left to the Catholic Church, the repository of divine revelation.
Now, the church answers the problem by laying down the first moment
of the external action of God, the hypostatic moment. By it the
human nature, and through it the cosmos, is elevated to the highest
possible perfection--a perfection beyond which we could not go; and
thus the problem is resolved, and the aspiration of the finite to
the highest possible union with the infinite is satisfied. That the
reader may fully understand the doctrine of Catholicity in answer to
the problem, we shall beg leave to recall a few principles which will
pave the way to the very heart of the answer.
1st. Every work of God, before it exists in itself, has an objective
existence in God's Word.
We remarked, in the sixth article, that every contingent being
must have a twofold state of existence, one objective, the other
subjective. The objective is the ideal and intelligible state of
every being residing eternally in the mind of God. Now, all God's
ideality or intelligibility is centred in the Word, whose constituent
is to be the very ideality or intelligibility of God. Consequently,
the cosmos, before it exists in itself, has an objective and
intelligible state of existence in the Word. In other terms, the
Word is the subsisting and eternal intelligible expression of every
thing that God is, and every thing that resides within God. He is,
therefore, essentially the expression of all divine ideas. Now,
all the works of God are a divine idea. Therefore, the Word by his
personal constituent is the representation, the type of the general
system of God's external works.
2d. All the works of God, inasmuch as they reside in the Word in a
typical state, are infinite.
For whatever is within God is identified with his essence, which is
absolute simplicity. Therefore, the cosmos, in its typical state
residing in the Word, resides in God, and is thus identified with the
essence of God, and is consequently infinite. St. John, with the
sublimest expression ever uttered by man, renders this idea when he
says, "All that was made in him (the Word) was life,"[30] indicating
that the Word, consisting of all the intelligibility of God and that
which was made belonging to the ideality and intelligibility of God,
was the very life of the Word, and consequently infinite.
3d. The Word is not only the type but the efficient cause of the
cosmos. The truth of this follows from the essential relation of the
Word to the Father.
The Father, knowing himself, knows also whatever is possible. But
whatever he knows he utters and expresses by his Word. Therefore,
the Father, through his only Word, utters himself and things
outside himself. But his utterance of creatures is also the cause
of their subjective existence, since God is pure and undivided act.
Consequently, through his single Word he affirms himself and his
exterior works, and consequently he is also their efficient cause.
4th. The external action of God tends to express, exteriorly, the
divine idea of the cosmos, as perfectly as it is uttered interiorly.
We have shown in the preceding article that, although it was not
necessary that God should effect the best possible cosmos, for the
reasons which we have therein given, yet it was most agreeable to
the end of creation that God should effect the best possible cosmos.
Now, the best possible cosmos is evidently that which draws as near
as possible to its intelligible and typical state. Consequently, the
external action of God has a tendency to express, exteriorly, the
divine ideas as perfectly as he utters them interiorly. St. Thomas
proves the same truth with a somewhat similar argument. Every agent,
he says, intends to express his own similitude (the interior idea) on
the effect he produces, and the more perfect is the agent, the better
and stronger will be the similitude between him and his effect. Now,
God is most perfect agent. It was, therefore, most agreeable to
him to stamp his own similitude on his external works as perfectly
as possible; that is, it was most agreeable to him to render his
external works as like their typical state as possible.
5th. This supreme or best possible expression of the typical state of
God's external works could not be substantial or ontological.
We have seen that the typical state of the cosmos, residing eternally
in the Word of God, is identified with him, and is therefore
infinite. It follows, therefore, that if we suppose a supreme,
substantial, and ontological expression of this typical state, we
must suppose a supreme, substantial, and ontological expression of
the infinite. Now, this is absurd; because a supreme and ontological
expression of the infinite would be the very substance of God. On
the other hand, the expression, requiring necessarily to be created,
would be essentially finite. Consequently, on the supposition, we
should have a finite infinite substantial expression of God, which is
a contradiction in terms.
6th. The supreme expression cannot be effected except by an
incorporation of the infinite into the finite.
Having excluded the identity between the finite and infinite natures,
an identity which would be a necessary consequence if the expression
were substantial and ontological, if a supreme expression of the
infinite is to be effected, if the cosmos, in its subjective state,
is to be elevated and made as like as possible to its typical state,
there are no other means of effecting this than by an incorporation
of the infinite into the finite. For let it be remembered that the
finite, in force of its nature, is indefinitely progressive. You can
add perfection to perfection, but unless you transform it into the
infinite, it will never change its nature, and will continue to be
finite. Thus, the only possible way of elevating it to the highest
possible perfection, is to raise it to a union with the infinite
greater than which you cannot conceive.
7th. This union or incorporation must be effected by the Word.
Because, first, the Word is the natural organ between the Father and
his exterior work, since, with the same utterance, the Father speaks
himself and his external works. Secondly, this union is required in
order that the external works may draw as near to their typical state
as possible. Now, the Word is the living and personal typical state
of the cosmos, the intelligible life of the external works; it is
necessary, therefore, that _he_ should enter into the finite, and
bring into harmony the interior infinite type of the cosmos, with its
finite external expression; unite together the ideal intelligible
state with the real subjective state of the cosmos.
From all we have said, it follows that all the external works reside
in the Word; that inasmuch as they reside in the Word in their
typical state, they are his very life, and consequently infinite;
that the Word is not only the typical but efficient cause of the
cosmos; that the external act tends to express exteriorly the typical
state of the cosmos as perfectly as it is uttered interiorly; that
this supreme expression could not be substantial and ontological;
and that, consequently, the only means of effecting it was an
incorporation of the infinite into the finite, to be executed by the
Word as the natural organ between God and his external works.
Now, this is the answer which Catholicity affords to the problem,
What is the union by which the finite attains its highest possible
perfection?
It answers in the sublime expressions of the Eagle among the
Evangelists, and which resume, in a few words, all we have hitherto
said.
"In the beginning (the Father) was the Word.
"And the Word was with God.
"And the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made _by him_, and without him was made nothing.
"That which was made in him was _life_.
"And the Word was made _flesh_, and dwelt among us."[31]
The Word of God, the subsisting ideality of the Father, the living
type of his external works, united himself to human nature, the
micro-cosmos, or abridgment of the cosmos, in such a close and
intimate union as to be himself the subsistence of human nature, and
thus exalted the cosmos to its highest possible perfection. This
union of the Word with human nature is called hypostatic or personal
union.
We must now study its nature and properties, draw the consequences
which flow from it, and point out how well it answers all the
requisites and conditions of the problem.
And in the first place, we remark that the subsistence of finite
beings is also contingent and variable. We have before given an idea
of subsistence and personality; but we beg leave to recall a few
ideas about these most important notions of ideology, that the reader
may better perceive in what the nature of the hypostatic union really
consists. We shall explain the following notions: possibility,
actuality, nature, substance, subsistence, and personality.
Possibility is the non-repugnance of a being. It is intrinsic or
exterior. When the essential elements which constitute the idea of
a being do not clash together or contradict each other, the being
is intrinsically possible. When, besides the intrinsic possibility,
there exists a principle which may give the being actual existence,
the possibility is external.
The intrinsic possibility of a being in the mind of the cause or
principle of this being is called intelligible actuality. Actuality
or existence, properly speaking--that is, subjective actuality--is
the existence of the being outside of the intelligent cause which
perceives it; or, in other words, the external expression of the
intelligible actuality.
Nature is the radical, interior principle of action in every existing
being.
Substance is the existing of the being in itself, or the permanence
and duration of a being in itself. Now, a being which is a substance
may be united with another substance, and the union may be so close
that one of them may become the natural, inseparable, intrinsic organ
of the other. In this case the being which is thus united with the
other and has become the organ of the other, although not ceasing
to be a substance, possesses no subsistence of its own. What, then,
is the subsistence of a being? It is not merely the existing in
itself; it is the exclusive possession of the existing in itself and
whatever flows from this exclusive possession. A being is possessed
of existence in itself and of its operations, when the union of which
we have spoken does not exist. But whenever such union exists, though
the being continues to be substance or to exist in itself, it has
yet no exclusive possession of itself.
Hence, subsistence is defined the last complement of a substance
which makes it an independent whole, separate or distinct from all
others; makes it own and possess itself, and renders it responsible
for its operations. Personality adds to this the element of
intelligence; so that a person is that supreme and intelligent
principle in a being which knows itself to be a whole, independent
of all others; which enjoys the possession of itself, and is
responsible for its actions. Consequently, every substance which
is complete--that is, detached from and independent of all other
substances in such a manner as to constitute a whole by itself, and
alone to bear the attribution of its properties, modifications, and
functions--is a subsistence.
The subsistence or personality of a contingent being is also
contingent, and may be separable from it so as to give rise to a
twofold supposition, either that the contingent being never had a
subsistence of its own, or, if it had, it may be deprived of it, and
its own subsistence may be substituted by another.
In the first place, we remark, in vindication of this statement,
that it is impossible that any substance could really exist without
a subsistence. Because, as we have said, subsistence is the last
complement of substance, and consequently without it the substance
could not be actual, but would be a mere abstraction. That for which
we contend in the proposition just laid down is, that it is not
necessary that a substance should have a subsistence of its own, but
that it may subsist of the subsistence of another.
For it is evident that every being comprised within the sphere of the
contingent and the finite may cease to be a whole by itself, and
may contract with a nature foreign to itself a union so intimate and
so strong as to depend on this foreign nature in all its functions
and its states, and no longer to bear the attribution and solidarity
of its actions and modifications. If, for instance, a hand detached
from the whole body were to trace characters, this action would be
attributed to it exclusively; it would be a subsistence, a whole
by itself, and we should say, _That hand writes_. But if it should
become a part of, and we should consider is as dependent on, a human
nature and will, it would then lose the solidary attribution of the
function of which it is the organ; and then we could no longer say,
_That hand writes_; but, _That man writes_.
A contingent substance may be deprived of the possession of its
subsistence by a union with a substance even inferior in nature to
itself. Because its superiority over this nature would not prevent
its being dependent on it in its functions and in its states, as
is the case with the human soul, which presides over the body,
which produces in it continual changes, and which, in spite of the
excellence which distinguishes it from the mass of matter which it
animates, yet depends on the body in its most intimate situations,
and finds itself bowed down by the continual evil which it suffers
thereby.
Hence is it that in man the possession of subsistence belongs neither
to the soul nor to the body, and there is no other subsistence in him
but the sum of the two natures of which he is composed, but the whole
of the two extremes united together, and which is at the same time
spirit and body, incorruptible and corruptible, the intelligent and
the brute.
Hence, neither the soul nor the body are denominated separately by
their respective functions; but it is the whole man who receives the
attribution and the different appellations of the actions and states
of either nature, and we say, man thinks, man walks, man wills, man
grows. Consequently that axiom, _Actiones et denominationes sunt
suppositorum_, Actions are to be attributed to the subsistence.
We remark, in the second place, that in the infinite alone the
subsistence and personality is necessary, and consequently can never
be separated from him or be dependent on any other. Because in this
order personality affects a nature essentially complete, total, and
of its own intrinsic nature absolutely independent in its action and
in its eternal and immutable state, of all external substance.
It follows, therefore, that if a divine personality enters into a
finite nature, it must necessarily preserve its own subsistence,
since it is evident that, if a divine person is united to a created
nature in a manner so close and intimate as to form one single
individuality, the created nature, in force of the principles above
stated, would have no individuality of its own, and the divine
personality would, in such case, necessarily be the supreme and
independent principle constituting the new individual, the infinite
term and completion of the two natures. Now, such is the hypostatic
union. The infinite person of the Word united to himself human
nature in a manner so close and intimate as to form one single
individuality, Christ Jesus, the Theanthropos; so that the human
nature of Christ had no subsistence of its own, but subsisted of
the personality of the Word. Hence, in Christ the Word of God was
the only supreme and independent principle, who knew himself to be
a whole apart, composed of the human and divine natures, who bore
alone the attribution and solidarity of the actions springing from
either nature, and who was, consequently, the only person in Christ.
But to make the nature of the hypostatic union more intelligible to
the reader, we shall dwell upon it a little longer.
We may reduce all the unions between the infinite and the finite to
three. The first is the action of God creating finite substances,
maintaining them in existence and directing all their movements,
permitting, however, their defects and shortcomings.
This is the first and fundamental union between the infinite and the
finite. It begins the moment the finite is created, and continues
in existence by preservation and concurrence. All this in the
natural order. In the supernatural order there is also a first and
fundamental union, as we shall see, by which the action of God
effects, as it were, a new and superior term, preserves and directs
it in its development. Thus, the first union between the finite
and the infinite is the action of God effecting a finite term,
maintaining it in existence and directing it in its development,
both in the substantial and in the sublimative moments. However,
this union not only leaves whole and entire the individuality and
subsistence of the two terms united, but is not even so close and
intimate as to prevent the finite term of the union from occasionally
failing in its action, and of falling short of the aim to which it
naturally tends. Hence a second and more excellent species of union.
By it the infinite is so closely united with the finite as not only
to preserve it, and to direct it in all its actions, but also to
prevent it from falling into defects and errors.
This second kind of union, though, as it is evident, far exceeding
the former in intimacy and perfection, since it implies an
extraordinary employment of activity on the part of the infinite, and
a special elevation of the finite, is yet not so close as to deprive
the finite term of its own subsistence and individuality.[32] We
may, therefore, conceive a third kind of union, whereby an infinite
personality may be united to a finite nature so closely and so
intimately as not only to move and direct it in all its actions, as
not only to prevent it from falling into failings and imperfections,
but as to make it the _intrinsic instrument_, the _intimate organ_
of his own infinite action in such a manner as to form of the finite
nature and of the infinite personality a new and single individuality.
This supposition is eminently possible. For, on the one hand, the
infinite personality being possessed of infinite energy, and, on the
other, the finite nature being endowed with an indefinite capacity of
sublimation, nothing can detain the first from communicating itself
to the second with such energy, power, and intensity of communication
as to render it its own most intimate and dependent organ of action.
In fact, let the communication of an infinite person to a finite
nature be carried to its highest possible degree of union short
of absorbing and destroying the real existence of the finite, its
substantiality, so to speak; let this finite nature be, accordingly,
raised to the highest possible intimacy with the infinite person;
let the latter take such intense possession of the former as to make
it its own intrinsic organ, the immediate and sole instrument of his
own infinite operation, and what will the result be? Why, that the
finite nature will no longer possess itself, no longer form a whole
by itself separated from and independent of any other; no longer bear
the attribution of the actions springing from its nature; in short,
it will no longer be a subsistence and an individuality by itself,
but will form one single individuality with the divine person, or
rather the infinite person will be the only single subsistence of the
two natures united, the infinite and the finite. The finite nature in
this supposition would stand, with regard to the infinite person, in
the same relation in which our body stands with regard to our soul.
For the union of body and soul, which constitutes the individual
called man, takes place according to this kind of union. The soul is
united to the body in a manner so close and so intimate as to render
the body its own most intrinsic, dependent instrument, the organ of
its operations in such a manner that, in force of this operation, the
body does not possess itself, does not form a whole apart, nor is it
accountable for the actions which immediately flow from its nature.
In other words, it has no subsistence of its own, but subsists of the
subsistence of the soul and the whole individual man. The result of
this union is possessed of the subsistence and forms one person.
The Incarnation of the Word is like to this union, hence called
hypostatic or personal union. The second person of the Trinity united
himself to the entire human nature, constituted of body and soul, in
a manner so close and intimate as to be _himself_ the subsistence
of the human nature; the latter never enjoying a subsistence of
its own, because, contemporaneously to the very first instant of
its existence, it became the internal, the immediate, and the most
intimate organ of the Word of God, and subsisted of the subsistence
of the Word, so that it never bore the attribution and solidarity of
those actions which have an immediate origin in human nature, but the
attribution and solidarity, and, consequently, the moral worth, of
those actions belonged to the personality of the Word, according to
the axiom that _Actiones sunt suppositorum_.
Hence the union between the Word of God and his human nature was not
a moral union, which always implies the distinct individuality and
personality of the two terms united, as Nestorius thought, and many
would-be Christians of the present day seem to hold.
Nestorius was ready to grant that the union between the Word and
human nature was as high and intimate as possible, so far as moral
union can permit; but never would he concede that it was any higher
than simple moral union, which kept whole and entire the two
individualities united. Consequently, he admitted two persons and
two individualities in Christ--the _Word_ of God, and the man called
Christ. From which theory it follows that our Lord was a mere man--a
saint, if you will, the highest of all saints, yet simply a man.
Catholic doctrine, on the contrary, teaching that the union of the
Word and the human nature was personal, inasmuch as the divine person
of the Word was the subsistence in which his human nature subsisted,
teaches consequently, at the same time, that in Christ there is one
person, one individuality--the divine personality of the Word; that
therefore Christ, the new individual, is God, being the second divine
person, in which both his divine and human nature subsist. Nor was
the human nature of this new individual so absorbed by the divine
personality as to cease to be a substance, as Eutyches affirmed, who
upheld, it would seem, a fusion and a mixture of the two natures
altogether inconceivable and absurd.
From all we have said we may form quite an accurate idea of what the
hypostatic union really means. It is the union, or the meeting, so
to speak, of the human and divine natures in the one single point
of contact, the infinite personality of the Word of God; the human
nature having no personality of its own, but subsisting of the
identical personality of the Word.
The new individual possessed of the divine and human nature in the
unity of the single personality of the Word is Jesus Christ.
To complete now the idea of the hypostatic union, we shall point out
some consequences which evidently flow from that union:
1. We should consider that nature being transmitted through
generation, and Christ being possessed of two natures, the human and
the divine, it is necessary to admit in him a twofold generation: one
eternal, according to which he received the divine nature from the
Father; the second temporal, by which he received his human nature
from the Virgin Mother.
2. As nature is the radical principle and source of operation in
every being, it follows that, as Christ is possessed of two natures,
we must predicate of him a double operation--one human, the other
divine.
3. In force of the same principle, we must predicate of him
whatever necessarily belongs to the two distinct natures. Hence, as
intelligence and will, together with their respective perfections,
belong both to the human and to the divine nature, it is clear
that we must attribute to Christ, first, a divine intelligence and
a divine will with their perfections, such as infinite wisdom and
knowledge, infinite holiness, goodness, justice, etc.; second, a
human intelligence and a human will, together with the perfections of
these faculties, as knowledge, wisdom, holiness, etc.
4. As actions, though immediately proceeding from nature, are to
be attributed to the subsistence and personality, because nature
could not act without being possessed of subsistence, and as the
subsistence and personality of both natures of Christ is one--the
personality of the Word of God; and as this personality is infinite,
it follows that the actions of Christ, whether immediately springing
from his human nature, or proceeding from his divine nature, have
all an infinite worth and excellence, on the ground of the infinite
worth of the person to whom they must be attributed. This principle,
so evident, and grounded on the axiom of ideology to which we have
alluded--_Actiones sunt suppositorum_--has been denied by some,
especially Unitarians. But happily the most abstract principles of
ideology have such a bearing upon human dignity that it is easy to
refute such would-be philosophers on the strong ground of the dignity
of the human species. Let us give an instance. How are the actions
immediately proceeding from the corporal nature of man, such, for
instance, as those of locomotion, distinguished from the actions
of locomotion in the brutes? And why is it that the actions of
locomotion of the first may attain the highest and most heroic moral
worth, while the same actions in the brute may never have a moral
dignity? Ontologically they are the same. An animal may move its
foot; I may do the same; both movements may save the life of a man.
In me, the stirring of my foot may have the dignity of a moral and
heroic action. In the brute, it can never have it. What causes the
difference? The difference lies in the fact that I am a person, the
brute is not. I, being a person, the supreme, first, and independent
principle of action of both my natures, corporal and spiritual, it
follows that all actions radically flowing from either of my natures
are to be attributed to me as person, as the supreme and independent
principle of them; and as I, as a person, am capable of moral
dignity, all the actions, whether proceeding from my corporal or my
spiritual nature, become capable of moral worth and dignity.
In Christ, the personality or the supreme and independent principle
of action of both his natures, human and divine, being one, it is
evident that whether his actions radically proceed from his human
nature, or spring from his divine nature, they must all be attributed
to his one and single person; and as the person is infinite, the
worth and dignity of all his actions is simply infinite. As in man
the personality of both corporal and spiritual natures being capable
of morality, the action springing from either nature may have a moral
dignity and worth. We shall conclude this article by answering a few
objections raised by Unitarians against the hypostatic union. We
shall take them verbatim from Dr. Channing's lecture on _Unitarian
Christianity_:
"According to this doctrine, (the doctrine of those who hold
the hypostatic union,) Jesus Christ, instead of being one mind,
one conscious intelligent principle, whom we can understand,
consists of two souls, two minds: the one divine, the other
human; the one weak, the other almighty; the one ignorant, the
other omniscient. Now, we maintain that this is to make Christ
two beings. To denominate him one person, one being, and yet to
suppose him made up of two minds infinitely different from each
other, is to abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness
over all our conceptions of intelligent natures. According to the
common doctrine, each of those two minds in Christ has its own
consciousness, its own will, its own perceptions. They have,
in fact, no common properties. The divine mind feels none of
the wants and sorrows of the human, and the human is infinitely
removed from the perfections and happiness of the divine. Can you
conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct? We have
always thought that one person was constituted and distinguished
by one consciousness. The doctrine that one and the same person
should have two consciousnesses, two wills, two souls infinitely
different from each other, this we think an enormous tax on human
credulity."[33]
We are not, of course, aware from what source or teachers Dr.
Channing learned the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Of one thing
we are fully assured, that the Catholic Church never taught, first,
that in Christ there are two souls. He is endowed with a human soul,
belonging to the human nature of which he is possessed. The infinite
and divine nature of the Word, of which Christ is also preserved,
has never, in theological language, been called a soul, nor can we
denominate it by that name except in loose and metaphorical language,
unworthy of a philosopher and theologian who is stating points of
doctrine.
Again, the Catholic Church never taught that the human soul of Christ
was ignorant. This may have been the opinion of those from whom Dr.
Channing may have drawn the theory of the hypostatic union; but in
stating a doctrine in which all Christendom concurs, Protestant
as well as Catholic, we should have thought it more honest if Dr.
Channing, not satisfied with his own teachers, would have taken the
pains to ascertain what two hundred and fifty millions of Christians
hold about it.
The first real objection of Dr. Channing is as follows:
"We maintain that this (to attribute to Christ two natures in one
person) is to make Christ two beings."
The same looseness and want of accuracy of philosophical language.
What does Dr. Channing mean by _being_? If by being is meant nature,
of course we do all attribute to Christ two natures, the human and
the divine.
If by being is meant person, we deny flatly that to attribute to
Christ two natures is to make him two persons.
Let the reverend doctor prove the intrinsic impossibility of two
distinct natures being united in one single subsistence and person,
and then we shall grant him that Christ, being possessed of two
natures, is two persons also. But such impossibility can never be
demonstrated; for the fact of the union between soul and body in man,
in the unity of one single personality, is a contradiction to all
such pretended impossibility. We have, moreover, shown in the course
of this article the intrinsic possibility of such supposition.
Dr. Channing continues:
"To denominate him one person, one being, and yet to suppose him
made up of two minds infinitely different from each other, is to
abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness over all our
conceptions of intelligent natures."
If our reverend opponent chooses to look with contempt and slight
on all distinct and accurate notions of ideology, which he calls,
in another place, vain philosophy; if he prefers to form crude and
undigested ideas; if he will not sound to the very depth the nature,
the faculties of intelligent beings, their acts, the genesis of
their acts, their distinctions from other faculties and their acts;
but loves rather to argue from ideas common to men who have never
thought and thought deeply on these subjects, and distinguished them
carefully, and classified them, is it any fault of ours if, when we
propound the true philosophical doctrines about these subjects, Dr.
Channing's ideas should become confused, and that darkness should
spread over that which was never clear?
"According to the common doctrine, each of these two minds
in Christ has its own consciousness, its own will, its own
perceptions. They have, in fact, no common properties. Can you
conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct?"
If by being the doctor meant natures, we cannot conceive any thing in
the universe more distinct, for which reason Catholicity teaches that
there are two _distinct_ natures in Christ.
If by being the doctor means that those two natures must make two
persons, we cannot grant the assertion, and ask again for proofs.
"We have always thought that one person was constituted and
distinguished by one consciousness."
This is the only show of reason we can find in the whole passage
we have been refuting; and we have no hesitation in affirming
that, if our opponent thought that one person is constituted by
one consciousness, in the sense that when an intelligent nature
is endowed with consciousness it must necessarily possess a
personality of its own, so that consciousness and personality may
be said to be identical, as the doctor supposes, he was wrong in
thinking so, and should study more deeply into the distinctive
essence of consciousness and personality. We may make the following
suppositions, according to true ideology:
1st. An intelligent nature, having consciousness of itself, may have
a personality of its own, as is the common case in human nature.
2d. An intelligent nature, having the consciousness of itself, may
be deprived of its own personality and subsist of the personality
of another, simply because consciousness and personality are two
distinct things, and may either go together or be separated, without
one being affected by the other.
Personality is the last complement of an intelligent nature, by which
it forms a whole apart from all others, possessing itself, and being
solidary of its actions.
Consciousness, or the _me_, is nothing more than the notion of an
intelligent activity which perceives the identity of itself, thinking
and reasoning with the act which perceives such identity. It rises in
man in that first moment on which he becomes aware that the act which
perceives the reasoning activity is not something different from
itself, but something identical with the reasoning activity. In that
first instant in which he perceives himself, man may pronounce, I.
He that says I, in uttering that monosyllable testifies of being
conscious that there is an activity, that this activity is the
same which reflects, speaks, and announces itself, perceiving this
activity.
Now, it is evident that the two notions of personality and
consciousness are absolutely distinct, and as such they may be
separated; and that the one can exist without the other in the sense
already explained. Consequently, supposing an individual composed of
two natures, one divine, the other human, both brought together in
the unity of one divine person, it follows that the divine nature has
consciousness of itself; in other words, is conscious that there is
an infinite activity which perceives itself, and is conscious of the
identity between the activity and the perception of that activity.
It follows, in the second place, that the human mind of the human
nature has also a consciousness of itself; that is, that in itself
there is a finite activity, and that activity perceives itself, and
is conscious of the identity between the activity and the act of
perception.
The divine nature in this one divine person would be conscious
of being that supreme and independent principle of action of the
natures; whereas the human nature would not be conscious of being
such a supreme and independent principle of action, but dependent and
subject.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Strauss, _La Vie de Jésus_. Par Littré, Paris.
[30] We read this passage as St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Augustine,
Beda, and others read it.
[31] St. John i.
[32] This species of union is what, in theological language, would be
called confirmation in grace, and took place in the Blessed Virgin
and in some saints.
[33] _Unitarian Christianity_, p. 196.
THE SEVEN BISHOPS.
We found, in a leading daily paper of New York the other day,
an editorial remark which illustrates so well the propensity of
Protestant journalists toward inconsistency whenever they deal with
the relations between civil government and the Catholic Church, that
we here cite it in full:
"Spain," said _The Tribune_, "is going to have a trial of the
seven bishops. There will be some difference, however, between
the question at issue in the Spanish trial and that in the famous
English cause which Macaulay describes as the most important
recorded in the history of England. In the Spanish case, the cause
of freedom will be represented rather by the government, who
prosecutes seven bishops for resistance of the secular authority,
than by the prelates who are to be placed on their defence. It
seems to us a good omen when they venture to put bishops on trial
for any thing in Spain."
Now, _The Tribune_ has always been a foremost advocate for complete
separation of church and state. When the new government of Spain
decreed freedom of religious worship, _The Tribune_, in common with
other American journals, hailed the measure with delight, as a great
step toward the mutual independence of the two orders. But here,
in this Spanish affair, there is a more absolute and oppressive
assertion of their union than even Henry VIII. ever ventured upon
in the creation of the Anglican establishment. Only, since the
union is effected by a tyrannical assertion of the supremacy of the
secular over ecclesiastical authority, Protestant writers see in it
an evidence of progress and liberality. It makes so much difference
whether it is my bull that is gored, or your ox.
The parallel, however, between the seven bishops under James II., and
the seven bishops under Serrano, (their number has been increased
to ten since that paragraph was written, and before our readers see
these pages may be raised still higher,) is such a fortunate one that
we purpose looking at it a little more closely. It will be found, we
think, to tell strongly for our side, and to teach some lessons which
the Spanish regency can ill afford to disregard.
In 1687, King James II. published his celebrated Declaration
of Indulgence, by which, after expressing his conviction that
consciences could not be forced, and religious persecution always
failed of its object, he proceeded to suspend the execution of all
penal laws against the Catholics and Dissenters alike, to authorize
all religious bodies to hold public worship after their own
fashion, and to dispense with all religious tests as qualifications
for any civil or military office. Whatever may be said of the
constitutionality of this declaration, it was unquestionably in
accordance with the principles of freedom and justice which have
since been recognized completely in this country, and are gradually
becoming established in Great Britain and all other constitutional
states. The Declaration of Indulgence might to-day be accepted in
every particular as the platform of the English liberals or _The New
York Tribune_. The Protestant party in James's day, however, was any
thing but the party of religious freedom or liberal ideas. Church
and state, in their minds, must be one--and that one the Protestant
church. The declaration was violently resisted. A year later (April
27th, 1688,) James issued a second declaration, repeating the points
of the former one, and proclaiming his unalterable resolution
to carry it into effect. By an order in council he subsequently
commanded that this paper should be read on two successive Sundays at
the time of divine service by the officiating ministers of all the
churches and chapels of the kingdom. "The clergy of the Established
Church," says Macaulay, "with scarcely an exception, regarded the
indulgence as a violation of the laws of the realm, as a breach
of the plighted faith of the king, and as a fatal blow levelled
at the interest and dignity of their own profession." The order
was generally disobeyed. The Archbishop of Canterbury and six of
his suffragans presented a petition to the king, recounting their
objections to the declaration and their reasons for refusing to order
its publication in church. For this they were committed to the tower,
and tried before the court of king's bench on a charge of seditious
libel. In the midst of the most intense popular excitement they were
acquitted, and that day, the 30th of June, 1688, is often referred to
as the crisis of the English revolution. So far as it was a political
movement, this affair of the bishops represents a victory of the
people over the arbitrary authority of the crown. So far as it was
a religious movement, it represents a triumph of the secular power
over what are called the great Protestant principles of liberty of
conscience and freedom of worship. Though the bishops may have been
political martyrs, they stand nevertheless as the representatives of
religious intolerance, proscription, and persecution.
And what is the case of the bishops in Spain? Since the overthrow of
Isabella, the country has been in a state little better than anarchy.
The regency of Serrano, though it probably commands the adhesion
of a majority of the people, has never been generally acquiesced
in. Republicans, Carlists, Isabellistas are strong enough to cause
the regency grave apprehension, and are only kept down by military
power. The Carlists especially display a vitality which proves them
to possess a strong hold of some kind upon the country, and to be
much more than the little band of miserable conspirators which Madrid
despatches represent them. It is difficult to know the truth about
them; for we get little news from Spain, except such as filters
through the offices of the regency at Madrid. It is said, however,
that the clergy in general are favorable to the Carlists, which,
considering the manner in which the churches and convents have been
plundered by the existing authorities at the capital, is not at all
unlikely. To put the clergy entirely at the mercy of the civil power,
the regent issued, on the 5th of August, the following extraordinary
decree:
"DECREE.
"At the proposal of the minister of grace and justice, and with
the approbation of the council of ministers, I ordain as follows:
"Article 1st. That an exhortation shall be made, and I hereby
make it to the most reverend archbishops and the right reverend
bishops to send immediately to the government, as is their bounden
duty, a circumstantial account of all those ecclesiastics of their
respective dioceses who have abandoned the churches to which
they were appointed, in order to combat the political situation
established by the Constitutional Cortes.
"Article 2d. The most reverend archbishops and right reverend
bishops are charged to send to the government, immediately
after their acquaintance with this decree, and without delays
or excuses being listened to, a statement of the canonical and
public measures they may have adopted, during the separation and
abandonment of the rebel priests, with a view not only to correct
and restrain them, but also to repair the most grievous scandal
produced among the faithful by such disloyal and reckless conduct;
and the government reserves to itself, after examining the reports
which the prelates may transmit to the ministry of grace and
justice, the adoption of such other measures as it may consider
expedient.
"Article 3d. It being notorious that many ecclesiastics excite the
innocent minds of some people against the laws and decisions voted
by the Cortes, and also against the order which I have issued
for their fulfilment, let the most reverend archbishops, right
reverend bishops, and ecclesiastical administrators send round
their dioceses for circulation, within the precise term of eight
days, a short pastoral edict, exhorting their flocks to obedience
to the constituted authorities; and the said prelates shall,
without loss of time, transmit a copy of the said edict to the
secretary of the said ministry.
"_Article 4th. The most reverend archbishops and the right
reverend bishops are likewise charged to withdraw the faculties of
confessing and preaching from those priests who are notoriously
displeased with, who have not hesitated to make an ostensible
display of opposition to the constitutional regimen._
"Article 5th. The government will render account of this decree to
the Cortes.
"FRANCISCO SERRANO.
"MANUEL RUIZ ZORRILLA,
"_Minister of Grace and Justice_."
It is difficult to imagine a bolder usurpation of authority. If
priests are found guilty of political offences, the regent has the
_power_ (we do not speak of the right) to proceed against them just
as he would against lay citizens. Not satisfied with that, he wishes
to impose ecclesiastical penalties also for political heterodoxy,
to constitute himself the hierarchical superior of all the bishops
and archbishops in Spain, to dictate the terms of their pastoral
addresses, and to make the church a mere instrument of oppression
in the hands of the civil power. He orders the prelates to turn
informers. He instructs them to lay punishments upon the parochial
clergy in plain violation of canon law. Worse than all, in the 4th
article of his decree, he commands the bishops to take away the
faculties of hearing confessions and preaching from all priests who
are even "displeased with the constitutional regimen." Comment upon
such an order is entirely superfluous. If it were obeyed, probably
three fourths of the parishes in Spain would be without pastors.
As a matter of course, the bishops have tacitly refused to comply
with this decree, and Serrano threatens to proceed against the most
obnoxious of them for disobedience.
Now, let any impartial person compare the cases of the English and
the Spanish bishops, and tell us which represents the more perfectly
the cause of just government and enlightened principles. Both
refused obedience to an order of the chief civil authority of the
realm because they held it to be an unwarrantable intrusion upon the
dignity and independence of their order, and a violation of the laws.
Herein the cases are parallel. The difference between them is just
this, that the order of James, though it was unconstitutional, was
a good and liberal measure in itself, while the order of Serrano is
not only illegal but tyrannous. How can _The Tribune_ say that "in
the Spanish case, the cause of freedom will be represented rather by
the government who prosecutes seven bishops for resistance of the
secular authority, than by the prelates who are to be placed on their
defence"? To our view, Serrano appears as the champion of civil and
ecclesiastical despotism, and the bishops are martyrs in the cause of
political freedom and religious independence.
James II. calculated that the power of the throne would be sufficient
in any case to insure the conviction of his seven bishops; but the
prosecution failed; the dissenting sects, which would have benefited
from his indulgence equally with the Catholics, united with the
Anglican Church to withstand him; the people fell on their knees
before the bishops in the streets; and in six months the king was a
fugitive. Will Spain pursue the parallel to this point? No government
can afford to be unjust. No government, especially which bases its
authority upon the consent of the people can last long after it has
become arbitrary and oppressive. Men love equity instinctively, and
the decree of the Spanish regent will be worth more to the Carlists
than an army of soldiers.
LINES ON THE PONTIFICAL HAT PRESERVED IN MADAME UZIELLI'S PRIVATE
ORATORY.
O high exalted instinct of the soul!
That evermore doth find
A grace and hidden splendor not their own
In things of curious kind;
Casket, or signet-ring, or coat of mail,
Or ermined robe of state,
That once belonged to history's champions,
The good, the wise, the great!
This relic fair, which love most Catholic
Devoutly treasures here,
To me, beholding it, than rubied crown
More glorious doth appear.
For cinctured round with spiry wheaten ears
And clustering grapes of gold,
Types of the pure oblation offered now
For bloody rites of old,
Here, (by no freak of fancy,) underneath
Its rim of mystic red,
It shaded from a Roman summer's sun
The sacred snow-white head
Of our dear Pius; as from church to church,
Amidst the kneeling throng,
Serene he passed--a vision of delight,
The ancient ways along!
Angels of Rome! oh! shield that head beloved
From danger and all fears;
Watch o'er the pontiff brave, the sovereign good,
The priest of fifty years!
And when his hour arrives, so long postponed
By Christendom's fond prayer,
May he in heaven's own hierarchy throned,
Be still our glory there!
_Oratory, Birmingham._ E. CASWALL.
FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.
In his latest historical work, (_Isabelle de Castille. Grandeur
et Décadence de l'Espagne_,) the distinguished historian, M.
Capefigue, says that, besides other debts to Isabella of Castile,
Spaniards also owe an association that saved Spain from disorder
and anarchy--_La Santa Hermandad_, the holy brotherhood, whose
law was that of absolute solidarity. Cervantes, in _Don Quixote_,
never lets an occasion pass of praising the brotherhood, with which
Isabella also introduced the holy office--the Inquisition. It is
our habit, says M. Capefigue, in matters historical, to avoid the
adoption of ready-made opinions, and more especially declamations.
We must examine with judgment the customs, the institutions, of a
period--the necessities of an epoch. Then, frequently, every thing is
justified and explained. Power is not inflexible through pleasure or
caprice, but through necessity. Ogres only exist in fairy tales. In
political history there are no men who from mere caprice eat human
flesh. There are two periods in the history of the Inquisition. In
the first, it rendered immense services. Ferdinand and Isabella
had just delivered Spain. But the Moors still covered the land,
and had to be watched. In constant communication with the Arabs in
Africa, they ceased not to invoke the aid of their brethren across
the strait. Together they conspired to reconquer Andalusia, the
promised land of the Arabs, who never ceased longing for the lovely
countries watered by the Guadalquivir. Theirs it was to hope and to
plot. Spain's it was to detect and punish them. In times of peril
for a state, exceptional powers are given, extraordinary tribunals
created. At a period exclusively religious, the sign of Spanish
nationality was Catholicity. Christian was the synonym of citizen,
and the holy office was charged with the police of the state against
those who accepted not the law of the land. Not only France but other
countries have had their committees of public safety and their
revolutionary tribunals. In the second period, the Inquisition--no
longer useful to the state--became a tribunal of theology. It
pursued heresy, which in societies based on religious principles is
always a danger. Most remarkable is it that even in its decline the
Inquisition preserved its popularity so largely among the great men
of Spain. Lope de Vega was the chief of familiars of the holy office.
Calderon was one of its most ardent members, bearing its banners at
_autos da fe_. Velasquez gloried in the title. Murillo paints the
flowers--the saints that ornament the _san benito_--and Zurbaran
takes his grandest heads from the Dominican fathers of the _santa
fide_. Without the guard and protection of the Inquisition, Spain
would not have effected the great things in her history. Torn by
interior dissensions, she would not have had the Americas; the reign
of Charles V. would not have been so glorious, nor would she have
gained the battle of Lepanto and saved Christian Europe.
* * * * *
The French publisher, V. Palmé, announces as in press the celebrated
work of Cardinal Jacobatius, _De Concilio_, forming the introduction
to the grand collection of councils.
* * * * *
The 14th, 15th, and 16th volumes of the _Bullarum, diplomatum et
privilegiorum sanctorum Romanorum pontificum Taurinensi editio_ have
just been published at Turin. The 14th volume includes the years
from the sixth to the sixteenth of the pontificate of Urban VIII.
(1628-39;) the 15th terminates that pontificate and contains that of
Innocent X. (1639-54;) and the 16th embraces the first seven years of
Alexander VII. (1655-62.) The bulls and constitutions are published
in chronological order. Some idea of their number may be formed from
the fact that of Urban VIII. there are 829, of Innocent X. 199,
of Alexander VII. 385. Each volume has _index nominum et rerum
præcipuarum, index initialis, index rubricarum_.
* * * * *
Late French papers announce the death of the Baron de Croze, formerly
deputy from the department of Charente Inférieure, father-in-law of
Count Anatole Lemercier, and for some years Cameriere of his holiness
Pius IX. The holy father was much attached to Baron de Croze, and
frequently held with him long and familiar conversations on politics
and history. Some ten years ago, the Baron addressed a memorial to
Pius IX., strongly urging his holiness to restore the Coliseum and
to appeal to the entire world for the immense sums necessary for
so great a work as the restoration of the noblest monument of the
antique grandeur of the Romans. "My dear son," replied Pius IX., "I
have seen your memorial, and thank you for it; but do you not know
that there are two kinds of vandalism, the one of destruction, the
other of restoration? Never has the Coliseum been more beautiful
than in the moving contrast of the splendor of its past and the
magnificence of its ruins. To restore them would, it seems to me, be
an artistic sacrilege, and would annihilate the work of ages only to
produce a poor and colorless counterfeit. Think no more of it, _caro
mio_." And the baron thought no more of it.
* * * * *
The Parisian publishing circulars announce in press and soon
to appear the celebrated Theology of Salamanca, _Collegii
Salamanticensis Cursus Theologicus_.
* * * * *
In a late German bibliographical catalogue we remark the name
of a saint we now see for the first time, and concerning whom
we acknowledge ourselves utterly ignorant. It occurs in the
title of a work thus announced: _Sainct Velociped. Eine Moderne
Reiselegende_--Saint Velocipede. A Legend of Modern Travel.
* * * * *
_Saint Agobard, Archevêque de Lyon, sa Vie et ses Ecrits_, par M.
l'Abbé P. Chevallard, is the title of a handsome octavo volume
just published at Lyons. Saint Agobard's life covered the period
from 779 to 840, and, with his writings, forms an important page
of the history of the church in France during the ninth century.
His episcopal career was active, and his influence on the religious
questions and discipline of his time considerable. The history of
this holy man is necessarily attached to that of the reign of Louis
le Débonnaire. St. Agobard's reputation for talent and learning
has never been contested, and historians and critics unite in the
opinion that he was the first mind of his period in France. It is
not exclusively within the church, nor by Catholics alone, that
St. Agobard is thus highly appreciated. MM. Guizot and Ampère have
spoken with great admiration of him; Ampère particularly mentions
his intelligent efforts in combating a widely spread and deeply
rooted belief that a disastrous epidemic which carried off thousands
of cattle was caused by the emissaries of the Duke of Benevento,
who--said popular report--scattered powders over the fields and in
the fountains, thus producing sudden death of the animals. Something
similar is recounted by Manzoni in his _Promessi Sposi_, where he
describes the _Untori_ and the pretended cholera poisoners. Besides
the essays of St. Agobard on theology, liturgy, and ecclesiastical
discipline, his writings on the superstitions of his period, and on
the pernicious influence of the Jews in Lyons, are remarkable and of
high value in an historical point of view.
* * * * *
Much indignation has been expressed in several European and English
papers concerning an imaginary prohibition of the pope to the
physicians of Rome from attending any person who, after three days'
medical attendance, should refuse the sacraments. The paragraphs
containing the indignation have been widely copied in the United
States, and we therefore notice the silly statement. The existence
and validity of an old brief of Sixtus V. is probably the origin of
the singular blunder. The brief in question orders doctors, under
pain of excommunication, to warn the parish priest of the patient's
danger, if, after three days, he appears in peril of life; but beyond
that the doctor cannot act, and continues his attendance to the last,
irrespective of the patient's religious state or dispositions. And
the provision is evidently wise and humane. In very many cases it is
dangerous for the patient to know that his physician considers him
in peril of death. To advise his family is much the same as to tell
the patient; and the obvious prudence of the matter is to notify the
parish priest, who can act according to the necessities of the case.
So much for one of the many falsehoods of the day. Like many others,
it has travelled fast and far. Will this refutation overtake it?
Doubtful.
* * * * *
A new history of Pope Pius IX. is announced as almost ready for
publication: _Histoire de Pie IX. et de son Pontificat_, par M.
Alexandre de Saint Albin.
* * * * *
The distinguished Father Theiner, of Rome, has lately given his
friends occasion to regret that he had not remained known to the
literary world by his _Monumenta_ alone. No words but those of praise
and admiration could then have been found for him. Our occasion for
this remark is his late controversy--or series of controversies--with
M. Crétineau-Joly, concerning the Cardinals Consalvi and Caprara, and
Bishop Bernier, touching their connection with the concordat of 1801.
The matter has culminated in an octavo volume lately out, _Bonaparte,
le Concordat de 1801 et le Cardinal Consalvi, suivi des deux Lettres
au Père Theiner sur le Pape Clement XIV._, par J. Crétineau-Joly; and
of which we made mention in our August number. M. Crétineau-Joly is a
terrible adversary, and wields a trenchant blade. Such a rapid shower
of cut, thrust, back, forward, and circular strokes is rarely seen.
It is to be regretted, however, that M. Joly, in the abundance of his
power of replication and retort, should not have been content with
telling Father Theiner, as he does, "You have been given a bad cause
to sustain, and you defend it with bad arguments." But blood becomes
as hot in literary quarrels as in physical combats, and M. Joly
goes entirely too far when he talks about surprising his adversary,
"_Vingt fois, trente fois, en flagrant débit de mensonge_." Those who
know Father Theiner are satisfied that he is in this case the victim
of his imagination and of his simplicity, and that, moreover, he has
been badly advised.
* * * * *
Dr. F. W. Kampschulte, Professor of History at the University of
Bonn, has hitherto been known as an author only by a few works of
secondary importance, such as his _History of the Ancient University
of Erfurt_. He has, however, just taken rank quite suddenly among the
best historians of Germany by his lately published _Johann Calvin,
seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf_, (John Calvin, his Church and
his State at Geneva.) The first volume alone is as yet published.
But this one is quite enough to display remarkable erudition, and an
amount of literary labor nothing less than enormous. Dr. Kampschulte
asserts on good grounds that, without the assistance of Berne,
Genevan Protestantism would never have succeeded as it did, and he
has, accordingly, thoroughly and successfully searched the archives
of Berne for new and valuable documents. Finally, the author has
not, like too many of his predecessors in the same field, been
content to take for Calvin's correspondence Beza's edition of the
_Epistolæ et Responsa Calvini_, which really contains but a small
portion of Calvin's correspondence, but has with wonderful labor and
perseverance collected a large amount of Calvin's letters hitherto
unknown, and which were dispersed throughout Europe.
* * * * *
A second edition of the _Bibliotheque des écrivains de la Compagnie
de Jésus_, par le P. Augustin de Backer, is announced as soon to
be published. It will be in three volumes in folio, each volume to
contain about three thousand columns, and will be placed at the very
low price of forty-five francs. It will not be for sale in the usual
manner by booksellers, and we therefore make special mention of
it. Persons desiring to obtain it may address the author, (College
Saint Servais, Liège, Belgique,) or the publisher of the _Etudes
Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires_, (_No. 18 Rue Lhomond, à
Paris_.) The first edition, commenced by Fathers Augustin and Alois
de Backer, appeared in 1855, in seven vols. 8vo. The new edition,
besides being in a single alphabetical series, will contain numerous
corrections and additions. It also contains articles on controversies
of special interest, such as the publication of the _Acta Sanctorum_,
the origin of the order of _Carmel_, etc.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
LECTURES AND ESSAYS ON IRISH AND OTHER SUBJECTS. By Henry Giles.
New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
Besides biographical lectures on O'Connell, Curran, Dr. Doyle, Oliver
Goldsmith, and Gerald Griffin, this volume contains other lectures on
the spirit of Irish history, Irish social character, etc., which many
of our readers have, doubtless, heard delivered by the author in his
pleasant and effective style.
Mr. Giles is of Irish birth, and for many years officiated and
preached as a Unitarian minister. There can be no doubt that his
Irish patriotism is sincere and enthusiastic, and yet, as we read,
we feel as though something were wanting. For reasons that can
be perfectly well understood without detailed explanation, Irish
patriotic character always appears incomplete without Catholicity.
Oliver Goldsmith and the Duke of Wellington are as much of Irish
birth as Dr. Doyle and Daniel O'Connell; but how much more
essentially Irish to every one are the two latter than the two
former. The Catholic reader of these lectures sadly misses what he
feels to be most essential. Take, for instance, the lectures on
O'Connell, Gerald Griffin, and Dr. Doyle, which are among the best,
and he perceives the absence of an element of appreciation that
nothing but Catholic sympathy could supply. These papers have high
merit as oral lectures, and precisely because of this merit they fall
short of their reputation when read. The effective lecture is not
necessarily an effective essay. There are certain elements nowadays
almost indispensable to the success of a lecture, and they happen
to be precisely those which detract from its literary merit. The
redundancy of anecdote is one of these elements, and Mr. Giles was
strongly given to it.
The book is, nevertheless, pleasant reading, although such essays
as "The Christian Idea in Catholic Art and in Protestant Culture"
afford additional proof--if any were needed--of the barrenness of
Protestantism in art.
* * * * *
ORDER AND CHAOS: A Lecture, delivered at Loyola College,
Baltimore, in July, 1869. By T. W. M. Marshall, Esq. Baltimore:
John Murphy & Co. 1869.
Mr. Marshall, who is both one of the most solid and altogether the
wittiest of English writers, delivered this lecture in Baltimore
before a select audience, on the eve of his return to England. It
is a well-reasoned argument, clothed in the author's usual choice
and happy style, and spiced with a seasonable amount of his humor.
Its topic is the order prevailing in the Catholic Church contrasted
with the disorder which rules among the sects, as a proof that the
former is of God, while the latter are of man. We quote the following
extract, which contains a well-delivered blow at the disunionists:
"You are asked to believe, by those who prefer the temple of
chaos to the sanctuary of God, this monstrous proposition: that
although disorder is inexorably banished, as we have seen, from
every other part of his dominions, as a thing abhorrent to the
Divine Architect, it finds its true home and congenial refuge
precisely in that spiritual kingdom of which he is at once the
lawgiver and the life. Brute matter knows nothing of it; earth,
and sea, and sky refuse to give it a place; the very beasts
of the field obey a law which regulates all the conditions of
their existence; but confusion and chaos, which can find a home
nowhere else, reign, and ought to reign, in the Christian church,
and in the kingdom of souls! That is the proposition which is
deliberately maintained, at this hour and in this land, by men
whose profession it is to teach others eternal truth. They gravely
assert that religion--which, when it is divine, is a bond of union
stronger than adamant, and when it is human, is the most active
dissolvent, the most powerful disintegrating agent which divides
and devastates modern society--_gains_ by ceasing to be one,
and that Christianity derives its chief vitality from the very
divisions which make it contemptible in the sight of unbelievers,
and had often provoked the scorn and derision even of the pagan
world. As this statement may seem to you impossible, even in
this nineteenth century, which is tolerant of all absurdities in
the sphere of religion, I will quote to you the very words of
one of the most conspicuous preachers of this land, who holds a
high position in the hierarchy of chaos. I take them from one of
your own local journals, of the second of this month, (June.)
You know that of late years many Protestants, weary of their
ceaseless conflicts and ashamed of their unending divisions,
have begun at last to sigh for the unity which they have lost,
and that in England they have even formed a society with the
express object of bringing together what they ignorantly call
'the different branches of the church.' We are told, however,
by the journal to which I allude, that the Reverend Henry Ward
Beecher, vehemently rejecting every such project, lately 'preached
against the schemes of church union, whether planned by pope,
protestant, or pagan'--pray understand that these are not my
words--and added this characteristic dissuasive from unity.
'The strength of the Christian religion lies,' he said--in what
do you suppose? in its truth, its holiness, or its peace? no,
but--'_in the number of the existing denominations_.' The hands
fall down in reading such words. 'I pray,' said He who will judge
the world, 'that they may all be _one_ as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee.' I sincerely trust, replies Mr. Beecher, that
they never will be one. 'Be perfect,' said St. Paul, 'in the
_same mind_ and the _same judgment_.' It is much more important,
rejoins Mr. Beecher, that you should maintain your divisions and
perpetuate your differences, for in _them_ lies the strength of
Christianity. 'Sects,' observed the same apostle, 'are the work
of the flesh.' Mr. Beecher judges them more leniently, and warns
his hearers, as you see, against the mistake of St. Paul. Yes,
these human teachers have come at last to this. They know so well
that supernatural unity is beyond _their_ reach, that they have
come to hate it, and to call it an evil! Yet even they will not
deny that it was the unity of the first Christians which conquered
the heathen world; and when the victory was accomplished, and the
surviving pagans had only strength enough left to beat themselves
against the ground where they had fallen, _they_ also cried out
in their impotent rage, '_Execranda est ista consensio_'--cursed
be this unity of the Christians. They had found it to be
invincible, but did not know that it was divine. Mr. Beecher
dares not say openly, 'Cursed be the unity for which Christ
prayed,' for even his disciples, though they can bear a good deal,
could not bear _that_; but he is not afraid to say, 'Blessed be
chaos!' 'Confusion, thou art my choice!' 'Disorder, be thou mine
inheritance!' Let us wish him a happier lot, both in this world
and the next."
* * * * *
IN HEAVEN WE KNOW OUR OWN; OR, SOLACE FOR THE SUFFERING. From
the French of the Rev. Father Blot, S.J. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society. 1869.
We would call special attention to this delightful little book.
The lady translator has conferred a very great service on
English-speaking Catholics; nor on Catholics alone, but also on all
professing Christians "of good-will," who,
"Here in the feeble twilight of this world
Groping,"
in order to satisfy one of their deepest and holiest cravings, and
not having known the Catholic Church, nor therefore "the communion
of saints," have turned--and _most_ naturally--into paths which only
lead to deception and despair.
The book before us supplies to "the afflicted" who mourn the loss
of friends a consolation as solid as it is abundant: a proof on
unshakable grounds of truths which seem to be forgotten even by some
among Catholics; that human ties _do_ survive the grave; that
"There the cherished heart _is_ fond,
The eye the same, except in tears;"
and that the knowledge and love of creatures must necessarily form
an integral part of the happiness of heaven. The reader will be
astonished to see what Catholic saints and doctors have said on this
subject; and what a stress they have laid on it as a part of their
own hopes and anticipations. To those, too, in particular, who are
tempted to despair of the departed, an antidote is here offered for
this poison of their rest; an antidote which, we are sure, has long
been needed by many an anxious heart.
In commending this book, then, to Catholics, we would urge them to
put it as much as possible in the hands of non-Catholic friends. The
success of a recent work, entitled _The Gates Ajar_, is evidence
enough of the hunger that exists in _all_ souls for food of this
kind. And why should any be left to pick up crumbs, when a full table
invites them? A perusal of _In Heaven We Know Our Own_ may open the
eyes of many to the glorious fact it is our privilege to know--that
the Catholic religion embraces _all_ truth, and alone can satisfy
_all_ the soul's cravings:
"An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink."
* * * * *
MOPSA THE FAIRY. By Jean Ingelow. With illustrations. Boston:
Roberts Brothers. 1869.
If the children wish to visit fairy-land, they could have no better
guide than Jean Ingelow; yet even she fails to make the fairy-world
half so fair or interesting as our own every-day world. However, Jack
learns some good lessons in his visit to fairy-land; for he found
a whole nation of fairies turned into stone for being unkind and
selfish. Let the little ones take care lest the fate of the fairies
befall them. The book is beautifully illustrated, and is altogether a
very pleasant book for children.
* * * * *
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. A Personal Narrative by Richard Henry
Dana, Jr. New edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1869.
Twelve years ago we determined upon a voyage similar to that the
author describes, and from a similar motive.
This recital of his two years' experience before the mast was put
into our hands to deter us from going. We recollect reading it with
the greatest interest, and being afterward more anxious to go than
ever. After three years' experience, during which we shared all
the sailor's toils and pleasures "fore and aft," we returned to a
student's life. It was therefore with some curiosity we reopened
this book to see what our judgment would be of this sailor's yarn as
compared with our own experience.
Before, it had the charm of adventure untried; now it gave the
pleasure of again, in imagination, riding the topsail yard-arm amid
the wild storm, hauling out the "weather earing," and "sending her"
off the Cape with all hands lashed to the rigging. We have never
read so vivid yet truthful a description of a sailor's life. It is
refreshing to see for once nautical terms correctly and naturally
used. We suspect that the author's estimate of the character and
religion of the people he visited has changed since he wrote. The
condition of the Mexicans now, as compared with their peace and
prosperity under the paternal care of the Catholic missionaries,
would surely warrant it.
We heartily sympathize with the author in his desire to better the
condition of seamen. They are a noble, large-hearted class of men. We
never expect to meet more courageous, generous, faithful men than
our comrades at sea. Yet their life, which must be full of toil and
danger, is made unnecessarily hard and laborious by unjust treatment.
They are over-worked and half-fed at sea, and swindled on shore. If
among the various protective societies, one were organized to protect
seamen from shipping masters, brutal officers, and "boarding-house
runners," it would be a praiseworthy act.
The author's account of his later visit to the Pacific coast is very
acceptably added to this new edition, and shows the great change that
has taken place in the condition of our commerce and of our country.
* * * * *
DIARY, REMINISCENCES, AND CORRESPONDENCE OF HENRY CRABB ROBINSON.
Selected and edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. 2 vols. 12mo. Pp. 496,
555. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.
In the United States, it is only the readers of the literary
biography of the last generation that know Henry Crabb Robinson
even by name; for although he was intimately acquainted with some
scores of distinguished men, and moved in the best literary society
of England, he left little or nothing to recall his memory after he
was dead, except the immense piles of manuscript from which these
two volumes have been selected. These, we venture to predict, will
enjoy a permanent place in literature, not much below the _Diary_ of
Pepys and Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. Mr. Robinson, however, had
nothing of the Pepys or the Boswell in his character. He was a man of
sharp natural faculties, excellent scholarship, abundant wit, eminent
social accomplishments, and strong character. In his youth he was a
foreign correspondent and sub-editor of _The Times_. Afterward he
practised at the bar. But for the most important part of his life,
covering a period of some thirty years before his death, he had no
profession, and passed his time in the society of literary and other
celebrities, with whom, for his extraordinary conversational powers
and more sterling qualities, he was always a welcome guest. It is
to his anecdotes and recollections of such men--Lamb, Wordsworth,
Southey, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, Rogers, Goethe, Lady Morgan, Lady
Blessington, Landor, and others--told with spirit and discretion,
that the _Diary and Reminiscences_ owe their value. The work of
selection and arrangement has been performed with excellent judgment,
and no one who takes up the volumes will readily lay them aside.
* * * * *
THE ELEMENTS OF THEORETICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY; for the use
of Colleges and Academies. By Charles J. White, A.M., Assistant
Professor of Astronomy and Navigation in the United States
Naval Academy. 16mo, 272 pp. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
Haffelfinger, 819 and 821 Market street. 1869.
Most writers of text-books, probably, are impelled to their task by
an impression that a void exists which only can be filled by a work
answering to a conception which they have formed in the course of
their studies. This arises from the fact that few subjects of study
can be thoroughly mastered by merely imbibing the ideas of another
person, and that consequently every one who spends much time in
acquiring, or particularly in teaching, any science, is obliged to
think a good deal upon the subject, and hence to arrange it almost
necessarily in his own mind in a different shape, and probably one
better adapted to himself, than that in which it was presented to
him. Finding nothing just like this among existing text-books, he
naturally concludes that the really systematic arrangement has yet to
be given, and by himself.
This every teacher perhaps is tempted to do; but unfortunately, the
best teachers, who perceive what difficulties are met with by the
mass of students, sometimes deny themselves the pleasure, or are
perhaps unable to indulge in it, while others supply books suited
only to a few. Sometimes, also, no void remains, having been already
filled. But in this subject of astronomy there certainly was a need
of a new work sufficiently precise and condensed to present salient
points to the mind of the student, and form matter for a recitation,
without being unnecessarily technical and uninteresting. Herschel's
_Outlines_, though an interesting and thoroughly scientific work,
and clear in its explanations, is rather fit to be read than to be
studied or recited from; yet this was undoubtedly the best book for
those not wishing to pursue astronomy professionally, but merely to
acquire a sufficient knowledge of it for a liberal education, or to
understand navigation and other branches of knowledge in which it is
involved.
Mr. White's book is exactly what was wanted for this purpose,
supplying all Herschel's defects for the student, being nearly or
quite as clear, and much more concise. It also contains other matters
which would not usually be found except in works on what is called
practical astronomy, but which are necessary for any one who desires
to make use of his knowledge; which end is also secured throughout by
the precise and definite form in which every thing is treated. One
often fancies he understands a subject, but finds that his knowledge
is unavailable from not being sufficiently in detail.
The author has a thorough acquaintance with his science, and
remarkable natural ability as a teacher, developed by long
experience. It will be a decided waste of time for any one to
undertake a similar book till the progress of science renders large
additions to this absolutely necessary; and this is brought up to
the actual date of publication, containing the latest results of the
spectroscope, and the most recent determinations of the astronomical
constants.
* * * * *
DIOMEDE. From the _Iliad_ of Homer. By William R. Smith. New York:
D. Appleton & Co.
This version of the Fifth Book of the _Iliad_ is as successful,
perhaps, as any similar attempt yet made. If not as smooth and
polished as Pope's, it is at least more accurate. But we venture to
think that the author has mistaken the true metre for translating
Homer. We believe the blank-verse of Tennyson the only one capable
of rendering it adequately. Much as we appreciate the version before
us, we have not yet seen any thing to equal Tennyson's "specimen
translation" of the celebrated moonlight scene, (_Iliad_, Book viii.)
* * * * *
PATTY GRAY'S JOURNEY FROM BOSTON TO BALTIMORE. By Caroline H.
Dall. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1869.
A pleasant and interesting story of Patty's journey to and stay in
Baltimore. Though Patty was a little girl, she was nevertheless a
true Yankee, and thought "that people must talk and act as they
did in Boston, or they could not possibly talk and act right." She
thought, too, "she could never love a 'Secesh;'" still, like a dear
little girl as she was, she soon learned to love her uncle Tom and
other relatives dearly. If the preface had been left out, the book
might be a good one for children; it certainly cannot be good for
them to have all the abuses of slavery served up again and again.
That evil has been done away with, and, at least as far as the
children are concerned, "let us have peace."
* * * * *
ECCLESIASTICAL MAP OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Arranged by
Rev. E. H. Reiter, S.J., of Boston, Mass. For sale by Fr. Pustet,
Bookseller and Publisher, 52 Barclay St., New York; 204 Vine St.,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
On this large and excellent map of the United States the seven
Ecclesiastical Provinces into which the country is divided are
distinguished by different ground colors, and the boundaries of the
several dioceses in each province and of the vicariates apostolic are
indicated by red lines. All the episcopal sees are marked by a line,
either red or blue; while the archiepiscopal sees are shown by a
combination of these two colors. We regard this map as a very useful
publication.
* * * * *
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SHAKER, AND REVELATION OF THE APOCALYPSE. With
an Appendix. F. W. Evans, Mount Lebanon, Columbia County, N. Y.
June, 1869.
No man in our day should attempt to solve the religious question
without a competent knowledge of the basis of the claims of the
Catholic Church to being the church of God and her faith the true
Christian faith. Her claim is prior to all others as an historical
fact, and must be fairly set aside before another can be allowed to
come into court. The author of the above autobiography is, as is
usual with the opponents of the Catholic Church, sadly lacking in
this knowledge. Among other absurdities, he tells us gravely that
"the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Leo the Great"! Well, after
all, that is an improvement on Rev. Justin D. Fulton, of Boston, who
affirms, "Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan."
The author appears to possess a smattering knowledge of several
things, and an exact and thorough knowledge of none. His book is a
jumble of materialism and spiritualism, of infidelity, Protestantism,
and credulity.
The language attributed, on page 80, to the late Archbishop Hughes,
we venture to say was drawn from the writer's imagination.
* * * * *
HOSPITAL SKETCHES, AND CAMP AND FIRESIDE STORIES. By Louisa M.
Alcott. With illustrations. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869. Pp.
379.
_Hospital Sketches_ originally appeared in the columns of the Boston
_Commonwealth_, over the signature of Tribulation Periwinkle, and
are "simply a brief record of one person's experience," as an army
hospital nurse. They are written in a pleasant, gossipy, natural
style; the incidents, a judicious admixture of the "grave and gay,"
the humorous and the pathetic, being alike removed from the extremes
of levity and gloom.
_Camp and Fireside Stories_, though more pretentious in style and
elaborate in plot, are not, in our opinion, of equal merit.
* * * * *
BIBLE HISTORY; containing the most remarkable events of the Old
and New Testament. Prepared for the use of Catholic Schools in the
United States. By Rev. Richard Gilmour. With the approbation of
the Most Reverend J. B. Purcell, D.D., Archbishop of Cincinnati.
Cincinnati and New York: Benziger Bros. 1869. Pp. 336.
We can heartily recommend this as an excellent "intermediate"
text-book in sacred history. Nor must we omit a special commendation
of the publishers, who, as far as the paper and typography are
concerned, are deserving of all praise. The illustrations are
numerous, always pertinent to the text, and, generally speaking,
satisfactory. An appendix contains "Maxims from the Sacred
Scriptures," "The Christian Doctrine as seen in the Narrations of the
Bible," and "A Bird's-Eye View of the Holy Land," the key to which
last, strange to say, omits the city of Jerusalem.
* * * * *
THE LETTERS OF PLACIDUS ON EDUCATION. London: Richardson & Son.
For sale by The Catholic Publication Society, New York.
We commend these _Letters of Placidus_ to the careful consideration
of educators. They are from the pen of a sound Catholic, an
accomplished scholar, and one who evidently speaks from a thorough
experience. Some, indeed, may think them bold in places; but all
will find them to contain suggestions worthy of their deepest
attention.
* * * * *
THE EMERALD. An Illustrated Literary Journal. Vol. III. New York:
The Emerald Publishing Company. 1869. Pp. 412.
This volume, in many respects superior to its predecessors, comprises
an immense amount of interesting and entertaining reading matter, and
is profusely illustrated.
* * * * *
THE OFFICE OF VESPERS; Containing the Order of the Vesper Service,
the Gregorian Psalm Tones harmonized, with the Psalms for all
Vespers during the year pointed for chanting. By Rev. Alfred
Young. New York: The Catholic Publication House. 1869.
Father Young has given us, we are glad to see, strictly Gregorian
melodies, both in the ritual of the vesper service and in the
psalm tones, such as are to be found in authorized editions of the
_Antiphonale Romanum_. This is something we commend with all our
heart. The melodies commonly found in our "choir books," "vesperals,"
and "services," are for the most part so garbled, both in the
inflections and arrangements, as to leave very little of the original
Gregorian tone standing. The chief merit of the book, however,
consists in a new division of the tones, and of the psalms, by which
but one pointing of the psalms is needed for chanting any one of the
tones with their varied concluding cadences. Father Maugin attempted
something of this kind in his _Roman Vesperal_, but succeeded only in
reducing the different pointings to four. The simplicity of Father
Young's arrangement cannot fail to be appreciated by organists as
well as by the singers. With his book in our choirs we need not be
condemned to hear the tiresome repetition of the same five psalms
sung to the same five tones on every Sunday and festival in the
year. We hope the author will find sufficient success with the
present publication to give us, as he proposes, the _Hymnal_ and
_Antiphonal_. With these we can have our vespers chanted as they
should be, in their truly effective style and religious spirit,
in comparison to which our so-called "musical vespers" are tame,
unmeaning, and, spiritually, unprofitable.
* * * * *
THE TWO WOMEN: A Ballad. By Delta. Milwaukee: The Wisconsin News
Company. 1868.
This somewhat curious effusion gave us much pleasure as we read it.
The smoothness and grace of the verse, and sometimes the diction,
too, remind us strongly of Tennyson.
* * * * *
THE LIFE OF HENRY DORIE, MARTYR. By the Abbé Ferdinand Baudry.
Translated by Lady Herbert. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by
The Catholic Publication Society, New York.
This neat little book is full of interest, as giving not only an
admirable sketch of its noble hero, but also a view of the Corea and
its inhabitants, for which the reader will be grateful who is eager
to know more of that strange region, and the wondrous work that is
doing there.
* * * * *
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has just published a new and
complete classified catalogue of all the American and English
Catholic books now in print. To be had _free_ on application at 126
Nassau Street.
* * * * *
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has in press and will publish
in a few weeks: _The Writings of Madame Swetchine_, 1 vol. 12mo,
$1.50, uniform with _Life of Madame Swetchine_. _Hymns and Songs
for Catholic Children_, containing the most popular Catholic hymns
for every season of the Christian year, together with May songs,
Christmas and Easter carols, and for the use of Sunday-schools,
sodalities, etc.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 56.--NOVEMBER, 1869.
THE LIFE OF FATHER FABER.[34]
In the life of Father Faber there was no sudden and violent change
from the excitement of worldly affairs to the quiet of the cloister,
no striking intervention of divine Providence, such as that which
in a single day converted Ignatius from a courtier to a saint. He
suffered, it is true, from spiritual conflicts and that rupture
of natural ties which for so many converts to the faith is little
short of a species of martyrdom; but the tender piety which beams
from all his maturer devotional works seems to have filled his heart
from boyhood, and his progress from heresy to faith was like the
gradual development of a seed planted in his breast in early youth.
Yet it is hardly in the Faber family that we should have looked for
a phenomenon like this. They were of Huguenot origin, and proud of
their religious ancestry; and their exiled forefathers, who settled
in England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, we may fairly
presume were honored in the family as confessors of the faith. The
grandfather of the subject of these pages was the Reverend Thomas
Faber, vicar of Calverley, in Yorkshire. Frederick William was born
at the vicarage, on the 28th of June, 1814. His father, Mr. Thomas
Henry Faber, was soon afterward appointed secretary to the Bishop of
Durham, and removed with his family to the episcopal domain of Bishop
Auckland. Durham had not yet lost its dignity as a County Palatine,
and in the glories of the ancient city, where the bishop held his
court with all the pomp and something of the power of royalty, there
was much to impress a warm poetical imagination, like that of young
Faber. The poetical faculty was afterward fostered by the beautiful
scenery of the Lake country, when he was sent to school at Kirkby
Stephen, in Westmoreland. There it was his chief delight to ramble
alone among the hills and meres, and fancy the chases filled again
with deer, the forests resounding with the hunter's horn, the ruined
halls and castles resonant with feast and song, and the deserted
abbeys vocal with prayer and chant. He shows his familiarity with
this region in some of his published verses. Subsequently, he
studied at Harrow, under Doctor Longley, afterward Archbishop of
Canterbury, by whose kindness and influence he was reclaimed at a
time when he had adopted infidel views. He gave himself with all
his heart to the study of English literature; but the classics got
rather less attention from him than they deserved, and his career
at Oxford, where he was matriculated at Baliol College, in 1832,
cannot be called a brilliant one. He was a man of scholarly tastes
and of scholarly attainments as well, yet in certain of the highest
requirements of the university he seems to have fallen short; for we
hear of his failing once or twice, not indeed in his examinations,
but in competition for a distinguished place. The fact probably was,
that he applied himself with undue partiality to favorite studies,
such as poetry and divinity. He was remarkable even at this time
for graces of person and manner, fine conversational powers, and
a rare faculty of attracting friends, notwithstanding a certain
dangerous keenness in his perceptions of the ludicrous, coupled with
great frankness in the expression of his feelings. "I cannot tell
why it is," said one of his schoolmates at Harrow, "but that Faber
fascinates every body." This remark was repeated to him afterward,
and filled him with a sense of obligation to use the gift in
promoting God's glory.
The temporary eclipse of faith to which we have alluded was of very
short duration; and when he came to Oxford, he was keenly alive
to religious impressions, with a strong Calvinistic tendency. The
tractarian movement, however, was just beginning, and Faber became
an enthusiastic admirer--"an acolyth," as he expressed it--of John
Henry Newman, who was then preaching at St. Mary's, Oxford. He did
not make Mr. Newman's acquaintance till several years later; but
under his influence he forgot his evangelicalism, and threw himself
eagerly into the great movement for the revival of church principles
as expounded in the _Tracts for the Times_. "Transubstantiation has
been bothering me," he wrote to a friend; "not that I lean to it,
_but I have seen no refutation of it_. How can it be absurd and
contradictory to the evidence of our senses, when they cannot by any
means take cognizance of the unknown being, substance, which alone is
held up as the subject of this conversion?"
This tendency toward Catholic truth was but slight, however, and
evanescent. There came a reaction in the course of a little while,
and Mr. Faber wrote to one of his friends:
"I have been thinking a great deal on the merits and tendency
of Newmanism, and I have become more than ever convinced of its
falsehood.... What makes me fear most is, that I have seen Newman
himself _growing_ in his opinions; I have seen indistinct visions
become distinct embodiments; I have seen the conclusion of one
proposition become the premiss of a next, through a long series:
all this is still going on--to my eyes more like the blind march
of error than the steady uniformity of truth--and I know not when
it will stop."
How thoroughly his mind and heart were taken up with religious
problems we can see in almost every letter. One of the correspondents
to whom he seems to have expressed himself with the fullest freedom
was Mr. John Brande Morris, and to him he writes, in 1834:
"When, after writing to you, and one or two other relations and
friends, I turn to pen a letter to my literary intellectual
friends, you cannot conceive how weak and uninteresting the topics
of discussion become. It is like one of Tom Moore's melodies after
an Handelian chorus, at once ludicrous and disgusting from its
inferiority."
He read a great deal of religious biography, and when he saw "the
maturity of faith and the religious perfection to which many good
men arrive so early," he felt disheartened at his own condition. "It
is true," he said, "I have often had hours of ecstatic, enthusiastic
devotion; but the fever has soon subsided, and my feelings have
flowed on calmly and soberly in their accustomed channels." He looked
for the fruits of his faith and found none. Yet in his ignorance
of what constitutes the true spiritual life, Faber, in his earnest
search after perfection, was doubtless much nearer to God than
the evangelical saints whose condition he so envied. He was soon
surrounded at Oxford by a little circle of admirers, who made him,
in some sort, the exemplar and guide of their religious life. He was
about twenty or twenty-one years of age when he began a systematic
effort to improve the opportunities for doing good which he believed
had thus been providentially opened to him. "I proceeded," he wrote
soon afterward, "to dictate, to organize, so to speak, a system of
aggressive efforts in favor of religion; and under my guidance a
number of prayer-meetings was speedily established; and by God's
grace I was enabled to do it with little noise or ostentation." In
another letter he describes the perplexity which he suffered during
a vacation visit to one of his disciples, who had "declined from his
Christian profession," and manifested an unregenerate fondness for
the pleasures of life, balls, theatres, etc., which are generally
so attractive to the young. Mr. Faber had little difficulty in
reasserting his influence; but his friend's father had "a violent
prejudice against what he called 'the humbug of evangelicals,'" and
strongly disapproved of the enthusiastic views of the little Oxford
coterie. Mr. Faber could not hold his tongue and let the son alone;
he trembled at the thought of breeding domestic dissension; and he
could not break off his visit without giving offence. It would be
interesting to know how he got out of the difficulty, but he does not
tell us.
There soon came a time when he discovered that, however Calvinism
might answer for seasons of religious excitement and spiritual
exaltation, it was not fit for the daily food of the soul. He could
not always be at a prayer-meeting or an exhortation. Secular studies
exacted most of his time, and he felt then that there was nothing
for him to lean upon. Another change in his religious views was
the inevitable consequence. He had been for some time an admiring
student of the works of George Herbert; Herbert led him on to
Bishop Andrewes; the necessity of sacraments, the prerogatives of
the church, the "penitential system of the primitive church," and
"the girdle of celibacy and the lamp of watching" became subjects
of frequent recurrence in his letters; he confessed that "the
evangelical system feeds the heart at the expense of the head," and
"makes religion a series of frames of feeling;" and before long we
find him quoting with approbation the writings of Dr. Wiseman. He was
indeed steadily advancing toward the Catholic Church, though he was
far enough from suspecting it. In June, 1836, he writes:
"Newman is delivering lectures against the Church of Rome. I have
just come from a magnificent one on Peter's prerogative. He admits
the text in its full literal completeness, and shows that it makes
not one iota for the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome."
It was well that he was getting even by these slow degrees to a more
comfortable faith; for in his university career he was destined to
suffer, just at this time, several severe trials. He had carried off,
in 1836, the prize for a poem on _The Knights of St. John_; but in
the examination for his degree he made a comparative failure, his
name appearing only in the second class, and, as a consequence of
this misfortune, he was also defeated in a contest for a fellowship
in his own college. To divert his mind from this double mortification
and recruit his exhausted strength, he made a short visit to Germany
with his brother, the Reverend Francis A. Faber. Soon after his
return, he secured a fellowship at University College, and also
carried off the Johnson divinity scholarship, for which there was
a strong competition. His position being now secure, he began to
prepare himself zealously for orders. He made the acquaintance of
Doctor Newman, and joined in his scheme for compiling the _Library
of the Fathers_, undertaking, as his share of the work, to translate
the _Books of St. Optatus against the Donatists_. He obtained a few
pupils, and during the vacation accompanied a small reading party to
Ambleside, near the head of Windermere. There he was fortunate enough
to form a friendship with Wordsworth, and used to spend long days
rambling with the poet over the neighboring mountains--Wordsworth
muttering verses in the intervals of conversation. His correspondence
is full of admiring allusions to Wordsworth's poetry, "Well or sick,"
he says, "cheerful or sad, I can almost always get happiness and
quiet and good resolves out of the old poet--God bless him! One may
hang on one sonnet of his by the hour, like a bee in a fox-glove, and
still get sweetness." His opinions of some other famous poets would
be declared unquestionably heterodox. He wrote to his brother from
Italy in 1843:
"I spent a _delicious_ evening at Fiesole, yesterday, and not
being, as I had feared, tormented by a single thought of the
execrable rebel and heretic, Milton, I had nothing to disturb the
beautiful tranquillity of the sunset, and the rosy mists of the
garden-like Valdarno.... England has no 'need' of Milton: how can
a country have need of any thing, policy, courage, talent, or any
thing else, which is unblessed of God; and how can any talent in
any subject-matter be blessed by the Eternal Father for one who,
in prose and verse, denied, ridiculed, blasphemed the Godhead of
the Eternal Son? Milton (accursed be his blasphemous memory) spent
a great part of his life in writing down my Lord's divinity--my
sole trust, my sole love; and that thought poisons _Comus_."
For Byron, "the beast who thrust Christ into company with Jove and
Mohammed"--Byron, "trampling under foot his duties to his country,
and scorning the natural pieties," his antipathy amounted to
loathing. "I must say that I cannot comprehend the anomaly which
strikes me both in guide-books and conversation of quoting and
praising men like Milton and Byron, when a man professes to love
Christ and to put all his hopes of salvation in him."
Mr. Faber's old master at Harrow, Doctor Longley, now Bishop of
Ripon, ordained him deacon in 1837, and Bishop Bagot promoted him
to the priesthood at Oxford in 1839. Meanwhile, he had spent the
long vacations at Ambleside, assisting there in parochial work, and
preaching twice a week, and the rest of the year he had passed among
his books at Oxford. A devoted Anglican at this time, and full of
hope that the movement guided by Pusey, Newman, and their associates
would revolutionize the whole English establishment, he had gone
so far toward Catholicism that when, just after his ordination as
priest, he made a second visit to the continent, he wrote to the Rev.
J. B. Morris the following curious letter from Cologne:
"I fear you will think me a sad Protestant. I determined, and so
did M----, to conform to the Catholic ritual here. We both of
us got Mechlin breviaries at Mechlin, and go to church pretty
regularly every day to say the hours, and we say the rest of the
hours as the priests do, in carriages, or inns, or anywhere. Also,
I have been tutorized in the breviary by a very _nice_ priest, a
simple-hearted, pious fellow with little knowledge of theology.
But it all will not do. The careless irreverence, the noise, the
going in and out, the spitting of the priests on the altar-steps,
the distressing representations of our Blessed Lord--I cannot
get over them. The censing of the priests, the ringing of bells,
the constant carrying of the blessed sacrament from one altar to
another--this I can manage; because I can say psalms meanwhile.
But at best, when I can get away into a side chapel with no wax
virgins in it, and no hideous pictures of the FATHER, I cannot
manage well."
The idea that Anglicans were excommunicate from Western Christendom
was a terrible distress to him. "Would you not like," he writes to
the same friend, "to spend six months among the Munich disciples of
Möhler, Döllinger, etc., etc.? Of course I shall know more of all
this when I have travelled. I shall strive to realize all such little
ways of impeded communion as are unstopped. It will surely do _me_
good, if no one else."
He soon had the coveted opportunity for more extended travel;
for in 1841, he went abroad as tutor to a young gentleman from
Ambleside, and spent six months journeying through the countries
bordering on the Mediterranean and the Danube, Styria, the Tyrol,
and Northern Germany. Memorials of this interesting tour are found
in some of his published poems and in a volume called _Sights and
Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples_, which
appeared in 1842, dedicated to Wordsworth. Into this book the author
introduced many reflections upon religious matters, chiefly in the
form of conversations with an imaginary representative of mediæval
Christianity, as well as of Mr. Faber's own Catholic feelings, whom
he calls "the Stranger." The volume closes with a dream, in which
the author conducts the stranger through English cathedrals, with
their bare altars and empty niches. "The stranger regarded them with
indignation, but did not speak. When we came out of the church, he
turned to me, and said in a solemn voice, somewhat tremulous from
deep emotion, 'You have led me through a land of closed churches and
hushed bells, of unlighted altars and unstoled priests. Is England
beneath an interdict?'"
The private journal of Mr. Faber's journey abounds with evidences of
the deep impressions which Catholic customs made upon him, and his
secret dissatisfaction with his own cold church--a dissatisfaction
of which probably he was still himself unconscious. He is at Genoa
on the Feast of the Annunciation, "and not to be utterly without
sympathy with the Genoese around us, we decorated our room with a
bunch of crimson tulips, apparently the favorite flower, that we
might not be without somewhat to remind us of her
'Who so above
All mothers shone;
The Mother of
The Blessed One.'"
In Constantinople he is impressed with the folly of patching up the
Anglican succession by an alliance with the Greek Church. "Depend
upon it," he writes, "cast about as we will, if we want foreign
Catholic sympathies, we must find them as they will let us in our
Latin mother." He witnesses a procession of pilgrims from Vienna to
the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Mariazell. "It was a bewildering
sight. I thought how faith ran in my own country in thin and
scattered rivulets, and I looked with envious surprise at this huge
wave which the Austrian capital had flung upon this green platform
of Styrian highland--a wave of pure, hearty, earnest faith." He is
indignant at the desecration of Sunday by the Lutheran population
of Dresden, and exclaims, "Yet year after year are we assured in
England of the connection between popery and whatever is disagreeable
in the foreign way of keeping Sunday. No person who has not been
abroad, and heard and seen and investigated for himself, would credit
the extensive system of lying pursued by English travel-writers,
religious-tract compilers, and Exeter Hall speech-makers, respecting
the Roman Church abroad; and whether the lies be those of wilfulness
or of prejudice, ignorance, and indolence, I do not see much to
distinguish in the guilt. These dirt-seekers scrape the sewers
of Europe to rough-cast the Church of Rome with the plentiful
defilements."
Soon after his return home, he was offered the college living of
Elton, in Huntingdonshire, and at first declined it, but afterward,
for a reason which curiously illustrates his conscientiousness, he
determined to accept. "My chief rock of offence," said he, "is the
subduing the poet to the priest." He would have given up poetry
altogether, but Keble convinced him that he had no right to bury
his chief talent in a napkin. To cultivate it in moderation was
more difficult, and here he thought the uncongenial duties of the
pastoral office would be a great help in correcting his inordinate
love of literature, and keeping him within the bounds of usefulness.
"I do not say you are wrong," was Wordsworth's remark on hearing his
determination; "but England loses a poet."
If his reason for accepting the rectory was a strange one, his first
step on taking possession was still stranger and still wiser. He
determined to visit Rome and study the method pursued by the church
in dealing with the souls committed to her care. "I want to go to
Italy," said he, "not as a poet, or a tourist, or a pleased dreamer,
but as a pilgrim who regards it as a second Palestine, the Holy Land
of the West." Dr. Wiseman, then coadjutor bishop of the central
district of England, gave him letters of introduction to Cardinal
Acton and Dr. Grant at Rome, so that he was enabled to see much more
of the charitable and religious institutions of the Christian capital
than falls to the lot of the ordinary visitor. He studied Italian,
in order that he might understand the numerous lives of saints in
that language, and singularly enough, or providentially we should
rather say, he conceived a particular devotion to St. Philip Neri,
his future father. Of his visit to the room in which the saint used
to say Mass he writes, "How little did I, a Protestant stranger in
that room years ago, dream that I should ever be of the saint's
family, or that the Oratorian father who showed it me should in a
few years be appointed by the pope the novice-master of the English
Oratorians. I remember how, when he kissed the glass of the case in
which St. Philip's little bed is kept as a relic, he apologized to
me as a Protestant, lest I should be scandalized, and told me with a
smile how tenderly St. Philip's children loved their father. I was
not scandalized with their relic-worship then, but I can understand
better now what he said about the love, the child-like love,
wherewith St. Philip inspired his sons. If any one had told me that
in seven short years I should wear the same habit, and the same white
collar in the streets of London, and be preaching a triduo in honor
of Rome's apostle, I should have wondered how any one could dream so
wild a dream."
Sensibly as he was affected by the pious practices and associations
of Rome, his attachment to the Church of England was as yet unshaken.
He still cherished the delusion that some way could be found of
connecting the Anglican establishment with this venerable apostolic
church. Controversy on such points of doctrine as indulgences,
etc., he put aside. "The one thing necessary to prove," said he,
"is that adherence to the holy see is essential to the _being_ of a
church: _to the_ well-_being of all churches I admit it essential_."
He visited the church of the Lateran on St. John's day, and knelt
bare-headed in the piazza to receive the holy father's blessing.
"I do not think," he writes, "I ever returned from any service so
thoroughly christianized in every joint and limb, or so right of
heart, as I did from the Lateran on Thursday." Afterward Cardinal
Acton obtained for him the favor of a private audience with Pope
Gregory XVI., the story of which he tells in the following words:
"The Rector of the English College accompanied me, and told me
that, as Protestants did not like kissing the pope's foot, I
should not be required to do it. We waited in the lobby of the
Vatican library for half an hour, when the pope arrived, and a
prelate opened the door, remaining outside. The pope was perfectly
alone, without a courtier or prelate, standing in the middle of
the library, in a plain white cassock, and a white silk skull-cap,
(white is the papal color.) On entering, I knelt down, and again
when a few yards from him, and lastly before him; he held out his
hand, but I kissed his foot; there seemed to be a mean puerility
in refusing the customary homage. With Dr. Baggs for interpreter,
we had a long conversation; he spoke of Dr. Pusey's suspension for
defending the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist with amazement
and disgust; he said to me, 'You must not mislead yourself in
wishing for unity, yet waiting for your _church_ to move. Think
of the salvation of your own soul.' I said I feared self-will
and _individual_ judging. He said, 'You are all individuals in
the English church; you have only external communion and the
accident of being all under the queen. You know this; you know all
doctrines are taught amongst you, any how. You have good wishes;
may God strengthen them! You must think for yourself and for your
soul.' He then laid his hands on my shoulders, and I immediately
knelt down; upon which he laid them on my head, and said, 'May the
grace of God correspond to your good wishes and deliver you from
the nets (_insidie_) of Anglicanism, and bring you to the true
holy church!' I left him almost in tears, affected as much by the
earnest, affectionate demeanor of the old man as by his blessing
and his prayer. I shall remember St. Alban's day in 1843 to my
life's end."
That he did not immediately embrace the truth seems to have been
not the effect of cowardice, but of a genuine scruple such as he
expressed to Pope Gregory. The Anglican party at this time were
sanguine of their ability to bring their members, as a body,
into communion with the Roman see, and Mr. Faber was doubtless
conscientious in his delay, though he suffered terribly from distress
of mind. "I grow more Roman every day," he writes. "I hardly dare
read the Articles; their weight grows heavier on me daily. _I hope
our Blessed Lady's intercession may not cease for any of us_ because
we do not seek it, since we desist for obedience' sake." He prayed
at the shrine of St. Aloysius on the feast of that saint, and left
the church as if speechless and not knowing where he was going. After
he became a Catholic, he told Dr. Grant that on the 21st of June St.
Aloysius "had always knocked very hard at his heart." Twice he took
his hat to go to the English College and make his abjuration, but on
each occasion some trifling circumstance interfered to prevent the
execution of his purpose. He wore a miraculous medal, and he obtained
some rosaries blessed by the pope. At last he went home to Elton,
having suffered during his visit a degree of mental anguish which
actually resulted in physical injuries that affected him all the rest
of his life.
Dr. Newman's state of mind was very much like Mr. Faber's at this
time. The two friends wrote to each other, and agreed to delay
their final decision for a little while longer; and in the mean
time Mr. Faber threw all his energy into his parochial duties,
endeavoring to copy the methods of pastoral labor which he had gone
to Rome to study. His parish was disorderly in consequence of long
neglect, and what religious vitality there was in the place was
found principally at the dissenting chapel. Mr. Faber relied for
reformation upon preaching, and what he considered the sacraments. He
cared very little for ceremonies and vestments, and compared those
who would now be called ritualists to "grown-up children playing at
mass, putting ornament before truth, suffocating the inward by the
outward." "This is not the way to become Catholic again; it is only
a profaner kind of Protestantism than any we have seen hitherto."
When the surplice controversy was agitating the Established Church,
he told his congregation that he usually preached in a surplice
because he preferred it, but he "would preach _in his shirt-sleeves_
if it would be any satisfaction to them." He tried to establish the
devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; he published three tracts on
examination of conscience; he introduced confessions, and out of the
most promising of his young male penitents he formed a confraternity
which used to meet at the rectory every night about twelve o'clock
and spend an hour in prayer. On the vigils of great festivals, their
devotions lasted two or three hours. On these nights, and also on
Fridays and every night in Lent, the whole party used the discipline,
each in turn receiving it from the others.
These devotional practices seem to have excited the powers of
darkness; for it is related that many times while the brotherhood
were assembled, mysterious disturbances were heard, often apparently
just outside the door of the oratory. The house was searched with
lights, but nothing was ever discovered which could account for the
noises.
On Sunday afternoons, the rectory grounds were thrown open to the
parish, and the clergyman mingled freely with his flock, while games
of foot-ball and cricket were introduced to make the gatherings more
attractive. Of course the Sabbatarians were frightfully scandalized
at such proceedings; but no one could deny that a great moral
improvement was soon perceptible in the parish, and the dissenters
began to forsake their chapel to crowd around Mr. Faber's pulpit. His
own austerities were fearful. He fasted rigorously, often eating for
his dinner nothing more than a few potatoes and a herring, and in
fact never taking a genuine meal except on Sunday. He wore a thick
horsehair cord tied in knots about his waist. Want of food often
brought upon him severe attacks of sickness, and sometimes he fainted
in the church while reading prayers. In such matters as these he
seems to have been his own director; but in other religious practices
he governed himself a great deal by the advice of Dr. Newman. "I have
a request to make," he writes to Newman in November, 1844, "which I
cannot any longer refrain from making; but I shall submit at once to
a _No_, if you will say it. I want you to revoke your prohibition,
laid on me last October year, of invoking our Blessed Lady, the
saints and angels. I do feel somehow weakened for the want of it, and
_fancy_ I should get strength if I did it."
It was some relief, perhaps, in this suffering of mind to give
utterance to his Catholic yearnings with his pen, since he durst not
pour out his whole soul in prayer. He had entered into a scheme for
publishing a series of lives of the English saints, and written for
it a _Life of St. Wilfrid_. All the volumes had caused more or less
irritation; but in the _Life of St. Wilfrid_ the Catholic tendencies
of the tractarian school were developed with the utmost freedom--with
so much freedom that we can hardly understand how they could have
come from the pen of any man who was even nominally an Anglican. His
difficulties, however, were now almost over. In the autumn of 1845,
many of his friends were received into the church. Among them was
Dr. Newman; and then Mr. Faber hesitated no longer. He put himself
at once into communication with Dr. Wareing, the vicar apostolic of
the eastern district, not to be instructed in Catholic doctrine, for
that he knew and believed already; but to inquire about various minor
points connected with a formal reception into the church. To abandon
his work at Elton he knew would involve spiritual injury to many;
and about that he felt at first some scruples. He asked advice of
one whose counsel he had always followed in times of perplexity--we
presume Dr. Newman. "Your own soul," he was told, "is the only
consideration, and you must save that, because--"
"No," interrupted he, "I have obeyed you as a Protestant and without
the 'because,' and I don't want to hear it now."
Another obstacle in his way was the state of his pecuniary affairs.
He had borrowed a large sum of money for charitable and other works
in his parish; and if he gave up his living, he could pay neither
principal nor interest. Was it not his duty to remain rector of Elton
until the debt was paid? He consulted an Anglican dignitary of his
own party. "Depend upon it," was the answer, "if God means you to
be a Catholic, he will not let that stand in the way." Confident,
therefore, that God would provide, he wrote to acquaint his friends
of his purpose, and had no sooner dispatched the letters than he
received from a generous anti-Catholic gentleman, who had heard of
his perplexity, a check for the full amount of the debt.
He officiated at Elton for the last time on the 16th of November.
At the evening service he told his people that the doctrines he
had preached to them, though true, were not those of the Church of
England; he could not, therefore, remain in her communion, but must
go where truth was to be found. Then he hastily descended the pulpit
stairs, threw off his surplice, which he left upon the ground, and
made his way as quickly as possible through the vestry to the house.
For a few minutes the congregation remained in blank astonishment.
The church-wardens and some others followed him to the rectory, and
begged him to remain; he might preach what he pleased, and they
would never question it. It was a sorrowful interview, for he loved
his flock with all his heart; but he was firm in his resolve. The
next morning he started early for Northampton, hoping to escape
observation; but the people were on the watch at their windows; and
as he passed through, they waved their handkerchiefs and cried, "God
bless you, wherever you go." Mr. Faber was accompanied by Mr. T.
F. Knox, a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and seven of his
parishioners. They were all admitted into the church the same evening
by Bishop Wareing, and the next day received their first communion
and the sacrament of confirmation. "A new light," wrote Mr. Faber
next day, "seems to be shed on every thing, and more especially on
my past position--a light so clear as to surprise me; and though I
am homeless and unsettled, and as to worldly prospects considerably
bewildered, yet there is such a repose of conscience as more than
compensates for the intense and fiery struggle which began on the
Tuesday and only ended on the Monday morning following."
Owing to various circumstances, a good many recent converts had
settled at Birmingham, where the church of St. Chad, under the
charge of the Rev. Mr. Moore, had become a great centre of Catholic
life. Mr. Faber and his companions went there, Faber accepting the
hospitality of Mr. Moore, and the others disposing of themselves in
various ways. They continued, however, to look up to their former
pastor for direction, and he soon conceived the idea of forming them
into a sort of community. With the approval of Mr. Moore and Dr.
Wiseman, they took possession of a small house in Caroline street,
Mr. Faber of course joining them. No definite rule was drawn up at
first, but their general purpose was to assist the parochial clergy
in visiting the sick, giving instruction, and similar duties. Mr.
Hutchinson, who afterward became a member of the little band, has
given an amusing account of a visit he paid them a few days after
their establishment. Mr. Faber, terribly scorched, was standing
over the fire stirring a kettle of pea-soup. There was hardly any
furniture except a long deal table, a chair, knife, fork, and mug for
each man, some pewter spoons with the temperance pledge stamped on
them, and a three-legged table, split across the middle, at which,
when he could be spared from the pea-soup, Mr. Faber was engaged
writing a pamphlet on the reasons for his conversion. Up-stairs
there were four small rooms, one used as a chapel, the others as
dormitories. There were no bed-steads; they all slept on the floor.
Such was the beginning of the Wilfridian Community, or Brothers of
the Will of God, though they took no distinguishing name until some
time later. At the commencement of the new year, the generosity of
a friend enabled Mr. Faber to visit Italy, where he had reason to
think he could obtain money for the support of the new community.
During his absence, the brethren found employment with some of the
Catholic tradesmen in the town, returning to Caroline street every
night. The distinguished convert was of course received in Rome with
great affection, especially by the ecclesiastics who had known him on
his former visit. Cardinal Acton fell upon his neck and kissed him.
The pope gave him a gracious interview. The English College offered
him a home. The superior of the Camaldolese at Florence expressed a
great desire to see him. "He was ill in bed," says Mr. Faber, "and
his bed full of snuff; he seized my head, buried it in the snuffy
clothes, and kissed me most unmercifully." There is, in fact, a
good deal of fun now and then in Mr. Faber's letters. He tells,
for instance, how "the dear old pope" refused to be angry with the
Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar, who came to Rome to give confirmation,
his holiness saying with a chuckle that "he really had not been aware
hitherto that Rome was in the diocese of Gibraltar;" and how, in "a
fit of unholy mirth," the holy father mimicked the way the English
Protestants did homage, "a familiar nod with their chin, as if they
had swallowed pokers." He was disappointed in the pecuniary aid which
he had come abroad to seek, but the journey was productive of much
spiritual comfort and improvement; and as money was soon forthcoming
from another quarter, he was enabled to go back to Birmingham with
a light heart, and to set about the more complete organization of
the community according to a rule which he had devised during his
absence. Meanwhile, arrangements had been completed for removal
to more commodious quarters in Birmingham; and in the course of
the year 1846 the brethren moved a second time to a fine estate
at Cheadle, generously given them by Lord Shrewsbury. They named
it St. Wilfrid's. Their first work here was to open a school for
boys. Pupils came in rapidly; but the bigotry of the neighborhood
was aroused, and the most amazing reports were circulated about the
new institution. A relative of Mr. Hutchinson (who had joined the
community under the name of Brother Anthony, Mr. Faber being styled
Brother Wilfrid of the Humanity of Jesus) sent a Scotch physician
to examine the establishment, and we suppose to report upon the
sanity of the inmates. The same relative described Mr. Faber as "an
ambitious villain and a hellish ruler," and declared that wherever he
went in London "the finger of scorn was pointed at him." "I am said
to have _strangled_ one of my monks," wrote the "hellish ruler;" "the
story is all over the land, and is believed. Mrs. R---- came to see
me at St. Wilfrid's, 'to see the man;' and glaring at me in silence
like a tigress, she told Lady Shrewsbury and Lady Arundel that I
was quite capable of all she heard, and that her faith in it was
established."
Humility had led Mr. Faber to defer ordination to the priesthood, and
up to this time he had received only minor orders; but in the Advent
season of 1846 he was raised to the subdeaconship, and at the end of
the following Lent he was ordained deacon and priest by Dr. Wiseman
at Oscott. The brothers could now engage much more effectively in
missionary work; and as, besides having a priest among them, they
received several valuable converts from time to time, they were
enabled to map out a wide extent of neglected country into districts,
and devote their days to a systematic visitation of every house
within their limits. The crowds who came on Sundays to St. Wilfrid's
soon overflowed the little chapel, and Father Faber used to preach
to them in a yard near the house, or under the beech-trees in the
garden. It was not unusual for him also to preach in the streets,
wearing his habit or cassock and holding a crucifix in his hand.
In a few months there remained but one Protestant family in the
parish, and the Protestant church was almost entirely abandoned!
Brother Anthony Hutchinson wrote, "We have converted the pew-opener,
leaving the parson only his clerk and two drunken men." The poor
people became extravagantly fond of "Father Fable," as they used
to call him; but he was not held in particular affection by the
Protestant clergy, and sometimes was unwillingly involved in what he
used to call "fighting and squabbling with parsons." On one occasion
he was followed into the room of a sick man by a minister of the
Primitive Methodists, who insisted on remaining there to hear what
was said in confession, and was with great difficulty persuaded by
the invalid to leave the house.
It was not only from Protestants, however, that Father Faber had
to suffer annoyance; his worst troubles came from those of his own
faith. About the time of his ordination he had made arrangements for
the publication of a series of lives of the saints, translated from
the Italian and other foreign languages, and afterward so widely
known as the Oratorian Lives. A part of the literary work he did
himself, but the most of it he committed to other hands, having at
one time between sixty and seventy translators at work under his
direction. The series began with a _Life of St. Philip Neri_. It
reached a large sale; but so little familiar were English readers
with the supernatural manifestations which abound in biographies of
the chosen servants of God that exception was taken to the work in
various quarters, and when the _Life of St. Rose of Lima_ appeared,
the opposition became extremely violent. It was objected that the
lives of foreign saints, however edifying in their respective
countries, were unsuited to England and unfit for Protestant eyes.
Under the advice of Dr. Newman, who nevertheless approved of the work
very cordially, the series was finally suspended. But then a reaction
set in; it was discovered how much practical good the publications
had done; some of those who had criticised them most severely
retracted and apologized; and the translations were resumed under the
auspices of the Oratorians, with whom Father Faber's community had
meanwhile been consolidated.
Mr. Faber and Mr. Hutchinson, the only priests in the community at
St. Wilfrid's, were on the eve of taking their vows when news arrived
that Dr. Newman was coming over from Rome to establish in England
the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Father Faber was at prayer when he
felt suddenly an interior call to join the new congregation. His
final decision was reached only after a long interior struggle and
a free conference with Bishop Wiseman. Humanly speaking, it was a
great sacrifice--perhaps the greatest Father Faber ever made. Besides
giving up the infant community to which he had devoted so much care,
and descending at one step from the position of superior to that
of novice, he had to tear himself away from a congregation which
was quite as warmly attached to him as his old flock had been at
Elton, to give up St. Wilfrid's, and to face the vehement opposition
of his brethren in the community and the generous friends to whom
he had been indebted for his foundation at Cheadle. "Giving St.
Wilfrid's up," he wrote, "seems to unroot one altogether from the
earth, and the future is such a complete blank that one feels as if
one was going to die." "It is Elton over again," only, "in my first
spoliation I kept my books and my Elton children; now I lose these
two." To his surprise, however, when once his mind had been made up,
the opposition of the community of St. Wilfrid's suddenly ceased.
They all professed their willingness to follow him; and the result
was, that the Oratorians took possession of the whole establishment.
Dr. Newman came to St. Wilfrid's in February, 1848, and admitted
the entire community to his congregation. "Father Superior has now
left us," wrote Faber, "all in our Philippine habits with turndown
collars, like so many good boys brought in after dinner. Since my
admission I seem to have lost all attachment to every thing but
obedience; I could dance and sing all day because I am so joyous; I
hardly know what to do with myself for very happiness."
It was not thought necessary to exact from him the full period of
three years' noviceship, so at the end of six months he was dispensed
from the remainder and appointed master of novices. In October of
the same year, the whole congregation removed from Birmingham to St.
Wilfrid's; but Father Faber was not allowed to remain long in this
favorite home; for in the spring he was sent with five other fathers,
namely Dalgairns, Stanton, Hutchinson, Knox, and Wells, and two
novices, Messrs. Gordon and Bowden, to found a new house in London.
At the head of this he remained until his death, and he never saw St.
Wilfrid's again but once.
The introduction of a new order or a new congregation is so common
an event now that we can hardly understand how bitter was the
ill-feeling aroused by the opening of the London Oratory in a hired
house in King William street in May, 1849. It was the first public
church which had been served by a religious community in that diocese
since the old faith was put under the feet of the English schism.
Bishop Wiseman was a warm supporter of the Oratorians, but many of
the secular clergy looked upon them with suspicion, doubted the
discretion of a community composed entirely of converts, disapproved
of the public wearing of their habit, and complained that their
peculiar services, with new prayers, hymns in the vernacular,
and a new style of preaching, were Methodistical, and ought to
be suppressed. Experience, however, in time showed the doubters
their mistake, and the diocesan clergy became not only friends
but imitators of the Oratorians. A great deal of popular animosity
continued to be manifested, especially during the excitement which
followed the reëstablishment of the English hierarchy. The walls
of London were placarded, "Down with the Oratorians," "Don't go to
the Oratory," "Banishment to the Oratorians," etc.; the fathers
were cursed in the streets, and even _gentlemen_ used to shout at
them from their carriage-windows. The government finally issued a
proclamation reviving an old statute which forbade Roman Catholic
ecclesiastics to wear the habit of their order, and thenceforth the
Oratorians always appeared in the streets in secular garb.
Father Faber was doing an immense amount of labor at this time,
preaching, visiting the sick, giving retreats and missions, and
conducting special devotions, besides employing some time in literary
occupations; yet he was almost constantly a sufferer from disease,
and was often obliged to cease for a while from all work whatsoever.
He had long been subject to very severe and prostrating headaches,
connected with which is the following remarkable incident which we
shall give in his own words, written to the Countess of Arundel and
Surrey on the 2d of December, 1850:
"And now I have so many things to tell you that I hardly know
where to begin. Some time ago, a lady at prayer in our church
thought it was revealed to her that St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi
wished to confer some _grazia_ on me in connection with my
headache. Her director gave her permission to act upon this;
whereupon she wrote to me, begging me when my headache came on to
apply a relic of the saint to my forehead. Some days elapsed; I
asked Father Francis, my director, for his leave to do this; as
it was a merely temporal thing, he took some time to consider.
I became ill, and had a night of great pain. I thought he had
forgotten all about it, and that it would be a blameworthy
imperfection in me to remind him of it. The morning after, he came
to confession, and found me ill in bed; he was going away, but I
knew he was going to say Mass, and so I made him kneel down by my
bedside, while I put on my stole, and with considerable pain heard
his confession; when he rose, I gave him the stole, and asked him
to hear my confession, which he did. Afterward he said, 'Well,
now, I think it would be well to try this relic.' I answered,
'Just as you please.' I was in great suffering, and very sick
besides. He gave it me, and walked away to the door to say Mass.
I applied the relic, a piece of her linen, to my forehead; a sort
of fire went into my head, through every limb down to my feet,
causing me to tremble; before Father Francis could even reach
the door, I sprang up, crying, 'I am cured, I am quite well!' He
said I looked as white as a sheet; I was filled with a kind of
sacred fear, and an intense desire to consecrate myself utterly
to God. I got up and dressed, without any difficulty, or pain, or
sickness. This was on the Wednesday. On the Saturday I had another
headache, but I had not asked Father Francis's leave about the
relic, and felt I ought to take no steps to get rid of my cross.
In the afternoon he told me I might apply it. Fathers Philip and
Edward were in the room. I was on my bed; I took the relic and
applied it; there was the same fire in a less degree, but no cure.
I then said to the saint, 'I only ask it to go to the novena and
benediction.' The cure was instantaneous; while Father Philip had
such an impression that the saint was in the room, that he was
irresistibly drawn to bow to her. Well, I said my office; then in
an hour or so came the novena and benediction; and as soon as I
returned to my room, I was taken so ill again I was obliged to go
to bed. Meanwhile I had totally forgotten what the others reminded
me of afterward, that two years ago Michael Watts Russell wrote
to me from Florence, and said, 'The children send their love, and
desire me to say they have just come from the tomb of St. Mary
Magdalene of Pazzi, whom they have been asking to cure Father
Wilfrid's headache.'
"After all this, I am sure I shall lose my soul if I do not serve
God less lukewarmly; so please pray for me."
God had not given him, however, the favor of a permanent restoration
to health. He was never well in London. "I have two vocations,"
he wrote to Father Bowden, "one for my body and one for my soul;
and they happen to be incompatible, so the body must do the best it
can, and the soul must rough-ride it for another sixty years, which
is supposed to be the term of incessant headache still left me.
When you and I sit toothless together, shaking our palsied heads at
recreation, we shall look down upon the junior fathers who have been
only thirty or forty years in the congregation with an ineffable
contempt; and when my dotage comes on, I shall fancy myself still
novice-master and you a refractory novice, and I shall trip you up
on your crutches for mortification." For the sake of his health he
was persuaded to start on a journey to Palestine; but he fell very
sick on the way, and went no further than Italy. He reached Naples
on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, (1851,) and entered the
Oratorian church just as benediction was about to be given, "which,"
he says, "was jolly." In the same letter (to Father Hutchinson) he
writes, "If I can get one, I will bring one of _the rum things_ they
put on the altar in Advent and Lent, when flowers are forbidden;
they take my fancy hugely." He came home far from well enough to
resume his work; but there was a great deal to be done, and he
never had any mercy on himself. There was a country house for the
congregation to be built at Sydenham Hill, and the fine new Oratory
at Brompton to be erected in place of the little establishment in
King William street, which the community had long ago outgrown. They
took possession of the Brompton house in March, 1854. The vast cost
of this great institution had been defrayed principally from the
private means of the individual members, but there had been several
donations--£10,000 toward the purchase of the site from a lady who
wished her gift to be anonymous; £4000 from the Earl of Arundel and
Surrey; and £700 collected by a committee for the erection of the
church. The current expenses of the house were also defrayed from the
pockets of the fathers, it being a rule of the congregation that the
receipts from their churches should not contribute in any way to the
support of the house, and indeed at Brompton the income of the church
did not equal its expenditure.
It was while the Brompton building was under way that Father Faber
began with his _All for Jesus, or the Easy Ways of Divine Love_,
that remarkable series of spiritual works which made his name so
widely known and loved throughout Europe and America. _All for Jesus_
appeared in 1853; _Bethlehem_, the eighth and last of the series, was
published in 1860. In the mean time, he had collected a volume of
his earlier and later poems; completed his poem of _Prince Amadis_;
published a collection of his hymns, many of which have become
exceedingly popular, and finished a great deal of minor literary
work. He made preparations for other books, on _Calvary_, _The Holy
Ghost_, _The Fear of God_, and _The Immaculate Heart of Mary_,
fragments of which appeared after his death under the title, _Notes
on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects_. These various writings are too
well known and too fondly esteemed, especially in the United States,
for any criticism to be called for here, and we can do nothing better
than copy the just eulogy which Father Bowden cites from _The Dublin
Review_:
"We know of no one man who has done more to make the men of his
day love God and aspire to a higher path of the interior life;
and we know no man who so nearly represents to us the mind and
the preaching of St. Bernard and St. Bernardine of Siena in the
tenderness and beauty with which he has surrounded the names of
Jesus and Mary."
All these exquisite works were written in the midst of the most awful
physical suffering. "It is plain," he writes in 1858, "that life
can't be lived at this rate. But my mind is now like a locomotive
that has started with neither driver nor stoker. I can think of
nothing but being seized, put on board one of her majesty's ships
of war as compulsory chaplain, and carried round the world for two
years. If I was on land, I should jib and come home." Bright's
disease of the kidneys, gout, neuralgia--a complication, in fact,
of numerous disorders, left him hardly an hour of ease, hardly a
night of rest. Soon after Easter, in the year 1863, the hope of
checking his disease or even notably relieving his sufferings was
finally given up. He seems to have been conscious of his condition
even before the physicians had pronounced their opinion. During
the month of April he made one or two short journeys, but without
experiencing any relief. By the middle of June he was so much
worse that the last sacraments were administered. On the 28th--his
forty-ninth birthday--he saw all the members of the community, one
by one, recommending himself to their prayers, and leaving with each
some parting gift. He rallied a little after this, and was even
well enough to take one or two short drives, and to enjoy farewell
visits from Cardinal Wiseman, and Dr. Newman, and many of his other
friends. His mind continued perfectly clear and calm until some time
in September, when attacks of delirium became frequent, and the
sedatives which had been used to produce sleep lost their soothing
effect. He received holy communion daily up to and including the 24th
of that month. The next day his attendants were able to put him into
bed, which had not been done since June; he had passed day and night
in his chair, propped up with pillows. He now lay quite still, gazing
at a large crucifix, and moving his eyes from one to another of the
five wounds. When told that his death was near, he only repeated his
favorite exclamation, "God be praised!" On the morning of the 26th,
Father Rowe told him that he was going to say Mass for him. He showed
by his face that he understood what was said; and just as the Mass
must have ended, he turned his head a little and opened his eyes with
a touching expression, half of sweetness and half of surprise. So his
spirit passed away, as if in the act of realizing the picture which
he had drawn in _All for Jesus_: "Only serve Jesus out of love, and
while your eyes are yet unclosed what an unspeakable surprise will
you have had at the judgment-seat of your dearest Love, while the
songs of heaven are breaking on your ears and the glory of God is
dawning on your eyes, to fade away no more for ever!"
We have already alluded in the first part of this article to Father
Faber's elegance of appearance and manner, and from a portrait
prefixed to the biography it seems that he retained his advantages of
person to a late period of his life. He was remarkable for his habits
of order and neatness, and once, when a father remarked upon the
tidiness of his room, he replied, "The napkin in the sepulchre was
found _folded_ at the resurrection." As might be imagined from the
narrative of his life, he was always distinguished for gentleness;
and Father Bowden remarks that he never was severe in the manner of
correcting the faults of his spiritual subjects, except possibly in
matters connected with the ceremonial of divine worship. Any defect
of demeanor during service, or inattention to the requirements of the
rubric, he rebuked with marked severity. In the church he would have
every thing of the best, whether it could be seen by the congregation
or not. When the new high altar of marble was put up in the Oratory,
he was much dissatisfied because the back was not finished like the
front, and he found fault with the altar rails for the same reason,
complaining that "the side next our Lord" was not ornamented. He was
very fond of children, and his correspondence contains some striking
evidences of his tenderness to them. We have already spoken of his
love of humor--a sense which seems naturally to accompany the poetic
instinct. His room was at all hours the frequent resort of his
brethren who looked upon it as a renewal of St. Philip's "School of
Christian Mirth." Father Bowden quotes the language of an old friend,
who wrote at the time of Father Faber's death of "the indescribable
charm of his private intercourse, of that wonderful brilliancy of
conversation in which he excelled all those whose social powers have
made them the idols of London society as far as they have excelled
ordinary men, of the magic play of his countenance and of his
voice, of the unprecedented combination of tenderness in affection,
unearthliness of aim, and worldly wisdom, which characterized his
private intercourse, and of his power of attracting little children
and learned men, one as much as the other."
Father Bowden has told the story of this beautiful life with
appreciation and affection, and with no mean literary ability.
His style is direct and unaffected, and he is not given to the
superfluity of pious reflection with which the biographers of
religious men are so apt to retard their narratives. The volume
contains a very copious selection from Father Faber's private
correspondence, so that it may be considered in many portions
virtually an autobiography.
FOOTNOTE:
[34] _The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber, D.D., Priest
of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri._ By John Edward Bowden, of the
same Congregation. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.
ANGELA.
CHAPTER V.
THE PROGRESSIVE PROFESSOR.
When Frank returned from the walk, he found a visitor at Frankenhöhe.
The visitor was an elegantly-dressed young man with a free,
self-important air about him.
He spoke fluently, and his words sounded as decisive as though they
came from the lips of infallibility. At times this self-importance
was of such a boastful and arrogant character as to affect the
observer disagreeably.
"It is now vacation, and I do not know how to enjoy it better than by
a visit to you," said he.
"Very flattering to me," answered Frank. "I hope you will be pleased
with Frankenhöhe."
"Pleased?" returned the visitor as he looked through the open window
at the beautiful landscape. "I would like to dream away here the
whole of May and June. How charming it is! An empire of flowers and
vernal delights."
"I am surprised, Carl, that you have preserved such a love for
nature. I thought you considered the professor's chair the
culminating point of attraction."
Carl bowed his head proudly and stood with folded arms before the
smiling Frank.
"That is evidently intended for flattery," said he. "The professor's
chair is my vocation. He who does not hold his vocation as the acme
of all attraction is indeed a perfect man. Besides, it will appear
to you, who consider every thing in the world--not excepting even
the fair sex--with blank stoicism; it will appear even to you that
the rostrum is destined to accomplish great things. Ripe knowledge
in mighty pulsations goes forth from the rostrum and permeates
society. The rostrum governs and educates the rising young men who
are destined to assume leading positions in the state. The rostrum
overthrows antiquated forms of religious delusion, ennobles rational
thought, exact science, and deep investigation. The rostrum governs
even the throne; for we have princes in Germany who esteem liberty
of thought and progress of knowledge more than the art of governing
their people in a spirit of stupidity."
Frank smiled.
"The glory of the rostrum I leave undisputed," said he. "But I beg
of you to conceal from the doctor your scientific rule of faith. You
may get into trouble with the doctor."
"I am very desirous of becoming acquainted with this paragon of
learning--you have told me so much about him; and I confess it was
partly to see him that I made this visit. Get into trouble? I do not
fear the old syllogism-chopper in the least. A good disputation with
him is even desirable."
"Well, you are forewarned. If you go home with a lacerated back, it
will not be my fault."
"A lacerated back?" said the professor quietly. "Does the doctor like
to use _striking_ arguments?"
"Oh! no. But his sarcasm is as cutting as the slash of a sword, and
his logical vehemence is like the stroke of a club."
"We will fight him with the same weapons," answered Carl, throwing
back his head. "Shall I pay him my respects immediately?"
"The doctor admits no one. In his studio he is as inaccessible as a
Turkish sultan in his harem. I will introduce you in the dining-room,
as it is now just dinner-time."
They betook themselves to the dining-room, and soon after they heard
the sound of a bell.
"He is just now called to table," said Richard. "He does not allow
the servant to enter his room, and for that reason a bell has been
hung there."
"How particular he is!" said the professor.
A door of the ante-room was opened, quick steps were heard, and
Klingenberg hastily entered and placed himself at the table, as at a
work that must be done quickly, and then observed the stranger.
"Doctor Lutz, professor of history in our university," said Frank,
introducing him.
"Doctor Lutz--professor of history," said Klingenberg musingly.
"Your name is familiar to me, if I am not mistaken; are you not a
collaborator on Sybel's historical publication?"
"I have that honor," answered the professor with much dignity.
They began to eat.
"You read Sybel's periodical?" asked the professor.
"We must not remain entirely ignorant of literary productions,
particularly the more excellent."
Lutz felt much flattered by this declaration.
"Sybel's periodical is an unavoidable necessity at present," said the
professor. "Historical research was in a bad way; it threatened to
succumb entirely to the ultramontane cause and the clerical party."
"Now Sybel and his co-laborers will avert that danger," said the
doctor. "These men will do honor to historical research. The
ultramontanists have a great respect for Sybel. When he taught in
Munich, they did not rest till he turned his back on Isar-Athen.
In my opinion, Sybel should not have gone to Munich. The stupid
Bavarians will not allow themselves to be enlightened. So let them
sit in darkness, the stupid barbarians who have no appreciation for
the progress of science."
The professor looked astonished. He could not understand how an
admirer of Sybel's could be so prejudiced. Frank was alarmed lest
the professor might perceive the doctor's keen sarcasm--which he
delivered with a serious countenance--and feel offended. He changed
the conversation to another subject, in which Klingenberg did not
take part.
"You have represented the doctor incorrectly," said the professor,
after the meal. "He understands Sybel and praises his efforts--the
best sign of a clear mind."
"Klingenberg is always just," returned Frank.
On the following afternoon, Lutz joined in the accustomed walk. As
they were passing through the chestnut grove, a servant of Siegwart's
came up breathless, with a letter in his hand, which he gave to Frank.
"Gentlemen," said Frank after reading the letter, "I am urgently
requested to visit Herr Siegwart immediately. With your permission I
will go."
"Of course, go," said Klingenberg. "I know," he added with a roguish
expression, "that you would as lief visit that excellent man as walk
with us."
Richard went off in such haste that the question occurred to him why
he fulfilled with such zeal the wishes of a man with whom he had been
so short a time acquainted; but with the question Angela came before
his mind as an answer. He rejected this answer, even against his
feelings, and declared to himself that Siegwart's honorable character
and neighborly feeling made his haste natural and even obligatory.
The proprietor may have been waiting his arrival, for he came out to
meet him. Frank observed a dark cloud over the countenance of the man
and great anxiety in his features.
"I beg your forgiveness a thousand times, Herr Frank. I know you go
walking with Herr Klingenberg at this hour, and I have deprived you
of that pleasure."
"No excuse, neighbor. It is a question which would give me greater
pleasure, to serve you or to walk with Klingenberg."
Richard smiled while saying these words; but the smile died away,
for he saw how pale and suddenly anxious Siegwart had become. They
had entered a room, and he desired to know the cause of Siegwart's
changed manner.
"A great and afflicting misfortune threatens us," began the
proprietor. "My Eliza has been suddenly taken ill, and I have great
fears for her young life. Oh! if you knew how that child has grown
into my heart." He paused for a moment and suppressed his grief, but
he could not hide from Frank the tears that filled his eyes. Richard
saw these tears, and this paternal grief increased his respect for
Siegwart.
"The delicate life of a young child does not allow of protracted
medical treatment, of consultation or investigation into the disease
or the best remedies. The disease must be known immediately and
efficient remedies applied. There are physicians at my command, but I
do not dare to trust Eliza to them."
"I presume, Herr Siegwart, that you wish for Klingenberg."
"Yes--and through your mediation. You know that he only treats the
sick poor; but resolutely refuses his services to the wealthy."
"Do not be uneasy about that. I hope to be able to induce Klingenberg
to correspond with your wishes. But is Eliza really so sick, or does
your apprehension increase your anxiety?"
"I will show you the child, and then you can judge for yourself."
They went up-stairs and quietly entered the sick-room. Angela sat on
the little bed of the child, reading. The child was asleep, but the
noise of their entrance awoke her. She reached out her little round
arms to her father, and said in a scarcely audible whisper,
"Papa--papa!"
This whispered "papa" seemed to pierce the soul of Siegwart like a
knife. He drew near and leant over the child.
"You will be well to-morrow, my sweet pet. Do you see, Herr Frank has
come to see you?"
"Mamma!" whispered the child.
"Your mother will come to-morrow, my Eliza. She will bring you
something pretty. My wife has been for the last two weeks at her
sister's, who lives a few miles from here," said Siegwart, turning to
Frank. "I sent a messenger for her early this morning."
While the father sat on the bed and held Eliza's hand in his, Frank
observed Angela, who scarcely turned her eyes from the sick child.
Her whole soul seemed taken up with her suffering sister. Only once
had she looked inquiringly at Frank, to read in his face his opinion
of the condition of Eliza. She stood immovable at the foot of the
bed, as mild, as pure, and as beautiful as the guardian angel of the
child.
Both men left the room.
"I will immediately seek the doctor, who is now on his walk," said
Frank.
"Shall I send my servant for him?"
"That is unnecessary," returned Frank. "And even if your servant
should find the doctor, he would probably not be inclined to shorten
his walk. Our gardener, who works in the chestnut grove, will show me
the way the doctor took. In an hour and a half at furthest I will be
back."
The young man pressed the outstretched hand of Siegwart, and hastened
away.
In the mean time the doctor and the professor had reached a narrow,
wooded ravine, on both sides of which the rocks rose almost
perpendicularly. The path on which they walked passed near a little
brook, that flowed rippling over the pebbles in its bed. The
branches of the young beeches formed a green roof over the path, and
only here and there were a few openings through which the sun shot
its sloping beams across the cool, dusky way, and in the sunbeams
floated and danced dust-colored insects and buzzing flies.
The learned saunterers continued their amusement without altercation
until the professor's presumption offended the doctor and led to a
vehement dispute.
Klingenberg did not appear on the stage of publicity. He left
boasting and self-praise to others, far inferior to him in knowledge.
He despised that tendency which pursues knowledge only to command,
which cries down any inquiry that clashes with their theories.
The doctor published no learned work, nor did he write for the
periodicals, to defend his views. But if he happened to meet a
scientific opponent, he fought him with sharp, cutting weapons.
"I do not doubt of the final victory of true science over the
falsifying party spirit of the ultramontanes," said the professor.
"Sybel's periodical destroys, year by year, more and more the
crumbling edifice which the clerical zealots build on the untenable
foundation of falsified facts."
Klingenberg tore his cap from his head and swung it about vehemently,
and made such long strides that the other with difficulty kept up
with him. Suddenly he stopped, turned about, and looked the professor
sharply in the eyes.
"You praise Sybel's publication unjustly," said he excitedly. "It
is true Sybel has founded a historical school, and has won many
imitators; but his is a school destructive of morality and of
history--a school of scientific radicalism, a school of falsehood
and deceitfulness. Sybel and his followers undertake to mould and
distort history to their purposes. They slur over every thing that
contradicts their theories. To them the ultramontanes are partial,
prejudiced men--or perhaps asses and dunces; you are unfortunately
right when you say Sybel's school wins ground; for Sybel and his
fellows have brought lying and falsification to perfection. They
have in Germany perplexed minds, and have brought their historical
falsifications to market as true ware."
The professor could scarcely believe his own ears.
"I have given you freely and openly my judgment, which need not
offend you, as it refers to principles, not persons."
"Not in the least," answered Lutz derisively. "I admit with pleasure
that Sybel's school is anti-church, and even anti-Christian, if
you will. There is no honor in denying this. The denial would be
of no use; for this spirit speaks too loudly and clearly in that
school. Sybel and his associates keep up with the enlightenment and
liberalism of our times. But I must contradict you when you say this
free tendency is injurious to society; the seed of free inquiry and
human enlightenment can bring forth only good fruits."
"Oh! we know this fruit of the new heathenism," cried the doctor.
"There is no deed so dark, no crime so great, that it may not be
defended according to the anti-Christian principles of vicious
enlightenment and corrupt civilization. Sybel's school proves this
with striking clearness. Tyrants are praised and honored. Noble men
are defamed and covered with dirt."
"This you assert, doctor; it is impossible to prove such a
declaration."
"Impossible! Not at all. Sybel's periodical exalts to the seventh
heaven the tyrant Henry VIII. of England. You extol him as a
conscientious man who was compelled by scruples of conscience to
separate from his wife. You commend him for having but one mistress.
You say that the sensualities of princes are only of 'anecdotal
interest.' Naturally," added the doctor contemptuously, "a school
that cuts loose from Christian principles cannot consistently condemn
adultery. Fie! fie! Debauchees and men of gross sensuality might sit
in Sybel's enlightened school. Progress overthrows the cross, and
erects the crescent. We may yet live to see every wealthy man of
the new enlightenment have his harem. Whether society can withstand
the detestable consequences of this teaching of licentiousness and
contempt for Christian morality, is a consideration on which these
progressive gentlemen do not reflect."
"I admit, doctor," said Lutz, "that the clear light of free,
impartial science must needs hurt the eyes of a pious believer.
According to the opinions of the ultramontanes, Henry VIII. was a
terrible tyrant and blood-hound. Sybel's periodical deserves the
credit of having done justice to that great king."
"Do you say so?" cried the doctor, with flaming eyes. "You, a
professor of history in the university! You, who are appointed to
teach our young men the truth! Shame on you! What you say is nothing
but stark hypocrisy. I appeal to the heathen. You may consider
religion from the stand-point of an ape, for what I care; your
cynicism, which is not ashamed to equalize itself with the brute,
may also pass. But this hypocrisy, this fallacious representation of
historical facts and persons, this hypocrisy before my eyes--this I
cannot stand; this must be corrected."
The doctor actually doubled up his fists. Lutz saw it and saw also
the wild fire in the eyes of his opponent, and was filled with
apprehension and anxiety.
Erect and silent, fiery indignation in his flushed countenance, stood
Klingenberg before the frightened professor. As Lutz still held his
tongue, the doctor continued,
"You call Henry VIII. a 'great king,' you extol and defend this
'great king' in Sybel's periodical. I say Henry VIII. was a great
scoundrel, a blackguard without a conscience, and a bloodthirsty
tyrant. I prove my assertion. Henry VIII. caused to be executed
two queens who were his wives--two cardinals, twelve dukes and
marquises, eighteen barons and knights, seventy-seven abbots and
priors, and over sixty thousand Catholics. Why did he have them
executed? Because they were criminals? No; because they remained true
to their consciences and to the religion of their fathers. All these
fell victims to the cruelty of Henry VIII., whom you style a 'great
king.' You glorify a man who for blood-thirstiness and cruelty can be
placed by the side of Nero and Diocletian. That is my retort to your
hypocrisy and historical mendacity."
The stern doctor having emptied his vials of wrath, now walked on
quietly; Lutz with drooping head followed in silence.
"Sybel does not even stop with Henry VIII.," again began the doctor.
"These enlightened gentlemen undertake to glorify even Tiberius, that
inhuman monster. They might as well have the impudence to glorify
cruelty itself. On the other hand, truly great men, such as Tilly,
are abandoned to the hatred of the ignorant."
"This is unjust," said the professor hastily. "Sybel's periodical
in the second volume says that Tilly was often calumniated by party
spirit; that the destruction of Magdeburg belongs to the class of
unproved and improbable events. The periodical proves that Tilly's
conduct in North Germany was mild and humane, that he signalized
himself by his simplicity, unselfishness, and conscientiousness."
"Does Sybel's periodical say all this?"
"Word for word, and much more in praise of that magnanimous man,"
said Lutz. "From this you may know that science is just even to pious
heroes."
Klingenberg smiled characteristically, and in his smile was an
expression of ineffable contempt.
He stopped before the professor.
"You have just quoted what impartial historical research informs
us of Tilly, in the second and third volumes. It is so. I remember
perfectly having read that favorable account. Now let me quote
what the same periodical says of the same Tilly in the seventeenth
volume. There we read that Tilly was a hypocrite and a blood-hound,
whose name cannot be mentioned without a shudder; furthermore, we
are told that Tilly burned Magdeburg, that he waged a ravaging war
against men, women, children, and property. You see, then, in the
second and third volumes that Tilly was a conscientious, mild man
and pious hero; in the seventeenth volume, that he was a tyrant and
blood-hound. It appears from this with striking clearness that the
enlightened progressionists do not stick at contradiction, mendacity,
and defamation."
The professor lowered his eyes and stood embarrassed.
"I leave you, 'Herr Professor,' to give a name to such a procedure.
Besides, I must also observe that the strictly scientific method, as
it labels itself at present, does not stop at personal defamation.
As every holy delusion and religious superstition must be destroyed
in the hearts of the students, this lying and defamation extends to
the historical truths of faith. It is taught from the professors'
chairs, and confirmed by the scientific journals, that confession is
an invention of the middle ages; while you must know from thorough
research that confession has existed up to the time of the apostles.
You teach and write that Innocent III. introduced the doctrine of
transubstantiation in the thirteenth century; while every one having
the least knowledge of history knows that at the council of 1215 it
was only made a duty to receive the holy communion at Easter, that
the fathers of the first ages speak of transubstantiation--that
it has its foundation in Scripture. You know as well as I do that
indulgences were imparted even in the first century: but this does
not prevent you from teaching that the popes of the middle ages
invented indulgences from love of money, and sold them from avarice.
Thus the progressive science lies and defames, yet is not ashamed to
raise high the banner of enlightenment; thus you lead people into
error, and destroy youth. Fie! fie!"
The doctor turned and was about to proceed when he heard his name
called. Frank hastened to him, the perspiration running from his
forehead, and his breast heaving from rapid breathing. In a few words
he made known Eliza's illness, and Siegwart's request.
"You know," said Klingenberg, "that I treat only the poor, who
cannot easily get a physician."
"Make an exception in this case, doctor, I beg of you most earnestly!
You respect Siegwart yourself for his integrity, and I also of late
have learned to esteem the excellent man, whose heart at present is
rent with anxiety and distress. Save this child, doctor; I beg of you
save it."
Klingenberg saw the young man's anxiety and goodness, and benevolence
beamed on his still angry face.
"I see," said he, "that no refusal is to be thought of. Well, we
will go." And he immediately set off with long strides on his way
back. Richard cast a glance at the professor, who followed, gloomy
and spiteful. He saw the angry look he now and then turned on the
hastening doctor, and knew that a sharp contest must have taken
place. But his solicitude for Siegwart's child excluded all other
sympathy. On the way he exchanged only a few words with Lutz,
who moved on morosely, and was glad when Klingenberg and Richard
separated from him in the vicinity of Frankenhöhe.
Ten minutes later they entered the house of Siegwart. The doctor
stood for a moment observing the child without touching it. The
little one opened her eyes, and appeared to be frightened at the
strange man with the sharp features. Siegwart and Angela read
anxiously in the doctor's immovable countenance. As Eliza said
"Papa," in a peculiar, feverish tone, Klingenberg moved away from
the bed. He cast a quick glance at the father, went to the window
and drummed with his fingers on the glass. Frank read in that quick
glance that Eliza must die. Angela must also have guessed the
doctor's opinion, for she was very much affected; her head sank on
her breast and tears burst from her eyes.
Klingenberg took out his note-book, wrote something on a small slip
of paper, and ordered the recipe to be taken immediately to the
apothecary. He then took his departure.
"What do you think of the child?" said Siegwart, as they passed over
the yard.
"The child is very sick; send for me in the morning if it be
necessary."
Frank and the doctor went some distance in silence. The young man
thought of the misery the death of Eliza would bring on that happy
family, and the pale, suffering Angela in particular stood before him.
"Is recovery not possible?"
"No. The child will surely die to-night. I prescribed only a soothing
remedy. I am sorry for Siegwart; he is one of the few fathers who
hang with boundless love on their children--particularly when they
are young. The man must call forth all his strength to bear up
against it."
When Frank entered his room, he found Lutz in a very bad humor.
"You have judged that old bear much too leniently," began the
professor. "The man is a model of coarseness and intolerable bigotry."
"I thought so," said Frank. "I know you and I know the doctor; and I
knew two such rugged antitheses must affect each other unpleasantly.
What occasioned your dispute?"
"What! A thousand things," answered his friend ill-humoredly. "The
old rhinoceros has not the least appreciation of true knowledge. He
carries haughtily the long wig of antiquated stupidity, and does not
see the shallowness of the swamp in which he wallows. The genius of
Christianity is to him the sublime. Where this stops, pernicious
enlightenment--which corrupts the people, turns churches into
ball-rooms, and the Bible into a book of fables--begins."
"The doctor is not wrong there," said Frank earnestly. "Are they
not endeavoring with all their strength to deprive the Bible of
its divine character? Does not one Schenkel in Heidelberg deny
the divinity of Christ? Is not this Schenkel the director of a
theological faculty? Do not some Catholic professors even begin to
dogmatize and dispute the authority of the holy see?"
"We rejoice at the consoling fact that Catholic _savants_ themselves
break the fetters with which Rome's infallibility has bound in
adamantine chains the human mind!" cried Lutz with enthusiasm.
"It appears strange to me when young men--scarcely escaped from the
school, and boasting of all modern knowledge--cast aside as old,
worthless rubbish what great minds of past ages have deeply pondered.
The see of Rome and its dogmas have ruled the world for eighteen
hundred years. Rome's dogmas overthrew the old world and created a
new one. They have withstood and survived storms that have engulfed
all else besides. Such strength excites wonder and admiration, but
not contempt."
"I let your eulogy on Rome pass," said the professor. "But as Rome
and her dogmas have overthrown heathenism, so will the irresistible
progress of science overthrow Christianity. Coming generations will
smile as complacently at the God of Christendom as we consider with
astonishment the great and small gods of the heathen."
"I do not desire the realization of your prophecy," said Frank
gloomily; "for it must be accompanied by convulsions that will
transform the whole world, and therefore I do not like to see an
anti-Christian tendency pervading science."
"Tendency, tendency!" said Lutz, hesitating. "In science there is no
tendency; there is but truth."
"Easy, friend, easy! Be candid and just. You will not deny that the
tendency of Sybel's school is to war against the church?"
"Certainly, in so far as the church contends against truth and
thorough investigation."
"Good; and the friends of the church will contend against you in so
far as you are inimical to the spirit of the church. And so, tendency
on one side, tendency on the other. But it is you who make the more
noise. As soon as a book opposed to you appears,--'Partial!' you say
with contemptuous mien; 'Odious!' 'Ecclesiastical!' 'Unreadable!' and
it is forthwith condemned. But it appears to me natural that a man
should labor and write in a cause which is to him the noblest cause."
"I am astonished, Richard! You did not think formerly as you now do.
But I should not be surprised if your intercourse with the doctor
is not without its effects." This the professor said in a cutting
tone. Frank turned about and walked the room. The observation of his
friend annoyed him, and he reflected whether his views had actually
undergone any change.
"You deceive yourself. I am still the same," said he. "You cannot
mistrust me because I do not take part with you against the doctor."
Carl sat for a time thinking.
"Is my presence at the table necessary?" said he. "I do not wish to
meet the doctor again."
"That would be little in you. You must not avoid the doctor. You must
convince yourself that he does not bear any ill-will on account of
that scientific dispute. With all his rough bluntness, Klingenberg is
a noble man. Your non-appearance at table must offend him, and at the
same time betray your annoyance."
"I obey," answered Lutz. "To-morrow I will go for a few days to the
mountains. On my return I will remain another day with you."
Frank's assurance was confirmed. The doctor met the guest as if
nothing unpleasant had happened. In the cool of the evening he went
with the young men into the garden, and spoke with such familiarity
of Tacitus, Livy, and other historians of antiquity that the
professor admired his erudition.
Frank wrote in his diary:
"May 20th.--After mature reflection, I find that the views which
I believed to be strongly founded begin to totter. What would
the professor say if he knew that not the doctor, but a country
family, and that, too, ultramontane, begin to shake the foundation
of my views? Would he not call me weak?"
He laid down the pen and sat sullenly reflecting.
"All my impressions of the ultramontane family be herewith
effaced," he wrote further. "The only fact I admit is, that even
ultramontanes also can be good people. But this fact shall in no
wise destroy my former convictions."
TO BE CONTINUED.
FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.
THE COUNCIL AND THE ROMAN CONGREGATIONS.[35]
The Council of Trent was the eighteenth general council, and
terminated its sessions in the year 1562. None had preceded it for
upward of a century, and during the three hundred years which have
since elapsed the church has failed to witness one of these august
assemblies.
Hence it has been objected that, since the sixteenth century, the
safeguards of truth and liberty have been diminished, and that the
absence, in modern times, of those councils, which were so frequent
during the first ages, manifests an intention on the part of the
popes to exercise their authority with the utmost rigor, and to
govern alone, without the assistance of those lights to which their
predecessors did not deem it humiliating to appeal.
This imputation is, however, contrary to the truth. During the first
three centuries there was no general council. Since then, as all
admit, the sovereign pontiffs have had the sole right to summon
these assemblies, and have been the sole judges as to when this
should be done. This power was conferred upon them with the especial
design that they might use it without incurring any blame from those
who never were made their judges. In the exercise of it they are
influenced by reasons which we cannot estimate. They know better than
any one else the wants of the church, the condition of the world,
the inconveniences, the obstacles, and the dangers which oppose such
an assemblage. Possibly, also, they perceive in history certain
reasons which modify their action. In modern times the secular power
loves to meddle with the affairs of the church. It desires to make
religion a handmaid of politics, and, thoroughly enamored of its own
independence, it would sink to the lowest limit the freedom of the
church. Its manifest impiety, its sceptical principles, which, under
the names of toleration and liberty of conscience, have penetrated
its governments, have rendered its interference far more disastrous
in modern times than at any former period in history. The kings of
the middle ages did indeed wish to make the church serve their own
ends, but they, at least, were in their turn faithful to her. They
held fast to her dogmas, and submitted humbly to her discipline.
Their combination was to rule, not to overthrow and destroy. But
such is not the temper of these modern governments, all or nearly
all of which seek to hold religion itself in subjection. For this
purpose they establish national churches, which are attached to the
universal church by a tie which may easily at any time be broken.
They exalt the authority of bishops, that thereby they may diminish
that of popes. They exhibit a desire to lodge the government of the
church in councils, and to use these assemblies for the introduction
of extensive modifications into ecclesiastical law. The councils of
Basle and Constance showed indications of these projects, and it was
through no fault of the secular power that the Council of Trent did
not realize them.
Thus also is explained the laudable design of the sovereign pontiffs
in contending against these disastrous tendencies, and in showing
to the world, by long experience, that the fundamental power in the
church rests with them. They have wished to remove from princes the
means upon which they had so often relied for the overthrow of
ecclesiastical authority. This is the reason why the popes, during
the last three centuries, have convoked no council, but have sought
from different institutions such assistance as they have required.
It is for the purpose of affording this assistance that the Roman
congregations have been established. Their origin may be found
in those consistories of cardinals which, from the ninth to the
sixteenth centuries, constituted the permanent senate of the pontiff,
and assembled twice or thrice a week in his palace, to consider
measures for the reformation of both clergy and people, to receive
the complaints of all classes of the faithful, and to decide the
controversies and disputes of the entire world. These consistories
were themselves the offspring of those Roman councils which were so
frequent during the first ten ages of the church; for it may be well
remarked that the church, though based upon the supreme authority
of the popes, has never neglected those human institutions which
could increase its influence or lighten the labors of its head. Its
principles have always been the same, but it has suited the method of
their application to the necessities of each succeeding age.
Like the councils, the consistories were composed of men renowned
for their faith, their learning, and their sanctity. The sovereign
pontiffs continually added to the college of cardinals the most
illustrious of the clergy, and called to Rome, from all quarters of
the globe, those religious, those ecclesiastics, and those prelates
whose assistance they deemed most useful in the government of
the church. These men were absolutely independent of the secular
power, and totally secluded from its influence. Living in constant
intercourse with the pontiff himself, they enjoyed all necessary
liberty; they exercised for life the powers confided to them; they
had no worldly care or fear, and they enjoyed a rank from which they
could not be deposed. They spent their time in prayer, in charitable
works, in the study of sacred literature, and in the discharge
of their duties. Where could be found more intelligence, greater
learning, or more ample guarantees for the preservation of truth?
The principle of the church, that her power, though essentially
resident in the person of one, should be disseminated through
the instrumentality of many, is applicable to all degrees of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Thus, the bishop and his chapter are considered as forming but one
body, while yet the decretal _novit_ of Alexander III. secures to
bishops the management of their own churches without the consent
or co-operation of their brethren. Thus, also, the popes have near
them a body of cardinals, an illustrious senate, composed of the
most learned and holy men of the whole world, who assist them in the
direction of the church. This senate, collected in one assemblage
under the presidency of the pontiff, forms the consistory, at whose
sessions the most important causes are frequently determined.
The extension of the faith, the multiplicity of appeals to the holy
see, the more complicated developments of modern life, and the
increased entanglements of the church with the world have, however,
rendered necessary a more frequent intervention of authority, and
added vastly to the number of those causes on which the holy see has
been obliged to pronounce judgment.
The government of the church is by far the most extensive of the
governments of the earth. It is not bounded by the limits of any
particular kingdom, but reaches throughout the globe, as well to
those countries whose heathen populations demand its constant care,
as to those Catholic states which are directly subject to the
jurisdiction of the apostolic see. From all these places innumerable
cases constantly arrive at Rome, each of which demands, for its
proper determination, a profound examination. These are not like
cases which are submitted to the civil tribunals, in which material
interests only are at stake, and for which a temporary solution is
sufficient. They are questions of doctrine, which demand an answer
rigorously exact, since these answers determine faith. They are
questions of administration, which interest secular institutions,
great personages, often entire provinces and kingdoms. They are
questions of conscience, upon which depend the peace and salvation of
souls. These decisions, whatever they may be, will always be received
with an unqualified respect and a perfect docility, which impose upon
their authors an obligation to exercise the utmost care. And yet it
is also necessary to judge quickly, for the affairs are often of a
vital importance which will not brook delay.
It would be, of course, impossible for the sovereign pontiff to
examine personally all these various matters, and to decide upon
them in a single assembly. Hence the college of cardinals has been
divided into a certain number of sections, to each of which pertains
the examination of some particular class of cases. This division did
not take place all at once. It grew into existence by the successive
erection of different congregations instituted as fast and in such
proportions as necessity seemed to require.
That which is especially remarkable about these institutions is
the protection which they give to private interests, since the
submission of each affair to the scrutiny of many persons is a
security for knowledge, independence, and impartiality in its
decision. Moreover, these institutions preserve the customs and
the character of an ecclesiastical government. We have mentioned
the relationship of bishops and their chapters. Every chapter was
subdivided into commissions, to each of which a separate part in the
administration of the diocese was assigned. One had the spiritual and
scholastic direction of the episcopal seminaries; another, that of
the temporalities; and still another, the examination and reception
of the candidates for the priesthood. These commissions bear a
certain resemblance to the Roman congregations. The latter were
established by the voluntary action of the sovereign pontiffs. The
Council of Trent was not occupied with them. It regulated diocesan
administration as it believed useful, but it left the administration
of the universal church to the wisdom of the popes; so that precisely
at the time when its enemies think they can detect tendencies on the
part of the holy see to absolutism, the pontiffs without constraint,
but of their own accord, organize those institutions which are the
best safeguards against the dangers of absolute power.
In reckoning up the number of those who, under different titles,
take part in these labors, we discover that the Roman congregations
form an entire assemblage of five hundred persons, all illustrious
for their piety and learning. Many councils have been less numerous.
These constitute a sort of permanent council, which is in daily
communication with all the churches of the world, and which, not
being limited in duration, can bring to the questions which are
submitted to it all desirable deliberation. Perfect order presides
over its labors. Like the councils, it is divided into sections, to
which the members are assigned according to their peculiar aptitudes.
These sections, which are the congregations properly so called, are
permanent also, and consequently are enabled to devote themselves to
the study of all the branches of ecclesiastical administration for
the purpose of determining its principles. Finally, like the councils
themselves, they draw their authority from the sovereign pontiff, and
their decisions are subject to his approval.
The attributes of these congregations are manifold and various.
They may be arranged under three principal heads: administrative,
deliberative, and judicial.
The Roman congregations are the supreme directors of ecclesiastical
administration. The sovereign pontiff adopts no measures which
affect the government of dioceses, the communities of religious, the
missions, or the ceremonies of the ritual; he grants no faculties
or dispensations; he fills no important position in the church,
until the congregation to whose sphere the case belongs has been
summoned to consider it. Often, indeed, the congregation itself
first perceives the necessity to be provided for. If it be a matter
of small moment, the president or secretary of the congregation,
either by virtue of his office or by special concession, will render
a decision. If the matter is of higher consequence, it is previously
submitted to the pope, and a decision rendered, as it is called, _ex
audentia summi pontificis_. If it is of the highest character, it
will receive special care and be considered in a full congregation.
In every case these acts derive their administrative power from
the authority given to the sovereign pontiff over the church. They
use this power, manifesting itself in council, with the assistance
of renowned and holy men and in a manner worthy of him who made the
world with number, weight, and measure.
These congregations have also to resolve the doubts which arise
upon different points of canon law. Sometimes propositions in the
abstract are submitted to them for the determination of discipline
or ceremonies; sometimes they consult upon the application of a
general law to some particular case which does not seem to come
entirely within its provisions. They occupy in the church the place
of a central light to which every one, prelate or layman, king or
simple citizen, may come for illumination. They are not only the
adviser of the sovereign, but of all his subjects. No institution
of the secular power can be compared to them. He who has doubts
upon the interpretation of civil law is able to consult its doctors
and professors only in detail. The council of state has no power to
respond to individuals who interrogate it; its advice is given only
when the government demands it. The courts can render only concrete,
particular decisions upon stated cases. More liberal than the state,
the church holds its wisdom at the disposal of every conscience. It
responds to all, and, without regard to the dignity of persons, it
investigates with the same care the questions they propound; for it
always acts for the salvation of souls, and considers every soul
redeemed by the blood of Christ as of infinite price.
The method of procedure in these deliberations shows the care
which the church exercises over every matter of this nature. The
question is first examined and discussed in a "consultation;" which
document is referred to all or a portion of the members, according
to the nature of the affair and the usages of the congregation.
The consultors are advised with. The question is submitted to the
judgment of eminent cardinals united in full congregation. The
decision is laid before the pope, whose approval must be obtained
before its promulgation. Then this decision becomes an authentic
interpretation of law, not merely on account of the official
authority of the congregation, but on account of the approbation
of the sovereign pontiff. It possesses legislative authority and
has the force of law. Further on we shall see that although these
congregations, being officially invested by the holy see with the
right of interpreting law, render definitive decisions which are
indisputable and cannot be raised by any other authority, yet they
are not thereby to be considered as infallible. Their judgments are
obligatory because supreme, not because they are infallible.
Finally, these congregations are the final tribunals for the
determination of ecclesiastical causes. Sometimes these causes
are brought by way of appeal from the decrees and sentences of
the ordinaries of different places. Sometimes the parties submit
directly to their decision questions never before raised at an
inferior tribunal. All these congregations possess judicial powers,
and are able to resolve contested cases. The chief of those to which
appeals are taken are, however, the Congregation of the Council and
the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars. The causes thus submitted
are both civil and criminal. The Congregation of the Holy Office is
the supreme tribunal for the crimes and misdemeanors which concern
faith, such as heresy, polygamy, detention of prohibited books,
infraction of fasts, the celebration of mass, and the administration
of the sacraments by men who are not priests, the public veneration
of unbeatified dead, and the superstitions of astrology and false
revelations. The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars is the ordinary
judge of appeals in those criminal causes which do not come under
the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. The Congregation of the Council
determines those cases which are specified by the Council of Trent.
These congregations, fifteen in number, are as follows:
1. The Congregation of the Holy Office, established by Paul III.
2. The Congregation of the Council, established by Pius IV.
3. The Congregation of the Index, established by Leo X.
4 and 5. The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, established by
Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V.
6. The Congregation of Rites, established by Sixtus V.
7. The Congregation of Schools, established by Sixtus V.
8. The Congregation of the Consistory, established by Sixtus V.
9. The Congregation of the Examination of Bishops, established by
Clement VIII.
10. The Congregation of the Propaganda, established by Gregory XV.
11. The Congregation of Ecclesiastical Immunities, established by
Urban VIII.
12. The Congregation of the Residence of Bishops, established by
Clement VIII. and Benedict XIV.
13. The Congregation of Indulgences, established by Clement IX.
14. The Congregation of Extraordinary Affairs, established by Pius
VII.
15. The Congregation of Oriental Rites, established by Pius IX.
The first of these congregations, as well in the order of their
importance as of their origin, is that of the Holy Office. The
principle upon which it is based, although violently attacked in
our day, is certainly incontestable. Man has no right to propagate
error; for error is an evil which causes public disturbance and
disorder, and is especially dangerous to the ignorant and feeble,
of whom the greater part of mankind is composed. Civil tribunals
and temporal governments never hesitate to use this right as
one necessary to their self-preservation. It is not, therefore,
surprising that the church claims it, since it is a perfect society,
and owes to itself the duty of self-protection. Rather should it
exercise this right with the most unquestioned authority, being
itself infallible, and able to discriminate with absolute exactness
between truth and error.
Twenty years before the conclusion of the Council of Trent, by a bull
dated July 2d, 1542, Pope Paul III. established the Congregation of
the Holy Office, composed of six cardinals, for the increase and
defence of the Catholic faith. The successors of Paul III. confirmed
this congregation and increased the number of its members. Sixtus
V. solemnly recognized its existence in 1588, in his bull _Immensa
Æterni_. This congregation is usually presided over by the pope
himself.
The Congregation of the Council was established by Pius IV., in
order to carry into effect the decrees of the Council of Trent,
and received from Sixtus V. the faculty of interpreting, with
apostolic authority, all the disciplinary canons of that august
assembly. The Council of Trent was bound by no precedents in
regulating particular points of discipline. It reviewed the whole
body of canons, confirming whatever in the former law ought to be
preserved, completing what was lacking, and publishing a full code of
ecclesiastical discipline. In spite of the care with which all these
new dispositions had been made, difficulties soon began to arise as
to their interpretation and application. The council had foreseen
this, and left it to the sovereign pontiff to provide for the
necessity. On this account, the pope instituted a permanent tribunal,
composed, at the outset, of those cardinals who had assisted at the
council, who understood its spirit, and knew how best to preserve and
transmit its traditions. This was the Congregation of the Council.
The religious orders already possessed an analogous institution. That
of Citeaux had always had some one power charged with the duty of
interpreting the rule. A similar tribunal is indispensable in every
well-ordered state. It guards the law from the deviations of custom,
and the abuse of private interpretation. It affords to it unity and
fixedness. Every modern government has its supreme court of appeals,
which exists almost solely for this object. But the institution of
these latter is comparatively recent, while the church has possessed
hers for many ages, and, in fact, gave to those of the state the
first impulse and example.
The Congregation of the Index was established by St. Pius V. Its
powers were afterward extended and confirmed by Gregory XIII. in
1572, by Sixtus V. in 1588, by Clement VIII. in 1595, and by other
sovereign pontiffs. The principle upon which its authority reposes is
indisputable. In every age the church has restrained the propagation
of false doctrines and prohibited the perusal of such books as
were dangerous to faith and morals. The invention of printing, in
1450, constrained it to watch with increased solicitude for the
accomplishment of this duty. In 1513, the fifth Council of Lateran
forbade the publication of any book without its previous examination
by the ordinary of the place. The efforts put forth for the spread
of Protestantism called for efforts still more vigorous in defence of
the church. The Council of Trent reënacted the laws concerning the
Index. It published the ten rules which are now regarded as the germ
of all modern legislation concerning the press. The establishment of
this congregation was but the organization and practical realization
of those principles which the church has always recognized, and of
which all states to-day admit the necessity.
The Congregation of the Index examines books and forbids those
which are false and immoral. Christians have need of some learned
and impartial authority to designate for them such books as they
ought not to read, and all sincere men admit the usefulness of this
warning; for many books are certainly unprofitable and injurious to
every one. Even though civil governments have criticised the rules
of the Index, they have not hesitated to adopt and use them as the
nucleus of their legislation concerning the press. The oath imposed
upon printers and booksellers, the deposit of a copy of each work
before it is offered for sale, the obligation of placing upon the
title-page the name of the printer, and of the signature of the
writers to articles in newspapers, are all embodied in the rules of
Clement VII. The prescriptions of the Index forbid the distribution
of manuscript and printed books which have not been duly approved,
in the same manner as the state prohibits those which have not been
duly stamped; except that the church has not invented stamps, nor
does a revenue result from its prescriptions. Moreover, the state
demands an approbation, or, in other words, exercises a censorship,
which, though now very greatly decried, is still enforced in regard
to plays, and, when occasion demands, to other publications also.
There is merely this difference, that the church causes its books to
be examined by bishops, by cardinals, by men who are at once learned
and impartial, while civil governments confide this responsibility
to men who are often more ignorant and less careful of morality than
the authors whom they control. The state has indeed adopted the
institution of the church, but it has greatly perverted it.
The decisions of this congregation are binding in all places; not
because the tribunal is infallible, but because it is supreme, and
because the popes have extended its authority over the whole church.
Some, like the Gallicans, have claimed the validity of their contrary
usages; but no custom can avail against law, especially when it is
universally acknowledged that the power of the lawgiver extends over
the whole world, and that no person, whatever his rank, or titles, or
privileges, is exempt from its decrees.
The Congregation of Bishops was established by Gregory XIII. The
Congregation of Regulars, which was afterward established by Sixtus
V., was, at a still later day, united to that of Bishops. This
congregation, which is one of the most busy of them all, occupies
in the church a sphere analogous to that of a council of state. It
possesses administrative faculties. It deputes visitors apostolic
to different provinces, appoints vicars in dioceses whose bishops
become incapacitated, and sends forth religious to visit the houses
of their several orders. It is the natural protectress of charitable
institutions. It approves of the sales, exchanges, and pledges of
the property pertaining to churches and monasteries. It has also
deliberative attributes, and decides upon questions submitted to
it by bishops, religious houses, and institutions; except such as
may involve the interpretation of the canons of the Council of
Trent. It has prepared the greater part of the bulls which have
been issued during the past three hundred years. In short, it
exercises an administrative jurisdiction over, and decides disputes
which arise between, different churches, bishops, chapters, orders,
and religious, and whatever other matters of controversy directly
concern the clergy. Its prompt method of procedure causes even
lay people, who voluntarily submit their cases to Rome, to prefer
its jurisdiction. It does not adjudge according to the vigorous
strictness of the law, but endeavors, as far as possible, to appease
the parties and reconcile their disagreements. Appeals in criminal
cases, except where the offence is within the peculiar cognizance of
the Holy Office, are also brought before this congregation.
We are not able to examine each of these congregations in detail.
All possess the same characteristics of wisdom and prudence
which distinguish every institution established by the popes.
The Congregation of Rites was organized for the preservation of
traditional vestments, liturgies, and worship, and to prevent that
incessant change which degrades state ceremonial, and often rashly
increases its expenses. The Congregation of Schools corresponds to
our boards of public education; though the latter are of extremely
recent origin, while the former has subsisted since the age of
Sixtus V. The Congregation for the Examination of Bishops receives
testimonials concerning the doctrine and habits of candidates for
the episcopate. It fills the place of a court of inquiry, from
which proceed nominations of public officers, even of the highest
rank; where influences of every kind antagonize each other; where
titles are forgotten; and where the aptitude of every candidate,
intellectual and moral, is carefully scrutinized.
These various congregations become, however, safeguards of truth and
freedom, not only by the variety of their faculties, but also by
their internal structure and their methods of procedure. Each of them
is composed of a cardinal-prefect, of a certain number of cardinals,
and a secretary. To this the Congregation of the Holy Office, which
is presided over by the pope himself, forms an exception.
The prefect is charged with the arrangement of the business of the
congregation. He manages the preparation of causes prior to their
discussion. He submits them to the examination of his colleagues, and
presides at their deliberations. After the debate has terminated,
he receives their suffrages and announces their decision. He also
examines into those matters which are settled at a private audience
with the pope, without being brought before the whole congregation,
and his words give publicity to the decisions which he receives from
the living voice of the pontiff himself. Finally, he determines alone
certain matters of minor importance, which, on that account, are
neither brought before the congregation nor the pope. He receives his
appointment from the sovereign pontiff, and holds his office during
life. When he is absent, his place is supplied by the oldest cardinal
of the congregation, and, at his death, the cardinal-secretary of
state places his signature to the nomination of the new prefect.
The secretary assists at the meetings of the congregations, and
is charged with the duty of recording its resolutions and acts,
of transcribing its registers, and of delivering its processes.
He also summons the cardinals, presents to them at each session
a brief of the causes they are to treat, and gives them, for each
of these, a succinct statement of the principal arguments of the
parties, with a summary of the documents pertaining to them. This
statement is printed upon loose sheets and distributed to the
cardinals several days in advance, in order that each may have time
to fully investigate the affair. Sometimes this statement is prepared
by the cardinal-reporter, hence called the _cardinal ponent_. The
secretary also submits to the pope the sentences of which he is to
approve; and, for this purpose, those of the different congregations
have a day of special audience before the pontiff. The faculty of
giving licenses for various purposes, such as reading prohibited
books, etc., etc., is confided to the secretary; also the power to
distribute copies of the decrees of the congregation, authenticated
by the signatures of the prefect and the secretary, and sealed with
the seal of the congregation, which thus become of valid force before
all tribunals, and even elsewhere, if they treat of extra-judicial
matters.
The secretaries are appointed by the pope himself. They must be
bishops, with the title of a church _in partibus infidelium_, or, at
least, prelates of the Roman court. In the Congregation of the Holy
Office the secretary is a cardinal.
The secretary has under him a number of inferior officials--a
vice-secretary, who supplies his place when vacant; a protocol, who
takes care of those records in which are registered current matters
of business, with the state of their examination; a master of rolls,
who preserves the various documents; and copyists, who prepare
duplicates and exemplifications. All these are under his control, and
for them all he is responsible. They are chosen at a general session
and hold office for life. They rank in the order of their seniority.
Their remuneration is moderate, but they enjoy it during life, even
when sickness or old age prevents the fulfilment of their duties.
To these congregations, moreover, are attached a number of
theologians and canonists, who act as counsellors in the
investigation of different questions, and assist with their advice
those cardinals whose place it is to determine causes. These also are
appointed for life by the pope, and, as they are generally taken from
the religious orders, they are never absent or obliged to leave Rome
without the permission of the congregation.
These counsellors prefer their opinions in various forms, according
to the character of the congregation. Sometimes one of them is
requested to present a written solution of some especial question;
sometimes they are all summoned to hold a united deliberation and
give their collective vote before the cardinals.
The parties who appear before these congregations are represented in
their presence by proctors and advocates. The proctors act in the
same capacity as our attorneys. They are the true defenders of their
cause by law and in fact. They compose the petitions, digest the
informations, and direct the whole proceedings. Their profession is
very honorable, but not open to every one.
Advocates are employed only in matters of higher importance, and
seldom except in those of abstract law. They disengage, as far
as possible, every question from the circumstances of fact which
surround it, and examine it doctrinally from the most elevated point
of view. Their profession is free; but in order to exercise it one
must be a doctor of civil and canon law, and consequently must
have spent four years in study at the Sapienza, or three years at
the Apollinaria. They are not limited in number, and are permitted
to appear before any of the congregations. There are also special
advocates belonging to the consistory, who deal only with the process
of canonization. All of these are men well versed in theological
learning, canons, councils, ecclesiastical history, civil and canon
law, and by their own erudition contribute vastly to the advancement
of jurisprudence.
Besides proctors and advocates, there are also solicitors who
take charge of various transactions and proceedings, hasten on
investigations, and are employed in extra-judicial affairs.
The method of procedure before these congregations differs according
to the congregation, the nature of the business, and even the will
of the parties themselves. It may likewise be distinguished into
the ordinary, the summary, the inquisitorial, etc., etc., and is
regulated by positive rules or by custom. They are well known to all,
and, in practice, never give rise to any confusion.
We do not desire here to enter into details concerning these
different modes of procedure. We can only go so far as to make
known their general character, and to compare it with our own civil
proceedings, which are sometimes, we think groundlessly, supposed to
be a model for all others.
We select, as a type of the whole, the usages of the Congregation of
the Council. This congregation receives appeals from the sentences
of ordinaries, and also causes submitted to it by the consent of the
parties; the latter being equally proper with the former, provided
the rules are equally observed. These causes are usually commenced
by the sending of a summons to the opposite party through a public
official, in the same manner as in civil processes. At the outset,
however, a particular formality, called the settlement of the
question, is observed. The object of this is to determine the precise
point upon which the decision of the congregation is desired. For
this purpose it is necessary that an issue be joined between the
adverse parties, upon some definite proposition.... This is done
either by the parties themselves or their proctors, in presence
of the secretary of the congregation, and, in their default, the
secretary himself explains it in writing, or, when requisite, the
congregation is called to determine it.
This summons for the settlement of the question is served fifteen
days before the date of the proceeding itself. At the same time, the
original and authenticated writings which the parties have employed,
as well as a statement of the facts, signed by the proctor, must be
deposited at the office of the secretary. If judicial inquests and
the deposition of witnesses are necessary, they are taken by the
ordinary in the capacity of judge-delegate, the congregation not
being able to act at a distance. The _procès-verbal_ authenticated
and duly legalized, are transmitted to it; but as the causes
generally come before it by appeal, all these investigations of fact
are previously concluded, and the ordinary sends forward the entire
papers of the case.
The defences of parties are presented in written memorials in the
Latin tongue, signed by an advocate or by a proctor approved by the
Roman court. These memorials are deposited with the secretary and
communicated to the complainants, as are also copies of all documents
that are produced, in nearly the same manner as in the highest
civil tribunals. These memorials are in turn succeeded by written
replications, signed and filed in the same way. Unless by special
permission, the memorials are limited to five printed sheets, and the
replications to two. In case of negligence, the proctor is liable to
a penalty. No supplementary writings are admissible.
From these papers the secretary makes memoranda, briefly setting
forth the whole affair and the principal arguments, the facts and
the law, as claimed by the parties, all of which, together with the
defences and replications, are printed and distributed in duplicate
to the cardinals. These, then, receive separately the parties with
their advocates and listen to their explanations, if they judge any
to be useful to their cause. These interviews are not, however,
secret. Both adversaries have their audiences, and they contribute
very much to elucidate doubtful matters.
The day of decision is fixed by the secretary. There is never any
delay except for the greatest reasons. The production of the defences
must take place at least thirty days before that of final judgment.
The printed memoranda are distributed at least six days before
it. The circulation of the papers and supplemental documents is
finished in the same interval. The audiences to parties are granted
within the last four or five days which precede. The distribution
of replications is made at latest the day before the session. After
this, no notice is taken of any testimony or document produced by one
of the parties, unless with the consent of the other.
There are no contradictory pleadings, no public audiences. Every
thing is done in writing. The cardinals, well instructed in the
cause from the defences, replications, documents, memoranda of the
secretaries, and the previous verbal explanations of the advocates,
assemble on the appointed day and deliberate out of the hearing of
the parties. This deliberation is secret, and sometimes takes place
between two audiences.
After judgment is rendered, the losing party has ten days in which to
petition for a new trial for the revision of the sentence by the same
congregation. The prefect grants this petition; the new hearing takes
place at the end of three months; and the party who demands it, if
defeated, defrays the expenses.
When sentence has been rendered, and has become of full force as a
judgment, an exemplification of it is transmitted to the winning
party, who presents it at the executive office of letters-apostolic
and of decrees of congregations, in order that it may be couched in
the requisite formularies.
The proceedings before the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars
closely resemble those before the Congregation of the Council. The
delays are somewhat shorter, but the ordinary procedure is the same.
Before both of them there is also a species of process more swift and
summary, to be employed when the parties desire it, or the nature of
the business demands it. Moreover, in the latter congregation it is
the secretary who renders its decision.
We have seen that appeals in criminal cases are taken from the
diocesan courts to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, except
when the nature of the offence brings it within the cognizance of the
Congregation of the Holy Office. This appeal must be entered within
ten days after the promulgation of the judgment. After the appeal is
perfected, the diocesan court transmits to the congregation a budget
which includes: 1, the process which was instituted in the first
instance; 2, the brief of this process and the note of that which
followed; 3, the defence of the accused; 4, the sentence. At the same
time the court signifies to the accused and his advocate that they
are now to prosecute their appeal.
If the appellant does not pursue the matter, a reasonable delay,
ordinarily of twenty days, is accorded, after which he is judged to
have renounced his appeal and the sentence is executed. If he does
pursue it, he makes choice of an advocate at Rome. The budget is then
sent to a judge-reporter, from whose hands the advocate receives a
memorandum of the case, and upon that bases his defence. This defence
is communicated to the first judge, that he may sustain his sentence.
All the papers are printed and distributed to the cardinals. The
cause is examined on an appointed day in presence of the assembled
congregation. The judge-reporter states the case. The proctor-general
defends the sentence of the court below. The cardinals render
their decision, which affirms, vacates, or revises the sentence of
the diocesan tribunal, and is immediately transmitted thereto for
execution. This decision is final; and, after it is rendered, the
pope alone can grant a review of the proceedings, and that only
before the same congregation, and for the gravest reasons.
It will be remarked that there is no public hearing of witnesses; but
if this should seem objectionable to any, it will be sufficient to
remind them that civil courts, which revise the judgments of courts
of correction, decide upon the papers of the case and not upon the
testimony of living witnesses at their bar; while, as for criminal
proceedings, it is well known that from the courts which try issues
of fact there is usually no appeal.
When, instead of an ordinary offence, the crime alleged is one
against the faith, the rules of procedure are inquisitorial in their
character, and differ somewhat from the preceding; but on account of
the weight of the penalty, they offer still greater safeguards to the
accused.
Moreover, it is not requisite that all the witnesses should have been
present during the whole transaction in question; the deposition of
a single one is admissible, though it is necessary that there be
more than two, and even three form but a sort of half-proof. All
interrogatories, skilfully directed to extort the truth from the
defendant or the witnesses by surprise, are strictly forbidden, as
are also any suggestions of the answer desired, and every effort is
made that the truth may flow naturally from the lips of the witness
and without the influence of fear. In order to avoid hatred and
terrorism, the names of the witnesses are not made known to the
accused, but their motives of hostility to him are examined with
the greatest care. False witnesses are punished with the utmost
severity, and, when it becomes necessary, the accused and accusers
are confronted with each other.
If from poverty, or any other reason, the accused is found without an
advocate or proctor, one is furnished for him.
Finally, the appeal is a matter of right. It is taken directly to
Rome, before the Congregation of the Holy Office, without passing
through any intermediate metropolitan tribunal, and, during its
pendency there, execution is usually stayed. Judgment is never
rendered against any one upon mere presumptions; but only after full
and unmistakable proof.
We come now to notice the written regulations which may be called
the skeleton of procedure. Save some variations in detail, they
differ little from those of all contested cases before the different
congregations. But in order fully to understand their advantages and
disadvantages, the reader should understand not only the text of the
law but the usages of its practices. For everywhere, at Rome as at
Paris, unwritten traditions and judicial customs modify and temper
the law, complete its deficiencies, and cause the inconveniences
which, at first sight, it would seem to occasion, wholly to
disappear. It is also impossible to base a serious comparison between
the procedure of two countries upon a mere reading of their rules.
Not only ought the two methods to vary according to the manners of
the parties, the character of the tribunals, and the nature of their
causes, but even two modes which are identical will often, under
different circumstances, produce entirely different results. They
accommodate themselves to the hand that wields them, and their value
can be really appreciated only after long usage of them; so that the
skilled practitioner alone is able to speak authoritatively of their
value, of their endurance, and of the guarantees which they offer for
the discovery of truth.
By these remarks we desire to show that the procedure of the Roman
congregations, without sacrificing any of the essential safeguards
of justice, is generally simple, brief, economical, informal to a
degree beyond that of any civil procedure; and, far from needing to
learn any thing from them, it is able in many points to become their
instructor.
There is, however, one great difference upon which we especially
insist, because it has formed the pretext for unjust attacks from
narrow minds, who are unable to comprehend that any thing can be well
done that is done in a way different from their own, or that any
difference between their customs and those of others is not a signal
mark of the inferiority of the latter. The Roman congregations admit
of no oral pleadings.[36] All discussion is in writing, though it is
necessarily completed by the verbal explanations which the advocates
give to the judges; but there is no public and passionate debate,
such as is common in all civil jurisdictions. We do not believe that
the absence of this is any evil. The Roman legislative body has
always endeavored to shun surprises in its hearings. Pleading, as it
is practised among us, is nothing but the conflict of two opposing
debaters, often unequally matched, and of whom the more powerful
is seldom on the side of the oppressed. We believe, indeed, that
the doors of the influential advocate, whose name and authority are
themselves a powerful argument, are rarely closed against the poor
who seek to enter them; but the poor do not always dare to stop and
knock, and so content themselves with men of more ordinary abilities.
If, then, one of these contesting advocates is more skilful than the
other; if he knows how to win favor for his client by an insinuating
speech and to cast ridicule upon his adversary; if he has the
faculty of grouping figures, of coloring facts, of flattering his
auditors during the progress of the controversy; if he is passionate
and violent, his emotion will affect the judge, whose heart beats
under his robe and is not, perhaps, to any extraordinary degree
unimpressible; all these circumstances, extrinsic to the real merits
of the cause, will exercise great influence upon its determination,
and may be able to wring from the tribunal a decision which, in
moments of reflection and coolness, it would never render.
Oral pleading resembles, to some extent, those ancient judicial
combats upon which the issue of causes was sometimes made to depend.
It is a duel of words, in which justice does not always have the
advantage. Our imagination represents an advocate as one whose work
it is to wrest the innocent from the clutches of powerful and cruel
persecutors; who summons eloquence to aid him in resisting the fierce
passions which menace the welfare of his client. This was well enough
for those primitive ages when a legal process was the outburst of
violent wrath, which dragged the alleged offender before a single
judge, or perhaps before a mob erected into a tribunal and swayed
by passion. But this conception is not correct for our day, even in
criminal matters, where the public prosecutor, as far as possible,
excludes mere feeling and makes his appeal to calm and solid reason
alone; and it is especially false in civil causes, in which the
advocate interprets the text of the law, discusses contracts,
examines and compares evidence, all of which labors are difficult,
and demand, above all things, reflection, good sense, and coolness.
For attaining, therefore, the ends of justice, a mode of written
procedure is particularly adapted. It assures to the contending
parties all the time necessary for a careful reply to the reasonings
on either side, and establishes an equality between the talents of
their respective advocates; it also removes the decision of the cause
from the bias of personal influences, and leaves it to be determined
by argument only. Moreover, the judge is able to reflect at his ease
upon the merits of the case, and is secure against the seductions of
artful declamation. Even before those supreme civil tribunals where
written and oral pleadings are both permitted, the latter are usually
regarded in the solution of the question, and this is what gives
to the advocates of those illustrious courts their influence and
renown. The Roman congregations are also supreme tribunals; but there
passion has no echo and needs no interpreter; there causes stand upon
their own merits, stripped of all attendant circumstances; there the
gravest questions of dogma, of morals, and of right are decided by
reason alone, but by reason illuminated both by science and by faith.
The procedure of the Roman congregations is much less expensive than
that before ordinary civil jurisdictions. Originally it was entirely
gratuitous, and many of the congregations--as, for instance, those
of the Propaganda, the Index, and the Holy Office--still retain this
rule in reference to all the causes which are submitted to them.
But the great increase of expense, consequent upon the increase of
causes, has necessitated the establishment, by other congregations,
of certain light taxes, although even these bear small proportion to
the actual disbursements. Thus, all the proceedings are upon ordinary
paper, which, not being liable to stamp-duty, makes one important
saving in expense. Again, while civil proceedings are registered
upon payment of a certain fee, which is another notable method of
taxation, those at Rome are registered without charge; and, while
masters of rolls elsewhere enjoy incomes sometimes reaching the sum
of many thousands, those at Rome are paid by the treasurer, and are
forbidden to receive any emolument, although perfectly gratuitous,
from any party, even for the most extraordinary labors--an obligation
imposed on them by oath upon their admission to office.
They are also obliged to exhibit, without charge, to any person the
various documents of their several bureaus, and are allowed but a
moderate recompense for the copies and exemplifications which they
may prepare. Even the expense of printing is borne, at least in part,
by the congregation. The congregations do not sell justice; they
give it. The pontifical treasury does not look to them as a source
of revenue. On the contrary, the taxes they collect are far less
than their expenses, and, in fact, so much so that their services
may be considered as gratuitous. For example, a matrimonial cause
submitted to the Congregation of the Council, and requiring minute
examinations, consultations, researches, and a large collection of
documents, will cost the winning party several crowns, the precise
amount depending upon the number of questions to be resolved. The
same case tried in civil courts would cost two or three thousand
francs.
The fees of advocates and attorneys correspond to the expenses.
Among us they continue constantly to increase. At Rome they are very
meagre. They are legally fixed at a uniform rate, according to the
importance of the cause and the result of the investigation. Even
these the advocates cannot demand as a right, and receive them only
as a spontaneous gift.
The French magistracy with good reason congratulates itself on the
establishment of an association designed to secure to the poor
the gratuitous defence of their just rights. Rome has long since
possessed a similar institution. This is the Society of Advocates,
which assembles on fête days to receive and reply to the inquiries
of the indigent. Among the obligations of the consistorial advocates
is that of defending the causes of the poor before their respective
tribunals. In criminal cases there are especial advocates for the
poor. Among the proctors there are certain ones appointed for the
poor, one by the pope, the others by the different societies.
Finally, the Society of St. Ives is particularly charged with the
protection of the indigent; and such are the customs among the
members of the Roman bar that none ever refuses his services to the
unfortunate who seeks them.
The Roman congregations are not mere tribunals instituted by the
holy see with a delegation of powers, which leaves the supreme
authority still in the hands of the sovereign pontiff, and allows a
right of appeal from their judgment to his. They are the holy see
itself, rendering its decisions by the mouths of its cardinals. Canon
law recognizes their jurisdiction as ordinary and not delegated.
Delegated jurisdiction is a mandate which confers upon the mandatary
certain special favors distinct from and inferior to the powers of
the mandator. Ordinary jurisdiction is an actual communication, which
unites the mandator and mandatary in one single tribunal, and makes
the one the simple organ of the other. Numerous passages of canon
law justify this conception of these congregations and render it
incontestable as a legal conclusion.
The nature of the decisions which they render makes the point still
more certain. They issue general decrees promulgated by order of the
sovereign pontiff, which consequently obtain the force of law in all
places in the same manner as the pontifical constitutions, from which
they do not essentially differ. Such are the decrees of the Holy
Office, of the Index, and certain of those of the Congregation of
Rites, of that of the Council, and of that of Bishops and Regulars.
They also render interpretations of existing laws, and these enjoy
a supreme and universal authority, as if they emanated directly
from the sovereign pontiff, since they are both submitted to and
approved by him. In fine, the sentences which they render in private
controversies are, equally with the rest, submitted to the pope;
though without this sanction, and from the ordinary powers of the
congregations, they would be obligatory upon all, and would become
the rule of other tribunals, since for this purpose especially were
these congregations instituted as courts of final judicature.
The decisions rendered by these different congregations, and
preserved in their archives from the very day of their institution to
the present, form the most magnificent body of jurisprudence which
has ever existed. One canonist of eminence reckons that upward of
sixty thousand decisions have been delivered by the Congregation of
the Council alone; a living, practical commentary on the Council of
Trent. The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars publishes nearly
three volumes of decrees every year, and the volumes which contain
its judgments are over eight hundred in number. When we remember that
nearly all these decisions are upon questions of law, disengaged from
mere accessories of fact, we are amazed at the treasures of science,
erudition, and reasoning which are thus accumulating from age to age
in these archives, and forming an inexhaustible reservoir, in which
tradition stores itself and whence justice and truth flow out upon
the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] We take pleasure in laying before our readers, at this time,
the accompanying translation from a recent number of one of the
leading magazines of France. The eyes of the people of this country,
and especially of our great cities, are being slowly opened to
the necessity of some reform in the methods of judicial business.
The delay and expense of legal proceedings--above all, the great
uncertainty of their result, is becoming daily a matter of more and
more serious consideration. In casting about the world for light upon
this vexed and intricate subject, the mind of the reformer cannot
fail to be guided to the mother and mistress of all nations, in whose
bosom is garnered the experience of twenty-five centuries, and whose
institutions are the development of that wisdom and sagacity which
made pagan Rome the queen of the world, and has given to Christian
Rome a sceptre whose sway is mightier and more extensive than that of
the sword.
We feel confident, therefore, that in presenting this article on
_The Roman Congregations_ to the American public, and particularly
to the legal profession, we are directing attention to what must, in
a greater or less degree, be the model of all permanent and reliable
civil tribunals. As applicable to the exigencies which press us most
severely at the moment, we call attention to the following features
of these congregations as worthy of particular investigation:
1. The life-tenure of judges and other officials, with the permanent
provision made for their support in case of disability.
2. The reduction of all pleadings to a simple, definite issue,
expressing in untechnical language the precise points of law or fact
which are in controversy.
3. The reduction of all testimony to the form of depositions, thereby
securing the sworn evidence without the mistakes and prejudices
almost inseparable from the oral examination of witnesses in court.
4. The reduction of all arguments to writing, procedure eminently
productive of accuracy, brevity, and completeness; three qualities
which, however desirable, are rarely found in the oral arguments of
counsel.
5. The submission of all questions to a body of trained and practised
judges, not so liable to be swayed by passion, interest, and
prejudice as a jury, or unaided by the counsel and assistance of
others, like a single judge, but bringing to the solution of every
issue a multitude of counsellors, among whom, if anywhere on earth,
is impartiality and wisdom.
We commend these features of Roman jurisprudence to those whose
interest and duty lead them to consider seriously the question of
legal reform, remarking for ourselves that the rapid and accurate
enforcement of legal rights and redress of legal wrongs is the
highest mark of temporal civilization, and that no country can expect
prosperity and renown unless the judicial ermine is kept free from
stain, and unless all men, rich or poor, have both equal rights and
equal means of protecting them before the law.--ED. CATH. WORLD.
[36] We use this term in its common, not its legal acceptation. It
technically refers only to those mutual allegations and denials of
the parties which end in the issue, either of law or fact, upon which
the courts are to decide. Here we employ it to denote the spoken
arguments of counsel.
AN OCTOBER REVERIE.
This most golden of all the bright October days, why are we not, as
we fain would be, on a brown hill-side, yielding care to whispered
persuasions of the wind, or afloat on waters that reflected our sky,
when--if it was not always without clouds--its clouds were tinged
with glory, or lying upon a shore where we built sand castles in
play--alas! for castles we built in earnest, to hold treasures of
hope--and laughed to see them dissolve in the laughing waves.
We have no wish to pluck the hill-side flowers; we shall never build
castles again, never chase back the encroaching waves, which, while
they seemed to recede, rose till they buried our castles and swept
away our treasures.
But it will be something to share the repose of nature; to lie on her
lap lulled by the requiem of the past, chanted by the voice that sang
the anthem of the future. For we--her deluded children--are weary,
and only ask of her a foretaste of the rest we hope to find by and by
in her bosom.
How weary we are! Of strivings from which we have no power to cease!
Of reachings, from which we cannot withhold our hands, toward objects
that elude us or turn worthless in our grasp! Weary of our own
and others' weakness and meanness! Of lying lives; of suspicions,
envyings, and covetings! How tired of homely work; oppressed by
narrow rooms, vexed by noises of neighbors separated from us only
by the legal number of inches in brick and mortar--a loud-talking,
stamping family on one side, and on the other the household of Widow
Smith, who keeps boarders and a piano!
By sounds that come up through the open window, I know that the
widow is in her kitchen helping to get the dinner. I seem to see
her, hot and worried. She is always worried. Her face would be a sad
one if she had time to let it settle into its proper expression. As
she never has time, it is anxious and fretful, and older than her
years. In the parlor, so near that the jangling of untuned wires
sets my whole being on edge, her daughter is playing the piano as
she sings, _I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble Halls_. Poor child! Yet
dream on. Who could undeceive thee, knowing that there is woven into
thy dream the pious resolve to win out of that discordant instrument
money wherewith to buy thy mother ease? Heaven help thee and bring
to naught the spite of the bachelor boarder in the room above, who,
instead of employing his grizzly brain with the plan gossips have
devised, by which he might brighten her life and thine, and his own
most of all, paces up and down, cursing the noise, and consigning
"that old tin pan" to a place his imagination keeps in a blaze with
fuel of whatsoever offends him. He hates "that eternal thrumming,"
hates "genteel daughters of working mothers. Teach music! Better
dismiss Nora and make Miss Julia help in the kitchen!"
It might be as well, but it is no affair of his.
Moreover, the mother has her dream. In it she sees her daughter less
hard-worked than she has been, and higher in the social scale than
she ever hopes to rise; except, perhaps, when that daughter shall
have exchanged Smith for Smythe.
But of all the vexations of our life here, the most persistent is
the row of houses across the way. Beset by so many things that
offend the other senses, we think it hard that our sight should be
so meanly thwarted. I grow angry whenever I look out, and wish that
I could push those houses down. I pine to see beyond them the curve
of a bay bounded by hills, a stretch of river with steamboats and
sails, and of shore with a village and farms on its slope, distant
mountains blending with sky, or outlined against piled thunder-caps.
Or a harbor with ships; some at anchor, some bound outward, and some
coming in from strange countries.
I keep fancying that the houses hide these sights, though I know
there is nothing behind them but row on row, more brown, stony, and
dull. These are low, and shut out less of the sky. The veneering,
which is of plaster instead of stone, is falling off, here and there,
to save it from monotony. The uniform dwellings, with their line
of connecting porches, remind one of the inside of a fort, and of
careless, gossiping, uncertain sojourn in quarters.
Widow Smith does not mind the wall that offends us. She told me her
story the other day; all she had gone through. What grieves her most,
as nearly as I could make it out, is living in a house that is not
high. "For," said she, as with a little tearful burst of eloquence
she ended her tale, "I hev lived in a three-story and basement, all
to ourselves, and always kept a girl, and the folks next door didn't
let out ther floors. Though," (wiping her eyes,) "I've nothin' aginst
them Browns. They behave themselves as well as some" (Mrs. Green,
over the way, who keeps two servants, and does not visit Mrs. Smith
and me) "thet's hed more advantages."
I answered, "These houses might do while rents are so high, if the
partitions were thicker, and if that row opposite did not hide the
view;" meaning the view in my mind. Mrs. Smith could not have seen
it; for she replied that "We mustn't be notional; real troubles come
fast enough without borrowin'. Since Smith died," she had "hed her
share, the Lord knew." If she "let sech things" make her "mis'rable,"
she should think that she was "goin' contrary to Scripter, wich
speaks aginst the sight of the eyes." Then, "of all things, a place
not built up was the forlornist." Besides, she liked "neighbors."
Good soul! so she does; loves them, too. I have known her to do "them
Browns" more than one kind turn; and to us, when we came, poor,
discouraged, and unused to city ways, she was guide, philosopher, and
guardian angel, in the guise of a lugubrious little woman in a rusty
mourning gown and yarn hood. She taught us to market, urged upon us
the importance of asking the price before buying, and of counting
our change afterward; encouraged us to resist the aggressions of
"the girl," enlightening us at the same time as to the amount of
service we might require of that personage; stood up for us with the
milk-man, ice-man, and man that peddles every thing, and made them
give us weight and measure.
But notwithstanding that Mrs. Smith is so sympathizing, it would not
have been worth while to return her confidence by telling her of our
former affairs--pleasant places where our lot was cast; the old house
beautiful we were born in; the hills, and and the river that bathes
their feet; purple ridges that lie eastward, blue mountains that
hide the west--scenes so changeless in form that memory does not err
in always showing them the same; so changeful in aspect that they
never wearied even our accustomed eyes.
We cannot talk of these things to one whose world is the city. Yet
there are in that world many who will understand us--living in high
houses and low ones; on floors, in garrets and dens; walking in
rich attire, shrinking in garments worn and unseemly; mingling with
others in the mart, lying on sick-beds, shut up in prisons--men for
whom fame blows glorious bubbles, but hollow and frail, as none know
better than themselves.
Devotees of science whose Eurekas sound more faintly at every step
as they mount her endless ladders; not because they fall from such
altitudes, but because they become discouraged as the conviction
dawns on them that all they have gained amounts to little.
The trader whose vessels dot the seas, who is not so elate with
fortune that he never sends a sigh after earlier ventures--ships of
bark with freight of sand, on waters the width of a boy's stride.
The gambler in the bread of the poor, not so callous that he never
feels a twinge of the old wound, the stab conscience gave the first
time he played "pitch and toss" on the blind side of the school-house
and won foolish Richard's penny. He remembers that Richard went
crying to his father for redress, and his mother came and told the
master, who would not believe foolish Richard's story against "the
smartest boy and the best at cypherin' in his school." He escaped,
but Richard was whipped by his father for losing his money and
telling a lie. He distrusts conscience. Why smite so then, why touch
so lightly now, if she can find the difference between that childish
sin and this wringing hard-earned pence from thousands of simple ones?
And the Father to whom the wretches clamor so does not seem to be a
credulous father to them. Perhaps, after all, he does not hear; or
is, like the master, on the side of those who can help themselves.
At any rate, his mills grind so slowly that it would hardly pay to
compute the time one's turn would take to come. It may be that the
wheels stand still, waiting for all his floods to gather.
The politician, not so lost in tortuous ways that the man depicted
in his first piece to speak, (it was chosen by his good mother, and
often said over to her for fear of "missing" on the momentous Friday,)
"The man whose utmost skill was simple truth;
Whose life was free from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall,"
does not still stand on the old pedestal in his secret heart.
Absent-eyed women, automatic figures in collections of cabinet-work,
upholstery, pictures, and marbles, to which no memories of theirs
have grown, lending attention to formal visitors while their
thoughts stray to the play-house under a tree, where they used to
receive little friends in calico sun-bonnets. The house of which
they themselves laid the moss carpet and chose and placed the
ornaments, deserted bird's-nests filled with speckled Solomon's
Seal, curiosities from the wood, and pretty stones from the brook.
For paintings, they had green vistas and glimpses of village, water,
and sky. The service, of acorn cups and bits of colored glass and
"chaney," was daily polished and set out by their own hands on the
flat rock they "made believe" was a table.
Women shawled with fabric of Cashmere, borne above the envious
street, but heeding neither its shifting crowd nor its shows. They
are thinking of chances enjoyed the more for their unexpectedness,
and paid in "kerchies" and "thank'ee, sirs" they used to "catch,"
when they went to the district school wrapped in homespun shoulder
blankets that took caressing softness from fingers--cold alas!
now--that pinned them on. Of balmy, luxurious rides on the heaped
hay-rigging. Slow, never to be forgotten cart rides in back-woods,
where wintergreen and princess-pine send up aromatic odors from
beneath the oxen's feet; with wheels now sinking in moss, now
craunching the pebbles of the stream, now swept by ferns, and anon
pressing down saplings that, released, spring back with a jerk and an
impatient protest of leaves. Onward, through sun-glorified arcades,
listening to comments of birds that are all about, though each one
seems solitary, startled by the beat of a partridge, or catching a
sight of her nest. Bending low to escape unbending arms of patriarchs
of the wood that fend the way. Peering anxiously into the gathering
night; coming out upon the clearing, where skeletons of forest trees,
martyrs to progress, that perished by her axe or her flames, lie
dimly outlined amid shadows, or stand gaunt against the sky, with
charred arms outstretched in motionless appeal.
Or of rides in the lumber-wagon, when grandfather--whom we cannot
describe from lack of words sufficiently expressive of venerableness
and benignity--held the "lines," and "Tom and Jerry," in sympathy
with childish impatience and delight, sped up hill and down,
till, amid clatter and rattle, and excited barkings, and joyful
exclamations, and a peremptory "whoa!" and "stand there, you Jerry!"
(Jerry never would stand there, nor anywhere, he was such a horse to
go,) followed by a volley of juvenile "whoas!" and "stand, Jerrys,"
the wagon drew up before the house, and a young aunt ran to lift the
children out, while grandmother stood in the door beaming on them a
smile whereof the warmth has passed down through the folds of years,
and glows still on hearts from which time has shut out the light of
ardent fires.
Did I say that crowd and shows were unheeded? That elegant leader
and lawgiver of society, Mrs. Augustus Jonesnob, who glides along in
an emblazed carriage, behind those splendid ponies, would not pass,
if she knew that she and her "turnout" elicited only a vague, half
pitying recollection of a "they say" that gives her the keeper of a
junk-shop for grandfather, making it likely that she has no heirloom
of tapestry, in fadeless azure, and green, and gold, wherewith to
hang the halls she always dreamed of, without dreaming how bare she
would find them.
Young Augustus--"Point-Lace Jonesnob," the girls call him--rides
beside his mother's carriage, well-dressed, well-mounted, smiling
complacently, for he knows that he looks about the thing; and the day
being neither too cold nor too warm, nor muddy, dusty, windy, nor
too early in the season, he thinks it will do to show himself. Does
any one suppose his smile to be the emanation from some reminiscence
of "taking the horses to water" in boyhood? The riding-master's
hand, and not the proud father's, held him on the first time he was
mounted. He has no breezy remembrances of free gallops whither he
would; no pensive memories of solemn rides across lonesome barrens,
where heavenward-pointing pines worship God with ceaseless harmonies
and unfailing incense.
Men whose life, sold for a salary, is the property of others; who
spend the hours they ought to have for recreation in street-cars,
while ill-used brutes drag them from and to homes in comfortless
suburbs, where faded wives, worn with housework that never ends,
busy over piles of mending that never diminish, wait, uncheerfully
ruminating devices and economies by which they are for ever trying to
make ends approach that are fated never to meet.
Broken-spirited gentlemen in threadbare black, worn and brushed till
the seams, notwithstanding the times they have been inked, are gray,
walking, walking, in search of employment; asking it deprecatingly,
for they are honorable, and are beginning to realize--others have
long seen it--their incapacity. Returning faint--the bite at the
baker's counter is beyond their means--to pale wives, who meet
them with smiles that are more sad than tears, and talk, while
their hearts belie their tongues, of better luck to-morrow. Perhaps
children, too, with eyes that ask--they are too well trained by their
mother to demand with their lips.
Women that have seen better days, paying their last dollar--it will
bring no return--for the ambiguous announcement that makes known
their willingness to accept any position not menial.
Elderly women, delicately bred, once sheltered and inclosed by
refined prejudices and conventionalisms, obliged, who knows by what
stress, to step out of the sacred (to them; they are old-fashioned
ladies) retirement of home. If we must refuse to buy the petty
stationery, print, or book they so courteously proffer, let it be
seen that we do it with pain; let us not shut the door against these
timid sparrows till they have flitted from the steps. They are not of
those to whom compassionate hesitation suggests importunity.
Women narrow-chested and grim-visaged, in whom there is no beauty or
charm left--pupils of virtue, to whom she gives neither holiday nor
reward--toiling up steep flights with bundles of shop-work.
Bedraggled women, that lug heavy baskets down wet area steps into
sunless abodes, where they wash all day, while the babes they have
not time to fondle want care and comforting, and must want these or
bread.
Sinful women, at whom, since Christ is dead in the souls of men,
all may cast stones. For them there is but little help or hope in a
righteous world.
Those who, by hallowed memories of purer scenes, have been kept from
evil.
Those who, though fallen and fouled, still guard, fair and apart,
pictures that fill their eyes with tears and their hearts with
yearnings--visions of morning stepping down the cliffs into valleys
where they dwelt; of sunsets in mountain countries; tropical lands
planted with palms that incline exile-ward; snowy regions where
blazing hearths and true hearts keep the place of the wanderer warm.
Home dwells pictured in their soul. It is an unpainted road-side
house. Sweet-pinks, marigolds, and holly-hocks grow in the
front-yard; morning-glories creep up the clap-boards, festoon
the windows, and peep into the wren's nest under the eve-trough.
In the maple by the doorstep a pair of robins have made their
habitation, and amid the green of the elm that roofs the spring and
wash-block--the stump of a former mighty tree--is seen the glint of a
fire-bird's wing.
Or a farm-house, with gardens and rows of hives, and barns with
their swallows, fields of corn and stubble, and upland pasture
where cattle are feeding. In "the new piece," between the pasture
and higher woodland, buckwheat blossoms for the bees, as it climbs
perseveringly up the ridge to overtake the poke, that, bending to
its weight of berries, mingles dawning crimson with changing hues of
blackberry-vines which hide the rocks. Along stone fences, golden-rod
and wild-aster still mingle their blooms untouched, though autumn
has reached stained fingers forth to trifle with the leaves of his
favorite sumach. In the swamp below, the scarlet lobelia burns amid
clumps of green and brown sedge. Beyond the swamp and meadow, and
wind-whitened willows by the creek, hills rise and bound the view.
Or it is a homestead, with venerable trees shading a lawn that slopes
to a lake in which house and trees lie mirrored. They are playing
with their brothers on the lawn, while their mother watches them
from her window; or gliding on the lake with companions and loves of
youth, steering their boat for a distant headland.
These are living pictures. Their woods sing Eolian measures; their
brooks talk of childhood and innocence; their clouds and seasons are
always changing; their swallows ever flying homeward, whither the
trees beckon. Miraculous pictures! their sun always shines on our
brides; their skies rain constant tears on our dead. Yea, in them the
dead are risen, and eyes long sealed look down on us with love.
But beyond the headland the lake has its outlet into a stream that
winds and tarries, all the while widening, till it empties into the
harbor, where ships, laden with costly merchandise, are spreading
sails for havens of uncertain promise. They fade along the fading
coast; glide across the dim belt that separates land's end from sky;
like phantoms disappear. And watchers turn, with a foreboding chill,
from windy piers, to confront dirty waterside stores, and pick their
way amid trucks and bales that obstruct broken side-walks, between
tall warehouses that glower at each other across lanes, to meet
odors of fish and oils, and spices and drugs, and countless other
foetid smells; to enter dull, ledger-lined offices, or seek, through
jostling ways, ticketed dwellings that are as alike as prison-cells.
Along the track that divides the farm, and cuts the hill in two,
shrieks a train, grudging its passengers the glimpse of beautiful
places of the rich; slackening its pace to prolong the dreariness of
the ugly outskirts, and, lo! dead rows of houses; long thoroughfares;
mean streets, with vile shops and squalid swarms; the clash of
vehicles; confusion of cries; rush of multitudes--the city.
From the small house the by-road leads to a turnpike that speeds
dustily on to a cobble-paved town by the river. The river flows down
to the city; where all night long, hungrily lapping slimy piers,
with dark hints of oblivion, with winks and gleams that the wretched
interpret, with noiseless, snaky undulations, and the fascinating
glitter of its thousand eyes, it charms the lost to loathsome death.
Would we, if cares did not bind us, go back to the scenes of those
pictures? If our mother's face had not gone from the window? If the
farm had not been sold? If alien hands had not cut down the maple and
the elm, and strange faces and the burr of unknown voices had not
scared the wrens from their nest? If we had money or time for the
journey? If we did not feel too much ashamed or disgraced--we have
been so unsuccessful, or false to early promises--to meet the pitying
or contemptuous looks of our acquaintance? For did they not know how
it would be? Did not they too, in youth, scent from afar the battle
they knew better than to enter without the certainty of winning?
If we have, or seem to have won it, is there not something in
ourselves that holds us back? We have now no desire for sports of
childhood. We are not sorry that our mother faded from her window
before we got hurts that her kisses could not make well. The halo
that surrounds venerated figures would pale in the broad light of
mid-life. We are not so forbearing with the old who are with us that
we could trust ourselves to have the departed back.
Do we recognize the boys and girls who lived in the small house by
the road, who used to get up early and run laughing to the spring
to take turns washing in the tin basin that hung against the elm?
And the faces mirrors now show us--are they the same that rose
radiant from that bath? Could we sleep soundly in a garret, and wake
delighted to see snow sifting through the roof? Or relish the food
we thought it neither shame nor labor to carry when, bare-footed in
summer and shod in calf-skin in winter, we walked a mile to the red
school-house down by the 'pike? Would we feel honored if the madam
were now to visit us in the modest dress that we once thought the
perfection of taste?
When it was our week to conduct her home, we neither hunted
bird's-nests, nor swung upon low branches of the "mill-pines,"
nor dipped our feet in mud-puddles to get "wedding-shoes" on, nor
sought berries along the fences, unless it was to string them on
timothy-rods and present them shyly for her acceptance.
Have we strength or inclination for harvest work? Then to leaden
hearts and sluggish blood what pleasure in moonlight sail, or
midnight sleigh-ride, or mad gallop over lift and level!
Let us guard our sacred pictures. To their scenes we will not return.
For if, instead of patches of sky, the circle of the firmament were
ours, with changing glory of dawn, and noon, and sundown, and deeps
gleaming with stars, yet our spirits would not soar with their
swallows. Their mountains would not draw our feet as they did when we
believed that every summit reached was a height gained, knew not that
the peaks which pierced the clouds hid higher ranges, yet no nearer
the heaven of hope than those which limited our sight.
Is there no spot, dear friend, that you and I would revisit?
Behold a worn foot-path in which we may walk and gather immortelles!
It leads to a city whereof the houses are low and hide none of the
sky; narrower than these, but straitness does not inconvenience
dwellers who have no call to go to and fro; not uniform--the
occupants' names are cut into fronts of marble and granite and mossy
red sand-stone. Some are marked by columns, others by crosses. Around
many plants are set. But here are others. The tenants were poor or
friendless folk, or strangers; they have only clay walls and roofs
of sod, upon which every blade, green or sere, all day long and all
night, bending lightly to airs of summer or swept low by winter
winds, keeps sighing, "May he rest in peace."
Old neighbors are here; but no looks of theirs question us as to
what we have done in the world, or in what failed.
Did the sight of these at last turn inward? and did lips that were so
ready with the Pharisee's prayer close with the cry of the publican?
Old friends! But their hands are cold and will never clasp ours
again. Enemies! Between them and us may judgment be the offspring of
Christian kindness!
And here, hedged with arbor-vitæ, is the place of our kin. Those of
them who passed hither before our time we could never realize. Others
are dim remembrances; like the baby sister that came one wild winter
night, to our great wonder, and, to our equal sorrow, left us in
spring for this small habitation.
These were not long separated. Dear old folks! one roof and one
tablet for two who had but one mind and one heart. Here lies the
little cousin we quarrelled with at evening, to shed over her in the
morning our first remorseful tears. Look through the break in the
hedge, on that square slab--
EVELYN GRANT.
Aged 35.
Our first school-mistress. We hated her with the impotent bitterness
of childish hearts outraged. For did she not show partiality to the
dullest scholar she had?--because his father was rich, the big boys
said; and thus we repeated it to our fond if not judicious friend,
old Diana, when we complained to her of Miss Evelyn's injustice in
sending Alf Whitfield up head every Monday.
"He is the oldest," she would say. "As if oldness is any reason why a
great fellow like that should have a better chance than the rest," we
would think. If we had understood how much of Miss Evelyn's support
depended upon the favor of rich Squire Whitfield, we might have felt
differently. They say that Alf's mother used to beg of the mistress
to encourage and make much of the bashful half-wit, who often wept
because he could not learn like the others.
We will pull the old weeds from her grave. They shall not choke
flowers planted by the orphan nephews she worked so hard to bring
up respectably--worked without a complaint long after the cough we
mocked behind our primers had hacked into her vitals.
Let us follow this road, beyond the pines--a little higher--here. The
spot we have thought and dreamed about but never before seen.
If any one should ask why we came, hardly pausing, by so many mounds
of soldiers who died in the same cause, as may be read on their
tablets, we would answer that, with the soul of this one, all glory
for us passed out of our marvellous sunsets, warmth from the color
of our autumns, charm from our ice-bound winters, sweetness from the
breath of our springs.
Down there, bordering this field consecrated to Catholic dead, is the
"colored folks' ground."
How tidy it looks. Formerly it was a huddle of neglected hillocks;
many of them sunken as if they who, deprecating scorn, had crept
through the world in the shadow of the wall, shrank even here from
obtruding.
How many of us Catholics, of the thousands that crowd that church of
which we see the cross above the hill-top, or lie here with hands
crossed to God, ever offered a prayer for those neglected souls,
living or dead?
Before that church was built there came from the West Indies,
following the fortunes of an exiled family, a gray-haired negro. He
did not persevere in hearing Mass because the children insulted
him on the street--waited for him with stones in their hands at the
corners of the church. He died, and, to fulfil his last wish, some of
his people planted a cross upon his unsodded grave.
I used to know every mound, from that Egyptian-faced vault,
"Against whose portal I had thrown,
In childhood, many an echoing stone;
And shrank to think, poor heart of sin,
It was the dead that groaned within;"
to the cheerful nook where the nurseryman's children sleep under
their coverlet of flowers. From the hero's pillar by the highway,
with the record,
"He lived as mothers wish their sons to live,
He died as fathers wish their sons to die,"
to the monument of the beloved woman whose husband and daughters came
every year from distant homes to add a tribute of plants and garlands
to the granite offering they had raised to her memory.
Here, broken and half buried, is the old slab with death's-head and
bones, and the verse exhorting all Christians to pray for the soul of
Peter Curran.
Under this willow--she that planted it, in the belief that it would
shade her rest, lies far away--our patriarch is buried: a father
to orphans; to the poor a brother. That memorial in the stranger's
ground--the only one--he caused to be placed above the remains of
the decayed gentleman he entertained so many years and laid to rest
at his own cost. Another, to whom he gave shelter, lies beside "the
chevalier." The droll Swede, the whaleman, is buried behind them
both. In our village foreigners were not looked upon with favor in
those ante-emigration times; and this one was so blundering that no
one would give him work after his honesty was proved. They were going
to send him to jail as a vagrant, when Uncle Allan made up his mind
that he needed just such a man for odd jobs. Bastian never learned
enough English to thank him, but the tears that wet his parchment
cheeks the day they brought his benefactor here were expressive.
Figures homely yet gracious, how they rise in memory!
Some fell asleep in hope; others drew back in doubt, or struggled
with doom. Some, having done their best, lay down, offering it and
that wherein they had failed to God, beside others who had nothing to
offer but remorse.
All these yet speak to us, with more significance on this October
afternoon in the October of our life than they did in past autumns;
while to every one, according to his need, they teach a lesson.
They say to the covetous, "Not one of your things shall pass through
the gate of this city."
To the envious, "Behold the state of him you wished to change places
with yesterday."
They promise those who are kept awake by care "a blessed sleep."
They speak of rest to the world-weary; to the good, of beatitude; to
the bad, of judgment; to all, of the end that is hastening on swift
wings.
FREE RELIGION.[37]
This Free Religious Association appears to be composed of men and
women who, some thirty years ago, were, or would have been, called
_come-outers_ in Boston and its vicinity, but who are now generally
called radicals, a name which they seem quite willing to accept. They
are universal agitators, and see or imagine grievances everywhere,
and make it a point wherever they see or can invent a grievance, to
hit it; at least, to strike at it. They were conspicuous in the late
abolition movement, are strenuous advocates for negro equality--or,
rather, negro superiority--stanch women's rights men, in a word,
reformers in general. They claim to have a pure and universal
religion; and though some of them are downright atheists, they
profess to be more Christian than Christianity itself, and their aim
would seem to be to get rid of all special religion, so as to have
only religion in general. They say, in the first article of their
constitution:
"This association shall be called the Free Religious
Association--its objects being to promote the interests of
pure religion, to encourage the scientific study of theology,
and to increase fellowship in the spirit; and to this end all
persons interested in these objects are cordially invited to its
membership."
Nothing can be fairer or broader, so far as words go. Ordinary
mortals, however, may be puzzled to make out what this religion
in general, and no religion in particular, really is; and also to
understand how there can be pure religion and scientific theology
without God. Our radical friends are not puzzled at all. They have
only to call man God, and the scientific study of the physiological
and psychological laws of human nature the scientific study of
theology, and every difficulty vanishes. Whoever believes in himself
believes in God, and whoever can stand poised on himself has in
himself the very essence of religion. According to them, the great
error of the past has been in supposing that religion consists in
the recognition, the love, and the service of a superior power; but
the merit of free religion is, that it emancipates mankind from
this mother error, discards the notion that they owe obedience to
any power above humanity, and teaches that man is subject only to
himself. Hence the Emersonian maxim, Obey thyself, which, translated
into plain English, is, Live as thou listest.
The aim of the association, the president--whom we remember as a
handsome, fair-complexioned, bright-eyed school-boy--tells us in his
opening address is Unity. He says:
"Our aim, let it be understood, is _unity_; not division, discord,
conflict--but unity. We are not controversialists. We carry no
sword in our hands. We wear no weapons concealed about our person.
Our one word is peace--the word which is always most heartily
responded to by earnest men. Religion means unity; the very
definition of it signifies the power that binds men together;
that binds all souls to the divine. The communion of saints--that
is the religious phrase; and yet you will pardon me if I say
that religion at present is the one word that means division. As
interpreted by the religious world, it means war and discord.
Subjects are debated on other platforms--social questions,
political questions; they are debated and dismissed. In the
religious world the discussion goes on more persistently, more
bitterly than on any other field; but the issues are always the
same, the venue is never changed, conclusions are never reached,
and we lack the benefit that comes from the reconciliation of
perpetual discussion.
"Religion as organized is organized division. The communion is a
communion-table, the Christ is a symbol of the sects, the unity is
a unity made up of separate departments and families. The ancient
religions of the world still hold their own. Buddhism, Brahminism,
the religion of Zoroaster, the religion of Confucius, Judaism,
fetichism, Sabaism--all stand where they did. All gather in their
population; all have their organized activities, as they ever
had. No one of them has materially changed its front; not one of
them has been disorganized; not one of them has retreated from
the ground that from time immemorial it has occupied. They have
stormed at each other, they have been mortal enemies; but still
they stand where they stood. There is no superstition, however
degrading, that does not exist to-day; and Christian missionaries,
Catholic and Protestant, have gone out with hearts of flame and
tongues of fire, and souls that were all one solid single piece of
consecration, and have dashed themselves in hosts with the utmost
heroism against those ancient lines of faith; and their weapons
have dropped harmless at the foot. Here and there a few hundred,
or a few thousand, or a few tens or hundreds of thousands, may
have shifted from one faith to the other; but the solid substance
of these great religions still endures. The vast aggregates of
millions and tens of millions are unaffected. Christianity holds
its own, and no more. Buddhism and Brahminism hold their own, and
as much. What shall we say to this? Does religion mean unity?
The world cannot be all of one form of religion. Religion is
deeper than all its several forms. One religion cannot dislodge
another; one faith cannot supplant another faith. Put Christianity
in the place of Brahminism and Buddhism, and people would not
be Christians. They might change their name--they would not
change their nature. The inhabitants of countries that have been
under the sway of those great faiths do not become Christian
men by becoming Christian peoples. The Turks in European Turkey
are better men than the Greek Christians in European Turkey.
The religions, as such, must hold their places essentially
undisturbed. Harmony is not possible at present on that ground--on
any sectarian ground.
"Christianity itself is a bundle of religions. There is the vast
Greek Church, with its patriarchs; there is the enormous Catholic
Church, with its pope; here are all the families of the Protestant
Church, with their clergy. They hold the same relative position.
Protestantism does not subdue Romanism; Romanism will never
subdue Protestantism. The Protestant Church and Roman Church have
stood face to face for centuries; and thus they will continue to
stand, as long as the populations have the genius that God gave
them. What is Christendom but an army divided against itself?
What is Protestantism but a mingling of warring sects?--each
sect falling in pieces the moment it becomes organized for work.
Unitarianism does not gain on Orthodoxy; Orthodoxy does not gain
on Unitarianism. Each sect takes up the little portion that
belongs to it, and must rest contented; and all the power of
propagandism, of sectarian zeal, of fire and earnestness, does but
cause the little flame to burn up more brightly for an instant on
the local altar; and, when it dies down, the ashes remain on that
altar still.
"Our word, then, is Unity. But how shall we get it? Not by
becoming Catholics; not by making another order of Protestants;
not by instituting another sect; but by going down below all the
sects--going down to faith. For faith, hope, aspiration, charity,
love, worship, we believe, are inherent, profound, indestructible
elements of human nature." (Pp. 7-9.)
The rhetoric is not bad; but in what does the unity aimed at consist,
and how is it to be obtained? Religion, by the speakers who addressed
the association, is assumed to be a sentiment, and faith and hope and
charity are, we are told, indestructible elements of human nature;
then since human nature is one, what unity can the free religionists
aspire to that they and all men have not already, or have not always
had? Pass over this; whence and by what means is the unity, whatever
it consists in, to be obtained? The answer to this question is not
very definite, but it would seem the association expect it from
below, not from above; for the president says, we are to obtain
it only by "going down below all sects--going down to faith." A
Catholic would have said, We attain to unity only by rising above all
sects, to a faith which is one and universal, and which the sects
rend and divide among themselves. But the radicals have outgrown
Catholicity, outgrown Christianity, and very properly look for faith
and unity from below. But when they get down, down to the lowest
deep, will they find them? What faith or unity will they find in the
lowest depths of humanity in addition to what all men have always
had? If, notwithstanding the unity of nature, sects and divisions
prevail, and always have prevailed, how, with nothing above nature or
in addition to it, do you expect to get rid of them, and establish
practical unity, or to obtain the charity that springs from unity?
The radicals deny that they are destructives, that they have only
negations, or that they make war on any existing church, religion,
sect, or denomination; they will pardon us, then, if we are unable to
conceive what they mean by unity, or what unity, except the physical
unity of nature, there is or can be among those who divide on every
subject in which they feel any interest. Does the association propose
to get rid of diversity by indifference, and of divisions simply by
bringing all men to agree to differ? We certainly find only unity
in denying among the individuals associated, who agree in nothing
except that each one holds himself or herself alone responsible for
his or her own personal views and utterances. Some of them would
retain the Christian name, and others would reject it. Mr. Francis
Ellingwood Abbott argues that it is not honest to hold on to the name
after having rejected the thing. By professing to be a Christian
a man binds himself to accept Christianity; and whoso accepts
Christianity, binds himself to accept the Catholic Church, which
embodies and expresses it. We make an extract from his address:
"As I look abroad in the community, I see two extreme types of
religious faith. One is represented in the Roman Church, the
great principle of authority. That church has been, and, I think,
will always be, the grandest and the greatest embodiment of
Christianity in social life. It is worthy of profound respect;
and I, for one, yield it profound respect. It took an infidel,
Auguste Comte, to portray fairly the service done to the world by
the Christian Church--the great Catholic Church--of the middle
ages; and we radicals are false to our principles, if we do not
do homage to every thing that is great and good and serviceable
in its season, even although we think its day of usefulness may
have passed. The fundamental principle of the Roman Church is
authority, pure and simple. The theology of Rome carries that
principle out to the extremest degree. Its hierarchy embodies it
in an institution; and, from beginning to end, from centre to
periphery, the Roman Catholic Church is consistent with itself
in the development of that one idea in spiritual and social and
ecclesiastical life.
"At the other pole of human thought and experience, I see a
very few persons--indeed, so few that I might, perhaps, almost
count them on the fingers of one hand--who plant themselves
on the principle of liberty alone; who want nothing else; who
stand without dogma, without creed, without priesthood, without
Bible, without Christ, without any thing but the Almighty God
working in their hearts. These two principles of authority and
freedom have thus worked out for themselves, at last, consistent
expression. Here are the two extremes--Romish Christianity and
free religion; and between these two extremes we see a compromise,
Protestant Christianity--the compromise between Catholicism and
free religion. Every compromise is weak, because it contains
conflicting elements. Protestant Christianity is like the image
with head of gold and feet of clay. It cannot stand for ever.
Either Christianity, as embodied in the Roman Church, is right, or
else free religion is right. Have we not learned yet to give up
these combinations of opposites, contraries, and incompatibles?
Has the war taught us nothing? Are we still trying to make some
chimerical mixture, some impossible union of freedom and slavery?
I trust not. For my own part, I stand pledged to liberty, pure
and simple; and I have come to view all compromises alike, and
to cast them utterly away, whether they clothe themselves in the
garments of Geneva, or in the last expression of Dr. Bellows and
the Unitarian Church." (Pp. 32-33.)
Mr. Abbott is not quite exact in his phraseology, and does not state
the Catholic principle correctly. The principle on which the church
rests, and out of which grow all her doctrines and precepts, is not
authority, but the mystery of the Incarnation, or the assumption of
human nature by the Word. Nor is he himself quite honest according
to his own test of honesty. To be consistent with himself, he must
reject not only the term _Christian_, but also the term _religion_,
and put the alternative, Either Catholicity or no religion. The word
religion--from _religare_--means either intensively to bind more
firmly, or iteratively, to bind again, to bind man morally to God as
his last end, in addition to his being physically bound to God as his
first cause. _Free religion_ is a contradiction in terms, as much so
as free bondage. Religion is always a bond, a law that binds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson differs from Mr. Abbott, and would retain the
name Christian, though without the reality. We quote a long passage
from his not very remarkable speech, out of deference to his rank as
one of the originators of the movement:
"We have had, not long since, presented to us by Max Müller a
valuable paragraph from St. Augustine, not at all extraordinary
in itself, but only as coming from that eminent father in the
church, and at that age in which St. Augustine writes: 'That which
is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients,
and never did not exist from the planting of the human race until
Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which
already subsisted, began to be called Christianity.' I believe
that not only Christianity is as old as the creation--not only
every sentiment and precept of Christianity can be paralleled
in other religious writings--but more, that a man of religious
susceptibility, and one at the same time conversant with many
men--say a much travelled man--can find the same idea in
numberless conversations. The religious find religion wherever
they associate. When I find in people narrow religion, I find also
in them narrow reading.
"I object, of course, to the claim of miraculous
dispensation--certainly not to the doctrine of Christianity. This
claim impairs, to my mind, the soundness of him who makes it, and
indisposes us to his communion. This comes the wrong way; it comes
from without, not within. This positive, historical, authoritative
scheme is not consistent with our experience or our expectations.
It is something not in nature, it is contrary to that law of
nature which all wise men recognized, namely, never to require
a larger cause than is necessary to the effect. George Fox, the
Quaker, said that, though he read of Christ and God, he knew them
only from the like spirit in his own soul. We want all the aids to
our moral training. We cannot spare the vision nor the virtue of
the saints; but let it be by pure sympathy, not with any personal
or official claim. If you are childish and exhibit your saint as
a worker of wonders, a thaumaturgist, I am repelled. That claim
takes his teachings out of logic and out of nature, and permits
official and arbitrary senses to be grafted on the teachings. It
is the praise of our New Testament that its teachings go to the
honor and benefit of humanity--that no better lesson has been
taught or incarnated. Let it stand, beautiful and wholesome, with
whatever is most like it in the teaching and practice of men; but
do not attempt to elevate it out of humanity by saying, 'This was
not a man,' for then you confound it with the fables of every
popular religion; and my distrust of the story makes me distrust
the doctrine as soon as it differs from my own belief. Whoever
thinks a story gains by the prodigious, by adding something out
of nature, robs it more than he adds. It is no longer an example,
a model; no longer a heart-stirring hero, but an exhibition, a
wonder, an anomaly, removed out of the range of influence with
thoughtful men." (Pp. 42-44.)
Mr. Emerson cannot be very deeply read in patristic literature,
if he is obliged to go to Max Müller for a quotation from St.
Augustine, and he proves by his deductions from the language of this
great doctor and father that he knows little of the Catholic Church.
St. Augustine was a Catholic, and taught that, though times vary,
faith does not vary, and that as believed the patriarchs so believe
we, only they believed in the Christ who was to come, and we in the
Christ who has come; and the church teaches through her doctors that
there has been only one revelation, that this was made, in substance,
to our first parents in the garden. She teaches us that Christianity
is not only as old, but even older than creation; for creation with
all it contains was created in reference to Christ the Incarnate
Word, and consequently Christianity, founded in the Incarnation, is
really the supreme law according to which the universe was created
and exists. It precedes all other religions, and the various heathen
or pagan religions and mythologies are only traditions, corruptions,
perversions, or travesties of it. To the question, "How is the church
catholic?" the very child's catechism answers, "Because she subsists
in all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth." How
otherwise could she be Catholic?
That "every sentiment [doctrine?] and precept of Christianity can be
paralleled in other religious writings" (religions, for Christianity
is not a writing) may be true in part, if taken separately and
in an unchristian sense; but certainly not as a connected and
self-consistent system, in its unity and integrity. But suppose it,
what then? It would only prove that all religions have retained more
or less of the primitive revelation, which all men held in common
before the Gentile apostasy and the dispersion of the race consequent
on the attempt to build the Tower of Babel; not that all religions
have had a common origin in human nature. What we actually find in
pagan religions and mythologies that is like Christianity, is no more
than we should expect on the supposition of a primitive revelation
held out of unity, and interpreted by pride, folly, and ignorance,
the characteristics of every pagan people. But Mr. Emerson is true to
the old doctrine which he chanted years ago in _The Dial_:
"Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below--
The canticles of love and woe."
Nothing can roll out of the heart of nature but nature itself; and
hence, in order to derive Christianity from within, Mr. Emerson
eliminates whatever is supernatural and external and reduces it to
simple nature, which every man from the beginning to the end of the
world carries within him, and of which he cannot divest himself. He
unchristianizes Christianity, makes it an element of human nature,
confounds it with the natural laws of the physicists, and then tells
us it is as old as creation, which is about as much as telling us
man is as old as--man, or nature is as old as--nature. Well may Mr.
Emerson be called the Sage of Concord, and be listened to as an
oracle.
All the speakers, with three exceptions, seemed anxious to have
it understood that the Free Religious Association has some great
affirmative truth which is destined to redeem and save the world.
Colonel Higginson, the successor of Theodore Parker, tells us with
great earnestness:
"If this movement of ours means any thing, it means not a little
petty denial, not a little criticism, not a textual discussion,
not a sum in addition or subtraction, like Bishop Colenso's books,
not a bit of historical analysis, like Strauss or Renan. These
are trivial things; these do not touch people; these do not reach
the universal heart. The universe needs an affirmation, not a
denial; and the religious movement that has not for its centre the
assertion of something, would be condemned already to degenerate
into a sect by the time it had the misfortune to get fairly born."
(P. 58.)
And again:
"Affirmation! There is no affirmation except the belief
in universal natural religion; all else is narrowness and
sectarianism, though it call itself by the grandest name, compared
with that. It impoverishes a man; it keeps his sympathy in one
line of religious communication; it takes all the spiritual life
of the race, and says, 'All of this that was not an effluence
from Jesus you must set aside;' and so it makes you a member in
full standing of some little sect, all of whose ideas, all of
whose thoughts, revolved in the mind of some one narrow-minded
theologian who founded it. It shuts you up there, and you die,
suffocated for want of God's free air outside." (P. 59.)
But the reverend colonel here affirms nothing not affirmed by
Christianity, nor any thing more than belongs to all men. Natural
religion is simply the natural law, the moral law, prescribed to
every man through his reason by the end for which he is created, and
is included in the Christian religion as essential to the Christian
character. What the free religionist does is not to affirm any thing
not universally insisted on by the Catholic Church, but to deny all
religion but universal natural religion; that is, he simply denies
supernatural revelation, and the supernatural order, or that there is
any reality broader than nature or above it. Free religion, as such,
is, then, not affirmative, but purely negative; the negation of all
religions in so far as they assert the supernatural. The real thought
and design of the men and women composing the association is to get
rid of every thing in every religion that transcends or professes to
transcend nature. They make no direct war on the church or even on
the sects, we concede; for they take it for granted that when people
are once fully persuaded that nature is all, and that only natural
religion is or can be true, all else will gradually die out of itself.
Mrs. Lucy Stone agrees in this with the others, and does not disguise
her thought. She says:
"We come into the world, I believe, every one of us, with all
that is needful in ourselves, if we will only trust it--all that
is needful to help us on and up to the very highest heights to
which a human being can ever climb; but we have covered it over
by dogma and creed and sectarian theory, and by our own misdeeds,
until these angel voices that are in us cease to be heard; not
totally cease--I do not believe they ever totally cease--but
they become less and less audible to us. But if we learn to heed
their faintest whisper, reverently and obediently, I believe that
there is no path where the soul asks you to go that you may not
safely tread. It may carry you to the burning, fiery furnace,
but you will come out, and the smell of fire even will not be on
your garments. It may compel you into the lion's den, but the
wild beast's mouth will be shut. You may walk where scorpions are
in the way of duty, and you will not be hurt. It is this 'inner
light;' it is not a text, it is not a creed, but it is this in
ourselves which, if trusted, will lead us into all truth.
"I said I did not believe this voice was ever lost in the human
soul. I do not forget that men grow very wicked, and women too,
for that matter; I do not forget that men and women sometimes
appear to us so lost and fallen that it seems as if no power in
themselves, or any human power, could help them up; and yet to
these worst, men and women, in some hallowed moment, is the word
given, 'This is the way: walk ye in it.' And if, at the side of
this man or woman, at that very moment, is some helping hand, some
voice wise enough to counsel, he or she may be started to walk in
that way." (P. 100.)
If Mr. Abbott is the logician of the association, Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe is decidedly the wit. In the essay she read to the meeting
she, with her keen woman's wit and her hard common sense, shows
up in admirable style the ridiculousness and absurdity of the
whole movement. She is not herself indeed free from all taint of
radicalism, and much she says may be due to her facility in detecting
and satirizing the follies and absurdities of her friends rather
than those of her foes; but her essay proves that she has a soul,
and knows that it has aspirations that go beyond nature, and wants
which only a supernatural religion can satisfy. She evidently has
glimpses of a truth higher, deeper, broader, than any recognized
by any other radical who spoke. She disposes of free religion in a
single sentence, "He is not religious who does not recognize the
_obligations_ of religion." We have space only for the concluding
paragraph of her not very logical, self-consistent, but witty,
shrewd, and satirical essay on _Freedom and Restraint in Religion_:
"But, friends, a sudden reaction comes over me. I determine to
profess and practise the new religion. I have learned at the
free religious club that I possess the first requisite for this,
having never studied any theology at all. The ex-divines whom I
have met there have so bewailed the artificial ignorance which
they acquired in their divinity-school training, that I presume
my natural knowledge to be its proper and desired antithesis. I
have read the Bhavadgheeta and Mr. Emerson's poems, the psalms and
gospel of the new faith. To be no Christian is the next important
desideratum; and I believe that I shall find this, as most people
do, easier than not. My first rule will be, 'Brahmins, beware
of intercourse with Pariahs!' The three hundred incarnations of
Vishnu, far more imposing in number than the single excarnation
of which the old theology has made so much, shall be preached
by me both as precept and example. The Confucian moralities,
as illustrated by Californian experience, shall replace the
Decalogue. Mr. Emerson's crowning sentence, that he who commits a
crime hurts himself, will, of course, suffice to convert a whole
society of criminals and reprobates. I will introduce the Joss
into prisons, and give the myth of the Celestial Empire a literal
interpretation. Our railroad and steamboat system will greatly
facilitate the offering of children to the river, with the further
advantage of offering the parents too. The strangling of female
infants will relieve the present excess of female population in
New England, and postpone the pressure of woman suffrage. The
burning of widows alone will save the country no small outlay in
pensions. Lastly, since the Turkish ethics are coming so much into
favor, I should advise a more than Mormon application of them in
our midst. Coöperative housekeeping could then be begun on the
most immediate and harmonious footing. And so we will reconvert
and transreform, and true progress shall consist in regress.
"But, as Archimedes asked to get out of the world in order to move
it, we shall be forced to go outside of Christendom in order to
accomplish this revolution. And if I may believe my friends of the
Free Religious Association, the surest way to do this will be to
keep closely in their midst. For, elsewhere, between steamboats
and missionaries, we cannot be sure of meeting people who shall be
sure of not being Christians.
"Perish the jest, and let the jester perish, if in aught but
saddest earnest she exchanged the serious for the comic mask.
Laughter is sometimes made to convey pathos that lies too deep for
tears. I have but faintly sketched the scene-painting that would
have to be done to-day, if religion could slip back and miss the
sacred and indispensable mediation of Christianity. Take back the
English language beyond the noble building of Shakespeare and
Milton; take back philosophy beyond the labor of the Germans and
the intuition of the Greeks; take back mathematics beyond Laplace
and Newton; take back politics from the enlargement of republican
experience--you will have yet a harder task when you shall carry
religion back to its ante-Christian status and interpretation.
"Lastly, and to sum up. The freedom of religion is the
satisfaction of obeying the innermost and highest impulses
of the human soul, to the disregard of all secondary powers
and considerations. I find this freedom inseparable from the
constraint which obliges the man toward this highest effort, as
the laws of the tidal flow force the wave to high-water mark.
Our human dignity consists in the assertion of this freedom, the
acknowledgment of this obligation. Intellectual freedom is found
in study and the progress of thought, which is ever substituting
enlarged and improved for rude and narrow processes. But the
liberal heart precedes the liberal mind, and conditions it. To be
careless as to authority and rash in conclusions, is not to be
free; to be strict in logic and scrupulous in derivation, is not
to be unfree. Let me end my discursive remarks with one phrase
from a dear, melancholy, Calvinistic poet, who passed his life in
damning himself and blessing others, repenting of a thousand sins
he was never able to commit:
'He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside.'"
(Pp. 53-57.)
A stranger, who gave his name as Gustave Watson, made a brief,
modest, sensible speech, which fully refuted the radical pretensions.
He told them that he had listened in vain to hear pronounced
the great affirmative truth the speakers professed to have. An
evangelical minister, a Rev. Jesse H. Jones, took up the defence of
Christianity, but was too ignorant of the Christian faith, and too
far gone himself in radicalism, to be able to effect much. He took
up the weakest line of defence possible, and labored chiefly to show
the novelty of Christianity against St. Augustine, and its identity,
under one of its aspects, with carnal Judaism or modern socialism. An
orthodox Jew sent an essay and a liberal Jew spoke. A professor of
spiritism made a speech, and several radicals spoke whose speeches we
are obliged to pass over, though as good as those we have noticed.
We have refrained as far as possible from ridiculing the proceedings
of the association, which is no association at all, since it is
founded on the principle of free individualism; for we wish to treat
all men and women with the respect due to ourselves, if not to
themselves. The chief actors in the movement we have formerly known,
and some of them intimately. We have no doubt of their sincerity and
earnestness; but we must be permitted to say that we have found
nothing new or striking in their speeches, and we cannot remember the
time when we were not perfectly familiar with all their doctrines and
pretensions. Their views and aims were set forth in the New England
metropolis nearly forty years ago, if with less mental refinement
and polish, with an originality and freshness, a force and energy,
which they can hardly hope to rival. They were embodied in 1836,
and attempted to be realized in the Society for Christian Union and
Progress, which its founder abandoned because he would not suffer
it to grow into a sect, because he saw his movement was leading no
whither, and could accomplish nothing for the glory of God or the
good of mankind here or hereafter, and because, through the grace
and mercy of God, he became convinced of the truth and sanctity of
the Catholic Church against which the Protestant reformers in the
sixteenth century rebelled. He may not now be very proud of these
radicals, but they are, to a great extent, the product of a movement
of which he and Ralph Waldo Emerson were the earliest and principal
leaders in Boston.
We readily acknowledge that the pretensions of these radical men
and women are very great, but they show no great intellectual
ability, and are painfully narrow and superficial. The ministers and
ex-ministers who figured on the occasion exhibited neither depth nor
breadth of view, neither strength nor energy of mind. They proved
themselves passable rhetoricians, but deplorably ignorant of the
past and the present, of the religions they believed themselves
to have outgrown, and especially of human nature and the wants
of the human soul. They appeared to know only their own theories
projected from themselves, and which are as frail and as attenuated
as any spider's web ever rendered visible by the morning dew. They
pretend to have studied, mastered, and exhausted all the past
systems, religions, and mythologies; they pride themselves on the
universality of their knowledge, and their having lost all bigotry,
intolerance, or severity toward any sect or denomination. They speak
even patronizingly of the church, and are quite ready to concede that
she was good and useful to humanity in her day, in barbarous times,
and in the infancy of the race; but humanity, having attained its
majority, has outgrown her, and demands now a more manly and robust,
a purer and broader and a more living and life-giving religion--a
religion, in a word, more Christian than Christianity, more Catholic
than Catholicity. Ignorant or worse than ignorant of the lowest
elements of Catholic teaching, they fancy they have outgrown it,
as the adult man has outgrown the garments of his childhood. Their
self-conceit is sublime. Why, they are not large enough to wear the
fig-leaf aprons fabricated by the reformers of the sixteenth century
with which to cover their nakedness. The tallest and stoutest among
them is a dwarf by the side of a Luther or a Calvin, or even of the
stern old Puritan founders of New England; nay, they cannot bear an
intellectual comparison even with the originators of New England
Unitarianism.
Take the Reverend Colonel Higginson, a man of good blood and rich
natural gifts, one who, if he had been trained in a Christian school,
and had had his mind elevated and expanded by the study of Christian
dogmata, could hardly have failed to be one of the great men, if
not the greatest man of his age. He has naturally true nobility of
soul, rare intellectual power, and genius of a high order; yet he
is so blinded, and so dwarfed in mind by his radicalism, that he
can seriously say, "There is no affirmation except the belief in
universal natural religion; all else is narrowness and sectarianism."
He has, then, no views broader than nature, no aspirations that rise
higher than nature, and labors under the delusion that men, reduced
to nature alone, would really be elevated and ennobled. He has never
learned that nature is not self-sufficing--is dependent; that it has
both its origin and end as well as its medium in the supernatural,
and could not act or subsist a moment without it--a truth which the
Catholic child has learned before a dozen years old, and which is a
simple commonplace with the Christian; so much so, that he rarely
thinks it necessary to assert it, far less to prove it.
This utterance of the reverend colonel is accepted by all the
radicals. None of them get above second causes; for them all God and
nature appear to be identical and indistinguishable; and this appears
to be their grand and all-reconciling doctrine. Hence the religion
which they propose has no higher origin than man, and no higher end
than the natural development and well-being of man, individual and
social, in this earthly life. It is the religion of humanity, not
the religion of God, and man, not God, is obeyed and worshipped in
it; yet it seems never to occur to these wise men and women that
nature either separated from or identified with God vanishes into
nothing, and their religion with it. But is a religion that is simply
evolved from humanity, that has no element above the human, and is
necessarily restricted to man in this life, and that contemplates
neither fore nor after, higher, deeper, and more universal than
Christianity which asserts for us the nature and essence of God,
teaches us the origin and end of all things, the real relations of
man to his Maker and to universal nature through all the degrees and
stages of his existence? No; it is your naturism that is "narrowness
and sectarianism."
Radicalism has heard of the mystery of the Incarnation, and
interprets it to mean not the union of two for ever distinct
natures, the divine and human, in one divine person, but one divine
nature in all human persons. Hence, while the person is human,
circumscribed, and transitory, nature in all men is divine, is God
himself, permanent, universal, infinite, immortal. This is what
the Christian mystery, according to them, really means, though the
ignorant, narrow-minded, and blundering apostles never knew it, never
understood its profound significance. The church took the narrow and
shallow view of the apostles; and hence our radicals have outgrown
the church, and instead of looking back or without, above or beyond
themselves, they look only within, down into their own divine nature,
whence emanates the universe, and in which is all virtue, all good,
all truth, all force, all reality. The aim of all moral and religious
discipline must be to get rid of all personal distinction, all
circumscription, and to sink all individuality in the divine nature,
which is the real man, the "one man," the "over-soul" of which Mr.
Emerson in his silvery tones formerly discoursed so eloquently and
captivated so many charming Boston girls, who understood him by
sympathy with their hearts, not their heads, though what he said
seemed little better than transcendental nonsense to the elder,
graver, and less susceptible of both sexes. Impersonal nature is
divine; hence the less of persons we are the more divine we are,
and the more we act from the promptings of impersonal nature the
more god-like our acts. Hence instinct, which is impersonal, is a
safer guide than reason, which is personal; the logic of the heart is
preferable to the logic of the head, and fools and madmen superior
to the wise and the sane. Hence, are fools and madmen profoundly
reverenced by Turks and Arabs.
But impersonal nature is one and identical in all men, and identical,
too, with the divine nature. There are no distinct, specific, or
individual natures; there is only one nature in all men and things;
for all individuality, all difference or distinction, is in the
personality. Hence when you get rid of personality, which, after all,
has no real subsistence, and sink back into impersonal nature, you
attain at once to absolute unity, always and ever present under all
the diversity of beliefs, views, or persons. Men and women are mere
bubbles floating on the face of the ocean, and nothing distinguishes
them from the ocean underlying them but their bubbleosity. Destroy
that, and they are the ocean itself. Get rid of personality, sink
back into impersonal nature, and all men and women become one, and
identical in the one universal nature. Vulgar radicals and reformers
seek to reform society by laboring to ameliorate the condition of
men and women as persons, and are less profitably employed than the
boy blowing soap-bubbles; for the reality is in the ocean on the
face of which the bubble floats, not in the bubbleosity. The true
radicals, who radicalize in satin slippers and kid gloves, seek
not to ameliorate the bubbleosity which is unreal, an unveracity,
a mere apparition, a sense-show, but to ameliorate man and society
by sinking it, and all differences with it, in universal impersonal
nature.
Yet what amelioration is possible except personal? If you get rid of
men and women as persons, you annihilate them in every sense in which
they are distinguishable from the one universal nature; and suppose
you to succeed in doing it, your reform, your amelioration would
be the annihilation of man and society; for you can have neither
without men and women as individuals--that is, as persons. To reform
or ameliorate them in their impersonal nature is both impossible and
unnecessary; for in their impersonal nature they are identical with
universal nature, and universal nature is God, infinite, immutable,
immortal, incapable of being augmented or diminished. Nothing can be
done for or against impersonal nature. We see, then, nothing that
these refined and accomplished radicals can propose as the object of
their labors but the making of all men and women, as far as possible,
talk and act like fools and madmen. This would seem to be their grand
discovery, and the proof of their having outgrown the church.
But we should be ourselves the fool and madman if we attempted to
reason with them. They discard logic, reject reason, and count the
understanding as one of the poorest of our faculties; as mean,
narrow, personal. Reason and understanding are personal; and all
truth, all knowledge, all wisdom, all that is real is impersonal. Is
not the impersonality of God, that is, of nature, a primary article
of their creed? How, then, reason with them or expect them to listen
to the voice of reason? Reason is too strait for them, and they have
outgrown it, as they have outgrown the church! They do not even
pretend to be logically consistent with themselves. No one holds
himself bound by his own utterances, any more than he does by the
utterances of another. They are free religionists, and scorn to be
bound even by the truth.
But suppose they wish to retain men and women--or women and men, for
with them woman is the superior--as persons, how do they expect by
restricting, as they do, their knowledge to this life, and making
their happiness consist in the goods of this world alone, to effect
their individual amelioration? Socialism secures always its own
defeat. The happiness of this life is attainable only by living
for another. Restricted to this life and this world, man has play
for only his animal instincts, propensities, and powers. There is
no object on which his higher or peculiarly human affections and
faculties can be exerted, and his moral, religious, rational nature
must stagnate and rot, or render him unspeakably miserable by his
hungering and thirsting after a spiritual good which he has not, and
which is nowhere to be had. The happiness of this life comes from
living for a supernatural end, the true end of man, in obedience
to the law it prescribes. When we make this life or this world our
end, or assume, with Mr. Emerson, that we have it within, in our own
impersonal nature, we deny the very condition of either individual or
social happiness, take falsehood for truth; and no good ever does or
can come from falsehood.
It will be observed by our readers, from the extracts we have made,
that the radicals not only confine their views to humanity and to
this life, but proceed on the assumption of the sufficiency of man's
nature for itself. They appear to have, with the exception of Mrs.
Howe, no sense of the need of any supernatural help. They have no
sense of the incompleteness and insufficiency of nature, as they
have no compassion for its weakness. They never stumble, never fall,
never sin, are never baffled, are never in need of assistance. It
is not so with ordinary mortals. We find nature insufficient for us,
our own strength inadequate; and, voyaging over the stormy ocean of
life, we are often wrecked, and compelled to cry out in agony of
soul, "Lord, save or we perish." Whosoever has received any religious
instruction knows that it is not in ourselves but in God that we
live and move and have our being, and that not without supernatural
assistance can we attain true beatitude.
In conclusion, we may say, these radical men and women set forth
nothing not familiar to us before the late Theodore Parker was an
unfledged student of the Divinity School, Cambridge, and even before
most of them were born. We know their views and aims better than
they themselves know them, and we have lived long enough to learn
that they are narrow and superficial, false and vain. We have in the
church the freedom we sighed for but found not, and which is not to
be found, in radicalism. God is more than man, more than nature, and
never faileth; Christ the God-man, at once perfect God and perfect
man, two distinct natures in one divine person, is the way, the
truth, and the life; and out of him there is no salvation, no true
life, no beatitude. We do not expect these radicals to believe us;
they are worshippers of man and nature, and joined to their idols.
Esteeming themselves wise, they become fools; ever learning, they are
never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, any more than the
child is able to grasp the rainbow.
FOOTNOTE:
[37] _Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting of the Free Religious
Association, held in Boston May 27th and 28th, 1869._ Boston: Roberts
Brothers. 1869. 8vo, pp. 122.
MEMENTO MORI.
"Come and see how a Christian can die."--_Addison to his
step-son._
We read that the celebrated Montaigne wished to make a compilation
of remarkable death-bed scenes; for, as he said, "he who should
teach men how to die would teach them how to live." It may not be
unprofitable for us to recall the last moments of some who have died
in the Catholic Church. It may give us some new idea of the power
of faith to sustain the soul in that supreme moment, and show us in
what a super-eminent degree the spirit of the church fits one for
the last great change, and fortifies him to meet it hopefully if not
triumphantly. Let us, then, in this month, consecrated by so many
pious Catholic hearts to the memory of the dead, draw around the
death-beds of some who are remarkable in various ways, and see if we
would not have our last end like theirs. There is a horrid curiosity,
if no higher feeling, which attracts us to the side of the dying, "to
observe their words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they
put upon it." It is as if we would read the final conflict of the
soul, obtain some new insight into the great mystery of death, and
perhaps catch some glimpse of what awaits us beyond its shadows. Even
the unbeliever at such a moment, forced to reflect on the destiny of
the soul, exclaims, "Soul, what art thou? Flame that devourest me,
wilt thou live after me? Must thou suffer still? Mysterious guest,
what wilt thou become? Seekest thou to reunite thyself to the great
flame of day? Perhaps from this fire thou art only a spark, only a
wandering ray which that star recalls. Perhaps, ceasing to exist when
man dies, thou art only a moisture more pure than the animated dust
the earth has produced." The mind thus excited to doubt and question
is already on the road to conviction. To see how a good man meets
his fate, is a lesson of heavenly love which fastens itself in the
memory; the words that consoled him and that he uttered sink into the
heart, perhaps to diffuse light when our own time comes.
If Addison found nothing more imposing, nothing more affecting, than
accounts of the last moments of the dying; if the great Montaigne
loved the most minute details respecting them, we need not turn with
repugnance from what we have a vital interest in, and what may give
us some new idea of the blessing of dying in the arms of our Holy
Mother the Church, fortified by her sacraments and sustained by her
spirit. The French historian Anquetil, in giving an account of the
death of Montmorenci, says, "It is instructive for persons of all
conditions in life to witness the death of a great man who unites
noble sentiments with Christian humility." It is true Dr. Johnson
says, "It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives;" but a holy
death is generally the crown of a good life, though "there are dark,
dark deaths which even the saints have died, the aspect of whose
brightness was all turned heavenward, so we could not see it."[38]
I do not believe that "there is more or less of affectation in every
death-bed scene." Young, rather, is right:
"A death-bed's a detector of the heart.
Here tired dissimulation drops her mask
Through life's grimace, that mistress of the scene!"
Father Faber says:
"Every Christian death-bed is a world--a complete world--of
graces, interferences, compensations, lights, struggles,
victories, supernatural gestures, and the action of grand
spiritual laws. Each death-bed, explained to us as God could
explain it, would be in itself an entire science of God--a summa
of the most delicate theology. The varieties of grace in the
individual soul are so many infinities of the one infinite life of
God. No two deaths are quite alike. The most delicate shades of
difference between one death and another would probably disclose
to us more of the ways of God, and more of the capabilities of the
soul than philosophy has ever taught. Some deaths are so beautiful
that they can hardly be recognizable for punishments. Such was
the death of St. Joseph, with his head pillowed on the lap of
Jesus. The twilight bosom of Abraham was but a dull place compared
with the house of Nazareth which the eyes of Jesus lighted. Such
was Mary's death, the penalty of which was rather in its delay.
It was a soft extinction, through the noiseless flooding of her
heart with divine love. As nightingales are said to have sung
themselves to death, so Simeon died, not of the sweet weariness of
his long watching, but of the fulness of his contentment, of the
satisfaction of his desires, of the very new youth of soul which
the touch of the Eternal Child had infused into his age, and,
breaking forth into music which heaven itself might envy and could
not surpass, he died with his world-soothing song upon his lips--a
song so sunset-like that one might believe all the beauty of all
earth's beautiful evenings since creation had gone into it to
fill it full of peaceful spells. Age after age shall take up the
strain. All the poetry of Christian weariness is in it. It gives
a voice to the heavenly detachment and unworldliness of countless
saints. It is the heart's evening light after the working hours
of the day to millions and millions of believers. The very last
compline that the church shall sing, before the midnight when the
doom begins and the Lord breaks out upon the darkness from the
refulgent east, shall overflow with the melodious sweetness of
Simeon's pathetic song."
Thus do our words--even dying words--go on vibrating for ever.
How many have died like St. Oswald, Archbishop of York, and the
Venerable Bede, repeating the _Gloria Patri_--that act of praise
which St. Jerome found in constant use among the oriental monks, and
was the means of introducing it into the western church, where it is
now daily repeated by countless tongues.
St. Ignatius Loyola died with the holy name of Jesus on his lips,
that watchword of his glorious order so full of sweetness to the
heart. So did that angelic youth, St. Aloysius. St. Hubert died
repeating the Lord's Prayer; St. Stephen of Grandmont while saying,
"Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." So did St. John of the
Cross, St. Catharine of Genoa, and hundreds of others.
St. Arsenius, after more than fifty years spent in the desert,
regarded death with fear. His brethren, seeing him weep in his agony,
asked him if, like other men, he feared to die. "I am seized with
great fear," he answered, "nor has this dread ever left me since I
first came into the desert." Nevertheless, he expired, in peace and
humble confidence, in his ninety-fifth year.
St. John Chrysostom, when dying, had all his clothes changed, even to
his shoes, putting on his best garments, which were white, as for his
heavenly nuptials; for "to one who loves," says Novalis, "death is a
mystery of sweet mysteries--it is a bridal night." He then received
the blessed sacrament and prayed, ending according to his custom,
with, "Glory be to God for all things." Then making the sign of the
cross, he gave up his soul.[39]
We read of the poet-monk Cædmon, "That tongue, which had composed
so many holy words in praise of the Creator, uttered its last words
while he was in the act of signing himself with the cross, and thus
he fell into a slumber to awaken in paradise and join in the hymns of
the holy angels whom he had imitated in this world, both in his life
and in his songs."[40]
The account of the death of the Venerable Bede is well known, but it
is one that can always be read again and again with renewed profit,
and never without emotion.
"About a fortnight before the feast of Easter," says his disciple
Cuthbert, "he was reduced to a state of great debility, with
difficulty of breathing, but without much pain, and in that
condition he lasted till the day of the Lord's Ascension. This
time he passed cheerfully and joyfully, giving thanks to Almighty
God both by day and night, or rather at all hours of the day
and night. He continued to give lessons to us daily, spending
the rest of his time in psalmody, and the night also in joy and
thanksgiving, unless he were interrupted by a short sleep; and
yet, even then, the moment he awaked he began again, and never
ceased, with outstretched hands, to return thanks to God. I can
declare with truth that I never saw with my eyes, nor heard with
my ears, of any man who was so indefatigable in giving thanks to
the living God.
"O truly happy man! He chanted the passage from the blessed
Apostle Paul, 'It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands
of the living God,' and several other passages from Holy Writ,
warning us to throw off all torpor of soul, in consideration of
our last hour. And being conversant with Anglo-Saxon poetry, he
repeated several passages and composed the following lines in our
tongue:
'Before the need-fare
None becometh
Of thought more wise
Than is his need.
To search out
Ere his going hence,
What his spirit
For good or evil
After his death-day
Doomed may be.'
He also chanted the antiphons according to his and our custom.
One of these is, 'O King of glory, Lord of hosts, who on this
day didst ascend in triumph above all the heavens, leave us not
orphans, but send upon us the Spirit of truth, the promised of
the Father. Alleluia.' When he came to the words 'leave us not
orphans,' he burst into tears and wept much; and after a while he
resumed where he had broken off, and we who heard him wept with
him. We wept and studied by turns; or rather wept all the time
that we studied.
"Thus we passed in joy the quinquagesimal days till the aforesaid
festival, and he rejoiced greatly, and gave thanks to God for
the infirmities under which he suffered, often repeating, 'God
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth,' with other passages of
Scripture, and the saying of St. Ambrose, 'I have not lived so as
to be ashamed to live among you; nor do I fear to die, for we have
a gracious God.'
"During these days, beside the lessons which he gave us, and
the chant of the psalms, he undertook the composition of two
memorable works; that is, he translated into our language the
Gospel of St. John as far as 'But what are those among so many?'
[St. John vi. 9,] and made a collection of extracts from the notes
of Isidore the bishop, saying, 'I will not suffer my pupils to
read falsehoods, and labor without profit in that book, after my
death.' But on the Tuesday before the Ascension his difficulty of
breathing began to distress him exceedingly, and a slight tumor
appeared in his feet. He spent the whole day and dictated to us
with cheerfulness, saying occasionally, 'Lose no time; I know not
how long I may last. Perhaps in a very short time my Maker may
take me.' In fact, it seemed to us that he knew the time of his
death. He lay awake the whole night praising God, and at dawn on
the Wednesday morning ordered us to write quickly, which we did
till the hour of tierce. At that hour we walked in procession with
the relics, as the rubric for the day prescribed; but one of us
remained to wait on him, and said to him, 'Dearest master, there
still remains one chapter unwritten; will it fatigue you if I ask
more questions?' 'No,' said Bede; 'take your pen and mend it, and
write quickly.' This he did.
"At noon he said to me, 'I have some valuables in my little
chest--pepper, handkerchiefs, and incense. Run quickly and bring
the priests of the monastery to me, that I may make to them such
presents as God hath given to me. The rich of this world give
gold and silver and other things of value; I will give to my
brethren what God hath given to me, and will give it with love
and pleasure.' I shuddered, but did as he had bidden. He spoke to
each one in his turn, reminding and entreating them to celebrate
masses, and to pray diligently for him, which all readily promised
to do.
"When they heard him say that they would see him no more in this
world, all burst into tears; but their tears were tempered with
joy when he said, 'It is time that I return to Him who made me
out of nothing I have lived long, and kindly hath my merciful
Judge forecast the course of my life for me. The time of my
dissolution is at hand. I wish to be released and to be with
Christ.' In this way he continued to speak cheerfully till sunset,
when the fore-mentioned youth said, 'Beloved master, there is
still one sentence unwritten.' 'Then write quickly,' said Bede.
In a few minutes the youth said, 'It is finished.' 'Thou hast
spoken truly,' replied Bede; 'take my head between thy hands,
for it is my delight to sit opposite to that holy place in which
I used to pray; let me sit and invoke my Father.' Sitting thus
on the pavement of the cell, and repeating, 'Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,' as he finished
the word 'Ghost,' he breathed his last and took his departure for
heaven."[41]
We read that St. Dunstan had Mass celebrated in his room on the
day of his death; and after communicating, he broke forth into the
following prayer, "Glory be to thee, Almighty Father, who hast given
the bread of life from heaven to those that fear thee, that we may
be mindful of thy wonderful mercy to man in the incarnation of thine
only-begotten Son, born of the Virgin. To thee, Holy Father, for that
when we were not, thou didst give to us a being, and when we were
sinners, didst grant to us a Redeemer, we give due thanks through
the same thy Son, our Lord and God, who with thee and the Holy Ghost
maketh all things, governeth all things, and liveth through ages and
ages without end." Shortly afterward he died in the sixty-fourth year
of his age.
The Cistercian abbot Aelred of Yorkshire died in wonderful peace
after eight years of monastic life, repeating with his last breath,
"I will sing eternally, O Lord, thy mercy, thy mercy, thy mercy!"
While St. Wilfrid of York lay dying in the fair town of Oundle, the
monks did not cease chanting night and day around his bed, though
with much ado, so bitterly they wept. When they came to the one
hundred and third psalm, and were sweetly and solemnly singing the
words, "Emittes spiritum tuum, et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem
terræ," "Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created;
and thou shalt renew the face of the earth," the words stirred the
soul of the careworn abbot, by whose pillow lay the Lord's body and
blood; he turned his head gently, and without a sigh gave back his
soul to God.[42]
St. Gilbert, when he was more than a century old, used to exclaim,
"How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me for ever? Woe is me, for the
time of my sojourning is prolonged!" His soul was at last released
one morning at the hour of dawn, while the monks were repeating the
verse of the office, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand."
Twenty abbots assembled to witness the death of St. Stephen Harding
at Citeaux. Hearing them whisper that he had nothing to fear after
so holy and austere a life, he said to them trembling, "I assure you
I go to God in fear and trembling. If my baseness should be found to
have ever done any good, even in this I fear lest I should not have
preserved that grace with the humility and care I ought."
St. Francis of Assisi, when he found he was dying, wished to be
laid on the bare ground. When this was done, he crossed his arms
and said, "Farewell, my children. I leave you in the fear of God.
Abide therein. The time of trial and tribulation cometh. Happy are
they who persevere in well-doing. For me, I go to God joyfully,
recommending you all to his grace." He had the passion according to
the Gospel of St. John read to him, and then repeated in a feeble
voice the one hundred and forty-first psalm. Having said the final
verse, "Bring my soul out of prison," he breathed his last.
St. Thomas Aquinas died lying on ashes sprinkled on the floor. When
he saw the holy viaticum in the priest's hands, he said, "I firmly
believe that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is present in this
august sacrament. I adore thee, my God and my Redeemer. I receive
thee, the price of my redemption, the viaticum of my pilgrimage, for
whose honor I have studied, labored, preached, and taught. I hope I
have never advanced any tenet as thy word which I had not learned
from thee. If through ignorance I have done otherwise, I revoke it
all and submit my writings to the judgment of the holy Roman Church."
Thus lying in peace and joy, he received the last sacraments, and
was heard to murmur, "Soon, soon will the God of all consolation
crown his mercy to me and satisfy all my desires. I shall shortly
be satiated in him, and drink of the torrent of my delights; be
inebriated from the abundance of his house; and in him, the source of
life, I shall behold the true light."
When the viaticum was brought to St. Theresa, she rose up in her bed
and exclaimed, "My Lord and my Spouse! the desired hour has at length
come. It is time for me to depart hence." Her confessor asked her if
she wished to be buried in her own convent at Avila. She replied,
"Have I any thing of my own in this world? Will they not give me
a little earth here?" She died with the crucifix in her hands,
repeating, as long as she could speak, the verse of the Miserere, "A
contrite and humble heart, O God, thou wilt not despise!"
There is a touching account of a renowned and pious knight who, in
the ages of faith, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Following
lovingly the traces of our Saviour's steps, his heart became so
broken with sorrow and love that his life flowed out through the
wound. He visited with tender devotion Nazareth, whose hills leaped
for joy when the Divine Word became incarnate in the womb of a
Virgin; Mount Tabor, whose summit was lit up by God glorifying his
only Son; the river Jordan, consecrated by the baptism our Lord
received at the hands of St. John the Baptist; Bethlehem, where in a
poor manger were heard the first cries of the Infant Word; the Garden
of Gethsemane, which Jesus bedewed with a bloody sweat; Golgotha,
where by his blood the Redeemer reconciled earth with heaven; and
the glorious tomb whence the God-man issued triumphant over death.
Finally, he came to the Mount of Olives. Here contemplating the
sacred foot-prints left on the rock by the ascending Saviour, he
pressed his lips upon them with loving gratitude; then gathering
together all the strength of his love, raising his eyes and hands
toward heaven, and longing to ascend by the way taken by our Saviour,
"O Lord Jesus!" he cried in all the ardor of his love, "I can no
longer find thee or follow thee in this land of exile; grant that my
heart may ascend to thee on high!" And, as he uttered these ardent
words, his soul fled to God like an arrow direct to its aim.
I find in an old book the following affecting account of the death
of Friar Benedict, who died at La Trappe on the twentieth of August,
1674:
"Brother Benedict, of the diocese of Rouen, died five years and a
half after his profession, the day of the _fête_ of our father St.
Bernard, aged thirty-two years. And as God visited him peculiarly
with his grace in the progress of his disease, and at the time
of his death, it has been thought desirable, in order both to
recognize the mercy of Christ and for the edification of his
community, to record the principal circumstances of his life and
death.
"He fell sick nearly four years before his death of a disease
upon his chest, and although, after that time, he was almost
continually oppressed with a violent cough, with extreme pain, and
with an intermitting fever, he never manifested even the slightest
impatience of his suffering or the least desire to be cured.
About Christmas of the year 1673, which preceded his death a few
months, his disease increased. But he did not cease to discharge
the peculiar offices prescribed to penitents in the monastery.
The fever which seized him about the middle of Christmas did
not prevent his following the same course of life he had long
pursued. Five days after Easter, his disease having considerably
advanced, the reverend father abbot ordered him to be conducted to
the infirmary. There his fever immediately increased, his limbs
inflamed, his cough became more violent, and the struggles in
which he passed his nights quite exhausted him. Notwithstanding
this, he continued to lie on a hard bed of straw till the moment
when they removed him to the ashes, five hours before his death.
He rose at four in the morning; he dined at the table of the
infirmary, though his weakness was such that he was evidently
unable to sustain the weight of his own head. During this time
nothing was to be discovered upon his countenance which did not
evidence the most complete tranquillity. He had been remarkably
ingenious, and had nothing about him which he had not both
invented and executed. Three weeks before his death, he said to
the father abbot that, as he had been in the habit of constructing
many things for the convenience of the monastery, and as it might
be troublesome to the abbot to find and introduce workmen into
the house after his death, he would on this account, if agreeable
to the abbot, instruct one of the brothers in his various arts.
The abbot having consented, he instructed a monk in less than a
fortnight in the different arts in which he had been accustomed
to be employed. And notwithstanding his weakness and pain, he did
all this with so much patience and collectedness that he seemed
to have lost all remembrance of his sufferings. The father abbot,
knowing the grace which God had given to him, and the degree in
which God had detached him from the world, thought it his duty
to follow up what he believed to be the designs of Providence in
regard to him. This led him in the various ordinances of religion
to maintain all the rigor which charity and prudence would permit;
though in all private communications with him he treated him with
the tenderness of a father. One day, when so overcome with pain
that he could take nothing, he described his state to the father
abbot, accompanying his description with certain expressions of
countenance which it is almost impossible to restrain in such
circumstances. The father abbot, however, said with severity,
(as though he had no compassion for those sufferings in which he
sympathized so truly,) that 'he spoke like a man of the world,
and that a monk ought to manifest under the worst circumstances
the constancy of his soul.' Benedict in an instant assumed that
air of severity that never afterward quitted him. The fear lest
the great exertions which he made by day and by night, combined
with his extreme debility, might suddenly remove him, led them to
give him the holy sacrament and extreme unction. He received both
with every demonstration of piety. Such, however, was his weakness
that he immediately fainted away. The father abbot having asked,
before they brought him the extreme unction, if he desired that
the whole community should be present at the ceremony, he answered
that, 'exterior ceremonies were not of vital importance; that
his brethren would derive little edification from him; and that
he had more need of their prayers than their presence.' All his
conversation during his malady was on the necessity of separation
from worldly things, of the joy which he anticipated in death, and
of the mercy which God had shown him in suffering him to end his
days in the society of the father abbot.
"Some days before his death, the father abbot inquired minutely
into the state of his mind; he answered in these very words, 'I
consider the day of my death as a festival; I have no desire for
any thing here, and I cannot better express my total separation
from things below than by comparing myself to a leaf which the
wind has lifted from the earth. All that I have read in the sacred
Scriptures comes home to me and fills me with joy. Nevertheless,
I can in no action of my life see any thing which can sustain
the judgment of God, and which is not worthy of punishment; but
the confidence which I have in his goodness gives me hope and
consolation.' He added, 'How can it be that God should show such
compassion to a man who has so miserably served him? I desire
death alone; what can a man be thinking of, not always to desire
it? What joy, my father, when I remember that I am about to
refresh myself in the waters of life.'
"His ordinary reading, for many years of his life, had been the
sacred Scriptures, which were so familiar to him that he spoke of
little else. He mentioned to the father abbot so many passages,
and repeated them in a manner so touching, so animated, and so
devotional, that his hearers were at once edified and astonished.
Those passages which were uppermost in his mind respected chiefly
the majesty of God; but as he had a most humble opinion of his own
life, which had however been, in the main, faithful and pure, he
always reverted to the subject of the divine compassion. It was in
that he found peace and repose.
"On the day of the Assumption, he felt himself so weak that he
was unable to leave the infirmary. The father abbot carried him
our Lord, whom he received upon his knees, leaning on two of his
brethren. Two days afterward, he fell into strong convulsions, and
imagined that the hour of his deliverance was come. The father
abbot asked, 'Is it with joy that you depart?' 'Yes,' said he,
'from my very heart.' He then added, 'Into thy hands I commend my
spirit.'
"The customary prayers were then offered up for the dying; but
the convulsions having left him, the father abbot said that the
hour of God was not arrived; and having given orders to remove
him from the ashes to his bed, he turned to the father abbot
with a serene countenance, and said, 'The will of God be done.'
He lived three days waiting with anxiety the time when God would
have mercy upon him. And such was his desire of death that the
father abbot was obliged more than once to say to him that it was
not for him to anticipate the designs of Providence. His pangs
lasted till within an hour of his death, but he endured them with
his accustomed patience and serenity. He said three days before
his death that the most dangerous moments were the last, and that
he did not doubt the great enemy of man would seek to disquiet
him, and therefore requested the prayers of the community. The
father abbot, having asked, after some other general discourse,
if he knew the guilt of sin, he answered sighing, and, as it
were, looking into the recesses of his own soul, and in language
expressive of the intensity of his feelings, 'Alas! once I knew
it not; but now I see in the Scripture that God claims, as one of
his chief attributes, the power of pardoning sin; "I am he who
blotteth out your iniquities." I am therefore convinced that sin
is a tremendous offence. I am far, indeed, from being like those
who are always overwhelmed with a consciousness of their offences,
but yet I believe, upon the testimony of faith and Scripture, that
sin is a fathomless gulf of ruin.' These words were accompanied
with a manner so extraordinary that they touched the very hearts
of those who surrounded him.
"His bones having pierced his skin, and his shirt of serge
sticking to his wounds, he begged them to move him a little; but
at the end of the day, when the person who had the care of him
wished again to ease his body, he said, 'My brother, you give me
too much ease.' The father abbot having ordered some milk to be
brought him, which was the only nourishment he took, he said,
'You wish then, my father, to prolong my life, and are unwilling
I should die on the day of St. Bernard.' The father abbot having
quitted him, he begged, perceiving that his death approached, that
he might be called back. As soon as he saw him, he said, 'Father,
my eyes fail me--it is finished.' The father having asked him
in what state he found himself, and if he was about to approach
Christ, 'Yes, father,' said he, 'by the grace of God, I am. I am
not indeed sensible of any extraordinary elevation of my mind to
God; but through his mercy I am in perfect peace. God be thanked!'
This he repeated three times. The father abbot having asked him if
he wished to die upon the cross and upon the ashes, 'Yes,' said
he, 'from my heart.' With these words he lost his speech, or, at
all events, it was impossible to hear any thing intelligible from
him except the name of Jesus, which he pronounced repeatedly. They
carried him to the straw spread out in his chamber. He was nearly
four hours in a dying state, and preserved his recollection during
the whole time. His eyes indicating a wandering state of mind,
the father arose, took some holy water, and, having scattered
it around him, repeated these words, 'Let God arise and let
his enemies be scattered.' His face at this moment resumed its
serenity. He kissed the cross several times, and, wanting strength
to lay hold of it, they observed that he advanced his head to
reverence it every time that it was presented to him. At length
all his disquietudes ceased; they beheld him calm, peaceful,
serene; and he breathed his last sigh with so much tranquillity
that those who watched him scarcely perceived his death."
When William the Conqueror was on his death-bed, he confessed all the
sins of his life, from his youth up, aloud and before a large number
of priests and nobles from England and Normandy. We read that, after
a long agony, on Thursday, the ninth of September, as the sun rose in
glorious splendor, William awoke, and presently heard the great bell
of the metropolitan church. He asked why it was ringing. "Seigneur,"
replied his servants, "it is ringing for prime at the church of our
Lady St. Mary." Then the king raised his eyes to heaven and, lifting
up his hands, said, "I recommend myself to holy Mary, Mother of God,
that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her dear and beloved
Son, our Lord Jesus Christ." With these words he expired.[43]
Peter, King of Aragon, at the approach of death, devoutly confessed
all his sins and received the sacraments. After bidding his family
farewell, he took a cross in his hands, lifted his streaming eyes
to heaven, crossed himself three times, kissed the cross, and then
said, "O Lord our Father, Jesus Christ our true God! into thy hands
I commend my spirit. Deign by thy holy passion to receive my soul
into paradise with the blessed St. Martin, whose festival Christians
this day celebrate." And with his eyes still raised heavenward, he
departed.[44]
When James, an unlearned lay brother of the order of St. Francis,
came to die, he begged pardon of all his brethren, took a wooden
cross from the head of his bed, kissed it, put it to his eyes, and
then said, with tenderness, "Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dulcia
ferens pondera, quæ sola fuisti digna sustinere Regem coelorum et
Dominum," "O sweet wood, sweet nails, supporting a sweet burden! Thou
alone wast worthy to sustain the King and Lord of the heavens." All
around him were greatly astonished, for he was unlearned, and they
had never heard him speak in Latin.[45]
We read in the life of St. Gertrude of the death of a young person,
who from her infancy upward had always shown a real spirit of
detachment from the world. When she found herself in the agony of
death, she bade farewell to all who were present, promising to be
mindful of them before God. Then turning in her sufferings toward the
Heavenly Bridegroom, she earnestly said, "O Lord, who knowest the
most secret thoughts of my heart, thou hast known how eagerly I have
longed to spend all the powers of my being, even unto old age, in thy
service; now that I feel thou desirest to recall me to thyself, all
my desire of serving thee in this world is changed to such an ardent
longing to behold thee, and be united to thee, that death, however
bitter it may be to others, only seems sweet to me." She wished the
sisters to read to her the account of the sufferings of our Saviour
in the Gospel of St. John, and when they came to the words, "He
bowed his head and gave up the ghost," she asked for a crucifix. She
lovingly kissed the feet of the image of our Saviour, thanked him for
his graces, commended her soul to his care, and then slept peacefully
in our Lord.
Our own Mother Seton, though she saw the intense grief of all the
community, and heard the sobs of her daughter, who fainted at her
side, died with the most profound composure. Her whole appearance
indicated peace and resignation. Lifting her hands and eyes to
heaven, she said, "May the most just, the most high, and the most
amiable will of God be accomplished for ever." Her last words were
the sacred names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
The poet Tasso, when informed that his last hour was at hand,
not only received the warning without alarm, but, embracing the
physician, thanked him for tidings so agreeable, and, raising his
eyes to heaven, returned tender and devout thanks to his Creator
that, after so tempestuous a life, he now brought him to a calm
haven. From this time he did not speak willingly on terrestrial
subjects, not even of that fame after death of which through life
he had been most solicitous; but resigned himself wholly and with
the liveliest devotion to the last solemn offices prescribed by his
religion. After confessing with great contrition, and receiving twice
the sacrament with a reverence and humility that affected all the
beholders, he received the papal benediction humbly and gratefully,
saying this was the chariot upon which he hoped to go crowned, not
with laurel as a poet into the capital, but with glory as a saint to
heaven. When he had arranged all his earthly affairs, he begged to be
left alone with his crucifix and one or two spiritual advisers, who
by turns sung psalms, in which he sometimes joined. When his voice
failed, his eyes still remained fixed upon the image of the crucified
Redeemer. His last act was to embrace it closely. His last words,
"Into thy hands, O Lord."
I quote the following account of the death of the great Raphael, in
the form of a letter from Cardinal Bibbiena:
"As I entered, he held in his hand a few spring flowers, which
he let fall as I handed him the rosary. He pressed the cross to
his lips and whispered, 'Maria.' His voice had a peculiar sound,
clear but so low as to be scarcely audible. In the sick-room I
found Count Castiglione, the good fathers Antonio and Domenico,
the painter Giulio, and others. They had moved his couch to
the window which stood wide open. Was it the effect of the
softening light or of the approaching triumph? Raphael had never
appeared more beautiful. His complexion was more roseate, and his
thoughtful, brown artist-eyes larger and more luminous than usual.
I told him what his holiness had requested me to say.
"'And so, dear Raphael,' I concluded, 'may the sympathy which the
highest as well as the lowest feels for you, have the power to
keep you long with us!'
"He smiled sadly.
"'You will, you must!' broke in Castiglione. 'Think what a longing
for art your attainments have awakened within us. Think of your
favorite plan to rebuild classical Rome, with its marble palaces
and temples, its triumphal arches and picture galleries!'
"'Yes, I desired it,' replied he; 'and if God had granted me
longer life, I should have succeeded.'
"'Do you still speak,' said I reproachfully, 'as if you would
never recover?'
"'O father!' said he, 'the separation is not easy for me. If I
could describe to you the longing which I have to retain the
departing day! How my heart cherished the last ray of the sun that
lingered on the hill! How beautiful is the world, how beautiful
the faces of men! And now to take leave of them for ever--to sleep
without hope of seeing the morrow!'
"'Beloved,' said I, 'do not forget that to-day the Saviour died,
that we might throw off this mortal life and put on immortality.'
"'How should I forget Him from whom I have received every thing?'
he answered softly. 'But even this mortal life was beautiful.'
"There was a moment's silence. Castiglione had taken Raphael's
hand. The latter was looking through the open window at the
distant hills that were lit up with the soft glow of the setting
sun. Then his glance wandered, evidently in the direction of his
thoughts, to the blue heavens, where the evening star looked down
quietly like a messenger from the other world.
"'I shall see Dante,' said he suddenly.
"At this moment one of those present took the cover from Raphael's
last picture, which hung on the wall opposite the couch. It is, as
you know, an altar-piece--the _Transfiguration_. The sight of the
immortal work, the dying master, the subject of the picture, and
all remembrances associated therewith, overpowered us, and we wept
aloud.
"His features began to change quickly, he spoke still, but wearily
and without connection, though in significant phrases. Twice we
heard those words of Plato, 'Great is the hope, and beautiful the
prize!' He mentioned your name, too, and begged that you would lay
your hand on his head.... The painter Giulio threw himself on the
couch and wept in agony. I asked the others to kneel with me and
pray for the dying.
"Once more Raphael revived, and, supported by two friends, arose
and looked around with wide-open eyes.
"'Whence comes the sunshine?' murmured he.
"'Raphael!' cried I, and extended both hands toward him, 'do you
recognize me?' For a moment it seemed as if he had not heard me,
then he spoke again, and the holy calm of his expression, in spite
of the death-struggle, bore testimony to his words, 'Happy.'...
He did not speak again; but it was full night when a voice broke
through the long stillness, 'Raphael is dead!'"
He died on Good-Friday, 1520, aged thirty-seven.
Besides these holy and edifying deaths, which might be continued
indefinitely, we all have treasured up in our heart of hearts the
sacred memory of some dear ones whose last words will go on vibrating
in our hearts for ever.
"Oh! soothe us, haunt us, night and day,
Ye gentle spirits far away,
With whom ye shared the cup of grace,
Then parted; ye to Christ's embrace,
We to the lonesome world again;
Yet mindful of the unearthly strain
Practised with you at Eden's door,
To be sung on, where angels soar
With blended voices evermore."
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Faber.
[39] Butler.
[40] Mrs. Jameson.
[41] Lingard.
[42] _Life of St. Wilfrid._
[43] Digby.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Digby.
REPLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLIES TO THE POPE'S LETTER.
"TO PIUS IX., BISHOP OF ROME:
"In your encyclical letter, dated Sept. 13th, 1868, you invite
'all Protestants' to 'embrace the opportunity' presented by the
council summoned to meet in the city of Rome during the month of
December of the current year, to 'return to the only one fold,'
intending thereby, as the connection implies, the Roman Catholic
Church. That letter has been brought to the notice of the two
General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in the United States
of America. Those assemblies represent nearly five thousand
ministers of the gospel, and a still larger number of Christian
congregations.
"Believing, as we do, that it is the will of Christ that his
church on earth should be one; and recognizing the duty of
doing all we consistently can to promote Christian charity and
fellowship, we deem it right to say in few words why we cannot
comply with your invitation, or participate in the deliberations
of the approaching council.
"It is not because we reject any article of the Catholic faith.
We are not heretics; we receive all the doctrines contained in
the ancient symbol known as the Apostles' Creed; we regard as
consistent with Scripture the doctrinal decisions of the first six
oecumenical councils; and because of that consistency we receive
those decisions as expressing our own faith. We believe the
doctrines of the Trinity and Person of Christ as those doctrines
are set forth by the Council of Nice, A.D. 325; by that of
Chalcedon, A.D. 451; and by that of Constantinople, A.D. 680.
"With the whole Catholic Church, therefore, we believe that
there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost; and that these three are one God, the same in
substance, and equal in power and glory.
"We believe that the Eternal Son of God became man by taking
to himself a true body and a reasonable soul; and so was, and
continues to be, both God and man, in two distinct natures and one
person for ever. We believe that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
is the Prophet of God, whose teachings we are bound to receive,
and in whose promises we confide. He is the high-priest of our
profession, whose infinitely meritorious satisfaction to divine
justice, and whose ever-prevalent intercession is the only ground
of our justification and acceptance before God. He is our King, to
whom our allegiance is due, not only as his creatures, but as the
purchase of his blood. To his authority we submit; in his care we
trust; and to his service we and all creatures in heaven and earth
should be devoted.
"We believe, moreover, all those doctrines concerning sin, grace,
and predestination, known in history as Augustinian. Those
doctrines were sanctioned by the Council of Carthage, A.D. 416; by
a more general council in the same place, A.D. 418; by Zosimus,
Bishop of Rome, A.D. 418; and by the third Oecumenical Council at
Ephesus, A.D. 481. It is impossible, therefore, that we should be
pronounced heretical without including the whole ancient church
in the same condemnation. We not only 'glory in the name of
Christians, but profess the true faith of Christ, and follow the
communion of the Catholic Church.' Still further to quote your own
words, 'Truth must continue ever stable and not subject to any
change.'
"Neither are we schismatics. We believe in true 'Catholic unity.'
We cordially recognize as members of Christ's visible church on
earth all who profess the true religion, together with their
children. We are not only willing, but earnestly desire, to
maintain Christian communion with them, provided they do not
prescribe as a condition of such communion that we should profess
what the word of God condemns, or do what that word forbids. If
any church prescribes unscriptural conditions of fellowship, the
error and the fault are with such church, and not with us.
"But, although neither heretics nor schismatics, we cannot
accept your invitation, because we still hold the principles
which prompted our 'ancestors,' in the name of primitive
Christianity, and in defence of the 'true faith,' bravely to
protest against the errors and abuses which had been foisted
upon the church--principles for which our fathers were, by the
Council of Trent, representing the church over which you preside,
excommunicated and pronounced accursed. The most important of
those principles are the following:
"FIRST. That the word of God, as contained in the Scriptures of
the Old and New Testament, is the only infallible rule of faith
and practice. The Council of Trent, however, demands that we
receive, _pari pietatis affectu_, the teachings of tradition as
supplementing and interpreting the written word of God. This
we cannot do without incurring the condemnation which our Lord
pronounced on the Pharisees when he said, 'Ye make void the word
of God by your traditions.'
"SECOND. The right of private judgment. When we open the
Scriptures, we find them addressed to the people. They speak to
us; they command us to search their sacred pages; they require
us to believe what they teach, and to do what they enjoin; they
hold us personally responsible for our faith and conduct. The
promise of the inward teaching of the Spirit to guide men into the
knowledge of the truth, is made to the people of God; not to the
clergy exclusively; much less to any special order of the clergy
alone. The Apostle John says to believers, 'Ye have an unction
from the Holy One, and know all things; and the anointing which
ye have received of him abideth with you, and ye have not need
that any man teach you.' (1 John ii. 20 and 27.) The Apostle Paul
commands us (the people) to pronounce accursed an apostle, or an
angel from heaven, who teaches any thing contrary to the divinely
authenticated word of God. (Gal. i. 8.) He makes the people the
judges of truth and error as accountable to God only; he places
the rule of judgment in their hands, and holds them responsible
for their decisions. Private judgment, therefore, is not only a
right, but a duty, from which no man can exonerate himself or be
exonerated by others.
"THIRD. We believe in the universal priesthood of believers; that
is, that all men have, through Christ, access by one Spirit unto
the Father. (Eph. ii. 18.) They need no human priest to secure
their access to God. Every man for himself may come with boldness
to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in
time of need. (Heb. iv. 16.) 'Having, therefore, boldness to enter
into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way,
... and having a High-Priest over the house of God, we may all
draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having
our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies
washed with pure water.' (Heb. x. 19-22.) To admit, therefore,
the priesthood of the clergy, whose intervention is necessary to
secure for the people the remission of sins and other benefits of
redeeming grace, we regard as involving either the rejection of
the priesthood of Christ, or a denial of its sufficiency.
"FOURTH. We deny the perpetuity of the apostleship. As no man can
be a prophet without the spirit of prophecy, so no man can be an
apostle without the gifts of an apostle. Those gifts, as we learn
from Scripture, are plenary knowledge of the gospel, derived by
immediate revelation from Christ, (Gal. i. 12,) and personal
infallibility in teaching and ruling. What are the seals of the
apostleship, we learn from what St. Paul says to the Corinthians,
'Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all
patience, in signs, in wonders, in mighty deeds.' (2 Cor. xii.
12.) Modern prelates, although they claim apostolic authority,
do not pretend to possess the gifts on which that authority was
founded; nor do they venture to exhibit the 'signs' by which
the commission of the messengers of Christ was authenticated.
We cannot, therefore, recognize them, either individually or
collectively, as the infallible teachers and rulers of the church.
"Much less can we acknowledge the Bishop of Rome to be Christ's
vicar upon earth, possessing 'supreme rule.' We acknowledge our
adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to be the only head of the
church, which is his body. We believe that although now enthroned
at the right hand of the Majesty on high, he is still present with
his people on earth, whom he governs by his word, providence, and
spirit. We cannot, therefore, put any creature in his place, or
render to a man the obedience which is due to Christ alone.
"As the Church of Rome excommunicates all those who profess the
principles above enumerated; as we regard these principles to be
of vital importance, and intend to assert them more earnestly
than ever; as God appears to have given his seal and sanction to
these principles by making the countries where they are held the
leaders in civilization--the most eminent for liberty, order,
intelligence, and all forms of private and social prosperity--it
is evident that the barrier between us and you is, at present,
insurmountable.
"Although this letter is not intended to be either objurgatory
or controversial, it is known to all the world that there are
doctrines and usages of the church over which you preside which
Protestants believe to be not only unscriptural, but contrary
to the faith and practice of the early church. Some of those
doctrines and usages are the following, namely, The doctrine of
transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass; the adoration
of the host; the power of judicial absolution, (which places
the salvation of the people in the hands of the priests;) the
doctrine of the grace of orders, that is, that supernatural power
and influence are conferred in ordination by the imposition of
hands; the doctrine of purgatory; the worship of the Virgin Mary;
the invocation of saints; the worship of images; the doctrine of
reserve and of implicit faith, and the consequent withholding the
Scriptures from the people, etc.
"So long as the profession of such doctrines and submission
to such usages are required, it is obvious that there is an
impassable gulf between us and the church by which such demands
are made.
"While loyalty to Christ, obedience to the holy Scriptures,
consistent respect for the early councils of the church, and the
firm belief that pure 'religion is the foundation of all human
society,' compel us to withdraw from fellowship with the Church of
Rome, we, nevertheless, desire to live in charity with all men. We
love all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. We cordially
recognize as Christian brethren all who worship, trust, and serve
him as their God and Saviour according to the inspired word. And
we hope to be united in heaven with all those who unite with us on
earth in saying, 'Unto him who loved us, and washed us from our
sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto
God--to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.' (Rev.
i. 6.)
"Signed in behalf of the two General Assemblies of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
"M. W. JACOBUS, PH. H. FOWLER,
"_Moderators_."
We will preface our remarks upon the foregoing document by a few
words of explanation to our European readers respecting the bodies
whose joint manifesto it is.
The Presbyterians of the United States are quite distinct from the
Congregationalists of New England, the descendants of the English
Puritans, although the two fraternize together to a great extent.
The Presbyterian Church is the daughter of the Kirk of Scotland,
having its home in the Middle States, whence it has spread through
the country, especially toward the West. Its government is more
vigorous than that of any other church except the Methodist, and its
doctrinal strictness surpasses that of all other large societies.
Its clergy number about five thousand, having, we believe, somewhere
near a half a million of communicants, and three or four times as
many members in a looser sense. It is, on the whole, the first
denomination as regards respectability, taking the country generally,
and in all its periods of history; and, if we reckon its allies,
the Dutch Reformed and Congregationalist societies, with it, as
representing the Calvinistic phase of Protestantism, this is the
system which has possessed the same vantage-ground in the British
colonies of the United States that the Episcopal Church has taken in
England.[46] Some thirty years ago, the Presbyterian body split into
two great divisions by means of a dispute about rigid and moderate
Calvinism, and rigid or lax enforcement of the Presbyterian polity.
The two General Assemblies which recently met in this city adopted
a plan of reunion which will probably receive general acceptance,
and fuse the Old and New School Presbyterians together again in one
body. The letter to the pope proceeds from the two assemblies, acting
through their respective moderators in virtue of a resolution which
passed both houses, which explains the fact that it is signed by two
distinct presiding officers. With these few prefatory remarks, we
pass to the consideration of the document itself.
We are very glad that the Presbyterian Assemblies have replied to
the pontifical letter. We are sure that all calmly-reflecting persons
will agree that in doing so they have fulfilled an obligation of
_bienséance_ required by a sense both of the dignity of the Roman see
and of their own respectability. They have shown, therefore, more
courtesy and more self-respect than either the Eastern patriarchs
or the Protestant Episcopal bishops, and, so to speak, have taken
the water of their haughty rival, the General Convention. The tone
of the document is remarkably dignified and courteous, and it will
undoubtedly be so considered by the prelates of the council and the
Holy Father. We would suggest to the gentlemen whose signatures are
appended the propriety of making an authentic translation of the
document into the Latin language, and of sending this, with the
original, in an official manner, properly certified, to Rome. The
editor of the _Evangelist_ seems to apprehend that the addressing of
this letter to the pope might be deemed officious or impertinent. We
can assure him, however, and all other persons concerned, that this
is by no means the case. The address of the pope to all Christians
not in his communion was no mere formality, but perfectly sincere
and in earnest. The Nestorian and Eutychian, as well as the Greek
bishops, were invited to present themselves at the council, although
these are far less orthodox on the fundamental doctrines of the
Trinity and Incarnation than the Presbyterian Assemblies have proved
themselves to be, by their full confession of agreement with the
faith of the Roman Church on these articles. It is true that the
above-mentioned bishops were invited on a different footing--not
merely as Christians, but as bishops. The reason of this is, that
their episcopal character is recognized and does not need to be
proved. Therefore, all they have to do is to purge themselves of
heresy and schism in order to be entitled, _ipso facto_, to take
their places as constituent members of the council, with the right
of voting, which will most certainly not be otherwise conceded
to them. The Protestant bishops could not be invited as bishops,
because their episcopal character is not recognized. If some of
them should appear to put in their claim, we have no doubt, from
the tenor of letters published in the English Catholic papers,
that they would be received with great respect and consideration,
and be allowed to argue their cause either before the council or
a special congregation. It is not yet too late for some of them,
who have sufficient courage and confidence in their cause, to do
it, and we hope they will. Presbyterian Protestants make no claim
to episcopal succession or ordination. Consequently they, by their
own admission, must be regarded by the council, and by all who
adhere to the hierarchical principle on which the first six councils
were constituted, as destitute of any right to a position above
that of laymen. Nevertheless, they are the heads and teachers of
large and respectable societies, equal in point of fact, in our
judgment, to those who call themselves bishops or presbyters in
episcopally-governed Protestant societies, and therefore entitled to
respect and consideration. No doubt they would receive all this were
they to present themselves at the council as representatives of their
religious societies. Of course, a council cannot consent to treat as
open questions any matters already defined by previous councils, or
enter into a controversial discussion of doctrines with men who, like
Dr. Cumming, would wish to go there as champions of Protestantism.
The only attitude in which it would be proper to appear at a council
would be that of persons asking for an explanation of the Catholic
doctrines, and of the motives on which they are based, which implies
a disposition to reconsider anew the grounds of the original
separation. That this disposition does not exist at present very
extensively we are well aware, and cannot, therefore, expect that
there will be at the approaching council any thing like a conference
of the heads of Protestantism with the Catholic prelates. There may
be other councils, however, at no very distant period, where this
may take place with very great advantage, and with the happiest
results in reuniting all Christians within the one fold of Christ's
church. It is something, however, to get from a great religious
society like the Presbyterian body of the United States a formal
statement of the reasons why they remain separated from the Catholic
Church, in the shape of a letter to the pope. Such a statement has
very great interest and great weight, and the document before us
is certainly far superior to the encyclical of the Pan-Anglican
Synod, or the other manifestoes of a similar kind which have been
issued from various Protestant assemblies. The amiable editor of the
_Evangelist_ compares it to "a hand of iron under a velvet glove."
We will venture, however, until some stronger and more authoritative
hand shall be stretched out to measure strength with it, to submit
our own, though a small one, to its grasp, wearing a glove of the
same material. We do this without fear and without ill-will, though
our remarks are only those of a private individual, having no force
beyond the reason that is in them. We do it the more readily, and
with greater interest, as the writer of this article is the son of a
former moderator of one of these assemblies, and is indebted to that
respectable body for some special prayers which it charitably offered
for his spiritual welfare.
The first and most striking feature noticeable in the letter is the
exculpation from heresy and schism which it puts forward. Nothing
could show more clearly that the compilers feel that there is a
_prima-facie_ case against them. They are in the attitude of men
who have broken off from the body of Christendom, separated from
the communion which once included all Christians, and put forth
a doctrine special to themselves, thus "condemned by their own
judgment,"[47] as St. Paul says is characteristic of those who turn
aside from sound doctrine. We do not judge any one individual among
the Presbyterians to be a formal heretic or schismatic. The authors
of the separation lived centuries ago, and men of this generation
have been placed in their state of separation by the act of their
ancestors. We speak, therefore, only of material heresy and schism,
not in an offensive sense, but from the necessity of being distinct
and adhering to the phraseology which the document before us itself
uses. We are obliged to say, therefore, that the very exculpation
it presents is a proof of the existence of that state of heresy and
schism which is denied. The fact of having departed from the doctrine
and communion in which the authors of Presbyterianism were educated,
and which is that of the great body of Christians descending in
unbroken continuity from the past, is acknowledged. The excuse given
is, that the church had erred, added to the faith, changed the law,
and was therefore herself responsible. The very justification which
is made establishes the truth of the charge. It establishes the fact
that particular members of the church set up a private doctrine and
a private organization against the Catholic doctrine and communion,
which is precisely what is meant by heresy and schism.
It is thus that a person who refuses to submit to the judgment
of the church judges himself. So long as he professes to submit
to the church, and disputes not the binding authority of her
doctrines, but their proper sense and meaning, his case is one for
adjudication, like that of Pelagius; but as soon as he rejects
the acknowledged doctrine of the church, defined by a competent
tribunal, as erroneous, he at once pronounces himself an alien from
the commonwealth, and by his own sentence forfeits all the rights
of his citizenship in it. The Presbyterian judicatories act on this
principle. The test of heresy with them is denial of the doctrines
defined in their confession of faith. The individual, or even the
congregation, is not the final authority. The presbytery, the synod,
the general assembly, are all legislative and judicial courts,
deciding questions of doctrine and discipline with authority, and
exacting submission from each individual clergyman and layman as a
condition of church fellowship. They avow, therefore, and act on
the principle, that the revolt of the individual against church
discipline is, _ipso facto_, schism, and his revolt against church
doctrine, _ipso facto_ heresy; so that by his very declaration, that
he is in the right and the church in the wrong, he judges himself
as a schismatic or heretic. Yet they themselves in judging their
own refractory members have given a far more signal example of that
self-judgment which St. Paul speaks of. For they have acted in the
same manner toward the church universal as their own condemned
members have acted toward them, and have thus sentenced themselves
in pronouncing upon these their ecclesiastical censure.
This principle is capable of a more amplified statement and
application. Heresy consists essentially in the denial of a part of
the Catholic faith, coupled with the profession of the remaining
parts. It is an affirmation and negation, in the same breath, of
the same principles. It is, therefore, self-judged, because the
affirmation which it makes in general terms of the truth of the
Catholic faith, and of a greater or lesser number of the distinct
dogmas of the faith, condemns and contradicts the denial which it
makes of some one or more particular doctrines of the same faith.
Moreover, every sect condemns all the other errors condemned
by the church, except its own; so that, taking all heresies in
the aggregate, they condemn and destroy each other; according
to the declaration of holy Scripture, _mentita est iniquitas
sibi_--unrighteousness has proved false to itself.
We find, therefore, that the spokesmen of the Presbyterian assemblies
admit the obligation of Catholic unity, profess their belief in
the Catholic church and the Catholic faith, and yet do not venture
to assert that the Presbyterian family is the Catholic Church, its
doctrine the Catholic faith; that it possesses unity in itself, and
that all those Christians who are separated from it are bound to
seek admission into its fold. They take what they implicitly admit
to be an exceptional, abnormal position; they profess themselves to
be only a fragmentary portion of Christendom, and excuse themselves
for their isolation on the plea that there is a chasm separating
them from the great mass of Christians which they cannot pass. When
we examine the special points made in this plea more closely, we
find that all the positive affirmations of doctrine are affirmations
of truths held in common with the Catholic Church, and that all the
statements peculiar to the authors of the document are protests or
negations. The Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption, etc., are palpably
Catholic doctrines. The Augustinian doctrines of sin, grace, and
predestination, so far as they are the statements or definitions
of Catholic faith in opposition to the heresy of Pelagius, are
dogmas, and so far as they are the opinions of a school, are sound
opinions, though open to discussion. No Catholic writer ever dreamed
of censuring them as heretical. The inspiration and infallibility
of the holy Scriptures, the priesthood of all Christians, the
right and duty of private judgment, the illumination and inward
guidance of individual believers by the Holy Spirit, are all sound
Catholic doctrines, when properly explained and harmonized with
other doctrines. These are the principal positive statements of
the document, and they add nothing whatever in the shape of new,
living, constructive principle of belief or organization to that
sum of truth which the Presbyterians have received from the old
tradition. Although some of the negations of Catholic doctrine are
put in a positive form, yet it is only the mode of expression which
is positive, while the substance of the proposition is a negation.
For instance, the proposition that Scripture is the sole authority,
so far as it enunciates a truth which is positive, declares the
inspiration and infallibility of the Scripture; but so far as it
goes beyond that declaration, is really a negation of the authority
of the unwritten word, expressed in the form of an affirmation that
the Scripture is the _sole_ authority. So, also, the whole of what
is peculiar to the Presbyterian doctrine as distinguished from
the Catholic, in the affirmation of the universal priesthood, the
rights of individual reason, the inward light of the Holy Spirit, is
derived from a negation of the hierarchical and sacerdotal orders,
the authority of the church, and her infallibility. Then follows a
long list of Catholic doctrines which are denied, and which the Roman
Church is accused of having added to the ancient creed. We cannot be
expected to go into the details of these doctrines singly, for the
purpose of proving that the church has defined and proposed them on
sufficient motives.
There are plenty of books in which the reverend gentlemen of the
Presbyterian Church, and the intelligent laymen who adhere to
that communion, can find the full and complete statement, with
the proofs, of every portion of Catholic doctrine and discipline.
For certain portions of it, they need not look beyond the bounds
of Protestantism. The divines of the Church of England, and the
controversial writers of the High-Church party in the United States,
have proved the hierarchical principle, the episcopal succession,
the grace of the sacraments, the real presence, and other doctrines
akin to these, with solid arguments from Scripture and history which
the advocates of Presbyterianism have never been able to refute. A
section of the clergy of another Presbyterian communion, to wit, the
German Reformed, have been led by their study of Scripture and the
ancient authors to adopt and advocate similar principles totally
contrary to those of the reverend moderators. They certainly cannot
put forth their statements, therefore, as certain and evident facts
or truths, admitted by all who have studied the Scriptures and
ancient authors, even among Protestants. Their reiteration of them
consequently establishes nothing, proves nothing; in no wise can be
alleged as a justification of their position. It is a mere defining
of their position, which gives no new information whatever to any
person, and therefore the discussion may justly be relegated to the
arena of regular polemics.
So far as the reverend doctors have made use of arguments, however,
it is proper that we should pay some attention to these, and this
they have done in regard to a few points, although with the brevity
to which the nature of their document restricted them.
(1.) Their first argument is against the authority of tradition.
It is that, by receiving the teachings of tradition as of equal
authority with the teachings of Scripture, we incur the condemnation
pronounced by our Lord against the Pharisees when he said, "_Ye
make void the word of God by your traditions_." The answer to this
is obvious. The traditions of the Pharisees were private, human,
recent traditions, not derived from the oral teaching of Moses
or other inspired prophets, but from the unauthorized glosses or
interpretations of the text of the law, made by the rabbis and
scribes exercising their own private judgment. They were contrary
to the true sense of the law, subversive of it, and maintained
in opposition to the authority of Jesus Christ, the divinely
commissioned interpreter and judge of doctrine. What has this to do
with a tradition descending from the oral teaching of Jesus Christ
and the apostles, agreeing with, explaining, and supplementing the
teaching of the Scripture? The canon of the New Testament is such a
tradition, and the Presbyterians have, consequently, if their opinion
is a true one, incurred the condemnation of the Lord by receiving it.
That traditions which are derived from the pure, original source of
revelation are to be received, is proved by the commandment of St.
Paul to the Thessalonians to "_Stand firm: and hold the traditions
which you have learned, whether by word or our epistle_."[48] This
is precisely what Catholics do. We hold all that has been delivered
to us by the apostles, whether transmitted through the Scriptures
or through tradition. Presbyterians reject apostolic and Catholic
tradition, but make void the word of God; that is, they pervert or
deny a great portion of the doctrine revealed by Jesus Christ through
the apostles, by their own human, unauthorized traditions. Thus, they
reject a number of the books of the Old Testament declared canonical
by the same apostolic tradition which fixes the canon of the New
Testament, by following the tradition of the Jews. They follow, in
respect to divers other essential points of doctrine as well as
discipline, the traditions of Luther and Calvin. Practically, they
are entirely under the control of this human, modern tradition, which
is designated by the reverend moderators as "the principles which
prompted our 'ancestors,' in the name of primitive Christianity, and
in defence of the 'true faith,' bravely to protest against the errors
and abuses which had been foisted upon the church;" that is to say,
against Catholic and apostolic tradition.
(2.) Their second argument is in favor of the right of private
judgment--that is, according to their way of understanding this
right--against the authority of the teaching church as the final,
supreme judge of doctrine. The argument in brief is, that the
Scriptures address the individual mind and conscience of every reader
in an authoritative manner, commanding him to search their pages,
promising him the divine illumination to understand their meaning,
holding him responsible to God for the belief and practice of their
teachings, and forbidding him to listen to any teacher who shall
present to him any doctrine differing from that which they contain.
Suppose we grant all this. What then? Presbyterianism gains nothing.
It cannot defend itself against other forms of Protestantism. It
cannot establish its system either of doctrine or discipline.
Moreover, an able, profound, biblical scholar, such as is Dr. Pusey,
for example, will be able to prove from the Scripture the greater
number of all those Catholic doctrines against which these divines
protest as errors of the Roman Church. Among these doctrines thus
contained in Scripture, and ascertainable even by one who begins
his search properly qualified and disposed, but without any other
authority except private judgment to direct him, are the authority
of tradition and of the church. What now is the individual to do?
The Scripture, as he supposed when he began to search it, teaches
the right and duty of private judgment upon its own contents, as
the exclusive method of learning the truths revealed from heaven to
men. He has followed this method conscientiously, relying on the
promise of divine illumination made to all sincere seekers after
truth, and he now finds himself referred to another authority,
that of the church. What is he to do now? Reject the Scriptures
and the whole system of positive Christianity as inconsistent
and self-contradictory? The Presbyterian divines cannot sanction
this conclusion. Then he must conclude that he had imperfectly
apprehended what the Scriptures teach respecting the right and
duty of the individual to judge of their true sense and meaning,
and must harmonize in some way their teaching on this point with
their teaching on the other point, namely, the authority of the
church. This is the way in which many have reached the church by
the road of private judgment. They have opened and searched the
Scriptures, assuming at the outset that they are the inspired word
of God, addressed to them as individuals and intelligible to their
own private reason, assisted by grace, without any extrinsic aid or
interpreter. The fact that they have been able to reach the same
knowledge of their true sense which the Catholic Church imparts to
her children in a shorter way, is no proof, however, that this is
the ordinary way in which the Lord intended that men should gain
this knowledge. We deny totally that it is. It is very easy to
assume the Scriptures in arguing with Catholics who affirm their
authority. We deny, however, that the assumption is justifiable on
Protestant principles. When the reverend doctors quietly say, "We
open the Scriptures," we meet them at once with a denial of their
logical right to assert that there are any Scriptures to be opened.
If the word of God is manifested to each individual directly through
a book, without human media, that book must be a miraculous work of
God created by him immediately, and authenticated by some manifest
sign from heaven. The Bible is not such a book. It is not a book at
all, in the strict sense of the word. It is a collection of writings
made by the church, authenticated as divine by her authority, and
therefore always presupposing her existence and the existence of that
faith and those laws by which she is constituted the church. To say
that the exhortations of the sacred books of Scripture are addressed
to each individual singly, without reference to the church of which
he is a member or of the doctrine which she teaches, is about as
sensible as to say that St. Paul's direction to "salute Andronicus
and Junias" was directed to the moderators of the two assemblies.
If all explicit teaching of the revealed truths were contained in
the Scripture, exclusively, and sufficiently for the immediate
instruction of all the faithful, the Scripture would clearly and
distinctly affirm this, and furnish us with a description of itself
or canon specifying the books which are inspired, duly authenticated
by St. John, the last of the apostles. It does nothing of the
kind, and the moderators are forced to allude to certain indirect
references which are made to the authority of the Scripture in some
of the sacred books. These indirect statements are not without
their value as proofs of the Catholic doctrine of inspiration, but
they by no means support the position of the moderators. Our Lord
directs the unbelieving Jews to search the Scriptures of the Old
Testament, because they testify of him, the living teacher, as
the Vicar of Christ now points to the pages of the New Testament,
where Protestants may find the proofs of his divine commission and
authority. St. Timothy is commended as having studied the same
Scriptures of the old law, which made him "wise unto salvation" by
preparing him to receive the oral teaching of St. Paul. St. Peter
incidentally informs us that the epistles of St. Paul are a portion
of the inspired Scripture, when he gives the caution to all who read
them that in them "_are some things hard to be understood, which
the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to
their own perdition_."[49] All this is in perfect harmony with the
teachings of the Catholic Church, as any one may see without our
taking the trouble to develop the matter any further.
The promise of the Holy Spirit to the faithful generally is not
in the least contrary to the doctrine of the infallibility of
the teaching church, and the duty of obeying its decisions. It
is a necessary condition to the participation in this light of
the Holy Spirit that an individual should be a member of the body
of Christ--the church--in which the Spirit resides. He must be
instructed and baptized in the faith, the true doctrine must be
given to him, the key to the sense of the sacred writings must be
furnished him, the criterion of discernment between true and false
interpretations of the revelation of Christ must exist in his mind,
in order that he may exercise his judgment rightly. Under these
conditions, the private Christian can possess the faith in himself in
such a way that he needs no man to tell him what the true doctrine
of Christ is, and detects at once the heresy of any false teacher,
even though he be a priest or bishop, who attempts to preach his
own new and private opinions contrary to the Catholic faith. This
is that supernatural, Catholic instinct pervading the church and
keeping the faithful loyal to their religion, under the longest and
bloodiest persecutions, like those which the Irish and the Poles have
endured with such martyr-like constancy. This "unction from the Holy
One" was in the fathers of the first six councils, by the confession
of the reverend doctors themselves, and in the universal church
which adhered to the true faith attacked by the Arian, Nestorian,
and Monophysite heretics. And if so, this same unction must have
enabled them to understand the true doctrine of the apostles on all
other points of the Christian faith, as well as on the Trinity and
Incarnation. If this unction is in all true Christians, then they
must all believe alike, in all ages and all places. Why, then, do the
Presbyterian divines reject the doctrines of the fathers of the first
six centuries, and the doctrines of all Christendom during these and
subsequent centuries, until the revolution of the sixteenth century,
concerning the sacraments, the priesthood, and other matters of the
most essential character?
(3.) The third argument is, that the doctrine of a human priesthood
implies a denial of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, or of its
sufficiency. We are surprised to see such manifestly inconsequent
reasoning in a document coming from a body of such high repute for
ability and learning as the Presbyterian clergy. The affirmation
that the Bible is the word of God implies, then, a rejection of
Jesus Christ as the Word of God, or a denial of his sufficiency.
The recognition of human teachers and pastors implies, then, the
rejection of Jesus Christ as the teacher and pastor, or the denial
of his sufficiency. What, then, are the five thousand Presbyterian
pastors but so many usurpers of the titles and offices of Jesus
Christ? Christ and the Holy Spirit are sufficient for each man
without any human intervention. Away, then, with your church, your
sacraments, your assemblies, your ministers, your confession of
faith, your bibles. Every man is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and
has unrestricted access to God through Jesus Christ, as the fanatics
said in the time of Luther, who had no argument by which he could
refute them, and was forced to call on the princes to use the more
efficacious weapon of the sword, and to sweep away the too consequent
but most unfortunate imitators of his own example by a deluge of
blood.
(4.) The fourth argument is, that there can be no apostolic
succession in the church, because bishops do not possess the gifts
and perform the miracles of the apostles. This argument merely
proves that the apostles can have no successors in that which was
peculiar to themselves as founders of the church, or fathers in
the spiritual order of the line of succession. They alone received
immediately from Jesus Christ the revelation of Christian faith and
Christian law. Their successors received this deposit from their
hands without any power to add to it or take from it. There is no
necessity that the successors of the apostles should receive by
a new revelation that which they have received from the apostles
themselves by tradition. They need not the gifts necessary to
originate, but only those necessary to preserve and continue the
work of Christ, committed to the apostles. It is, therefore, no
argument against the infallibility of the episcopate in preserving,
proclaiming, explaining, or protecting against contrary errors the
deposit of faith received from the apostles, to say that it lacks
the immediate inspiration necessary to an infallible proclamation of
revealed truths at first hand. The miracles wrought by the apostles
as signs of their apostleship authenticate this revelation as taught
by their successors to the end of time, and seal the credentials
of the episcopal line which they founded throughout its entire
length without any new miracles. As to the fact of the establishment
of the hierarchy containing the three distinct grades of bishop,
priest, and deacon, deriving its power through episcopal ordination
from the apostles, it is enough to refer to the learned works of
Protestant authors who have fully proved it. Catholic authors do not
teach that bishops succeed to the extraordinary apostolic office
of the apostles, but only to their episcopal office. We hold that
St. Peter alone has successors to the plenitude of his apostolic
power, with the reservation of so much as only the founder of the
line could or need exercise. To this supremacy of the successor of
St. Peter the divines object still more strongly than to the power
of the episcopate, that it substitutes the pope in the place of
Jesus Christ. It is very hard to find by what logical process this
conclusion is reached. The divines admit that St. Peter and the
apostles were the infallible teachers and rulers of the church. If
their argument is sound, they cannot admit this without substituting
the apostles in the place of Jesus Christ. If the church could
be governed by a human, infallible authority for half a century,
without prejudice to the supreme authority of Jesus Christ, it
could be governed for an indefinite number of centuries in the same
way, without any such prejudice. It is quite irrelevant to this
side of the question whether this authority is exercised by one or
by several, over local churches or over the church of the whole
world, Christ is the head of all particular churches as well as of
the church universal. If it is compatible with this headship of
Christ that a man should be the pastor of a single congregation,
it is quite as much so that he should be a pastor over a diocese,
over a province, over a nation, over a collection of nations, or
over the whole world. The reverend doctors have therefore confused
the issue. It is simply a question of fact as to what constitution
Jesus Christ actually gave the church, and what powers he delegated
to his ministers. The Presbyterians, on their own principles, are
bound to prove from the New Testament alone that our Lord did not
give the church an episcopal and papal constitution, but did give
it a Presbyterian polity. When they made their case out against the
Episcopalian divines on the one side, and against such Catholic
authors as Archbishop Kenrick, Mr. Allies, F. Bottalla, and F.
Weninger, on the other, it will be time to listen to them, but not
sooner.
We have done with the arguments of the reverend doctors, but we
cannot withhold an expression of surprise at the signs of the divine
sanction to their principles which they appeal to, apparently in lieu
of the miracles which are wanting, or of the four marks by which
the church used to be known in the old times. That men believing in
total depravity and election should appeal to the temporal prosperity
of nations--the mass of whom, on their principles, are hopelessly
doomed to everlasting fire, there to be tormented for ever, even for
those actions which the world calls virtuous and brilliant--as a
proof of the divine favor, is somewhat strange. We wonder they did
not add, "Behold we are rich and increased in goods; in this great
capital where we are assembled, our churches are principally in the
upper portion of the city, handsomely carpeted, richly cushioned, and
principally frequented by the wealthier classes. Indeed, we are the
church both of the _élite_ and of the elect."
We have done with the arguments by which the reverend doctors sustain
their protest against the Roman Church, and will devote the rest of
our space to a consideration of those by which they sustain their
claim to be recognized as orthodox, Catholic Christians. Their line
of argument is certainly remarkable, and must strike many of their
readers with surprise. It is an attempt to take the position held
by the Catholic Church during the first five or six centuries, to
identify their cause with that of the early fathers and councils,
to shelter themselves under the ægis of a Catholic creed, to
use Catholic language, appropriate the Catholic name, and make
profession of adhering to Catholic unity and the communion of the
Catholic Church. There must be a wonderful charm and power about
this word when even Presbyterians are compelled to bow before its
majesty, and to acknowledge that their cause is lost if they cannot
indicate their right to inherit and blazon on their escutcheon this
glorious, world-subduing title. "The name itself of Catholic keeps
me," says St. Augustine, the favorite doctor of the Presbyterians.
The divines of the assemblies are, therefore, compelled by the very
attitude they have taken, in justifying themselves as orthodox
believers before the holy see, to claim that appellation which
was the distinctive mark and sign of that ancient body whose
faith is acknowledged by both sides as the standard and criterion
of orthodoxy. This language is, however, evidently only adopted
for the occasion. It is not the natural, ordinary phraseology of
Presbyterians, who are not accustomed to teach and preach to their
own adherents the necessity of Catholic unity, communion in the
Catholic Church, agreement with the first six councils, or to call
their doctrine the Catholic faith. These words must have a definite
meaning. They are not mere phrases or pure synonyms of other words
equally significant of the same ideas. Catholic is not merely another
name for true, or scriptural, or apostolic. It will not do for one
to give out a system of doctrine which he has constructed by his
own private judgment upon the Scripture, or learned by a private
illumination, or taken from the writings of a particular set of
religious teachers, and call it Catholic because he thinks it is
proved to be true, and ought to be universally received. The term
Catholic includes in its signification completeness and integrity of
truth; but its specific sense is concrete, visible universality of
outward profession, the _quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_,
of Vincent of Lerins. This universality in time and space is the mark
and outward manifestation of the integral, divine truth, and those
who accept it and proclaim it as such must necessarily hold that
the indefectibility of the visible church is guaranteed by Almighty
God. It is unmeaning for those who hold that the body of the visible
church, as organized under its legitimate pastors, can apostatize
from the pure faith of the gospel, and the line of true believers be
continued invisibly, or in a small, separated section of professed
Christians, to make use of the word Catholic, or pretend to agree
with the fathers of the first six centuries in their profession of
Catholicity as opposed to heresy. The marks of the church, unity,
sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity, if they are really marks, as
declared by all who profess to be Catholics in the genuine, natural,
commonly accepted sense of the word, must be so burnt into the object
they are intended to mark that they are ineffaceable and easily read
and known by all men. The young Mohican hero Uncas was recognized
by the aged Indian chief and prophet Tamenund as the legitimate
heir of the noblest and most royal line of the northern sachems, by
the figure of its sacred emblem, the tortoise, tattooed upon his
breast. The name _Catholic_ is, as it were, the _totem_ which marks
a peculiar ecclesiastical race, descended from the ancient fathers,
indelibly stamped upon its breast as the sure sign of its legitimacy.
It is in vain, therefore, that the Presbyterian doctors vaunt their
acceptance of the Catholic symbol, the Apostles' Creed, including
as one of its essential articles, "I believe the holy, Catholic
Church." They do not believe this article in the Catholic sense,
as understood by the whole ancient church, namely, as designating a
well-known, specific, visible body, and implying a full belief of
all the doctrines authoritatively proclaimed by that body. Among a
thousand others we take one text of St. Augustine, which we have hit
upon at random, expressing this sense: "Catholica fides est autem
hæc--constitutam ab illo matrem ecclesiam, quæ Catholica dicitur,
ex eo quia universaliter perfecta est, et in nullo claudicat, et
per totum orbem diffusa est." "The Catholic faith is this--that the
mother church was constituted by him, which is called Catholic,
because it is universally perfect, and is diffused through the whole
world."[50] Moreover, the profession in general terms of holding the
Catholic faith, or the avowal even of a creed completely orthodox,
avails nothing to those who are outside the Catholic communion, and
make their orthodox profession a pretext for keeping up a separate
organization in opposition to the legitimate pastors. All the
ancient separatists made a loud outcry that they were true, genuine
Catholics. The modern ones, from the Greeks to the Presbyterians,
imitate their example. There is a power residing in that name which
all acknowledge. They feel that their claim to be truly apostolic,
orthodox churches, holding the pure doctrine and order established by
the apostles and apostolic men, will be utterly demolished if they
yield the title to Catholicity. Hence they have tried to arrogate it
to themselves, and to affix nicknames to the Catholic Church. But
their efforts have always been in vain. When they are divested of
the disguises and borrowed raiment which they throw around their own
proper form, the sign on their breast is wanting, and none of the
black paint with which they strive to smear it over can mar or cancel
the indelible imprint which the numberless lancets of persecution
have cut and graven into the very flesh of the majestic figure of
the true body of the Son of God. Hear once more St. Augustine: "The
Christian religion must be held by us, and the communion of that
church which is Catholic, and is called Catholic, not only by its
own members, but also by all its enemies. For, whether they will or
no, the very heretics themselves and the offspring of schisms, when
they talk not with their own friends, but with people outside, call
the Catholic Church nothing else but Catholic. For they cannot be
understood unless they designate her by that name by which she is
denominated by the whole world."[51]
The profession of agreement with the first six councils is equally
fallacious. Why the first six and not the last twelve? The Catholic
Church receives all the eighteen councils with equal veneration, and
is now preparing herself to celebrate the nineteenth, which will
have equal authority with the first, because the fathers will be
equally congregated together in the Holy Ghost, with the presence
of Christ in the midst of them, and the inexhaustible virtue of his
promise, _Lo! I am with you always, even to the consummation of the
world_. The separated bodies of Christians are ranged in an ascending
series of protesters against these councils, who reject a greater
or lesser number according to the date or reason of the judgment
pronounced in them against their several errors. The Greeks reject
all but the first seven, the orthodox Protestants all but six; the
Monothelites rejected the sixth, the Eutychians the fourth, the
Nestorians the third, the Macedonians the second, the Arians the
first, in which they are followed by the modern Unitarians. It is
evident enough that there is a principle of consanguinity binding
together all these families, from those who reject the Council
of Nice to those who repudiate the Council of the Vatican. The
Catholic Church is marked by the unbroken continuity of oecumenical
councils. The other churches reject as many of these councils as
seems good in their eyes, and accept the decisions of the others
because they are in accordance with their own opinions. They do not
submit to the councils; they judge them, and ratify such of them as
they approve. The profession made by the Presbyterian doctors of
receiving six councils amounts, therefore, to nothing as a plea in
defence of their orthodoxy. Upon their own principle, they might
just as rightfully reject these six councils as the seventh. They
really reject and deny their authority as councils, they repudiate
the very principle on which they were constituted, and affirm their
own supreme right to judge. They acknowledge the truth of the
doctrines which they defined; but it is purely on the ground that
these doctrines agree with their own private opinions respecting
the sense of the New Testament. The whole of this portion of the
letter, in which the Presbyterian doctors attempt to use Catholic
phraseology, is evidently nothing but a piece of special pleading.
They do not venture the assertion that the church of the period of
the six councils--that is, the three centuries and a half between
the years 325 and 680--was identical in doctrine or discipline with
the Presbyterian Church of the United States, which they represent.
Nevertheless, they seem to wish to leave the impression on the
minds of their readers that the fathers, the councils, the common
belief and practice of those ages sustain their cause. The editorial
comment in the _Evangelist_ boldly asserts that such is the case.
The small number of scholars well read in patristic theology who
are found among the Presbyterian clergy will probably not risk
their reputation for learning or put at hazard the success of their
cause by any such rash statement. As a general rule, however, the
Presbyterian clergy and theological students, though well-educated
scholars in the college curriculum and certain special professional
branches taught at the seminaries, have not turned their attention to
ancient Christian history and literature. They know much more about
Turretin than they do about St. Augustine. It is quite probable,
therefore, that a very general impression prevails among them, that
they are really on the whole in conformity with the doctrine of the
great fathers of the ancient church. This is a delusion which a
little study of the original works of the fathers themselves would
soon dissipate. We could not desire any thing more efficacious for
this purpose than the study of St. Augustine, called by Luther
the greatest teacher whom God had given to the church since the
days of the apostles, and revered in a most remarkable way by all
those who follow the Lutheran and Calvinistic confessions.[52]
The deeply learned men and independent thinkers among Protestants
understand this well, and the notion of the half-learned sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries that Protestantism can take its stand on
the era of the first six councils is a mere remnant of mist that
hangs for a while over portions of the landscape, but is destined
soon to disappear before advancing light. St. Augustine is
diametrically opposed to the first principle of Presbyterianism and
all Protestantism, that principle which is the dominant idea of the
Presbyterian reply to the Pope.
He says, "Non crederem Evangelio nisi me commoveret Ecclesiæ
Catholicæ auctoritas," "I would not believe the gospel unless the
authority of the Catholic Church moved me to do it."[53] Prof. Reuss,
of the Protestant theological faculty in the University of Strasburg,
says that "St. Augustine's principles come to their result in this
famous saying, diametrically opposed to the fundamental principle
of all Protestant theology."[54] Julius Müller, another professor
in the same faculty, says of all the fathers: "This must be openly
admitted by every unprejudiced historical investigation, that not
merely the ecclesiastical theology of the middle ages, but even the
patristic theology of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, are,
upon every point that is a matter of dispute between Catholicism and
Protestantism, more on the side of the former than of the latter."[55]
Presbyterians cannot make any thing by an appeal from the Council of
Trent to the first six councils. They have no connection either by
continuity of thought or succession with historical Christianity,
and their only resource is to maintain that the true interpretation
of the gospel, which was lost before the Council of Nice assembled
under the auspices of Constantine, has been restored by Calvin,
Luther, and Knox. How they can account for the fact that the church
which, on their theory, had subverted the apostolic church, was
unerring in its definitions of the great dogmas of the Trinity,
Incarnation, Original Sin, and Grace, is only known to themselves.
It is only by a happy inconsistency that orthodox Protestants have
preserved that portion of the Catholic faith which they have received
by tradition from their ancestors. The true Protestant principle of
individualism necessarily tends to master the contrary principle of
faith in the minds of Protestants, and to produce the doubt, the
denial, the hostility to all positive dogmas which marks the most
advanced rationalism. All this was working in Luther himself, whose
brain contained the seeds of the bitter fruit which has ripened in
the minds of his followers in our day. He himself was the prey of
doubt, and gave utterance to the strongest expression concerning the
absurdity of the principal doctrines of his own system.[56] Thrown
upon the discussion of what the Scripture is, and what it means,
with nothing to appeal to but private judgment, Presbyterianism, or
any other form of Protestantism, has nothing to look forward to but
an endless shock and collision of conflicting opinions, which can
have no other effect than the resolution of the whole mass into its
component atoms.
We have concluded our remarks upon the reply of the Presbyterian
moderators to the pope's letter. While we have been forced to point
out distinctly that the principle of its protest against the doctrine
and authority of the Roman Church is totally subversive of all
faith, yet we willingly acknowledge that some of the most sacred and
fundamental dogmas of faith are held and professed by the respectable
bodies in whose name it was written. Their doctrine is like a superb
ancient _torso_ to which plaster limbs and head have been added.
Although their principle is equally destructive of all faith with
that of the Arians, yet we by no means regard them in the same light.
The authors of heresies who mutilate the faith are very different
from those who receive and hold with reverence this mutilated faith.
Their intellectual and moral worth, their philanthropy and zeal for
God, the value of many most excellent works which they have written
in defence of the divine revelation, we fully appreciate. That
great numbers have been and are in the spiritual communion of the
Catholic Church we sincerely hope. We desire that the schism which
has separated them from our visible communion may be healed, not
only for their own spiritual good, but also that the Catholic Church
in the United States may be strengthened by the accession of that
intellectual and religious vigor which such a great mass of baptized
Christians contains in itself. Above all things, we desire that all
who acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Sovereign
should be united in mind, and heart, and effort, in order that his
universal kingdom over the nations of the earth may be established as
speedily and as completely as possible.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] Besides the great bodies above mentioned, there are in
the United States eight or ten other societies resembling the
Presbyterian Church in order and doctrine, and numbering some
hundreds of thousands of communicants.
[47] Epistle to Titus, iii. 11.
[48] 2 Thess. ii. 14.
[49] 2 Peter iii. 16.
[50] De Genesi ad Litteram. Op. Imp. Cap. 1, §§ 2 and 4.
[51] De Ver. Rel. v. 2.
[52] The reader is referred to a treatise entitled _Studies in St.
Augustine_, which is published in the same volume as the _Problems of
the Age_, at the office of this magazine.
[53] Con. Ep. Manich. i. 6.
[54] Sur Le Canon, p. 169.
[55] Quoted by Döllinger. _Church and Churches_, p. 298.
[56] See Audin's _Life of Luther_, vol. ii. p. 418, where references
and quotations are given.
A HERO, OR A HEROINE?
CHAPTER I.
A HERO.
"You say he is handsome?"
"No; I said he was nice-looking, and gentlemanly, as of course
Philip's cousin would be. But you know I judge only from a
photograph."
"How vain you are of your lover, Jessie! You would be just as proud
of him if he had not his handsome face, of course?"
"Of course I would."
"I will not marry a handsome man! However, tell me some more about
the cousin. Why should he bury himself at Shellbeach? I should think
a man of any aspiration could not endure such a contracted life. I
suppose he is as gossiping and weak-minded as a country minister."
"My dear Margaret!"
"I know you think me uncharitable. The truth is, men exasperate me;
and then remember I am twenty-five and not engaged."
"You have no one to blame except yourself."
"I don't know about that. Is it my fault that young men are all
alike, and inexpressibly wearisome? Seriously, I am tired of being
Miss Lester, and mean to change my condition. Why do you look at me
in that peculiar manner?"
"I was wondering how you would suit the doctor."
"Does he want to be suited?"
"I should think so, from his letter."
"Jessie, give it to me this moment. I must see it."
"I will not give it to you. I will read you something he says. No,
you are not to look over my shoulder; sit down peaceably, or else I
shall put the letter in my pocket."
"Why Jessie, what is the matter with you? I never saw you so
dignified in all my life. I suppose the letter is all about Philip,
and that is why you choose to keep it to yourself. Well, here I am,
meek as a lamb, actually submitting to you. It is too absurd!"
With these words, Margaret, who had seated herself on a sofa near her
friend, jumped up, seized the letter and tore it open, while Jessie
held out her hands imploringly, but did not offer to resist her
impetuous companion. Margaret glanced at the first two pages.
"Philip, Philip. Don't be alarmed; I would not be hired to read it.
Let me see; what is this? 'Why was not I fortunate enough to have
you myself?' Aha! you have two irons in the fire, you artful little
creature?"
"Don't be silly, Margaret, but read on."
"I don't know about this; I shall not scruple to warn Philip, if
you are getting yourself into trouble. What comes next? 'But since
so charming a companion is beyond my reach, cannot you undertake to
find me some one as much like you as possible, or at least just as
nice, who would not be afraid of a quiet, hard-working life with a
poor doctor, in the dullest of country towns? A sweet temper is, of
course, the first requirement; moderate personal attractions; some
sense and experience, and a little money for herself. Of course I
want a great many more things, but these will do for the present. So
if you know of a young woman, strong and healthy--to think that a
doctor should have almost forgotten those important items!--send her
down here, will you? and I will marry her on the spot.' Well, I will
not read any more of your letter, unless there are any more of this
modest man's requirements. But seriously, Jessie, I think I would do
very well for him, and you may write and tell him I am coming."
"Margaret, of course you are in fun? How can you look so sober? You
would not surely mean any thing so improper."
"I am in very earnest, and really it is quite refreshing to be so.
I am tired out with my third season of balls, operas, Germans, and
all that kind of nonsense, and I would like to see a little of real
life. I have not quite made up my mind what I will do; but I will go
up-stairs for an hour, and then I will tell you what to write to the
doctor. My good old aunty shall be favored with a long visit from her
niece, whom she has not seen for five years; and in the mean time,
you are not to say one word to your mother or to any one else. Do you
hear, Jessie? Come, promise me."
The promise was given, and Jessie was left in great perplexity for
nearly two hours, when a message was brought her that Miss Lester
would be glad to see her up-stairs. She found her friend at a little
writing-table, in a sort of boudoir between their rooms, where the
girls used to work and read in the mornings, and receive calls from
their intimate friends.
"There!" said Margaret, rising as she entered; "sit down there,
Jessie, and read what I have written; you are to copy it in your
answer to the doctor's letter. Read it aloud to me; I want to hear
how it sounds."
Jessie read as follows:
"I highly approve of your wish to marry, and think I can help
you in the matter. I have some one in my mind that comes pretty
well up to your different requirements--at least those you have
specified; for of course I cannot pretend to answer for the
'great many more things' which you want, but have not mentioned.
Moreover, this young woman is a dear friend of mine, and is
willing to marry, if she can be satisfied. She says she will go
to Shellbeach and stay with a relation, in order to see and to
be seen, on condition that you will be at her disposal to a
reasonable degree during her visit, which she will limit to six
months, and that, at the end of that time, you will write her a
true statement of how you stand affected toward her. On her part,
she will promise to marry you, if by that time you both desire it.
I may as well tell you that her name is Margaret Lester, and that
she will stay with old Miss Spelman, with whom you are on such
friendly terms. This whole matter, you will understand, is to rest
between you, Miss Lester, and myself."
Jessie was too much accustomed to her friend's eccentricities to
be very much astonished by this unexpected termination to their
morning's conversation. She disapproved, however, of the whole
affair, and remonstrated as strongly as she dared; but she had grown
to defer to Margaret's stronger will, and now felt it impossible to
oppose her. "Besides," as Margaret said, "what could be more natural
than that she should go to stay with old Aunt Selina? It was only
what she ought to have done before." And, to crown all, Jessie was
informed that a letter had been already written and sent to Miss
Spelman, and Margaret intended to go, at any rate.
The discussion lasted some time, and ended by Jessie's unwillingly
placing herself at the desk and writing a letter, which, though it
contained the exact words of the copy given above, also enlarged,
in Jessie's own affectionate language, on her friend's good
qualities, attractions, and popularity, and had nearly alluded to
the very handsome income, which would so far exceed the doctor's not
unreasonable demand. But that Margaret cut short; it was enough, she
said, that he should believe her to have a little pin-money; for of
course he would expect to support the family, if he had any spirit,
and if he had not, she would have nothing to do with him. Poor Jessie
groaned over Margaret's downright speeches, but did not attempt to
change her decision. The letter was at last sealed and sent, and
Jessie could only wonder at Margaret's high spirits for the rest
of the day. She had never looked handsomer, or been more amusing,
or played more finely than on that evening, when Mrs. Edgar gave a
little party. She was so kind to the young men, that they all were
charmed with her and with themselves, and quite expanded under the
warmth of her bright smiles.
Jessie, on the contrary, was preoccupied and distressed. She felt
uncomfortable at what she had done, at the thought of the secret
she was keeping from her mother, and troubled when she remembered
the approaching separation from her friend. How she wished Margaret
were not so hard to please! Why could she not like that pleasant Mr.
Lothrop, who was so handsome, so rich, and who would so gladly have
availed himself of the smallest encouragement to make her an offer?
How kindly she smiled on him to-night! Why couldn't she be satisfied
with pleasing him? And then what was the chance that this fastidious
girl would take a fancy to Dr. James, whom, though she had never
seen, she believed to be plain and unattractive? What could come of
it, except trouble for the poor man? Of course he would fall in love
with Margaret, while she would think of nothing but amusing herself.
"And I shall have been the instrument of bringing disappointment and
unhappiness to Philip's cousin and dearest friend."
All these thoughts kept Jessie in a very unenviable state of mind
during the evening, and she was thankful when she could escape to her
own room, and write a long letter, before going to bed, to her absent
lover; of course not disclosing Margaret's secret, but disburdening
her mind of many anxieties on her friend's account.
While the answers to the letters written in so impulsive a manner are
being expected with some impatience, a few words should be said on
the history and circumstances of Margaret Lester, about whom a good
deal is to be written in these pages.
CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY.
Margaret's mother died when she was about fourteen years old, and her
father, unwilling to take the direction of his daughter's education,
placed her at an excellent boarding-school, where no expense was
spared to give her every advantage, and where, being perfectly happy,
she remained until she was nineteen. It was at this school that she
formed the friendship with Jessie Edgar which was afterward to be so
great a benefit to her. Jessie was the second daughter of a wealthy
New York family, and it was at her home that Margaret passed her
first Christmas vacation, and all her succeeding holidays.
Jessie's gentle, yielding nature found great enjoyment in Margaret's
boldness and self-reliance, and Margaret, who began by protecting
and supporting the other's timidity and shyness, ended by heartily
admiring and loving her sweet and unselfish room-mate. They became
"inseparables," in school-girl phrase, and when school-days were
over, and Mr. Lester thought that the best completion to his
daughter's education would be a little travelling, Jessie's mother
consented to her accompanying her dear friend. For two years they
visited beautiful places together, and felt their friendship drawn
more closely, as their sympathies became enlarged.
But this happy experience came to a sudden and sorrowful end. Mr.
Lester had a dreadful fall while they were coming down a mountain,
and, after lingering a few weeks in extreme suffering, died, leaving
the two girls quite alone in a foreign land. They had a sad journey
home; he had been the life and soul of their expedition, and, having
travelled a good deal before, had been able to be the pleasantest
kind of guide for them. It had been hard to prevail on Margaret to
leave the Swiss town where he lay buried in the little graveyard; but
Jessie's love prevailed, and they came safely back together to Mrs.
Edgar's hospitable house. Once there, the kind friends would not let
Margaret think of leaving them, and she had grown to consider the
pleasant house almost as her own home.
It was long before she recovered her high spirits, but at
twenty-three she was induced to go into society with Jessie, who
had waited for her. She was, from every point of view, a desirable
match--young, rich, and fine-looking; gay and good-humored. Pleased
with herself and her surroundings, she thoroughly enjoyed her first
season, and was unmistakably a belle. The next year, however, was
a disappointment; there was a sameness in her life and amusements
that became irritating to her. Jessie was engaged to be married, and
Margaret found herself jealous of her friend's divided confidence.
But, though she said to Jessie that she would like to follow her
example, "to be able to sympathize with lovers' rhapsodies," like the
princess in the fairy-tale, she found fault with all her admirers;
criticised them, nicknamed them, and discouraged their attentions as
soon as these became exclusive. A very gay summer at a fashionable
watering-place followed this wearisome winter, and Margaret entered
upon her third season disposed for any thing but enjoyment. No
one who saw her in society would have guessed her real character.
High-spirited, gay, liking to astonish and slightly shock her friends
by her behavior, a little of what is termed "a trainer," there lay
underneath this careless exterior a depth of real sentiment that only
one or two people whom she truly loved were aware of. To be loved for
herself, and to love, were her aspirations.
First, she was perfectly aware of her own attractions, and believed
she could have almost any man of her acquaintance, if she should
choose to make herself agreeable to him; but she could not believe in
any one's disinterested attachment to her.
"They all know I am rich," she would say to Jessie; "they would not
take me and poverty. Now, I would be glad, if I were poor, to marry
a poor man; then I could believe in his love, and we could have some
trials to bear together."
Secondly, she earnestly wished to love; but this, with her, meant a
great deal. She wanted to look up to some one, to honor and believe
in him; she thought of this much more than of the sentiment; for she
knew she should find that with the rest. She was tired of taking the
lead, and of having her own way. How gladly would she submit herself
to a noble guide! She imagined herself almost as a queen stepping
down from her throne, resigning sceptre and authority, and saying,
with Miss Procter,
"Love trusts; and for ever he gives, and gives all."
"But these young men," she said to Jessie, "are so intensely
matter-of-fact! They would think my brain softening, if they knew
what I wanted and expected to find." At another time she said, "If
I could only find something a little different! I think I will go to
Australia, marry a squatter, and see all the queer animals. My money
would be worth while out there."
It has been said that Margaret had a maiden aunt living at
Shellbeach, her mother's only sister. This lady she had seen but once
since her return from abroad, when Miss Spelman came to New York on
purpose to take her niece home with her. Margaret, however, was not
willing to leave the Edgars, and so her aunt returned to Shellbeach,
a little offended by her niece's preferring strangers to her own
flesh and blood, but, on the whole, perhaps relieved that her quiet
home was not to be invaded by a person of so startling a character as
she conceived Margaret to be. A visit had been agreed upon between
them; but this had been declined and deferred so many times that the
old lady, again offended, had given up proposing it. If it had not
been for Margaret's curiosity about Jessie's friend, Doctor James,
she certainly would not have remembered her duty to her mother's only
sister; while it is equally true that, if it had not been for that
convenient relative, she could not for a moment have entertained the
idea of taking the lion (that is, the doctor) by storm in his den.
For of any likelihood of being captivated herself in this adventure,
it must be acknowledged, she had no thought. Her curiosity, her
strongest weak point, was thoroughly excited about this doctor.
That a man with a fine education, a profession, and enough money to
live respectably, (all which information she had obtained from her
friend,) should isolate himself in a stupid little sea-side town,
because he liked to do so and enjoyed it, was to her a mystery which
demanded to be cleared up at once. How she should like to astonish
this hermit! How she would dress! How she would shock his ideas of
propriety, if he had any! He would be surprised and overpowered, of
course, and then--well, then she would beat a graceful retreat, and
come back to Jessie's wedding in the best of spirits.
"I shall take Cécile and the Marchioness and Jimmy, and you will
see that we shall have an exciting time. I shall make myself so
delightful to dear Aunt Selina that she will not hear of my staying
less than six months; and I shall study housekeeping, economy, and
medicine, and experiment on Cécile when she is sick."
"Why do you take the Marchioness?"
"How can you ask? I must have exercise; and who knows but I may make
myself useful by visiting the distant patients when the doctor's
horse is tired?"
"But why not take Lady Jane? She is much handsomer."
"She is too fine for my purpose. I don't want to seem wealthy, you
know; and the Marchioness goes mousing along, her head level with her
tail, in true Morgan style, and looks any thing but extravagant. Then
Jimmy will keep us awake, and bark at Aunt Selina's cats when other
excitement fails."
"How do you know she has any cats?"
"Of course she has cats! Half a dozen, I have no doubt. Who ever
heard of an ancient maiden living alone without cats? How I wish the
answers would come!"
They did come, in due time; Miss Spelman's first, cordially welcoming
her niece to Shellbeach for any length of time, or for good and all.
Margaret felt rather ashamed, as she saw how her aunt had fallen
into the trap, and how completely her own good faith had been taken
for granted. She mentally resolved that, if it depended on her, Miss
Spelman should not repent her generosity; she would make herself as
delightful as she could, cheerfully give up her own convenience, if
necessary, and make up for her long neglect of so disinterested a
relation.
This letter arrived on the third day of expectation; the doctor's,
not until a full week had elapsed. "A doctor's time is not his own,
and the number of invalids at Shellbeach has been greater than
usual." It would be well to give the letter in full, at least so much
of it as relates to Margaret and her proposition.
"If it were the first of April," wrote the doctor, "I should find
no difficulty in comprehending your letter; as it is not, I am
inclined to believe that I am being 'sold;' but I do not believe
practical jokes are in your line, and you write apparently in good
earnest. Therefore, if your original friend seriously recommends
such an experiment as this, I can but acquiesce, of course. Miss
Spelman also informs me that her niece 'is coming;' so I feel that
any opinion I may express on the subject is superfluous. However,
it seems to me that there should be an equality of position in
this matter, and I will say that I agree to Miss Lester's terms,
provided she agrees to mine. I have but one condition, and it
is her own: that at the end of the time she appoints she will,
simultaneously with me, that is, at a given hour, write me 'a
true statement of how she stands affected toward me'--which
means, of course, tell me honestly if she loves me. I have a
right to say that I think this plan doubtful in its purpose, its
practicability, and its probable results."
Not a word more was given to the subject; the letter spoke briefly of
Philip, of Jessie, and terminated.
Margaret of course saw this letter in the same forcible way that she
saw the other. Jessie thought she would be offended, and so she was,
but that did not have the result Jessie secretly hoped for.
"He is not well-bred, and evidently thinks a great deal of himself.
How I shall enjoy snubbing him!"
"You are going?"
"I should think so! Do you suppose I shall disappoint Aunt Selina for
such rudeness as this? But I will have no more second-hand dealings."
And so saying, she seized pen and paper, and wrote as follows:
"DR. JAMES: I accept your condition. Six months from next Monday,
which will be July 18th, at eleven o'clock in the evening, we will
write our letters.
"MARGARET LESTER."
Jessie was not allowed to see this note, which was at once dispatched
to Shellbeach.
"And now," Margaret said, "comes the fun of arrangements. We will go
up-stairs and consult about my clothes, and all that I shall take
with me."
CHAPTER III.
PASSENGERS FOR SHELLBEACH.
Dr. James's letter had been received on Tuesday; the following
Monday, at about three o'clock on a bleak and gray January afternoon,
Margaret, accompanied by her maid and terrier dog, arrived at
the little way-station of Shellbeach, and ascertaining that
Miss Spelman's carriage had not arrived, walked into the little
waiting-room and to the airtight stove, which was, however, barely
warm. Her teeth chattered, and she stamped her feet and rubbed her
hands; the French maid followed, bearing bag and shawls, shivering
and casting forlorn glances around her. The little dog alone seemed
in good spirits, and ran about, inquiring into every thing, and
snuffled suspiciously at a man who sat wrapped in a shawl, reading a
book, and at two small boys, who were partaking of frost which they
scraped off the windows.
"Well, we're all frozen, so it's no use saying it's cold," said
Margaret, walking about the room; "but I'm famished, and as cross as
a bear."
"O mademoiselle! it is terrible," cried Cécile, with a sort of little
shriek.
"It is a forlorn place, certainly; let me see if my provisions are
exhausted," Margaret said, taking the bag. The little boys at the
window became deeply interested, and paused in their unsatisfactory
repast.
"One seed-cake! How exciting! What! you want it, do you? Well, take
it," she said to the little dog, who jumped upon her, and while he
devoured it she watched him, saying reflectively, "Little pig! if I
were dying of starvation, and it were my last crumb, he would eat it.
How do I look, Cécile? I am all covered with cinders."
"Yes, mademoiselle; you look like a fright."
Margaret smiled, and returned to the platform, where she made
inquiries of a man who was looking helplessly at her trunks how they
were to be got to Miss Spelman's. Having arranged that matter, she
asked,
"Can't I have that buggy to drive up in? Does it belong to the man
inside there?"
"It belongs to him," said the driver, with a grin, and Margaret
turned away in despair.
"The train was early," said a boy standing by, "and perhaps the young
lady's team will be along soon."
Margaret, who had her purse in her hand, at once presented the
boy with twenty-five cents, as an acknowledgment for the ray of
encouragement he had volunteered. He bore it philosophically, and she
returned to the room.
"Cécile, it's only two miles to Miss Spelman's; suppose we walk; it
will be warmer than waiting here. Give me the bag, and you take the
shawls, and we will inquire the way."
She accompanied these words with a look of indignation at the man who
was fortunate enough to have a buggy at his command; but to her great
surprise, he rose, and, approaching her, said:
"The train was early, and I expected Miss Spelman's carryall; but it
is evidently not coming, and you must manage with my buggy."
"You are Doctor James?" said Margaret with an inquisitive look.
"You are right; and you are Miss Lester," he replied. "I am sorry you
have had to wait in the cold; but when I saw you had a companion, I
thought it would be wiser to wait for the carryall. Miss Spelman said
she should probably send; but asked me, at any rate, to meet you. I
will drive you home and come back for your maid."
"But it's so cold here, and Cécile feels the cold more than I. Could
we not possibly go three in the buggy? Would it be too much for the
horse?"
The doctor smiled for the first time; he was pleased by her thought
for her maid.
"You and I are good-sized people, but she is small. I think Rosanna
can stand the weight; but it will not do to start cold. I propose we
go over to the store and get thoroughly warmed."
"Oh! delightful," cried Margaret, "the thought of being warm again is
almost too much for me."
The doctor led the way across the railroad track to a kind of variety
store, where there was certainly no reason to complain of the cold.
The air was stifling, and conveyed to Margaret's sense of smell the
impressions of soap, molasses, peppermint drops, brown paper, and
onions, at one breath; but she was too grateful to be warm even to
make a face, which under other circumstances she would doubtless
have done. Seated in chairs before the energetic little stove, she
and Cécile toasted hands and feet while the doctor went for the
horse. When he returned, they were quite ready to start, and the
bag being stowed away in the box, they put on all their wrappings,
by the doctor's advice, and packed themselves into the buggy. Jimmy
curled himself under his mistress's feet, the buffalo robe was well
tucked in, and the sturdy-looking mare started with her load with a
willingness which showed she too was glad to have her face toward
home. It was cold enough in spite of their comfortable start, and,
to make matters worse, Margaret's veil blew away; but she would not
have alluded to it for the world. The doctor seemed absorbed in his
driving, and Cécile occupied with her aching toes; and allowing it
to escape seemed to her so feminine and weak-minded a proceeding
that she bore the cutting wind in silence rather than expose her
carelessness. Her gratitude to the doctor for rescuing her from her
uncomfortable situation, and the genial feelings produced by her
warming at the stove, now gave way to reflections on this man's
previous behavior, as he sat wrapped in his shawl, in the cold little
waiting-room. What a hard-hearted, outrageous monster he must be! Why
did he not speak at once, and be sympathetic and kind? Of course he
was studying her, and no doubt criticising her, at that unfavorable
moment. It chafed her to think to what an inspection she had been
exposed, and how utterly she had been at a disadvantage. At last she
broke the silence by saying abruptly,
"Does not extreme hunger add to one's capacity for being cold?"
She intended to embarrass him by reminding him of his profession, but
she was disappointed; for he answered at once, with a slight movement
of his mouth, not however a smile,
"Extreme hunger? Yes; especially such as the poor feel, who may have
tasted nothing for two or three days, nor meat for as many months.
How long is it since you breakfasted?"
"At eight," she replied shortly.
The doctor, remembering with a little compunction that he had both
breakfasted and dined, hastened to say,
"That is a long time for a person accustomed to regular meals. I am
quite sure you will find a better reception in the matter of dinner
than you experienced at the station."
"I do not understand why my aunt did not send for me."
"Nor I; she said to me, 'I shall send the carryall, if possible;
but you will oblige me by meeting my niece, and if any thing should
happen to prevent my man's being there, you will bring her home.' I
am sure only you and the dog were expected."
"Yes, I said my maid would probably come in a day or two; but she was
able to get ready to accompany me."
Then there was silence once more, till Dr. James drew up his horse
before a well-clipped, flourishing hedge, and, getting out, opened
a small brown gate, and carried the bag and shawls up the neat
gravelled path. The short afternoon had come to a close, though it
was scarcely four o'clock, and the firelight shone pleasantly out
from the windows, where the curtains were drawn aside. The doctor
deposited the wrappings on the steps, said hastily, "Good-by, Miss
Lester, I shall call on you as soon as possible," and was in his
buggy and driving quickly away before she had time to utter a word.
She had stood for a moment, expecting the door to be thrown open at
once; she even wondered that her aunt was not awaiting her on the
threshold; but as no one appeared, she gave the bell a rather decided
pull. Instantly the door was opened by the neatest of maids, in a
white apron, who beamed upon the guests while she took the bag and
shawls. Margaret walked at once toward the bright fire, which shone
out of an open door, and there in the middle of the room stood a
little lady, who met and embraced her, saying in an agitated voice,
"Welcome, my dearest niece, a thousand times!"
"Thank you, aunt; I am almost perished! How pleasant the fire looks!"
Miss Spelman was trembling in every limb, but Margaret's decided
tones, quite free from emotion of any kind, composed her. She drew
an easy-chair to the fire, and then turned to Cécile, who stood
hesitating in the hall.
"You brought your maid, did you not, dear Margaret? That is good; it
will make you more at home. Ann, I hope you will make Miss Lester's
maid quite comfortable. Her name, my dear? Oh! yes, Cecilia." And
as the woman disappeared, she continued, "I am glad you have so
respectable and steady an attendant, my dear; when I heard she was
French, I feared she might be very dressy and flippant, and get
restless in our quiet little household."
She gently helped Margaret to lay aside her things; then, as she
seated herself in the comfortable chair and held out hands and feet
to the grateful flame, the little lady once more placed her hand on
her shoulder, and kissed her forehead.
"For all the world like your poor father," she said softly. As
Margaret was silent, she continued, "But I must tell you why I did
not send for you. I beg your pardon, my dear child, for such apparent
neglect. The fact is, I have a new man, and dare not trust him alone
with the horses, and I have a cold and was afraid to go out this raw
day. If it had been milder, nothing should have kept me at home; but
as I had asked our good doctor to meet you, I knew you would really
be provided for. Then, I thought it would seem so uncourteous to let
him give his valuable time to going to the station for you, and then
disappoint him of the pleasure of bringing you home. You see, I did
not look for your maid. O dear! how very rude you must think me." And
the poor lady stopped short, quite appalled at her own conduct, the
impropriety of which for the first time impressed her.
"No matter now, aunt, I'm safely here."
"And thankful I am to have you, dear; but to think that I should have
allowed you to drive home alone with a strange young man!"
"I was not alone with him."
"But I did not know that; and, O dear me! how did you all get here?"
"Why, sandwiched, three in the buggy, of course; Cécile in the
middle; it was the shortest way. He wanted to bring first me and
then Cécile, but I would not let him. However, don't worry about it
now, aunty. I would like to go to my room, I think, and make myself
presentable; I am covered with cinders."
"Certainly. You will find a fire there, and, I hope, every thing you
want. If not, you must let me know." So saying, Miss Spelman led the
way up-stairs to a good-sized room, where a little wood fire was
burning and candles were lighted. The trunks were already there, and
Cécile was unpacking and laying out what her mistress would want.
"We have tea, generally, at six; but I have ordered it to-day at
five, for I know you need both dinner and tea. Cecilia will find me
down-stairs if you want any thing." With these words, Miss Spelman
withdrew and closed the door.
"I have arrived at that period of starvation," remarked Margaret,
"when I am resigned to wait indefinitely for my food, provided it
comes at last." At that moment a knock announced Ann, who brought in
a waiter with cup and saucer and tea-things. "Miss Spelman thought a
cup of tea would be warming."
Very soon Margaret was sitting in her wrapper and slippers, in a
little rocking-chair, sipping her hot tea, while Cécile brushed and
arranged her hair. She began to feel fatigued; but that was rather
a delightful sensation, now that she had nothing to do but rest and
be comfortable. Before five, she went down to the parlor, where her
aunt once more received her with a little speech, and then came
the looked-for tea-dinner. It appeared that Miss Spelman knew what
was good as well as Mrs. Edgar, and Margaret, as she surveyed the
well-spread table, the spotless linen, the shining glass and silver,
the temptingly brown chicken before her, the spongy biscuit and
delicate cake, was glad to find that, at least, she would not starve.
"I begin to feel a sea-air appetite already," she exclaimed; "and O
aunty! how good every thing tastes."
Miss Selina was pleased, for she was a hospitable hostess; and when
she and Margaret were established before the fire, curtains drawn,
and the lamp shining brightly, there was a mutual good feeling
between them, which, from that time, nothing disturbed. Margaret,
as she leaned back in her chair, holding a little screen before her
face, had now time to examine her aunt more closely, and she studied
her with considerable curiosity. She was decidedly _petite_, and so
very neat and trim about her dress that she made Margaret think of a
fairy godmother. Her hair was white, although she was not yet sixty;
she wore a cap, and soft lace round her throat; her eyes were dark
and bright, and her smile very sweet and cheerful. She must have
been pretty, Margaret thought, and like that dear mother so well
remembered.
After answering a good many questions about her life in New York,
Mrs. Edgar, Jessie, and her lover, Margaret said rather abruptly,
"You see a good deal of Doctor James, don't you, aunt?"
"Oh! almost every day, my dear. He has to drive very often over to
Sealing, and my house is right on his way. He feels quite attached
to me, because, once when his sister was staying with him, she was
sick, and I used to go and sit with her; and at last, when she was
getting well, and was able to be moved, I got her to come and make me
a visit; for I thought it must be dull for her, with her brother away
so much. So he used to come every day to see about her, and he got
into the way of dropping in as if he belonged here, and he has kept
it up ever since."
"What sort of a girl was the sister?"
"Oh! she was a charming creature--pretty and picturesque; young, too,
and very clever for her age; and the doctor thought every thing of
her, though he used to find fault with her and try to improve her,
and was always bringing some hard book for Lucy to read, or asking
me to tell her this, or remind her of that, and not let her forget
the other, till I used to think the poor child would have been vexed
with both him and me; but she used to laugh and shake her pretty
brown curls, and make the best of it all. I grew to love that child,
Margaret, and I confess to you, if you had not come to me, I would
very probably have offered to adopt her, and do for her as if she
were my own. I did not suppose you needed any money, my dear," she
added in an apologetic tone.
"Don't mention your money, please," cried Margaret. "Dear aunty, I
can't manage what I've got now; why should I want any more? By all
means make the pretty Lucy an heiress, and let her come and live
here, near her brother."
Miss Spelman shook her head, and Margaret continued,
"But where does Lucy live, and where does the family come from
originally?"
"They have had a country-seat in Maine for years, and are very nice
people, I would think; the doctor, at least, is a perfect gentleman.
He has been in the war, was wounded two or three times; and when it
was all over, came here because the old doctor was about to move
away. They knew each other, and so Dr. James just quietly took the
other's place, and has a great deal more than filled it ever since."
"But why does he choose to live in a little place like this? Jessie
told me something of his benevolence; but that doesn't seem reason
enough to keep him here."
"That is the only reason, I am sure--that, and attachment to the
place and people. He does an immense amount of good, my dear; why,
he attends all the poor people, for miles around, for nothing!"
"But then what does he live on?"
"Certainly not on his fees. He has a little money of his own--enough
for such a place as this--and that leaves him free, as he says,
to have no hard money feelings between him and his patients. The
consequence is, he is worshipped by the poor, and, in fact, by almost
every one both here and at Sealing; they give him no peace, and he
has to work like a horse all the time."
"I hope he enjoys it."
"He says he does; but I think the life is too hard for him."
"And does he intend to live here indefinitely?"
"He never alludes to living anywhere else; but I hope he may marry
some day, and then, no doubt, he would go where his wife wished."
"Don't you think his wishes ought to be hers?"
"Certainly, my dear Margaret, I think so; but then, I believe I'm
old-fashioned." Miss Spelman was pleased, that was evident; and then
she said she knew her niece was a fine musician, but she was perhaps
"too tired to touch the instrument?"
Margaret smiled, and though she was tired certainly, and sleepy
besides, she went with a very good grace to "the instrument," which
she found to be an old piano, excellent in its day, but now out of
tune and jingling; the keys were yellow, and one pedal was broken,
but no speck of dust was to be seen inside or out, or on any thing
else in Miss Selina's house. Margaret, without thinking much about
it, played some very modern music, such as she generally played in
the evenings at Mrs. Edgar's, deep and difficult music, playing
well and carefully, without notes; till she began to realize how
impossible any execution would be on such a piano. When she paused,
Miss Spelman said rather plaintively,
"That is very fine, my dear; but my taste is not up to the present
standard. And--do you play from note, dear Margaret?"
On receiving an affirmative reply, she went into an adjoining closet,
and brought out one or two old music-books, marked on the covers, "M.
and S. Spelman," and with Margaret and Selina alternately written
on the music within. Margaret had never seen such a collection of
curious, old, simple music. She smiled as she played, to see her
aunt's hands beating time, and watched the absorbed expression of
her face, varying from a smile of content to a look of sadness and
regret. As she at last closed the piano, she said,
"I will play these pieces over when I am by myself, and then I shall
do them more justice when I play them for you again. Forgive my many
blunders."
Then came cake, fruit, and wine, at nine o'clock, and then Margaret
was glad to say "good-night" and go to her pleasant room, where she
found, to her great satisfaction, that she was soothed to sleep by
the breaking of the waves on Shellbeach.
CHAPTER IV.
A CONFIDENTIAL LETTER.
MY DEAREST JESSIE: I have received your most welcome letter, and only
wish I could tell you how good it was to hear from you. It made me
long to see you, dear; but as I am resolved I will not be so weak as
to give up and go back to you yet, I will not sentimentalize now, nor
dwell on my feelings, which, I assure you, are unusually tender for
me.
I have now been here three whole days, and they seem as many
months; the snow-storm which began the night after my arrival,
lasted perseveringly till this morning, when there was a beautiful
clear-away, and my spirits, which were rather drooping, rose at once.
It was very cold, and Aunt Selina was afraid to go out, and I was
lazy, and passed the morning in the house. After dinner, however, I
became desperate, put on my shortest dress and rubber boots, and went
forth with Jimmy on an exploring expedition. The snow was very deep;
but I needed exercise, and enjoyed immensely plunging about in the
fresh drifts, and getting rid, at the same time, if I must confess
it, of a fair amount of wrath and resentment, of which your paragon
of a doctor was the cause. Only think, my dear, of his allowing me
to be three days here without calling! In such weather, too, when he
must have known I was penned up in the house with nothing to amuse
me, (not that I didn't amuse myself very well, but he could not have
known that.) How did he know that I mightn't have caught a severe
cold in that horrid waiting-room at the station, or driving with him
in his freezing chaise? And after leaving me in that abrupt way,
waiting on the steps here, without a single polite word to me or Aunt
Selina, as if he said, "I have been dreadfully bored by having to
bring you here; now let me get away as fast as I can!" Well, I was
provoked with him, and with myself for caring; but I grew pleasanter
every step I took; and when I at last found myself on a high bank
right over the sea, and the pretty little beach with the dear, blue
waves breaking and foaming below me, I was in a state of exhilaration
and delight that I can't describe. I could hardly have torn myself
away, except that I was very cold; and the sunset light had almost
faded when I got home. Then, my dear, what do you think? Aunt Selina
greeted me with, "O Margaret! what a pity you went out; here Doctor
James has been waiting nearly an hour for you, and he wanted so much
to see you, and was so sorry that he couldn't come before! But, my
dear, he has been away, and only got home this morning." That was
funny, was it not? "He looked so nice," Aunt Selina said. "I wish
you could once see him nicely dressed; he doesn't take enough pains
with himself generally." Now, I know that aunty was as much surprised
as I that this call had not been made before, and a great deal more
disturbed. She praises the doctor on every occasion, and I am sure
she wanted him to make a favorable impression on me. She has been
very curious about our drive from the station; but I have said very
little about it, except that I thought we were all of us cold and
cross.
Well, I was nicely wet from my snowy walk; but after I had changed my
dress and had my tea, I felt splendidly. At eight o'clock the bell
rang--a wonderful circumstance, so far--and after a little delay in
the hall, in walked the doctor. I suppose he could not bear that
his get-up should be thrown away, and he really looked very nice
indeed. I am sure he prides himself on his feet and hands, which
are small--not in themselves, but for his size--and well shaped.
His clothes were any thing but fashionable; but they fitted him
well, and looked as if he were at home in them, and something in his
general appearance made me feel that he had intended to do me honor,
and I was quite mollified toward him. Aunt Selina was enraptured. I
was--can you imagine it?--a little embarrassed, having been wholly
taken by surprise at his making his appearance; he was calm and
at his ease. He explained his apparent neglect of me, expressed
regret at finding me out this afternoon, and asked about my walk,
etc. He is provoking in many ways, Jessie, but in one especially:
he is so stingy of his smiles; I can express it in no other way. He
is the most serious person I ever saw; even when it would be polite
to smile, he will not; but moves the muscles round his mouth in a
peculiar way that makes me want to say to him, "Well, why don't you
do it? It won't hurt you!" His eyes are not particularly large, but
gray, and look as if they saw as much as mine, only he does not stare
as I do, but seems to take in every thing with one glance. I did
not find him difficult to talk to, as I imagined I should, but am
surprised to find how much he knows. He asked me to play, but did not
like the piece; and when I tried him with a little of Aunt Selina's
music--which I described to you in my first letter, you remember--he
asked for Beethoven. That he enjoyed, I believe, and a few of my
little French airs, one of which he recognized, and I discovered, to
my astonishment, that he had been abroad. He spoke of organ music,
and when I told him about my desire to learn to play on the organ,
said he thought I could do so here, as there were both a good organ
and organist at Sealing. And, if he arranges it so, I am to take
lessons once or twice a week, and practise in the little church here.
Well, dear Jessie, this letter must come to a close, as I am sleepy.
Give my best love to your dear mother; write soon and tell me all
about your own affairs and Philip.
Always your loving
MARGARET.
SHELLBEACH, Dec. 21.
CHAPTER V.
A SLEIGH-RIDE.
On the morning after Margaret had written the letter to her friend,
given above, she was finishing her breakfast at about nine o'clock,
while little Miss Spelman bustled about in her china-closet, and
around the room, when a jingle of bells was heard, and in a moment
more, Dr. James appeared at the dining-room door.
"Miss Lester, do you feel in the mood for a sleigh-ride? I have to go
over to Sealing, and shall be glad to take you."
"Oh! yes," cried Margaret, jumping up from the table, "of all things
what I would like best; but I must change my dress, I am afraid. I
will not be ten minutes, if you can wait."
"I have a call to make near here, and will come back for you."
In a short time Margaret appeared, dressed in a dark blue suit with
black dog-skin furs, and a very jaunty round cap to match on her head.
"Will you be warm enough?" asked the doctor, surveying her.
"I have my cloak besides," said Margaret, displaying a very thick and
heavy mantle, of every color of the rainbow.
As they drove off, Doctor James remarked,
"You will set this quiet little place on fire, with your bright
colors; we don't see such brilliant things here very often."
"Gay colors are the fashion," said Margaret, "and I almost always
wear them. I get very tired of them, however, and wish my style were
not _prononcé_. I quite long sometimes to wear neutral tints, and
cool, delicate colors."
"Miss Edgar wears such shades, does she not? She is so perfectly
refined and lady-like."
Margaret glanced at him quickly and answered,
"She does, when she is willing to take the trouble; but I generally
have to insist upon her dressing becomingly. When we were in Paris,
we were both told about our different styles, and how we should
dress; and I think it is worth while to consider the subject, and
Jessie does not; that is all."
"Does not Miss Edgar care for dress?"
"I think she does; but for dress without any reference to herself.
She is very fond of pretty things, and would be quite contented to
wear a rose-colored bonnet, or a bird-of-paradise evening dress, if I
did not prevent it. You admire Miss Edgar very much, do you not, Dr.
James?"
"As much as I can admire a lady I have never seen. But why should you
think that I admire her?"
"And if she were not already engaged, you would like to marry her
yourself, would you not?"
Margaret spoke impulsively; and before she had uttered the last words
would gladly have swallowed the sentence whole, but it was too late.
The doctor's face flushed, and he said very slowly,
"Did Miss Edgar show you that letter?"
"Yes--I mean no; that is, I mean, Dr. James, that I took it away from
her and read it myself. She did not want me to see it; it was all my
fault. Jessie is gentle, and I am rough, and I tyrannize over her
very often."
Margaret's voice sounded remorseful, and the doctor softened.
"There was no reason why you should not have seen that letter, any
more than any other. I would not have Miss Edgar other than Philip's
wife for any thing in the world; and my saying I would have liked her
myself, was meant only as a joke, and I am sure she understood it so.
Indeed, I was far from being in earnest when I wrote that letter."
It was now Margaret's turn to change color, and her face burned; an
unusual and painful thing for her. She felt at that moment as if she
would like to find herself on the opposite side of the world. What an
absurd position she was in! This man must regard her as a fool, or
worse. What business had she to be at Shellbeach at all, or here in
this sleigh, beside one on whom she had not the smallest claim, and
who had no reason to think her any thing but a forward, unlady-like
girl, as she was? These, and many equally disagreeable thoughts
rushed through her mind, before Dr. James said pleasantly,
"Is it possible you keep up your city hours here, and breakfast at
nine o'clock? How luxurious your life must be!"
"Does nine seem late to you?" asked Margaret, making an effort to
speak carelessly; "it is early to me. When we used to come home from
parties at three or four in the morning, we breakfasted at eleven or
even twelve. But there is no excuse for sleeping late here, I know; I
might go to bed at eight o'clock in the evening, except when we have
a visitor, as we did last night. But you see there are no bells; my
room is dark, and Cécile never comes in till I ring for her. Then,
Aunt Selina says she does not mind."
"Miss Spelman is not a very early riser herself. But, Miss Lester, I
think a poor man's household ought to be up with the dawn." He smiled
at her in a friendly way as he spoke, and Margaret laughed.
"And the mistress of a poor man's household ought to call all the
members of the family, ought she not?"
"I think so; that is a very important matter. Yet I know few things
in our daily life which require more heroism than getting up in the
morning at the right time. Though I ought to be accustomed to being
called at any and every hour, I never find it grows easy to forsake
my pillow; and whenever it is not imperatively necessary for me to
get up, I prolong my morning nap in the most cowardly way."
"Were you in earnest when you said getting up early was heroism?"
"It is a grand name for a small matter, certainly; but I was in
earnest when I said it."
"I should so like to be a heroine! It is almost worth while to try
the experiment."
They now drove into the main street of the town of Sealing, and there
Dr. James showed Margaret a bookstore, the circulating library, and
pointed out one or two more shops, and asked her if she thought
she could occupy herself for half an hour, while he visited a few
patients.
"I may be gone even longer than that," he said, "and it would be very
cold for you to sit in the sleigh and wait."
"I should like to explore the town very well," she answered; "and I
will meet you in an hour's time wherever you say. O Dr. James! I want
a sled very much; I delight in coasting. Could I get a good one here?"
"There are no toy-shops, properly speaking, but there is an excellent
carpenter across the street, and he would make you a satisfactory
sled, I have no doubt."
"There is coasting about here, I hope?"
"Yes, there are one or two capital hills. If you like, we will go to
the carpenter's now, before I leave you; perhaps my advice on the
subject would be acceptable."
They ordered the sled, and Margaret added, with a sideway glance
at Dr. James, that the word "Enterprise" was to be printed in red
letters on one side, and "1867" on the other. The apothecary's shop
was appointed as the place of rendezvous, and the doctor drove away.
He was back again first; but after waiting and wondering a few
minutes, she came round the corner, looking at her watch, with a
bright color, and her dress white with snow.
"I am on time," she cried; "just an hour, Dr. James; and I have had
such a splendid time! But I have a few things at the different shops;
will you stop for them?"
From a small shop, combining the establishments of a small
watch-maker, a locksmith, and a bell-hanger, a man came out with a
parcel which Margaret insisted on holding in her own hands all the
way home.
"What do you think it is?" she asked.
"I can't imagine what you should want from that shop, but the shape
is very much like a clock."
"You are right; it is an alarm-clock."
Dr. James smiled, but made no comment; and as they drove home, she
gave him an account of the hour she had spent alone.
"I got one or two books from the library; pretty trashy, I should
think, but it was entertaining to read the names of the well-worn
volumes on the shelves. I visited the dry-goods store, and then
determined to explore; and pretty soon I found a little street which
was one steep hill, down which some small boys were coasting. They
seemed harmless and meek, and after bestowing upon them a paper
of sugar-plums I had just bought, I requested the loan of a sled.
You should have seen the astonishment depicted on their faces,
and heard the giggles and rapture when, taking the largest sled
from the unresisting hand of its owner, I asked for instruction as
to establishing myself upon it and starting, and then went full
speed down the hill, regardless of the houses on either side and
the shouts of my friends above me. It was splendid, Dr. James! I
don't know when I have enjoyed any thing so much! Well, I dragged my
sled up again, and asked for six more coasts, hinting at more candy
to be forthcoming; but I found all offers of compensation quite
unnecessary, as the little fellows were as enraptured as I at the
performance, and each begged me pathetically to try his sled. But I
held to my first choice; and though on the third coast I upset and
rolled in the snow, I persevered till I found my hour was almost up,
and then abandoned my sled to its owner."
Dr. James seemed much entertained by this description, and Margaret
added,
"But for the credit of human nature, and especially of boy nature,
which I have always considered to be remorseless to the last degree,
I must tell you that when I fell off my sled into the snow the boys
did not laugh at and deride me, but came running down the hill to see
if I were hurt--a circumstance which pleased me very much."
The drive back to Shellbeach seemed all too short for Margaret; she
was left, as before, on the doorstep with her several bundles; but
this time she entered as a member of the family, glowing with the
exercise and almost as noisy as Jimmy, who came barking and leaping
to welcome his mistress. She gave a detailed account of her drive to
her aunt, ending with the exclamation, "And Dr. James both smiled
and laughed! I feel that I have achieved a triumph!"
CHAPTER VI.
ANOTHER LETTER.
The following is a letter which Dr. James wrote to his friend Philip:
"You ask me to tell you about Jessie's friend, who has come to
stay with my old crony, Miss Spelman, and I see that you are
curious to know my sentiments regarding her. I also suspect, from
the tone of your remarks, that you think it would be a very good
thing for a poor doctor like me, etc., etc. That this coincides
with Miss Selina's course of reasoning on this matter, I am pretty
certain; for before Miss Lester came she was continually praising
her to me, and now I can see that every opportunity is improved
to bring us together. Would you believe it, Philip?--when the
young lady arrived, Miss Spelman manoeuvred so as to give me a
_tête-à-tête_ drive with her from the station to the house! She
was disappointed in her plans, as there were both a maid and a dog
to be packed into my chaise besides Miss Lester. But what seems so
plain to other people's eyes, I cannot say is so to mine. You want
a description of her, and add a hope that I have found the ideal
of our college days. I laugh as I recall that ideal, and think
of the reality before my mind's eye. Picture to yourself, then,
a tall young woman--five feet eight inches, I should say--large
in proportion, and a decided brunette. She is called handsome,
as you know, but I do not agree to this; though if the adjective
were _showy_, I should have no objection to make. Her style is
rather loud, or, as she herself says, '_prononcé_.' She has a pair
of very brown, inquisitive eyes, which see, I am sure, much more
than they have any right to see. She has a good deal of color, but
not the changing blush we used to talk of. Her dress? Of course I
cannot give you a correct description of that; but the first time
I saw her in the house, she wore very deep purple with ornaments
of gold, a gold band on her hair, and long, barbarous eardrops.
The next time, in the morning, she was dressed (I am not joking)
in bright scarlet, worked all over with black; and she went to
drive with me in a round fur cap that would have been appropriate
to a young swell in New York, but hardly to a lady. But all these
objections are, after all, minor, when I come to the great one;
my dear fellow, she is an heiress! Now, you know very well my mind
on this subject; and I know you will think of my favorite verse,
'Where I want of riches find,
Think what with them I would do,
That without them dare to woo.'
"But in this case I feel sure that I should not be a disinterested
lover. I could never forget her money. By the way, I suspect that
she did not intend me to know she was wealthy; Jessie's note gave
the impression that she had, as I wished, enough to secure her own
comfort; but Miss Spelman took care to let me understand how very
well her niece was provided with 'earthly goods.'
"I see I am allowing myself to find fault with Miss Lester and
criticise her, a thing I have resolved I will not do. I will
therefore suppress a good deal more of disapproval I was going to
write, and see what I can tell you in her praise. In the first
place, I think she is good-tempered; I have seen her thoughtful
of her maid, and good-natured when she was both cold and hungry.
She is entertaining, intelligent, and companionable. I enjoyed her
society when I drove her over to Sealing, and she is wonderfully
fresh and simple in her tastes for a _blase_ New Yorker, surfeited
with gayeties as she has been. She is a good musician, though she
does not sing. Her hands are her best feature: large and shapely
and well kept; they are also warm, smooth, and womanly.
"Where is my dream, Philip? Would not your gentle Jessie more
nearly fulfil it? You will say that dreams 'go by contraries;'
true perhaps of those we frame at night, unconsciously; but does
that wise maxim hold good of day-dreams and castles in the air
also? Now, you have chosen well and wisely for yourself, and
my best wish is that you and your loving helpmate may live to
enjoy all the bliss you hope for; but I must wait until my wife
manifests herself, as I am sure she will, unmistakably, and for
that I am content to wait until I am an old man."
It will be seen from this letter that Dr. James had not disclosed,
even to his old friend, the secret of Margaret's visit to Shellbeach;
neither was Jessie more communicative on the subject; for they were
both rather ashamed of the affair. Margaret herself, to tell the
truth, was not free from a like embarrassment; there was something
manly and unassuming about the doctor, a freedom from all pretension
and assertion, that made her feel, when with him, quiet and almost
diffident. This, however, she did not acknowledge to herself; and her
high spirits determined her to carry out her plan, and brave all the
obstacles which her appreciation of the circumstances suggested to
her. From one point of view, her coming was a success; Miss Spelman
was charmed with her, and spoke of her remaining indefinitely. She
made much of and petted her in a way Margaret was not accustomed to,
and which was very pleasant to her. She could almost imagine, now,
what it would be to have a mother's love and care during these years
of her youthful womanhood. True, her aunt was no support, and her
advice was not always wise; but Margaret was both by nature and habit
self-reliant, and the person was not come, she thought, to whom she
could abandon the reins of government, and in whose favor she might
abdicate.
CHAPTER VII.
FROM THE LABORING CLASSES.
After a week had passed in her aunt's well-ordered household,
Margaret received a few ceremonious calls from the ladies of
Shellbeach and Sealing, which, in the course of another week, she
returned with due formality with her aunt. The visiting acquaintance
of Miss Spelman at Shellbeach consisted of a few elderly ladies, of
whom Margaret saw but little during her visit, though they were kind
and cordial, and always gave her a pleasant welcome to their houses.
There was one caller, however, of whom Margaret was destined to see
a good deal, and who deserves a more particular description. She
was a lady who might have been between forty and fifty, who came
walking into the house without ringing, one windy evening, in rubber
boots, with which she had been making herself a path in the newly
fallen snow. She was tall and thin, with heavy eye-brows, and rather
masculine bearing and manners, but a very genial smile beamed on her
lips and in her eyes. Her voice was loud but cheerful, and she gave
Margaret a warm squeeze of the hand and a good, steady look in the
eye, that seemed to show she was disposed for friendliness.
"Well now, Martha," said Miss Spelman, helping her guest off with
hood and cloak, and wheeling up a comfortable chair for her to the
fire, "where have you been all this long time? And how are you and
your poor old father? How does the house stand this cold winter, and
how are you getting along altogether?"
The visitor seated herself in the chair, tucked up her plain brown
gown over her knees, and clasped her rough, strong-looking hands,
seeming to enjoy the cheery blaze; then she answered rather slowly,
"We are very well off, thank you, Miss Spelman. Father's about the
same as usual; he misses the garden now the snow has come. The house
is pretty tight, and I keep the fires going with Norah's help. You
know Dr. James got Norah for us, and a more willing, good-natured
creature I never wish to see. She really seems to have brought
sunshine into the house, and says, 'May the queen of heaven send you
good health, sir!' and, 'May the blessed saints look out for you,
Miss Martha!' quite in the old-country fashion."
"I don't know about Irish help," said Miss Spelman; "I never can get
along with them. I haven't had one these ten years, since my poor
old Bridget died; and then they're always so set about getting to
church, and dreadfully put out if they are prevented now and then."
"Do you think so? Well, Norah says to me, 'I dearly love to go to
holy Mass, and to pay my respects on the saints' days; but the priest
tells me to mind my duty in the house first, and I wouldn't feel easy
to go and leave that poor lamb (one of her names for my father) with
none to look after his dinner.'"
"Well, long may she prove a treasure, that's all," and the old lady
shook her head doubtfully.
"You've come to a pretty place, Miss Lester," said Martha Burney;
"it's pretty enough now, with its fresh white dress of snow; but I
don't know what you'll say to it when the young green comes out, and
the birds begin to sing. But what do you find to do with yourself?"
"Nothing very useful yet. I have given my attention principally to
coasting; I have got a new sled, and have found some charming coasts
about here. I go out before breakfast."
"Bless me! how many ages is it, I wonder, since I did that?" cried
Miss Burney. "Then you do not keep late hours in the morning?"
"I did at first, through force of habit; but now I have an
alarm-clock, and try getting up at six, and dressing without a fire."
"Very well, very well indeed, for a New Yorker! Ah! I see you will
do for the country. You must never go away, but make up your mind to
settle down here."
"That's what I mean to have her do," said Miss Spelman; "and Margaret
said she would consider the subject."
Miss Burney's call lasted a full hour; then she enveloped herself in
cloak and hood, and shaking Margaret once more warmly by the hand
took her departure.
"Who is she, aunt? I think she must be a character, and mean to
cultivate her acquaintance."
"Yes, she has a story. Her father--lamb, indeed!" cried Miss Spelman,
interrupting herself; "that Norah had better call him 'poor wolf;' to
be sure he is reaping the fruits of his misdeeds, but he has richly
deserved his troubles. Well, he was a swindler; that is all. His
poor wife died of the shame when the biggest of his robberies came
to light, and he went steadily down-hill, with this brave daughter
trying to keep him straight. He spent one or two poor little legacies
she had left her, and at last became the broken-down, imbecile old
man he is now. When he was too feeble to prevent her, Martha took him
out of the great city where he lived, and they somehow found their
way here; and then she went to work and has supported him ever since.
She teaches in the public school over in Sealing; she is the head
lady teacher now, and with that, and a little she has had left her
within a few years, she supports herself and him."
"Is it not a hard life for her?"
"Very, but she prefers obscurity; and that is the best employment she
can get here. She is a fine woman, independent and brave, owing no
one any thing and taking care of herself. She had a lover once, they
say," continued Miss Selina, dropping her voice; "but when it all
came to light about her father's transactions, of course she released
him."
"And he accepted it?"
"Why, certainly he did, dear Margaret; no man would wish to marry a
woman with such a father."
Margaret drummed with her foot on the fender, but made no reply.
"I like Martha Burney's company, and I try to make her come here
often; but it is hard to induce her to leave her father. She says she
has to be away from him so much of each day, that it is not right to
let him pass any more time alone."
"Well, I suppose she would not object to my going to see her."
"She would be delighted to see you. She has all her evenings, and
Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. She is very fond of young people."
The Sealing callers do not demand a particular description. There
were a few young ladies, none of whom Margaret much liked; she
thought them assuming and silly. One of them crowned her other
offences by replying to a question of Margaret's about Miss Burney,
"Oh! yes, very estimable person, I believe; I do not know her. Were
you aware that she teaches in the public school?"
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE SPECIES.[57]
I.
For a century and a half, the attention of the scientific world has
been repeatedly called to theories purporting to prove the evolution
of the species. Before the last dozen years, they elicited nothing
but deserved contempt from those conversant with the phenomena of
which they treat. Their absurdity was transparent, alike in their
conclusion and in the processes by which that conclusion was held to
have been reached. They were in succession fully refuted. But there
arose a class of men, somewhat superior in intellect and ingenuity to
the propounders of these speculations, who were imbued with similar
atheistic principles. They directed all their efforts toward the
conception of a theory more capable than the others of attaining a
respectable scientific _status_. It would have been matter of great
surprise, then, if this concentration of intellectual energy had not
resulted in something sufficiently plausible to startle the world.
In the year 1859, Mr. Charles Darwin, one of the first naturalists
of England, propounded his theory of development, in a work termed
_The Origin of Species_. This purported to be a full and conclusive
confirmation of the hypothesis of evolution. The theory was elaborate
and ingenious, and on its appearance was immediately advocated by
many men to whom it was not wholly unexpected. Its congruity with
their atheistic views can alone furnish an adequate explanation of
the haste with which they declared themselves its advocates. This
harmony with preconceived ideas was confessedly the chief inducement
urging them to accept the theory. Hear Mr. Herbert Spencer's
conception of the spirit in which a person should approach the
subject: "Before it can be ascertained how organized beings have been
gradually evolved, there must be reached the conviction that they
_have_ been gradually evolved." The italics are his own. Mr. George
Henry Lewes, in an article in the _Fortnightly Review_ for April 1st,
1868, says:
"There can be little doubt that the acceptance or rejection
of Darwinism has, in the vast majority of cases, been wholly
determined by the monistic or dualistic attitude of the mind.
And this explains, what would otherwise be inexplicable, the
surprising fervor and facility with which men, wholly incompetent
to appreciate the evidence for or against natural selection, have
adopted or 'refuted' it."
That Mr. Lewes and other really able men have been so influenced,
we entertain not the slightest doubt. But their failure to discover
and appreciate the evidence against the theory, we ascribe not to
incompetency, but to the bias of a foregone conclusion. We hail with
delight the efforts of these men to sustain the theory, confident
that, the greater the light thrown upon it, the more glaringly
palpable will become its absurdity.
We purpose to show, in this and other articles, that the facts which
are seemingly so congruous with the conception of evolution are in
reality grossly at variance with it, and strictly in accordance with
the doctrine of special creations. We will proceed at once to their
consideration.
Variations form the data of Darwin's theory. These, as facts, cannot
be disputed. Variation is everywhere seen. Scarcely any species,
either animal or vegetable, has escaped this tendency. While some
species have not presented differences among their individuals
sufficiently marked for the formation of varieties, a multitude of
other species display modifications which form the characteristics
of dozens of widely distinct breeds. Not less than one hundred and
fifty distinct strains and varieties have descended from the original
wild pigeon, _columba livia_. All these varieties result from man's
careful selection, and his judicious pairing of those individuals
which possess the required modifications. This he does in sure
reliance on the law of heredity, which transmits to the offspring
the most minute peculiarities of the parents, saving, of course,
when they are brought into conflict with opposite characters. These
variations are both in the direction of increase and in the direction
of decrease. Here we find a variety formed by the appearance of a
modification not observable in the species under nature, and there
a variety formed by the total or partial suppression of one or more
characters. Now, few portions of the organization are incapable of
modification. Darwin has conclusively shown that even the bones and
internal organs have been greatly modified. To realize fully the
extent and scope of variation, it is necessary to consult Darwin's
late work, _Animals and Plants under Domestication_. Many of the
modifications--especially those most widely divergent--constitute
differences greater than those which distinguish species from
species, and, in some few cases, genus from genus.
It may here be thought that we have made too great concessions; that
the logical and inevitable conclusion from the facts, as we state
them, is the evolution of the species. Not so. For the more numerous
and the more widely divergent the modifications are shown to be, the
more easily will we be able to prove to demonstration the fixity of
the species.
As these varieties (or incipient species, as Darwin conceives them
to be) were formed through the selection by man of slight successive
modifications, Darwin affects to believe that variations arose in
the wild state; that they were accumulated and preserved by nature
by a process analogous to man's selection; and that by the long
continued accumulation and conservation, through countless ages, of
these modifications, the species have evolved from one another. This
selective power of nature he infers from the struggle for existence
constantly carried on in the wild state, wherein the weak succumb,
and the fittest, strongest, and most vigorous survive, and, according
to the theory, attain to a higher development.
Many objections have been urged against Darwin's theory. Some have
questioned the efficiency of natural selection; and others have
contended that selection necessarily implies a selecter. Some have
considered Darwinism sufficiently disproved by the absence of the
transitional links between the different species. Others have
asserted the inconceivableness of the primordial differentiation of
parts in organisms when they all presented the simplest structure.
Another argument has been adduced from the tendency of domesticated
animals and plants, when neglected, to recur to the ancestral form
under nature. Some assume a limit to variation; while others have
contended that domestication of itself has introduced something
plastic into organisms, enabling them to vary, and that, therefore,
the analogy drawn between animals and plants under domestication
and those under nature is inadmissible. Others assert that domestic
animals and plants have been rendered in an especial manner
subservient to the uses and purposes of man. In conformity with
this view, they also affirm that the conception of species is, for
that reason, not applicable to the creatures under domestication.
For ourselves, we concede that the analogy between domesticated and
natural animals and plants is a just one, in the light in which the
phenomena of variation are generally regarded. For we wholly dissent
from the opinion of the introduction by domestication of any thing
plastic into organisms, and firmly believe in the operation of
secondary causes in the formation of varieties.
These arguments, in the form in which they are adduced, are
inconclusive. Their weakness springs from an error into which those
who have urged them have fallen, which vitiates at the start all
their reasoning. To this error we shall presently advert. But while
we cannot concur in their premises, we have something more than an
intuition of the truth of their common conclusion.
The facts, of which the _Animals and Plants under Domestication_
is a vast repertory, admit of a theory more conformable than that
of Darwin to the phenomena of variation; a theory which fully
accounts for the appearance of the profitable modifications under
domestication, (confessedly inexplicable on Darwin's theory,) and
for the formation of races under nature; a theory admitting of
still further variation; and which is at the same time strictly
in accordance with the doctrines of special creations and of the
immutability of the species. This teleological explanation, of
which we conceive the phenomena of variation to be susceptible, we
will render amenable to all the canons of scientific research. And
in doing so, we will rely for our proofs upon no evidence but that
furnished us by noted evolutionists.
The seeming concurrence of all the evidence in favor of Darwinism
results from a misconception by all of the true nature of its data.
In all the arguments adduced by the advocates of special creation in
disproof of Darwin's hypotheses, these variations have been tacitly
admitted to arise by evolution. That they have thus arisen seems to
be taken for granted. In this admission lies their error. Upon this
current conception of varietal evolution rests the whole evolution
hypothesis. Upon the validity of this assumption we join issue with
Darwin, as we conceive that upon this point the whole question
hinges. For it is not a little illogical to concede the evolution of
varieties, and to deny the evolution of species. If we can show that
this assumption is invalid, the whole evolution fabric will fall.
Darwin tacitly assumes that the existing state of nature is
the normal or primordial condition of animals and plants. The
difficulty hitherto experienced in confuting his errors springs from
acquiescence in this assumption. True it is that Darwin does not
believe in the validity of this assumption, but merely makes it to
show the inconceivableness of the negation of evolution. With him
a species is not fixed but fluctuating, and is merely a subjective
conception, having no objective reality. Believing in the converse
assumption, we advance the following theory: _That animals and plants
have degenerated under nature, and that the favorable modifications
arising under domestication are due to reversion to the perfect type_.
Darwin, in treating of variations, refers them indiscriminately to
reversion and to evolution. This he does according to no law, rule,
method, or formula. The mere circumstance that he has one subject
under consideration, suffices to induce him to ascribe to reversion a
modification which, in another portion of his work, he, with strange
inconsistency, attributes to "spontaneous variability." He affects
to deem it a sufficient answer to the ascription of characters to
reversion, to appeal to the absence of such characters in the species
under nature. If the assumption of degeneration and subsequent
favorable reversion can lay even the least claim to tenability,
this answer is in no wise satisfactory. If it can be conclusively
shown that most, if not all, creatures in a state of nature, are in
a degenerated condition, then the irresistible inference will be,
in the absence of any other rational explanation, that favorable
variations are ascribable to reversion.
While, as Herbert Spencer says, "a comparison of ancient and modern
members of the types which have existed from paleozoic and mesozoic
times down to the present day shows that the total amount of change
(in animals) is not relatively great, and that it is not manifestly
toward a higher organization," paleontology furnishes us with
many facts showing the great size of ancient mammals, and marked
degeneracy in their descendants. Thus, Darwin concurs with Bell,
Cuvier, Nilsson, and others in the belief that European cattle--the
Continental and Pembroke breeds, and the Chillingham cattle--are the
degenerate descendants of the great urus, (_bos primigenius_,) with
which they cannot now sustain a comparison, so greatly have they
degenerated. Cæsar describes the urus as being not much inferior in
size to the elephant. An entire skull of one, found in Perthshire,
measures one yard in length, while the span of the horn cores is
three feet and six inches, the breadth of the forehead between the
horns is ten and a half inches, and from the middle of the occipital
ridge to the back of the orbit it is thirteen inches, (_Owen's
British Fossil Mammals_, pp. 500, 501, 502.) The common red deer
have so greatly undergone degeneration that the fossil remains of
their progenitors have been held to be those of a distinct species,
(_strongylocerus spelæus_.) An advocate of Darwinism--a writer in
the _Edinburgh Review_ for October, 1868--differs with Owen on this
point, and holds that the common red deer are their descendants,
greatly degenerated. From their antlers it is inferred that they
equalled in height the megaceros, whose height to summit of antlers
was ten feet four inches, (_Owen's British Foss. Mam._) So marked
is the difference in the size of the antlers, says the Edinburgh
reviewer, that it would be possible to ascertain approximately the
antiquity of a deposit in which they might be found from that fact
alone. The horse and the _elephas antiquus_ have also been shown to
have decreased in size.
Changes similar to these have been adduced by the advocates of
evolution, to show the manner in which species have been formed
under nature. But these, we apprehend, imply devolution rather than
evolution. They also serve, contend they, as illustrations of the
harmony subsisting between the organism and its environment. If by
this is meant that the organism responds to every marked change in
the environment, we admit the harmony. But if congruity between a
perfect physiological state and the changed conditions is implied, we
demur. Certain conditions are absolutely essential to the growth of
characters and to general perfection. When they are so modified as
to entail the diminution or loss of any positive feature, this tells
upon the organism. Darwin, noting that the appearance of certain
characters was invariably consequent upon the presence of certain
conditions, says (in order to avoid any thing like a teleological
implication) that we must not thence infer that those or any
conditions are absolutely necessary to the growth of any organs or
characters. That Darwin errs, and that full physiological perfection
cannot exist except where there is full general growth, and full
growth of all parts or organs, we shall clearly demonstrate when, in
a future article, we treat of the laws of compensation or balancement
of growth, of correlation, of crossing, and of close interbreeding.
But whether there exists harmony between the organism or not, there
is none the less deterioration. And when reversion to the type from
which the organism has degenerated takes place under domestication,
it is termed evolution.
But those proofs of degeneration and subsequent favorable reversion
upon which we chiefly rely are those afforded by Darwin himself.
On page 8, Vol. I. of his late work, he says, "Members of a
high group might even become, and this apparently has occurred,
fitted for simpler conditions of life; and in this case, natural
selection would tend to simplify or degrade the organism; for
complicated mechanism for simple actions would be useless or even
disadvantageous." The efficiency of natural selection in this respect
we fully concede.
And again, on page 12, "During the many changes to which, in
the course of time, all organic beings have been subjected,
certain organs or parts have occasionally become of little use,
and ultimately superfluous, and the retention of such parts in
a rudimentary and utterly useless condition can, on the descent
theory, be simply understood." We heartily concur in this explanation
furnished by the descent theory, as we fully believe all that is
attributed to the law of hereditary transmission, the particularities
of the hypothesis of pangenesis excepted.
Treating of a symmetrical growth, he cites the cases of "wrong
fishes," gasteropods or shell-fish, of certain species of bulimus,
and many achitinellæ, verucca, and orchids, and infers, from their
being as liable to be unequally developed on the one as on the other
side, that the capacity for development is present, and that it is
due to reversion. "And as a reversal of development occasionally
occurs in animals of many kinds, this latent capacity is probably
very common." (P. 53, vol. ii.)
On pages 58, 59, and 60 are given cases of "the re-development
of wholly or partially aborted organs." The _corydalis tuberosa_
properly has one of its two nectaries colorless, destitute of nectar,
and only one half the size of the other. Its pistil is curved toward
the perfect nectary, and the hood, formed of the inner petals, slips
off the pistil and stamens in one direction alone, so that when a
bee sucks the perfect nectary, the stigma and stamens are exposed
and rubbed against the insect's body. "Now," says Darwin, "I have
examined several flowers of the _corydalis tuberosa_, in which both
nectaries were equally developed, and contained nectar; in this we
see only the re-development of a partially aborted organ; but with
this re-development the pistil becomes straight and the hood slips
off in either direction; so that the flowers have acquired the
perfect structure, so well adapted for insect agency, of dielytra
and its allies. We cannot attribute these coadapted modifications
to chance, or to correlated variability; we must attribute them to
reversion to a primordial condition of the species." Upon Darwin's
hypothesis, all the beautiful, delicate, involved, and harmonious
adjustments, coadaptations, relations, and dependencies in organic
nature must, at some time, have arisen by evolution. But here he
apparently assigns their coadaptation as a reason for not ascribing
these modifications to chance, or to correlated variability; as
if their evolution were inconceivable. Does this consist with his
theory? What difficulty exists against their evolution now, which
is not susceptible of being urged with equal if not greater force
against their evolution ages ago? Why push the question further back
in time? Was the evolution of these modifications less inconceivable
then than now? If so, why? In default of an answer, we have no
alternative but to conclude that all favorable modifications arise by
reversion.
Having given several cases of the "reappearance of organs of which
_not a vestige could be detected_," he declares it "difficult to
believe that they would have come to full perfection in color,
structure, and function unless those organs had, at some former
period, passed through a similar course of growth." We surmise that
at the moment in which Darwin conceived such a difficulty, his
singularly powerful imagination was impaired by over-exercise. We
trust that, on the recurrence of such a mental state, he will cease
to marvel at us for experiencing a like difficulty in conceiving the
evolution of any favorable characters.
After giving the opinion of several naturalists--in which he
concurs--"that the common bond of connection between the several
foregoing cases is an actual though partial _return_ to the ancient
progenitor of the group," he says, "If this view be correct, we
must believe that a vast number of characters capable of evolution
(!) lie hidden in every organic being." Here Darwin, as if he had
demonstrated the tendency to revert too clearly for the tenableness
of his theory, asserts that the appearance of these characters,
which have been by him attributed to reversion, is attributable to
evolution. The inconsistency is manifest. But this may be taken as
a type of the whole of Darwinism. For the author, after acquainting
us, without the slightest apparent hesitation, with facts showing
degeneration to have been little short of universal, declares that
he is forced to believe that favorable modifications are due to
"spontaneous variability," as they are otherwise inexplicable;
seeming to be wholly oblivious of ever having mentioned previous
degeneration. This reminds us of another inconsistency of which
evolutionists are guilty. They never tire of inveighing against the
reference of phenomena to what they term "metaphysical entities,"
such as "vital power," "inherent tendency," "intrinsic aptitude,"
etc. But this by no means precludes their use of the same phrases
when treating of phenomena which refuse to be moulded into even
seeming conformity to their hypotheses. Again, these characters
cannot be due to evolution if they are a return to the ancient
progenitor of the group; for that implies the possession of a larger
number of characters in the progenitor than in its descendants;
which directly militates against evolution, which is an advance from
the simpler to the more complex. But Darwinism is in part but an
ingeniously disguised and elaborate revival of the idea of Geoffroy
St. Hilaire. He conceived "that what we call species are various
degenerations of the same type." Races under nature are, upon our
theory, caused by degeneration; they are various degenerations of
a specific type. Observing that races were thus caused, Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, we apprehend, instituted an analogy between races and
species, and inferred from the former being various degenerations
of a specific type, that the latter were the various degenerations
of a generic (or a still higher) type. He was also induced thus to
conclude by the fact that characters, which were held in common by
all the species of a genus, were in some species in a rudimentary
state. But the sterility of hybrids precludes the possibility of
this common origin of the species. In so far as this hypothesis
relates to species, Darwin adopts it. The fact that races have been
similarly caused, he ignores, as that is grossly at variance with
his hypothesis of evolution, which lays claim to plausibility only
in the absence of any rational explanation of the appearance of
favorable modifications under domestication. Were races confessed to
be the degenerations of a specific type, then it would be apparent
to the capacity of a boy that the appearance of characters under
domestication was due to reversion. Had not Darwin accepted the
idea of St. Hilaire, his theory would be devoid of its present
semblance of unity and coherency. Having started out to prove the
common origin of the species _by evolution_, he preserves the
appearance of consistency in his illustrations by assuming an
identical conclusion, but one arrived at, as he unwittingly shows,
_by postulating degeneration_. This furnishes him with a seeming
confirmation of his theory; but as these hypotheses of degeneration
and evolution are wholly incongruous, the vain endeavor to blend them
harmoniously involves him in many inconsistencies and absurdities.
Thus, in endeavoring to prove community of origin of the species,
he, in conformity with the conception of degeneration, accounts for
the appearance of characters by reversion, and then, apprehensive
that this attribution would be wholly subversive of his theory of
development, ends by inconsistently and gratuitously terming them
instances of evolution. The expressions quoted above illustrate
this. He has shown that the modifications are due to a _return_ to
the ancient progenitor of the group, and then says, "If this view be
correct, we must believe that a vast number of characters _capable
of evolution_ (!) lie hidden in every organic being." Many other
instances of this inconsistency could be given, but the following
will, we trust, suffice. After adducing cases of bud variation, he
says, "When we reflect on these facts, we become deeply impressed
with the conviction that, in such cases, the nature of the variation
depends but little on the conditions to which the plant has been
exposed, and not in any especial manner on its individual character,
but much more on the general nature or condition, inherited from some
remote progenitor of the whole group of allied beings to which the
plant belongs." Mark the consistency. The appearance of nectarines
on peach-trees by bud variation is here ascribed to reversion, while
in numerous other places it is adduced as one of the most striking
instances of evolution. He has cited the cases of bud variation
as instances of evolution, to prove community of origin of the
species, and then assumes the community of origin of the species to
account _by reversion_ for the appearance of nectarines and all bud
variations. But Darwin may go on involving himself in a succession
of absurdities, in the just confidence that, however gross they may
be, they will not be observable so long as his opponents admit the
evolution of varieties.
On page 265, he declares it "impossible in most cases to distinguish
between the reappearance of ancient, and the first appearance
of new characters." This of course implies that some characters
arise by evolution. Now, how are we to discriminate between those
arising by reversion and those arising by evolution? What is the
distinguishing characteristic of the latter? Darwin has failed to
inform us. We deny evolution in any case--"sport," strain, race,
variety, or species. Darwin takes it for granted in the cases of
"sport," strain, and variety, after having shown degeneration to have
been almost universal. He professes to believe that these are due to
evolution. What is evolution? Is it not "a name for a hypothetical
property which as much needs explanation as that which it is used to
explain"? Whence results this belief in evolution? From intuition?
This knowledge of the existence of such a potent factor is doubtless
very enviable, especially when it is possessed by able scientists.
But--to follow a train of thought pursued in another connection--it
needs some guarantee of its genuineness. For the first impulse of a
scientific scepticism is to inquire by what means these scientists
have acquired such a knowledge of the cause of variations. If it
was gained from a study of nature, then it must be amenable to all
the canons of scientific research; and these assure us that the
appearance of favorable modifications is wholly inexplicable except
upon the hypothesis of reversion, and that evolution is merely a
name for a cause of which we are presumed to be ignorant. In science
an explanation is the reduction of phenomena to a series of known
conditions, thus bringing what was unknown within the circle of the
known. Does the hypothesis of evolution fulfil this requirement?
Has it not been confessed that "spontaneous variability," or
evolution, stands in the place of ignorance? Is not the ascription of
characters to evolution a "shaping of ignorance into the semblance
of knowledge"? Has not Darwin shown that such it is, when he frankly
acknowledges his ignorance of the cause of the appearance of
favorable modifications, and when he attributes them to "an innate
spontaneous tendency"? Of what validity, then, can an hypothesis be,
when the assumption upon which it is grounded is, confessedly, wholly
gratuitous? Before it can be entitled to a hearing in a scientific
court of inquiry, it is necessary that it furnish some warrant for
assuming evolution. We rely with the most implicit confidence upon
Mr. G. H. Lewes concurring with us in deeming this requisite.
On page 350, Darwin says, "Many sub-varieties of the pigeon have
reversed and somewhat lengthened feathers on the back of their
heads, and this is certainly not due to the species under nature,
which shows no trace of such a structure; but when we remember
that sub-varieties of the fowl, the turkey, the canary-bird, duck,
and goose all have top-knots or reversed feathers on their heads,
and when we remember that scarcely a single natural group of birds
can be named in which some members have not a tuft of feathers on
their heads, we may suspect that reversion to some extremely remote
form has come into action." A high development of the "extremely
remote form," together with degeneration under nature and subsequent
favorable reversion, is here manifestly implied.
On page 247, the tendency to prolification is ascribed to reversion
to a former condition.
"With domesticated animals," says Darwin, on page 353, "the reduction
of a part from disuse is never carried so far that a mere rudiment is
left, but we have good reason to believe that this has often occurred
under nature."
Speaking of the gradual increase in size of our domesticated animals,
he says, "This fact is all the more striking, as certain wild or
half-wild animals, such as red deer, aurochs, park-cattle, and boars,
have, within nearly the same period, decreased in size." (P. 427.)
On page 61, Vol. II., he says, "It is probable that hardly a change
of any kind affects either parent without some mark being left on the
germ. But on the doctrine of reversion, as given in this chapter, the
germ becomes a far more marvellous object; for besides the visible
changes to which it is subjected, we must believe that it is crowded
with invisible characters, proper to both sexes, to both the right
and left side of the body, and to a long line of male and female
ancestors, separated by hundreds or even thousands of generations
from the present time; and these characters, like those written on
paper with invisible ink, all lie ready to be evolved (!!!) under
certain known or unknown conditions." If this is the case, is not
the scope of reversion sufficiently wide to cover every favorable
modification which has arisen, or may arise, under domestication?
But these extracts from Darwin's _Animals and Plants under
Domestication_, strongly confirmatory as they are of our hypothesis,
ill sustain a comparison with the last we shall adduce. Fuller
concession no one could reasonably desire.
"With species in a state of nature," says Darwin, on page 317,
"rudimentary organs are so extremely common _that scarcely one can
be mentioned_ which is wholly free from a blemish of this nature."
Stronger confirmation of our hypothesis, short of a full and
unequivocal confession of its validity, we are utterly unable to
conceive. Are we not, after this, justified in ascribing to reversion
every favorable modification which has arisen or may arise?
Having thus furnished full warrant for assuming degeneration and
subsequent favorable reversion, and for alleging the complete
gratuitousness of the converse assumption of evolution, let us turn
our attention to the grand principle of natural selection.
It is scarcely possible to read Darwin's graphic description of the
struggle for existence among animals and plants, and not marvel at
their survival. Creatures under nature are subjected to the greatest
vicissitudes of climate. Thousands are born into the world with
delicate constitutions, inherited from their progenitors. These enter
into competition with their fellows for the means of subsistence;
and although they eventually succumb, they have, during their short
lives, by this competition, induced the deterioration of their
stronger companions. All without exception have to struggle, from
the hour of their birth to the hour of their death, for existence.
Natural extinction carries off those whose impaired constitutions
are inconsistent with prolonged existence. Consequent upon natural
extinction is the survival of the fittest and strongest. Darwin avers
that the weaker portion of the species having been carried off by
natural extinction, the next generation, having been derived only
from the stronger portion of the race, will be of a still stronger
constitution. This is not the case. Natural extinction does not
arbitrarily carry off the weak, but merely those whose extremely
impaired constitutions are incompatible with life. Many survive
between which and the conditions there is little compatibility. And
even the offspring of those which are the strongest are subjected in
their turn to the same if not worse conditions, and to the same if
not severer competition; for the probability is, that the increase in
the number of animals and plants has been great. Thus degeneration
is ever active. If the climate fails to entail deterioration,
and becomes favorable, the same result is produced by the severe
competition consequent upon "an astonishingly rapid increase in
numbers."
Darwin implies that natural selection is something more than the
correlative of natural extinction. That it is, he has not shown. All
the facts show that the one is merely the correlative of the other.
The semblance of the converse being the case is given, we conceive,
by the constant use, when speaking of those preserved by natural
selection, of the superlative, as strongest, fittest, most vigorous.
Under nature, unfavorable modifications are ever arising, and those
animals and plants which possess them in a marked degree are carried
off by natural extinction. Natural selection, in its turn, operates
merely by the preservation of those organisms which have undergone
little or no modification. The two factors are only different
aspects of the same process. One necessitates the other. More than
this, natural selection is not. That it acts by the preservation of
successive favorable modifications, Darwin has signally failed to
adduce a single instance to prove. Instances of adaptation he has
adduced, but they are invariably, except where man has intervened,
those of degeneration. A description of the process of natural
selection is always accompanied with an account of the incessant war
waging throughout nature, resulting in natural extinction. Following
this is natural selection, preserving the fitter, stronger, and more
vigorous. Now, a tolerably clear conception of our view may be gained
by considering that, although those preserved may be the fitter,
stronger, and more vigorous, in comparison with their brothers or
contemporaries, they may be--and the vast majority of the instances
adduced by Darwin show this to be the case--less fit, less strong,
and less vigorous than their progenitors. Those instances adduced
which do not imply this, show no advance on the progenitors, but
merely a struggle against degeneration and a continuance in the same
state. For animals and plants under nature can scarcely hold their
own. Many of them are reduced to the lowest condition compatible
with life. If they do not remain stationary, their movement is in
the direction of degeneration. Does not Darwin's assertion, before
adverted to, that rudimentary organs are so extremely common that
scarcely a single species can be mentioned which does not possess
such a blemish, imply the preëxistence of conditions sufficiently
adverse to entail unfavorable changes in almost every point or
character in an organism? It is not a little amusing to see that,
in numbers of the exemplifications of the process of natural
selection given by Darwin, the animals and plants are subjected to
extreme vicissitudes of climate, the severest competition, and other
unfavorably modifying influences, and although deterioration is
acknowledged to result, and it is manifest that all are unfavorably
modified, he invariably concludes with the assertion that the
strongest and most vigorous survive. This assertion is true in one
sense, but is false when viewed with reference to the inference
intended to be drawn. It will be seen that the more correct assertion
would be, those survive which have undergone less modification or
none.
But independently of these considerations; even upon the supposition
that natural selection was equally powerful with man's selection in
the formation of varieties or races, that as strongly pronounced
and as widely divergent modifications as those observable under
domestication had arisen under nature, the efficiency of natural
selection is a matter of no moment. For the argument therefrom begs
the whole question. It takes for granted the whole point really
in controversy. It assumes that those modifications which may
arise, or which have arisen, are due to evolution. It is not in
the least inconsistent with our views that favorable varieties or
races should arise under nature. As a matter of fact, we deny their
ever having arisen. But we are not by this denial estopped from
believing it possible for them to arise in the future. For were the
conditions to change, and to become as favorable as those to which
animals and plants are subjected under domestication, races would
then arise. They would probably be fewer in number, but a nearer
approach to perfection could be attained, the conditions admitting;
for man's improvement of the animals and plants under his care
is retarded, owing to his not being as yet perfectly conversant
with the conditions requisite for their full development. But the
modifications which may arise under nature will be due to reversion.
The improvement of natural species will imply their previous
degeneration. Darwin conceives variations to arise by evolution, and
concession of this is essential to the validity of his argument.
The question then recurs, Are the favorable modifications which
have arisen, or which may arise, due to evolution or to reversion?
Until this point is settled in favor of the ascription to evolution,
Darwin's argument from natural selection is wholly irrelevant.
An illustration may perhaps conduce to a clearer conception of the
relation in which the theories of evolution and reversion stand to
each other. The following will, we believe, fully serve this purpose.
Conceive a glass tube, bent into the shape of the letter V, of
which the left leg alone is clearly visible. In this, water is
seen slowly ascending by a succession of apparently spontaneous
impulses. "Now," argue a certain class of philosophers, "this is a
peculiar case. The water here manifestly does not acknowledge the
law of gravitation. It must, then, conform to a law _sui generis_;
a law of which we are wholly ignorant; a law which transcends the
scope of our intelligence. This law, be it what it may, we will
term evolution. Now, as this name, given arbitrarily, is the only
explanation of which the singular ascent of the water will admit, we
are forced to conclude that the water will, if similarly confined
above as here below, continue to rise for ever. Any theory other
than this is inconceivable. The assumption of a limit to the ascent
of the water is manifestly wholly gratuitous. What evidence is there
to induce the belief that there exists such a limit?" But would not
the calculations of these philosophers be signally confounded by the
removal of the covering of the right leg of the tube, disclosing the
downward course of the water from a certain height? The analogy,
we presume, is clear to all. The ascent of the water in the left
leg answers to the appearance of the profitable modifications under
domestication, the apex of the tube to the existing state of nature,
and the descent of the water in the right leg answers to degeneration
under nature; while the height from which the water has descended
in the right leg, and to which in the left leg it is ascending in
conformity to the rule that water always seeks its own level, in like
manner answers to the perfect type of the species from which the
animal or plant has degenerated, and to which it is reverting.
But, even assuming that the argument from the gratuitousness of
the assumption of varietal evolution, together with that from the
explanation afforded by the theory of reversion, is inconclusive,
there is yet another which may be adduced.
Darwin's theory is condemned by its advocates. For it is one of
a class of theories which, they contend, are not entitled to any
consideration or hearing in a scientific court of inquiry. Doubtless
many of our readers, at least those conversant with science, have
spent many a pleasant hour perusing numerous well-written pages
filled with protests against the ascription of phenomena to such
entities as "plastic force," "vital power," "intrinsic aptitude,"
"inherent tendency," etc. This attribution is one of the stock
objections against every thing which does not tally with the ideas
current among positivists. The advocates of Darwin, of whom most, if
not all, are followers of Comte, wax eloquent and enthusiastic while
on this theme. Here they disport themselves after the manner of men
conscious of having alighted on a subject highly calculated to call
forth their most happy thoughts. Here their rhetoric is consummate,
and their turns of expression singularly felicitous. Their affected
indignation at the assumed absurdity of thus accounting for phenomena
knows no bounds. So thrilling is this tirade, and so perfect the
simulation of honest indignation, that we, though of a somewhat cold
temperament, have, through sympathy, often caught and retained for a
moment the infection of enthusiasm. When our feelings ceased to have
full sway, and when our reason returned, we were in a fit state to
appreciate fully the great power of eloquence.
After animadverting thus severely on this ascription of phenomena,
it was not to be expected that these positivists would be guilty
of the inconsistency of advocating a theory the basis of which was
one of these "metaphysical entities." Very little credence, we
are sure, would be given to the assertion that the foundation of
Darwin's theory was an occult quality. For that theory has again
and again been held up to the world as a shining sample of what can
be effected in science by conformity to the positive process of
discovery. Yet such is the case. Darwin, on page 2, Vol. I. of his
late work, says, "If organic beings had not possessed _an inherent
tendency to vary_, man could have done nothing." In numerous other
portions of his work may be found the reference of variations to
"an innate spontaneous tendency," (p. 362, Vol. I.,) to "spontaneous
or accidental variability," (p. 248. Vol. II.,) to the "nature or
constitution of the being which varies," (p. 289, Vol. II.,) and to
"other metaphysical entities." So frequent is the recurrence of these
expressions that it is scarcely possible to open any portion of his
work and not alight on one. The whole of Darwin's theory is deduced
from this occult quality in animals and plants. And this is a theory
advocated by G. H. Lewes, and a number of others who have given in
their adhesion to positivism! If this explanation is, as they claim,
unphilosophical, are they not bound to withdraw their support from
such a theory? Does not their present position argue a total want
of consistency? Which is the more entitled to support, even from
their own professed stand-point, a theory which refers favorable
variations to an innate tendency in organisms, or that which ascribes
variations to reversion? No; as any other view would be incompatible
with the success of their darling theory, they are perfectly
content to consider variation as an ultimate law, even though such
a consideration involves a gross inconsistency. Regardless of this,
they advance the theory, and, when engaged on a collateral point,
marvel at their opponents for doing that which they have done at
the start, and complacently extol the clearness of their own views,
which have been arrived at by the aid of an hypothesis based upon the
same occult quality against which they are now exhausting all their
eloquence.
The truth is, that these "metaphysical entities" are in almost as
frequent use among positivists as among their adversaries. They
are, perhaps, more ingeniously disguised. But a close examination
of their speculations will elicit the fact that they are guilty
of the same (alleged) absurdity, and on a point, as in the present
instance, most materially affecting their whole theory. But these
explanations are denounced as metaphysical merely to facilitate the
reception of their finely spun theories. The dawn of science in any
department of knowledge is invariably preceded by a mist. This acts
as a false medium, through which the subjects of science are dimly
seen, presenting a most monstrous aspect. This is rendered still
more distorted by the ingenious but absurd theories of men bent
upon tracing a want of harmony between science and religion. Their
hypotheses, at first sight, apparently preclude the need of these
phrases, but they are at last necessitated to use them in accounting
for phenomena of which the ascription to known factors would be
grossly at variance with their views. The use of these entities
is in some cases only provisional with us, to be abandoned on the
advent of true knowledge; for religion does not shun the light of
true science. In this transitional period between complete ignorance
and full knowledge, these speculative theories are propounded. They
purport to furnish an explanation of all phenomena, and to dispense
with the necessity of using "metaphysical entities." Their adoption
is necessitated, contend their propounders, if the converse theories
are conceded to be unscientific. This we deny, and appeal to the
existing low condition of scientific knowledge, which precludes for
a time the possibility of the formation of any well-founded theory.
This theory of evolution, for instance, is confessedly founded on
ignorance--ignorance of the law to which its data conform. But when
science advances, and when facts are exposed to the clear sunlight of
precise and impartial investigation, perfect harmony is observable
between science and religion; and the absurdity of the theories
which were urged for our adoption becomes manifest. Past experience
justifies our belief that such will ever be the case. For it is only
those departments of knowledge which are abandoned to speculation
which present facts seemingly at variance with religion. We refuse to
accept the alternatives which they offer, confident that, as they are
at variance with religion, they are not the legitimate products of
true science.
Races under nature have been formed exclusively by degeneration. By
this we do not wish to imply any innate tendency in organisms to
degenerate. The degeneration of which we speak is solely induced
by the direct and indirect action of the conditions of life. Upon
assuming certain conditions necessary to full growth, the formation
of natural races becomes deductively explicable. It is with regret
that we observe a disposition on the part of some of the advocates
of special creation to believe growth independent of the conditions.
The dependence of growth upon the conditions cannot be disputed. Nor
do we wish to dispute it; for it is, to our mind, strong confirmation
of the doctrine of final causes. The supporters of the evolution
hypothesis maintain that an organism has the capacity for adapting
itself to any conditions, so that they are not so marked and sudden
as to entail extinction. We acquiesce in this thus far--where the
conditions are favorable, improvement ensues. But with us improvement
implies previous degeneration. And when the conditions are adverse,
a change for the worse results in proportion to the change in the
conditions. Such adaptation as this we admit. But we fancy Darwin
would consider this too teleological to be a concession. Adaptation,
with him, implies harmony. This harmony we will not gainsay. But if
the conditions induce the total or partial suppression of any part
or character, we contend that this adaptation of the organism to the
conditions is not consistent with complete physiological integrity.
The departure from a state of integrity is directly proportioned to
the retardation of growth of either the organism as a whole, or of
only one or more of its organs or characters. This repression is the
criterion by which to judge of the adverseness of the conditions.
For our belief in this incompatibility between full integrity
and conditions which entail the loss or diminution of any part,
character, feature, or organ, we will, in a future article, furnish
full warrant.
Starting out, then, with perfect specific types, we will be able to
account for the formation of races without the aid of an equivocal
process, without postulating any occult quality, and by means in
every way analogous to those which, as Darwin has shown, play an
important part in inducing modification.
From the instances of degeneration adduced by Darwin, we may infer
that the conditions of life were at one time extremely adverse.
And surely, if they were sufficiently unfavorable to involve the
reduction of most important organs to a rudimentary condition, they
must also have caused the suppression of many minor characters. The
climate in most countries has been adequately rigorous to act upon
the organization as a whole, and thus entail deterioration in size;
and as these unfavorable conditions ranged from those but little
unfavorable to those barely compatible with life, the retention
of the organism in each or several of these stages would create
diversity of size; for climate acts with different degrees of force
in different countries. Then in a single country the animals or
plants would be subjected to closely similar conditions, and long
continued subjection to these would produce uniformity of size, and
indigenous races.
In addition to these modifications consequent upon the direct
action of the climate on the whole organization, there would result
minor changes. The conditions of life would in different districts
or countries be unfavorable to different parts or characters. The
reduction of these parts would follow, and this would, through
correlation of growth, involve modifications in other portions of the
organization. For, says Darwin, "all the parts of the organization
are to a certain extent connected or correlated together."
Owing to these causes there would be disproportionate deterioration
of the characters. When an organ of which the function is activity
would be little exercised, it would become atrophied. Different
situations would occasion more or less disuse of organs, and these
would consequently be differently modified. Then their modification
would call for the modification of other characters. Thus, the
legs in some animals are made more or less short by disuse, and by
correlation the head is reduced in size, and changed in shape. Loss
of characters, such as the crest of feathers on the head, and wattle,
conjoined with changes in other parts of the organism, would, through
correlation, produce more or less diminution in size of the skull.
General decrease in size, and loss of tail or tail-feathers, would
lessen the number of the vertebræ, which result would induce other
changes. When the hair is affected by humidity of climate or other
causes, the tusks, horns, skull, and feet become modified. There is
also correlation of degeneration between the skin and its various
appendages of hair, feathers, hoofs, horns, and teeth; between
wing-feathers and tail-feathers; between the various features of head
and skull.
With animals, a small supply of food would cause decrease in size;
and with plants, an insufficient quantity of the necessary chemical
elements, together with the starvation consequent upon the close
contiguity of other plants, would produce the same result. Diseases
peculiar to certain localities, heights, and climates have also
played their part in the modification of animals and plants.
Given, then, a perfect type, the unfavorable action of these
elements--heat and cold, dampness and dryness, light and electricity,
disuse, disease, absence of some of the necessary chemical elements,
and insufficient supplies of food--together with that of their
countless modifications, acting separately and conjointly, directly
and indirectly through correlation, is amply adequate to the
production of the modifications by which, as we conceive, races have
been formed.
That it is possible for characters to appear after having been
lost for a great length of time, is amply shown by Darwin in his
chapters on reversion. Individuals of breeds of cattle that have been
hornless for the last one hundred or one hundred and fifty years
occasionally give birth to horned calves. Characters, he assures
us, may recur after an almost indefinite number of generations.
"From what we see of the power of reversion, both in pure races and
when varieties or species are crossed, we may infer that characters
of almost any kind are capable of reappearance after having been
lost for a great length of time." Speaking of the transmission of
color during centuries, he says, "Nevertheless, there is no more
inherent improbability in this being the case than in a useless and
rudimentary organ, or even in only a tendency to the production of
a rudimentary organ, being inherent during millions of generations,
as is well known to occur with a multitude of organic beings. There
is no more inherent impossibility in each domestic pig, during a
thousand generations, retaining the capacity to develop great tusks
under fitting conditions, than in the young calf having retained for
an indefinite number of generations rudimentary incisor teeth which
never protrude through the gums." The power of reversion is further
shown in the cases of pelorism before given. And again, he urges
that, "It should also be remembered that many characters lie latent
in organisms ready to be evolved (?) under fitting conditions."
But it is scarcely necessary to adduce proofs of the possibility of
reversion; for, if characters arise in species which have confessedly
degenerated, it is the height of absurdity to attribute them to
evolution, rather than to reversion.
Many objections, we are sure, will suggest themselves, and many
doubts will be expressed whether the theory here enunciated will
cover all the facts. We feel confident of succeeding in obviating
every difficulty, and in dissipating all such doubts. In this
article we have shown upon what an infirm basis the evolution
hypothesis rests, and have suggested a legitimate alternative. In our
forthcoming articles, we shall show still further weakness of the
views of Darwin and Spencer, and point out facts which, while grossly
at variance with the development doctrines, afford conclusive proof
of the objective reality of the species.
FOOTNOTE:
[57] _The Origin of Species._ By Charles Darwin, A.M., F.R.S., etc.
Fourth edition.
_The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication._ By Charles
Darwin, A.M., F.R.S., etc. Two volumes, 8vo. London: John Murray.
1868.
_The Principles of Biology._ Vol. I. By Herbert Spencer. London:
Williams & Norgate. 1864.
HAYDN'S FIRST LESSONS IN MUSIC AND LOVE.
I.
The Hungarians, like the Austrians and Bohemians, have great love
for music. "Three fiddles and a dulcimer for two houses," says the
proverb; and it is a true one. It is not unusual, therefore, for
some out of the poorer classes, when their regular business fails
to bring them in sufficient for their wants, to take to the fiddle,
the dulcimer, or the harp, playing on holidays on the highway or in
taverns. This employment is generally lucrative enough, if they are
not spendthrifts, to enable them not only to live, but to lay by
something for future necessities.
An honest wheelwright, called "merry Jobst," on account of his
stories and jokes, lived with Elschen his wife, in a cottage in the
hamlet Rohrau, on the borders of Hungary and Austria. They were
accustomed to sit by the wayside near the inn on holidays; Jobst
fiddling, and Elschen playing the harp and singing with her sweet,
clear voice. Almost every traveller stopped to listen, well pleased,
and on resuming his journey threw often a silver twopence into the
lap of the pretty young woman. Jobst and his wife, on returning home
in the evening, found their day's work a good one.
The old cantor of the neighboring town of Haimburg passed along the
road one afternoon, and in the arbor, opposite the tavern, sat merry
Jobst fiddling, and beside him pretty Elschen, playing the harp and
singing. Between them, on the ground, sat a little chubby-faced boy
about three years old, who had a small board shaped like a violin
hung about his neck, on which he played with a willow twig as with a
genuine fiddle-bow. The most comical and surprising thing of all was,
that the little man kept perfect time, pausing when his father paused
and his mother had a solo, then falling in with his father again, and
demeaning himself exactly like him. Often, too, he would lift up his
clear voice, and join distinctly in the refrain of the song.
"Is that your boy, fiddler?" asked the music-teacher.
"Yes, sir, that is my little Seperl."[58]
"The little fellow seems to have a taste for music."
"Why not? I shall take him as soon as I can to one who can teach him."
The cantor came from this time twice a week to the house of merry
Jobst to talk with him about his little son, and the youngster
himself was soon the best of friends with the good-natured old man.
So matters went on for two years, at the end of which time the cantor
said to Jobst, "If you will trust your boy with me, I will take him,
and teach him what he must learn to become a brave lad and skilful
musician."
Jobst did not hesitate long, for he saw clearly how great an
advantage the instruction of Master Wolferl would be to his son. And
though it went harder with pretty Elschen to part with Joseph, who
was her only child, yet she gave up at last. She packed up the boy's
scanty wardrobe in a bundle, gave him a slice of bread and salt and
a cup of milk, embraced and blessed him, and accompanied him to the
door of the cottage, where she signed him with the sign of the cross
three times, and then returned to her chamber. Jobst went with them
half way to Haimburg, and then returned, while Wolferl and Joseph
pursued their way till they reached Wolferl's house, the end of their
journey.
Wolferl was an old bachelor, but one whose heart, despite his gray
hairs, was still youthful and warm. He gave daily lessons to the
little Joseph, and taught him good principles, as well as how to sing
and to play on the horn and kettle-drum; and Joseph profited thereby,
as well as by the other instructions he received in music.
Years passed, and Joseph was a well-instructed boy; he had a voice
as clear and fine as his mother's, and played the violin as well as
his father; he likewise blew the horn, and beat the kettle-drum, in
the sacred music prepared by Wolferl for church festivals. Better
than all, Joseph had a true and honest heart; had the fear of God
continually before his eyes, and was ever contented, and wished well
to all.
The more Wolferl perceived the lad's wonderful talent for art, the
more earnestly he sought to find a patron for him, for he felt
that his own strength could reach little further, when he saw
the zeal and ability with which his pupil devoted himself to his
studies. Providence so ordered it at length that Master von Reuter,
chapel-master and musical director in St. Stephen's Church, Vienna,
came to visit the deacon at Haimburg. The deacon told Master von
Reuter of the extraordinary boy, the son of the wheelwright Jobst
Haydn, the pupil of old Wolferl, and created in the chapel-master
much desire to become acquainted with him. The next morning,
accordingly, Von Reuter went to Wolferl's house, which he entered
quietly and unannounced. Joseph was sitting alone at the organ,
playing a simple but sublime piece of sacred music from an old
German master. Reuter, astonished and delighted, stood at the door
and listened attentively. The boy was so deep in his music that he
did not perceive the intruder till the piece was concluded, when,
accidentally turning round, he fixed upon the stranger his large dark
eyes, expressive of astonishment indeed, but sparkling a friendly
welcome.
"Very well played, my son!" said Von Reuter at last. "Where is your
foster-father?"
"In the garden," said the boy; "shall I call him?"
"Call him, and say to him that the chapel-master Von Reuter wishes to
speak to him. Stop a moment! You are Joseph Haydn, are you not?"
"Yes, I am Seperl."
"Well, then, go."
Joseph went and brought his old master, Wolferl, who with uncovered
head and low obeisance welcomed the chapel-master and music director
at St. Stephen's to his humble abode. Von Reuter, on his part,
praised the musical skill of his _protégé_, inquired particularly
concerning the lad's attainments, and examined him formally himself.
Joseph passed the examination in such a manner that Reuter's
satisfaction increased with every answer. After this he spent some
time in close conference with old Wolferl; and it was near noon
before he took his departure. Joseph was invited to accompany him and
spend the rest of the day at the deacon's.
Eight days after, old Wolferl, Jobst, and pretty Elschen, the younger
son, little Michael, on her lap, sat very dejectedly together, and
talked of the good Joseph, who had gone that morning with Master von
Reuter to Vienna, to take his place as chorister in St. Stephen's
church.
FOOTNOTE:
[58] The diminutive for "Joseph," in the dialect of the country.
II.
Wenzel Puderlein, a noted hair-dresser in the Leopoldstadt of
Vienna, was one day dressing the hair of the Baron von Swieten,
first physician to the empress, when he heard the great man's son
ask permission to present to him a wonderful young musician, whose
talents were beginning to attract public attention. Puderlein was
happy to say he knew all about him, having long been hair-dresser to
the chapel-master Von Reuter, in whose house young Haydn had lived
ten or eleven years. He had been chorister at St. Stephen's, but had
been obliged to relinquish the position two years before, having lost
his fine, clear soprano voice after a severe illness.
"And what does young Haydn now?" asked the baron.
"Ah! your honor, the poor fellow must find it hard to live by giving
lessons, playing, and thus picking up what he can; he sometimes
also composes, or what do they call it? He lives in the house with
Metastasio; not in the first story, like the court poet, but in the
fifth; and when it is winter, he has to lie in bed and work, to keep
himself from freezing; he has a fireplace in his chamber, but no
money to buy wood to burn therein."
"This must not be; this shall not be!" cried the Baron von Swieten,
as he rose from his seat. "Am I ready?"
"One moment, your honor--only the string around the hair-bag."
"It is very good as it is. Now begone!"
Puderlein vanished.
"And you, help me on with my coat, give me my stick and hat, and
bring me your young teacher this afternoon." Therewith he departed;
and young Von Swieten, full of joy, went to the writing-table to
indite an invitation to Haydn to come to his father's house.
Meanwhile Joseph Haydn sat sorrowful, and almost despairing, in his
chamber. He had passed the morning, contrary to his usual custom, in
idle brooding over his condition. Now it appeared quite hopeless, and
his cheerfulness seemed about to take leave of him for ever, like his
only friend and protectress, Mademoiselle de Martinez. That young
lady had left the city a few hours before. Haydn had instructed her
in singing, and in playing the harpsichord; and by way of recompense,
he enjoyed the privilege of boarding and lodging in the fifth story
in the house of Metastasio. All this now ceased with the lady's
departure, and Joseph was poorer than before; for all that he had
saved he had sent conscientiously to his parents, only keeping so
much as sufficed to furnish him with decent though plain clothing.
"But where now?" thought he; and asked himself, sobbing aloud, "Where
shall I go, without money?"
Just then, without any previous knocking, the door of his chamber was
opened, and, with bold carriage and sparkling eyes, entered Master
Wenzel Puderlein.
"Come to me!" cried the hair-dresser, while he stretched his
curling-irons like a sceptre toward Joseph, and pressed his
powder-bag with an air of feeling to his heart. "To me! I will be
your father; I will foster and protect you; for I have feeling for
the grand and the sublime, and have discerned your genius. I will
lead you to art--I myself; and if, before long, you be not in full
chase, and have not captured her, why, you must be a fool, and I will
give you up!"
"Ah! worthy Master Puderlein," cried Haydn, surprised, "you would not
receive me when I know not where to go nor what to do?"
"Now, sit you down on that stool," said Puderlein, "and do not stir
till I give you leave. I will show the world what a man of genius can
make of an indifferent head."
"Are you determined, then, to do me the honor of dressing my hair,
Master von Puderlein?"
"Ask no questions; but sit still."
Joseph obediently seated himself, and Wenzel began to dress his hair
according to the latest mode.
When he had done, he said with much self-congratulation, "Really,
Haydn, when I look at you and think what you were before I set your
head right, and what you are now, I may, without presumption, call
you a being of my own creation. Now pay attention: you are to dress
yourself as quickly as possible, and collect your movables together,
that I may send to fetch them this evening. Then betake yourself
to the Leopoldstadt, to my house on the Danube, No. 7; go up the
steps, knock at the door, present my compliments to the young lady
my daughter, and tell her you are so and so, and that Master von
Puderlein sent you; and if you are hungry and thirsty, call for
something to eat and a glass of Ofener or Klosteruenburger; after
which you may remain quiet till I come home, and tell you further
what I design for you. Adieu!"
Therewith Master Wenzel Puderlein rolled himself out of the door,
and Joseph stood awhile with his hair admirably well dressed, but
a little disconcerted, in the middle of his chamber. When he had
collected his thoughts at length, he gave thanks with tears to God,
who had inclined the heart of his generous protector toward him, and
put an end to his bitter necessity; then he gathered, as Puderlein
had told him, his few clothes and many musical notes together,
dressed himself carefully in his best, shut up his chamber, and after
he had taken leave, not without emotion, of the rich Metastasio,
walked away cheerfully and confidently, his heart full of joy and his
head full of new melodies, toward the Leopoldstadt and the house of
his patron.
III.
When young Von Swieten came half an hour later to ask for the young
composer, Signor Metastasio could not inform him where "Giuseppe"
had gone. How many hours of despondency did this forgetfulness on
the part of the renowned poet prepare for the poor, unknown, yet
incomparably greater artist, Haydn!
When Joseph, after a long walk, stood at length before Puderlein's
house, he experienced some novel sensations, which may have been
consequent on the thought that he was to introduce himself to a young
lady and converse with her; an idea which, from his constitutional
bashfulness and his ignorance of the world, was rather formidable to
him. But the step must be taken, nevertheless. He summoned all his
courage and knocked at the door. It was opened, and a handsome damsel
of eighteen or nineteen presented herself before the trembling young
man.
In great embarrassment he faltered forth his compliments and his
message from Master Wenzel. The pretty Nanny listened to him with an
expression of pleasure, and of sympathy for the forlorn condition of
her visitor. When he had ended, she took him by the hand, to his no
small terror, without the least embarrassment, and led him into the
parlor, saying in insinuating tones, "Come in, Master Haydn; it is
all right. I am sure my papa means well with you; for he concerns
himself for every dunce he meets, and would take a poor wretch in for
having only good hair on his head! But you must give in to his humors
a little; for he is sometimes a trifle peculiar. Now tell me, what
will you have? Do not be bashful; it is a good while since noon, and
you must be hungry from your long walk."
Joseph could not deny that such was the case, and modestly asked for
a piece of bread and a glass of water. Nanny, laughing, tripped out
of the room. Ere long she returned, followed by an apprentice whom
she had loaded with cold meats, a flask of wine, tumblers, etc. She
arranged the table, filled Joseph's glass, and invited him to help
himself to the cold pastry and whatever else awaited his choice.
The youth fell to, timidly at first, then with more courage, till,
after he had, at Nanny's persuasion, emptied a couple of glasses,
he took heart to attack the cold meats more vigorously than he had
done for a long time before; making the observation mentally that
if Mademoiselle Nanny Puderlein was not quite as _distingué_ and
accomplished as his departed patroness, the honored Mademoiselle
de Martinez, still, as far as youth, beauty, and polite manners
were concerned, she would not suffer by a comparison with the most
distinguished dames in Vienna. When Master Wenzel Puderlein came
home an hour or two later, he found Joseph in high spirits, with
sparkling eyes and cheeks like the rose, already more than half in
love with the pretty Nanny.
Joseph Haydn lived thus many months in the house of Wenzel Puderlein,
burgher and renowned _friseur_ in the Leopoldstadt of Vienna, and
not a man in the imperial city knew where the poor but gifted and
well-educated artist and composer was gone. In vain he was sought
by his few friends; in vain by young Von Swieten; in vain, at last,
by Metastasio himself. Joseph had disappeared from Vienna without
leaving a trace. Wenzel Puderlein kept his abode carefully concealed,
and wondered and lamented, like the rest, over his loss, when his
aristocratic customers, believing he knew every thing, asked him if
he could give them any information as to what had become of Joseph.
He thought he had good reason and undoubted right to exercise now
the hitherto unpractised virtue of silence; because, as he said to
himself, he only aimed at making Joseph the happiest man in the world!
Joseph cheerfully resigned himself to the purposes of his friend, and
was only too happy to be able undisturbed to study Sebastian Bach's
works, to try his skill in composing quartettos, to eat as much as
he wanted, and, day after day, to see and chat with the fair Nanny.
It never occurred to him to notice that he lived, in a manner, as
a prisoner in Puderlein's house; that all day he was banished to
the garden behind the dwelling or to his own snug chamber, and only
permitted to go out in the evening with Wenzel and his daughter. It
never occurred to him to wish for other acquaintances than their
nearest neighbors, among whom he was known simply as "Master Joseph;"
and he cheerfully delivered every Saturday to Master Wenzel the
stipulated number of minuets, waltzes, etc., which he was ordered to
compose. Puderlein carried the pieces regularly to a music-dealer
in the Leopoldstadt, who paid him two convention-guilders for every
full-toned minuet, and for other pieces in proportion. This money
the hair-dresser conscientiously locked up in a chest, to use it,
when the time should come, for Joseph's advantage. With this view, he
inquired earnestly about Joseph's greater works, and whether he would
not soon be prepared to produce something which would do him credit
in the eyes of the more distinguished part of the public.
"Ah! yes, indeed," replied the young man. "This quartetto, when I
shall have finished it, might be ventured before the public; for I
hope to make something good of it. Yet what can I do? No publisher
would take it, because I have no distinguished patron to whom I could
dedicate it!"
"That will all come in time," said Puderlein, smiling. "Do you get
the thing ready, yet without neglecting the dances."
Joseph went to work; yet every day he appeared more deeply in love
with the pretty Nanny; and the damsel herself looked with very
evident favor on the dark though handsome youth. Wenzel saw the
progress of things with satisfaction; the lovers behaved with great
propriety, and he suffered matters to go on in their own way, only
interfering, with a little assumed surliness, if Joseph at any time
forgot his tasks in idle talk, or Nanny her housekeeping.
But not with such eyes saw Mosjo Ignatz, Puderlein's journeyman
and factotum hitherto; for he thought himself possessed of a prior
claim to the love of Nanny. It was gall and wormwood to Ignatz to
see Joseph and the fair girl together. He would often fain have
interposed his powder-bag and curling-irons between them when he
heard them singing tender duets; for Nanny had really a charming
voice, was very fond of music, and was Joseph's zealous pupil in
singing.
At length Ignatz could no longer endure the torments of jealousy. One
morning he sought out the master of the house, to discover to him
the secret of the lovers. How great was his astonishment when Master
Wenzel, instead of falling into a violent passion and turning Joseph
out of doors without further ado, replied, with a smile, that he was
well pleased to have it so. In vain Ignatz urged his own prior claims
to Nanny's favor, and the encouragement he had received from father
and daughter. His pretensions were treated with the utmost scorn.
The journeyman declared he would instantly quit the hair-dresser's
treacherous roof, and him and his periwig stock. He hastened to pack
up his goods, demanded and received his wages, and left the house
vowing vengeance against its inmates. Puderlein was incensed; Nanny
laughed; Joseph sat in the garden, troubling himself about nothing
but his quartetto, at which he was working.
Wenzel Puderlein saw the hour approaching when the attention of
the imperial city, and of the world, would be directed to him as
the protector and benefactor of a great musical genius. The dances
Joseph had composed for the music-dealer in the Leopoldstadt were
played again and again in the halls of the nobility. All praised
the lightness, the sprightliness and grace that distinguished them;
but all inquiries were vain, at the music-dealer's, respecting the
name of the composer. None knew him, and Joseph himself had no idea
what a sensation the pieces he had thrown off so easily created in
the world. Master Wenzel, however, was well aware of it, and waited
with impatience the completion of the first quartetto. At length
the manuscript was ready. Puderlein received it, took it to the
music publisher, and had it sent to press immediately, which the
sums he had from time to time laid by for Joseph enabled him to do.
Haydn, who was confident his protector would do every thing for his
advantage, committed all to his hands; he commenced a new quartetto,
and the old one was soon nearly forgotten.
They were not forgotten, however, by Mosjo Ignatz Schuppenpelz, who
was continually on the watch to play Master Puderlein some ill trick.
The opportunity soon offered; his new principal sent him one morning
to dress the hair of the Baron von Fürnberg. Young Von Swieten
chanced to be at the baron's house, and in the course of conversation
mentioned the balls frequently given by Prince Esterhazy, and the
delightful new dances by the unknown composer. In the warmth of his
description the youth stepped up to the piano and began a piece which
caused Ignatz to prick up his ears, for he recognized it too well; it
was Nanny's favorite waltz, which Joseph had executed expressly for
her.
"I would give fifty ducats," cried the baron, when Von Swieten had
ended, "to know the name of the composer."
"Fifty ducats!" repeated Ignatz. "Your honor, I can tell your honor
the name of the composer."
"If you can, and with certainty, the fifty ducats are yours,"
answered Fürnberg and Von Swieten.
"I can, your honor. It is Pepi Haydn."
"How? Joseph Haydn? How do you know? Speak!" cried both gentlemen
to the _friseur_, who proceeded to inform them of Haydn's abode and
seclusion in the house of Wenzel Puderlein; nor did the ex-journeyman
lose the opportunity of be-powdering his ancient master plentifully
with abuse as an old miser, a surly fool, and an arch tyrant.
"Horrible!" cried his auditors, when Ignatz had concluded his story.
"Horrible! This old _friseur_ makes the poor young man, hidden from
all the world, labor to gratify his avarice, and keeps him prisoner!
We must set him at liberty."
Ignatz assured the gentlemen they would perform a good deed by doing
so; and informed them when it was likely Puderlein would be from
home, so that they could find an opportunity of speaking alone with
young Haydn. Young Von Swieten resolved to go that very morning,
during the absence of Puderlein, to seek his favorite; and took
Ignatz along with him. The hair-dresser was not a little elated to be
seated opposite the baron, in a handsome coach, which drove rapidly
toward Leopoldstadt. When they stopped before Puderlein's house,
Ignatz remained in the coach, while the baron alighted, entered the
house, and ran up stairs to the chamber before pointed out to him,
where Joseph Haydn sat deep in the composition of a new quartetto.
Great was the youth's astonishment when he perceived his
distinguished visitor. He did not utter a word, but kept bowing to
the ground. Von Swieten, however, hesitated not to accost him with
all the ardor of youth, and described the affliction of his friends
(who they were Joseph knew not) at his mysterious disappearance. Then
he spoke of the applause his compositions had received, and of the
public curiosity to know who the admirable composer was and where
he lived. "Your fortune is now made," concluded he. "The Baron von
Fürnberg, a connoisseur, my father, I myself--we will all receive
you; we will present you to Prince Esterhazy; so make ready to quit
this house, and to escape, the sooner the better, from the illegal
and unworthy tyranny of an avaricious periwig-maker."
Joseph knew not what to reply; for with every word of Von Swieten his
astonishment increased. At length he faltered, blushing, "Your honor
is much mistaken, if you think I am tyrannized over in this house;
on the contrary, Master Puderlein treats me as his own son, and his
daughter loves me as a brother. He took me in when I was helpless and
destitute, without the means of earning my bread."
"Be that as it may," interrupted young Von Swieten impatiently, "this
house is no longer your home; you must go into the great world under
very different auspices, worthy of your talents. To-morrow the baron
and I come to fetch you away." Therewith he embraced young Haydn with
cordiality, quitted the house, and drove back to the city, while
Joseph stood and rubbed his forehead, and hardly knew whether all was
a dream or reality.
But the pretty Nanny, who, listening in the kitchen, had heard all,
ran in grief and affright to meet her father when he came home, and
told him every thing.
Puderlein was dismayed; but he soon collected himself, and commanded
his daughter to follow him, and to put her handkerchief to her eyes.
Thus prepared, he went up to Haydn's chamber. Joseph, as soon as he
heard him coming, opened the door and went to meet him, to inform
him of the strange visit he had received.
But Puderlein pushed him back into the chamber, entered himself,
followed by the weeping Nanny, and cried in a pathetic tone, "I know
all; you have betrayed me, and are now going to leave me like a
vagabond."
"Surely not, Master Puderlein. But listen to me."
"I will not listen! Your treachery is clear; your falsehood to me and
to my daughter! O ingratitude! see here thine image. I loved this
boy as my own son. I received him, when he was destitute, under my
hospitable roof; clothed and fed him. I have dressed his hair with
my own hands, and labored for his renown; and for my thanks, he has
betrayed me and my innocent daughter!"
"Master Puderlein, listen to me. I will not be ungrateful; on the
contrary, I will thank you all the days of my life for what you have
done for me."
"And marry that girl?"
"Marry her?" repeated Joseph, astonished. "Marry her? I--your
daughter?"
"Who else? Have you not told her she was handsome? that you liked
her?"
"I have indeed; but--"
"No buts; you must _marry_ her, or you are a shameless traitor! Think
you a virtuous damsel of Vienna lets every callow bird tell her she
is handsome and agreeable? My innocent Nanny thought you wished to
marry her, and made up her mind honestly to have you. She loves you;
and now will you desert her and leave her to grief and shame?"
Joseph stood in dejected silence. Puderlein continued, "And I--have
I deserved such black ingratitude from you, eh? have I?" With these
words, Master Wenzel drew forth a roll of paper, unfolded and held
it up before the disconcerted Joseph, who uttered an exclamation of
surprise as he read these words engraved on it, "Quartetto for two
violins, bass viol, and violoncello. Composed by Master Joseph Haydn,
performer and composer in Vienna. Vienna, 1751."
"Yes!" cried Puderlein, triumphantly, when he saw Haydn's joyful
surprise--"yes, cry out and make your eyes as large as bullets. I did
that; with the money I received in payment for your dances I paid for
paper and press-work, that you might present the public with a great
work. Still more: I have labored to such purpose among my customers
of rank that you have the appointment of organist to the Carmelites.
Here is your appointment. Now go, ingrate, and bring my daughter and
me with sorrow to the grave."
Joseph went not; with tears in his eyes he threw himself into
Puderlein's arms, who struggled and resisted vigorously, as if he
would have repelled him. But Joseph held him fast, saying, "Master
Puderlein! listen to me! There is no treachery in me! Let me call you
father; give me Nanny for my wife."
Master Wenzel was at last quiet. He sank exhausted into an arm-chair,
and cried to the young couple, "Come hither, my children; kneel
before me, that I may give you my blessing. This evening shall be the
betrothal, and a month hence we will have the wedding."
Joseph and Nanny knelt down and received the paternal benediction.
All was festivity in No. 7, on the Danube, that evening, when the
organist, Joseph Haydn, was solemnly betrothed to the fair Nanny,
the daughter of Wenzel Puderlein, burgher and proprietor in the
Leopoldstadt in Vienna.
The Baron Von Fürnberg and young Von Swieten were not a little
astonished, when they came the next morning to take Haydn from
Puderlein's house, to find him affianced to the pretty Nanny. They
remonstrated with him earnestly in private; but Joseph remained
immovable, and kept his word, pledged to Puderlein and his bride,
like an honorable young man.
At a later period he had reason to acknowledge that the step he
had taken was somewhat precipitate; but he never repented it, and
consoled himself, when his earthly muse caused a little discord among
his tones, with the companionship of that immortal partner, ever
lovely, ever young, who attends the skilful artist through life,
and who proved herself so true to him that the name of Joseph Haydn
shall, after the lapse of centuries, be pronounced with joyful and
sacred emotion by our latest posterity.
FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.
A SKETCH OF THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.
BY COUNT FRANK RUSSELL KILLOUGH, LATE OF THE PONTIFICAL ARMY.
It was worthy of Catholic Ireland, that noble daughter of the church,
which has preserved intact the faith of St. Patrick in the midst of
struggles, trials, and persecutions of every kind, to send to the
pope a legion of her sons to fight beside the generous volunteers
whom every vessel brought from France, Belgium, Germany, and
Switzerland. As my thoughts revert, after an interval of eight years,
to this noble band, whose organization I superintended temporarily,
I love to recall the great natural qualities which redeemed their
defects, and, despite their disorders and uproar, and their incessant
quarrels, won for the Irish the admiration of Lamoricière, and
merited the approval of the pope, who, after the crisis, desired to
form around him a guard of these valiant soldiers, these indomitable
heroes, these Catholics faithful to the death.
Unfortunately, in the midst of the fatigues and excitement of this
period, amid marches and countermarches, orders and countermands,
it was impossible for me to keep a journal of the thousand and one
strange incidents, daily events, interesting or amusing, of which I
was a witness; indeed, they would furnish Alexander Dumas abundant
matter for dramas and endless tales. I must limit myself to those
scenes which have left the deepest impression on my memory.
The 30th of May, 1860, found me in garrison in a small hamlet on
the frontiers of Tuscany, Titta della Pieve, situated some leagues
from Lake Trasimene, famous for the struggle between Hannibal and
the Romans, which took place upon its border. Thence a sudden order
despatched me to Macerata, a small town of the Adriatic Marches,
where I was to organize the Irish Legion. Already a hundred and fifty
recruits had arrived, and the order was couched in terms admitting
of no delay. I left with regret, for in this little hamlet I had
found a family, whose hospitality had touched me. It was that of the
_gonfalonnier_.
The young matron, simple in her tastes, well educated, and handsome
as Italians naturally are, had undertaken by her kindness to make us
forget the ungracious reception which our uniform had won for us in
Perugian society. And in this she manifested not only sound judgment
and education, but also rare courage, at this dangerous time, when
the least respect toward a pontifical officer merited the stroke of
the assassin's dagger. A little later, I was to find her in Rome,
proscribed for her fidelity by a violent, iniquitous, and vindictive
government. Will she be able to return to her home despite the cruel
vexations to which she has been exposed? I know not, and dare not
hope any thing of Piedmontese mercy. Could I separate myself from
that noble Swiss regiment, dear for so many reasons, beneath the
shadow of whose flag I for the first time drew my sword for the pope?
Alas! I was obliged to quit for a long time, perhaps, my brethren
in arms, whose friendship had become a pleasure and encouragement
and even a necessity, to find in a new corps new associates; and
this at the moment when great events were vaguely rumored, when
each could foresee the necessity of all that was dear to brace up
against the storm, whose distant echoes were already to be heard.
But military obedience exacted this sacrifice. I left early on the
following morning, and, after escaping an attack on the diligence by
twelve masked brigands, in the gorges of the Apennines, I arrived at
Macerata on June 1st.
I immediately received a visit from the almoner of the volunteers,
whose appearance deserves particular description.
He was an Irish Franciscan father, and by his lofty stature and
sonorous eloquence reminded me of the portrait of the great
O'Connell, which in my childhood I had seen traced by enthusiastic
admirers of his oratory. When Father Bonaventure appeared in the
midst of the recruits, the men made way for him respectfully. One of
them had been guilty of some breach of discipline. The priest spoke
sweetly to him, and a few words of tender severity brought tears to
the eyes of the offender. Indeed, this monk, with his lofty brow
and stately gait, his coarse habit falling in ample folds from his
massive shoulders, was well calculated to impress these children of
nature, at once simple but keen, enthusiastic but fickle, good in
heart but hasty in character, on whom the priest alone has fitted the
yoke of authority.
I immediately saw the necessity of establishing the best possible
relations with this influential man. The preliminaries of our
conversation being ended, he said, "My dear captain, will you--"
"Pardon me, reverend father, but you give me a title to which I have
no right. I am only a lieutenant."
"Why, captain dear, this will never do. I have announced to the
recruits the arrival of their _captain_; they are prepared to receive
you, and all the prestige of your authority will be lost if they find
that you are only a lieutenant. No; permit me without offence to
attribute to you the rank to which you won't be long coming, if all
that I have heard of you be true."
"You flatter me infinitely, and I am much obliged for your high
opinion; but as we have many things to do, let us save our
compliments for some future occasion, and look at the men, whom I
must inspect without delay."
"Immediately, mon cher commandant--"
"Still another thing, Monsieur l'Aumonier--"
"They are in the barracks, and I will present you to them. Come with
me; these good fellows await you with impatience, and I hope you will
be pleased with them. Remember, you are captain."
I found the recruits, about a hundred and fifty in number, ranged in
two lines along the vast corridor, and I must confess that my first
impression was not favorable. They were for the most part ragged,
evidently fatigued by the long voyage. A long bench stood before them.
"We must remove this bench," said I to the priest. "It will be in the
way during my inspection."
"Not a bit of it, captain dear," he answered; "on the contrary, it
will assist wonderfully for the ceremony of your presentation. You
are shorter than I, and my height destroys the effect that you ought
to produce, (he was six feet eight inches in stature.) Get up on
that bench, and you will appear as tall as I, and your prestige will
increase proportionally."
"All right, reverend father; here goes for the bench. You are a
decided master of scenic art."
I acted on his advice, and mounted my platform, while the chaplain
prepared his countenance and attitude for the grand discourse that
was to follow. He waited for silence, and, when he saw all eyes
directed toward me and all ears open to him,
"Boys," he said, swinging with majestic movement the loose sleeves
of his habit, "welcome this happy day, the object of your ardent
desires, on which you will enjoy the honor of enrolling yourselves in
the army of the sovereign pontiff, and on which your names, children
of St. Patrick, will be inscribed on the great list of the defenders
of the papacy. You see before you, at this moment, the representative
of that august sovereign for whom your Irish and Catholic hearts beat
with filial love. Welcome with acclamations him whom God has sent
us--the illustrious Captain Russell," (here he laid his heavy hand
on my head as if he wished to flatten it,) "the noble descendant of
your ancient kings, the worthy nephew of the gallant Marshal McMahon,
the hero of Perugia, into whose hands I gladly resign the authority
which I have hitherto exercised. Now, boys, from the bottom of your
throats, hurrah for Captain Russell."
"Hurrah for the captain!" shouted the hundred and fifty.
"And you, captain," (here he turned his great, benevolent eyes toward
me,) "whom the pope has invested with the powers of commander until
the arrival of their regular chief, consider in the goodness of your
heart the devotion of these true sons of Ireland, who, abandoning
their homes and families, came through fatigues, dangers, and
privations, over mountains and seas, to place at your disposal their
lives, their strength, and their heart's blood."
I answered this harangue as well as I could, giving with all my
might a hurrah for the pope, which was repeated along the line;
then, descending from my pedestal, I shook warmly the hand of the
reverend chaplain, to testify publicly my trust in him, and, after
the inspection, occupied myself immediately in forming the companies.
Alas! the first act of my administration was unlucky, and showed that
my brains were not equal to the organization of an Irish regiment.
Having learned from the chaplain that the recruits of different
provinces mutually entertained profound jealousy, I thought I would
succeed well in putting all the Dublin men in one company and all the
Kerry men in another. This disposition having been made, I assigned
to each of the companies one or more apartments of the barracks, and
ordered them to take immediate possession of their quarters.
This order, simple in appearance, was the occasion of a prodigious
storm; and you would be long divining its cause.
While the Dublin men executed my order without delay and betook
themselves quietly to their quarters on the upper story, the Kerry
men, on the contrary, gathered in several noisy groups under the
conduct of as many leaders, as if they did not understand the orders,
and finally declared point blank that they would not obey them.
"Peste, Monsieur l'Aumonier," said I to the chaplain, who observed
with a certain anxiety the disturbance which was brewing, "if things
begin thus, they do not augur well for the future."
"Wait a bit, captain, before dealing harshly with the culpable. Let
me find out the motives of their resistance."
"All right, father. I await your rendering an account of them."
The monk stepped firmly up to the mutineers and endeavored to speak
with them.
"We want the upper floor! We'll have the top floor!" was the only
answer he received.
"But, boys, the upper floor is no better than the lower."
"We want the upper! The Kerry lads are not made to be stowed away on
the ground-floor."
"For mercy's sake, listen to reason, or else the captain--"
"Down wid Dublin! Kerry for ever!"
The monk returned, pale as death, to explain the cause of the tumult.
The volunteers from "county Kerry," whose blood is proverbially warm,
were indignant because I had quartered them on the ground-floor,
while the Dublin lads occupied the upper story; wherefore they were
determined not to budge until this insult was repaired and Kerry
vindicated.
"But, reverend father, the order is given, and cannot be revoked
without compromising my dignity. Try to point out to me the leaders;
I will have them arrested. As to the others--"
"Ah! captain, remember their inexperience of discipline."
"That is the very reason why I wish to be severe with the leaders."
I had the leaders of the disturbance arrested, and, on seeing
this, the remainder quietly dispersed and occupied without further
difficulty their allotted barracks.
"Boys," said I, going among them, "the leaders who have brought you
astray are scoundrels, whom I am going to punish. They have trifled
wickedly with that proud sentiment of rivalry which does honor to
the different provinces of Ireland. Keep this sentiment of noble
jealousy, of just emulation, keep it for the field of battle, where
you can make better use of it than here."
"Hurrah for the pope! hurrah for the chaplain! hurrah for the
captain!"
A few days later, on a beautiful afternoon in June, the detachment
of volunteers from Limerick arrived. They numbered about two
hundred, conducted like the others by their chaplain, a man at once
indefatigable and full of courage, whose almost juvenile ardor was
irresistibly communicated to his companions.
I thought that these brave men, fatigued by a long journey and
numerous privations, deserved to be well treated by that pope to whom
they came thus to offer their arms and blood. Hence, I had prepared
for them at the barracks fresh straw mattresses and warm soup, and,
having made these arrangements, went forward to meet them on the road
to Ancona.
Confused cries and sounding hurrahs soon announced the approach of
the column. I presented myself to the new almoner, whom I recognized
by his long black coat and high gaiters. At once he gave a prodigious
hurrah for the pope, which was instantly repeated by the two hundred
volunteers with an enthusiasm of which the pure races are alone
capable. At the same time they brandished enormous cudgels, which
served them alike as walking-sticks and weapons, and with which each
man had provided himself before quitting his native parish.
It would be difficult to portray the terror which such scenes
produced on the peaceful inhabitants of the town, little accustomed
to such noisy demonstrations. They always avoided meeting the
_Ollandesi_, as they then ignorantly termed them--the _Verdoni_,
(canary color, half green and half yellow,) as they afterward called
them, from the colors of their uniform. The women were content to
gaze timidly from the windows at these strange guests; the urchins
alone, braver or more frolicsome, escorted the newly-arrived, and
strove to keep step with these giants of the north, four times as
great as themselves.
During the bombardment of Ancona, which lasted six days, I occupied
with the fourth Irish company a bastion of the intrenched camp,
situated on a height which commanded the city and the defence from
the land side. For some days we had nothing to shelter us; and to
add to the annoyance, the earth having been lately turned for the
works ordered by the general, the first rain changed it to thick mud.
On this couch my men had to sleep, with naught above them save the
arch of heaven. Nevertheless, they did not complain, as I might have
expected from their previous conduct, and they remained the whole
night exposed to a driving rain on this wet soil without uttering one
complaint, so much had the sight of the enemy excited their ardor and
developed their military virtues. Strange! It had only required a
few bomb-shells to change these peasants, so untractable the evening
before, into sober, patient, and warlike soldiers, ready for all
sacrifices. Every afternoon, about five o'clock, the bombardment
ceased, as if by agreement, and then commenced the most original
scene which can be imagined.
In the midst of the terreplein of my bastion they kindled a fire,
and grouped themselves pell-mell around it, just as chance arranged
them, soldiers, non-commissioned and commissioned officers. For
the latter seats of honor were reserved, consisting principally of
inverted wheel-barrows, water-buckets, and old pieces of lumber. The
pipes struck up, the gourds of brandy passed from hand to hand, and
tongues were unloosed; and as the day had been more or less exciting,
so was the conversation animated. One of a dramatic turn, endowed
with a long and neglected beard and draped majestically in some old
cloak, recited with upraised hands some scene of mighty Shakespeare.
Another, somewhat younger, sung tenderly a national air, a sweet
melody of the poet Moore. I have always remembered one of these
touching ballads, and cannot resist giving it here:
"Rich and rare were the gems she wore,
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore;
But oh! her beauty was far beyond
Her sparkling gems or snow-white wand.
"'Lady, dost thou not fear to stray,
So lone and lovely, through this bleak way?
Are Erin's sons so good or so cold
As not to be tempted by woman or gold?'
"'Sir knight! I feel not the least alarm;
No son of Erin will offer me harm;
For though they love woman and golden store,
Sir knight, they love honor and virtue more!'
"On she went, and her maiden smile
In safety lighted her round the green isle,
And blest for ever is she who relied
On Erin's honor and Erin's pride."
Another, an inhabitant of the mountains, began some interminable
legend, in which the ghosts of his ancestors played an important
part. Sighs and cries of joy accompanied the recital, broken only
by the monotonous "All's well," which the sentries on the parapet
passed from one end of the camp to the other. All listened, awed,
wonder-stricken, and transported in spirit to the hearths which they
had left, and around which they had often kept joyous vigil by the
light of the burning turf. Fortunately, no inopportune shell came
from the enemy's batteries to cast its lurid glare over the joyous
group or glitter on the beard of the singer. O pure and romantic
natures! Oh! what a natural poesy and gayety surrounds this race,
which we are wont to cover with a cloud of melancholy sadness. Were I
to live a hundred years, I could not efface the vivid remembrance of
those noisy vigils at Bastion No. 8, at the bombardment of Ancona in
1860.
Momentary enthusiasm was their great motive power. Whoever knew how
to excite them, could obtain from them whatever he wished. And then,
to see the play of their chests, their arms and shoulders; they
seemed like so many Vulcans. The heaviest weights, which an Italian
could scarcely move, gun-carriages, shell, beams, blocks of stone,
they raised without difficulty, and, placing them on their stalwart
shoulders, carried them with the greatest ease, one after another.
From this I derived much benefit in a critical situation.
The Piedmontese having, half by surprise and half by main force,
seized one of the outposts of Monte Pelago, and having there posted
a battery, whence a raking fire entirely commanded the bastion which
I occupied, I saw that, in order to protect my men, I must construct
a traverse in the midst of the bastion. But how remove the earth?
How perform all the necessary work under the fire whose balls rained
among us and whistled unpleasantly in our ears? Fortune favored me; a
heavy rain storm interrupted the bombardment.
"To work, boys! to work!" I cried. "In three hours you must raise
twelve feet in length of a traverse, eight feet high, five feet thick
at the top, and ten at the bottom, which will withstand every thing
they may send from Monte Pelago. Here, you terrace-makers, come on
with your picks and shovels. And you, Sergeant Tongue--you are a
master carpenter; dress these logs and slabs for me, to make a frame
for the work. In this manner, by God's grace, we will get ready a
traverse that would keep the devil out, even if we had not the Pope
with us. To work, boys! to work!"
In a few hours we had the bastion sheltered from the fire of the
enemy. Alas! my poor traverse, fruit of such generous labor, we
did not keep you long. In fact, the following day all was over,
unfortunately ended; Bastion No. 8, along with all the others, passed
into the hands of the enemy.
I did not take part in the defence of Spoleto, that feat of arms so
glorious for the Irish Legion; but after seeing these volunteers at
the bombardment of Ancona, I can easily imagine what must have been
that struggle of twenty-four hours of their two companies against ten
thousand Piedmontese.
An old cannon of heavy calibre, for many years laid aside as
condemned, was buried in a corner of the fortress. Instantly it was
extricated from the _débris_, transported by main force to a height
whence it commanded the enemy, and mounted on a gun-carriage; and the
rusty old piece, astonished at its resurrection, killed more men on
that one day than during the entire century of its past existence.
A decayed, half-ruined gate afforded an entrance into the citadel.
The enemy directed their efforts against it. The athletic sons of St.
Patrick fell to work, and in an hour it was braced up and barricaded
with gabions, and firmly resisted two successive assaults of the
enemy's column.
I could cite twenty instances of this kind, where heroic courage
joined to prodigious muscular strength worked miracles. But if a more
prosaic example will suffice to form an idea of the strength of these
iron limbs, I would add, softly and not without a slight blush, that
during the period of my command I never saw a guard-house door which
could resist their opposing efforts more than two hours, however well
bolted it might be. After the iniquitous bombardment, which did not
respect the white flag floating over all the works of the citadel and
fort, our general capitulated, and we were obliged to abandon the
place. The departure was very trying, and I cannot recall without
grief the humiliation of that disastrous day. I do not wish to
speak of it, nor could I do so without bitter tears; but it gives me
pleasure to remember a spirited act of the Irish Legion.
It was six o'clock in the evening; our companies, of which I
commanded the last, marched in close column, flanked, alas! by a line
of Piedmontese, who, I must admit, had more regard for our misfortune
than the dastardly population of the city. We passed gloomily the
gate which leads to the Porta Pia, quickening our step as much as the
escort would allow, when some of my men came to me. "Captain," said
they, "we have come to say that Ireland will blush for her children
if she learns that we abandoned this city without bidding a last
adieu to the pope; we ask permission to salute him after our fashion
at this last moment."
"I understand; be quiet for a moment, and Ireland will be content
with you and with me."
A few moments after this, we reached the boundary of the suburbs. As
the last man passed the gates of this unfortunate city, judging the
moment opportune for the execution of our project, I gave with all
the strength of my voice a last hurrah.
"Hurrah for the pope!" shouted all in unison. The walls, the
city, the gate, even the ocean itself, were shaken. To paint the
astonishment of our guards would be impossible. They consulted
together for an explanation of what had just occurred. Finally, I
heard a sous-officer say to his neighbor,
"_Lasiamo fare, sono Irlandesi!_ Bah! these are Irishmen; of what use
is it to trouble yourselves about their savage cries?"
Such was our departure from Ancona, on the 29th of September, 1860,
and such the solemn adieu of the Irish Legion to the pontifical soil.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Edwin P. Whipple.
Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1869.
The volume of essays bearing this title is a contribution to our
critical literature by a writer who is, perhaps, the best of American
critics. If "to see things as they really are" is, as Matthew Arnold
says, the end and office of true criticism, Mr. Whipple, we think,
is in literary matters fairly entitled to the distinction we have
mentioned; and although we are far from having in this country such
critics as Taine, or St. Beuve, or even Arnold himself, it is one
which, in these days of improved and improving literary taste among
Americans, is real and desirable.
The essays in the present volume, written originally to be delivered
as lectures before the Lowell Institute, and then published during
the years 1867 and 1868 in the _Atlantic Monthly_, are upon those
subjects in which he is most at home, and appears always at his best.
He is an enthusiastic and thoroughly appreciative student of English
literature, and though, as the authors and the works which form
the topics of these essays have been long ago thoroughly discussed
by such critics as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt, the critical
scholar will find but little strikingly new in the book, he cannot
fail to derive pleasure and profit from many things in it which are
preëminently suggestive, and from the greater clearness and precision
which many of his previous ideas will gather.
The most striking characteristic of Mr. Whipple in these essays is
the masterly manner in which he connects the work with the author.
He deals less with words than with things; less even with ideas than
with mind. He presents to us especially the mental characteristics,
the habits of thought and feeling--in a word, the inner self of the
author of whom he is treating. From a careful study of the works
he has traced the man, and he gives us now the result; and using
the works for illustration and proof, asks us if they are not the
expression of the individual character which he has drawn. Thus, it
is the arrogant and conceited Jonson, the bitter and misanthropic
Marston, the "one-souled, myriad-minded" Shakespeare, rather than
arrogance, misanthropy, or universality in their writings, that he
portrays by his criticism.
The book manifests also Mr. Whipple's usual independence, which
prevents him from becoming the slavish admirer of any author, however
great, and his innate love of moral purity, which he shows especially
in his criticisms upon the dramatists.
Its style is marked by that wonderful control of language and
facility of expression for which Mr. Whipple has always been
distinguished. But we think it bears evidence of the object for which
the essays were originally prepared--delivery as popular lectures.
Such a sentence as we give below seems to us to detract from the
dignity of style which we might rightfully expect in the author.
Referring to Jonson's brief occupation as a mason, Mr. Whipple says:
"We have no means of deciding whether or not Ben was foolish
enough to look upon his trade as degrading; that it was
distasteful we know, from the fact that he soon exchanged the
trowel for the sword, and we hear no more of his dealing with
bricks, if we may except his questionable habit of carrying too
many in his hat."
Such things as this, which occur more or less frequently throughout
the book, might have been advantageously omitted when Mr. Whipple
transferred his essays from the judgment of a mixed audience at a
lecture-hall, to that of the readers of a book which will be likely
to find its way only into the hands of those who are interested in
its subject. But, as a general rule, he uses allusions and anecdotes
appositely and well, and gains much sprightliness and vivacity in
treating of subjects which might otherwise appear somewhat dull to
the general reader by witty and humorous illustrations.
He has also shown a singular felicity of expression in many phrases
and figures which seem to embody the result of a careful study of the
author, and by them he often succeeds in conveying in one condensed
and vivid sentence more of the essential idea of his criticism than
he could have done in pages of elaborate discussion. Thus, speaking
of Jonson's tragedies, he says:
"They seem written with his fist."
Of Chapman he says:
"Often we feel his meaning rather than apprehend it. The imagery
has the indefiniteness of distant objects seen by moonlight."
And of Spenser:
"In truth, the combining, coördinating, centralizing, fusing
imagination of the highest order of genius--an imagination
competent to seize and hold such a complex design as our poet
contemplated, and to flash in brief and burning words details over
which his description lovingly lingers--this was a power denied to
Spenser. _He has auroral lights in profusion, but no lightning._"
Mr. Whipple's work seems to us more peculiarly valuable in the
discussion of the minor dramatists and poets of the time--authors
who are comparatively unknown to the general mass of readers. But
these writers are neglected only on account of the great wealth of
genius in which the age abounded. Their real brilliancy appears only
as darkness by the side of the overpowering light of Shakespeare and
Jonson, Spenser and Bacon. We hope that many will be induced by this
book to cultivate an acquaintance with the works of the men of whom
it treats, and we have the more expectation that this will be so from
the fact that not its least praiseworthy characteristic is the care
and good taste with which the extracts from these authors, by which
Mr. Whipple illustrates his criticisms, have been made. We can only
regret that they have been so sparingly introduced.
The author's treatment and discussion of Bacon's genius, and
his claim to be the founder of the inductive philosophy, are
unsatisfactory to our mind; but this subject involves a question into
which it is impossible to enter in this notice.
We regret that we cannot take leave of this pleasant and on the whole
admirable book without being obliged to say, that though it is by
no means dangerous, it is often annoying to the Catholic reader.
Mr. Whipple seems to be imbued with that prejudice and unfairness
which is so common in English and American literature when alluding
to the church, and in several places by slight words and phrases
expresses that sneering contempt in which authors of his "liberal
and tolerant" views are so apt to indulge toward those who differ
from them in belief. We think, too, that in his introductory chapter
he gives altogether too much prominence to the "Reformation" as
a means of intellectual awakening. The so-called Reformation may
indeed have been partially, and in a peculiar sense, a _result_ of
the intellectual ferment of the time--an unhappy and deplorable
result--but it was not one of its _causes_, as the author seems to
think. Those lie further back, in those other great events which Mr.
Whipple names--the revival of classical learning, the invention of
printing, and the discovery of America; events which he and his class
of writers would do well often to remind themselves were brought
about by loyal and devout Catholics.
* * * * *
THE WRITINGS OF MADAME SWETCHINE. Edited by Count de Falloux of
the French Academy. Translated by H. W. Preston. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 1869.
_The Life and Letters of Madame Swetchine_, published some eighteen
months since, might dispense us from any more special mention of her
_Writings_ than to say that she is in both works well and eloquently
portrayed as a character "destined to hold a front place among
the most powerful, original, pure, and fascinating revealed in all
history."
Madame Swetchine was of aristocratic birth, very wealthy,
accomplished, and even learned. Better than all these, she was
liberal in ideas, the friend of the poor and lowly, modest, humble,
and pious. The greatest minds of the age--De Maistre, De Bonald,
Cuvier, Frayssinous, De Falloux, De Broglie, Lacordaire, and
Montalembert--sought her friendship and hung upon her words. And
yet even such homage as this never inspired her with the slightest
literary vanity or worldly ambition. She wrote much, but never for
publication. She never specially preserved what she wrote, never
desired to. The material of the book before us, collected after her
death by her executor, Count de Falloux, of the French Academy, was
written without any fixed plan, at various periods, upon loose leaves
in a rapid, illegible hand, most of it in pencil. The manuscript was
distributed among several of her literary friends, with whom it was a
labor of love to arrange and prepare it for the press.
Rarely has unpublished writing had so bright a constellation of
posthumous interpreters. The "Thoughts" are arranged by the Abbé
de Cazalès and Count Jules de Berton; "Old Age," by Count Paul
Resseguier; "Resignation," by Count Albert De Resseguier and Prince
A. Galitzin.
The general title "Writings" is eminently proper here, as Madame
Swetchine never entertained the premeditation implied by the term
"works." They are marked by a knowledge of the world, a philosophical
range of thought, a purity of soul, and an elevation of piety rarely
united in one person. Here are a few of her scattered "Thoughts,"
which we take almost at random:
"Loyalty is patriotism simplified."
"I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first, and
superlatively, honest men."
"The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he
can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume."
"We forgive too little--forget too much."
"Good is slow; it climbs. Evil is swift; it descends. Why should
we marvel that it makes great progress in a short time?"
"We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our
reason pious."
"Years do not make sages; they only make old men."
"Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy
to be on visiting terms."
"The choicest of the public are not always the public choice."
"The inventory of my faith for this lower world is soon made out.
I believe in Him who made it."
"I allow the Catholic only one right; that, namely, of being a
better man than others."
"Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are
insufferable to us in others."
"A vast number of attachments subsist on the common hatred of a
third person."
The treatise on old age is a classic Christian _De Senectute_, with
an elevation and morality impossible to Cicero.
The _Airelles_ (flowers that ripen under the snow) are a series of
beautiful reflections, as remarkable for their strength as for their
delicacy. They are utterances which sprang from Madame Swetchine's
own heart, but reached no other; impressions which clothed themselves
in images to people her solitude. Here are a few which we select with
hesitation, as we must necessarily confine our choice to the shortest:
"To have ideas is to gather flowers. To think is to weave them
into garlands."
"Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity."
"The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least."
"O widow's mite! why hast thou not, in human balances, the immense
weight which celestial pity accords thee?"
"Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious
part of frivolous ones."
"We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past."
"We are often prophets to others only because we are our own
historians."
"We are early struck by bold conceptions and brilliant thoughts;
later, we learn to appreciate natural grace and the charm of
simplicity. In early youth, we are hardly sensible of any but very
lively emotions. All that is not dazzling appears dull; all that
is not affecting, cold. Conspicuous beauties overshadow those
which must be sought; and the mind, in its haste to enjoy, demands
facile pleasures. Ripe age inspires us with other thoughts. We
retrace our steps; taste critically what, before, we devoured;
study, and make discoveries; and the ray of light, decomposed
under our hands, yields a thousand shades for one color."
"Slavery, for example. Christianity has no need to ordain its
abolition--it inspires it; and that is enough for the man who
would be governed by the spirit of Christ. It is the imperfect
reception of Christianity in the soul which allows slavery to
continue; and truth has made no progress unless human bondage
has been rendered impossible by its advance. To combat slavery
solely from a philanthropic point of view, is too often to lose
one's labor, for lust and cupidity mount guard over the system;
but to encourage, develop, and stimulate the moral element most
antagonistic to human bondage is to accelerate the chances of
emancipation, and to multiply them a hundred-fold."
There are various other chapters, comprising a remarkable range of
subjects--on the soul, the intellect, on nature, courtesy, music, the
fine arts, on resignation, the world, the affections, etc.
The translation is well executed by Miss Harriet W. Preston, and the
typography and paper are excellent.
* * * * *
CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, AS DEFINED BY THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, EXPOUNDED
IN A SERIES OF CONFERENCES, DELIVERED IN GENEVA. By the Rev. A.
Nampon, S.J. Proposed as a means of reuniting all Christians.
Translated from the French, with the approbation of the author,
by a member of the University of Oxford. Philadelphia: Peter F.
Cunningham. 1869.
We know of no work recently issued by the American Catholic press
whose appearance we more cordially welcome than this of Father
Nampon's, _Catholic Doctrine, as defined by the Council of Trent_.
It is truly a book for the times; and we unite with the most Rev.
Archbishop of Baltimore, whose approbation, together with that of
the Archbishops of New York and Cincinnati, and of the Bishop of
Philadelphia, it bears, in expressing the conviction that "it is
well calculated to do a great amount of good," and the "hope that
it may be extensively circulated." When the illustrious Bossuet gave
to the world his incomparable work on Catholic doctrine in contrast
with "Protestant Variations," Protestantism was but in its seed-time;
and the harvest of errors, which it has since so abundantly brought
forth, had scarcely begun to show itself. Since then, to use the
words of the author of the book before us, "How many new variations
and divisions have appeared among Protestants! What ruins has the
explosion of rationalism scattered on that desolated plain! And what
weakness has been produced in that which yet remains among them of
Christian belief! How many doctrines, at that time respected, are now
thrown aside with contempt in the exercise of private judgment! How
much has the authority of Scripture been shaken! To what an extent
have the sublime mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and,
indeed, all mystery, all notions of the supernatural, become, in
the eyes of an ever-increasing number of those who heretofore were
Christians, superannuated, absurd, mythological ideas!"
But the author of the present volume does not propose to himself to
_add_ to the work of the great Bossuet--to be a _continuator_ of the
history of the variations. He adopts a different method. Translating
and setting before the reader the definitions and decrees of the
sacred Council of Trent, whose work was called forth by, and mainly
directed against the errors of the so-called Reformers, or to which
their revolt against the church's authority had given rise, he first
expounds the true Catholic doctrine impugned by them, and then
contrasts with it the ever-varying opinions and fading beliefs which
they undertook to substitute for that doctrine. And this is done so
clearly and eloquently, and yet so kindly withal, that his book may
be specially commended to the Protestant reader, as one wherein he
will find Catholic doctrine set forth in its verity, and Protestant
error in its deformity, without occasion given to take offence. May
it fall into the hands of many such readers; and may its perusal be
to them, as was happily the case with the excellent translator of
the book, the occasion of their recognizing the verity of Catholic
doctrine, and of their conversion to the Catholic Church!
The volume is got out in a handsome dress, as are all of Mr.
Cunningham's later publications.
* * * * *
MAN IN GENESIS AND IN GEOLOGY; OR, THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF
MAN'S CREATION, TESTED BY SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OF HIS ORIGIN AND
ANTIQUITY. By Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., LL.D. New-York: Samuel R.
Wells, 389 Broadway. 1870.
This is a short treatise of considerable value, showing both research
and a power of clear reasoning on the part of the author. To a
very great extent we concur with his conclusions and opinions, and
altogether in his estimate of the importance and utility of such
investigations. The student of biblical science will find his book
useful to a greater extent than its unpretending size and appearance
would indicate; and its general effect, so far as it is circulated
in the ordinary reading community, must be wholesome, as furnishing
an antidote to the pseudo-scientific trash which is such a common
article of intellectual diet in our day. The lack of a sufficient
authority to define what is revealed with certainty prevents the
author from affirming with due assurance some revealed verities, such
as the unity of the race, and brings down his argument too much to a
mere balancing of probabilities, a defect which is inherent in modern
popular theology and philosophy. He makes also an over-estimate of
the value of material progress in itself, and its effect on the sum
of human happiness. Like most Protestant ministers, he is unable
to keep from betraying his uneasiness in regard to Protestantism
by bringing in the confident but groundless and unproved assertion
that it is the mainspring of all modern civilization, science,
and progress. Dr. Ewer has fully shown the fallacy of all such
assumptions, which, at all events, are quite irrelevant to Genesis
and geology, and would be more appropriately put forth by the author
in his sermons than in a scientific treatise. There are other things
which are out of keeping with the solid, scholarly character of
the best portion of the book, betraying haste and a lack of care
and finish in the composition. With these deductions, we gladly
acknowledge our obligations to the learned author for a really
valuable contribution to sacred literature.
* * * * *
A CRITIQUE UPON MR. FFOULKES'S LETTER. By H. I. D. Ryder, of the
Oratory. London: Longmans.
Mr. Ffoulkes's unfortunate pamphlet is completely pulverized by this
short, pithy, and complete reply. Dr. Ward and F. Bottalla have also
performed the same task, each in his own way, and we cannot but
commiserate any one who falls into the hands of such a trio. We look
upon Mr. Ffoulkes as a man who has some very good points, and who has
shown a temper of mind and heart inclining us to judge his mistakes
very leniently. His pamphlet is tedious, crude, inconsistent, and
utterly without any logical or historical basis. It is, nevertheless,
a fair reflex of the state of mind in which many Anglicans are at
present detained, so that it is well calculated to do a great amount
of mischief. Refutations of it are, therefore, not a superfluous
work, but a very useful one. We are glad that F. Ryder has answered
Mr. Ffoulkes, for the reason above given; but, apart from this, we
are glad to see any thing on theological topics from his pen. In our
opinion he has shown more of the true genius of theology than any
other of the rising young authors in the Catholic Church of England,
except, perhaps, Fr. Bottalla, who is without his equal in his
manner of handling the controversy respecting the papal supremacy.
F. Ryder is a deep student in certain departments of theology which
lie below the surface presented in the common text-books; he is
uncommonly discriminating and judicious, and possesses a fine tact
which enables him to feel the seat and nature of the errors and
misconceptions in the English mind most in need of skilful handling.
We hope, therefore, that his pen may be employed as frequently as
possible on theological topics.
* * * * *
THE INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS, WITH ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES. From the
French of Ernest Menault. With Illustrations. New York: Charles
Scribner & Co. 1869. 1 vol. 16mo.
This is a most interesting work, and is one of the volumes of the
"Illustrated Library of Wonders," the previous ones of which have
been noticed in our pages. The information given in this little book
about insects and animals is highly interesting, and if heeded there
would be less need of "societies for the protection of animals."
In the preface, the author very justly remarks that "The marvels
of animal intelligence claim now more than ever the attention of
observers. Without admitting, like some people, that we came from a
quadruped; without approving the beast-worship of the Egyptians; we
believe that most animals which crawl or walk on the earth, or fly
in the air, form communities like ourselves. We believe that the
lower animals possess, in a certain degree, the faculties of man,
and that our inferior brothers, as St. Francis of Assisi calls them,
preceded us on earth." The illustrations are good, and _apropos_ to
the subjects.
* * * * *
SEEN AND HEARD. Poems, or the Like. By Morrison Heady. Baltimore:
Henry C. Turnbull, Jr. 1869.
Criticism is disarmed on taking up the literary productions of an
author who has suffered under almost total loss of sight and hearing
since the age of sixteen. That under this double deprivation he
should have produced poetry marked by so many vivid passages of
description, is truly remarkable. No wonder that he feelingly seizes
on the fine invocation passage of Young in his _Night Thoughts_:
"Silence and Darkness, solemn sisters, twins
From ancient Night, who nursed the tender thought
To reason, and on reason built resolve--
That column of true majesty in man--
Assist me; I will thank you in the grave."
Mr. Heady is known in the West as the Blind Bard of Kentucky, of
which State he is a native.
* * * * *
THE WORKS OF HORACE. Edited, with explanatory notes, by Thomas
Chase, A.M., Professor in Harvard College. Philadelphia: Eldredge
& Brother. New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co. 1870.
This edition of Horace is one of the best we have seen. The type is
excellent, the text accurate, the notes neither insufficient nor
superfluous.
* * * * *
ELEMENTS OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE. Taken from the Greek Grammar of
James Hadley, Professor in Yale College. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. 1869.
This excellent "abridgment of Professor Hadley's Grammar" will prove,
we have no doubt, a very serviceable book. We agree with those who
have represented to the professor that his larger grammar is somewhat
cumbersome to a beginner.
* * * * *
THE ELEMENTS OF MOLECULAR MECHANICS. By Joseph Bayma, S.J.,
Professor of Philosophy, Stonyhurst College. London and Cambridge:
Macmillan & Co.
This work contains a philosophical, mathematical, and mechanical
theory of the ultimate molecular constitution of matter, probably
the most generally interesting question now being discussed in the
scientific world. It is not one which can be dismissed hastily; and
we shall, therefore, postpone a fuller notice of this certainly very
able treatment of the subject to a future number.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 57.--DECEMBER, 1869.
FATHER HECKER'S FAREWELL SERMON.[59]
"Render, therefore, to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's; and to God
the things that are God's"--ST. MATT. xxii 21.
The Pharisees endeavored to entrap our blessed Lord by a dilemma
which would force him to present his doctrine under a false and
untenable issue, whichever side of it he might take. He overcame
their cunning by a superior wisdom which reduced them to silence and
covered them with shame. In a precisely similar manner the enemies of
the church are perpetually endeavoring to force upon her some false
issue, with equally signal ill success. The Pharisees presented the
rights of God and the rights of Cæsar as two contrary, antagonistic
sides of a dilemma, one of which must be chosen to the exclusion of
the other, and either one of which would be fatal to the cause of
Jesus Christ. The modern enemies of the church place religion in
opposition to reason, faith to science, grace to nature, liberty to
authority, as if these were contrary and antagonistic to each other.
They require us to choose between them. If we choose the first set
of principles, they expect to ruin our cause by simply showing
its opposition to the second set; if we choose the second set of
principles, they expect an equally easy victory, because in that case
religion and the church become unnecessary. The church will not,
however, permit herself to be placed in any such false position. She
will not choose between religion and reason, faith and science, grace
and nature, authority and liberty, but she will embrace and reconcile
them all, giving to each one of them all that is justly due to it.
At the present moment, when the pope has summoned an oecumenical
council, the influence of which upon the world is dreaded by
anti-Catholics and some nominally Catholic statesmen, the cry has
become unusually loud and alarming that the church is assuming an
aggressive attitude against science, civilization, the rights of the
state, religious and political liberty. What! the church aggressive,
her attitude dangerous? It is not long since you all said she was
an effete institution, an affair of past ages, totally dead! Now
it seems you have suddenly become afraid of her aggressions, and
are alarmed lest she should swallow up all modern society. You no
longer affect to pity her feebleness, but you exclaim against her
audacity. Undoubtedly, the convocation of an oecumenical council by
Pius IX. was a very bold act. When you consider his advanced age of
nearly eighty years, the critical state of Europe, the vastness and
complication of the questions and interests upon which a council must
deliberate, and other circumstances well known to you all, which I
need not specially enumerate, the act of the pope may very properly
be characterized as one of the boldest steps which has ever been
taken by any sovereign ruler.
Yet, in the light of the Catholic faith, so far from being such
a very bold act, it appears like the most natural and the safest
thing which he could possibly do. The Catholic faith teaches that
the church founded upon the rock of Peter is infallible, by the
promise and perpetual presence of Christ, the continual, inamissible
indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In an oecumenical council, where the
universal episcopate is gathered together under the presidency of its
head, the successor of Peter, as vicar of Christ, the Catholic Church
is organized for deliberation and action in the most perfect way
possible. Who compose a council? The bishops of the world, to whom
the right of membership belongs by divine law, and other prelates in
eminent positions to whom the privilege is conceded by ecclesiastical
law. Among them are men of distinct races, of different nations and
languages, and governing dioceses or missions in all the different
quarters and regions of the globe. The most learned and able men of
the Catholic Church, the men who are most experienced in affairs and
most intimately connected with the great political interests of the
world, the men who have made the greatest sacrifices and performed
the most important labors in the cause of God, are to be found
among them. It is a world-congress of men in every intellectual and
moral respect the most venerable that could possibly be collected
on the earth; without comparison superior to any other deliberative
or legislative assembly. An oecumenical council is, as the church
teaches and every Catholic is bound to believe, infallibly directed
and assisted by the Holy Spirit. Its decisions are to be received
as proceeding from the mouth of God, its definitions of faith are
final, unerring, and unchangeable. It is impossible, therefore,
to imagine a greater absurdity, a more palpable contradiction,
than that of appealing from an oecumenical council to Jesus Christ
while professing to continue a member of the Catholic Church. It is
appealing from the Holy Spirit to the Son; and, to carry out the
absurdity to its utmost length, we have only to suppose one appealing
from the Son to the Father Almighty. The god who is really appealed
to in such a case is the idol of self in the bosom of the individual.
The question which is so frequently and anxiously asked, What, then,
will the council do? has already been answered by anticipation in
what I have just said, so far as it can be answered, at the present
time, or need be answered, to reassure every good Catholic. The
council will do whatsoever the Holy Ghost dictates. Further than this
we cannot say any thing positively. But we can say very distinctly
and certainly, what the council will _not_ do. If it were to be an
assembly of Protestant divines, guided each one by his private light,
or of Swedenborgians, Spiritists, or Mormons, something _piquant_
might be expected in the line of new doctrines or new revelations.
But since it is a Catholic council, there will be no new revelations
or new doctrines proclaimed. The church has no mission or authority
to add any thing to the deposit of faith, committed by our Lord,
orally or by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to the apostles. Her
office is to guard, to teach, to protect, and explain the faith.
She decides what Jesus Christ taught to the apostles, and they to
their successors, according to evidence contained in Scripture and
apostolic tradition, assisted by the infallible light of the Holy
Spirit. Whatever she defines as pertaining to Catholic faith has
always been believed in the church. The council will, therefore,
so far as relates to faith, proclaim no new doctrines, but merely
explain, so far as necessary, the ancient faith as it is opposed to
the errors of the day, and declare in a more precise and explicit
manner that which is really contained in the divine revelation, and,
therefore, always implicitly believed by every Catholic.
In respect to discipline, the church has no power to alter any divine
laws; but she has power over her own laws, to add to them, to amend,
modify, or abrogate them. In matters of variable discipline, the
council will, therefore, consider how far any new legislation is
necessary and expedient, will make such enactments as it shall deem
best, and these will become part of the supreme, universal law of the
church, binding on the conscience of all its members.
But it is objected, and even some ill-informed or disaffected
Catholics are found to join in the cry, the Roman court will prevail
in the council, the bishops will not be free to discuss or decide any
thing; for every thing has already been determined by the pope, who
will impose his will as law upon the council. Be it so! All I have to
say, then, is that, if the Roman court prevail, it is the Holy Ghost
who prevails through the Roman court. Those who use such language
know but little of the real state of things at the Roman court, or
of the character of the prelates who will compose the council. In
regard to the Roman court, I can speak from my own personal knowledge
and experience. There is no sovereign on earth toward whom so much
freedom of speech is used, by those whose position and character
qualify them to give him advice, as the sovereign pontiff. There is
no place where there is so much freedom of opinion and discussion as
Rome. The former councils, and especially that of Trent, show how
great is the freedom of debate, and how thorough the discussion of
topics which prevails in these august assemblies. I will speak of but
one instance, that of the Archbishop of Braga, at Trent, who insisted
in the most pointed manner on the obligation which rested on the most
illustrious cardinals to set the example to the rest of the faithful,
of "a most illustrious reform." So far from giving offence at Rome,
the freedom of this holy prelate caused him to be treated by the pope
with the most distinguished consideration, and honored by marks of
the warmest friendship. The prelates who will compose the council
of the Vatican are not men who can be either allured or terrified
by any human or worldly motives into any action contrary to their
consciences or their convictions.
But the pope has already in his recent encyclical and syllabus, with
the acquiescence of the great body of Catholic bishops, condemned
science, progress, civilization, and liberty.
What is the authority on which this assertion is made? The
newspapers. The _newspapers_! Who would not be ashamed to cite such
an authority on such a subject. Newspaper articles written, as some
of them openly confess, chiefly with a view of making a sensation,
by persons destitute of the proper information for speaking
intelligently on ecclesiastical matters, and too frequently not of
a disposition to tell the truth if they knew it. To place faith in
opposition to science is a patent absurdity, for it is the same as
opposing truth to truth. And there is no person upon whom the charge
of maintaining such an absurdity can be fastened with less justice
than Pius IX. There is no pontiff who has appeared to take such an
especial pride and delight in maintaining by his decisions and by
the magnificent language of his pontifical letters the dignity and
the rights of human reason as he has, a fact which I could easily
prove by citations, if the time permitted. But let us know what those
persons who charge the syllabus with opposing science, signify by
that term. If they mean by it the theories of sophists like Humboldt,
Huxley, Comte, Mill, Spencer, and certain philosophers of Boston,
who dethrone God, deify matter, degrade the rational and spiritual
nature of man, and reduce all knowledge to a chaos of scepticism, the
pope and the church are opposed to all such science as that. Whoever
upholds it is certainly fully authorized to apply to himself the
definition which his favorite philosophy gives of man; to wit, that
he is nothing more than _a finely organized ape_.
What do they mean by progress and civilization? Is it the supremacy
of material interests, the dictatorial control of the state over
education, the doctrine that the chief end of man is to establish
railways and telegraphic lines? Then the church is opposed to them.
But to call her the enemy of civilization in the true, genuine sense
of the word, is not only false, but the basest ingratitude on the
part of those to whom she has given that inheritance of civilization
on which all the nations of Christendom are at this moment living.
What do they mean by liberty? Freedom from all religion, from all
moral restraints, from the bonds and obligations of marriage, the
subjection of the church to the power of civil rulers, and the
atheistic constitution of the political and social state? To all
these the church is opposed, and these she will resist to the last
drop of her blood. And so are you opposed to them, if you have
the sentiments of a man or make any pretension to the name of a
Christian. So are the wisest and most virtuous of those who are out
of the communion of the church, by whatever name they may choose to
be designated. Such false liberalism as this we all alike detest, and
must oppose with all our strength; for it is destructive of that only
true liberty which we prize above all things--the "_liberty of the
children of God_."
I have thought it necessary, my dear brethren--I may say my beloved
children in Christ, for I am your pastor--to present before you these
considerations on the eve of my departure to attend the Oecumenical
Council.
It is not that you have need to be taught these things--for you are
believing and instructed Catholics--that I have presented them before
you; but that you may better understand what great benefits and
blessings we may expect to flow from the deliberations and acts of
that great council which is about to assemble, the most numerous and
the most important which has been seen in the church for centuries.
I desire you to look forward, as I do, to a new and glorious era in
the church's history, an era of the triumph of faith and holiness, in
which I trust our own country is destined to become the theatre of a
brilliant development of the Catholic religion. I earnestly recommend
to your prayers the success of the great work which is before the
council, and my own prosperous return to you after its close. As I
kneel at the sepulchre of the holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul, and
before the holy shrines of the saints, I will remember you; and in
now taking my leave of you for a short time, I pray God to give you
his blessing, and to keep us all in peace and safety until we shall
meet again.
FOOTNOTE:
[59] Preached at St. Paul's church, New York, Sunday, October 17th,
1869, previous to his departure for Europe to attend the Oecumenical
Council.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.
ANGELA.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ULTRAMONTANE WAY OF THINKING.
On the following morning no message was sent for the doctor. The
child had died, as Klingenberg foretold. Frank thought of the great
affliction of the Siegwart family--Angela in tears and the father
broken down with grief. It drove him from Frankenhöhe. In a quarter
of an hour he was at the house of the proprietor.
A servant came weeping to meet him.
"You cannot speak to my master," said she. "We had a bad night. My
master is almost out of his mind; he has only just now lain down.
Poor Eliza! the dear, good child." And the tears burst forth again.
"When did the child die?"
"At four o'clock this morning; and how beautiful she still looks in
death! You would think she is only sleeping. If you wish to see her,
just go up to the same room in which you were yesterday."
After some hesitation, Frank ascended the stairs and entered the
room. As he passed the threshold, he paused, greatly surprised at the
sight that met his view. The room was darkened, the shutters closed,
and across the room streamed the broken rays of the morning sun. On a
white-covered table burned wax candles, in the midst of which stood a
large crucifix; there was also a holy-water vase, and in it a green
branch. On the white cushions of the bed reposed Eliza, a crown of
evergreens about her forehead and a little crucifix in her folded
hands. Her countenance was not the least disfigured; only about her
softly-closed eyes there was a dark shade, and the lifelike freshness
of the lips had vanished. Angela sat near the bed on a low stool; she
had laid her head near that of her sister, and in consequence of a
wakeful night was fast asleep. Eliza's little head lay in her arms,
and in her hand she held the same rosary that he had found near the
statue. Frank stood immovable before the interesting group.
The most beautiful form he had ever beheld he now saw in close
contact with the dead. Earnest thoughts passed through his mind. The
fleetingness of all earthly things vividly occurred to him. Eliza's
corpse reminded him impressively that her sister, the charming
Angela, must meet the same inevitable fate. His eyes rested on the
beautiful features of the sufferer, which were not in the least
disfigured by bitter or gloomy dreams, and which expressed in sleep
the sweetest peace. She slept as gently and confidingly near Eliza as
if she did not know the abyss which death had placed between them.
The only disorder in Angela's external appearance was the glistening
curls of hair that hung loose over her shoulders on her breast.
At length Frank departed, with the determination of returning to make
his visit of condolence. After the accustomed walk with Klingenberg,
he went immediately back to Siegwart's.
When he returned home, he wrote in his diary:
"May 21st.--Surprising and wonderful!
"When my uncle's little Agnes died, my aunt took ill, and my
uncle's condition bordered on insanity; tortured by excruciating
anguish, he murmured against providence. He accused God of
cruelty and injustice, because he took from him a child he loved
so much. He lost all self-control, and had not strength to bear
the misfortune with resignation. And now the Siegwart family
are in the same circumstances; the father is much broken down,
much afflicted, but very resigned; his trembling lips betray the
affliction that presses on his heart, but they make no complaints
against providence.
"'I thank you for your sympathy,' said he to me. 'The trial is
painful; but God knows what he does. The Lord gave me the dear
child; the Lord has taken her away. His holy will be done.' So
spoke Siegwart. While he said this, a perceptible pain changed
his manly countenance, and he lay like a quivering victim on the
altar of the Lord. Siegwart's wife, a beautiful woman, with calm,
mild eyes, wept inwardly. Her mother's heart bled from a thousand
wounds; but she showed the same self-control and resignation as
Siegwart did, to the will of the Most High.
"And Angela? I do not understand her at all. She speaks of Eliza
as of one sleeping, or of one who has gone to a place where she
is happy. But sometimes a spasm twitches her features; then her
eyes rest on the crucifix that stands amid the lighted candles.
The contemplation of the crucifix seems to afford her strength and
vigor. This is a mystery to me. I cannot conceive the mysterious
power of that carved figure.
"Misery does not depress these people; it ennobles them. I have
never seen the like. When I compare their conduct with that of
those I have known, I confess that the Siegwart family puts my
acquaintance as well as myself to shame.
"What gives these people this strength, this calm, this
resignation? Religion, perhaps. Then religion is infinitely more
than a mere conception, a mere external rule of faith.
"I am beginning to suspect that between heaven and earth there
exists, for those who live for heaven, a warm, living union.
It appears to me that Providence does not, indeed, exempt the
faithful from the common lot of earthly affliction; but he gives
them strength which transcends the power of human nature.
"I have undertaken the task of putting Angela to the test, and
what do I find? Admiration for her--shame for myself; and also the
certainty that my views of women must be restricted."
He had scarcely written down these thoughts, when he bit impatiently
the pen between his teeth.
"We must not be hasty in our judgments," he wrote further.
"Perhaps it is my ignorance of the depth of the human heart that
causes me to consider in so favorable a light the occurrences in
the Siegwart family.
"Perhaps it is a kind of stupidity of mind, an unrefined
feeling, a frivolous perception of fatality, that gives these
people this quiet and resignation. My judgment shall not be made
up. Angela may conceal beneath the loveliness of her nature
characteristics and failings which may justify my opinion of the
sex, notwithstanding."
With a peculiar stubbornness which struggles to maintain a favorite
conviction, he closed the diary.
On the second day after Eliza's death the body was consigned to the
earth. Frank followed the diminutive coffin, which was carried by
four little girls dressed in white. The youthful bearers had wreaths
of flowers on their heads and blue silk ribbons about their waists,
the ends of which hung down.
After these followed a band of girls, also dressed in white and blue.
They had flowers fixed in their hair, and in their hands they carried
a large wreath of evergreens and roses. The whole community followed
the procession--a proof of the great respect the proprietor enjoyed
among his neighbors. Siegwart's manner was quiet, but his eyes were
inflamed. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the larks sang
in the air, and the birds in the bushes around joined their sweet
cadences with the not plaintive but joyful melodies which were sung
by a choir of little girls. The church ceremonies, like nature,
breathed joy and triumph, much to Richard's astonishment. He did not
understand how these songs of gladness and festive costumes could be
reconciled with the open grave. He believed that the feelings of the
mourners must be hurt by all this. He remained with the family at the
grave till the little mound was smoothed and finished above it. The
people scattered over the graveyard, and knelt praying before the
different graves. The cross was planted on Eliza's resting-place,
and the girls placed the large wreath on the little mound. Siegwart
spoke words of consolation to his wife as he conducted her to the
carriage. Angela, sunk in sadness, still remained weeping at the
grave. Richard approached and offered her his arm. The carriage
proceeded toward Salingen and stopped before the church, whose bells
were tolling. The service began. Again was Richard surprised at the
joyful melody of the church hymns. The organ pealed forth joyfully
as on a festival. Even the priest at the altar did not wear black,
but white vestments. Frank, unfamiliar with the deep spirit of the
Catholic liturgy, could not understand this singular funeral service.
After service the family returned. Frank sat opposite to Angela, who
was very sad, but in no way depressed. He even thought he saw now and
then the light of a peculiar joy in her countenance. Madame Siegwart
could not succeed in overcoming her maternal sorrow. Her tears burst
forth anew, and her husband consoled her with tender words.
Frank strove to divert Angela from her sad thoughts. As he thought it
would not be in good taste to speak of ordinary matters, he expressed
his surprise at the manner of the burial.
"Your sister," said he, "was interred with a solemnity which excited
my surprise, and, I confess, my disapprobation. Not a single hymn
of sorrow was sung, either at the grave or in the church. One would
not believe that those white-clad girls with wreaths of flowers on
their heads were carrying the soulless body of a beloved being to the
grave. The whole character of the funeral was that of rejoicing. How
is this, Fräulein Angela; is that the custom here?"
She looked at him somewhat astonished.
"That is the custom in the whole Catholic Church," she replied. "At
the burial of children she excludes all sadness; and for that reason
masses of requiem in black vestments are never said for them; but
masses of the angels in white."
"Do you not think the custom is in contradiction to the sentiments of
nature--to the sorrowful feelings of those who remain?"
"Yes, I believe so," she answered tranquilly. "Human nature grieves
about many things over which the spirit should rejoice."
These words sounded enigmatically to Richard.
"I do not comprehend the meaning of your words, Fräulein Angela."
"Grief at the death of a relative is proper for us, because a
beloved person has been taken from our midst. But the church, on the
contrary, rejoices because an innocent, pure soul has reached the
goal after which we all strive--eternal happiness. You see, Herr
Frank, that the church considers the departure of a child from this
world from a more exalted point of view, and comprehends it in a more
spiritual sense, than the natural affection. While the heart grows
weak from sadness, the church teaches us that Eliza is happy; that
she has gone before us, and that we will be separated from her but
for a short time; that between us there is a spiritual union which
is based on the communion of saints. Faith teaches me that Eliza,
rescued from all afflictions and disappointments, is happy in the
kingdom of the blessed. If I could call her back, I would not do it;
for this desire springs from egotism, which can make no sacrifices to
love."
Her eyes were full of tears as she said these last words. But that
peculiar joy which Richard had before observed, and the meaning of
which he now understood, again lighted up her countenance. He leaned
back in the carriage, and was forced to admit that the religious
conception of death was very consoling, even grand, when compared
with that conception which modern enlightenment has of it.
The carriage moved slowly through the silent court-yard, which lay
as gloomy under the clouds as though it had put on mourning for the
dead. The chickens sat huddled together in a corner, their heads
sadly drooping. Even the garrulous sparrows were silent, and through
the linden tops came a low, rustling sound like greetings from
another world.
Assisted by Richard's hand, Angela descended from the carriage.
Her father thanked him for his sympathy, and expressed a wish to
see him soon again in the family circle. As Richard glanced at
Angela, he thought he read in her look a confirmation of all her
father said. Siegwart's invitation was unnecessary. The young man
was attracted more strongly to the proprietor's house as Angela's
qualities revealed themselves to his astonished view more clearly.
But Frank would not believe in the spotlessness and sublime dignity
of a Christian maiden. He did not change his former judgment against
the sex. His stubbornness still persisted in the opinion that Angela
had her failings, which, if manifested, would obscure the external
brilliancy of her appearance, but which remained hidden from view.
Continued observation alone would, in Frank's opinion, succeed in
disclosing the repulsive shadows.
Perhaps a proud determination to justify his former opinions lay
less at the bottom of this obstinate tenacity than an unconscious
stratagem. The young man anticipated that his respect for Angela
would end in passionate affection as soon as she stood before him
in the full, serene power of her beauty. He feared this power, and
therefore combated her claims.
The professor had returned from his excursion into the mountains, and
related what he had seen and heard.
"Such excursions on historic grounds," said he, "are interesting and
instructive to the historical inquirer. What historical sources hint
at darkly become distinct, and many incredible things become clear
and intelligible. Thus, I once read in an old chronicle that the
monks during choral service sung with such enchanting sweetness that
the empress and her ladies and knights who were present burst into
tears. I smiled at this passage from the garrulous old chronicler,
and thought that the fabulous spirit of the middle ages had descended
into the pen of the good man. How often have I heard Mozart's divine
music, how often have I been entranced by the stormy, thrilling
fantasies of Beethoven! But I was never moved to tears, and I never
saw even delicate ladies weep. Two days ago, I wandered alone among
the ruins of the abbey of Hagenroth. I stood in the ruined church;
above was the unclouded sky, and high round about me the naked walls.
Here and there upon the walls hung patches of plaster, and these were
painted. I examined the paintings and found them of remarkable purity
and depth of sentiment. I examined the painted columns in the nave
and choir, and found a beautiful harmony. I admired the excellence
of the colors, on which it has snowed, rained, and frozen for three
hundred and twenty years. I then examined the fallen columns,
the heavy capitals, the beauty of the ornaments, and from these
significant remnants my imagination built up the whole structure,
and the church loomed up before me in all its simple grandeur and
charming finish. I was forced to recognize and admire those artists
who knew how to produce such wonderful and charming effects by such
simple combinations. I thought on that passage of the chronicle, and
I believe if, at that moment, the simple, pure chant of the monks had
echoed through the basilica, I also would have been moved to tears.
If the monks knew, thought I, how to captivate and charm by their
architecture, why could they not do the same with music?"
"The stupid monks!" said Richard.
"If you had spoken those words at my side in that tone as I stood
amid those ruins, they would have sounded like malicious envy from
the mouth of the spirit of darkness."
"Your admiration for the monks is indeed a great curiosity," said
Frank, smiling. "Sybel's congenial friend a eulogist of the monks!
That indeed is as strange as a square circle."
"If I admire the splendor of heathenism, must I not also admire the
fascinating, still depth of Christian childhood? In heathenism as
well as in Christianity human genius accomplishes great and sublime
things."
"That, in its whole extent, I must dispute," said Frank. "Where is
the splendor and greatness of heathenism? The heathen built palaces
of great magnificence, but crime stalked naked about in them. When
the lord of the palace killed his slaves for his amusement, there
was no law to condemn him. When lords and ladies at their epicurean
feasts would step aside into small apartments, there by artificial
means to empty their gorged stomachs, they did not offend either
against heathen decency or its law of moderation. The marble columns
proudly supported gilded arches; but when beneath those arches a
human victim bled under the knife of the priests, this was in harmony
with the genius of heathenism. The amphitheatres were immense halls,
full of art and magnificence, in which a hundred thousand spectators
could sit and behold with delight the lions and tigers devour slaves,
or the gladiators slaughtering each other for their amusement. No.
True greatness and real splendor I do not find in heathenism. Where
heathen greatness is, there terrible darkness, profound error, and
horrible customs abound. Christianity had to contend for three
hundred years to destroy the abominations of heathenism."
"I will not dispute about it now," said Lutz. "You shall not destroy
by your criticism the beautiful impressions of my excursion. I
also met the Swedes on my tour. About thirty miles from here there
is, among the hills, a valley. The peasants call the place the
'murder-chamber.' I suspected that the name might be associated
with some historical event, and, on inquiry, I found such to be the
case. In the Thirty Years' War, when Gustavus Adolphus, the pious
hero, passed through the German provinces murdering and robbing, the
inhabitants of the neighborhood fled with their wives, children,
and property to this remote valley. They imagined themselves hid in
these woods and defiles from the wandering Swedes, but they deceived
themselves. Their hiding-place was discovered, and every living
thing--cows, calves, and oxen excepted--was put to the sword. 'The
blood of the massacred,' said my informer, 'flowed down the valley
like a brook; and for fifty years the neighborhood was desolate,
because the Swedes had destroyed every thing.' Such masterpieces of
Swedish blood-thirstiness are found in many places in Germany; and
as the people celebrate them in song and story, it is certain that
the pious hero has won for himself imperishable fame in the art of
slaughter."
"Do you not wish to have the 'murder-chamber' appear in Sybel's
periodical?"
"No; fable must be carefully separated from history; and in this case
I want the inclination for the subject."
"Fabulous! I find in the 'murder-chamber' nothing but the true
Swedish nature of that time."
The professor shrugged his shoulders.
"Gustavus Adolphus may wander for ever about Germany as the 'pious
hero,' if for no other purpose than to annoy the ultramontanes."
Frank thought of the Siegwart family.
"I believe we are unjust in our judgments of the ultramontanes,"
said he. "I visit every day a family which my father declares not
only to be ultramontane, but even clerical, and on account of it
will not associate with them. But I saw there only the noble, good,
and beautiful." And he reported circumstantially what he knew of the
Siegwart family.
"You have observed carefully; and in particular no feature of Angela
has escaped you. This Angela," he continued jocosely, "must be
an incarnate ideal of the other world, since she has excited the
interest of my friend, even though she wears crinoline."
"But she does not wear crinoline," said Frank.
"Not!" returned the professor, smiling. "Then it is just right. The
Angel of Salingen belongs to the nine choirs of angels, and was sent
to the earth in woman's form to win my proud, woman-hating friend to
the fair sex."
"My conversion to the highest admiration of women is by no means
impossible; at least in one case," answered Richard, in the same
earnest tone.
"I am astonished!" said the professor. "My interest is boundless.
Could I not see this wonderful lady?"
"Why not? It is eight o'clock. At this hour I am accustomed to make
my visit."
"Let us go, by all means," urged Lutz.
On the way Frank spoke of Angela's charitable practices, of her love
for the poor, her pious customs, and of her deep religious sentiment,
which manifested itself in every thing; of her activity in household
matters, of her modesty and humility. All this he said in a tone of
enthusiasm. The professor listened with attention and smiled.
As they went through the gate into the large court-yard, they saw
Angela standing under the lindens. She held a large dish in her hand.
About her pressed and crowded the representatives of all races and
nations of that multitude which material progress has raised from
slavish degradation. From Angela's hand rained golden corn among
the chattering brood, who, pressed by a ravenous appetite, hungrily
shoved, pushed, and upset each other. Even the chivalrous cocks had
forgotten their propriety, and greedily snatched up the yellow fruit
without gallantly cooing and offering the treasure to the females.
Nimble ducks glided between the legs of the turkeys and snatched up,
quick as lightning, the grains from their open bills. This did not
please the turkeys, who gobbled and struck their sharp bills into the
bobbing heads of the ducks. A solitary turkey cock alone scorned to
participate in the hungry pleasures of the common herd. He spread his
wings stiffly like a crinoline around his body, strutted about the
yard, uttered a gallant guttural gobble, and played the fine lady in
style.
Near the gate stood the stalls. They all had double doors, so that
the upper part could be opened while the lower half remained closed.
As the two friends passed, they saw a massive head protruding through
the open half of one of those doors. The head was red, and was set
upon the powerful shoulders of a steer who had broken loose from his
fastening to take a walk about the yard. When he saw the strangers,
he began to snort, cock his ears, and shake his head, while his fiery
eyes rolled wildly in his head.
"A handsome beast," said Frank, as he stopped. "How wide his
forehead, how strong his horns, how powerful his chest!"
"His head," said Lutz, "would be an expressive symbol for the
evangelist Luke."
The steer was not pleased with these compliments. Bellowing angrily
he rushed against the door, which gave way. Slowly and powerfully
came forth from the darkness of the stall the colossal limbs of
the dangerous beast. The friends, unexpectedly placed in the power
of this terrible enemy, stood paralyzed. They beheld the colossus
lashing his sides with his tail, lowering his head threateningly,
and maliciously stealing toward them like a cat stealing to a mouse
till she gets within a sure spring of it. The steer had evidently the
same design on the strangers. He thought to crush them with his iron
forehead and amuse himself with tossing up their lifeless bodies.
They saw this, clearly enough, but there was no time for flight. The
red steer in his mad onset would certainly overtake and run them
down. Luckily, the professor remembered from the Spanish bull-fights
how they must meet these beasts, and he quickly warned his friend.
"If he charges, slip quickly to one side."
Scarcely had the words escaped his trembling lips, when the steer
gave a short bellow, lowered his head, and, quick as an arrow,
rushed upon Frank. He jumped to one side, but slipped and fell to
the ground. The steer dashed against a wagon that was standing near,
and broke several of the spokes. Maddened at the failure of his
charge, he turned quickly about and saw Frank lying on the ground,
and rejoiced over his helpless victim. Richard commended his soul
to God, but had enough presence of mind not to move a limb; he even
kept his eyes closed. The steer snuffed about, and Frank felt his
warm breath. The steer evidently did not know how to begin with the
lifeless thing, until he took it into his head to stick his horns
into the yielding mass. The young man was lost--now the steer lowered
his horns--now came the rescue.
Angela had only observed the visitor as the bellowing steer rushed at
him. All this took but a minute. The servants were not then in the
yard; and before they could be called, Richard would be gored a dozen
times by the sharp weapons of the steer. The professor trembled in
every limb; he neither dared to cry for help, lest he might remind
the steer of his presence, nor to move from the place. He seemed
destined to be compelled to see his friend breathe out his life under
the torturing stabs.
Before this happened, however, Angela's voice rang imperatively
through the yard. The astonished steer raised his head, and when he
saw the frail form coming toward him with the dish in her hand, he
gave forth a friendly low, and had even the good grace to go a few
steps to meet her.
"Falk, what are you about?" said she reproachfully. "You are a
terrible beast to treat visitors so."
Falk lowed his apology, and, as he perceived the contents of the
dish, he awkwardly sank his mouth into it. Angela scratched his
jaws, at which he was so delighted that he even forgot the dish and
held still like a child. The professor looked on this scene with
amazement--the airy form before the murderous head of the steer. As
Master Falk began even to lick Angela's hand, the professor was very
near believing in miracles.
"So now, be right good, Falk!" said she coaxingly; "now go back where
you belong. Keep perfectly quiet, Herr Frank; do not move, and it
will be soon over."
She patted the steer on the broad neck, and holding the dish before
him, led him to the stall, into which he quickly disappeared.
Frank arose.
"You are not hurt?" asked Lutz with concern.
"Not in the least," answered Frank, taking out his pocket
handkerchief and brushing the dust from his clothes. The professor
brought him his hat, which had bounced away when he fell, and placed
it on the head of his trembling friend.
Angela returned after housing the steer. Frank went some steps toward
her, as if to thank her on his knees for his life; but he concluded
to stand, and a sad smile passed over his countenance.
"Fräulein Angela," said he, "I have the honor of introducing to you
my friend, Herr Lutz, professor at our university."
"It gives me pleasure to know the gentleman," said she. "But I regret
that, through the negligence of Louis, you have been in great danger.
Great God! if I had not been in the yard." And her beautiful face
became as pale as marble.
Richard observed this expression of fright, and it shot through
his melancholy smile like rays of the highest delight; but for his
preserver he had not a single word of thanks. Lutz, not understanding
this conduct, was displeased at his friend, and undertook himself to
return her thanks.
"You have placed yourself in the greatest danger, Fräulein Angela,"
said he. "Had I been able when you went to meet the steer, I would
have held you back with both hands; but I must acknowledge that I was
palsied by fear."
"I placed myself in no danger," she replied. "Falk knows me well, and
has to thank me for many dainties. When father is away, I have to go
into the stalls to see if the servants have done their work. So all
the animals know me, and I can call them all by name."
They went into the house.
"It is well that my parents are absent to-day, and that the accident
was observed by no one; for my father would discharge the Swiss who
has charge of the animals, for his negligence. I would be sorry for
the poor man. I beg of you, therefore, to say nothing of it to my
father. I will correct him for it, and I am sure he will be more
careful in future."
While she spoke, the eyes of the professor rested upon her, and it is
scarcely doubtful that in his present judgment the splendor of the
rostrum was eclipsed. Frank sat silent, observing. He scarcely joined
in the conversation, which his friend conducted with great warmth.
"This occurrence," said Lutz, on his way home, "appears to me like an
episode from the land of fables and wonders. First, the steer fight;
then the overcoming of the beast by a maiden; lastly, a maid of such
beauty that all the fair ones of romance are thrown in the shade. By
heaven, I must call all my learning to my aid in order to be able to
forget her and not fall in love up to the ears!"
Frank said nothing.
"And you did not even thank her!" said Lutz vehemently. "Your conduct
was more than ungallant. I do not understand you."
"Nothing without reason," said Frank.
"No matter! Your conduct cannot be justified," growled the professor.
"I would like to know the reason that prevented you from thanking
your preserver for your life?"
Richard stopped, looked quietly into the glowing countenance of his
friend, and proceeded doubtingly,
"You shall know all, and then judge if my offensive conduct is not
pardonable."
He began to relate how he met Angela for the first time on the lonely
road in the forest, how she then made a deep impression on him, what
he learned of her from the poor man and from Klingenberg, and how
his opinion of womankind had been shaken by Angela; then he spoke of
his object in visiting the Siegwart family, of his observations and
experience.
"I had about come to the conclusion, and the occurrence of to-day
realizes that conclusion, that Angela possesses that admirable virtue
which, until now, I believed only to exist in the ideal world. If
there is a spark of vanity in her, I must have offended her. She must
have looked resentfully at me, the ungrateful man, and treated me
sulkily. But such was not the case; her eyes rested on me with the
same clearness and kindness as ever. My coarse unthankfulness did not
offend her, because she does not think much of herself, because she
makes no pretensions, because she does not know her great excellence,
but considers her little human weaknesses in the light of religious
perfection--in short, because she is truly humble. She will bury
this dauntless deed in forgetfulness. She does not wish the little
and great journals to bring her courage into publicity. Tell me a
woman, or even a man, who could be capable of such modesty? Who
would risk life to rescue a stranger from the horns of a ferocious
steer without hesitation, and not desire an acknowledgment of the
heroic deed? How great is Angela, how admirable in every act! I was
unthankful; yes, in the highest degree unthankful. But I placed
myself willingly in this odious light, in order to see Angela in full
splendor. As I said," he concluded quietly, "I must soon confess
myself besieged--vanquished on the whole line of observation."
"And what then?" said the professor.
"Then I am convinced," said Richard, "that female worth exists,
shining and brilliant, and that in the camp of the ultramontanes."
"A shaming experience for us," replied the professor. "You make
your studies practical, you destroy all the results of learned
investigation by living facts. To be just; it must be admitted that a
woman like what you have described Angela to be only grows and ripens
on the ground of religious influences and convictions."
"And did you observe," said Richard, "how modestly she veiled
the splendor of her brave action? She denied that there was any
danger in the presence of the steer, although it is well known
that those beasts in moments of rage forget all friendship. Angela
must certainly have felt this as she went to meet the horns of the
infuriated animal to rescue me."
Frank visited daily, and sometimes twice a day, the Siegwart family;
he was always received with welcome, and might be considered an
intimate friend. The family spirit unfolded itself clearer and
clearer to his view. He found that every thing in that house was
pervaded by a religious influence, and this without any design or
haughty piety. The assessor was destined to receive a striking proof
of this.
One afternoon a coach rolled into the court-yard. The family were at
tea. The Assessor von Hamm entered, dressed entirely in black; even
the red ribbon was wanting in the button-hole.
"I have learned with grief of the misfortune that has overtaken you,"
said he after a very formal reception. "I obey the impulse of my
heart when I express my sincere sympathy in the great affliction you
have suffered in the death of the dear little Eliza."
The tears came into the eyes of Madame Siegwart. Angela looked
straight before her, as if to avoid the glance of the assessor.
"We thank you, Herr von Hamm," returned the proprietor. "We were
severely tried, but we are reasonable enough to know that our family
cannot be exempted from the afflictions of human life."
Hamm sat down, a cup was set before him, and Angela poured him out a
cup of fragrant tea. The assessor acknowledged this service with his
sweetest smile, and the most obliged expression of thanks.
"You are right," he then said. "No one is exempt from the stroke of
fate. Man must submit to the unavoidable. To the ancients, blind fate
was terrific and frightful. The present enlightenment submits with
resignation."
If a bomb had plunged into the room and exploded upon the table, it
could not have produced greater confusion than these words of the
assessor. Madame Siegwart looked at him with astonishment and shook
her head. The proprietor, embarrassed, sipped his tea. Angela's
blooming cheeks lost their color. Hamm did not even perceive the
effect of his fatal words, and Frank was scarcely able to hide his
secret pleasure at Hamm's sad mishap.
"We know no fate, no blind, unavoidable destiny," said Siegwart, who
could not forgive the assessor his unchristian sentiment. "But we
know a divine providence, an all-powerful will, without whose consent
the sparrow does not fall from the house-top. We believe in a Father
in heaven who, counts the hairs of our heads, and whose counsels rule
our destiny."
Hamm smiled.
"You believe then, Herr Siegwart, that divine providence, or rather
God, has aimed that blow at you?"
"Yes; so I believe."
"Pardon me. I think you judge too hard of God. It is inconsistent
with his paternal goodness to afflict your beloved child with such
misfortune."
"Misfortune? It is to be doubted whether Eliza's death is a
misfortune. Perhaps her early departure from this world is precisely
her happiness; and then we must reflect that God is master of life
and death. It is not for us to call the Almighty to account, even if
his divine ordinances should be counter to our wishes."
"I respect your religious convictions, Herr Siegwart. Permit me,
however, to observe that God is much too exalted to have an eye to
all human trifles. He simply created the natural law; this he leaves
to its course. All the elements must obey these laws. Every creature
is subject to them; and when Eliza died, she died in consequence of
the course of these laws, but not through God's express will. Do you
not think that this view of our misfortunes reconciles us with the
conceptions we have of God's goodness?"
"No; I do not believe it, because such a view contradicts the
Christian faith," replied Siegwart earnestly. "What kind of a God,
what kind of a Father would he be who would let every thing go as
it might? He would be less a father than the poorest laborer who
supports his family in the sweat of his brow."
"And the whole army of misfortunes that daily overtake the human
family? Does this army await the command of God?"
"Do not forget, Herr Assessor, that the most of these misfortunes
are deserved; brought on by our sins and passions. If excesses would
cease, how many sources of nameless calamities would disappear! For
the rest, it is my firm conviction that nothing happens or can happen
in the whole universe without the express will of God, or at least by
his permission."
The official shook his head.
"This question is evidently of great importance to every man," said
Frank. "Man is often not master of the course of his life; for it is
developed by a chain of circumstances, accidents, and providential
interferences that are not in man's power. I understand very well
that to be subject to blind chance, to an irrevocable fate, is
something disquieting and discouraging to man. Equally consoling,
on the other hand, is the Christian faith in the loving care of an
all-powerful Father, without whose permission a hair of our head
cannot be touched. But things of such great injustice, of such
irresistible power, and of such painful consequences happen on earth,
that I cannot reconcile them with divine love."
While Frank spoke, Angela's eyes rested on him with the greatest
attention; and when he concluded, she lowered her glance, and an
earnest, thoughtful expression passed over her countenance.
"There are accidents that apparently are not the result of man's
fault," said Siegwart. "Torrents sweep over the land and destroy
all the fruit of man's industry. Perhaps these torrents are only the
scourges which the justice of God waves over a lawless land. But I
admit that among the victims there are many good men. Storms wreck
ships at sea, and many human lives are lost. Avalanches plunge from
the Alps and bury whole towns in their resistless fall. It is such
accidents as these you have in view."
"Precisely--exactly so. How will you reconcile all these with the
fatherly goodness of God?" cried Hamm triumphantly.
The proprietor smiled.
"Permit me to ask a question, Herr Assessor. Why does the state make
laws?"
"To preserve order."
"I anticipated this natural reply," continued the proprietor. "If
malefactors were not punished, thieves and desperadoes, their bad
practices being permitted, would have full play. Then all order would
vanish; human society would dissolve into a chaos of disorder. God
also created laws which are necessary for the preservation of the
natural order. Storms destroy ships. If there were no storms, all
growth in the vegetable kingdom would cease. Poisonous vapors would
fill the air, and every living thing must miserably die. Avalanches
destroy villages. But if it did not snow, the torrents would no
longer run, the streams would dry up and the wells would disappear,
and man and beast would die of thirst. You see, gentlemen, God cannot
abolish that law of nature without endangering the whole creation."
"That explains some, but not all," replied Hamm. "God is
all-powerful; it would be but a trifle for him to protect us by his
almighty power from the destructive forces of the elements. Why does
he not do so?"
"The reason is clear," answered Angela's father. "God would have
constantly to work miracles. Miracles are exceptions to the workings
of the laws of nature. Now, if God would constantly suppress the
power, and unceasingly interrupt the laws of nature, then there would
be no longer a law of nature. The supernatural would have devoured
the natural. The Almighty would have destroyed the present creation."
"No matter," said the official. "God might destroy the natural forces
that are inimical to man; for all that exists is only of value
because of its use to man."
"Then nothing whatever would remain. All would be lost," said
Siegwart. "We speak and write much about earthly happiness that
soon passes away. We glorify the beauty of creation; but we forget
that God's curse rests on this earth, and it does not require great
penetration to see this curse in all things."
"You believe, then, in the future destruction of the earth?" asked
Hamm.
"Divine revelation teaches it," said Siegwart. "The Holy Scriptures
expressly say there will be a new earth and a new heaven; and the
Lord himself assures us that the foundations of the earth will be
overturned and the stars shall fall from the heavens."
"The stars fall from the heavens!" cried Hamm, laughing. "If you
could only hear what the astronomers say about that."
"What the astronomers say is of no consequence. They did not create
the heavenly bodies, and cannot give them boundaries; besides, we
need not take the falling of the stars literally. This expression may
signify their disappearance from the earth, perhaps the abolition
of the laws by which they have heretofore been moved, and the
reconstruction of those relations which existed between heaven and
earth prior to the fall. God will then do what you now demand of him,
Herr von Hamm," concluded Siegwart, smiling. "He will destroy the
inimical power of nature, so that the new earth will be free from
thorns, tears, and lamentations."
Thus they continued to dispute, and the debate became so animated
that even Angela entered the list in favor of providence.
"I believe," said she with charming blushes, "that the miseries of
this earthly life can only be explained and understood in view of
man's eternal destiny. God spares the sinner through forbearance
and mercy; he sends trials and misfortunes to the good for their
purification. God demanded of Abraham the sacrifice of his only son;
but when Abraham showed obedience to the command, and consented to
make that boundless sacrifice, he was provided with another victim to
offer sacrifice to God."
"Fräulein Angela," exclaimed Hamm enthusiastically, "you have solved
the problem. Your comprehensive remark reconciles even the innocent
sufferers with repulsive decrees. O Fräulein!"--and the assessor fell
into a tone of reverie--"were it permitted me to go through life by
the side of a partner who possesses your spirit and your conciliatory
mildness!"
Angela looked down blushing. She was embarrassed, and dared not raise
her eyes. Her first glance, after a few moments, was at Richard.
* * * * *
Frank wrote in his diary:
"Even the preaching tone becomes her admirably. Morality and
religion flow from her lips as from a pure fountain that vivifies
her soul."
As yet he had not surrendered to Angela.
Frank sprang from an obstinate Westphalian stock; and that the
Westphalians have not exchanged their stiff necks for those of
shepherds, is sufficiently proved by their stubborn fight with the
powers who menaced their liberties. Had Frank been a good-natured
South-German or even Municher, he would long since have bowed head
and knees to the "Angel of Salingen." But he now maintained the last
position of his antipathy to women against Angela's superior powers.
He visited the Siegwart family not twice, but thrice, even four times
a day. He appeared suddenly and unexpectedly before Angela like a spy
who wished to detect faults.
Just as he was going over the court, on one occasion, a tall lad
came up to him. The boy came from the same fatal door through which
Master Falk had rushed out upon Richard with such bad intentions. The
servant held his hat in his right hand, and with his left fumbled the
bright buttons on his red vest.
"Herr Frank, excuse me; I have something to say to you. I have wanted
to speak to you for the last three days, but could not because my
master was always in the way. But now, as my master is in the fields,
I can state my trouble, if you will allow me."
"What trouble have you?"
"I am the Swiss through whose fault the steer came near doing you a
great injury. It is inexplicable to me, even now, how the animal got
loose. But Falk is very cunning. I cannot be too watchful of him.
His head is full of schemes; and before you can turn around, he has
played one of his tricks. The chain has a clasp with a latch, and
how he broke it, he only knows."
"It is all right," replied Frank. "I believe you are not to blame."
"I am not to blame about the chain. But I am for the door being
open, Miss Angela said; and she is perfectly right. Therefore, I beg
your pardon and promise you that nothing of the kind shall happen in
future."
"The pardon is granted, on condition that you guard the steer better."
"Miss Angela said that too; and she required me to ask your pardon,
which I have done."
Angela stood in the garden, hidden behind the rose-bushes, and heard,
smiling, the conversation.
As Frank passed over the yard, she came from the garden carrying a
basketful of vegetables. At the same time a harvest-wagon, loaded
with rapes and drawn by four horses, came into the yard.
"Your industry extends to the garden also, Miss Angela," said Frank.
"Now I know no branch of housekeeping that you cannot take a part in."
"My work is, however, insignificant," she returned. "In a large house
there is always a great deal to do, and every one must try to be
useful."
"Your garden deserves all praise," continued Richard, eyeing the
contents of the baskets. "What magnificent peas and beans!"
For the first time Frank observed in her face something like
flattered vanity, and he almost rejoiced at this small shadow on
the celestial form before him. But the supposed shadow was quickly
changed into light before his eyes. "Father brought these early
beans into the neighborhood; they are very tender and palatable.
Father likes them, and I am glad to be able to make him a salad this
evening. He will be astonished to see his young favorites of this
year, eight days earlier than formerly. There he comes; he must not
see them now." She covered them with some lettuce.
And this was the shadow of flattered vanity! Childish joy, to be able
to astonish her father with an agreeable dish.
The loaded wagon stopped in the yard; the horses snorted and pawed
the ground impatiently. The servants opened the barn-doors, and Frank
saw on all sides activity and haste to house the valuable crop.
Siegwart shook hands with the visitor.
"The first blessing of the year," said the proprietor. "The rapes
have turned out well. We had a fine blooming season, and the flies
could not do much damage."
"I have often observed those little flies in the rape-fields," said
Frank. "You can count millions of them; but I did not know that they
injured the crop."
They both went into the house, where a bottle of Munich beer awaited
them. Soon after, the servants went through the hall, and Frank heard
Angela's voice from the kitchen, where she was busily occupied. The
servants brought bread, plates, cheese, and jugs of light wine to the
servants' room.
"Neighbor," said Siegwart, "I invite you to-morrow afternoon at four
o'clock to a family entertainment--providing it will be agreeable to
you."
The invitation was accepted.
"You must not expect much from the entertainment. It will, at least,
be new to you."
Frank was much interested in the character of this ultramontane
entertainment. He thought of a May party, a coronation party; but
rejected this idea, for Siegwart promised a family entertainment, and
this could not be a May party. He thought of all kinds of plays,
and what part Angela would take in them. But the play also seemed
improbable, and at last the subject of the invitation remained an
interesting mystery to him, the solution of which he awaited with
impatience.
An hour before the appointed time Richard left Frankenhöhe, after
Klingenberg had excused him from the daily walk. He took a roundabout
way along the edge of the forest; for he knew that the Siegwart
family would be at divine service, and he did not wish to arrive
at the house a moment before the time. Sunday stillness rested on
all. The mountains rose up a deep blue; the vari-colored fields were
partly yellow; the vineyards alone were of a deep green, and when the
wind blew through them it wafted with it the pleasant odors of the
vine-blossoms.
Madame Siegwart was just returning home from Salingen between her two
children. Henry, a youth of seventeen and the future proprietor of
the property, had the same manners as his father. He walked leisurely
on the road-side, examining the blooming wheat and ripening corn.
When he discovered nests of vine weevils, he plucked them off and
crushed the eggs of the hated enemies of all wine-growers. Angela
remained constantly at her mother's side, and as she accidentally
raised her eyes to where Richard stood, he made a movement as though
he was caught disadvantageously.
A short distance behind them came Siegwart, surrounded by some men.
They often stopped and talked in a lively manner. Frank thought that
these men were also invited, and hoped to become acquainted with
the _élite_ of Salingen. He was, however, disappointed; for a short
distance from Siegwart's house the men turned back to Salingen. They
had only accompanied the proprietor part of the way. The servants of
Siegwart also came hastening along the road, first the men-servants,
and some distance behind them the maid-servants. Frank had observed
this separation before, and thought it must be in consequence of the
strict orders of the master. Frank considered this narrow-minded, and
thought of finding fault with it, in true modern spirit. But then he
considered the results of his observations, which had extended to the
servants. He often admired the industry and regular conduct of these
people. He never heard any oath or rough expressions of passion;
every one knew his work, and performed it with care and attention.
He observed this regular order with admiration, particularly when he
thought of the disobedience, dissatisfaction, and untrustworthiness
of the generality of servants. Siegwart must possess a great secret
to keep these people in agreement and order; therefore he rejected
his former opinion of narrow-mindedness, and believed the proprietor
must have good reason for this separation of the sexes.
Frank remained for a time under the shadow of an oak, looked at
his watch, and finally descended the shortest way. He was expected
by Siegwart, and immediately conducted to the large room. The
arrangement of the room showed at a glance its use. There was a
small altar at one side, and religious pictures hung on the walls.
There was also a harmonium, and on the windows hung curtains on
which were painted scenes from sacred history. In the middle of the
room there was a desk, on which lay a book. To the right of the desk
sat the men-servants, to the left the maids, the Siegwart family in
the centre. A smile passed over Frank's countenance at the present
religious entertainment--for him, at least, a new sort of recreation.
At his entrance the whole assembly rose. He greeted Angela and her
mother, pressed warmly the hand of Henry, and took the seat allotted
to him.
Angela ascended the pulpit, sat down and opened the book. She read
the life of the servant St. Zitta, whom the church numbers among
the saints. Angela read in a masterly manner. The narrative tone
of her soft, melodious voice ran like a quickening stream through
the soul. Some passages she pronounced with plastic force, and
into the delivery of others she breathed warm life. All listened
with great attention. Zitta's childhood passed in quick review,
then her hard lot with a master difficult to please. The servants
listened with astonishment. They heard with pious attention of
Zitta's pure conduct, of her fidelity and humility, of her industry
and self-denial. They all felt personally their own deficiency in
comparison with this shining model. When Angela closed the book,
Frank saw that the servants were deeply impressed. Meditatively they
left the room, as though they had heard a striking sermon.
"Ah!" thought Frank. "Now I know one of the means by which Siegwart
influences his people."
"Now comes the second part of the entertainment," said the
proprietor, taking Richard's arm. "We will now go into the garden."
On the way thither Frank saw under the lindens a long table set
with food and wine, and at it sat the servants. Richard heard their
conversation in passing. They talked of St. Zitta and recounted the
striking facts of her life.
Near the garden wall grew a vine-arbor, which caught the cool air
as it passed and loaded it with pleasant odors. Thousands of the
flowers of the blooming vine appeared between the indented leaves.
Each of these diminutive flowers breathed forth a fragrance which for
sweetness of odor could not be surpassed.
A young brood of goldfinches, who had taken possession of the arbor,
now cleared off. They flew up on the dwarf trees, or hid among the
roses, which of all colors and kinds grew in the garden. The hungry
young ones cried incessantly, and tested severely the parental duty
of support. But the old ones were not ashamed of this duty. Here
and there they caught flies and other insects, and carried them to
the young ones, who stood with outstretched wings and flabby bills
wide open. Then the old ones would fly away again, light on the
branches--mostly on bean-stalks--make quick dodges, wave their tails,
smack their tongues, and seize as quick as lightning a harmless
passing fly. The sparrows did not behave so harmlessly. They pecked
at the bright shining cherries that hung in full clusters on the
swaying branches. Others of this sharp-billed gentry hopped about on
the strawberry-beds, and disfigured the large berries as they tore
off great pieces of the soft meat. One of them had even the boldness
to hop about on the decorated table that stood at the upper end of
the arbor, to strike his sharp bill into the buttered bread, make an
examination of the preserves, ogle the slices of ham, and admire the
black bottles that stood on the ground. He also took to flight as the
company arrived. The vine-blossoms seemed to send forth a sweeter
fragrance as Angela, bright and beaming, approached, leaning on the
arm of her mother.
"Do you have this edifying reading every Sunday?" asked Richard.
"Regularly," answered the proprietor. "It is an old custom of our
family, and I find it has such good results that I will not have it
abolished. The servants are not obliged to be present. They are free
after vespers, each one to employ himself as best suits him. But it
seldom happens that a servant or a maid is absent. They like to hear
the legends, and you may have remarked that they listen with great
attention to the reading."
"I have observed it," said Frank. "Miss Angela is also such an
excellent reader that only deaf people would not attend."
She smiled and blushed a little at this praise.
"I consider it a strict obligation of employers to have a supervision
over the conduct of the servants," said Madame Siegwart. "Many,
perhaps most, servants are treated like the slaves in old heathen
times. They work for their masters, are paid for it, and there the
relation between master and servant ends. This is why they neglect
divine service on Sundays and feast-days; their moral wants are not
satisfied, their natural inclinations are not purified by restraints
of a higher order. The servants sit in the taverns, where they
squander their wages, and the maids rove about and gossip. This is
a great injustice to the servants, and full of bad consequences. It
cannot be questioned that masters should shield their servants from
error and keep them under moral discipline."
"Precisely my opinion," returned Frank. "If servants are frequently
spoiled and general complaint is made of it, the masters are greatly
in fault. I have long since admired the conduct of your servants. I
looked upon Herr Siegwart as a kind of sorcerer, who conjured every
thing under his charge according to his will. Now a part of the
sorcery is clear to me."
"Well, you were favorable in your judgment," said the proprietor,
laughing. "So you considered me a magician; others consider me an
ultramontanist, and that is something still worse."
Richard smiled and blushed slightly.
"You no doubt have heard this honorable title applied to me, Herr
Frank?"
"Yes, I have heard of it."
"And I scarcely deceive myself in supposing," continued Siegwart
good-humoredly, "that your father has spoken to you of his neighbor,
the ultramontane."
"You do not deceive yourself at all," answered Frank. "I consider it
a great honor to have become better acquainted with the ultramontane."
"I have often wished to speak to you," continued the proprietor, "of
the reason which called forth your father's displeasure with me. I
suppose, however, that you have heard it."
"My father never spoke of it, and I am eager to know the unfortunate
cause."
"It is as follows. About ten years ago your father, with some other
gentlemen, wished to establish a great factory in this neighborhood.
The land on which it was to stand is a marsh lying near a pond, the
water of which was to be made of use to the factory. I tried with all
my power to prevent this design, and even for social and religious
reasons. Our neighborhood needed no factory. There are but few very
poor people, and these support themselves sufficiently well among
the farmers. Experience proves that factories have a bad effect on
the people in their neighborhood. Our people are firm believers.
The peasants keep conscientiously the Sundays and festivals. In all
their cares for the earthly they do not forget the eternal life.
This religious sentiment spreads happiness and peace over our quiet
neighborhood. The factory, which knows no Sunday, and the operatives,
who are sometimes very bad men, would have brought a harsh
discordance into the quiet harmony of the neighborhood. I considered
these and other injurious influences, and offered a higher price for
the swamp than your father and his friends. As there was no other
convenient place about, the enterprise had to be given up. Since that
time your father is offended with me because I made his favorite
project impossible. This is the way it stands. That it is painful to
me, I need not assure you. But according to my principles and views I
could not do otherwise. Now judge how far I am to be condemned."
"I speak freely," said Frank. "You have acted from principles that
one must respect, and which my father would have respected if he had
known them."
The proprietor could have observed that he had, in a long letter,
justified himself to Herr Frank. But he suppressed the observation,
as he felt it would be painful to his son.
"Father," said Henry, "hunger and thirst are appeased. Can I ride out
for an hour?"
"Yes, my son; but not longer. Be back by supper-time."
The young man promised, and, after a friendly bow to Frank, hastened
from the garden. The little circle continued some time in friendly
chat. The servants under the lindens became noisy and sang merry
songs. The maids sat around the tea-table in the kitchen and praised
St. Zitta.
The cook appeared in the arbor and announced that Herr von Hamm was
in the house, and wished to speak on important business to Herr and
Madame Siegwart.
"What can he want?" said the proprietor in surprise. "Excuse me,
Herr Frank; the business will soon be over. I beg you to remain till
we return. Angela, prevent him from going."
Angela, smiling, looked after her retiring parents and then at
Richard.
"I must keep you, Herr Frank. How shall I begin?"
"That is very easy, Fräulein. Your presence is sufficient to realize
your father's wish. A weak child of human nature cannot resist one
who can conquer steers."
"Now you make a steer-catcher of me. Such a thing never happened in
Spain; for there the steers are not so cultivated and docile as they
are with us."
She took out her knitting.
"This is Sunday, Miss Angela!"
"Do you consider knitting unlawful after one has fulfilled one's
religious duties?"
"The case is not clear to me," said Frank, smiling secretly at
the earnestness of the questioner. "My casuistic knowledge is not
sufficient to solve such a question reasonably."
"The church only forbids servile work," said she. "I consider
knitting and sewing as something better than doing nothing."
"I am rejoiced that you are not narrow-minded, Fräulein. But this
little stocking does not fit your feet?"
"It is for little bare feet in Salingen," she replied, laying the
finished stocking on the table and stroking it with both hands as a
work of love.
"I have heard of your beneficence," said Frank. "You knit, sew, and
cook for the poor people. You are a refuge for all the needy and
distressed. How good in you!"
"You exaggerate, Herr Frank. I do a little sometimes, but not more
than I can do with the housework, which is scarcely worth mentioning.
I make no sacrifice in doing it; on the contrary, the poor give me
more than I give them; for giving is to every one more pleasant than
receiving."
"To every one, Fräulein?"
"To every one who can give without denying herself."
"But you are accustomed also to visit the sick, and the hovels of
poverty are certainly not attractive."
"Indeed, Herr Frank, very attractive," she answered quickly. "The
thanks of the poor sick are so affecting and elevating that one is
paid a thousand times for a little trouble."
Frank let the subject drop. Angela did not give charities from pride
or the gratification of vanity, as he had been prepared to assume,
but from natural goodness and inclination of the heart. He looked at
the beautiful girl who sat before him industriously sewing, and was
almost angry at his failure to detect a fault in her pure nature.
"Do you always adorn the statue of the Virgin on the mountain?" said
he after a pause.
"No; not now. The month of our dear Lady is over. I always think with
pleasure of the happy hours when in the convent we adorned her altar
with beautiful flowers."
"You must have a great reverence for Mary, or you would not ascend
the mountain daily."
"I admire the exalted virtues of Mary, and think with sorrow of her
painful life on earth; and then, a weak creature needs much her
powerful protection."
"Do you expect, Miss Angela, by such attention as you show the statue
to obtain protection of the saint?"
"No, I do not believe that. The adorning of the pictures of saints
would be idle trifling if the heart wandered far from the spirit of
the saints. Our church teaches, as you know, that the real, true
veneration of the saints consists in imitating their virtues."
Frank sat reflecting. The examination and probation were thoroughly
disgusting to him. Siegwart appeared in the garden, and came with
quick steps to the arbor. His countenance was agitated and his eyes
glowed with indignation. Without speaking a word, he drank off a
glass of wine. Frank saw how he endeavored not to exhibit his anger.
"Has Herr von Hamm departed?" asked Richard.
"Yes, he is off again," said the proprietor. "Angela, your mother has
something to say to you."
"Now guess what the assessor wanted?" said Siegwart, after his
daughter had left the arbor.
"Perhaps he wanted the Peter-pence collection," said Frank, smiling.
"No. Herr von Hamm wanted nothing more or less than to marry my
daughter!"
Frank was astonished. Although he long since saw through Hamm's
designs, he did not expect so sudden and hasty a step.
"And in what manner did he demand her?"
"It is revolting," said the proprietor, much offended. "Herr von Hamm
graciously condescends to us peasants. He showed that it would be
a great good fortune for us to give our daughter to the noble, the
official with brilliant prospects."
"Herr von Hamm does not think little of himself," said Richard drily.
"How did the man ever come to ask my daughter? He and Angela! What
opposites!"
"Which, of course, you made clear to him."
"I reminded the gentleman that identity of moral and religious
principles alone could render matrimonial happiness possible. I
reminded him that Angela was an ultramontane, whose opinions would
daily annoy him, while his modern opinions must deeply offend Angela.
This I set before him briefly. Then I told him frankly and freely
that I did not wish to make either him or Angela unhappy, and at this
he went away angrily."
"You have done your duty," said Frank. "I am also of opinion that
similar convictions in the great principles of life alone insure the
happiness of married life."
When Richard came home, he wrote in his diary:
"June 4.--Unconditional surrender. What I supposed only to exist
in the ideal world is realized in the daughter of an ultramontane.
Angela, compared to our crinolines, our flirts, our insipid
coquettes--how brilliant the light, how deep the shadow!
"My visits to that family have no longer a purpose. I feel they
must be discontinued for the sake of my peace. I dare not dream of
a happiness of which I am unworthy. But my future life will feel
painfully the want of a happiness the possibility of which I did
not dream. This is a punishment for presuming to penetrate the
pure, glorious character of the Angel of Salingen."
He buried his face in his hands and leaned on the table. He remained
thus a long time; when he raised his head, his face was pale, and his
eyes were moist with tears.
TO BE CONTINUED.
DR. HARWOOD'S PRICE LECTURE.
A certain Mr. Price, of Boston, left a sum of money for a course
of annual lectures, one of which is to be against "Romanism," and
Dr. Harwood, the rector of Trinity church, New-Haven, having been
selected as the lecturer for the current year, has favored us with
the publication of his lecture on "Romanism," in the pages of the
_New-Englander_, as well as in the form of a separate pamphlet. The
dignified place which is held by the author of this lecture, as well
as his personal character and influence, give a considerable weight
to whatever he may publicly say on such a topic, in addition to the
intrinsic claim it may have on the attention of both his partisans
and opponents. On this account, and moreover on account of the
tangible, well-exposed issue which distinguishes the production of
the reverend doctor from most of the _brochures_ of his polemical
associates, we have thought it worth while to devote a little time to
the discussion of its contents.
Dr. Harwood does not attempt a formal argument against the claims of
the Roman Church to supremacy over all Christendom. He is addressing
an audience with whom, as with himself, it is a foregone conclusion
that these claims are baseless, and Romanism a fearful, dangerous
superstition. There is a tone of dislike and fear running through
the lecture with which the audience is expected to sympathize fully,
as when something is spoken of whose very mention is sufficient
to awaken the aversion of all the moral sensibilities without any
need of showing reasons. Just as the mere mention of the words
polytheism, Mohammedanism, Mormonism, call up those sentiments of the
falsehood and evil of the things they represent, which are interwoven
with the intellectual and moral constitution inherited from our
ancestors, nurtured by education, and governing our judgments like
a second nature, so the mere pronunciation of the terms Rome, pope,
sacrifice of the mass, with their derivatives and the other phrases
associated with them, are quite sufficient to carry away an average
New-England audience in a tide of sympathy with any anti-Roman
orator. It was not necessary, therefore, for Dr. Harwood to argue
with an audience already convinced, in proof of the position that
the Roman Church must be resisted and opposed. The question to be
considered was how best to do it? What are the points to be attacked?
is one division of the question; by what road, with what weapons
are these points to be attacked? is the other. With a singular and
very honorable manliness and directness, the lecturer puts aside
all secondary issues and places himself openly in front of the
fundamental dogmatic basis of the Roman Church, with the avowal that
it is necessary to the victory of his cause to attack and subvert
this central stronghold. He seeks to ascertain, like a topographical
engineer who is laying out positions for a bombardment, the precise
situation and extent of this central work, and the exact spot on
which the heavy guns which are to play upon it must be planted. It
remains yet to be seen whether his report will be accepted by the
leaders of his side, and an attempt made to carry out the bold,
perhaps somewhat hazardous, strategy which he recommends.
Aside from all preliminaries and accompaniments which serve to
give rhetorical finish and effect to the lecture as a popular
oration, its gist and pith consist in the statement that the two
dogmas of the sacrifice of the mass and the papal supremacy form the
constitutive principle of the Roman Church, which the masters of
heavy polemics are recommended to step up and overthrow. We have no
objection to this issue, and are perfectly willing to fight the whole
campaign through on that line. If the doctor intends, however, to
define precisely and scientifically that these two dogmas together
constitute the _differentia_ of the doctrine of the Roman Church,
his definition is open to criticism. The dogma of the sacrifice of
the mass is no part of the _differentia_ which distinguishes the
Roman Church from the Eastern Christians, or from a respectable
party in the author's own communion. The true _differentia_ marking
the Catholic Church in the communion and under the headship of the
Bishop of Rome, as a sole and singular organization without its like
among all the corporate religious societies of the world, is what
is called in theological language the _juge magisterium ecclesiæ_,
the living, perpetual, infallible, supreme authority in spirituals
exercised in constant and uninterrupted continuity, and keeping
the body of the church in indefectible unity. This magistracy is
focussed and capitalized in the headship of the primatial see of the
world, the Roman Church, and the supremacy of its bishop. A Greek
or an Anglo-Catholic may hold theoretically that this _magisterium_
belongs rightfully to the church, and could be exercised in case
the church were assembled in what each of them respectively would
acknowledge to be an oecumenical council. Neither of them, however,
can acknowledge the continuous and present exercise of this plenary
authority, because both are obliged to maintain that the church is
in a disunited, disorganized state. It is precisely because both
refuse to acknowledge the papal supremacy, that they deny the church
in communion with Rome to be the complete church in organized unity
and its general councils to be oecumenical. It is precisely this
supremacy which makes this church an organized unit, and places it
in the condition to act with full and complete power. The supremacy
of the pope may, therefore, stand for the _differentia_, and we are
willing to accept it as such, with the explanation above given,
that it includes also the unbroken unity, together with the plenary
judicial and legislative power of the Catholic episcopate as a
whole, including both the pope as supreme head, and the bishops as
_conjudices cum papa_, or fellow-judges and rulers, with and under
the pope, of the universal church.
This simplifies the issue, and reduces the controversy, as between
the Roman Church on one side, and all professed Christians refusing
to acknowledge her supremacy as "mother and mistress of churches" on
the other, to one question only. A victory on this one question is
for us complete and decisive, for it enables us to sweep the whole
battle-field. If the supremacy we claim for the pope is established,
the obligatory force of all the doctrines and laws proclaimed by
him as head of the universal church is established also, without
need of further argument, or possibility of appeal to any other
tribunal on the earth or in heaven. If our antagonists could vanquish
us, our cause would be a lost one; we should be brought down to a
common level with the Greeks as a mere branch of the church, and the
way would be open for those negotiations in view of the "reunion
of Christendom" which to certain persons seem so desirable. There
would still remain, however, a vast field of controversy before one
holding what we understand to be Dr. Harwood's views could make
his position good. The entire hierarchical system of the Eastern
churches, maintained also in theory by such a powerful party in the
doctor's own church, would remain to be refuted and overthrown.
Suppose this to be done, and we will readily concede that the system
of what is called the broad-church school, represented by Stanley,
Robertson, the author of the book called _Liber Librorum_; to whom we
think might be added the New-Haven divines, and the higher school of
Unitarians, such as Dr. Bellows, Dr. Osgood, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Alger,
and others; is the most rational and sensible of all the _soi-disant_
Christian systems which would be left on the ground. Perhaps Dr.
Harwood, looking on Greek Christianity and the amateur catholicity of
his own brethren as without real significance, intended to find some
doctrine which might stand for the entire hierarchical, sacramental
system, and which, joined with the doctrine of papal supremacy,
might with that make up the _differentia_ of the Roman Church in
respect to Protestantism. In this point of view, he has well chosen
the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. Our preceding strictures
are merely critical, and we are willing to meet Dr. Harwood on the
precise ground he has chosen for himself, the wager of battle being
this: that our Lord Jesus Christ established the papal supremacy
and the sacrifice of the mass, as essential parts of his religion.
Since the doctor has only appeared, however, in the character of a
scout, to clear the way for more heavily-armed combatants, and merely
skirmishes a little in advance, we will skirmish in the same manner,
without engaging more deeply in the controversy than simply to repel
his attacks. If the champions he has called on come up, which
we very much doubt, we hope they will go to work in earnest, and
undertake to meet and answer in detail all the proofs and arguments
adduced by our able writers, at least in English, in support of the
papal supremacy and the eucharistic sacrifice. Unless they do this,
they will not be entitled to any notice at our hands.
So far as Dr. Harwood merely describes the doctrine we hold
respecting the papal supremacy, he is almost entirely correct, and
so eloquent that the effect produced in his mind by its grandeur,
in spite of his inward reluctance, is visible. Of argument against
it there is hardly the semblance, a point we note not to the
author's disadvantage, but merely as a reason for not arguing in its
favor. One passing objection he does throw, as he goes by, at the
title supreme pontiff or _pontifex maximus_. This word appears to
alarm him, and no doubt alarmed all the excellent ladies and other
worthy persons in his audience, who are easily alarmed by words.
"He is regarded as the _pontifex maximus_ of the whole church of
Christ. _Pontifex maximus!_ The very word brings up memories of the
imperial city before it became Christian. Julius Cæsar was _pontifex
maximus_--the office was held by all the Cæsars--it was held while
the disciples of Jesus Christ, worshipping their Lord in the
catacombs, or dying in the amphitheatre 'to make a Roman holiday,'
associated the office with all cruelty and impiety." If this passage
is any thing more than a rhetorical flourish, it means that the name
and office of supreme pontiff are bad, unchristian things, because
the heathen had them. We ought, then, to carry this principle out
to its fullest extent. The heathen had an order of men specially
devoted to religion, public prayers, holy days, temples, religious
hymns, etc., therefore we should have none of these. The surplice
which Dr. Harwood wears is derived through the Jews, from the ancient
Egyptian priests; his prayer-book is full of observances derived from
the Roman Church. He preaches sermons and observes a fast of forty
days, like the Mohammedans, all of which is very wrong, and reminds
us painfully of Pharaoh, and the fires of Smithfield, and the cruel
persecutions of the Turks against the Christians. The Jews had a
high priest appointed by Almighty God. Our Lord is a high-priest,
_pontifex maximus_. Heathen perversions or travesties of divine
things make no argument against the things themselves. Neither is
there any reason why names, forms, observances, used by heathen, if
they are good and suitable, should not be adopted by Christians, just
as we appropriate heathen architecture, take possession of heathen
temples, and employ heathen philosophy in the service of religion.
We have no doubt that Moses imitated the civil and religious customs
of the Egyptians to a very great extent in the prescriptions of his
law. Parallelisms between the Catholic religion and various false
religions may easily enough be pointed out. We laugh at such an
argument as not worthy of being seriously refuted. The greater the
number of analogies that can be pointed out, the stronger is the
proof that the principles of our religion are derived from the origin
of the race, universal, and in accordance with human nature. Rome
was not all bad before it was converted. Whatever in it was good did
not need to be abolished, but only sanctified. Our Lord drove out
Jupiter, the angels and saints supplanted the imaginary divinities of
Olympus, the successor of Peter took the place of the successor of
Cæsar. The glorious temples of the gods became Christian churches,
and Roman polity became an organizing power over all Christendom. In
this was only fulfilled the prophecy of St. Paul, "_The God of peace
shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly_."[60] This kind of play
upon words with _pontifex maximus_ will, therefore, help Dr. Harwood
very little unless he can disprove the existence of the thing they
represent--a human priesthood with a supreme head over it, possessing
power delegated by Jesus Christ.
The lecturer is not precisely accurate in what he says of the
definition of the immaculate conception. The judgment of the Catholic
bishops and doctors had been for ages manifested, and was taken
anew in the most formal manner, before Pius IX. proclaimed his
definition. Those few persons among the prelates and theologians
who were opposed to the definition, did not merely submit outwardly
by keeping silence, but inwardly by an interior submission of the
mind, precisely as a good Christian would have submitted to St.
Peter himself in a similar case. If Dr. Harwood admits the doctrinal
infallibility of the New Testament, he can easily understand that,
if the meaning of any passage in it about which he had previously
doubted should be made clear to him, he would have to give his
interior assent to it, even though he must change an opinion he had
held all his life long. Precisely so with us. An infallible judgment
makes known to us with the certainty of faith the true sense of the
divine revelation, which we receive accordingly as equally certain
and obligatory on the conscience with every other revealed truth.
Whoever does not give this inward assent becomes a heretic, and
therefore Pius IX., in his Bull _Ineffabilis_, pronounces that every
one who does not believe the immaculate conception as a revealed
truth has suffered shipwreck of the faith.
In his account of the Catholic doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass
the author of the lecture is less successful, and misrepresents
it seriously; not intentionally, or through wilful carelessness,
but through a misunderstanding of Catholic phraseology. Because
the church calls it the _same sacrifice_ with the sacrifice of the
cross, he appears to think that our Lord is believed to have redeemed
the world by the oblation of himself at the institution of the
eucharist, and to be continually repeating this act of redemption in
the sacrifice offered daily on our altars. Dr. Seabury, the first
Protestant bishop of Connecticut, did actually teach that our Lord
offered himself in the eucharist as a sacrifice, and not on the
cross. This strange notion of the founder of his own diocese, Dr.
Harwood incorrectly ascribes to the Catholic Church.
"The _sacrifice_ was made or instituted in the night in which
he was betrayed; and, in the system of Romanism, this sacrifice
is every thing. I do not see that the cross is necessary; for
the stress falls upon the sacrifice of the altar, and the
worshipper is directed to that sacrifice as vested with objective
propitiatory virtue."
The church teaches that our Lord redeemed the world by his death
and the shedding of his blood upon the cross. He did not redeem it
by the oblation of himself in the Last Supper, nor does he do so by
the sacrifice of the altar; the sacrifice of redemption having been
offered once for all upon the cross, and not needing to be repeated.
The church does not mean by "same sacrifice" that the oblation in
the eucharist is a similar act of redemption, propitiatory in the
divided sense, or merely as containing the body and blood of Christ,
and presenting them before God. The sacrifice is the same, because
the victim is the same, the priest is the same, and all the value or
merit contained and applied in the sacrifice of the altar is derived
from the bloody sacrifice of the cross. There is thus a moral unity
binding together the innumerable acts of consecration and oblation
which take place on the Christian altars with each other and with
the sacrifice of the cross, in one whole, just as the innumerable
acts of obedience performed by our Lord during his earthly life make
one integral act of obedience with the final and consummating act of
his oblation on Mount Calvary. No doubt the intrinsic excellence of
the sacrifice of the eucharist is infinite, and therefore sufficient
for the redemption of this world or a thousand others, if there
were others needing redemption. The merit of the circumcision, the
fasting, the prayer, the preaching, the poverty and humiliation, the
labors and tears of our Blessed Lord was infinite, and fully adequate
to the redemption of mankind, without the sacrifice of the cross.
Every act of love to God the Father proceeding from the sacred heart
of Jesus Christ in heaven is simply infinite in its intrinsic value.
Yet no Catholic theologian maintains that the meritorious acts of
our Lord performed while he was a wayfarer on the earth redeemed
mankind apart from his death, or that he has merited any additional
grace for men since his sacrifice was completed. The sacrifice which
our Lord offered in the Last Supper did not, therefore, constitute
that act of expiation to which, in the divine decree, the remission
of original and actual sin was annexed; and much less is there any
such distinct, expiatory merit in the sacrifice which he perpetually
makes of himself in the eucharist, since his meritorious work has
been consummated. He offered himself once for all as a bloody
sacrifice upon the cross, meriting thereby an eternal redemption. At
the Last Supper he offered up himself to the Father as the Lamb who
was to be slain the next day, presenting by anticipation the merit
which he would gain by his cruel and ignominious death, as an act
of adoration, thanksgiving, expiation, and impetration in behalf of
all those who were included either generally or specially in his
intention. Doubtless, he frequently in prayer had presented these
same merits to his Father; and from the time of Adam's sin these
same merits had constituted the only ground on which pardon or grace
had been conferred, thus verifying the appellation applied to our
Lord in the Scripture of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world." In the sacrifice now offered by the priests of the new law,
Christ is presented before the Eternal Father as the Lamb who has
been slain. And although, as a sacrifice, the eucharist is equally an
oblation of the body and blood of the Lamb of God with the sacrifice
of the cross, differing only in the manner of offering, yet as this
manner of offering upon the cross by pain, blood-shedding, and death
constituted the precise act which expiated sin and redeemed the
world, the sacrificial nature of the eucharistic action which it has
in common with the crucifixion does not derogate from the exclusive
attribute belonging to the latter as the redemptive expiation or
the sacrifice of ransom, blotting out the curse of the fall, and
reopening the gates of heaven to our lost race. A sacrifice of
expiation including all ages, all men, and all sins having been
once offered, there is no need and no place for another, which is
precisely what St. Paul proves in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Dr.
Harwood fancies that we have a dread of that epistle. It is not long
since we went through that epistle carefully with a theological class
without being aware of any sentiments of repugnance to its doctrine
arising in our minds. It is very true that the unlearned and unstable
may wrest this, as they do the other epistles of St. Paul and the
Scriptures generally, to a sense in contradiction to the Catholic
faith. To one, however, who is sufficiently learned to understand
the real scope and intent of the apostle, or sufficiently docile
to receive the instruction of competent interpreters, it presents
no difficulty. St. Paul is not speaking of the eucharist or of the
Christian priesthood at all, but is confronting the priesthood
and sacrifices of Jesus Christ in the work of redemption with the
priesthood and sacrifices of the old law, as these were understood by
unbelieving or heterodox Jews. The point to be established was, that
Jesus Christ would never give up his priesthood to a successor, or
offer up another sacrifice similar to the one offered on the cross.
It needs no reasoning to show that Catholic priests do not pretend
to be in the place of Jesus Christ, but simply his instruments. The
perpetuity of his priesthood is therefore not in the slightest degree
incompatible with ours, which is in a different line, but rather
requires it. Neither is it necessary to prove that we do not pretend
to offer a sacrifice which expiates sins or atones for persons not
included in the sacrifice of the cross. The doctor misunderstands
the phrase "propitiatory sacrifice." The church does not mean that
a new sacrifice is offered for persons whose sins were unatoned for
on the cross, or who have fallen a second time under the curse and
need a new ransom. The word "propitiatory" merely denotes that in
the sacrifice of the altar an application is made of the merits of
Christ's death to individuals for the remission of temporal penalties
due to the justice of God. The redemption was made on the cross; the
application of the grace of remission is made in the sacrament of
penance; the remission of temporal penalties, both for the living
and the dead, is obtained through the sacrifice of the altar. All
the efficacy of the divine eucharist, whether as a sacrifice or a
sacrament, is derived from the merits of Jesus Christ, which were
consummated in his death. It is, therefore, by the application of
the merit of the sacrifice of the cross that the sacrifice of the
mass becomes efficacious to salvation. The Lamb of God is presented
before the Father with the merit acquired by his death upon Mount
Calvary, and this presentation is an act of supreme adoration, of
thanksgiving, of impetration, and of satisfaction for the debt due to
the divine justice, made in a sensible, visible manner, with mystic
rites and ceremonies; which is enough to constitute a sacrifice in
the strict and proper sense, whatever difference of opinion there may
be concerning the essence of the sacrificial act in the eucharist.
Although, therefore, there are many priests and many sacrifices
numerically, it is one act performed by one person which is exhibited
and applied in all, so that there is truly but one sacrifice and
one priest. The reverend doctor might have seen this for himself
if he had reflected more carefully on the words of the Council of
Trent which he has himself quoted, _Cujus quidem oblationis cruentæ,
inquam, fructus per hanc uberrime percipiuntur_--"The fruits of which
bloody oblation, indeed, are by this most abundantly partaken of."
The words of the lecturer following his exposition of the doctrine
are not at first sight intelligible. "We may be pardoned, then, if we
ask what then is our Lord to us personally?" It is very difficult to
see how the hidden presence of our Lord under the sacramental veils
is any obstruction to our personal relation to him as our Saviour.
How does this presence derogate from the fact that he died for each
of us on the cross, and is ever living in heaven to make intercession
for us? Our adoration of his sacred body and precious blood under
the forms of bread and wine does not hinder our meditating upon
his passion and death upon the cross, or raising our mental eye to
his glorious form at the right hand of God. The author appears to
imagine that his sacramental presence must destroy his natural mode
of existence and reduce him to a passive, helpless state of being in
the host. But this is only because he fails to conceive the Catholic
doctrine that our Lord is present both in heaven and also in the
host at the same time, though in two different modes. He says, "He
is present with us, we adore that presence, but he is passive and
lifeless in the hands of a priesthood. No sign or word comes from the
pix. When the church is in travail over a new doctrine, recluse and
learned men busy themselves in vast libraries in order to catch the
_consensus_ of Catholic tradition. A believer may be excused, if,
like Mary, he cries out, 'They have taken away the Lord, and I know
not where they have laid him!'" Strange language this from a member
of the communion of Andrewes, Hooker, Taylor, Pusey, and Hobart! Has
the author ever read their glowing words respecting this same theme?
Is he familiar with the doctrinal books of his own church? Taken away
the Lord, when he remains perpetually in our tabernacles awaiting
the visits of those true believers who pass hours in sweet communion
at the foot of the altar, conversing with him as with the friend and
spouse of their souls? When he is given to them in communion and his
sacred body rests in their bosoms, kindling there the flames of a
sacred love often equal to that which glows in the seraphim? Let the
reverend doctor read the lives of the saints, and ask them if the
Lord is silent when they converse with him in the blessed sacrament,
or let him even ask the ordinary pious Catholic that question. He
does not indeed break the silence of his hidden state by words
audible to the bodily ear, but he speaks far more efficaciously to
the heart in a way which is unintelligible to cold rationalism, but
perfectly well known to faith inflamed by love. The divine eucharist
was not instituted as a medium for communicating light to the church
concerning revealed truths. Christ teaches and rules the church by
the Holy Spirit, and not by his human voice. It is his will that
study, meditation, and counsel should be the means by which the
prelates and doctors of the church obtain the light and assistance of
this divine Spirit. Dr. Harwood is not pleased with this arrangement;
but as the Lord appears to have determined definitely that it must be
so, we are afraid that his suggestions will not be attended to. At
all events, he may console himself with the reflection that he has
discovered an entirely new objection to the Catholic doctrine.
We have unwittingly passed over one other objection, namely, that the
doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice destroys the idea of communion.
The eucharist does not cease to be a sacrament by being a sacrifice.
If there is communion among Episcopalians through a reception of
bread and wine, it would seem that there might be also communion
among Catholics in receiving the true body and blood of Christ. If
the Protestant Episcopal liturgy is a common prayer, certainly the
Catholic liturgy is equally one, though it is also a sacrifice.
Moreover, there is, in the strictest sense, communion in the very
act of offering the sacrifice. The priest, though consecrated by a
heavenly grace and commissioned by the divine authority of our Lord,
is consecrated to minister for the people, in their name and as their
representative. He offers up the sacrifice for the people, and they
offer sacrifice to God through him, which is signified in the mass by
the action of the deacon, who, as the representative of the laity,
holds the pixis in his hand at the offertory, and placing his right
hand on the foot of the chalice, recites with the priest the prayer,
_Offerimus tibi, Domine, calicem_, etc. We will not attempt to prove
the truth of the Catholic doctrine of the mass, since the author does
not directly attempt to disprove it, but will drop the subject here,
and proceed to notice what method he proposes to follow in refuting
the two grand Catholic doctrines of the papacy and the mass.
The reverend doctor takes a review of the condition of Protestantism
as in contrast with that of the Catholic Church, in which we are
happy to be able to concur with him as well as to commend the
graphic power of his description. He then briefly indicates three
ways of proceeding: one by tradition, one by tradition and Scripture
together, and one by Scripture alone, which he selects, reserving the
right to appeal to tradition when it is convenient. We will let his
language speak for itself:
"As searchers after truth, we must acknowledge some standard and
appeal to some recognized authority. Without this we must follow
either our own mental bias, or else become the prey of every man
who shall be bold enough to declare that he has and holds the
truth of God. I fear very much we have lost sight of this need
of appeal to a recognized standard of truth and duty. We are, in
this new age, building apparently on the sand; or it would seem
that what we had supposed to be rock, on which many were building,
has become pulverized, and as the sands shift under the power of
the stream, multitudes believe to-day what they did not believe
yesterday, and to-morrow they may believe nothing at all.
"I touch here a serious evil which is doing more harm to our
Protestantism than any direct assaults of Romanism. We seem to be
under some spell. Our spiritual ideas are resolving themselves
into a series of dissolving views; and all because the mind
has not the proper nutriment to impart health and vigor to our
religious feelings and convictions. Upon every account it becomes
us to recognize the fact that in religion we must have an actual,
definite standard of appeal. This we must find either in sacred
Scripture or in tradition, or in both combined. If we accept the
tradition of the church as law, we might as well abandon the
contest with Rome, because the traditions gradually, as they
gather force and headway in time, revolve around the papacy. The
traditions in the long run have made the papacy; they are its
chief support to-day. To accept them bodily, in mass, is to appeal
to actual Christendom--to the historic church--as to a standard
and law, and not as to a _witness_ of truth. It is to acknowledge
the identity of Christian truth and the Christian Church visible.
This brings us again to Romanism, or this is the postulate of the
Roman Catholic apologist.
"If to-day I ask _what is truth?_ and if I allow every church or
sect to answer, I am stunned by a confused and unintelligible
noise. If I allow one church to answer, and only one, in the midst
of the crowd of churches, by my procedure I submit myself, in
advance, to that one church. But if I allow none to answer for
me, and I recognize, nevertheless, a divine historic revelation,
I am compelled to go to sacred Scripture in order to learn what
God requires me to believe. Shall we take the sacred Scripture
fashioned by Italian workmen? or by Greek, or by Anglican, or by
German, or by American workmen? No; but the text in its purity
and simplicity. Here we must take our stand whensoever we come to
the question of what it is necessary to believe in order to be a
Christian; whensoever, in a word, loyalty and the obedience of
faith are required or even considered.
"I do not mean, however, to deny and repudiate utterly the
traditional principle. Christianity is historic. As a social
interest, as an organized spiritual fact, it comes to us from
the past. We cannot dismiss this past of Christian life and
history, any more than we can dismiss the past of our civil life
and institutions. The new generation, as it succeeds the old,
does not build again from the foundations. A. U. C. represented a
fact to the Roman citizen which he never could forget. We measure
time in the world's history by the letters A. D. We date our
public documents in the United States from the declaration of
our independence. We do not create the state anew; we administer
it as an existing fact. So in religion. Many things, many words,
institutions, and the like have come to us from the past, which
we accept and use as a matter of course. We baptize infants, we
observe the first day of the week, we use the imposition of hands
in ordination and confirmation, we employ the words sacrament,
trinity, incarnation, etc., in theology. This is an illustration
of the recognition of a traditional principle which is inevitable.
We do not, therefore, maintain that we must have a sure and
certain warrant of Scripture for all that we may observe and do
as Christians, because it is impossible to be confined to the
written word under all circumstances, and during all ages. Much is
left the conscience and judgment of individuals and of particular
churches; but when we come to faith, to what it is necessary to
believe as Christians, we must adhere firmly to the Bible, and
never for a moment allow any one to impose upon the conscience any
thing, as requisite to a true reception of the Gospel, which is
not contained therein, nor may be proved thereby.
"This, then, is our standard of appeal. Logically and morally
it is the right and only standard of appeal in the discussion,
especially of the claims and teachings of any and of every church
whatsoever. If this be not the tribunal to which we must go, then
we must have recourse to the dictum of a church, and then, as we
have seen, we allow a church to be its own standard of appeal.
Consequently, when Rome proclaims her infallibility, we must allow
her claim. When the Church of England disowns infallibility, we
may or may not accept her disclaimer. If we do _not_ accept it,
then we prove her to be _fallible_, to be mistaken articulately
in respect of her own quality and prerogative. We are reduced to
absurdity.
"We are forced back to sacred Scripture, and in the interests of
Christian truth we are compelled to take our stand here. And I
declare in all completeness of conviction, that with the Bible in
our hands we are triumphant against the doctrine of the supremacy
of the pope, and of the sacrifice of the mass. This is to be
triumphant against Romanism."
Dr. Harwood is sagacious enough not to follow the example of the
generality of his Episcopalian associates, which the Presbyterians
have been lately seduced by their evil genius into following, that
is, to appeal to the first six councils. He probably agrees with
the author of _Liber Librorum_ and Dr. Stanley, that in A.D. 200 we
find the thing he is opposing and anxious to escape from, existing.
"How, then, came such an institution into existence? For nothing
can be plainer than that about a hundred years after the death of
John _it appears_, although in any thing but apostolic garb. All is
altered." "No other change," says Dean Stanley, "equally momentous
has ever since affected its fortunes; yet none has ever been so
silent and secret. The church has now become history, the history
not of an isolated community or of isolated individuals, but of
an organized society, incorporated with the political systems of
the world."... "Hard is it to see in such a church any thing but a
profound mystery of God, a mystery of spiritual evil, a mystery of
iniquity."[61] Dr. Harwood feels it to be necessary to take refuge
in the obscure period between the year 100 and the year 200 as in a
chasm separating historical from scriptural Christianity. It is very
easy to make a theory concerning the silent, sudden change which took
place during this century, and then, clearing history by a bound, to
land in the New Testament. Once there, with full liberty of private
interpretation, which means freedom to interpret it by the light of
any philosophical theory or preconceived opinions one may choose to
adopt, Dr. Harwood thinks he is safe, and able to defend himself
to the end against Romanism. He imagines that we are unwilling and
unable to follow him there, and meet him--or rather the champions of
his cause--on their own chosen ground. "In conclusion, we will ask
you to remember that the Roman Catholics have never liked our appeal
to Scripture. They do not like it to-day any better than they liked
it three hundred years ago." If the doctor thinks we are afraid of
the Scriptures, or in any way distrustful of our ability to prove
our doctrines from it, he is extremely mistaken. We have always
been ready to enter into that part of the argument, and we maintain
specifically respecting the two grand doctrines of the papacy and the
mass that they can be fully and satisfactorily proved from Scripture,
as in point of fact they have been proved, to mention no others,
by Mr. Allies and Cardinal Wiseman. We object to the demand that
Scripture should be the only source of appeal, not because we are
afraid that we shall be defeated by scriptural arguments; but because
the demand is unjust, and the assumption on which it is founded is
baseless. We demand that the subject shall be discussed in all its
bearings, on all its grounds, by the light of all the knowledge that
is attained from every source. We deny the ability of our adversaries
to establish the authority of Scripture without first assuming
Catholic principles, and we deny their logical and moral right after
using these principles in establishing Scripture, to throw away
or burn their ladder by denying or ignoring these same principles
when it is a question of establishing the sense of the Scripture,
explaining or integrating its statements. If we are to shut out of
our minds all the ideas of Christianity which are extraneous to
the literal statements of the New Testament, to take the attitude
of learners searching after truth, and to get from the naked text
without other interpreter than itself the sense that is in it, we
have a difficult task of doubtful issue before us. John Locke, who
was probably as capable of doing this impartially as any Englishman
can be, tried it, and proclaimed as the result of his studies that
only one idea is demonstrably revealed in the New Testament, namely,
that Jesus Christ is the prophet of God to whose teaching and
precepts obedience is due. As to his actual teaching and precepts, he
could only find probability, concluding, therefore, very justly, that
there is no system of doctrine or code of precepts clearly binding
upon all alike, each one being left to the guidance of a probable
conscience only.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to read the New Testament
without spectacles. For our own part, we are quite sure that the New
Testament contains more or less explicitly all the principal and
many of the minor Catholic doctrines, and that the sense given by
the church is the one given by true exegesis and criticism. Yet we
will not venture to say how far we should be able to see this without
Catholic spectacles. We are quite sure that Dr. Harwood also has a
pair of spectacles, and cannot lay them aside if he would. We find
in point of fact, that ordinarily persons who believe in the Bible
and read it all their lives, whether Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
or even Unitarians, are seldom startled out of the belief they have
been taught, and convinced of some different interpretation, merely
by reading it. It is evident, therefore, that any one exposition made
of Christianity from the simple text will never be a demonstration in
the view of all candid, sincere persons. There will always be various
interpretations having more or less probability, and unity will never
be reached. Besides this, the degree and extent of inspiration will
never be settled, or the limits between the human, transitory element
and the divine, unchangeable element become fixed. The result will
be that we must fall back on philosophy and a system of rationalism.
Let it be conceded that the ideas in the mind of each sacred writer
when he wrote are clearly apprehended, it will be impossible to
secure perfect submission even to the teachings of inspired men,
when the principle of church authority has been cast to the winds.
This is the reason why, even at the outset of an argument, and
before we are entitled to cite the authority of tradition as divine
to one who denies it, we refuse to permit the case to be argued on
the scriptural ground alone, even though both parties admit the
divine authority of Scripture. We desire to do something more than
to make a good case, and to establish our interpretation as even
the more probable or the most probable. We desire to prove it to a
demonstration which does not leave even a slight probability on the
other side, through which an adversary may creep. We wish to have
the question adjudicated and decided, so that it may be clear and
indisputable that God has revealed and commands all men to believe
and obey the Gospel of his Son as a distinct and positive law of
faith and practice, and not as a mere theory. We are not afraid,
however, that we cannot get the best of it, in a discussion of the
text of the New Testament, conducted on the same principles that we
should apply to an ancient manuscript about whose contents we have
no extrinsic light whatever. Those who come nearest to this cold,
critical impartiality are men who possess the intellectual keenness
necessary to see into ideas as they are, without having any motive
to misrepresent them. One who is indifferent as to the question
what the sacred writers thought and intended to say, because he
considers their teaching as equivalent only to that of Socrates
or Confucius, and who is qualified to examine critically the New
Testament, will at least attempt to state impartially what impression
it has made on his mind. And that statement will throw some light on
the question, What does the text clearly and unmistakably signify
by itself, apart from ideas on the same subject-matter which are
derived from Christian tradition? One person of this kind, Mr. Samuel
Johnson, of Lynn, Massachusetts, who is a leader among the Bostonian
free-thinkers, in an article which appeared in _The Radical_ gave
his opinion that the doctrine of the papacy is clearly contained in
St. Matthew's Gospel. The infidel Jew Salvador, in a work whose name
we do not now remember, but which we have attentively read, declares
that the Roman Catholic religion is the genuine religion of the
New Testament, and that Protestantism is a total misconception of
Christianity; an opinion we have ourselves personally heard expressed
by a well-informed and zealous Israelite of our acquaintance. We do
not care to press these testimonies too far; but at all events they
indicate, in connection with the fact that so many learned students
of the Bible, both Protestant and Catholic, interpret it in a manner
quite different from that of Dr. Harwood's school, that it does not
on the face of it clearly and unmistakably pronounce in his favor or
against us.
We insist then, further, that even conceding Dr. Harwood for a
moment in possession of the ground on which his belief of the divine
authority of the Scripture stands, he is bound to admit all the
light that ecclesiastical history throws back on its text, as he
himself partially but inconsistently admits, and as all Protestants
have ever done so far as it suited their purposes to do so. We
may illustrate this by a parallel case. A Christian discusses the
text of the Old Testament with a Jew. If the Jew should insist on
sticking to the text, and interpreting the prophecies exclusively
by biblical criticism, the Christian could justly insist that the
facts of the life of Jesus Christ and the history of Christianity
must be considered. The Jew himself would not fail to cite all kinds
of historical facts not prejudicial to himself against an infidel,
as manifesting the sense and fulfilment of the prophecies. Let the
Jew shut his eyes to the miracles proving the divine mission and
miraculous conception of Jesus, and he can very plausibly explain the
famous prediction, "Behold the Virgin (ha almah) shall conceive,"
etc., as signifying. "Behold _this young woman_"--that is, one
standing by and pointed out by Isaias--shall conceive and bear a
son. So, with all the Messianic passages of the Old Testament, as
one may see by consulting Rabbi Leeser's English translation, with
notes, published at Philadelphia. Now, it is a perfectly fair and
conclusive argument against a Jew to show that the history of Jesus,
established on merely human faith, presents such a correspondence to
the prophecies of the Old Testament that it must be regarded as their
fulfilment. Although the Old Testament alone might not reveal Jesus
to his individual reason, yet in the light of his life it is shown
that these ancient Scriptures testify of him. It is not competent for
him to allege his Scripture as a complete and finished revelation,
rejecting every thing which is not clearly visible on its face; for
we can show him that his Scriptures point out the glorious son of
David's royal daughter as the one who will carry out the dispensation
of Moses to its consummation.
It is precisely the same case between us and Protestants. We point to
the church as presenting historical facts and verities corresponding
to the somewhat obscure predictions or other declarations of the
Scripture, and manifesting their significance. We show how all
that can be learned from the New Testament by itself is in harmony
with what the church proclaims herself to be, and declares true
Christianity to consist in; and we show the Scripture presupposes,
provides for, and points toward the church. If we take all those
passages which relate to the divine eucharist, and place beside them
the traditional teaching and practice of the church, we see them at
once lit up with meaning and irradiating our minds with the true
and Catholic doctrine. One is the explanation of the other, and the
historical existence of the sacrifice of the mass confronted with
the language of the Scripture demonstrates that it must be the thing
which the sacred writers meant. We take the prediction of our Lord
to St. Peter, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church." One who knows nothing about the Catholic Church might easily
be persuaded that our Lord meant no more than this: "Thou art firm
like a rock in thy faith, and upon such a firm faith I will establish
all the elect who are an invisible society known to me, and these
Satan shall never be able to overcome." But when that stupendous,
world-subduing might of Peter's see which overawes even Dr. Harwood
is contemplated in history as it emerges from the obscure dawn of the
Christian era, and goes forward through all time conquering and to
conquer, its plain correspondence to and fulfilment of the literal
significance of our Lord's words proves conclusively that he meant
this, and nothing else. We do not intend, however, to go into this
argument any further, as Dr. Harwood does not profess to argue the
point himself. All we aim at is, to show that the argument must be
conducted on the ground of history as well as that of Scripture. And
here we desire to call attention to an admirable article by President
Woolsey in the same number of the _New-Englander_, in which Dr.
Harwood's lecture was first published, on the _Church of the Future_,
which exhibits with rare ability the very idea we are insisting upon,
that the true Christianity is the genuine historical Christianity.
The only true issue which can be made is respecting the genuine,
historical development of the Christian idea. Dr. Harwood and his
school cannot escape from this. If, therefore, the champions whom he
summons to the controversy respond to his call, they will be bound
to demonstrate historically that the papal supremacy was a purely
human invention substituted for the authentic constitution which
the apostles gave to the Christian church. This Dr. Harwood thinks
can be done. "If the pope be that rock, we can find by the lights
of history the strata and the law of its structure. We observe it
acquired shape and size--and there is a hammer which can break it in
pieces." If there is such a hammer, we wonder that it has not yet
been found and wielded. In our opinion, the enemies of the papacy
have already said every thing which can be said on their side of
the question. We are at a loss to know how history can be made to
give up any thing new on the subject, any thing which has not been
already thoroughly sifted and discussed. We are perfectly willing
that our adversaries should try again to look up or manufacture a
hammer with which to try the effect of their blows upon the Rock of
Peter. We think they will find that they are undertaking a herculean
task. One thing only we must be permitted to observe, that any one
who undertakes this controversy ought not to ignore and pass by
what has already been written by Catholic controversialists. It is
not fair that the discussion should be always beginning _de novo_,
and Catholic writers be required to repeat all the labor of their
predecessors. If Dr. Harwood, or any one else, is disposed to attempt
our demolition, let him first master all the arguments and evidences
which have been already adduced on our side, give a distinct answer
to them, and rebut the answers which we have already made to
anti-papal arguments. Whoever does this with competent learning and
ability, will no doubt receive due attention; but until this is done,
it will be quite sufficient for us to challenge a refutation of the
works of our champions which hitherto have remained unanswered, and
which we confidently affirm to be unanswerable.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Romans xvi. 20.
[61] _Liber Librorum._ Note D, p. 228.
HAYDN'S STRUGGLE AND TRIUMPH.
I.
"Seventeen kreutzers for a morning's work!" exclaimed a pretty but
slovenly-dressed young woman, standing at the door of an apartment
in a mean-looking house in one of the narrow streets of Vienna,
addressing a man of low stature and sallow complexion, who had just
come in. "And the printers running after you ever since you went
out! Profitless doings for you to spend your time! At eight, the
singing-desk of the brothers De la Merci; at ten, Count de Haugwitz's
chapel; grand mass at eleven; and all this toil for a few kreutzers!"
"What can I do?" said the weary, desponding man.
"Do! Give up this foolish business of music, and take to something
that will enable you to live. Did not my father, a hair-dresser, give
you shelter when you had only your garret and skylight, and had to
lie in bed and write for want of coals? Had he not a right to expect
you would dress his daughter as well as she had been used at home,
and that she should have servants to wait on her, as in her father's
house?"
"You should not reproach me, Nanny. Have I not worked till my health
has given way? If fortune is inexorable--"
"Fortune! As if fortune did not always wait upon industry in a proper
calling. Your patrons admire and applaud, but they will not _pay_;
yet you _will_ drudge away your life in this ungrateful occupation. I
tell you, Joseph Haydn, music is not the thing!"
Here a knock was heard at the door; and the wife, with exclamations
of impatience, flounced away. The unfortunate artist threw himself on
a seat, and leaned his head on a table covered with notes of music.
So entirely had he yielded himself to despondency that he did not
move, even when the door opened, till the sound of a well-known voice
close at his side startled him from his melancholy reverie.
"How now, Haydn! what is the matter, my boy?"
The speaker was an old man, shabbily dressed, but with something
striking and even commanding in his noble features. His large, dark,
flashing eyes, his olive complexion, and the contour of his face
bespoke him a native of a sunnier clime than that of Germany. Haydn
sprang up and welcomed him with a cordial embrace.
"And when, my dear Porpora, did you return to Vienna?" he asked.
"This morning only; and my first care was to find you out. But how is
this? I find you thin, and pale, and gloomy. Where are your spirits?"
"Gone," murmured the composer, and dropped his eyes on the floor. His
visitor regarded him with a look of affectionate interest.
In answer to Porpora's inquiries, Haydn told him of the struggles and
failures by which he had been led to doubt his own genius, till he
had succumbed under the crushing hand of poverty. "I am chained," he
concluded bitterly; and, giving way to the anguish of his heart, he
burst into tears.
Porpora shook his head, and was silent for a few moments. At length
he said:
"I must, I see, give you a little of my experience. I was, you know,
a pupil of Scarlatti more fortunate than you; for my works procured
me almost at once a wide-spread fame. I was called for not only in
Venice, but in Vienna and London."
"Ah! yours was a brilliant lot," cried the young composer, looking up
with kindling eyes.
"The Saxon court," continued Porpora, "offered me the direction
of the chapel and of the theatre at Dresden. Even the princesses
received my lessons; in short, my success was so great that I
awakened the jealousy of Hasse himself. All this you know, and how I
returned to London upon the invitation of amateurs in Italian music."
"Where you rivalled Handel!" said Haydn enthusiastically. "Handel,
with all his greatness, had no versatility. Your sacred music,
Porpora, will live when your theatrical compositions have ceased to
enjoy unrivalled popularity."
"My sacred compositions may survive and carry my name to posterity;
for taste in such things is less mutable than in the opera. You
see now, dear Haydn, for what I have lived and labored. I was once
renowned and wealthy. What did prosperity bring me? Envy, discontent,
rivalship, disappointment! Would you know to what period I can look
back with self-approbation, with thankfulness? To the toil of early
years; to the struggle after an ideal of greatness, goodness, and
beauty; to the self-forgetfulness that saw only the glorious goal
far, far before me; to the undismayed resolve that sought only its
attainment. Or to a time still later, when the visions of manhood's
impure and selfish ambition had faded away, when the soul had shaken
off some of her fetters, and roused herself to a perception of the
eternal, the perfect, the divine; when I became conscious of the
delusive vanity of earthly hopes and earthly excellence, but at the
same time awakened to the revelation of that which cannot die!
"You see me now, seventy-three years old, and too poor to command
even a shelter for the few days that yet remain to me in this world.
I have lost the splendid fame I once possessed; I have lost the
riches that were mine; I have lost the power to win even a competence
by my own labors; but I have not lost my passion for our glorious
music, nor enjoyment of the reward she bestows on her votaries; nor
my confidence in Heaven. And you, at twenty-seven, you--more greatly
endowed, to whom the world is open--_you_ despair! Are you worthy to
succeed, O man of little faith?"
"My friend, my benefactor!" cried the young artist, clasping his hand
with deep emotion.
"Cast away your bonds; cut and rend, if your very flesh is torn in
the effort; and the ground once spurned, you are free. What have you
been doing?" And he turned over rapidly the musical notes that lay on
the table. "Here, what is this--a symphony? Play it for me, if you
please."
So saying, with a gentle force he led his young friend to the piano,
and Haydn played from the piece he had nearly completed.
"This is excellent, admirable!" cried Porpora, when he rose from the
instrument. "When can you finish this? for I must have it at once."
"To-morrow, if you like," answered the composer more cheerfully.
"To-morrow then; and you must work to-night. I will go and order you
a physician; he will come to-morrow morning--how madly your pulse
throbs!--and when your work is done, you may rest. Adieu for the
present." And pressing his young friend's hands, the eccentric but
benevolent old man departed, leaving Haydn full of new thoughts, his
bosom fired with zeal to struggle against adverse fortune. In such
moods does the spiritual champion wrestle with the powers of the
abyss, and mightily prevail.
When Haydn, late that night, threw himself on his bed, weary, ill,
and exhausted, his frame racked with the pains of fever, he had
accomplished the first of an order of works destined to endear his
name to all succeeding time.
While the artist lay on a sick-bed, a brilliant _fête_ was given by
Count Mortzin, an Austrian nobleman of immense wealth and influence,
at which the most distinguished individuals in Vienna were present.
The musical entertainments given by these luxurious patrons of the
arts were at that time, and for some years after, the most splendid
in Europe.
When the concert was over, Prince Antoine Esterhazy expressed the
pleasure he had received, and his obligations to the noble host.
"Chief among your magnificent novelties," said he, "is the new
symphony, _St. Maria_. One does not hear every day such music. Who is
the composer?"
The count referred to one of his friends. The answer was, "Joseph
Haydn."
"I have heard his quartettos; he is no common artist. Is he in your
service, count?"
"He has been employed by me."
"With your good leave, he shall be transferred to ours; and I shall
take care he has no reason to regret the change. Let him be presented
to us."
There was a murmur among the audience and a movement, but the
composer did not appear; and presently word was brought to his
highness that the young man on whom he intended to confer so great an
honor was detained at home by illness.
"So! Let him be brought to me as soon as he recovers; he shall enter
my service. I like his symphony vastly. Your pardon, count; for we
will rob you of your best man." And the great prince, having decided
the destiny of a greater than himself, turned to those who surrounded
him to speak of other matters.
News of the change in his fortune was brought to Haydn by his friend
Porpora; and so renovating was the effect of hope that he was strong
enough on the following day to pay his respects to his illustrious
patron. His highness was just preparing to ride, but would see the
composer; and he was conducted through a splendid suite of rooms
to the apartment where the proud head of the Esterhazys deigned to
receive an almost nameless artist. The prince, in the splendid array
suited to his rank, glanced somewhat carelessly at the low, slight
figure that stood before him, and said, as he was presented, "Is
this, then, the composer of the music I heard last night?"
"This is he--Joseph Haydn," replied the friend who introduced him.
"So--a Moor, I should judge from his dark complexion. And you write
such music? Haydn--I recollect the name; and I remember hearing, too,
that you were not well paid for your labors, eh?"
"I have been very unfortunate, your highness--"
"Well, you shall have no reason to complain in my service. My
secretary shall fix your appointments; and name whatever else you
desire. All of your profession find me liberal. Now then, sir Moor,
you may go; and let it be your first care to provide yourself with
a new coat, a wig, and buckles and heels to your shoes. I will have
you respectable in appearance as well as in talents; so let me have
no more of shabby professors. And do your best, my little dusky, to
recruit in flesh--it will add to the stature; and to relieve your
olive with a shade of the ruddy. Such spindle masters would be a
walking discredit to our larder, which is truly a spendthrift one."
So saying, with a laugh, the haughty nobleman dismissed his new
dependent. The artist chafed not at the imperious tone of patronage;
for he did not yet feel the superiority of his own vocation. It was
the bondage-time of genius; the wings were not yet grown which were
to bear his spirit up, when it brooded over a new world.
The life which Haydn led in the service of Prince Esterhazy, to
which service he was permanently attached by Nicolas, the successor
of Antoine, in the quality of chapel-master, was one so easy that
it might have proved fatal to an artist more inclined to luxury and
pleasure, or less devoted to his art. Now for the first time relieved
from the care of the future, he was enabled to yield to the impulse
of his genius, and create works which gradually extended his fame
over all the countries of Europe.
II.
On the evening of a day in the beginning of April, 1809, all the
lovers of art in Vienna were assembled in the theatre to witness the
performance of the oratorio of _The Creation_. The entertainment
had been given in honor of the composer of that noble work--the
illustrious Haydn--by his numerous friends and admirers. He had been
enticed from Gumpendorf, his retreat in the suburbs, the cottage
surrounded by a little garden which he had purchased after his
retirement from the Esterhazy service, and where he was spending
the last years of his life. Three hundred musicians assisted at
the performance. The audience rose _en masse_ and greeted with
rapturous applause the white-haired man, who, led forward by the
most distinguished nobles in the city, was conducted to the place
of honor. There, seated with princesses at his right hand, beauty
smiling upon him, the centre of a circle of nobility, the observed
and admired of all, the object of the acclamations of thousands--who
would not have said that Haydn had reached the summit of human
greatness, had more than realized the proudest visions of his
youth? His serene countenance, his clear eye, his air of dignified
self-possession, showed that prosperity had not overcome him, but
that amid the smiles of fortune he had not forgotten the true
excellence of man.
"I can see plainly," remarked one of Haydn's friends, whom we will
call Manuel, "that he will write no more."
"He has done enough; and now we are ready for the farewell of Haydn,"
said another.
"The farewell?"
"Did you never hear the story? I have heard him tell it often myself.
It concerns one of his most celebrated symphonies. The occasion
was this: Among the musicians attached to the service of Prince
Esterhazy, were several who, during his sojourn upon his estates,
were obliged to leave their wives at Vienna. At one time his highness
prolonged his stay at Esterhazy castle considerably beyond the usual
period. The disconsolate husbands entreated Haydn to become the
interpreter of their wishes. Thus the idea came to him of composing
a symphony in which each instrument ceased, one after another. He
added at the close of every part the direction, 'Here the light is
extinguished.' Each musician, in his turn, rose, put out his candle,
rolled up his notes, and went away. This pantomime had the desired
effect; the next morning the prince gave orders for their return to
the capital.
"He used to tell us a somewhat similar story of the origin of his
Turkish or military symphony. You know the high appreciation he met
with in his visits to England; but notwithstanding the praise and
homage he received, he could not prevent the enthusiastic audience
from falling asleep during the performance of his compositions. It
occurred to him to devise a kind of ingenious revenge. In this piece,
while the current is gliding softly, and slumber beginning to steal
over the senses of his audience, a sudden and unexpected burst of
martial music, tremendous as a thunder-peal, startles the surprised
sleepers into active attention. I would have liked to see the
lethargic islanders, with their eyes and mouths thrown open by such
an unlooked-for shock!"
A stop was suddenly put to the conversation by the commencement of
the performance. _The Creation_, the first of Haydn's oratorios,
was regarded as his greatest work, and had often elicited the most
heartfelt applause. Now that the aged and honored composer was
present, probably for the last time, to hear it, an emotion too deep
for utterance seemed to pervade the vast audience. The feeling was
too reverential to be expressed by the ordinary tokens of pleasure.
It seemed as if every eye in the assembly were fixed on the calm,
noble face of the venerated artist; as if every heart beat with
love for him. Then came, like a succession of heavenly melodies, the
music of _The Creation_, and the listeners felt as if transported
back to the infancy of the world. At the words, "Let there be light,
and there was light," when all the instruments were united in one
full burst of gorgeous harmony, emotion seemed to shake the whole
frame of the aged artist. His pale face crimsoned; his bosom heaved
convulsively; he raised his eyes, streaming with tears, toward
heaven, and, lifting upward his trembling hands, exclaimed, his voice
audible in the pause of the music, "Not unto me--not unto me--but
unto thy name be all the glory, O Lord!"
From this moment Haydn lost the calmness and serenity that had marked
the expression of his countenance. The very depths of his heart had
been stirred, and ill could his wasted strength sustain the tide
of feeling. When the superb chorus at the close of the second part
announced the completion of the work of creation, he could bear the
excitement no longer. Assisted by the prince's physician and several
of his friends, he was carried from the theatre, pausing to give
one last look of gratitude, expressed in his tearful eyes, to the
orchestra who had so nobly executed his conception, and followed by
the lengthened plaudits of the spectators, who felt that they were
never to look upon his face again.
Some weeks after this occurrence, his friend Manuel, who had sent to
inquire after his health, received from him a card on which he had
written, to notes of music, the words, "_Meine kraft ist dahin_,"
"My strength is gone." Haydn was in the habit of sending about these
cards, but his increased feebleness was evident in the handwriting
of this; and Manuel lost no time in hastening to him There, in his
quiet cottage, around which rolled the thunders of war, terrifying
others but not him, sat the venerable composer. His desk stood on one
side, on the other his piano; he smiled, and held out his hand to
greet his friend.
"Many a time," he murmured, "you have cheered my solitude, and now
you have come to see the old man die."
"Speak not thus, my dear friend," cried Manuel, grieved to the heart;
"you will recover."
"Not here," answered Haydn, and pointed upward.
He then made a sign to one of his attendants to open the desk, and
reach him a roll of papers. From these he took one and gave it to
his friend. It was inscribed in his own hand, "Catalogue of all my
musical compositions, which I can remember, since my eighteenth year.
Vienna, 4th December, 1805." Manuel, as he read it, understood the
mute pressure of his friend's hand, and sighed deeply. That hand
would never trace another note.
"Better thus," said Haydn softly, "than a lingering old age of care,
disease, perhaps of poverty! No; I am happy. I have lived not in
vain. I have accomplished my destiny; I have done good. I am ready
for thy call, O Master!"
His spiritual adviser and guide was with him the next hour, and
administered the last consolations of religion. The aged man was
wrapped in devotion. At length he asked to be supported to his
piano; it was opened, and as his trembling fingers touched the keys,
an expression of rapture was kindled in his eyes. The music that
answered his touch seemed the music of inspiration. But it gradually
faded away; the flush gave place to a deadly pallor; and while his
fingers still rested on the keys, he sank back into the arms of his
friend, and gently breathed out his parting spirit. It passed as in a
happy strain of melody!
Prince Esterhazy did honor to the memory of his departed friend by
the pageant of funeral ceremonies. His remains were transported
to Eisenstadt, in Hungary, and placed in the Franciscan vault.
The prince also purchased, at a high price, all his books and
manuscripts, and the numerous medals he had obtained. But his fame
belongs to the world; and in all hearts sensible to the music of
truth and nature is consecrated the memory of Haydn.
PRAYER.
If men but knew--a wise priest gravely said,
His Roman doctor's cap upon his head--
If men but knew what they had won by prayer
Aside from all their worldly thrift and care,
They might be tempted, in a literal sense,
"Always to pray," and with just toil dispense.
THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE SPECIES.
II.
Of the several circumstances which led to the conception of
the theory here advanced, the first and most important was the
recognition of the fact that variation was left unaccounted for upon
the hypothesis of evolution. Here, if anywhere, we conceived, was to
be found the vulnerable part of Darwinism. It occurred to us that the
probabilities were that a theory was false when it had for its data
phenomena which conform to no law. Our subsequent inquiries furnished
us with nothing by which to rebut this presumption; but with much to
confirm it. Our suspicion at last strengthened into conviction, and
we became confident that contemplation of the subject of the cause
of variation alone could furnish us with a solution of the whole
question.
It is of laws alone of which we speak in these articles. All
the facts adduced by Darwin we accept, and use them merely as
illustrations. We have nothing in common with those who contend
that the refutation of Darwinism lies solely with mere compilers
of facts--fanciers, florists, and breeders. Darwin has heretofore
anticipated nothing but a joinder of issue upon facts. He has
apparently never contemplated being met by a demurrer. He has
endeavored to confound his opponents by a vast multitude of facts;
and, owing to his reverence for whatever has the sanction of
antiquity, it has never entered his mind that any one would be so
presumptuous as to demur to the time-honored conception of _new
growth_, upon which these facts are based. Of this presumption we
are guilty when we deny the very existence of organic evolution.
In the preceding article we directly intimated, on several occasions,
that no theory other than that of reversion can afford a solution of
the mystery of the appearance of favorable modifications. As some
little diversity of opinion exists respecting Darwin's views on the
subject of the cause of variation, it may be well for us to dwell
awhile on this question, and to furnish some evidence substantiating
our statement.
Darwin, in his _Origin of Species_, candidly and frankly admits that
he can assign no satisfactory reason for the appearance of favorable
modifications. He ascribes them to "spontaneous variability," and
assures us that "our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound."
We might adduce a number of other expressions equally declaratory of
his inability to assign the cause of variation; but as the Duke of
Argyll has taken such pains to direct attention to this _hiatus_ in
Darwin's evidence, we cannot refrain from quoting from his _The Reign
of Law_:
"It has not, I think, been sufficiently observed that the theory
of Mr. Darwin does not address itself to the same question, (the
introduction of new forms of life,) and does not even profess to
trace the origin of new forms to any definite law. His theory
gives an explanation, not of the processes by which new forms
first appear, but only of the processes by which, when they have
appeared, they acquire a preference over others, and thus become
established in the world. A new species is, indeed, according to
his theory, as well as with the older theories of development,
simply an unusual birth. The bond of connection between allied
specific and generic forms is, in his view, simply the bond of
inheritance. But Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have discovered
any law or rule according to which new forms have been born from
old forms. He does not hold that outward conditions, however
changed, are sufficient to account for them. Still less does he
connect them with the effort or aspirations of any organisms after
new faculties and powers. He frankly confesses that 'our ignorance
of the laws of variation is profound;' and says that in speaking
of them as due to chance, he means only 'to acknowledge plainly
our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation.' Again he
says, 'I believe in no law of necessary development.'" (P. 228.)
On page 254, the Duke of Argyll continues:
"It will be seen, then, that the principle of Natural Selection
has no bearing whatever on the origin of species, but only on
the preservation and distribution of species when they have
arisen. I have already pointed out that Mr. Darwin does not
always keep this distinction clearly in view; because he speaks
of natural selection 'producing' organs or 'adapting' them. It
cannot be too often repeated that natural selection can produce
nothing whatever except the conservation or preservation of some
variation otherwise originated. The _true_ origin of species
does not consist in the adjustments which help varieties to live
and prevail; but in those previous adjustments which cause those
varieties to be born at all. Now, what are these? Can they be
traced or even guessed at? Mr. Darwin has a whole chapter on the
laws of variation, and it is here, if anywhere, that we look for
any suggestion as to the physical causes which account for the
origin as distinguished from the preservation of the species.
He candidly admits that his doctrine of natural selection takes
cognizance of variations only after they have arisen, and that
it regards variations as purely accidental in their origin, or,
in other words, as due to chance. This, of course, he adds, is
a supposition wholly incorrect, and only serves 'to indicate
plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation.'
Accordingly, the laws of variation which he proceeds to indicate
are merely certain observed facts in respect to variation, and do
not at all come under the category of laws, in that higher sense
in which the word law indicates a discovered method under which
natural forces are made to work."
It will be seen that we have not gone too far in proclaiming Darwin's
inability to account for variation. In the absence, then, of any
other rational explanation, are we not necessitated to accept the
theory of reversion? What possible objection can be urged against it?
Reversion is not a heretofore unknown factor. Nor is it an occult
factor. It is constantly recognized by Darwin. Two chapters of the
_Animals and Plants under Domestication_ are filled with phenomena
illustrating its action; and it forms the basis of his lately
propounded hypothesis of pangenesis.
In the interval between the publication of his _Origin of Species_
and the writing of his _Animals and Plants under Domestication_,
Darwin has received no enlightenment as to the cause of variation. A
writer in _The North American Review_ for October, 1868, holds the
contrary, and distinctly asserts that Darwin is inclined to adopt
the mechanist theory, to attribute the phenomena of variation solely
to the influence of the physical conditions, and to repudiate the
idea of a concurrent cause. After speaking of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
ascription of variations to the physical conditions, he says:
"In his latest work, Mr. Darwin inclines to adopt the mechanist
theory, so far as the cause of variations is concerned. 'We will
now consider,' he says, 'the general arguments, which appear to
me to have great weight, in favor of the view that variations
are directly or indirectly caused by the conditions of life to
which each being, and more especially its ancestors, have been
exposed.... These several considerations alone render it probable
that variation of every kind is directly or indirectly caused by
changed conditions of life. Or, to put the case under another
point of view; if it were possible to expose all the individuals
of a species to absolutely uniform conditions, there would be no
variability.' When variations of all kinds and degrees, that is,
all the gradual differentiations by which the vast multitude of
existing species has been evolved out of the primordial form or
forms, are thus attributed solely to the accumulative action of
the conditions of life, without any recognition of a concurrent
cause in that constant self-adaptation by organisms for which the
conditions cannot account, it would seem fairly inferrible that
the mechanist theory is supposed to explain the evolution of the
species, if not of individual organisms."
Now, there is nothing in the expressions quoted from Darwin's work,
which justifies such a construction as _The North American Review_
has here placed upon them. Although we, as a vitalist, implicitly
believe in the coöperation of other than mechanical causes, yet
we fully and most unqualifiedly concur in Darwin's assertion that
there would be no variability were all the individuals of a species
exposed to absolutely uniform conditions. This fact is by no means
incompatible with a belief in "forces which manifest themselves in
the organism." We have shown that varieties or races under nature
are attributable solely to the action of the conditions of life.
Under domestication, the changed conditions are the secondary cause
of favorable modifications, reversion being the primary cause.
But without the concurrence of this secondary cause, it is wholly
impossible for favorable variations to occur. The expressions of
Darwin, then, carry with them no implication that variations are
solely caused by the changed condition; for the recognition of the
power of the conditions to the extent claimed by Darwin by no means
precludes the belief in a concurrent cause. The conclusion that a
change in the conditions is a cause of variation, and that were
there no such change there would be no variability, is necessitated
by the theory here advanced. For, an acquaintance with phenomena
displaying the action of the physical conditions forces upon us the
teleological inference that certain conditions are essential to
the full development of characters. Does it not thence necessarily
follow that, when the conditions are dissimilar, modifications will
result from the individuals of a species being exposed to conditions
favorable or unfavorable in different degrees to the growth of some
of the parts or features? Darwin's assertion is then quite consistent
with a belief in the concurrence of causes not mechanical.
But the discovery of Darwin's opinion on this point is not left
solely to conjecture and speculation. Had the _North American_
Reviewer carefully perused Darwin's late work, he would have found
many most unequivocal declarations of the author's belief in the
concurrence of other causes. They recur most frequently.
On page 248, Vol. II., he says, "Throughout this chapter and
elsewhere, I have spoken of selection as the paramount power; yet
its action absolutely depends on what we in our ignorance call
spontaneous or accidental variability."
Page 250: "Variation depends in a far higher degree on the nature
or constitution of the being, than on the nature of the changed
conditions."
On page 291, after giving cases of bud-variation, he says, "When
we reflect on these facts, we become deeply impressed with the
conviction that in such cases the nature of the variation depends
but little on the conditions to which the plant has been exposed,
and not in any especial manner on its individual character, but
much more on the general nature or constitution, inherited from
some remote progenitor of the whole group of allied beings to which
the plant belongs. We are thus driven to conclude that in most
cases the conditions of life play a subordinate part in causing any
particular modification; like that which a spark plays when a mass
of combustible matter bursts into flame--the nature of the flame
depending on the combustible matter and not on the spark." And again,
on page 288, "Now is it possible to conceive external conditions
more closely alike than those to which the buds on the same tree are
exposed? Yet one bud out of the many thousands borne by the same
tree has suddenly, without any apparent cause, produced nectarines.
But the case is even stronger than this; for the same flower-bud has
yielded a fruit one half or a quarter a nectarine, and the other
half or three quarters a peach. Again, seven or eight varieties of
the peach have yielded, by bud variation, nectarines; the nectarines
thus produced no doubt differed a little from each other; but still
they are nectarines. Of course there must be some cause internal or
external to excite the peach-bud to change its nature; but I cannot
imagine a class of facts better adapted to force on our mind the
conviction that what we call the external conditions of life are
quite insignificant in relation to any particular variation, in
comparison with the organization or constitution of the being which
varies."
These assertions that there is something beyond the actions of the
conditions of life are met with continually in his work, and they
fully and conclusively show that he is no-wise inclined to adopt the
mechanist theory. What alternative have we, then, but to conclude
that this occult potent factor is reversion?
We have, we think, sufficiently shown that Darwin does not attribute
variations solely to the conditions. But it has been asserted by
the _North American_ Reviewer, of whom we have often spoken, that
Mr. Herbert Spencer declares them to be thus solely due. A dozen
careful perusals of _The Principles of Biology_ have failed to
corroborate such a statement. On the contrary, Mr. Spencer on many
occasions makes use of the phrase "spontaneous variations," though,
apparently, under protest. It is true that throughout his work there
is a constant insistance on the great part played by the physical
conditions in causing variations. The greatest prominence is given
to this factor. There is also a manifest desire that the mechanical
forces be taken as adequate to the production of the phenomena. But
nowhere is there clearly expressed a repudiation of the idea of
concurrent cause. In some places there is a recognition of it.
Thus, on page 281, Mr. Darwin, after speaking of the action of the
conditions of life, says, "Mr. Herbert Spencer has recently discussed
with great ability this whole subject on broad and general grounds.
He argues, for instance, that the internal and external tissues
are differently acted on by the surrounding conditions, and they
invariably differ in intimate structure; so, again, the upper and
lower surfaces of true leaves are differently circumstanced with
respect to light, etc., and apparently in consequence differ in
structure. But, as Mr. Herbert Spencer admits, it is most difficult
in all such cases to distinguish between the effects of the definite
action of physical conditions and the accumulation through natural
selection of inherited variations which are serviceable to the
organism, and which have arisen independently of the definite action
of these conditions."
It may be well to remark that the physical conditions are the sole
cause of variation when viewed in their statical aspect; but when
viewed in their dynamical aspect, the conditions are, except when
the movement is in the direction of degeneration, only the secondary
cause. For, upon the theory here enunciated, were all the individuals
of a species fully developed, there would be but one race or variety,
that is, the perfect type. The existence of a plurality of races or
varieties necessarily implies the unfavorable modification of some of
the parts or characters of some of the members of the species.
It is hardly possible for any one's common sense to be so impaired,
even by speculation or the bias of a foregone conclusion, as to
induce a belief that the characters given below have arisen solely by
the action of the physical conditions. When the cases are isolated,
such a belief is, in a small measure, excusable; but when they are
given consecutively, the ascription of the characters solely to
mechanical causes would imply not a little aberration of mind.
Numerous instances of bud-variation are given by Darwin. Several
of these we have incidentally adverted to. By this process of
bud-variation have arisen in one generation alone, and even in one
season, nectarines from the peach, the red magnum bonum plum from
the yellow magnum bonum, and the moss-rose from the Provence rose.
Many other instances might be adduced of the appearance of characters
equally strongly pronounced.
That the following characters have not arisen in one generation
is confessedly owing to the lack of scientific knowledge as to
the conditions requisite for their growth. The English lop-eared
rabbit, which is under domestication, weighs not less than eighteen
pounds. The pouter-pigeon is distinguished by the great size of
its oesophagus; the English carrier-pigeon, by its surprisingly
long beak; and the fantail, as its name connotes, by its immense
upwardly-expanded tail. In the progenitor of these birds, the
rock pigeon, (_columba livia_,) there is not a trace of these
characters discernible. It is a matter of great surprise to look at
the stringy roots of the wild carrot and parsnip, and then to note
the astonishingly great improvement which has resulted from their
subjection to more favorable conditions. Gooseberries have attained a
great size and weight. The London gooseberry is now between seven and
eight times the weight of the wild fruit. The fruit of one variety of
the _curcurbita pepo_ exceeds in volume that of another by more than
two thousand fold!
Now, these strongly pronounced favorable modifications are explicable
only upon the theory of reversion. Had they arisen by the slow
accumulation, through centuries, of successive, scarcely appreciable
increments of modification, their being due to evolution, or solely
to the physical conditions, would be less inconceivable. Darwin's
professedly favorite rule is, _Natura non facit saltum_--"Nature
makes no leaps." But we fail to see nature's conformity to it. We
must confess that upon the hypothesis of evolution nature indulges
herself with the most gigantic leaps.
It might be urged that, upon assuming, for the purposes of the
argument, that Mr. Herbert Spencer does attribute variations solely
to the physical conditions, he is thereby discharged from the
imputation of advocating a theory which is wholly gratuitous. But he
assuredly is not. He is placed by this ascription of variations in
no better position, so far as respects this point. He has adduced
no evidence in favor of their being thus solely ascribable. His
attribution of them solely to the physical conditions is equally
gratuitous with his ascription of them to evolution. The fact that
variations are due to a change in the conditions, and that variations
would be absent were all the individuals of a species subjected to
absolutely uniform conditions, is, as we have seen, quite compatible
with a belief in a concurrent cause. The necessity of a change in the
conditions is admitted, and even called for, upon our theory. Mr.
Herbert Spencer's assumed assertion of variation being due solely to
mechanical causes would necessarily imply a denial of a concurrent
cause. But this denial is wholly gratuitous; he has furnished no
warrant for it. And again, assuming him to concede a concurrent
cause, the question then recurs, Are variations attributable to
reversion or to evolution? As we have seen, there is no foundation
for ascribing them to evolution--evolution being merely a name for a
cause unknown.
In _The Westminster Review_ for July, 1865, and in _The North
American Review_ for October, 1868, Mr. Herbert Spencer is taxed
with inconsistency. In his _Principles of Biology_, Mr. Spencer
writes, "In whatever way it is formulated, or by whatever language
it is obscured, this ascription of organic evolution to some
aptitude naturally possessed, or miraculously imposed on them, is
unphilosophical. It is one of those explanations which explains
nothing--a shaping of ignorance into the semblance of knowledge. The
cause assigned is not a true cause--not a cause assimilable to known
causes--not a cause that can anywhere be shown to produce analogous
effects. It is a cause unrepresentable in thought; one of those
illegitimate symbolic conceptions which cannot by any mental process
be elaborated into a real conception. In brief, this assumption of
a persistent formative power, inherent in organisms, and making
them unfold into higher forms, is an assumption no more tenable than
the assumption of special creations; of which, indeed, it is but
a modification, differing only by the fusion of separate unknown
processes into a continuous unknown process." When he proceeds to
treat of the waste and repair of the tissues, he finds that they
refuse to acknowledge his mechanical principles, and he is forced
to assume for the living particles "an _innate_ tendency to arrange
themselves into the shape of the organism to which they belong." The
inconsistency was noted, commented upon, and became the subject of
much animadversion.
This inconsistency, however, is comparatively excusable, as the
histological phenomena which he had to explain are complicated and
involved, and have to respond to the influences of divers parts
of the body. But were we to show that his denunciation of the
"ascription of organic evolution to some aptitude," is equally
applicable to the attribution to "evolution," he would be considered,
we are sure, guilty of the grossest possible inconsistency. This we
can show; for there is no definition of a "metaphysical entity," to
which the term evolution does not answer. Can any one conversant with
the works of the first of evolutionists, particularly with his _First
Principles_, _Principles of Psychology_, and _Principles of Biology_,
gainsay the fact that organic evolution implies a _tendency_ in
organisms _to advance_, when under the influence of physical
conditions, from the simpler to the more complex?
Mr. Spencer tacitly assumes the inevitable "becoming of all living
things;" and that organic progress is a result of some indwelling
tendency to develop, naturally impressed on living matter--some
ever-acting constructive force, which, concurrently with other
forces, moulds organisms into higher and higher forms. Many instances
of this we might adduce, but we will quote but two. On page 403,
of his _First Principles_, he speaks of "a tendency toward the
differentiation of each race into several races." And on page
430, Vol. I. of his _Principles of Biology_, he says, "While we
are not called on to suppose that there exists in organisms any
primordial impulse which makes them continually unfold into more
heterogeneous forms, we see that _a liability to be unfolded_ arises
from the action and reaction between organisms and their fluctuating
environments."
Surely, it cannot, with any show of reason, be contended that the
word "liability" is not here used as the perfect synonym of that
"metaphysical entity," the word "tendency." If the concurrence of
a "liability to be unfolded" and the physical conditions be the
definition of evolution, were we not warranted in asserting all
that we did, with respect to the implication of organic evolution?
Evolution a "metaphysical entity"! The words seem strange. They
sound like a contradiction in terms; and we know that it is hard to
realize the fact that Mr. Spencer has based his whole theory upon
"some aptitude." But can the fact be gainsaid? Do not the thoughts
of every one who reads of a "liability to be unfolded," recur to the
page where Mr. Spencer stigmatizes such phrases as unphilosophical?
Hear again how he characterizes them. "In whatever manner it is
formulated, _or by whatever language it is obscured_, this ascription
of organic evolution to some aptitude _naturally possessed_, or
miraculously imposed on them, is unphilosophical. It is one of those
explanations which explains nothing--a shaping of ignorance into
the semblance of knowledge." Every reader will, we are sure, concur
with us in the opinion that the evolution hypothesis is here clearly
condemned. The special creation theory, as here advocated, involves
no occult factor. The physical conditions concur with reversion to
cause the favorable modifications.
While we do not join in such a strong protest against the use of what
are termed "metaphysical entities," as that in which positivists
are wont to indulge, we cannot but concede that they have often
retarded the progress of science, and directed the course of inquiry
into wrong channels. But the true scientist does not altogether
eschew their use; nor does science preclude his following a middle
course. But that, however, against which we do most earnestly and
most indignantly protest is their use for the purpose of showing
incongruity between science and religion; and their use when there
is a perfectly legitimate alternative. The advocates of evolution
endeavor to laugh to scorn such phrases; but, double which way they
will, they are forced to use them, if not in one instance, at least
in another.
We hope, then, never again to hear "metaphysical entities" urged as
an objection against the special creation theory. But we incline to
retract that. For the positivists have become, through practice, so
well conversant with the phraseology peculiar to this theme, that
they are now capable of masterpieces of wit and eloquence. Were they,
through fear of the imputation of inconsistency, to refrain from
furnishing the world with these, we would be debarred the pleasure of
their perusal. With reluctance would we forego such opportunities of
cultivating a delicacy of taste.
In _Appleton's Journal_ for July 31st, 1869, Mr. Spencer has declared
that "the very conception of spontaneity is wholly incongruous
with the conception of evolution." Now, to our mind, the theory of
"spontaneous generation" is the perfect analogue of the theory of
evolution. We conceive that the latter theory is open to the same
objections which are urged by Mr. Spencer against the hypothesis
of heterogenesis. "No form of evolution," he declares, "organic or
inorganic, can be spontaneous, but in every instance the antecedent
forces must be adequate in their quantities, kinds, and distributions
to work the observed effects." Now, do not the alleged cases of
evolution, equally with those of spontaneous generation, fail to
fulfil this requirement? Does not Mr. Spencer's assumption of a
tendency as a concurrent cause with the conditions, imply such a
failure? What precludes the advocates of "spontaneous generation"
from assuming "a liability" in inorganic matter "to unfold" into
microscopic organisms? Could not agenesis have resulted from
the concurrence of this tendency with mechanical causes? Such
an explanation is equally open to the believers in "spontaneous
generation." The true _status_ of the evolution hypothesis is really
no higher than that of the hypothesis of heterogenesis. They are both
founded upon similar bases.
Together with the absurdity of adducing alleged cases of necrogenesis
as the assumed missing link in the evolution process, might also have
been mentioned, by Mr. Spencer, an objection to which the experiments
of Professor Wyman are open. It is assumed in those experiments that,
if fully matured organisms are not able to stand a temperature above
two hundred and eight degrees, their ova would be destroyed when
subjected to a temperature of two hundred and twelve degrees. These
ova are allowed to stand only a little over three degrees more than
a developed organism. Is this a fair supposition? Is it not to be
expected that, if a fully matured organism can stand a temperature
of two hundred and eight degrees, its ova, which are almost diatomic
in character, will sustain a temperature approaching that of
incandescence? We trust that this digression will be pardoned.
Before treating of variation under domestication, we may take
occasion to disclaim any attempt to account for variations of color.
These are not so manifestly due to degeneration and subsequent
favorable reversion. They accord with our theory; but as this
accordance is not susceptible of the short and complete demonstration
of that of all other variations, the limits of our series preclude
our entering into a long dissertation on the subject. Nor would the
importance of modifications of color justify such a course; for
Darwin characterizes them as phenomena of no consequence, and assures
us that little attention is paid to them by naturalists.
Under domestication, animals and plants are subjected to
comparatively favorable conditions, to conditions of which they have
been deprived in the state of nature. Thus stimulated, they display
marked improvement, and revert to the perfect condition from which
they have degenerated. The favorable changes which they present are
noted by man, and carefully preserved by crossing and judicious
pairing with those possessing equal advantages. In this way, the best
are selected and made to transmit to their offspring their improved
condition. Each breeder's success is determined by the more or less
favorable conditions of the situation, district, or country, and by
his sagacity and discrimination in selecting those in which occurs
the greatest increase of size. As the conditions vary in different
localities, and as breeders possess different degrees of scientific
knowledge, animals and plants would be differently improved, and
thus there is established a series of gradations all answering to
the characters of as many varieties. As we have seen, in a somewhat
similar manner races have been formed under nature. They were in part
established by the retention of the animal or plant in several of the
phases of degeneration; while varieties under domestication are in
part due to the retention of the organism at each stage of reversion.
The greater number of varieties under domestication, as compared
with the paucity of races under nature, results in a measure from
man's selection retaining the organism at almost every gradation.
Under nature, the animals of a district or country freely intercross,
and from this intercrossing results uniformity of character and the
consequent existence of only one race in a country. Besides, the
conditions of life are comparatively uniform in each district; but
under domestication man is, by means of his scientific knowledge,
continually varying the conditions.
We are conscious that this explanation accounts only for difference
of size. It does not show how wholly different characters have been
acquired by the various varieties; nor the cause of the possession
of the greatest structural differences by individuals of the same
species. Were this the sole process by which varieties were formed,
one variety would be merely the miniature of the other. Other
explanations are required to illustrate the manner in which the great
divergence of character observable under domestication, has been
effected. These we shall furnish.
Darwin, both in his _Origin of Species_ and in his _Animals and
Plants under Domestication_, draws particular attention to this
divergence of character. It forms a most conspicuous portion of his
theory. It displays the gradual acquisition by individuals originally
alike of differences as great as those characterizing species.
As Darwin has assured us, there is scarcely a single species under
nature which does not possess organs in a rudimentary state. Now,
these arise under domestication, and are apportioned among the
several varieties. Each organ is developed, and is allotted to a
certain variety, of which it forms the peculiarity. In one variety,
special attention is paid to the development of a single organ,
while the remaining organs are left to be developed in and to form
the characteristics of other varieties. Thus the upwardly-expanded
tail in the pigeon constitutes the peculiarity characteristic of the
fantail; the enlargement of the oesophagus, that of the pouter; and
the divergent feathers along the front of the neck and breast, that
of the turbit.
By this process--the development of rudimentary organs and their
apportionment among the several varieties--a portion of the
divergence of character is effected.
These rudimentary organs have been the occasion of many a warm
controversy. They are asserted to be totally incongruous with the
doctrine of teleology. Their uselessness and occasionally detrimental
nature, it is contended, preclude the possibility of design. Several
objections have been urged against the doctrine of final causes;
but those who profess to disbelieve in design concur in according to
these organs the greatest prominence.
The doctrine of final causes is a conception thrust upon us by a
vast multitude of facts from organic nature. But, now and then,
exceptional phenomena will present themselves apparently at variance
with it. These, as a writer in _The London Quarterly Review_ for
July, 1869, ably maintains, are merely objections, not disproofs.
Owing to a misconception current among the advocates of special
creation, they have been unable to reconcile rudimentary organs
with the doctrine of teleology. All the attempts heretofore made to
harmonize these anomalous features with the doctrine of final causes
have been feeble. We may instance one. A Mr. Paget, in his Hunterian
Lectures at the College of Surgeons, argues that the function
of these organs is "to withdraw from the blood some elements of
nutrition, which, if retained in it, would be positively injurious."
We can readily appreciate the feelings which induce an evolutionist
to smile at this assumption of excretion as the sole function and
purpose of a rudimentary organ.
Upon the theory of degeneration and subsequent favorable reversion
here propounded, these rudimentary organs are quite congruous with
the doctrine of final cause. To obviate the difficulty presented
by these parts, we have accepted the interpretation of the
evolutionist. This interpretation we adopted at the start. It forms
the basis of our theory--its foundation-stone. That for which the
evolutionist contends is, that these organs have at one period been
fully developed. In this we concurred; for it furnished us with an
explanation of the favorable modifications under domestication;
while, as we shall show, it is by no means at variance with the
doctrine of the immutability of the species. Rudimentary organs imply
degeneration, past complexity of structure, and present comparative
simplicity of structure; facts at variance with evolution, but
strictly in accordance with our theory. We have seen that the
idea of the normal nature of the existing natural condition has
rendered the advocates of special creation unable to account for
the appearance of profitable modifications. The seeming incongruity
between rudimentary organs and the doctrine of teleology is a
result of the same misconception. A curious confusion of ideas,
generated by the assumption of this false position, has urged the
opponents of evolution tacitly to contend that animals and plants
were originally created with these organs in a rudimentary state,
and that the present condition of these parts is a normal one. We,
concurrently with the evolutionists, recognize in these organs
"traces of old laws"--"records of the past." They are the traces of
laws which obtained when the conditions were favorable to the full
development of the organs. Under domestication, the conditions are
being supplied, and the organs are, in consequence, being developed.
On page 386 of his _Principles of Biology_, Mr. Herbert Spencer
says, "And then to complete the proof that these undeveloped parts
are marks of descent from races in which they were developed, there
are not a few direct experiences of this relation. 'We have plenty
of cases of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions--as the
stump of a tail in tailless breeds--the vestige of an ear in ear-less
breeds--the reappearance of minute dangling horns in hornless breeds
of cattle.'"
But together with their being traces of old laws, they are traces
of laws which so far adhere to the present that the laws of the
whole organism fail fully to obtain without their concurrence; and
their concurrence is consequent solely upon the full development of
these rudimental features. In other words, full perfection consists
in the perfect coördination of all the parts, and absence of this
coördination suffices to throw the organism within the domain of
pathology. The reduction, therefore, of any organ to a rudimentary
condition is deleterious to the organism as a whole. We are perfectly
aware that this needs something more than gratuitous affirmation; but
as the adduction of evidence in this place would be inconsistent with
the symmetry and continuity of our argument, we are forced to bespeak
our readers' indulgence until the publication of the next article of
this series. But it is sufficiently clear that, upon assuming the
truth of our theory, the difficulty offered to the doctrine of final
causes by rudimentary organs is obviated.
It is manifest that the development of rudimentary organs, with
their distribution among the several varieties, is but a partial
explanation of the great divergence of character. There remain to be
shown, then, other processes by which this has been effected.
Divergence of character has been also caused by the development in
different varieties of those parts which have been only partially
suppressed under nature. This necessarily causes disproportionate
development of the characters in the individuals. Proportionate
development would occur if all the features of the animal or plant
were subjected to equally favorable conditions, and if they were all
impartially cared for by man. Convergence of character would thence
result. And this convergence of character is at first sight to be
expected. For if an animal or plant has, as we have seen, diverged
in character under nature, and then reverts under domestication
to the original perfect type, that which is to be anticipated is
convergence of character. But some part presents a modification in
advance of its fellows. This man seizes and makes it the peculiarity
of a certain variety. By the careful conservation and judicious
mating of those individuals which display a tendency to diverge in
the same direction, and of those which tend least to develop new
characters, he preserves the type of the variety. Modifications
arising in other points of structure are similarly preserved by other
breeders, and characterize other varieties. When a variety is marked
by a certain peculiarity, the fancier or breeder looks with a jealous
eye upon the acquisition by any individual of any new character, even
though it be for the better. When, therefore, any individual of a
well-established variety displays a tendency toward the production
of a new character, it is systematically suppressed. "Sports" are
regarded with disfavor by the fancier or breeder, and rejected as
blemishes, because they tend to destroy uniformity of character among
the members of the variety. Owing to these and similar causes, in
each variety a different point of structure is admired, selected, and
attended to, and exclusive attention given to its development, to the
neglect of the others. All the features are not developed in the same
variety, but are distributed among different varieties. Thus, in the
carrier-pigeon the length of the beak is the character particularly
attended to; in the barb, quantity of eye-wattle; and in the runt,
the weight and size of the body.
In this way is effected the disproportionate development upon which
divergence of character is consequent. Darwin shows this, with this
difference: he believes that the modifications arise by evolution,
while we contend that they arise by reversion. Nor does he concur
with us in the use of the term "disproportionate development;" for
that implies that the presence of all the parts in an individual is
necessary to perfection. But he shows the process to be the same, be
the law to which the variations conform what it may. On page 245,
Vol. II., he says, "Man propagates and selects modifications for
his own use and fancy, and not for the creature's own good." And
on page 220 he asserts, "that whatever part or character is most
valued--whether the leaves, stems, bulbs, tubers, flowers, fruit, or
seed of plants, or the size, strength, fleetness, hairy covering, or
intellect of animals--that character will most invariably be found to
present the greatest amount of difference both in kind and degree."
Strong confirmation of this view that divergence of character is
attributable to disproportionate development may be drawn from
the fact that those species in which is observable the greatest
divergence of character are those whose breeding is directed by fancy
or fashion. Where utility guides selection, there an approximation to
convergence of character is seen; but where selection is guided by
fancy, there is a very strongly-marked tendency toward divergence.
In the formation of varieties, fancy nowhere enters as such a
predominating element as it does in the breeding of pigeons; and
consequently, nowhere else is seen such great divergence. Darwin is
ever directing attention to this. On page 220, Vol. I., he dwells
upon it with peculiar emphasis. The converse fact is also seen.
With cattle, the object of breeders is not the formation of numerous
varieties, but merely the improvement of the animals. An objective
mode of treatment is here identical with a subjective mode. And here
we have comparatively proportionate development, and a consequent
approach to convergence of character. After citing convergence of
character in the case of pigs, Darwin says, (Vol. II., page 241,) "We
see some degree of convergence in the similar outline of the body in
well-bred cattle belonging to distinct races."
In the foregoing description of the processes of formation of
domesticated varieties, we have assumed reversion as the cause of
modifications. We have occasion now to speak of a process which
implies a cause that is not reversion. Varieties are formed, and
disproportionate development and divergence of character effected, by
man's continuing the process of degeneration commenced under nature.
Several illustrations of this we will adduce.
In the tumbler-pigeon, the beak is greatly reduced, and, by
correlation, the feet have become of a size so small as to be barely
compatible with the bird's existence. Its skull is scarce one half
the size of the wild rock-pigeon, its progenitor; and the number of
the vertebræ has lessened. The ribs are only seven in number, whereas
the rock-pigeon has eight. The peculiarity characteristic of this
variety is confessedly due to degeneration. We refer to the habit
of tumbling which Darwin attributes to disease--to "an affection of
the brain." (P. 153.) Other varieties of the pigeon also owe some of
their characters to degeneration. In the barb, the beak is .02 of
an inch shorter than in the wild rock-pigeon. Important characters
have correspondingly deteriorated. Darwin, speaking of domesticated
pigeons, says, "We may confidently admit that the length of the
sternum, and frequently the prominence of its crest, the length of
the scapula and furcula have all been reduced in size in comparison
with the same parts in the rock-pigeon."
Pigs present several cases of deterioration of parts under
domestication. Through protection from the climate, the coat of
bristles has been greatly diminished. By disuse and man's selection,
the legs have become of a size scarcely compatible with the animal's
power of locomotion. Darwin requests us to "hear what an excellent
judge of pigs says, 'The legs should be no longer than just to
prevent the animal's belly from trailing on the ground. The leg is
the least profitable portion of the hog, and we therefore require
no more of it than is absolutely necessary for the support of the
rest.'" Fully to realize the extreme shortness of the legs, it is
necessary to see them in the possession of a highly improved breed.
Correlation with the legs has led to the complete reduction of the
tusks, and has induced the shortness and concavity of the front of
the head which are so characteristic of domestic breeds.
With pigs, there is disproportionate development and also convergence
of character. This is owing to all the breeders having aimed at the
same object, the reduction of the characters given above, and the
full development of the trunk or body. On page 73, Vol. I., Darwin
says, "Nathusius has remarked, and the observation is an interesting
one, that the peculiar form of the skull and body in the most
highly cultivated races is not characteristic of any one race, but
is common to all when improved up to the same standard. Thus the
large-bodied, long-eared, English breeds with a convex back, and the
small-bodied, short-eared Chinese breeds, with a concave back, when
bred to the same state of perfection, nearly resemble each other in
the form of the head and body. This result, it appears, is partly
due to similar causes of change acting on the several races, and
partly to man breeding the pig for one sole purpose, namely, for
the greatest amount of flesh and fat; so that selection has always
tended toward one and the same end. With most domestic animals,
the result of selection has been divergence of character, here it
has been convergence." Divergence of character is solely caused
by disproportionate development, and proportionate development
in all the members of the species necessarily causes convergence
of character; but disproportionate development may also induce
convergence, as it has done in this case.
Degeneration has also been the means of the formation of breeds of
cattle, as the niata cattle, and those distinguished by the complete
suppression of the horns.
Tailless breeds of animals have been formed; among which may be
mentioned the rumpless fowl, and tailless cats and dogs.
Ears in other animals have been reduced to mere vestiges.
Degeneration is also seen in the great deterioration in size of
dogs. The turn-spit dog is manifestly a case of degeneration.
Blumenbach remarks "that many dogs, such as the badger-dog, have
a build so marked and appropriate for particular purposes, that I
should find it difficult to persuade myself that this astonishing
figure was an accidental consequence of degeneration." "But,"
says Darwin, "had Blumenbach reflected on the great principle of
selection, he would not have used the term degeneration, and he
would not have been astonished that dogs and other animals should
have become excellently adapted for the service of man." (Vol. II.,
page 220.) It is difficult to conceive why Darwin here ignores the
fact of degeneration. The peculiar build of the badger-dog is not an
accidental consequence of degeneration. But it is equally far removed
from being the product solely of selection. Degeneration is not the
less present because of the operation of selection. Could the two not
act concurrently? It is clearly manifest that it is the joint action
of degeneration and selection which accomplishes the appropriateness
for particular purposes, and not either alone. Selection, in such a
case as this, merely guides the course of degeneration. Unfavorable
modifications occur, and such of them as best subserve the uses and
purposes of man, he selects and preserves; the rest he rejects. Thus
results the adaptation of these animals to the service of man.
With some fowls, the comb has been lost. The Sebright bantam, which
is one of the greatest triumphs of selection, weighs hardly more than
one pound, and has lost its hackles, sickle-tail feathers, and other
secondary sexual characters.
The Porto Santo rabbit differs in size from the wild English rabbit,
its progenitor, in the proportion of rather less than five to nine.
The crooked and shortened legs of the Ancon sheep of New England,
frequently referred to by Darwin, also displayed the action of
degeneration. This is a case which shows that disproportionate
development in a single variety will produce divergence in the
species, even when there is great proportionate development in the
other varieties.
"With cultivated plants," says Darwin, "it is far from rare to find
the petals, stamens, and pistils represented by mere rudiments, like
those observed in natural species." (P. 316.) The Red Bush Alpine
strawberry is destitute of stolons or runners. In the St. Valery
apple, the stamens and corolla are reduced to a rudimentary state.
It has, consequently, to be fertilized by artificial means. This is
effected by the maidens of St. Valery, each of whom marks her fruit
with a ribbon of a certain color, and fertilizes it with the pollen
of adjacent trees.
Thus we have four processes of formation of varieties. 1st. The
retention of the organism at each stage of reversion, accounting
only for differences of size. 2d. The development of rudimentary
organs and their apportionment among the several varieties. 3d. The
development in different varieties of those parts which have been
only partially suppressed under nature. 4th. The continuation under
domestication of the process of degeneration commenced under nature.
Now, we conceive that, by showing the phenomena of variation to be
conformable to the theory of degeneration and reversion, and by
proving the unscientific nature of the assumption of evolution, we
have fulfilled the promise made by us at the start. Even as the case
now stands, the theory of special creations must commend itself to
every truly scientific mind. But it is not our design to leave the
subject a mere question of probabilities. It lies within our power to
prove the doctrine of special creations to demonstration; to place
our theory upon evidence beyond the reach of cavil.
To the mind of every reader accustomed to scientific habits of
thought, it is clear that our next step is to adduce proofs of our
belief that the development of all the parts in every individual is
necessary to perfection. In this direction we shall push the subject,
and we now affirm that there is a typical structure--the sum of all
the positive features of the species.
With a full appreciation of the magnitude and importance of the act,
we advance the following definition of a species.
_A species is a class of organisms, capable of indefinitely
continued, fertile reproduction among each other, and endowed with
the possession--either actual or potential--of character; the
suppression, reduction, or disproportionate development of which is
incompatible with a state of physiological integrity._
A HERO, OR A HEROINE?
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LION'S DEN.
Dr. James invited Margaret to visit "the shop," and one day, after
returning a few calls in Sealing, she stopped, with her aunt,
on their way home, at a plain brown house in the one street of
Shellbeach. There were two square pieces of green, one on each side
of the front door, shut in with a brown fence; the small door seemed
quite covered up, for, besides a large shining knocker in the middle,
there was above it a brass plate, on which was inscribed "Dr. James,"
in large letters. There also appeared a small bell on one side, and
another opposite labelled "night-bell." Which of these advantages
to improve, was at first rather a puzzle to Margaret; but her aunt
settled the question by giving a smart pull to the right-hand bell,
whence she concluded that the knocker, on which she had meditated an
attack, was intended solely for unprofitable ornament.
A tall and thin young man, who had the appearance of having outgrown
all his clothes, opened the door with a promptness which seemed to
imply that he had been lying in wait for the favorable moment to
pounce upon them, and which was a little startling to the ladies. He
surveyed them both with interest, explained that the doctor was not
at home, but was expected in, and proposed that they should walk into
the parlor and wait. Having ushered them into that apartment, the
youth discreetly withdrew.
"My dear aunt, what a forlorn room! And do you see the dust?"
Miss Spelman shook her head in a mournful manner, and proceeded to
establish herself on a black horsehair couch, (having first gently
flapped it with her handkerchief,) while Margaret walked about from
one thing to another, commenting and criticising.
"This is where he sits to write, I suppose. And if here isn't a
family of three little kittens curled up in his arm-chair! I hope he
won't mistake them for a cushion, that's all! What piles of books!
Medicine, medicine, medicine! Oh! here is something of a different
kind; poetry! who would have imagined it? Shelley, Longfellow,
Tennyson. How many nice things! This bookcase is filled with
treasures. The dust can't get in there, that's a comfort! And this
is a family portrait, I suppose; a lady with one, two, three, six
children. How funny and old-fashioned it is! Here are his pipe and
smoking-cap; oh! do see these funny skin slippers;" and she balanced
one on each hand. "How I would like to rummage here! Oh! there are
sleigh-bells." And Margaret established herself, prim and proper, in
one of the hard, straight-backed chairs just as Dr. James entered. He
gave them a pleasant welcome, and conducted them at once into "the
shop."
"It's a good time to look about here," he observed, "while John is
gone with the mare. The shop is his especial sanctum, and I think he
regards visitors as interlopers."
There was no dust to be seen in that room; every thing was scrubbed
and brushed till it shone, and absolute neatness reigned.
"This does not look to me like a shop," said Margaret.
"I can't say I deal in 'slippery-ellum,' 'stick-licorish,' and
'gum-arrabac-drops,'" replied the doctor; "if you want the real
name, this is a dispensary on a small scale. You see, I have no
faith in Mr. Creamer, in Sealing, further than for simple doses.
You might buy essence of peppermint or tincture of rhubarb of him,
to great advantage; but as for compounding pills and powders, I
prefer to attend to those myself. Then it is a convenience to some
of my patients, who can make a visit to the doctor and obtain their
remedies at one and the same time."
At these words, Miss Spelman gave her niece a little nudge, as they
stood side by side, and looked, as the saying is, volumes; but
Margaret did not understand, and wondered what her aunt could mean.
"And who is John?" she asked.
"Oh! John is my factotum; as much a part of myself as the shop is.
You see he stays here when I am away, and goes on errands; he keeps
every thing nice, and can be trusted with simple prescriptions; in
return for which, I impart to him a little medical knowledge; so we
stand both amicably in each other's debt, which leads to an excellent
understanding between us."
Again Margaret felt herself gently poked; but being as completely in
the dark as ever, she was forced to wait for an explanation till a
future time. They admired all the arrangements, till John's return,
when the doctor led them back into the parlor, where, the fire having
been stirred up and the curtains drawn so as to admit the sun, the
aspect of things was more cheerful. Margaret once more admired the
kittens and books, and accepted the doctor's offer to lend from the
latter, by borrowing Miss Procter's poems, in blue and gold, which
she espied on a high shelf.
On their drive homeward, Margaret said,
"Why did you punch me, Aunt Selina? Was I misbehaving?"
"No, indeed! I only wanted you to notice what the doctor was saying.
What was it?"
"The first time was when he said his patients could visit him and get
their remedies at the same time."
"Yes, just his benevolence. Those are his poor patients, you see, for
whom he has set up that dispensary; he gives them advice and medicine
free."
"But then he must have money."
"So he has, a little; but he uses up every cent and more; for he
sends some to his mother and sister, and takes ever so much care of
the poor for miles around."
"But he must have fees from his rich patients; you told me he was as
popular at Sealing as here."
"Certainly they pay him; but he does not encourage a large practice
in Sealing, for there is a very good doctor living there, with a wife
and family. So though Dr. James visits a few patients in Sealing,
they are almost all people who used to live here, and are now not
willing to give him up. But his fees could not begin to enable him to
do all he does, if he had not something of his own."
"The second time you admonished me was when he spoke of his boy."
Miss Spelman laughed contemptuously.
"It was exactly like him to speak as if that matter was a
give-and-take affair! The fact is, the boy's mother, a widow, took
it into her head, like all mothers, that her son was something
remarkable, and ought to be sent to college; of course without a
penny to do it with. She disclosed her mind to Dr. James, and the
end of it was, that he has taken him clean off her hands, gives him
a nice little salary for the work he does in the dispensary, and is
educating him, besides, to be a first-rate physician; and I suppose
when the doctor goes away from this town, young Richards will just
step into his place and have it all his own way. I know all this, you
see, because I know the mother. The doctor never breathed a word of
it, you may be sure; but she told me all about it. And this is what
Dr. James calls a mutual-benefit society, or something of the sort."
Margaret laughed; but she was not disposed to praise or admire the
doctor, chiefly because she was aware that her aunt expected and
wished her to do so. She listened attentively, however, to this,
and as much more information as Miss Spelman chose to volunteer
about her favorite, now and then putting in a doubtful question, or
slightly depreciatory remark, which only elicited fresh praises;
until sometimes the little lady would dimly perceive the game her
niece was playing, and retire into silence and dignity.
CHAPTER IX.
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.
A month had gone, Margaret was astonished to find how quickly. She
was contented and happy; interested, too, in her various occupations,
and, except for missing Jessie's sympathy and companionship, feeling
no regret for her former life. Such a state of things would have been
impossible, had she not been utterly wearied with the whirl of gayety
and the accumulation of engagements which seemed to her unavoidable
while she remained in New York. But the complete change was reviving
to her, and, as she said, she had taken up the study of human nature,
which really meant that she had become interested in one person,
and that person was Dr. James. She saw him a good deal; for he came
freely to Miss Spelman's house, he had taken her sleigh-riding,
accompanied her on expeditions in search of coasting or skating,
played chess with her, and lent her books.
Since that occasion, on their first drive to Sealing, when "the
mistress of a poor man's household" had been alluded to, that ideal
person was frequently spoken of with considerable enjoyment of the
joke by both parties, and once Margaret had asked him outright, what
he would consider necessary accomplishments in such a person.
"I don't know that a poor doctor's wife would differ from the wife
of any other poor man," he had answered her. "I have in my mind a
woman not afraid of work, not requiring amusement nor excitement,
able to do her own work; you see I say _able_--not that I would
object to her having a servant, or perhaps two; but she should
understand and be able to explain and direct all the domestic
arrangements of the house. She should wait on herself; therefore her
dress should be plain and simple. Especially should she know how to
cook and sew, to market well, and to be considerate and cheerful to
her servants. Then, as concerns my professional business, I should
think a slight acquaintance with simple medicines and remedies, and
where they are kept in the shop, in case of emergency, would be
useful; fortitude to bear the sight of, and even to suffer, pain and
sickness, so as to set a good example; and, to sum up, a cool head, a
steady hand, and presence of mind."
When Dr. James had ended this minute description, he was struck by
the extent of his requirements; and as Margaret's eye met his, they
both laughed heartily, and though at the time she made no comment
on his ideal poor man's wife, she often alluded to her virtues
afterward, before other people, who, of course, could not understand
what she meant, while the doctor, she was delighted to see, was
slightly embarrassed and at a loss for a reply.
Margaret had seen a little of the Sealing society at a few
tea-parties, which aimed at being so genteel that they were
insufferably stiff and drowsy. Margaret longed to do something to
wake up the young men, who, dressed in their best, with the stiffest
of collars and the most surprising cravats, sat with folded hands
and feet placed close together, helplessly, just where they happened
to be put, without daring to do more than assent in as few words as
possible to the stream of conversation kept up by the ladies, who
seemed to consider it the business of the evening to entertain them.
She very nearly proposed "blind-man's buff" on one occasion, but her
courage failed her at the last moment; she thought it would be a
hopeless undertaking to attempt to infuse life and activity into such
frozen figures. At last, one young woman, named Mary Searle, gave a
small party, and had the independence to propose playing games; and
when Margaret warmly seconded the movement, and set the example by
suggesting "fox and geese," she was astonished to behold every body
become at once natural and merry. The young men were metamorphosed,
forgot their feet and hands, and performed wonders of agility.
It dawned upon Margaret that all this restraint must have been
occasioned wholly by her presence, and she did her best to dispel
all respect for "city ways" by showing that she could romp with the
merriest. The evening ended with a Virginia-reel, and from that time
the ice was broken, and Margaret saw the people in their pleasantest
light--without affectation, simple, kindly, and cheerful. But of
"society" she saw little; the Sealing young ladies complained that
she was not "sociable," though when they were with her they got on
very well; she said she was "too busy" to visit much, and so managed
to keep a good deal to herself.
Of Martha Burney, however, she saw a good deal, and before long
made an arrangement to drive her every morning to her school. The
Marchioness had come, and Margaret had hired a little sleigh for her
own use and pleasure.
"You see I have to get up early now, for my drive with Miss Burney,"
she explained to the doctor; for she was anxious that he should not
think she was trying to please him. After leaving her companion, who
returned in the afternoon by the cars, she sometimes stopped for her
organ lesson, and sometimes came directly home, where she practised,
or shut herself up to study Latin. This latter, however, was a
secret. The day she visited Dr. James's dispensary, she had noticed
Latin names on his jars and vials, and had then and there decided in
her own mind that some acquaintance with Latin would be indispensable
to "a poor doctor's wife." So she had bought a dictionary, grammar,
and one or two Latin books, and now worked laboriously in private,
every day, while in the afternoons she walked, drove, or read with
her aunt.
CHAPTER X.
AN AWAKENING.
One Sunday evening, Dr. James was sitting in Miss Spelman's pleasant
parlor; she was dozing in her chair by the fire, and Margaret sat on
a little sofa near her. There had come a long pause, such as very
often came on Sunday evenings, and on this occasion the doctor had
been more abstracted and inattentive than usual. He sat by the table
in an arm-chair, studying the fire with a troubled face, and Margaret
watched him and wondered what was wrong. At last he started and said,
as their eyes met,
"Miss Lester, pardon me. I believe I am very rude; I have a good
deal on my mind, and when you stop speaking, my thoughts go off to
something I cannot forget."
He paused a moment, and then, before she could answer him, went on.
"They talk about a doctor's becoming callous, and indifferent to pain
and suffering; I wish it were more true! Of course there are certain
things which, when we have seen them borne well and bravely by some,
we expect others to meet in the same way, and so seem unfeeling and
unsympathizing when folks make a great fuss about them.
"When, however, I see people really suffering and in want, it makes
me sick at heart, and I cannot forget it. There is a family a couple
of miles out of the east end of this town who are in great trouble,
and I don't see what can help them out of it." He stopped abruptly
and stared at the fire again.
"Dr. James, do you suppose I am not interested? Go on quickly, and
tell me the rest; for perhaps I can help these poor people."
He looked at her earnestly and continued,
"The husband is a shoemaker; a good fellow, though thriftless. It is
the old story; want of work, a sick wife, a large family, rent due,
and the wolf at the door. I have been to several people; but money
seems very scarce just now, and more is needed than I can raise for
them. My own funds are very low, and some kind people suggest the
poor-house at Sealing for them; but that would break their spirit; so
I can't bear to think of it."
"Why, Dr. James! of course I can help them. Why did you not come to
me before? Cannot we go to-night and pay the rent, and take them what
they need?"
"To-morrow will do for them; if you like, however, I can take the
rent to Mr. Brown to-night. Perhaps you will sleep better for it; I
know I shall. To-morrow you can drive there, and do what you think
best for them."
Margaret's sympathy seemed very consoling to the doctor, and he
talked to her freely of the state of the poor people with whom he
came in contact. He said he had to see so much misery he could not
possibly relieve, that it was a constant weight on his mind; it
haunted him like a ghost; and even when warm and comfortable himself,
he could not forget those wants which he so desired to relieve but
could not. Then the people in the neighborhood rendered him but
little assistance; for they either did not realize, or else were
indifferent to the destitution of their neighbors.
Dr. James had never before opened his mind to Margaret as he did that
evening. He spoke of his intense sympathy with the poor, simply and
as a matter of course; and every word conveyed to her a reproach,
for it made her conscious of her own selfishness and hardness of
heart. Though she had always given freely, when asked, to fairs and
subscriptions, and to charity collectors, she had done so, as she now
saw, out of her abundance, and with a cold heart. How much thought
had she ever given to the sufferings of the poor? What had she ever
done to relieve them? Yet here was a man whose whole life was devoted
to helping and healing his fellow-creatures, and who reproached
himself for enjoying the simplest comforts so long as others were
without them. A whole mine of new thoughts seemed opened in her mind;
she longed to be alone; and when Dr. James had left her, after warmly
grasping the hand that had given him the rent for his poor family,
she said good-night to her aunt as early as possible, and going to
her own room, she thought long and regretfully of the past, and
formed a firm resolution to live more nobly for the future.
CHAPTER XI.
UNEXPECTED ADVICE.
The next morning, after driving Martha Burney to Sealing as usual,
Margaret filled her sleigh with good things at the grocery and
provision stores and then made her way, by the directions Dr. James
had given her, to the house of John McNally, the poor man of whom
he had spoken. She found the distress quite as great as she had
expected, and would not have known what to do first, had she not
found there a woman from the neighborhood who was endeavoring to
assist the sick wife. This woman at once made gruel and tea, and put
away the provisions in their proper places, while Margaret collected
around her the children, who were half starving, and distributed
among them a plentiful supply of bread and butter, to which she
afterward added a dessert of oranges and candy.
Poor John looked on as though it were all a dream, and watched
Margaret's every movement as he would those of a good fairy, till,
she turning to him, said kindly,
"Will you not sit down and have some breakfast? Perhaps this friend
of yours will cook some steak for you."
Then he mechanically sat down on a chair near the table, and
covering his face with his hands, strove to hide tears of joy that
trickled down his cheeks. Margaret went into the chamber and sat
by the wife, who was sitting up in bed drinking her gruel, while
Susan, the friend, went to cook the steak, the savory smell of which
soon filled the little house. Margaret left them with a promise to
return the next day; but before she went, she put into John's hand
a twenty-dollar bill, bidding him get every thing that his wife and
family needed.
What a happy day that was for Margaret! She felt so light-hearted
and joyous that she could hardly attend to her usual duties; but she
endeavored to study and practise the regular number of hours, saying
to herself, "If I am going to do good every day, I must not let it
interfere with every thing else." In the afternoon she would not go
out; she was sure the doctor would come, and she could not afford to
miss his call. So Miss Selina took one of her friends to drive, and
Margaret sat at home waiting. Tea-time came and her aunt returned,
and still the visitor she expected had not appeared; at length, as
they left the table, sleigh-bells were heard, and the doctor opened
the hall door.
"There is a lovely moon, Miss Lester; can you not wrap yourself up
and take a short drive with me?"
She hastened to get her hood, muff, and shawl, and in a few moments
was flying over the frozen ground, in and out of the white moonlight
and the dark shadows, the sleigh-bells ringing gayly, and her own
heart beating fast with joy.
Dr. James was the first to speak.
"You can't think what a pleasure it has been to me all day, to think
of those poor people relieved from their trouble and wretchedness; I
am sure it has been a happiness to you also. The poor things consider
your help as a direct interposition of providence, and I must say
they seem full of gratitude rather to God than to you. They appear to
consider you as merely a secondary cause of their relief."
"That is right enough, Dr. James; I owe a great deal more to them
than they to me; I was never so happy before in my life."
"I can well believe it. But I must tell you something, Miss Lester,
that may diminish your satisfaction a little; which I would not
mention, however, if I did not think it would be useful in the
future. What you did for the family was, in the main, excellent; but
you remember I told you McNally was thriftless! Well, the sum of
money you put into his hands was too large; when he went to Sealing
for medicine and things for his wife, some idle fellows got hold of
him, and the consequence was, I found him reeling about the street
this afternoon, with a small bottle of medicine in his pocket, and
all his money gone. I took him home, and administered the medicine to
his wife myself; it was useless to speak to him then, but to-morrow
I am going there to talk to him as he deserves, for he has not been
drunk before for months."
"Why, I have done more harm than good."
"Not so bad as that, I am sure; you were injudicious, and a great
deal too lavish in your bounty."
"Dr. James, it seemed to me very little to leave, when so much was
needed; I quite congratulated myself on my prudence."
"It was a great deal of money for a poor man to have in his pocket.
In almost all such cases the wife is the one to intrust with the
money; she knows for what it is most needed, and makes it go as far
as it can; but the best way of all, I think, is to find out, by
interesting yourself, what are the wants of the poor, and supply them
by your personal care. When you have time, you might go and talk with
Rose--that is the wife--and, if you like, give her what she needs."
"I am glad you told me this, Dr. James; it will teach me to be wiser
next time. You see I am wholly inexperienced, for I never did any
thing of the kind before in my life. Now I am determined to try
again. Can't you tell me of another case of distress among your
patients?"
"Not at present, I believe, though, for that matter, I believe
there is no want of poor people at any time. Miss Lester, excuse my
asking you; do you want to do good systematically, and practically,
and perseveringly, or is this only a passing enthusiasm, which will
vanish when the novelty ceases?"
"Dr. James, if I do good perseveringly, as you say, I suppose the
excitement will wear off, and it will become a very matter-of-fact,
unromantic business, perhaps even tedious and inconvenient; still, I
have thought about it all to-day, and I have made up my mind to help
as many people as I can. So long as I remain here, it shall be one of
my occupations."
"Very well, then; and for the direction of practical, systematic good
works, I advise you to go to the Catholic priest."
"What! to that fat man with the red face, who laughs so loud?"
"Ah Miss Lester! if you had a little more medical knowledge, you
would be aware that natural temperament is in itself enough to
account for the corpulence of some people, to say nothing of the
sedentary life a priest generally leads; and in finding fault with
that laugh, you touch on a tender point; for it is, in my eyes, one
of Father Barry's shining virtues. It is the 'being jolly' under all
circumstances, and in spite of every thing adverse and difficult,
which makes this obscure country priest a great man. Think of his
life! What can be more laborious, more self-sacrificing, more
ill-paid, thankless and disheartening? And look at his face! My
dear Miss Lester, he is an educated man, and yet his intercourse is
entirely with the rude and ignorant poor of this most bigoted of
places. He is cut off from all those who profess to be people of
education here, and who look down on him with contempt and suspicion,
because they cannot even conceive what a life of devotion and
self-sacrifice means. What could have induced him to choose such a
life, liable to be condemned to such a place and such a people, I do
not understand."
"Think of your own life, Dr. James."
"Ay, there it is; I often think of the two lives, and naturally
compare them. Now, see the difference: I choose this place for
myself, and shall stay here as long or as short a time as I see fit;
he, as I understand it, is placed here by his bishop, for a year or
for his lifetime, he knows not which. Then, I work among these people
because it makes me contented, and because I cannot bear to see
misery and not relieve it. But he, strange to say, is not moved by a
spirit of active benevolence only, or even chiefly, so far as I can
judge; for he believes human suffering to be the penalty of sin; a
penalty which must be paid--therefore, better paid in this life than
in the life to come; and when I say to him, 'Then why do you do good
to every one within your reach?' he answers, 'For the love of God.'"
"Strange!" Margaret answered, feeling that he expected her to say
something, but with her mind occupied, it must be confessed, rather
with her companion's character than with that of the priest.
"Yes, you see he is as far removed from mere philanthropy as he
can be, and yet I know of no life so useful as his; mine grows dim
beside it. Then, again, when I compare our lives, he has none of that
self-approval, or rather self-complacency, which is the staff and
support of mine."
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I say. Of course I know that my work is a good and useful
one, and that I do it well. I know, moreover, that there are not many
men of my age and abilities who would consent to live such a life
as mine. Hence I feel at times a self-satisfaction which is to me
inspiration, and strength, and refreshment. On the contrary, Father
Barry, though his life appears to me crowded with good works, seems
to fear that if he should die now his hands would be found empty.
His life differs from mine in its motive: he acts from religious
principle, while I help the poor only because it makes me wretched
to see suffering without trying to relieve it. You see I talk to him
freely; I meet him a good deal among my patients, and we have done
some good turns for each other. I go to see him, and when he is not
busy, often sit with him of an evening; and he is the best company
I know. But I have been so engrossed by my own reflections that I
forgot I was giving you advice; by all means if you want to bestow
relief where it is most needed, ask his assistance.
"Why not the minister here, or at Sealing?"
"Dr. Thorndike here is, as you know, an old man, too old and infirm
to visit much; he could not help you; and Mr. Sparks, at Sealing,
has a large family, a wife who is always delicate, and a small
salary. Poor fellow! he means to do his duty; but his only servant
is a little girl, and after a wakeful night, walking up and down
with the baby, he has to see to the furnace fire, split the wood,
and do 'chores' generally. Then he has his sermons to write, his
parishioners to visit, and little tea-drinkings to grace with
his presence; of all of which duties I admit he acquits himself
irreproachably. He is, in fact, quite a model parson, and so, I
assure you, he is considered at Sealing; but, as you may imagine, he
has little time for miscellaneous visiting among the poor. Indeed, he
is only too glad to have Father Barry assume almost the whole of that
hard work, and is on the best of terms with him in private, though he
rails against popery and the priesthood from the pulpit in the most
popular manner. No; I don't advise you to be guided either by our
Congregationalist brother here, or our Methodist brother at Sealing.
Father Barry knows every poor family for twenty miles around, and he
can give you as much and more work than you can attend to." By this
time they were nearing home and the doctor said,
"I am glad you are not discouraged by this little accident, at the
outset of your benevolent works; it is brave of you, and deserves
better success next time. You have done well for the beginning, and
have reason to feel happy. I will go over to McNally's to-morrow, and
frighten him a little, and in the afternoon, or the next day, you can
go to see his wife again."
Dr. James declined to come in; he shook hands warmly with Margaret,
and drove away. Miss Spelman was very curious to know what had taken
place on the drive.
"Was he agreeable, my dear? Did he tell you about himself?"
"Rather about his friend the priest; how strange that he should think
so much of him."
Miss Spelman shook her head, "I don't approve of that intercourse;
these priests are very sly, and who knows that he may not be a Jesuit
in disguise? I have warned the doctor about it, but he is very
self-willed. Would you believe it, my dear? The only place he ever
goes on Sundays is to the Catholic mass, either at Sealing or here,
where they have it in the hall once a month; on which occasion Father
Barry always dines with him. I do not mean to say that Dr. James goes
to the mass every Sunday, for he often sleeps late on that day; but
he never goes to church anywhere else."
"I don't blame him," said Margaret, "for not enjoying Dr. Thorndike's
sermons; they always put me to sleep; or Mr. Sparks's either, for
that matter, they are so intensely commonplace! I am sure I could
write a great deal better ones, without having been to college or
studied divinity, either."
CHAPTER XII.
PROGRESS.
Margaret did not see the doctor till the next evening; she had been
very busy all day, and so had he; but as she was playing cribbage
with Miss Spelman, after tea, he made his appearance, and, declaring
that he had plenty of time, and that they must finish their game, he
sat down before the fire and waited till Miss Spelman triumphantly
announced:
"A double sequence, eight; pairs royal, fourteen; that takes me out,
my dear."
"It is a rubber, too," Margaret observed, rising and approaching the
fire. "Now, Doctor James, I have some business to talk over with you,
and you must come with me into the dining-room; or I will put on my
cloak, and we will go out on the piazza."
"It is moonlight out there," remarked Miss Spelman, "if you only
dress warm enough."
"And will the moon retire behind a cloud, if I should insist on
catching cold, aunty? But you need not be afraid; my cloak is very
warm; I will put the hood over my head, and we will walk fast up and
down all the time. Shall we not, Doctor James?"
They proceeded to the piazza, and began their promenade, while Miss
Spelman, taking occasion to go into the dining-room, stood there in
the dark, smiling as she watched their figures pass back and forth
before the window. "It is all going just right," she thought; "how
much they always have to say to each other!"
Meanwhile, as soon as they had stepped out of the window, Margaret
began, "Well, Doctor James, where do you suppose I have been to-day?"
"To the McNallys', this afternoon, I suppose."
"Very wisely guessed; but where have I been this morning?"
"Really, Miss Lester, you tax my curiosity too far; I am not good at
guessing."
"I have been to see Father Barry."
"Really!" he exclaimed, now surprised indeed, for he had not imagined
she would act so promptly on their talk of the previous evening. He
did not yet understand the energy of her character, her activity
and earnestness, which made a resolve and its fulfilment almost
simultaneous.
"Why are you surprised? Listen, and I will tell you all about it. I
had such a remarkable adventure! You see Miss Burney and I drove to
Sealing this morning, as usual. I did not tell her a word of what I
was going to do; I only worked on her sensibilities a little about
the McNallys; not that I wanted her to do any thing for them, but
merely because I felt like harrowing somebody's feelings. After I
had left her, I took my lesson, shopped a little, paid a visit to
those silly Gleeson girls--putting off the evil day, you see--and
then went straight to Father Barry's house. As I approached, I saw
a woman coming out of the gate, holding in her hand two plates--one
turned upside down --evidently containing something good. She was
talking to herself and saying, 'O God bless him! God bless him!' and
did not seem to see me or any thing else. My curiosity was roused,
and I stopped her by asking, 'God bless whom? And what have you got
in those plates?' She stared at me for a moment, and then exclaimed,
'Oh! but he is a darling man!' 'God bless and reward him!' and so on.
At last I extorted from her that his reverence had given her 'a bit
of lovely steak,' for her sick daughter at home. I was interested,
and hurried past her, up the steps, where I found the door ajar, left
so probably by the woman, in coming out. I was a little curious, I
acknowledge, and hence did not stop to ring. After entering, I paused
to consider what I should do next. There were two closed doors on one
side of the entry, and one half open, on the other. I approached the
one that was partly open, and stood on the threshold of--what do you
suppose? actually the dining-room, with Father Barry seated at the
table, eating bread and butter, with a dish of potatoes on the table,
and before him a saucer containing two boiled eggs. I understood
how things were, at a glance; he had sent his own dinner away with
that woman, and was dining on eggs instead. Why are you laughing?"
Margaret exclaimed, suddenly breaking off.
"The whole thing is so amusing, and I would say so characteristic.
Your stopping the woman, entering the house as if it belonged to you,
seeing all that poor Father Barry was eating for his dinner, and then
making so complete a story out of the whole affair. Forgive me for
laughing; you can't think how interested I am. Will you not go on?"
Margaret, who had been perfectly serious herself, after a moment's
pause continued, "I was taken aback, you may be sure, and begged
pardon in a very confused manner; but Father Barry rose, and, with
the utmost politeness, asked me if there was any thing he could
offer me. I thought to myself that there was not much left to offer
any one. So I asked permission to wait till he had finished, and he
showed me into a sort of parlor, where something, which must have
been a confessional, made part of the furniture; and there I sat and
stared at large maps of the county and of Ireland, and pictures of
a pope and of the Virgin, for about ten minutes, when he came and
asked me to excuse him for keeping me waiting. He knew me before I
told him my name, and seemed surprised when I explained what I had
come for. He said he wished he could give me Sunday-school work to
do, but as I was not a Catholic, that was impossible. However, there
was quite enough of other work to be done. He was very kind, and
we soon came to a good understanding. The first family he spoke of
were the McNallys, and he proposed--only think how sensible!--that I
should give John some work to do. He said shoes were very much needed
among his Sunday-school children, this winter; so he proposed that I
should order a number of pairs of different sizes, and bring them by
instalments, for him to distribute among his children. Altogether, I
was very glad I went, and I see that his advice will be most useful.
I am going again on Friday."
"I am sure you have been quite successful. Still, don't undertake
more than you can perform."
"No. Father Barry said the same; I will take care not to overdo
things in the beginning, because I mean to keep it up."
"I found John McNally," said the doctor, "quite overcome by shame
and remorse; he was sure the lady would never trust him again. I told
him he did not deserve that she should. I was very harsh at first,
and only allowed myself to be softened by degrees. At last I told him
that his rent was paid, and that I would try to get him work."
"And I found Rose sitting up, this afternoon," said Margaret. "She
would like to do a little plain sewing when she is better, and I
said I would get her some. She says they could get along very well,
if John could only have steady work to do; but it is so much easier
to buy shoes in Sealing, that people forget him. Now, Dr. James, I
have a plan of moving them to Sealing, and getting a little shoe-shop
for John, and then they would be sure to prosper, for he is a good
workman, I hear."
"Let me caution you against beginning too impulsively in favor of
this one family. Remember that there are others in want, and you
cannot do so much for all. Besides, I have known a sudden stroke of
good luck to prove the ruin of poor and honest people like these.
I think we can get John more work, and I will take care that other
people do not forget him."
Margaret was reluctantly persuaded to give up the plan of a removal
to Sealing, and only comforted herself by ordering of McNally fifty
pairs of shoes for Father Barry's Sunday-school children.
CHAPTER XIII.
A PROOF OF FRIENDSHIP.
There is no need of describing more fully the three winter months
that Margaret passed at Shellbeach. The time went faster than ever,
after she had offered her services to Father Barry. Under his
direction, she did great good; more indeed than any one knew of, for
she had obtained a promise from the good priest that he would not
speak of her charities. So when Dr. James once or twice tried to lead
his friend to speak about the matter, Father Barry, desirous that she
should not lose the reward of the "Father who seeth in secret," only
smiled and said, "She knows all about it, you must go to her." As for
the McNallys, Margaret still considered them as her _protégés_, and
cherished in private the project for improving their condition.
Then she had done something else, a thing of which she was very
proud, and of which she often afterward boasted--she had taught a
roomful of children in the public school at Sealing! Old Mr. Burney
was growing more and more infirm, and seemed threatened with the
entire loss of his mind. It became every day more difficult to leave
him; and one morning, Margaret, on calling as usual for her friend,
found that her father had had a shock of paralysis, and could not
be left. Martha had planned to send an excuse by Margaret for her
absence; but she could think of no person to supply her place, and
she was completely surprised by Margaret's announcing her intention
to try her hand at managing the children! All remonstrance was in
vain, and having received a few brief directions, Margaret drove
rapidly away to Sealing. How her fashionable friends in New York
would have opened their eyes, had they been favored with a sight
of Miss Lester hearing two or three dozen children recite the
multiplication-table!
She returned in the afternoon, radiant, and, as she herself said,
"hungry as a bear." She gave glowing accounts to Martha of her
success, and begged to be allowed to try the experiment again on the
morrow. Some of the boys, she remarked, evidently "took her measure;"
but after trying a little impertinence, they gave it up as a bad job,
and every thing went as well as Martha could have desired. For three
days, Margaret kept this up, and gained the hearts of even the most
obdurate of her scholars. How delighted she was with her success!
At the end of that period, as old Mr. Burney had grown better,
Margaret's school duties came to a close.
CHAPTER XIV.
MARGARET'S COURAGE.
It was early spring. The buds were swelling, the birds beginning to
sing, and a week of mild weather had filled every one's heart with a
longing for out-of-door life, when an excursion was planned by a few
of the Sealing young people, to a wild and beautiful spot called the
Glen, a few miles inland, a favorite resort for picnic parties. There
were a dozen in all, and they were to go in a large open wagon with
four seats, and take their provisions with them. It was the custom of
the place for the young men to have the nominal getting-up of these
excursions; that is, they incurred the expense of the "team" and the
trouble of invitations, while the girls prepared the eatables. There
was always to be an equal number of ladies and gentlemen; the couples
were arranged beforehand, and each youth was in duty bound to devote
himself to his companion unremittingly, during the drive and at the
place of the picnic.
Dr. James had agreed to join this party, an almost unheard-of thing
for him to do, and the committee of arrangements had assigned him
to Margaret, as her escort. This was disinterested on the part of
the other ladies; for although they were not supposed to have a
voice in the distribution of the gentlemen, their influence was
certainly felt, as one or two of the committee very conveniently had
sisters, who gave their advice at home, and communicated to their
intimate friends the results of their important deliberations. It
was disinterested in them, then, to allow Miss Lester to have as her
escort the doctor, who was a great favorite, and by far the most
desirable man, in the towns of Sealing and Shellbeach combined, for
an escort, a partner, a husband, or what not. Added to this, it was
quite an honor to have him devote so much of his precious time to
their picnic; he was, in fact, the lion of the party, and perhaps no
one else could have been selected for his companion without exciting
disapprobation, to say the least, in the minds of many of the others.
So it seemed to be a wise as well as a magnanimous plan which gave to
Margaret the privilege of the exclusive attention of Dr. James for
one whole afternoon.
A perception of the state of the case dawned upon her, as the great
wagon stopped at Miss Spelman's door, and she inwardly smiled when,
after seeing her contribution to the feast safely packed away, she
took her place between the doctor and a young man, who was usually
accounted for as being "in the bank," though what office he held in
that important institution was left rather uncertain.
She resolved to repay the politeness of the rest of the party by
making herself generally agreeable, and monopolizing her escort as
little as possible. In this she succeeded admirably, and the whole
company were in high spirits and enjoying themselves to the utmost
when they reached the Glen, and began to walk through pastures and
over rough and broken ground, before reaching the bed of the brook,
where the picnic proper was to be held. All the provisions were
set down on the high, flat rock which answered for a table, and
then the party broke up into couples, as the girls expressed their
inclinations, some to sit down on the rocks and others to explore the
woods or follow up the stream to its source.
Margaret, to whom every thing was new and interesting, wished to go
through the Glen, and proposed that they should climb the wooded
bank above them, follow the stream through the woods, and return by
the rocks. Dr. James was very willing, and they set out on their
scramble up the bank, and then along the edge, catching at branches
or roots of trees for support, and slipping frequently on the wet
last year's leaves and damp earth. It was all fun to Margaret; she
laughed with an almost childish delight at every difficulty, refused
all assistance, and kept generally ahead of her companion, who
seemed inclined to take the rough climbing more leisurely, and was
not enraptured when the treacherous leaves landed him in a hole, or
a seemingly firm bough which he grasped gave way in his hand, and
almost made him lose his balance and fall.
At last the head of the Glen was reached; a turn had hidden the rest
of the party from them, and their voices sounded faint and distant.
"Now we will go down to those lovely green meadows," said Margaret.
"But, O Dr. James! what is that?"
"Only a bridge across, made of a great pine log. You see the top has
been smoothed."
"A bridge! Then it is meant to be crossed. Come, let us cross it."
"Certainly, if you wish. I have been foolish enough to cross it
before, and am willing to do so again."
"Why was it foolish?"
"Because it is dangerous. It is only a few steps across, I
acknowledge. But look down; how would you like to fall among those
rocks?"
At this moment three or four of the party came round a huge rock
which had hidden them from sight, and evidently noticed the two
standing by the bridge.
"You need not try to frighten me, Dr. James; my nerves are not easily
shaken. Come, shall I go first?"
"If you please. Your stick may be a sort of balance-pole; imagine
yourself on the tight-rope, and look steadily at that little tree
before you; don't look down. I am in earnest, Miss Lester."
Margaret looked at him, laughed, and stepped on the little bridge.
The people who were looking at them were frightened, and the girls
turned away their faces. Margaret made three steady steps, then
paused.
"Do you see what a lovely green that water is, just below us?"
Two steps more and her stick dropped, she staggered, and put her
hands to her head.
"I am falling!"
But she felt a strong hand on each of her shoulders, and a voice of
command said,
"Fix your eyes on that tree, and walk straight on." She obeyed, and
three more steps brought her to firm ground. Instantly, almost before
her feet touched the bank, the doctor withdrew his hands, and without
a word, with a displeased and gloomy face, preceded her down the
bank. He was saying to himself,
"Now we shall have a scene, and she will say she owes her life to me,
and call me her preserver, or some such nonsense."
Margaret leaned for a moment against the little tree she had been
told to look at so steadfastly, and then followed her companion
through the woods. He walked so fast that she was soon out of breath
trying to overtake him. When she had done so, she said in a low voice,
"I am vain and contemptible. I despise myself more than I can
express. Forgive me for giving you so much trouble."
Dr. James turned; his face was clear, and he smiled upon her with a
smile that was sunshine itself; he did not reply, but walked slowly
by her side, then stooped, and holding something out to her, said,
"See, here are the first flowers; the little hepatica ventures out
before all the rest. Will you take it? How pretty it is! how delicate
the colors are; and the stem is covered with fur. Notice the green
and brown leaves, too; they add to its beauty and singularity. It is
my favorite flower."
The deep flush in Margaret's face had died away, and her voice had
resumed its usual tone when they joined the rest of the party, and
sat down to the feast; but her gayety was gone, and it seemed as if
nothing could recall it. She was abstracted and serious, and not in
accordance with the merriment around her. At last she arose, and
went to a rock, on which she leaned, and watched the little minnows
darting about in a green pool of water, when she was startled by the
doctor's voice close beside her. He held toward her a small silver
tumbler, filled with iced claret and water, and said in an undertone,
"Miss Lester, how can you let a trifle weigh so on your mind, and
cloud all your enjoyment?" He was smiling in a friendly way; but she
looked at him reproachfully, and said,
"How can you call it a trifle? It might have cost me my life."
"You are right," he replied gravely; "nothing ought to be called
a trifle whose consequences might be serious; though attendant
circumstances make us look at the same thing in such different
lights at different times. On the bridge, and when I felt angry with
you afterward, your conduct seemed to me a most weighty matter; now I
can with difficulty recall any thing except the honesty and courage
of your apology. Having seen and humbly acknowledged your fault, will
you not now confer a favor on the whole party by forgetting what is
past?"
Margaret smiled, and saying, "I will, at least, forget myself,"
accompanied him back to the party.
She did her part very well, and, owing in a great measure to her
efforts, the rest of the picnic and the moonlight drive home were
quite as pleasant as the setting out had been.
"She is a brave woman," the doctor said to himself that night in his
study; but Margaret was quite unconscious that his opinion of her
had been raised instead of lowered, by the occurrences of the picnic
party at the Glen.
CHAPTER XV.
A CHANGE.
This little mortification--and it really was one to Margaret's
high spirit, owing to her anxiety to stand well in Dr. James's
opinion--should have been a lesson to her to give up contradicting
him, and opposing her own will to his, and for a time it was so; and
yet that very wish to please, of which she was conscious and ashamed,
made her often dispute with and appear to oppose him, when she would
have liked to agree and do as he advised.
She began to realize something else, too, that had the effect of
making her surround herself, as it were, with an armor of prickles
and thorns; so that her intercourse with the doctor was far from
peaceful or pleasant. She felt that the work she was doing among the
poor was wholly with and for Father Barry; she was helping him, not
Dr. James; and this, she felt, was the doing of the latter, and not
without a reason. At first, when he had recommended her to take the
priest as her adviser, she had felt a cooling of enthusiasm; still,
having said she meant to persevere, she would not draw back.
It would have been sweet to her, she knew it now, to help the
doctor; to be his friend, confidant, coadjutor; to feel that she was
making his labor, which she revered and sympathized with, easier and
pleasanter. But he had made that impossible; he had directed her
to go to some one else for help, for counsel, for support, while
he stood alone as before, and had never again applied to her for
assistance for his patients, though she had once or twice asked if
she could not relieve them. She understood the pride which prevented
him from accepting her money, or placing himself under obligations to
her. "He does not like me well enough to let me help him," she said
to herself; and she soon abandoned all those efforts to make herself
agreeable to him, which at first came so naturally to her.
The picnic lesson, therefore, though by no means forgotten, had
ceased to influence her actions; and when the real spring-time came,
with mild air, and young, fresh green, as May drew to its close
and June was at hand, Margaret had managed to quarrel with Dr.
James several times, and had made herself unhappy and him far from
comfortable. He began to come less often to his old friend, Miss
Spelman's, and to hear less of Margaret's plans and doings.
Miss Selina was much puzzled at the turn things were taking, and yet,
when they disputed, she was half the time uncertain whether they
were in fun or in earnest; and it did no good to remonstrate with
Margaret; for the incomprehensible girl agreed with all she said, and
acknowledged the doctor to be perfectly right.
The friendship with Martha Burney continued, however, and at her
house Margaret always appeared to the best advantage, even before
Dr. James. She seemed to stand somewhat in awe of her older friend,
and was desirous to please; and besides, she had made a kind of
agreement with herself that when she met the doctor there, she might
allow herself to be as pleasant and conciliatory as her inclinations
led her to be. She was in a peculiar frame of mind, and this curious
compromise can be better described than explained.
In the mean time, old Mr. Burney gradually became more and more
feeble; soon he lost his mind to such a degree as not to be able
even to recognize his faithful daughter; and at last, early in May,
he died. Margaret could not understand how Martha could grieve as
she did at his loss; knowing his character and former misdoings, and
seeing him a broken-down, witless old man, the daughter's sorrow
seemed to her unreasonable; but when Martha talked of him as he was
once, when his wife was living, handsome and brave and generous, the
idol of those two fond women, it made her think of her own dear and
noble father, lying alone in his quiet resting-place in the little
Swiss graveyard, and she found she could give the sympathy and
comfort which before were impossible.
His death made little apparent difference. Martha, after the funeral,
went quietly on with her school duties, till she "could think of
something more useful to do," she said; and her little household was
as quiet and homely as usual, only, as it seemed to other people,
much pleasanter. But Martha said,
"Oh! it was such a difference; she could not work with half the
spirit now that it was only for herself; she had always had some one
to live for, and now she could not feel any interest in what she did."
Margaret often went for her in her phaeton and brought her back to
her aunt's to tea, and there grew up between them a sympathy and
affection that was destined to last for life.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE SANITARY TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW YORK CITY.
The rapid growth of New York City is at present exciting universal
interest throughout the country; and as a place of residence, or in
a business point of view, it would be difficult to over-estimate
the vast advantages it possesses. Nature has lavished upon the
island its choicest gifts; surrounded on one side by the East and
Harlem rivers, on the other by the beautiful Hudson, the "Rhine of
America," as an entirety, its advantages for natural drainage and
general healthfulness cannot be surpassed. But eighteen miles from
the Atlantic Ocean, with an admirable harbor, the nations of the
earth already vie with each other in pouring into the lap of this
infant giant their most costly productions and most beautiful works
of art. It is now the most populous city and the greatest commercial
emporium of the western hemisphere, and stands with its youthful
vigor a proud rival of the largest cities of the old world. With the
vast undeveloped wealth of free America, and the energy and ambition
of her sturdy sons to press it forward, is it not easy to foreshadow
the prospective importance of this metropolis of the Union?
But one subject of uneasiness presents itself in this glance at
the future, and that is the rather limited space which nature's
barriers have allowed us, and which threatens eventually to stop the
progress of the city. "Manhattan Island is but thirteen and one half
miles long, and has an average width of one and three fifths miles.
This gives an area of twenty-two square miles, or fourteen hundred
acres."[62]
We may consider the city as pretty solidly built up as far north as
Fifty-ninth street, the border of Central Park. The census of next
year will probably show the population to number between thirteen
and fourteen hundred thousand souls; and the rate of increase is
estimated to be between six and seven per cent per annum. Thus the
population of the island in 1880 will number far above two millions,
and the city be extended as far northward as Ninetieth street. There
are but "37,244 lots of full size, that is, twenty-five by one
hundred feet, between Eighty-sixth and One Hundred and Fifty-fifth
street."[63] This shows conclusively that before many more such
decades of years roll round, every available portion of the island
will be built upon, and our further expansion apparently prevented.
But this, we hope, will be obviated by the erection of the East
River bridge, and other modes of rapid transit to our sister city,
Brooklyn, and the Jersey shore; thus enabling us to bring within our
limits all the territory that will be required.
For the present, the rapidly increasing number of our commercial
houses and the consequent greed for space shown by trade in the
lower part of the city, as well as our constantly augmenting
population, show conclusively that the better class of residents now
occupying locations south of Thirty-fourth street will be obliged
to look elsewhere for homes. That this is to be the case no one
can doubt, who has studied the progress of business marts in their
up-town march, during the last two years. The invasion of Union
Square, the magnificent buildings on Broadway between Eighteenth
and Nineteenth streets, the "Grand Hotel," and, more than all else,
the appropriation of the lower end of Fifth Avenue for public
galleries, attest this fact, and warn us that no prominent location
below Thirty-fourth street will, in a short time, be safe from
the all-powerful grasp of this insatiable demand. With this fact
before us, the question arises, What portion of the island offers
the greatest prospective permanency for private residences, and at
the same time the best inducements for the happiness and physical
well-being of the people?
That tract of the island bounded on the south by Thirty-fourth
street, on the east by Lexington avenue, on the west by Sixth avenue,
and on the north by Fifty-seventh street, is undoubtedly very
desirable property; but with our rapid growth it is impossible to
tell what it will be twenty years hence; and besides, we are lured
past this portion by the many advantages offered by the section north
of it.
We have now before us the Central Park, extending from Fifth Avenue
on the east, to Eighth avenue on the west; and stretching out
in picturesque beauty from Fifty-ninth to One Hundred and Tenth
street. To the east and west of this, we find topographically a very
different character of country. On the east side from Fifty-ninth to
Ninetieth street, the surface is very uneven; in some parts ledges of
rock run up one hundred and twenty feet above tide-water, and then
abruptly descend into valleys almost on a level with tide-water; and
here are found the beds of old streams, so many of which formerly
rolled their sluggish waters through this portion of the island into
the East River. The general fall is eastward, though not sufficiently
so to make natural drainage into the river good. From Ninetieth
street to the Harlem River, we have a perfectly flat plain; unbroken,
with the exception of Mount Morris Square, by any marked elevation.
The land lies but little above tide-water, and presents every
appearance of being to a great extent "made ground." This supposition
is further strengthened by the alluvial character of the soil. Many
suppose that a branch of the Hudson once flowed across the island
at Manhattanville to Hell Gate; but we believe that originally the
upper portion of Manhattan was a distinct island, and have no doubt
the waters of the Hudson washed freely between the two, and in time
the amount of soil gradually deposited on either bank limited and
eventually closed the gap, thus giving us our present formation.
On the west side of the park we have a very different topography.
"From Fifty-ninth to One Hundred and Fourth street, the Eighth
avenue is nearly the central ridge of the Island. Its average
height is twenty to thirty feet above the Fifth avenue. At
Fifty-ninth street, the elevation of the Eighth avenue above the
tide-level is seventy-six feet four inches, increasing to ninety
feet at Seventieth street, reaching one hundred and twenty feet
at Eighty-fifth street and one hundred and twenty-two feet at
Ninety-second street; descending, it is eighty-nine feet at One
Hundred and Fourth street, and gradually falls off to the general
low level of Harlem plains.
"At One Hundred and Sixth street, the ridge extends
north-westwardly, leaving the Eighth avenue, running nearly
along the Ninth avenue to One Hundred and Twentieth street; then
bending westwardly, and forming the southern hill-side of the
Manhattan valley to the Hudson River. The new grade of the Eighth
avenue already established, by keeping up elevations and filling
depressions, will gradually ascend to and then descend from its
summit at Ninety-second street, and make the finest possible grade
for any avenue on the island."[64]
To appreciate, one must see the romantic beauty presented by the
bold bluff of rocky formation against which the crystal waters of
the Hudson dash in ceaseless waves and eddies. At points forming
ascents from seventy to one hundred and forty feet above tide-water,
it stretches away, with varying elevation and constantly changing
scenery until it reaches Manhattanville. There, as if to make space
to cradle the village in its rocky embrace, for a few blocks it
disappears, only to rise in more stately proportions beyond, forming
its crowning glory of landscape grandeur at Washington Heights.
"There is a high table-land between the Eighth and Ninth avenue
ridge on the east, and the Hudson River bank on the west. The
surface of this table-land is broken; it has high rocky ridges and
mounds in central locations reaching these elevations. At
Ninth avenue and Sixty-sixth street 89 feet.
Ninth avenue and Seventieth street 98 "
Ninth avenue and Eighty-fourth street 120 feet.
Ninth avenue and Ninety-first street 121 "
Ninth avenue and One Hundred and Fifth street 117 "
Tenth avenue and Seventy-seventh street 98 "
Tenth avenue and Eighty-fifth street 109 "
Tenth avenue and Ninety-Second street 107 "
Tenth avenue and One Hundred and Fifth street 109 "
Tenth avenue and One Hundred and Seventeenth street 145 "
"Between these elevations, which (except a central ridge or
terrace between the Ninth and Tenth avenues from Seventy-ninth to
Ninety-fourth street) are not generally continuous, are numerous
hollows and valleys, the lowest having an elevation of fifty to
sixty feet above the tide-level. The average elevation of this
plateau is as much as seventy-five feet; in the more northerly
portion, as much as one hundred feet. The surface drainage from
this plateau finds its way to the river, through the valleys
above indicated, at Sixty-seventh, Eightieth, and Ninety-sixth
streets."[65]
With a view to the prospective physical health of the city, the
authorities should do every thing possible to destroy the extensively
prevailing malaria found in it, which emanates from the large tract
of made ground along the East River, and from the beds of the
original streams, which covered acres of land in the primitive state
of the island. Few people fully comprehend the insidiousness of this
poison which affects the system in such a variety of ways and shows
such erratic developments that at times the skill of the physician
is baffled in attempting to detect its presence. It is rendered more
permanent in many locations by the miserable condition of the sewers,
and, where these have not been built, by the irregular grading of
streets forming obstructions to the natural drainage of the soil.
Again, in many places where sewers have been provided, as along the
course of Seventy-fourth street between Third and Fifth avenues, they
do not seem to entirely prevent the generation of the poison, as
intermittent and remittent fevers are still rife in the surrounding
districts: not properly filling up the beds of the streams in many of
these cases may, however, account for this.
Owing to its rocky formation, malaria has found a home in but few
locations in the north-western section of the city; and if these
are examined, they will generally be found to be lots which, by the
grading of the streets, have been made lower than the side-walks.
When these are properly filled, the deleterious influence they exert
will disappear. In addition to this, the level of this section is
so much above tide-water that it possesses every advantage for
natural, and, when that does not prove sufficient, every facility for
promoting artificial, drainage.
According to the report of the Board of Central Park Commissioners
for last year, "the prevailing winds for the year were west and
north-west." Let us see what comparative difference this makes to the
two sections of the city under consideration. The west side receives
this wind in all its bracing freshness directly after it has passed
over the Jersey highlands, on the opposite side of the Hudson. It
carries before it all the exhalations from this side toward the east,
and imparts a healthful vigor to all who come within its influence.
The east side, being so much below the level of the west, receives
but little of the benefit to be derived from this wind. Again:
"When the mercury in the barometer rises, the smoke and injurious
emanations are quickly dispelled in the air. When the mercury
lowers, we see the smoke and noxious vapors remain in the
apartments and near the surface of the earth. Now, every one knows
that, of all winds, that from the east causes the mercury in the
barometer to rise the highest, and that which lowers it most is
from the west. When the latter blows, it carries with it all the
deleterious gases it meets in its course from the west. The
result is, that the inhabitants of the eastern parts of a city
not only have their own smoke and miasmas, but also those of the
western parts brought by the west wind. When, on the contrary,
the east wind blows, it purifies the air by causing the injurious
emanations to rise, so that they cannot be thrown back upon the
west. It is evident, then, that the inhabitants of the western
parts receive pure air from whatever part of the horizon it comes.
We will add, that the west wind is most prevalent, and the west
end receives it all fresh from the country.
"From the foregoing facts, M. Junod lays down the following
directions: First, persons who are free to choose, especially
those of delicate health, should reside in the western part of a
city. Secondly, for the same reason, all the establishments that
send forth vapors or injurious gases should be in the eastern
part. Thirdly and finally, in erecting a house in the city, and
even in the country, the kitchen should be on the eastern side, as
well as all the out-houses from which unhealthy emanations might
spread into the apartments."[66]
The absence of foliage is a great disadvantage in malarious
districts, and here the east side of the city enjoys a marked
superiority over the west in the ample and rich character of its
soil, which, with proper cultivation would produce trees of luxurious
foliage. On account of the small quantity and the poor quality of the
soil in many locations in the north-western section of the island,
trees are not as numerous as they should be; but it becomes only a
greater duty to foster those we have, and to constantly increase
their number by planting others in every desirable location. Too
little regard has in all ages been paid to that beautiful harmony
established by the wisdom of God in nature, and but few persons
consider how essential the vegetable kingdom is to animal life.
With each inspiration of air which we draw into our lungs to obtain
oxygen, a certain amount of blood is purified, and throws off its
carbon. This carbon is rapidly absorbed by plants, and nurtures
them; and in return they liberate the oxygen which is absolutely
necessary for our being.
"Plants absorb their food entirely in a liquid or gaseous form,
by imbibition, according to the law of _endosmosis_, through the
walls of the cells that form the surface; as when liquids of
unequal density are separated by a permeable membrane, the lighter
liquid or the weaker solution will flow into the stronger with a
force proportionate to the difference in density; but at the same
time a smaller portion of the denser liquid will flow out into the
weaker, which process is called _exosmosis_. The fluid absorbed by
the roots is thus carried from cell to cell, rising principally in
the wood, and is attracted to the leaves, or other parts of the
plants exposed to the sun and light, by the exhalation which takes
place from them, and the consequent inspiration of the sap. Here
the crude sap is exposed to sun and light, and assimilated and
converted into organizable matter."[67]
Man, in his ruthless desire to utilize, according to his weak
appreciation, every thing placed within his power, destroys the very
breastworks against disease and death with which the foresight of the
Creator has surrounded him. Many instances are recorded where the
removal of a grove of trees has rendered entire villages for ever
afterward a prey to the innumerable miseries produced by malarial
poison. This fact has been recognized from the earliest days, and
demonstrated so clearly by experience, that the more intelligent
inhabitants of rural districts, where marshes abound, build their
homes so that winds passing over them, and consequently laden with
their pestilential exhalations, shall be intercepted by some belt
of forest-trees. Many parts of Italy would be uninhabitable without
the protection of its luxurious vegetable productions, and it is
well known that the citizens of Rome are thus shielded from the
south-west wind passing over the dreaded Pontine marshes. The
salutary influence of foliage is not felt in the case of malaria
alone; observers have noticed the comparative immunity from epidemic
diseases also enjoyed by those whose homes are thus protected. During
the prevalence of cholera in Burlington, Iowa, in 1850, this was
strikingly demonstrated.
"In the houses on the west side of Main street, north of Court,
more deaths took place than in any other portion of the city;
and more occurred, in proportion to the number of inmates, in
every other house than in the one in front of which were trees,
and, what is still more convincing, the natural predisposition
to cholera existed to a greater extent among the inmates of this
house, than in any other. Another and more striking instance
occurred in the two houses nearest the 'old saw-mill.' The house
adjoining the mill was surrounded by trees, and not one of the
occupants suffered from cholera; while, in the other house, which
was exposed, and stood upon the bank of the Mississippi, three
deaths took place; and what is more to the point, the family which
escaped were new-comers, and suffering from _nostalgia_, and the
effects of a change of climate, which act as a predisposing and
exciting cause of the disease; while those who lived in the other
house were old residents, and had been thoroughly acclimated. Dr.
Buckler notices similar facts in his account of the cholera, as it
appeared in the Baltimore Alms-house, in 1849."[68]
Trees are useful to us in another respect; they moderate temperature.
In winter, the heat of the earth is constantly ascending their trunks
to be given to the air. It is well known that large forests decidedly
lessen the intense cold, and, in summer, moderate the extreme heat,
by the great amount of moisture which they exhale from their leaves.
Again, who has not felt the happy influence a forest has upon the
mind? How our petty troubles melt away, and our hearts expand with
grateful homage, when we listen to the tuneful harmony of æolian
sweetness, as the feathered songsters of the grove, and the passing
breezes rustling through the verdant foliage unite to form nature's
orchestra, wafting upward one grand strain of praise to the Deity.
And when, in the autumn of our lives, borne down by blighted hopes
and ruined ambition, we seek the forest's solitude, every fitful
breeze sounds a low wail of sympathy, falling in gentle cadence on
the crushed heart.
The young growth of the trees is particularly noticeable in Central
Park, and in this respect it will be many years before we can rival
Druid Hill Park near Baltimore, where the grand old trees, raising
their majestic heads toward heaven, seem whispering to every passing
zephyr hymns of adoration. Here, art may carve meandering roads, span
the crystal streams with elaborate bridges, erect statues in honor
of man, decorate and adorn to suit the taste of the most fastidious;
but high above all these, the majestic oaks wave their luxuriant
foliage, and assert the superiority of the works of the Creator
over the imitations of the creature. Thus it needs but a moment's
consideration to see what a material advantage to our comfort,
physical well-being, and happiness trees are; and to understand why
our broad avenues should be bordered with them, and their growth
fostered as much as possible in our parks; and we may rest assured
that succeeding generations will bless us for the forethought which
will add so much to the beauty and healthfulness of our metropolis.
The eastern portion of all large cities is devoted to manufacturing
purposes, and New York presents no exception to this almost
universal rule. By reason of the comparatively level and easily
graded character of the east side, buildings were rapidly erected
along the line of the Second, Third, and Fourth avenues; and the
suburban villages of Harlem and Yorkville have been most remunerative
to property-holders on that side of the park. The easy access to
the points above named by the city railroads has drawn that kind
of capital which invests in good substantial tenant-houses. These
pay sufficiently well to prevent their being demolished, even with
a prospect of better pecuniary results from a higher class of
property; and thus are always an obstacle in the way of first-class
improvements in a neighborhood.
The east side possesses a great many advantages which will in
time increase its commerce, and render its entire river-side most
valuable. Already numbers of manufactories, lumber-yards, and other
business places occupy nearly the entire water-front as high as
Fiftieth street; and the easy approach to, and gentle slope of its
bank offering great facility for landing merchandise, will rapidly
increase their number toward the northern extremity of the island.
Again, should the attempt to relieve Hell Gate of its dangerous
rocks be successful, a new era of prosperity will dawn for the East
River shore, and every foot of its extent at once receive increased
valuation. Piers will spring into existence, and vessels of every
description bearing the precious wares of every clime, will seek this
hitherto inhospitable channel, and thus lessen their tedious voyage
by at least two hundred miles.
North of Fifty-ninth street on the west side, with the exception
of the squatter's shanty, removable at a few days' legal notice,
there is nothing to impede the numerous and beautiful improvements
designed by the Central Park Commissioners, to whose judgment this
work is intrusted. These improvements consist in laying out parks
and public drives, and in adding in every possible way to the natural
advantages of this section. First, at the intersection of Broadway,
Eighth avenue, and Fifty-ninth street we will have the Circle, with
a radius of two hundred and sixteen feet. This will provide at once
an opening to the grand Boulevard, and also add to the beauty of the
entrance at this point to Central Park. The ground around this circle
will undoubtedly present one of the finest positions in the city
for public buildings, and will become as valuable for this purpose
as that in the neighborhood of Union Square. In this connection we
would express a hope that the commissioners will reconsider the
great mistake they have made in closing Sixtieth street between
Eighth avenue and the Boulevard, thereby cutting off the view of
the park and its grand entrance from the residents of that street.
It would add much to the finish of the circle, and the beauty of
the approach to the park, if Fifty-ninth street retained to either
river the width it has between Fifth and Eighth avenues. Eventually
a ferry will be established at either extremity of this street, for
the accommodation of persons desiring to visit the park; and this
with other circumstances, combines to make it very desirable that it
should be one of the wide streets. Several efforts have been made to
have the Belt Railroad running on this street removed to Fifty-eighth
street, but so far without success. As this change is desired by the
property-owners and residents in the neighborhood of the park, it is
hoped it will be effected by the Legislature during their session
this winter.
From the north-western portion of the circle issues the boulevard
mentioned above. This will be in reality the extension of Broadway,
and is designed to be one hundred and fifty feet wide, with
twenty-two feet of its central portion reserved for a grass-plot, to
be bordered on either side with shade-trees. It will extend along the
line of the old Broadway road "crossing Ninth avenue at Sixty-fifth
street and Tenth avenue at Seventy-second street, and then passing
about midway between the Tenth and Eleventh avenues to One Hundred
and Fourth street, where it bends to the westward, following the
line of the Bloomingdale road, and strikes the Eleventh avenue
at One Hundred and Seventh street, and then follows the Eleventh
avenue to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street. Beyond One Hundred and
Fifty-fifth street it continues as a part of the improvements of the
Fort Washington district, which are now being carried out by the
commissioners under the law of 1865,"[69] framed for this purpose.
Then we have the Zoölogical Garden, which is considered a portion
of Central Park, and which is to occupy the space bounded by
Seventy-seventh street on the south, Ninth avenue on the west,
Eighty-first street on the north, and Eighth avenue on the east.
It should properly be extended, taking in the same blocks from
Seventy-seventh to Eighty-first street, as an arm of the park, and
crossing the intervening avenues and boulevard by arched bridges,
to the Riverside Park, which skirts the Hudson. This last will be
one of the most beautiful improvements on the island. Commencing at
Seventy-second street, with the rocky highland, it continues along
the bank of the Hudson as far north as One Hundred and Thirtieth
street. It will be bounded on the east by the new River-bank
avenue, which runs along the crest of the highland, and is to be
one hundred feet wide, and on the west by Twelfth avenue. It is
difficult to imagine a more charming variety of scenery than this
park must present from its many prominent points. A continuous view
of the Hudson for miles will be seen, with the bold highlands of New
Jersey on the opposite shore, and the limpid waters of the river
adding variety to the charming landscape. Turning toward the north,
Fort Washington looms up in grand proportions against the distant
horizon, covered with rich foliage, and studded here and there with
princely mansions. Glancing eastward, the park, with its charming
intermingling of natural and artificial beauty, stretches away toward
the East River in endless variety of lawn, shrubbery, and pebbly
pathway; while to the south a grand panoramic view of the island city
is presented, with its myriad towers and steeples of public buildings
and of churches, all attesting the prosperity and wealth of the
people. We hope the Park Commissioners will consider the extension
we have above suggested. If made now, its expense would be light in
comparison with the increased value of the property bordering the
proposed connections; while the combination of the two parks, the
boulevard, and the Zoölogical Garden would form a succession of grand
pleasure-grounds such as no city of the world can now boast of.
We have still to mention Morningside Park, which is to commence at
One Hundred and Tenth street, and extend as far north as One Hundred
and Twenty-third street. It will be somewhat irregular in form and
its southern portion will be bounded on either side by one of the new
avenues, and the northern extremity by Ninth and Tenth avenues. It is
most fortunate that the original intention of cutting down the grade
of the streets in this section has been changed, and the matter
left to the option of the Central Park Commissioners. We may rest
assured that excellent taste will harmonize their improvements, and
every notable point be reserved for some artistic design, and thus
no natural advantage be destroyed which would add to the beautiful
symmetry of the whole.
During the progress of these vast improvements a permanent system
of sewerage should be devised for the comfort and convenience of
the inhabitants of this district. At present this could be readily
effected, as in many parts of the boulevard, Eighth avenue, and side
streets, the grade will have to be raised several feet above the
present level. This is particularly noticeable in the boulevard in
the neighborhood of Eighty-fourth street, where the old Broadway
road must lie twenty feet below the grade of the grand drive. It
should also be a question as to the kind of sewer to be adopted.
We are convinced that throwing away the contents of our sewers is
an irreparable error, as all the _débris_ passing through them
should be used as a fertilizing agent. Throughout the country, but
more particularly in the South, is the reckless abuse of the soil
noticeable. Our farmers sow and reap their crops year after year
until the earth is worn out, and loses its productive power; then
they seek new fields. Our territory is so vast, that the effect of
this wretched mode of farming has not as yet been felt; but it must
be, sooner or later. In many parts of Europe, the same ruinous policy
has been pursued, and now the inhabitants are obliged to import
guano to sufficiently revivify their impoverished land to raise
even the lightest crop. We are happy to see that some of our public
men have had their attention drawn to this fact. Senator Sprague in
a recent conversation said, "We are rapidly exhausting our virgin
soil, without furnishing it the means of recovery in the shape of
fertilizers, and extending our railroads to new tracts as fast as we
wear out the old cultivated ones." If we could deodorize the material
from our sewers, and put it to practical uses, we would be gainers
in many ways. In the first place, our piers would be relieved of
the enormous quantity of decomposing matter which may constantly
be seen festering under the sun's rays, and emitting pestilential
exhalations; and secondly, a vast amount of valuable fertilizing
material would be garnered from this large city, which would go
far toward enriching the lands around us; and we may add that this
experiment has been tried, and proved not only a success, but also
highly remunerative.
"Sewerage has been advantageously deodorized and applied to
agricultural uses in localities in England, where it could not be
conveniently discharged into the sea, by the process of Mr. W.
Higgs, of Westminster, which consists in collecting it in large
tanks and admitting with it a stream of lime-water, the effect of
which is to cause the precipitation of the organic matter with
the phosphates, urates, sulphates, etc., and the expulsion of any
free ammonia. Through the cover of the tanks the ammonia and all
gaseous matters are conveyed by a pipe into a convoluted chamber,
where they are fixed by various chemical reagents, and preserved.
The tanks, when full, are allowed to remain undisturbed for an
hour, when the liquids are drawn off clear and without odor. The
pulpy sediments are then collected and dried, and rendered fit
for the market. The expense of the process was rated at £1 per
ton, and the manure thus prepared was sold at Cardiff for £3 per
ton."[70]
It is an unquestionable fact that through the sewers of cities
enormous quantities of the constituents of plants are conveyed into
the sea, and unless saved and restored to the soil, the loss must be
made up from other sources, or the lands become impoverished. From
the London sewers, refuse matter is thrown into the river Thames; and
so fearfully does this immense body of filth pollute its waters that
it has been found necessary during warm weather to neutralize the
impurity and destroy the foul gases by throwing large quantities of
disinfectants into the river, costing the city as much as "£20,000 in
the summer of 1859." They are now constructing an addition to their
sewers which will carry their contents along the course of the river
eight miles to Barking, into a reservoir a mile and a half long,
and about one hundred feet wide by twenty-one feet deep. From this
reservoir it will be, at high-tide, discharged, through numerous
large pipes, into the middle and bottom of the river, at the depth
of sixty feet below the surface. "The estimated cost of this vast
work is about £4,000,000, and the time fixed for its completion five
years."[71]
As the river Seine divides the city of Paris into two parts, so it
divides the sewers into two districts, which formerly emptied their
contents respectively on the right and left bank of the river. In
order to prevent the infection of the water of the river, the main
sewer of the left bank was made to pass its contents through a tunnel
under the river, and empty them at Asnières, the same point where
that of the right bank emptied, thus avoiding the current which
washed the discharged material back upon the city.
Thus we see that the disposition of sewerage has always been a
question of great import, even to cities situated on large streams of
water, into which it could be turned. While proposing a system for
at once doing away with the nuisance caused by it, and at the same
time utilizing it for fertilizing purposes, we are happy to add that
it is not the first time the plan has been brought forward for New
York. Professor Lewis A. Sayre during his administration as Resident
Physician of this city, had regular plans drawn up and calculations
made as to the cost of the entire work; and also what return could
with certainty be expected from the investment. The designs were
made by the late John Randall, of Maryland, one of the ablest civil
engineers the country has ever produced.
The professor's idea was, to have the street excavated for some
twelve feet below its grade. A substantial wall of masonry was to
be built on either side to sustain the sidewalk, and a convex iron
girder was to cross the entire width of the street, upon which the
pavement could be laid. Within the inclosure thus made, the sewer,
water, and gas-pipes could be placed, and trap-doors arranged
at certain distances to make it possible to get at them without
disturbing the pavement. Here could be carried on a vast laboratory
for deodorizing the contents of the sewers. His plan also embraced a
sort of trap by which the yard of each house communicated with the
main sewer, and an arrangement by which the fluid portion was allowed
to drain away from the solids, which in turn were to be dumped from
the temporary reservoir in which they were received into a small car
at the bottom of the excavation, and then carried to the laboratory
by a regular railroad intersecting every portion of the city.
This general plan of subterranean sewerage may strike the eye of the
uninitiated as very expensive; but when we consider the manipulation
a street is subjected to from the time its boundaries are defined
by the surveyor, until it has been handed over to the city as
complete, by the last contractor, we think the plan will appear
in a very different light. In the first place, take a street that
requires filling up to a certain specified grade. Sealed proposals
or bids are received from contractors for the work, and the party
making the most advantageous offer obtains the contract, and in due
course of time completes the work. Then, in all probability, a second
party obtains a contract to at once put down some kind of pavement.
After this, houses are built upon the street, and a sewer must be
laid. This completed, the gas and Croton mains must be put down.
Then each house must have separate sewer, gas, and water connection.
Thus the pavement is perpetually torn up and relaid, each removal
rendering it more unfit for travel. Why not, when the street was
low enough to lay the sewer without turning out one shovelful of
earth, put in the pipes for the sewer, gas, and water, and leave
the laying of the pavement until it could be done without having it
torn up four or five times for necessities which every one knows
will arise? Let any one calculate the vast sums of money spent on a
street, in these various changes, and we are sure the amount will
be larger than the cost of the plan above proposed, with this great
difference, that when the work is completed, in the latter case,
a yield of from six to seven per cent upon the outlay could be at
once expected, while in the former there would be constant call for
additional expense in repairs. Where the grade of a street requires
to be raised several feet, it is doubtful if it would cost much
more to put up the two walls of masonry and the iron girders than
it costs to fill up the space with earth and rocks. Contractors pay
from forty to seventy-five cents per load for this filling; and
every one knows how very few square feet the carts used for this
purpose hold. Again, the question of an underground railroad has
been much discussed during the past few years. With this plan of
sewerage, it would be no more expensive to carry such a railroad over
the entire city, worked from given points by stationary engines and
wire ropes, as is proposed for the overground railroad, than to lay
such a road in the streets of the city; excepting that arrangements
would have to be made at certain distances to enable passengers to go
down to platforms below, for the purpose of entering the cars. This
project would at once put into the hands of the city authorities a
subterranean city, and also the vast revenues to be obtained from its
underground railroads, and does not present half the difficulties
that must have been experienced in bringing the Croton water across
the Harlem River.
Having shown that nature has particularly favored that portion of the
city which lies west of the park, and that, from present indications,
the highest art will prevail in the magnificent improvements which
are there going on, we will mention another cause, which will add
weight to the many reasons already adduced, why it should in the
future become the home of the fashion and wealth of the metropolis.
If we look at the great capitals of Europe, we will notice the
general tendency the affluent classes have shown to select their
abodes in the western sections of these cities. Paris, London, St.
Petersburg, Berlin, and others show this conclusively. In each, the
western section is covered with the elegant palaces of the rulers
and the costly mansions of the rich; while on the east side is found
the bustling activity of the work-shops and manufactories. In a
translation from _Le Correspondant_ published in the April number of
this magazine, the writer, speaking of this subject, says,
"In visiting the ruins of Pompeii and other ancient cities, I
have observed, as well as M. Junod, that this custom dates from
the highest antiquity. In those cities, as is seen at Paris in
our day, the largest cemeteries are found in the eastern parts,
and generally none in the western. M. Junod, examining the reason
of so general a fact, thinks it is connected with _atmospheric
pressure_.
"M. Elie de Beaumont has since mentioned some facts which tend
to prove the constancy and generality of the rule laid down by
M. Junod. He noticed in most of the large cities this tendency
of the wealthy class to move to the same side--generally, the
western--unless hindered by certain local obstacles. Turin, Liège,
and Caen are examples of this. M. Moquin-Tandon has observed the
same thing at Montpellier and Toulouse."
In the first part of this article the influence of "_atmospheric
pressure_" was fully spoken of, as also the effect of the winds so
favorable to residents on the west side. With these facts in view, it
is easy to foresee that those who possess means will always purchase
homes in this portion of the city, which offers the best security
against disease and the greatest guarantee for continued physical
health.
It is curious to go back to the commencement of the present century,
and to note the changes in location the growth of the city has
obliged the wealthy to make since that time. In the early days, State
street, and then Bowling Green, offered to this class attractions
superior to those of any other portion of the city. The ample shade
of the latter, its stately forest-trees, verdant lawn, and beautiful
walks, with the refreshing sea-breeze constantly blowing in from old
ocean, and the magnificent moving panorama in the harbor, made it a
great favorite of our forefathers. They whiled away their time in
this charming resort, smoking their pipes, and watching the merry
gambols of the children. It may be, they canvassed the future of this
goodly city, which under their thrifty influences already promised
well, never dreaming, however, of the gigantic growth its future
was to develop. In time this garden spot changed into the great
_entrepôt_, where emigrant ships daily landed vast numbers eager to
obtain employment and homes in this new country where every thing
promised wealth and happiness. Greenwich street next absorbed within
its precincts the votaries of fashion; soon after, it had for rivals
in public favor East-Broadway and College Place. They, in turn, were
deserted for the location between Fourth and Eighth streets. But the
same agency being at work here as below, soon brought Union Square
into requisition. After this, Fifth and Madison avenues became the
grand centres of the opulent classes; and to-day the entire course
of the former, with its long line of brown-stone architecture and
regal grandeur, attracts the attention and challenges the admiration
of the world. But after this avenue reaches Ninetieth street, its
grade descends rapidly to the low level of the Harlem plains, and is
no longer so desirable for residences. At the rate it is now being
built upon, it will soon be completed to this point, and then in what
direction will this current turn? The Harlem Railroad will always
prove an insurmountable objection to Fourth avenue, which is behind
it; and it does not require a prophet's power to foresee that the
Grand Boulevard, the garden parks overlooking the Hudson, and the
great aids to general healthfulness possessed by the west side, will
prove sufficiently attractive to cause the next move to be in the
direction of the beautiful sites which border these improvements.
The proposed widening of Broadway from Thirty-second to Fifty-ninth
street adds certainty to this prediction. We think it most
unfortunate that this change did not commence as low down as
Seventeenth street, and we hope it may yet be found advisable to
do so. We would then have a noble thoroughfare starting from the
Battery, crossing the various avenues diagonally until it reached
the beautiful circle at the Eighth avenue entrance to the park; and
then continuing as the Grand Boulevard to the upper extremity of the
island. This measure, which seems to meet with the disapprobation
of a large portion of the community, if carried out, would, we are
convinced, prove a crowning glory to the metropolis; and it is but
fitting that the thoroughfare which is to vie with any other in the
world should have a continuance in the lower part of the city worthy
its princely magnificence; for it would then be a subject of pride
not only to us but to the whole country, which would regard it as a
national ornament.
We may also look forward to an ever-increasing commercial importance
for the east side, with its long line of piers fronting the harbor,
always filled with vessels bearing the flags of every commercial
nation of the world.
Its shore will be covered with capacious warehouses and immense
manufactories, from which will resound the noisy bustle and unceasing
activity of trade.
A glance at the residences in the different locations mentioned
above, as being at various times the homes of those possessing
wealth, will show that each successive change has been marked by
an increase in the lavish expenditure of means for the purpose of
producing architectural display. With this fact before us, we may
form an idea of the palatial houses with which, by means of their
rapidly increasing wealth, the rising generation will crown the
hill-sides of the western section.
When the proposed improvements for this portion of our city have been
completed, the whole, bounded on the one side by Central Park, with
its many natural and artificial beauties appearing like a fairy-land,
and on the other by the dancing waters of the Hudson, will give to
our metropolis attractions superior to those possessed by the most
celebrated cities of Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] _Encyclopedia._
[63] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.
[64] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.
[65] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.
[66] "Influence of Locality on Duration of Life." CATHOLIC WORLD,
April, 1869.
[67] _Public Parks._ John H. Rauch, M.D., of Chicago.
[68] _Public Parks._ John H. Rauch, M.D.
[69] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.
[70] _New American Cyclopædia._
[71] _New American Cyclopædia._
THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER.
TRANSLATED FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES, HISTORIQUES ET LITTERAIRES.
While visiting, two or three months since, the Vatican Basilica, it
seemed to me there was a certain correspondence, a kind of harmony,
between this monument and the great event of which it is soon to
be the theatre. Since that time new observations have strengthened
this first impression; then reminiscences of a different kind, the
perusal of various works, unfortunately too limited in numbers, and
especially a more attentive examination of St. Peter's, have had the
effect of defining more clearly what at first was only a vague and
confused perception.
Before my pilgrimage to Rome, I was so fortunate as to visit one
of the cities which had for a long time been the objects of my
most ardent curiosity. I refer to the humble Tyrolean city where,
more than three hundred years ago, was held the last and most
glorious of the general councils. The city of Trent presents nothing
extraordinary to the eye of the traveller except, perhaps, a kind
of trident of mountains which gives it its name, and which forms
around it a group of natural fortifications truly grand. Certain
monuments, among others the cathedral of a Roman style, and
somewhat interesting, appeared to merit some attention. But that
which attracts and interests the Catholic heart in the most lively
degree is the church where the holy Oecumenical Council held its
immortal sessions. It bears the name of St. Mary Major, the same as
the great Roman basilica so generally known and venerated. In truth,
this renowned title is hardly appropriate, if the dimensions of the
edifice and its architectural merits alone are considered. In these
respects it more nearly resembles our modest Parisian church of Notre
Dame des Victoires. This comparison, without being wholly just, may
yet give a good idea of the sanctuary rendered illustrious by the
Council of Trent.
As to the local traditions respecting this august assembly, a sojourn
far too short prevented me from collecting them as fully as I could
have wished. According to the information of a respectable priest
with whom I conversed a short time, a great revival of faith, the
effects of which are still visible, took place in the city on the
third commemorative centenary in the month of June, 1863. This same
ecclesiastic likewise informed me that the memory of our great Laynez
has always been dear to the popular memory, and that the greatest
eulogium that can be passed upon a man who devotes himself to works
of charity is to compare him to that indefatigable apostle. Probably
his learned discourses are nearly forgotten even in the places where
they were delivered; his preaching is only remembered because of his
deeds, a new proof, among so many others, in support of the divine
word, "Wisdom passeth away, ... but charity shall never pass away."
Not far from the entrance of Santa Maria Maggiore is a monument,
erected in 1855 for the first anniversary of the proclamation of the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It bears a statue of her "who
has destroyed all heresies throughout the world," and for whom the
fathers of the Council of Trent formally stipulated an exception
in the decrees respecting the doctrine of original sin. I noticed
in the interior of the church a painting representing one of the
reunions of the council, and especially the crucifix which stood
on a table in the centre of the nave and presided, so to speak, at
those solemn assemblies. This crucifix may now be seen above one
of the side altars. It is regarded with extreme veneration by the
faithful. I will not attempt to depict my emotion in celebrating the
holy mysteries before this sacred image with the same chalice the
cardinal legate had used, which was kindly loaned me by the venerable
chaplain. You can easily imagine that the place, the circumstances,
and those precious relics, without mentioning my own inclinations,
imposed it on me as a duty to offer up the holy sacrifice for the
success of the approaching council.
On the whole, the city of Trent and the sanctuary of the council do
not fully correspond with the solemn grandeur of the event which took
place therein. It is unnecessary to say that this kind of contrast
does not shock in the least a mind at all familiar with objects
connected with the faith. This want of correspondence is frequently
to be noticed even in a more striking degree. The least supernatural
eye soon forgets the whole edifice and these material objects only
to behold the great Christian wonders once wrought within so small a
space. We say to ourselves, with profound emotion, that this is the
cenacle of modern times--a real cenacle, in truth, where the light of
the Holy Ghost was diffused more abundantly than had ever taken place
since the day of Pentecost.
Without any great effort of the imagination I could see a figure of
the religious renovation produced by the holy Council of Trent in
circumstances, wholly accidental, that occurred at the time of my
journey. It was during the latter part of the month of October. On
the way from Botzen the country had been ravaged by an inundation
of the Adige. Everywhere was a scene of desolation sad to behold.
The following morning, on the contrary, just as we were starting for
Italy, a glorious sun rose over the city of Trent. The bold summits
that surround it were crowned with such lights as are only seen in
mountainous countries. Clouds of magic brilliancy hung here and there
over the deep gorges and on the heights, the fields had resumed their
joyous and smiling aspect, even the traces of the inundation were
less sad to behold, and our eyes could linger with a pleasure almost
without alloy on the magnificence of nature.
The council of the nineteenth century, for which preparations are
now being made at Rome and throughout the civilized world, cannot
be less fruitful than that of the sixteenth in the regeneration and
salvation of souls. The gravest reasons on every hand appear to
justify this hope, and perhaps it is allowable to find a significant
sign of it in the happy choice of the place where this great court of
Catholicity is to be held. At all events, the basilica of St. Peter
is certainly the most suitable theatre in the whole world in which to
assemble an oecumenical council. Every thing about it is marvellously
adapted to this purpose; every thing seems to reveal a preconceived
harmony that divine Providence is so often pleased to manifest in
the accomplishment of his august designs. In speaking thus, I only
express differently, if I am not mistaken, the idea of Sixtus III.
in the fifth century. This pontiff, having convoked in the ancient
basilica of St. Peter a certain number of bishops, wrote to Cyril,
the patriarch of Alexandria, to announce this synod, and, among other
things, wrote these remarkable words: "_Ad beatum Petrum Apostolum
universa fraternitas convenit. Ecce auditorium congruens auditoribus,
conveniens audiendis_."[72] "The whole brotherhood meets at the tomb
of blessed Peter the Apostle. Behold a place befitting both the
hearers and the things to be heard."
It cannot be doubted that this suitability, so well understood by
Sixtus III., also occurred to Pius IX., when he designated the tomb
of St. Peter as the rendezvous of his brethren in the episcopate.
It seems to me desirable that an inscription in a conspicuous place
should bear the fine expression of Sixtus III. Its meaning and
adaptation with regard to the approaching council would be more
strikingly apparent than they could have been at the particular synod
of the fifth century.
Let us now enter this august temple and regard with admiration, as
we pass, the colossal portico and the vast nave, whose length and
height cannot at once be taken in by the unaccustomed eye. Almost at
the extremity of the nave, at the right, is the bronze statue of St.
Peter, which for more than fourteen centuries has received the homage
of pilgrims. Let us not forget to prostrate ourselves after their
example, and press our trembling lips to the feet of the apostle,
literally worn by the pious kisses of so many generations. A few
steps further on, and we stand before the Confession, that is, the
glorious sepulchre of the first vicar of Jesus Christ, around which
a hundred lights do not cease to burn night and day. After kneeling
for a few moments, not without being penetrated by a powerful but
sweet emotion which stirs the soul to its very depth, let us rise and
look first at the superb baldaquin of gilded bronze which rises to
the height of eighty-six feet over the grand altar and the tomb of
St. Peter. Above bends over us "the Pantheon raised in the air" by
the genius of Michael Angelo--the incomparable dome, measuring one
hundred and thirty feet in diameter, and four hundred and twenty-six
feet in height on the outside.
If, from this central point of the basilica, we look to the right, we
see the northern transept extending more than one hundred and sixty
feet from the Confession. The altar at the end is consecrated to the
Saints Processus and Martinian--two Roman soldiers, at first jailers
of the apostle St. Peter, and then his disciples, baptized by his
own hand. "From that time," says the Abbé Gerbet, "the remembrance
of these two saints has constantly clung to that of St. Peter, their
master and their friend, as the shadow follows the body." Martyred
the same year as he, they were buried near the Aurelian way, not far
from the Vatican. The antique statue of St. Peter, now venerated in
the basilica, was formerly in a monastery connected with the cemetery
where these two martyrs reposed. It was afterward placed in the
oratory which Pascal I. had erected in their honor in the ancient
Vatican basilica, whither he had their relics transported. The ashes
of these two jailers of St. Peter always in a manner gravitated
around him, until, placed here at his side, they have become for ever
his acolytes in this magnificent crypt, as they were his guardians in
the dark dungeons of the capitol.[73]
Another glory is in reserve for Saints Processus and Martinian.
Before their altar and in the spacious chapel which is dedicated
to them are to be held the solemn sessions of the council. Let us
hope with firm assurance that these faithful guardians of the first
pope, and his immortal acolytes, will keep invisible guard around
his successor, and around the bishops, his brethren, when they are
reunited in this sanctuary to continue the work of the great Fisher
of Souls.
Returning from the altar of Saints Processus and Martinian, before
resuming our place by the Confession, let us notice at the left, at
the end of the Gregorian chapel, the tomb of Gregory XVI. and the
marble statue with his hands raised to bless. Connected with him
many interesting thoughts came into my mind. He is the last of the
popes who joined the church triumphant. His tomb and that of St.
Peter, so near each other, bring before us the two extremities of
the great chain of apostolical succession which extends back from
our own age to the first Christian era. The intermediate links
are known to us all through the authentic records of history, and
they are represented here almost entire under our eyes. Look first
at the tombs and statues of the greater number of popes since the
commencement of the sixteenth century. It is sufficient to name a
few of them. There is the funereal monument of Pius VI. at the foot
of the staircase leading to the Confession. He merited this post
of honor, as has been justly remarked, because he was "the first
pope who died from the martyrdom of exile and captivity after the
construction of the new basilica." Two other pontiffs, Benedict
XIV. and Clement XIII., are entombed close by the transversal nave
where the council is to be held. They will be there on each side
of the august assembly--the double personification of clerical
learning and pontifical firmness. The throne of Pius IX. will
almost touch the tomb of Clement XIII. A little further on, in the
southern nave, is the monument of one of the greatest pontiffs of
the seventeenth century--that of Innocent XI., the firm antagonist
of Louis XIV. At the end of the choir, or apsis, the sixteenth
century is represented by Paul III. His tomb is at the right of the
symbolic chair of St. Peter, which is supported by the four great
doctors. He also was worthy of this privileged spot; for his name
is indissolubly connected with what have been called "two of the
greatest providential events of modern times," (and I can say that
the expression is certainly true of the first of these:) he convoked
the Council of Trent, and was the first to give his approval to the
formation of the Society of Jesus. Among the tombs of the pontiffs
of the fifteenth century we select at hazard those of Sixtus IV.,
Nicholas V., and Eugenius IV., all three rendered illustrious by
the great events of their pontificates. The ashes of the two last
are in the subterranean church of the Vatican. Only six or seven
tombs represent the preceding ages in the upper church. They are
those of St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo the Great, Sts. Leo II.,
III., IV., and IX. The crypts spread before us a much longer list.
Conspicuous therein is Boniface VIII., the pontiff who declared the
first jubilee of the fourteenth century; and then, going back into
the preceding ages, Alexander III.; Calixtus II.; Urban II., the
first organizer of the Crusades; St. Nicholas I., one of the men who
merited by the most brilliant claims the title of great; Adrian I.,
the friend of Charlemagne, and celebrated by him in that immortal
elegy so worthy of the great pope and of the great emperor, and still
to be read in the portico of St. Peter's; St. Agatho, made glorious
by the sixth oecumenical council, held at Constantinople; Honorius
I., the beautiful inscription on whose tomb so eloquently avenges
undeserved calumny; St. Boniface IV., who consecrated the Pantheon;
and then a great number of other glorious pontiffs, till we come to
St. Simplicius, the second successor of St. Leo the Great. Dating
from the latter, there is an interruption of more than two centuries
in the pontifical sepulchres of the Vatican. The popes of this time
repose in the catacombs, particularly in that of St. Calixtus. But
until the year 202 all the others, with the exception of St. Clement
I. and of St. Alexander I. in going back from St. Victor to St.
Linus, the immediate successor of St. Peter, have been deposited
near the Prince of the Apostles in the place where St. Anacletus,
even in the first century, constructed "the memorial of the blessed
Peter called the Confession," according to the expression of an
ancient inscription on the walls of this sacred crypt. When a portion
of the pavement was removed in order to construct the monument of
Pius VI., the bones of the first successors of the apostle were
exposed. Their faces were found turned toward his tomb.
Altogether, the Vatican basilica and its crypts contain the tombs
of about one hundred and forty popes. Let us not fail to remark
that almost all the others are in the catacombs, or the neighboring
churches; only a small number of popes have been buried out of Rome.
We have then here, without going out of St. Peter's, the greater part
of that dynasty which is the most ancient and the most glorious in
the history of the world. I refer to the privilege it possesses--and
it alone--of tracing a succession, uninterrupted and of incontestable
legitimacy, back to him whom Jesus Christ established as head and
foundation of the universal church. Some slight shadows, I know,
seem to hover here and there over certain links in this descent of
eighteen hundred years, but this cannot disturb an unprejudiced mind
for a moment. The glory of the whole line diffuses too powerful and
subduing a light for that! Where is the rival church that can show in
its history, in its monuments, its temples, and even in its tombs, a
succession, a connection, an antiquity, and a proof of catholicity,
worthy, I will not say of equalling, but of being compared with
this? Christian tradition, the liturgy, the frequent language of
schismatical churches themselves, are agreed in giving the pope
the name of Apostolic. This name, as well as that of Catholic,
of which St. Augustine boasted with such good reason against the
Donatists, would alone be a strong title in favor of Rome. At all
events, it is the unique and incommunicable privilege of the Roman
Church to have been built upon the foundation of the apostles--_super
fundamentum apostolorum_. And this expression of St. Paul, which
has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed, is verified at Rome with
a fulness of evidence truly wonderful. It has, in truth, pleased
Divine Providence to consecrate this church in the eyes of all with
the special characteristic of apostolicity, to collect within its
walls, if not the entire bodies of all the apostles of Jesus Christ,
at least considerable portions of their relics. A part of the bones
of St. Paul repose fraternally beside those of St. Peter in the
Vatican, and, as if to attest more strongly the brotherhood of these
two founders of Christian Rome, a part of the body of St. Peter has
been transported to the basilica of St. Paul beyond the walls, and
their skulls are placed together at St. John Lateran; both thus
taking possession of the three great basilicas of Rome. The bodies
of Sts. Simon and Jude are also at the Vatican. Those of St. James
the Minor and St. Philip are in the Church of the Holy Apostles, that
of St. Matthias at St. Mary Major, and that of St. Bartholomew in
the basilica that bears his name. Different churches at Rome possess
important relics of other members of the apostolic college, as well
as of St. Mark and St. Luke. One apostle delayed longer than the rest
joining this rendezvous of the glorious dead, and yet it was only
proper, it would seem, that he should be near Simon Peter, for it was
his brother in the flesh, his elder brother. But this vacancy was at
last filled up by the agency of Him who directs all human events.
Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, Thomas Paleologus, King
of Peloponnesus, fearing that the head of St. Andrew, preserved until
that time in Achaia, would fall into the hands of the Turks, wished
to preserve it by confiding it to the Roman Church. At this news
great was the joy of the magnanimous pontiff whose name, destined
to cast such brilliancy over succeeding ages, was just becoming
renowned. Pius II., in order to receive this precious relic, had a
procession and ceremonies of extraordinary solemnity, an enthusiastic
description of which has been handed down to us in the annals of
that time. The sacred head, which the Saviour of the world "had more
than once, without doubt, touched with his hands and with his divine
lips," (these are the words of Pius II., in an admirable discourse
on this occasion,) was placed not far from the tomb of St. Peter,
where it remained till a sacrilegious hand dared to carry it away
from its sanctuary for a time. But, as is known, Pius IX. had the joy
of finding it some days after with the seals intact, and henceforth
the homage of the faithful will not cease to offer reparation for
the outrage committed.[74] To increase devotion toward St. Andrew, a
unique privilege, which had its origin in the delicate inspirations
of Christian sentiment, has long been granted to him; the colossal
statue of the brother of the Prince of the Apostles stands before the
altar of the Confession, and on a level with the three great statues
which recall the precious relics of the Saviour's Passion.
Thus, it is evident, the apostolic college is in a manner assembled
in the city of Rome. "The legend, according to which all the
apostles assembled together to witness the last moments of the
Blessed Virgin, has in a manner been verified as to their mortal
remains around the tomb of St. Peter. The first council of Jerusalem
seems to be held here permanently."[75]
This idea appears to me to give an admirably beautiful significance
to one of the most solemn prayers of the liturgy which is chanted
at the mass of the apostles and especially on the festivals of Sts.
Peter and Paul. Imagine that we hear resounding the voice of Pius
IX., of a compass and harmony equal to the basilica itself, which
it fills with its powerful undulations. Listen to this prayer which
he addresses the eternal Shepherd: _Gregem tuum, Pastor æterne,
non deseras, sed per beatos apostolos tuos continua protectione
custodias; ut iisdem rectoribus gubernetur quos operis tui vicarios
eidem contulisti præesse pastores._ "Desert not, O eternal Shepherd,
thy flock, but through the blessed apostles grant it thy unceasing
protection; that it may be governed by those rulers whom thou hast
appointed to continue thy work and to be the pastors of thy people."
Does it not seem that the truly providential presence of the sacred
relics of all the apostles at Rome is like a continual reply of Jesus
Christ to the supplication of his high-priest? Or raise your eyes
toward the radiant dome, as Pius IX. often loves to do while he is
chanting, and while the _sursum corda_ of his soul is manifested by
his looks, do you not behold the mosaics gleaming there on high like
celestial apparitions? See the eternal Shepherd who does not cease to
watch over his flock, and around him his blessed apostles, his vicars
on earth, who now from the highest heavens continue to protect and
govern the lambs and sheep of the divine fold.
I have not yet had the great Christian joy of assisting at the
festival of St. Peter in the basilica itself; but on another occasion
I experienced in the same place, leaning against the balustrade of
the Confession, a joy almost comparable. It was on Palm-Sunday,
when the choristers of the Sistine chapel made the arches resound
with the grand and solemn affirmations of the Catholic Credo. I
shall never forget the quiver that passed through my frame when I
heard resounding these simple words as they were taken up one after
another: _et unam--sanctam--Catholicam--et apostolicam--ecclesiam_
... "and one--holy--Catholic--and apostolic--church." Then my eyes
were irresistibly attracted toward the dome, and through the light
which at that moment flooded it I had a sight of the glorious
figures with which it is adorned, and which appeared to me like a
reflection of the church triumphant in the heavens. Then I recalled
the gorgeous procession I had just seen pass through the grand nave
of the basilica--Pius IX. borne on his _Sedia Gestatoria_, and before
him the imposing _cortége_ of cardinals, bishops, and prelates, all
bearing in their hands the triumphal palms--and it seemed to me that
this immense inclosure expanded to a still larger size, or rather,
its walls vanished and gave place to the church universal dispersed
in the four quarters of the globe, but all bound to the tomb of St.
Peter, in perpetual communion with him, receiving from him by a
constant influence its divine characteristics of unity, sanctity,
catholicity, and apostolicity, living by his faith and his love,
ruled and governed by his authority, and always spiritually present
where he is to be found, according to the words of St. Ambrose, the
truth of which I had never comprehended so fully, _Ubi Petrus, ibi
ecclesia!_ "Where Peter is, there is the church."
But let us leave these retrospective ideas and evocations, and rather
endeavor to discover in the basilica of St. Peter the visible signs
of unity, sanctity, and catholicity, as well as of apostolicity, the
authentic marks of which we have just noticed.
And first, let us read around the dome these words in colossal
letters on a golden ground of mosaic, TU ES PETRUS; ET SUPER HANC
PETRAM ÆDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEA; ET TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI COELORUM.
"Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church; and I
will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." And a little
lower on the frieze, above the two pillars of the choir, these
words recently placed on a similar ground, _Hinc una fides mundo
refulget_, "Hence one faith shines upon the world;" to correspond
with which these other words are hereafter to be engraved above the
opposite pillars, _Hinc sacerdotii unitas exoritur_, "Hence the
unity of the priesthood arises." There is a symbolic commentary on
this last inscription in the urn placed on the tomb of St. Peter.
It contains the palliums which the pope sends to the metropolitans.
They are kept in this place to signify that that is the origin and
source of all jurisdiction and all ecclesiastical authority. This
urn and these inscriptions are sufficient to make us understand the
whole mystery of Catholic unity. This unity, indeed, is comprehended
in the decisive words which established Peter as the foundation of
the church and confided to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Peter thus became the true representative of Jesus Christ and the
personification, so to speak, of the divine authority. And he
himself in his turn transmitted this plenitude of power to the Roman
pontiff, his successor, his inheritor, his universal legatee, thus
living again, as it were, in his successor, investing him with his
authority, and communicating to him by a continued operation the full
and entire power of feeding, directing, and governing the universal
church, according to the dogmatic definition of the Council of
Florence. From this centre of power the apostolic authority extends
through all ranks of the hierarchy, and by a wonderful ubiquity is
diffused without being weakened to the lowest grades of the Catholic
priesthood. Patriarchs, primates, metropolitans, archbishops, and
bishops throughout the world are all armed with the plenitude of
this authority; all derive from this source their jurisdiction
and the legitimate exercise of their rights; all, as they love to
acknowledge, govern their own churches "by the grace of God and of
the apostolic see." And this is why throughout the church there is
the same government, the same doctrine, the same administration
of the sacraments and divine worship. There is but one rule of
government; for, as Bossuet (who was always incomparable when the
whole truth illumined his soul) has somewhere said, "There is such
a sympathy in all parts of the body of the church, that what each
bishop does according to the rule and spirit of Catholic unity, the
whole church, the entire episcopate and the chief bishop, does with
him." There is the same doctrine; for the Roman see teaches all
others, and these again all the faithful, or, to express it better,
the different grades of teachers (it is still Bossuet who speaks)
"have only one doctrine, by reason of the necessary connection they
have with the chair which Peter and his successors have always
occupied."[76] Finally, the administration of the sacraments and
the divine worship are the same; for the central authority of Peter
intervenes in some manner in all the sacramental functions, whether
to render them legitimate, or, as is seen in the ministry of the
confessional, to make them efficacious and valid; and besides, it is
only in communion with Peter that God accepts the offering of the
divine sacrifice as well as all other acts of worship and prayer.
The perfect unity that reigns in the hierarchy and the government of
the church engenders a not less perfect unity in the entire body of
the faithful. Indeed, all the members of the church are reunited and
bound together by means of the central authority of Peter, always
present in the pope, and, through him, in all the representatives of
the episcopal hierarchy. All the faithful recognize this peculiar
authority as that of Jesus Christ. It is by submission and obedience
to it that they rise when fallen. It is by faith in this authority
and its depositaries of every degree that they receive the teachings
of the true faith. It is to this they have recourse in order to be
admitted to the participation of the sacraments and all the treasures
of the church. And thus all, whoever they may be, remain attached
to this authority by the intelligence that affirms the same truth,
the will that observes the same law, and the heart that draws from
the same sources of life; a unity of faith, of obedience, and of the
sacraments--a triple unity realized by Jesus Christ and his vicar, to
whom all hearts, all inclinations, and all minds adhere as luminous
rays to their centre and source. It is true that this adhesion has
not among all the same strength and efficacy; sometimes it is purely
exterior, and yet it exists in a certain manner till the rupture
is consummated either by excommunication or by manifest schism and
heresy. But, thanks be to God, the number of the faithful is always
immense in whom this union is full and entire. And they accomplish
thereby a mystery of unity still more close and wonderful than that
which we have just considered. It is given to the authority of Peter,
who visibly unites the faithful, to bind them also together invisibly
by the ineffable tie of the communion of saints--the crown and full
consummation of unity. But no; the vicar of Christ has yet another
privilege by virtue of the power that he has received of binding and
loosing in heaven as well as on earth--he opens the entrance to the
eternal mansions. The souls submissive till the end to his authority,
and ruled by the power of his attraction, rise and mount to become
living stones in the harmonious construction of the celestial temple:
_Fabri polita malleo,
Hanc saxa molem construunt,
Aptisque juncta nexibus,
Locantur in fastigio._
"This vast edifice, even to the pediment, is composed of stones
polished by the mallet of the workman and skilfully joined
together."
It is thus that the gigantic edifice of the Vatican dome, after
taking root around the tomb of the apostles, springs up from the soil
on its four enormous supports, binding them together by the key-stone
of its vast arches, and then, gathering itself together, rises more
and more resplendent, more and more transfigured, till, at the moment
of uniting all its ascending lines, it half opens to form a sublime
sanctuary around the Ancient of Days, whose form beams forth from its
very top.
It is grand to assist in the basilica of St. Peter at one of these
solemnities which are like splendid foreshadowings of the future
state of souls in their glorious union with God. Behold around the
choir the inscriptions engraved on marble. They recall the dearest
and most solemn festival that has yet been celebrated in our age--the
proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. That day
witnessed under these arches the triumph of Catholic unity, as well
as the triumph of the Virgin conceived without sin. The accounts of
ocular witnesses, still remembered by all, have made us familiar with
that great manifestation of the _cor unum_ and the _anima una_, of
the "one heart" and "one soul," when, at a word from Pius IX., the
act of faith, full, absolute, and unanimous, burst forth in loving
tones from the hearts of the two hundred prelates and bishops, and
the multitudes of priests reunited in this basilica, then resounded
with one accord from the souls of forty or fifty thousand of the
faithful likewise assembled in the same church, and was prolonged
in repeated echoes from the lips of the two hundred millions of
Catholics scattered throughout the world. Since that time two or
three manifestations almost as glorious have been made in this
basilica, and in all cases the great episcopal hierarchy, represented
by a vast deputation, have inclined before the word of their august
chief, believing what he believes, approving what he approves, and
condemning what he condemns; and in all cases also the universal
voice of true Catholics, whether present at Rome bodily or only in
spirit and in heart, has risen to hail with one acclamation the
infallible decisions of the successor of Peter.
But how can we forget the last festival, so sweetly and deliciously
touching, which has just been celebrated in this grand basilica? That
also was a brilliant manifestation and triumph of unity; of that
unity the sweetest and most beautiful of all others--that of brethren
of the great Catholic family around their father and their pope, to
celebrate with him the golden wedding of his old age so long and
painfully tried, but ever courageous and serene, and always blessed
by God. There were mingled people of all ages, of every condition,
and, morally speaking, of every race and nation on the globe. And
these representatives of all nations, divided among themselves not
less by distance than by their interests, prejudices, and hereditary
enmities, and perhaps--who knows?--on the point of renewing
old fratricidal struggles, drawn in against their will by the
calculations of human policy--they were all there, drawn together and
united by mutual love for their common father! And doubtless there
was among them another source of division. I refer to divergence of
opinions--opinions more or less correct, more or less at variance
with the truth. There are always such in the bosom of Catholic unity.
But admire the strength of this unity, remaining still intact in the
midst of these elements of discord. We know that every assent given
to mere opinions is necessarily conditional in this sense--that
every Catholic worthy of the name is always ready to yield them
to the teachings of revealed truth. Adhesion to the faith, on the
contrary, is absolute, without condition or reserve, and moreover,
this adhesion extends not only to the truths that the church requires
us directly and expressly to believe, but also to the whole order of
truths contained in the depository of revelation. What takes place,
then, when the soul of the believer finds himself clinging to an
erroneous opinion? That which happens in the physical order when two
forces are in opposition to one another--the more feeble is absorbed
by the overruling force. By virtue of the same law of moral dynamics,
faith, which is an absolute affirmation, neutralizes and absorbs an
erroneous opinion, which is only a conditional affirmation; in other
terms, the latter is disavowed--retracted by the very fact that he
makes a genuine act of faith. And this is how, among Catholics, the
unity of the faith bursts forth and triumphs even in the midst of the
causes that would seem to destroy, or at least to modify, it.
You will not expect me to describe this sacerdotal festival in
detail. It was at once solemn and grand, as well as simple, popular,
and affecting. Besides, other accounts have made you as familiar
with all this as it is possible to be with what is indescribable. I
will only select from the wonderful whole one thing which perhaps
escaped general attention. It was at the moment when the grandest _Te
Deum_ I ever heard was resounding beneath the arches of the basilica
like the voice of the great deep. When this verse of the Ambrosian
hymn was being chanted, _Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur
ecclesia!_--"The holy church acknowledges thee throughout the whole
earth"--Pius IX. raised his hands to his eyes as if to collect his
thoughts. It was as if his mind wandered off from one hemisphere to
the other--to every region where there is a Catholic church--and saw
the entire world communing in thought with him, praying with him,
and with him rendering glory and thanksgiving to God. And indeed, as
you know, at that same hour, millions of souls scattered over the
globe were united in a general concert of prayer in order to join
themselves more completely to him who was more than ever the great
Chief of Prayer, as the savages of the new world sublimely style the
vicar of Jesus Christ.
I can boldly declare that in no time, no place, did any man, any king
and father of a nation, any pontiff, perhaps any saint, have such an
ovation, such a manifestation of universal love; and I say further
that this was not merely a triumph, but a miracle of supernatural
union in the church--a miracle doubtless presaging still greater to
come.
I have said that this jubilee of Pius IX. drew representatives
from the whole Catholic world to Rome. The city of unity was on
that day also the city of Catholicity _par excellence_. This last
characteristic, however, Rome does not manifest only on extraordinary
occasions, but permanently by its physical and moral position. "If a
nation possessed a cathedral surrounded by a portico to which each
province had furnished an arcade or column which bore its name,
this monument would be a harmonious emblem of the diversity to be
found in the unity of this people. There is something analogous to
this in the Christian world." In the shadow of the great basilica
of the popes most nations have their church, their festivals, and
their national tombs. Each one finds some sacred monument bearing
on the history of his country. Every one breathes here, in the
atmosphere of religion, his native air. National establishments,
reunited in the same city by political or commercial interests,
represent concord less than division. Counting-rooms are rivals,
altars are brethren. This is one cause of the sentiment that almost
every one experiences who lives for some time in Rome, far from his
native country. "Nowhere does one feel so much at home as in this
city."[77] If one comes from a remote province of Lower Brittany or
from the extremities of Ireland, from the depths of Ethiopia, the
Indies, or the two Americas, he finds everywhere sanctuaries, tombs,
institutions, offerings _ex-voto_, and indeed all kinds of mementoes
that recall the far-off country. The prelacy, the priesthood, and
the religious orders have representatives from all countries. The
army itself has a cosmopolitan character. You see there, under the
noble garb of the Zouave, the dark skin of the African beside the
white face of the Dutchman or Canadian. Whoever you may be, you are
sure not to be wholly isolated or unknown. Soon a familiar accent
or an unforeseen accident will reveal a compatriot or a friend. It
is impossible to forget your country; it becomes dearer to you than
ever. You appreciate it perhaps more fully, but the narrowness of
your former attachment is destroyed by contact with the broad spirit
of Catholicity which penetrates you.
He who has the leisure to examine certain statistics will find
at Rome evidences of Catholicity even in examining the list of
travellers, or the missives of the mails, or even the catalogues of
gifts sent to the holy father, and especially that of the offerings
he recently received for the jubilee of his priesthood. All this and
many other things constantly verify a proverb now misinterpreted,
and too trivial to be quoted, but which the ancients expressed very
nobly, "All roads lead to Rome." There is this difference--the roads
leading to the Rome of Sts. Peter and Paul are far more extended than
those of the Rome of Romulus and Remus. What one only accomplished
by force of arms, the other has effected by the universality of
evangelical preaching.
Without leaving the Vatican basilica we can discover, on all sides,
authentic proofs of this universality. On the day of solemn
functions, when the pope celebrates the holy sacrifice, a Greek
deacon officiates beside a Latin deacon, and chants the Gospel in
the language of St. Luke. A Greek archbishop also assists at it as
well as one of the Armenian Church. The Syriac Church has also its
ministers at the holy see. The presence of these bishops and these
priests of different rites is not a mere spectacle unsustained by
reality. They are representatives of churches scattered throughout
the East.[78] We have many other reflections to make on this subject,
but they must be reserved, with a thousand things, till a future
time. See now, on the tablet that perpetuates the remembrance of the
formal decision respecting the Immaculate Conception, the names of
the bishops who were present. The titles of a great number of their
churches would be vainly sought for in the ancient diptychs. They
assert the presence of the Catholic hierarchy in regions unknown
to the fathers of Nice or even of Trent. See, further on, the
confessionals ranged around the southern transept; the inscriptions
they bear notify you that there are penitentiaries and confessors
who speak all the principal languages of Europe, including that of
Greece. Behold also a _bas-relief_, peculiarly significant, under the
statue of Gregory XVI. It is symbolical of the most glorious event
of his reign--the institution of the work of the propagation of the
faith. At the feet of the pontiff are the types of almost all races,
who render him their tributes of veneration and gratitude. There is
another idea under this symbol: it shows that the see of Peter is
the source of the apostolic missions, the centre of a power which is
expansive and subjugating, and the focus of that divine light which
seeks to be diffused throughout the entire heart of humanity.
It is in truth from Rome that the great evangelizers of nations
have set out. To mention here only a few, and not the most ancient,
Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, wished, as is said in his Acts, "to
repair to the see founded on a rock. He wished to comprehend more
fully the canonical laws of the holy Roman Church, and obtain for
his mission and his labors the strength derived from the apostolic
authority." He came then to the tomb of the holy apostles, and set
out again with the benediction of Pope St. Celestin I., as at a later
date the monk Augustin departed, sent by St. Gregory I. to evangelize
England. Another pope of the same name, St. Gregory II., had the
glory of conferring his blessing on the monk Wilfrid, the great
apostle of Germany. He summoned him to his presence in the church of
St. Peter, and consecrated him bishop after having changed his name
to Boniface. After his consecration, he placed in the Confession of
St. Peter a writing that ended with these words:
"I, Boniface, an unworthy bishop, have written with my own hand
this paper containing my oath of fidelity, and, in placing it on
the sacred body of St. Peter, I promise to keep this vow before
God, who is my witness and my judge."...
St. Corbinian, who was also one of the first preachers of
Christianity in Germany; St. Amandus, who preached on the shores
of the Garonne, the Escaut, and the Danube, and St. Kilian, who
evangelized Franconia, came likewise to prostrate themselves at
the Confession of St. Peter, whence set forth in other times Paul,
Formosus, Donatus, Leo, and Marinus, sent by Pope Nicholas I. among
the Bulgarians; Egidius, Bishop of Tusculum, sent to Poland by
Pope John XIII.; and Willibald, Prochorius, etc., who received
an apostolic mission to Vandalia.[79] Let us also mention St.
Anscharius, who was sent by Gregory IV. as legate to the Swedes,
Danes, Icelanders, and all the northern nations. Two other apostles
who evangelized a great race, now, alas! almost entirely given over
to schism, kindled their missionary ardor at the tomb of the Prince
of the Apostles. After having commenced their apostolic labors among
the Sclaves, St. Cyril and St. Methodius came to Rome to receive
episcopal consecration, and celebrated here the first mass in the
Sclavonic language.[80] Then, their second evangelical expedition
being terminated, they both returned to Rome. One of them, Cyril,
died here, and his tomb, placed beside that of Pope St. Clement,
remains as a perpetual memorial of his attachment to the centre of
unity and of Catholicity.
It would take too long to mention here the names of all the other
apostles who set forth from Rome before or after the most illustrious
of all--St. Francis Xavier. We will only remark that the numerous
pupils that the Roman ecclesiastical seminaries have sent on a
mission never fail to kindle their zeal at the Confession of the
Prince of the Apostles.
One of these seminaries requires special notice, because it is in
itself a proof of Catholicity and of the principle which engenders
a Catholic spirit. I wish you could have been present, as I was, at
the festival that the Propaganda celebrated on the Sunday in the
octave of the Epiphany. You would have heard speak or chant in their
own languages Greeks, Syrians, and I know not how many from other
nations--even a negro from Senegambia, who was not applauded the
least, for, though his _wolof_ was understood by hardly any one, his
powerful and pathetic voice made an extraordinary impression on the
whole audience. A composition in verse, recited some years ago at
one of these exhibitions, sets forth in a happy manner the peculiar
character of this house. Here is an extract from it which you will
not read without pleasure:
"Toute diversité vient ici se confondre;
Le Chinois parle au Turc surpris de lui répondre,
Gambier par l'Indoustan se laisse interroger,
Le nègre ouvre l'oreille aux doux chants de la Grèce,
Et dans ce choeur de voix, qui s'aggrandit sans cesse,
Dieu prépare une place au Bédouin d'Alger.
Rome! c'est dans ton sein que leur accord s'opère!
Dans ce chaos de mots qui divise la terre,
L'harmonie apparît des qu'on prie avec toi;
Ton hymne universel est le concert des âmes,
Le Dieu de l'unité, que seule tu proclames,
En nos accents divers entend la même foi.
Sur tout rivage ou peut aborder une voile,
Tes apôtres s'en vont, guidés par ton étoile,
Des peoples renouer l'antique parenté;
La vérité refait ce qu'a détruit le crime,
Et Rome, de Babel antipode sublime,
Du genre humain épars reconstruit l'unité."
All races are here mingled. The Chinaman converses with the
surprised Turk, and Gambia is questioned by Hindostan. The negro
listens to the sweet chants of Greece, and in this choir of
voices, constantly increasing, Providence has prepared a place for
the Bedouin of Algiers.
Rome, it is in thy bosom that this union is effected! In the
confusion of tongues which divides the nations, harmony is
restored by union with thee. All souls join in thy universal hymn.
The God of unity, whom thou alone proclaimest, hears the same
accent of faith in our different languages.
Thy apostles, guided by thy star, go forth to every shore where
a vessel can land, to bind all nations to their venerable head.
Truth repairs the devastations of sin, and Rome, sublime antipode
of Babel, restores the unity of the scattered human race.
These verses quoted by the Abbé Gerbet, and which he had, I think,
composed himself for that occasion, express with a rare felicity this
unique character of Christian Rome, which is the harmonious fusion
of Catholicity with unity. Besides, are not these two prerogatives
one and the same thing under two different aspects? For what is
Catholicity but a unity which expands and is diffusive? And what is
unity but Catholicity drawn to its centre?
The name of Holy City, now synonymous with that of Rome, implies
another characteristic, not less brilliant, not less peculiar of the
church which is one and universal. The Vatican basilica--for it is
this we are particularly studying--seems to have been constructed
and arranged expressly to prove that the church is the mother of the
saints. Remember, first, that this temple has been for a long time
the only sanctuary used at the great festivals of beatification and
canonization. It is useless to recall the ceremonies of this kind
that have recently been celebrated here with so much solemnity; but
what is not useless to remark is, that the public honors conferred on
these heroes of sanctity have always been preceded by examinations
so minute and scrupulously careful that the most distrustful critic
could not, without the loss of human confidence, resist the light
of evidence. Look up above the arches of the grand nave. There, on
a level with the acanthus leaves of the pilasters, are the colossal
representations and personifications of the Christian virtues,
mingling like the flora of heaven with the vegetation of earth. Are
there only mere symbols there? Look a little lower down, and you will
discover something else. Ranged around the nave from the choir and
the transepts to the porticoes are the statues of the founders of
the religious orders, beginning with the patriarch St. Benedict and
ending with St. Vincent de Paul and St. Theresa; and under the form
of these great leaders, the eye of thought beholds an innumerable
number of holy souls--monks or religious--who, following their
footsteps, have acquired the palm of sanctity. This brilliant array
of saints around the basilica does not end at the threshold of the
temple. Go for a moment into the grand portico, and you will see
the chain continued and prolonged on the immense colonnade of the
square. There is a whole nation of martyrs, pontiffs, confessors,
and virgins, ranged like a procession before the Saviour and his
apostles, whose images look down from the façade of the basilica.
And entering anew into the nave, you will find on the pillars of
the three first balustrades at the right and left, the medallions
of the first popes, almost all martyrs; and this is not a complete
list of those who are honored as saints. There are more than eighty
here who bear this title; and how many more are also worthy of being
numbered with them! For, in spite of some stains that calumny has
vainly magnified, the successors of Peter have brilliantly justified
the title of _Holy See_ conferred on the Roman chair, and have left
in history the most luminous train in the annals of sanctity. You
see also the fine mosaics on the projecting arches of the small
domes--they are the doctors and the fathers of the church; and among
them you will find these grand oriental figures: St. Flavian, St.
Germanus of Constantinople, and St. John Damascene. Beneath the
altars of the lateral chapels you will discover the bodies of these
other incomparable glories of the ancient oriental church: St. Basil
the Great, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, and St. John Chrysostom. The
whole church is in a manner paved with the tombs of the saints.[81]
Do not forget that this is the place where Nero, the greatest of
persecutors, had the Christians of Rome burned as torches before his
atrocious eyes. Add to all these venerable relics, the numberless
others that St. Peter's possesses in its treasury, without mentioning
a second time the ashes of the holy apostles, and your faith will
behold a thousand times more beauty and brilliancy in the august
remains that adorn this grand basilica than in one of its great
illuminations, though the finest in the world.
And what would we find if we could examine all the other sanctuaries
of Rome and its immense cemeteries? The catacombs alone have
furnished for the veneration of the faithful an incalculable number
of bones of martyrs, and the richness of these mines, so fruitful
in sanctity, has not yet been exhausted. Different circumstances
have contributed to bring together at Rome relics from the entire
Christian world. The most humble oratories and chapels display such
treasures without number. "One would say that from almost every
region where the gospel has been preached--from the mountains of
Armenia to the forests of America, from the shores of England to the
caves of Japan--the most of those who were martyrs by the shedding
of their blood, or martyrs of charity, have been desirous that some
part of themselves should join this great council of catacombs.
The ancient Christians sometimes designated the cemeteries of the
martyrs by the name of councils." A list has been drawn up of the
countries and cities which were the birthplace, the residence, or
the tombs of the saints whose relics are at Rome. This geographical
selection is in a manner a funereal atlas of the Christian world....
What constellations of tombs are here! An antiquary has happily
said they form _the subterranean heaven_ of Rome.... If you connect
in imagination with the different parts of this reliquary of the
universe the virtues that each specially represents, and which
altogether afford the least imperfect likeness of the God-man, you
will see in the midst of this _campo santo_ of the Christian world
the most sublime image of the Saviour that can be found on earth;
for it is not produced by colors, or composed of pieces of marble,
but of the members of those who lived the life of Jesus Christ--a
kind of mosaic doubly sacred by reason of what it represents and the
materials of which it is composed, in which each part contributes to
reproduce more grandly the image with which it is itself stamped.
Every Christian era has contributed to this work, and Rome is the
sepulchre where this mysterious form will repose till the last
day.[82]...
This is not all. Relics much more sacred than those of the saints are
also reunited in this great metropolis. Pious pilgrims may venerate
considerable fragments of the wood of the manger and of the true
cross, as well as the inscription in three languages that Pilate
attached to it. They can climb the staircase of the pretorium which
the Saviour must have ascended and descended several times, and on
which may be still seen traces of his blood. Finally, (for I cannot
tell all,) from the tribune of the Vatican basilica there is exposed,
on certain solemn occasions, the holy face imprinted on the veil of
Veronica, a part of the true cross, and the lance that pierced the
heart of Jesus after his death. What was most precious at Jerusalem
providence has transferred to Rome, to show that it is henceforth a
new Jerusalem--the holy city and the treasury of the merits of Jesus
Christ.
This accumulation of relics and sacred memorials gives to Rome a
peculiar power of profoundly moving every Christian heart. It is well
known that it is particularly in thus holy city that are wrought the
wonders of divine grace--the most extraordinary conversions. When
one has a soul reasonable and noble enough to rise above prejudice
and common views, when one is capable of tasting the gift of God, it
is impossible not to feel the sweet influence of this atmosphere all
impregnated with supernatural odors. All the religious monuments,
all the sanctuaries, every atom of dust, so to speak, of this
soil impregnated with the blood of martyrs, cause in the worthy
heart, an emotion more penetrating and powerful than any other on
earth. And whatever frivolity or hatred--too often agreed--may say,
these impressions are not weakened by observing the Roman people
in general, or the majority of the pilgrims to the Holy City, or
its adopted children; on the contrary, the sight of the crowds
kneeling on the pavements of the churches or proceeding with grave
thoughtfulness to the stations and religious festivals, has its share
in affecting the very fibres of each Christian heart. All this I know
does not move those who quench the light, according to the expression
of Holy Writ: these can, if they choose, repeat the insolent proverb,
_Roma veduta, fede perduta_--"To see Rome is to lose your faith;"
and, after all, they are right; for when the eyes are diseased,
nothing blinds them more easily than the rays of the sun.
Is there any need of adding that in this respect the Roman Church
defies all comparison with schismatical or Protestant churches,
wherever they may be? I confine myself to one question: where is
the city in England, Germany, or Russia that, after attracting to
it the noblest and most sincere souls in the world, imposes on them
the irresistible desire of abjuring the religion of their fathers,
as illustrious Protestants have often done at Rome? This strange
phenomenon, this power of converting, peculiar to Rome, and to Rome
alone, suffices to prove to those who can reason from cause to effect
that the Roman Church is truly a holy and sanctifying church, as it
is a church indivisible, catholic, and apostolic--_unam, sanctam,
catholicam, et apostolicam ecclesiam_.
All these privileges, these characteristic signs of the true church
are found, as we have seen, in the basilica of St. Peter. It is
more than certain that no premeditated intention has produced this
lapidary and monumental synthesis. All has been brought about in
a spontaneous manner--effected only by a sense of the truth here
set forth, and whose inspirations have been followed. The Vatican
basilica has become an immense book, which shows on every leaf the
authentic proofs and characteristics assigned by Christian antiquity
as the means of recognizing the true institution founded by Jesus
Christ.
It seems to me there is no need of prolonging these observations to
show the correspondence I mentioned at first, between this basilica
and the solemn reunion which is soon to take place under its arches.
When the Council of the Vatican holds there its grand sessions, the
very stones of the edifice will cry aloud, _lapides clamabunt_,
to attest that the church is indivisible--one in its faith, its
government, its sacraments and worship, and united in all these by
the unity of its priesthood to its central authority. The stones of
the basilica will proclaim by their inscriptions, their statues,
and all the sacred mementoes of which they are the witnesses and
depositories, that this is the church alone Catholic, the only origin
and source of Catholicity; alone holy, the only mother of the saints,
and the only source of sanctity. They will unite their voice to that
of the monuments and tombs in declaring that this is the church alone
apostolic--the only inheritor of the see and privileges of Peter,
and, consequently, the only foundation of all other churches.
The Vatican basilica possesses a particular memorial which I have
not yet mentioned, and which is a material proof of the legitimate
succession of Peter in the Roman Church. It is the chair once used
by the Prince of the Apostles. This incomparable relic was exposed
to the veneration of the faithful at the eighteenth centenary of
the martyrdom of St. Peter. Since that day it has been religiously
enclosed in the walls of the basilica; but if it is no longer
visible to the eye, there is, at the end of the apsis, a symbolical
representation which eloquently expresses the same idea. It is the
apostolic chair supported by the four great doctors of the East and
West, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius and St. John
Chrysostom. In conferring on them the glory of supporting the chair
of Peter the genius of art has only expressed the constant language
of their deeds and their writings, condensed in an expression of St.
Augustine, "The primacy of the apostolic see has always been confined
to the Church of Rome." A similar testimony in favor of the Roman
primacy has been given by other doctors and founders of churches
whose forms adorn the basilica, or whose bodies repose under its
altars. They all proclaim the rights of the apostolic see in union
with St. Jerome, "It is on this rock that the church was founded;
whoever eats of the lamb out of this house is defiled." They all
proclaim with St. Irenæus that "all churches ought to rally around
that of Rome on account of its preponderating preëminence," as the
smaller domes of the basilica surround the great dome to render
homage to its royal dignity, _propter potiorem principalitatem_.
Finally, the same testimony is rendered to the supremacy of St.
Peter's chair by the immense "council of catacombs," by all the
saints whose relics repose in this _campo santo_, this "holy field"
of the Christian world. Their remains are the glory of the Roman
communion in which they professed to live and die, and, all dead as
they are, they speak and prophesy that this church will be till the
end the true tabernacle of God with man.
Thus, when Pius IX. takes his seat to preside at the august council,
he will be surrounded by all the proofs that assert the plenitude
of his apostolic authority--the testimony of the martyrs and holy
confessors, of the doctors and founders of churches, of the popes
his predecessors and all the traditions they represent; finally,
the testimony of Jesus Christ himself, whose words the Vatican
basilica expresses in various ways: "_Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church.... And I will give to thee the keys
of the kingdom of heaven.... I have prayed for thee that thy faith
fail not.... Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs._" Surrounded by so many
proofs of his power, of which no other place in the world can give
a recapitulation more solemnly eloquent, the successor of Peter can
here claim, with more reason than anywhere else, the prerogatives of
the Prince of the Apostles; he can apply to himself the words graven
on the pedestal of the bronze statue of St. Peter, "Behold in my
person the Divine Word, the rock beautifully wrought with gold, upon
which I now stand immovable."
The bishops also will find in the basilica more monuments than in
any other place in the world that attest the divine right they have
received to govern the church with the successor of St. Peter, and
under his supreme authority. The expressive statues of Athanasius,
Ambrose, Augustine, Flavian, and Germanus of Constantinople, the
bodies of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Chrysostom will
be there to proclaim the glory, the privileges, and the inalienable
rights of the episcopacy. But especially the united relics of
the apostolic college of whom the bishops are collectively the
successors, the constant presence of this "council of Jerusalem"
will be a proof that it belongs to them to judge in all matters of
faith and discipline, and to appropriate the august formula, "It hath
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us"--_Visum est Spiritui Sancto
et nobis_.
The Son of God himself will give to the council of the Vatican very
special pledges of his protection and love. I have already mentioned
the precious relics of the Passion, the imprint of the divine face,
his cross which redeemed the world, and the lance that brought
forth blood and water from his heart--symbols of baptism and all
the treasures of grace. The Catholic faith has the assurance of
the divine assistance promised to oecumenical councils. It cannot
receive from the presence of these venerable objects any substantial
augmentation; but they may produce a sensible excitation, and will be
a very special pledge of reasonable hope; and besides, if it is true
that certain privileged places have the power of profoundly moving
the soul, how can it be denied that this virtue evidently belongs to
the basilica of St. Peter? Yes, it is right that the greatest event
of our age should take place in this temple--the largest in the
world--under these arches which astonish us the more the longer we
regard them, because they give us an ever new sensation of immensity
and majesty. It is right that the representatives of the universal
church should be face to face with the immortal monuments of
apostolicity, unity, catholicity, and sanctity; in presence of these
tombs of the sovereign pontiffs and great bishops; in contact, so to
speak, with the corner-stone on which whoever falls shall be broken.
It is right that in looking down into the glorious tombs of Sts.
Peter and Paul they should behold the very origin of Christianity;
and this at a time when there is a question of the renovation and
modification of Christian society. Finally, it is right that, in
laboring upon this superhuman work, they should have before them
the eloquent examples of their glorious predecessors in the same
work, and likewise the visible signs and authentic proofs of the
assistance, protection, and blessing of Heaven. All these mementoes
and holy objects will inspire the fathers of the council with a
more profound sentiment of the greatness of their task and a deeper
consciousness of their strength; and when they behold on the dome the
representation of the Father of light, from whom cometh every perfect
gift, that of the eternal Shepherd surrounded by his apostles and
the Queen of saints, and that of the Spirit of truth hovering over
the tomb of St. Peter and over his symbolic chair, they will feel
more fully that they are not vain representations; they will hear
and comprehend with a more profound and intense emotion the words of
the divine promises, _Behold I am with you.... As the Father hath
sent me, so have I sent you.... I will send you the Paraclete, who
shall teach you all truth.... He who heareth you heareth me: he who
despiseth you despiseth me. He who believeth shall be saved: he who
believeth not shall be condemned._
I have endeavored to present some of the reflections suggested by the
Vatican basilica by reason of the coming council. From the same point
of view we might find many other perspectives not less interesting,
by taking new positions near the tombs of the holy apostles.
For the present, however, it is time to close. Let us leave these
sacred walls after having kissed anew the revered foot of Peter. In
traversing the great square, let us read the celebrated inscription
graven by Sixtus V. on the obelisk, and which, it is to be hoped,
will have, by means of the council, its entire verification,
_Christus vincit--Christus regnat--Christus imperat. Christus ab omni
malo plebem suam defendat_. "Christ overcomes--Christ reigns--Christ
rules. May Christ defend his people from every evil."
And now, before separating, let us ascend for a moment one of the
hills of Rome to contemplate this great basilica from a distance, at
the hour preferred by visitors, when the sun is about to set behind
the dome. Here listen to the lines of a poet whose name is dear to us
by so many titles:
"Dall' altezza del Pincio contemplando
Il disceso all' occaso Astro primiero,
Ammiravam siccome egli, toccando
La divina Basilica di Piero,
Arricchisca di luce i suoi tesori
E con celeste amor si fermi a cingerla
Di rubini, zaffiri et fulgid' ori;
Io quindi ammutolia.
Ma intesi una più fervida, più pia
Alma esclamar: 'Son quelle
Le due dell' universo opre più belle
Onde materia sublimata adornisi:
Dio per l'uom quella Lampa in ciel ponea,
Al suo Signor l'uomo quel tempio ergea.'"
"Contemplating afar from Pincio's height
The monarch orb slow sinking in the west,
Enrapt we stood to see him touch the shrine
Of Peter, the Basilica divine--
Enriching all its treasures with his light:
And how his love its grandeur did invest
With robe of rubies, sapphires, and bright gold.
And I withal grew voiceless at the sight;
But one, a soul of purer beat than mine,
Made utterance at my side, 'In these behold
Two works, of all which matter can unfold
Of ornament, creation's loveliest.
God set for man that lamp in yonder sky:
Man to his Lord this temple raised on high.'"
Yes, Silvio Pellico is right: there are before us two of the finest
creations in the universe. The light that God has suspended in the
firmament to shine on man, and this temple that man has erected
to honor his God. But if the divine basilica of Peter appears so
beautiful and radiant when the sun surrounds it with an aureola
of rubies and sapphires, what will it be when the look of faith,
which discovers things invisible, sees it surrounded by the rays, a
thousand times more brilliant, of divine and incorruptible truth?
Such, nevertheless, will be the spectacle Catholic souls will enjoy
when is accomplished what the bishops in a celebrated address have
styled the great work of light--_grande opus illuminationis_.
ROME, April 19, 1869.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] See _Istoria della sacrosanta patriarcale Basilica Vaticana_. By
the Rev. F. M. Mignanti. Vol. i. c. xxiii. Other special synods are
mentioned, held in the ancient basilica of St. Peter--the first in
386, and the last in 1413.
[73] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. c. iii.
[74] The fact to which I have alluded happened in 1848. The details
are to be found in Mignanti's _Istoria_, vol. ii. pp. 203-5.
[75] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. ch. ii.
[76] Sermon on the Unity of the Church.
[77] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. ii. c. x.
[78] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. c. ii.
[79] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. c. 6.
[80] My learned _confrère_, Father Martinoff, has been so kind as
to translate a passage from an ancient manuscript attesting this
interesting fact.
[81] _Tutto il pavimento dell' istessa chiesa è pieno di sepolcri di
santi._ _Bosio_, _Roma Sotter_, p. 33.
[82] I am sorry to abridge these quotations from the Abbé Gerbet.
They should be read in their connection in order to comprehend
the beautiful development of his ideas. I wished to make numerous
extracts from this great writer, first, because they would be the
most brilliant part of these pages, and that they might cause a
book too little known, in spite of its eminent merits, to be more
appreciated. Whoever truly wishes to know Rome, should read and
re-read _l'Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_. Although this work was not
as fully finished as the celebrated Bishop of Perpignan intended, he
implies to a certain degree what he does not say, for he possesses a
suggestive talent which is the peculiarity of genius. He opens to us
new perspectives. His broad religious and philosophic views of Rome
direct and develop the personal views of the reader who attentively
studies the place. Such has been my experience, and I wish that all
instructed Christians who come to Rome could experience it more fully.
BEECHER'S NORWOOD.[83]
[Our delay in noticing this book by a distinguished author till
the reading public have probably forgotten it, has been purely
unintentional. We placed it, soon after its publication, in the
hands of one of our collaborateurs, a genuine New Englander by
birth, education, and association, to prepare a notice or a review
of it, as he might judge proper. He read it, no inconsiderable
feat, but was taken very ill, and lay for many months with faint
hopes of recovery. During his illness and for some time after his
recovery the book was forgotten. He now, at this late day, sends
us his judgment, and we hasten to pay our respects to the author,
and our debt to the publishers.--ED. CATH. WORLD.]
The Beecher family is certainly a remarkably gifted family, though we
think the father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was the best of them all. Yet
his two daughters, Miss Catharine Beecher and Mrs. Harriet Beecher
Stowe, are women of rare abilities, and have made their mark on the
times and sad havoc with New England theology. Dr. Edward Beecher
has written several notable books, among which may be mentioned _The
Papal Conspiracy_ and the _Conflict of the Ages_, which prove him
almost equally hostile to Rome and to Geneva. Henry Ward Beecher is
the most distinguished of the sons, and probably ranks as the most
popular, certainly the most striking, pulpit orator in the country.
But none of the family are remarkable for purity of taste, refined
culture, or classical grace and polish as writers. They would seem
to owe their success partly to their audacity, but principally to a
certain rough vigor and energy of character, and to their sympathy
with the popular tendencies of their country. They rarely take, never
knowingly take, the unpopular side of a question, or attempt to stem
the current of popular opinion. They are of the world, and the world
loves them. They never disturb its conscience by condemning its moral
ideal, or calling upon it to strive after a higher and purer ideal.
They have in an eminent degree the genius of commonplace. There are
in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and _The Ministers Wooing_ passages of rare
force and vigor, but they are not very original, nor very recondite.
The Beecher genius is not lyrical or dramatic, but essentially
militant and prosaic. It can display itself only against an
antagonist, and an antagonist at least about to fall under the ban of
public opinion. They have some imitative ability, but little creative
power, and rarely present us with a living character. We remember
only two living characters in all Mrs. Stowe's writings, Dred and the
Widow Scudder; and we are not certain that these are not copies of
originals.
The author of _Norwood_ is less of an artist than his sister, Mrs.
Stowe, and under the relation of art his novel is below criticism.
It contains many just observations on various topics, but by no
means original or profound; it seizes some few of the traits of New
England village life; but its characters, with the exception of
Judge Bacon, Agate Bissell, and Hiram Beers, are the abstractions
or impersonations of the author's theories. The author has little
dramatic power, and not much wit or humor. The persons or personages
of his book are only so many points in the argument which he is
carrying on against Calvinistic orthodoxy for pure naturalism. The
substance of his volume seems to be made up of the fag-ends of
his sermons and lectures. He preaches and lectures all through it,
and rather prosily into the bargain. His Dr. Wentworth is a bore,
and his daughter Rose, the heroine of the story, is a species of
bluestocking, and neither lovely nor lovable. As a type of the
New England cultivated and accomplished lady she is a failure,
and is hardly up to the level of the New England school-ma'am.
The sensational incidents of the story are old and worn out, and
the speculations on love indicate very little depth of feeling or
knowledge of life, or of the human heart. The author proceeds on a
theory, and so far shows his New England birth and breeding, but he
seldom touches reality.
As a picture of New England village life it is singularly
unfortunate, and still more so as a picture of village life in the
valley of the Connecticut, some twenty miles above Springfield,
in Massachusetts, where the scene is laid, and where the tone and
manners of society in a village of five thousand inhabitants, the
number Norwood is said to contain, hardly differ in refinement and
polish from the tone and manners of the better classes in Boston
and its vicinity. There are no better families, better educated,
better bred, more intellectual in the State, than are to be found
in no stinted numbers in the towns of the Connecticut valley, the
garden of Massachusetts. The book is full of anachronisms. The
peculiar New England traits given existed to a certain extent, in our
boyhood, in back settlements or towns not lying near any of the great
thoroughfares; but they have very generally disappeared through the
influence of education, the railroads, which run in all directions
through the State, and the almost constant intercourse with the
society of the capital.
The turnpikes did much to destroy the rustic manners and language
of the population of the interior villages, and the railroads have
completed what they left undone. Save in a few localities, there
is no longer a rustic population in Massachusetts, and very little
distinction between the countryman and the citizen. In small country
villages you may find Hiram Beers still, but Tommy Taft, Polly
Marble, and Agate Bissell are of a past generation, and even in
the past belonged to Connecticut rather than to the Old Bay State.
Strangers suppose the people of the several New England States
have all the same characteristics, and are cut out and made up
after the same pattern; but in reality, except in the valley of the
Connecticut, where there is a blending of the characteristics of the
adjoining States, the differences between the people of one State
and those of another are so strongly marked that a careful observer
can easily tell, on seeing a stranger, to which of the six New
England States he belongs, without hearing him speak a word, and not
unfrequently the section of his State from which he comes. There is
no mistaking a Berkshire countryman for a Cape Codder, or a Vermonter
for a true son of the Old Bay State, or a Rhode Islander. The gait,
the air, the manners, the physiognomy even, tell at once the man's
native State. The Vermonter is the Kentuckian of the East, as the
Georgian is the Yankee of the South, and we have found no two cities
in the Union, and there are few east of the Rocky Mountains that we
have not visited, where the citizens of the one have so many points
of resemblance with those of the other, as Boston, the metropolis of
New England, and Charleston, the real capital of South Carolina.
Accidental differences of course there are, but the type of character
is the same, and the purest and best American type we have met with.
And we are very disinterested in our judgment, for we are natives
of neither city nor State. In both we have the true English type
with its proper American modifications. No two cities stood firmer,
shoulder to shoulder, during the American war of independence, "the
times that tried men's souls," than Boston and Charleston. They
became opposed not till, under the lead of Philadelphia and the
Pennsylvania and Kentucky politicians, Congress had fastened on the
country the so-called American system, which struck a severe blow at
the commerce of New England, and compelled its capitalists to seek
investment for their capital in manufactures. It is a little singular
that New England, which up to 1842 had voted against every protective
tariff that had been adopted, should have the credit or discredit of
originating and securing the adoption of the protective system. The
ablest speech ever made against the system in Congress was made in
1824 by Mr. Webster, then a member of the House of Representatives
from Boston. We express no opinion on the question between free-trade
and so-called protection; we only say that Pennsylvania and
Kentucky, not the New England States, are chiefly responsible for
the protective system; the very remote cause, at least, of the late
terrible civil war between the North and South, in which, if the
victory was for the Union, the South are likely to be the gainers in
the long run, and the North the losers.
But we are wandering. Mr. Beecher speaks truly of the diversity
and originality of individual character in New England, which you
discover when you have once broken through the thin crust of
conventionalism; but he seems not to have observed equally the
marked differences of character between the people of the several
States. The wit of a Massachusetts man is classical and refined; of
the Connecticut man sly, and not incapable of being coarse; of the
Vermonter it is broad farce, and nobody better than he can keep a
company of good fellows in a roar till morning. The Bay State man
has a strong attachment to tradition and to old manners and customs,
and his innovating tendency is superinduced, and is as repugnant
to his nature as Protestantism is to the _perfervidum ingenium
Scottorum_. He is naturally a conservative, as the Scotch are, if
we may so speak, naturally Catholic; and it was only a terrible
wrench of the Scottish nature that induced the loyal Scots to adopt
the Reformation. The Connecticut man excels the Bay State man in
ingenuity, in inventive genius, in doing much with little; is less
conservative by nature, and more enterprising and adventurous, and
in his exterior conduct more under the influence of public opinion.
Each is proud of his State, and the Connecticut man especially, who
has acquired wealth elsewhere, is fond of returning to his early
home to display it; but attachment to the soil is not very strong in
either, and neither will make heavy sacrifices for simple love of
country. The Bay State man is more influenced by his principles, his
convictions, like the South Carolinian, and the Connecticut man more
by his interests.
The Vermonter has no conservative tendency by nature; he cares
not the snap of his finger for what his father believed or did;
is personally independent, generally free from snobbishness, no
slave to public opinion, and for the most part has the courage of
his convictions; but he loves his State, loves her green hills and
fertile valleys, and when abroad holds a fellow-Vermonter dear as his
brother. A Georgian and a Connecticut man are fighting in Georgia;
the Connecticut man looking on will wish his countryman to get the
better of his Georgian opponent, but will not interpose till he has
inquired into the cause of the dispute, and ascertained on which side
is the law. A Georgian and a Vermonter are fighting under the same
circumstances; the Vermonter comes up, looks, knocks the Georgian
down, rescues his countryman, and investigates the cause and the
law afterward. The Vermonter pays no attention to the personal
responsibility he may incur; the Connecticut man tries to keep always
clear of the law; and if he makes up his mind to do a great wrong
to some one, he takes care to do it under cover of law, so that no
hold can be got of him. The Bay State man is much the same; and the
Connecticut man has less of patriotism than the Vermonter. We speak
of what was the case in our own youth and early manhood; yet the
character of the whole American people has so changed during the last
forty years that we can hardly any longer recognize them, and in the
judgment of an old man they have changed not for the better.
We have no space to remark on the characteristic differences of the
three remaining New England States. These States have still less
resemblance to each other. The people of Maine differ widely from
the people of New Hampshire, and the people of Rhode Island have
very few traits in common with the people of any of the other New
England States. The author of _Norwood_ has lost no little of his own
original New England character or overlaid it with his Westernism. He
is not in sympathy with the true New England character, as found in
any of the New England States, and is more disposed to exaggerate, in
his descriptions, its few eccentricities than to bring out its higher
and nobler qualities. No doubt the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts
and Connecticut set out with the intention of founding what they
regarded as a Christian commonwealth, in which the evangelical
counsels should be recognized and enforced as laws. They would have
organized and maintained society, except in not enjoining celibacy,
after the mode of a Catholic monastery. They attempted by constant
vigilance and the strict enforcement of very rigorous laws to shut
out all vice and immorality from their community. They were rigorists
in morals, somewhat rigid and stern in their personal character, and
have been generally supposed to be much more so than they really
were. Their experiment of a Christian commonwealth as it existed in
their own ideal failed, partly through their defective faith and the
absence of supernatural grace, and partly through their exacting too
much of human nature, or even of men in the flesh, except an elect
few. But they, nevertheless, succeeded in laying the foundation of a
Christian as distinguished from a pagan republic, or in founding the
state, the first in history, on truly Christian principles; that is,
on the rights of God, and which better than any other known state has
protected the rights of man.
The Puritan did not separate from the Church of England on the
principle of liberty of dissent, or because he wished to establish
what liberals now understand by religious liberty. The principle of
his separation was the Catholic principle, that the magistrate has
no authority in spirituals, and no right to prescribe any forms or
ceremonies to be used in worship. It was a solemn protest not against
the doctrines of the Anglican Church, but against the authority
it conceded in spiritual matters to the civil power--or the civil
magistrate, as they said then. The Puritan was logical; he had a
good major, and his conclusion would have been just, if his minor
had only been true; and we are, in our opinion, indebted to him far
more than to Lord Baltimore or to Governor Dongan of New York for the
freedom of conscience secured by our institutions. Lord Baltimore
and Governor Dongan sought the free exercise of their own religion
for their co-religionists, and asserted, and in their situation
could assert, only toleration. Neither could assert the principle of
true religious liberty, the incompetency of the state in spirituals,
holding, as they did, their power from the king of England and head
of the Anglican Church. The Puritan abominated toleration, called it
the devil's doctrine, and proved himself little disposed to practise
it; but in asserting the absolute independence of the church or
religion before the civil magistrate, he asserted the true principle
of religious liberty, which the Catholic Church always and everywhere
asserts, and laid in the American mind the foundation of that
religious freedom of which our religion, which they hated, now enjoys
the benefit.
We have nothing to say of the virtues of the Puritans in relation
to the world to come; but they certainly had great and rare civil
virtues, and they have had the leading share in founding and shaping
the American state. They were grave, earnest--too much so, if you
will; but however short they fell in practice, they always asserted
the independence and supremacy of the moral order in relation to
civil government, and the obligation of every man to obey God rather
than men, and to live always in reference to the end for which God
makes him. Their moral standard was high, and they set an example
of as moral a people as can be looked for outside of the church.
They had only a faulty religion, and perhaps were Stoics rather
than Christians in their temper; but they always put religion in
its right place, and gave the precedence to its ministers. They
placed education under charge of the church, and the system of
common schools which they originated or adopted was really a system
of parochial schools, under the supervision of the pastor, and
supported by a tax on the parish, imposed by the parishioners, in
public meetings, on themselves. The centralized system of godless
schools, borrowed from the Convention that decreed the death of Louis
XVI., generally adopted by the Middle and Western States, is hardly
yet fully adopted in Massachusetts, though since 1835 it has been
gradually gaining the ascendency; and Cambridge University, founded
for God and the church, has only this very year thrown off its
religious character, dispensed with morning prayers,[84] and become a
purely secular institution--an inevitable but a lamentable change.
The Puritans not only adopted a high moral standard, but they lived
as nearly up to it as is possible for human nature alone since the
fall, and few examples of a more rigidly moral people can be found
than were the New England people for a century and a half after
the landing of the Pilgrims, and to them, in no small measure, the
whole Union is indebted for its moral character as well as for the
greater part of its higher institutions of learning. There have
been as learned, as gifted, as great men, found in other States,
and perhaps even more learned, gifted, and greater; but there is no
part of the Union where the intellectual tone of society is so high,
or intellectual culture so general as in New England, especially
in the States founded by the Puritans, as were Massachusetts and
Connecticut. New York leads in trade and commerce; Pennsylvania
latterly, Virginia formerly, in politics; but the New England
mind has led in law, jurisprudence, literature, art, science, and
philosophy; though since Puritanism has been lapsing into liberalism
its preëminence is passing away. We speak of New England as it was
thirty or forty years ago, or a little earlier, when the majority of
the supreme judges, and two thirds of the members of the legislature
of New York were Connecticut or, at least, New England men. New
England, we fear, is no longer what she was when we were young, and
she appears only the shadow of her former self. She is attempting to
do, from sheer calculation, and purely secular motives, what even in
the heyday of Puritanism was more than she could effect, aided by
strong religious convictions and motives. Still, if the substance
is wanting, she keeps up the appearance of her old moral character,
and in no part of the Union will you hear finer moral sentences, or
better reasoned orations on the beauty of virtue and the necessity of
religion to the commonwealth. Even New England infidelity is obliged
to assume a moral garb, to express itself in Christian phrases, and
affect to be more Christian than Christianity itself.
The author of _Norwood_ does not do justice to the intellectual
character of New England life, to the thought, the reflection, and
movements of a New England village of five thousand inhabitants.
His village philosopher, Dr. Wentworth, is very shallow, being very
narrow and very prosy. We could easily find any number of farmers
in the valley of the Connecticut able to see through his paganism
at a glance, and refute it with a word. Especially is the author
unjust to New England women. No doubt such women as Polly Marble,
Rachel Cathcart, Agate Bissell, and Mother Taft can be found in a
New England village, but they are not representative characters. New
England Puritanism was never so stiff, or so annoying to one's self
or to others, as it appears in these exceptional characters. The
women of New England are in general remarkable for their intellectual
culture, their gentleness, their refinement, their grace and dignity
of manners, the elevation and breadth of their minds, and the extent
and variety of their information, no less than for their domestic
tastes and habits, or superior _faculty_ as housekeepers. There are,
no doubt, blue stockings in Yankeeland which their wearers' skirts
are too short to conceal; no doubt, also, there are women there who
encroach on the rights and prerogatives of the other sex, and aspire
to be men; but your leading woman's rights women and men are not New
Englanders. Our old friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is a New
Yorker, and Susan B. Anthony, if born in Nantucket, is a Quakeress,
and the Quakers are of no country, or simply are their own country.
Many movements are accredited to New England which originated
elsewhere, and are simply taken up by a certain class of New
Englanders in easy circumstances, as a diversion or a dissipation,
instead of whist, balls, routs, and plays. Yet they are only a class.
The Massachusetts legislature voted down, by a large majority,
the proposition to give the elective franchise to women, and the
legislation of the Old Bay State continues far more masculine and
conservative than that of the State of New York.
_Norwood_ leaves the impression on the reader that the Puritans
were a set of gloomy fanatics, austere and unbending, harsh and
cruel, minding every body's business but their own, and seeking,
in season and out of season, to cram their horrible doctrines down
every neighbor's throat, and that the only sociable and agreeable
people to be found among them were precisely those who had broken
away from the Puritan thraldom, and returned to the cultivation and
worship of nature. The wish is father to the thought. More social,
neighborly, genial, kind-hearted, hospitable people it would be
difficult to find in the Union than were the great body of these
New England Puritans, than perhaps they are still; though they have
by no means improved since they have abolished the dinner-table, as
they suppose in the interest of temperance, and substituted opium for
Santa Cruz rum and old Jamaica spirits, as they have philanthropy for
devotion. Intellect, morals, and sociality seem to us to have sadly
deteriorated under the misdirected efforts to advance them.
But Henry Ward Beecher has had a far other purpose in _Norwood_
than to produce a work of art, to construct a story, or to sketch
New England village life. He is willing enough to correct some of
the misapprehensions which Southerners have, or had, of New England
character; but his book, after all, has a serious purpose, and is
intended to be a death-blow to New England theological and moral
doctrines.
The author, though nominally a Christian, and professedly a
Congregational preacher, is really a pagan, and wishes to abolish
Puritanism for the worship of nature. But it is less the Puritan than
the Christian he wars against; and if he understands himself, which
is doubtful, his thought is, that a child, taken as born, without
baptism or regeneration, may be trained up by the influence of
flowers and close communion with nature, beasts, birds, and fishes,
reptiles and insects, to be a Christian of the first water. Dr.
Wentworth represents this theory, and reduces it to practice in the
training of his daughter Rose, whose chief educator is the half-idiot
negro, Pete, "no great things in the intellects, but with a heart as
big as that of an ox." The theory recognizes Christ only in nature,
and really identifies him with nature, and resolves the Christian law
of perfection into the natural laws of the physicists. The author
holds, if any thing, that heaven, the crown of life, is in the order
of generation, and is attainable as the result of natural development.
The theory, of course, rejects the very fundamental principle of
Christianity, which declares that "except a man be born again he
cannot see the kingdom of God." The author, indeed, does not deny in
words the new birth; nay, asserts it, but resolves it into a natural
operation, a sort of mental and physical crisis, and recognizes
nothing supernatural, or any infusion of grace in it; which is in
reality to deny it. We have as hearty a dislike of Calvinism as
any one can have, and we know it passably well by our own early
experience; but we confess that we have no wish to see old-fashioned
Puritanism exchanged for pure rationalism or mere naturalism, and
as against Henry Ward Beecher, we are strongly tempted to defend
it. Any one who knows New England at all, knows that its morals
have deteriorated just in proportion as its old Puritanism has
declined, or been liberalized. The fact, whatever the explanation, is
undeniable. In our judgment, it is the natural result of loosening
the restraints which Puritanism undoubtedly imposed on the passions
and conduct, and leaving people to their natural passions, instincts,
and propensities, without any restraint at all. Despotism is bad
enough; but it is better than no government, better than anarchy.
As it affects the question of conversion to the church, we see no
gain in the change. We think a sincere, earnest-minded Puritan a
less hopeless subject than a liberal, like an Emerson, a John Weis,
a John Stuart Mill, a Mr. Lecky, a Herbert Spencer, or such men as
were the late Mr. Buckle and the late Sir William Hamilton, who
despise Christianity too much to offer any direct opposition to it.
The honest Puritan is prejudiced indeed, and unwilling to hear a word
in favor of the church; yet he believes in Christian morals, and has
some conception of the Christian plan of salvation, and therefore
really something for the missionary to work on; but men who have
resolved Christianity into naturalism, and measure reality or even
the knowable by their own narrow and superficial understandings, are
beyond his reach. Their case is hopeless.
Puritanism keeps alive in the community a certain Christian habit of
thought, a belief in the necessity of grace, and more or less of a
Christian conscience. The greater part of the common people gathered
into the sects in seasons of revivals, if our missionaries were
present, could just as easily be gathered into the church, and be
saved. We suffer terribly in this country for the want of missionary
priests, who can go wherever their services are needed by those who
know not yet "the faith once delivered to the saints." Our priests
are too few for the wants even of our old Catholic population, and
what with hearing confessions, and attending sick calls, building
churches and school-houses, and providing for the most pressing wants
of a Catholic people, are over-worked, and soon exhausted. The great
majority of our priests die young, from excessive labor. There is
with us a vast missionary field, not indeed among the sects, but
among the so-called Nothingarians, who comprise the majority of the
American people, and who, though without any specific belief, are
yet far from being confirmed unbelievers. But let the Beechers and
their associates succeed in reducing Christianity to naturalism,
and you soon make this whole class downright infidels. We can have,
therefore, no sympathy with Beecherism, or pleasure in seeing its
success against even old-fashioned New England Puritanism.
We should say as much of the Presbyterianism of the Middle, Western,
and Southern States. We believe any of the older Protestant sects
that retain a belief in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and future
rewards and punishments, and that practise infant baptism, are
preferable by far to any form of modern liberalism, which discards
dogma for sentiment and reason for the soul, and are really
nature-worshippers, and as much idolaters as were the old pagans,
whose rivers and ponds, whose gardens and orchards were overrun with
gods. Even a Methodist is upon the whole better than a Liberal,
however puffed up he may be by the successful worship of mammon by
his sect, and its growing respectability in the eyes of the world.
We have bestowed, perhaps, more attention on Mr. Beecher and his
novel than they deserve, but we have made them the text for a
desultory discourse, partly in defence of New England against her
denigration attempted by one of her prominent sons, and partly in
protest against the revival of heathen nature-worship favored by
the author. We have not aimed at exalting New England above other
sections of the Union. Each section of our common country has its
peculiar merits, which are essential to the welfare and development
of the whole. New England has hers, which, in some respects, excel
those of other sections, and in other respects fall short of them.
It is not for us to strike the balance, and to decide which upon
the whole preponderate. We have wished to give New England her due,
without detracting any thing from what is due to any other section
of the Union. We should be sorry to see the effort now making to
New Englandize the South succeed. There are some things in the New
England character that could be corrected with advantage; and there
is much in the Southern character, its openness, its frankness, its
personal independence, its manliness, its aristocratic tone and
manner, that we should be sorry to lose. But we do not like to find
any man decrying his own native land or insensible to its merits.
FOOTNOTES:
[83] Norwood; or, Village Life in New England. By Henry Ward Beecher.
New York: Scribner & Co. 1868. 12mo, pp. 549.
[84] Since this was written, we learn that morning prayers are not
dispensed with, only they are held at eight o'clock instead of an
earlier hour, as formerly.
CHURCH MUSIC
I.
"The Prayer of the Church is the most pleasing to the ear and heart
of God, and therefore the most efficacious of all prayers." While
we have been perusing the various works on church music that have
come before us in the shape of book, pamphlet, tract, and magazine
article, we could not keep the words we have quoted above from the
celebrated Dom Gueranger out of our mind. In Europe, both in England
and on the continent, it is evident, from the numerous publications
pertinent to the subject which have been lately issued, that the due
celebration of the divine offices of the Church is becoming more and
more the object of no little anxiety on the part of the hierarchy,
and that the clergy are everywhere making strenuous efforts to
get rid of the abuses which since the Protestant reformation, the
straitness of the times has tolerated. One of the most notorious of
these abuses, fully naturalized amongst us, is the profane character
of church music. Several writers, among whom stand preëminent two
English priests--the Rev. Canon Oakeley and the Rev. James Nary--have
crossed swords on the subject of reform, and we have thus been
enabled not only to get at the merits of the particular dispute
between these two amicable combatants, but have been led as well to
reflect upon the primary object of music in the divine offices, the
intention of the Church, and the means she has ordained for realizing
it; although we must confess that, with Dom Gueranger's words ringing
in our ears, we have not heard from the pages of the publications
in question quite so clear an echo to their truth as we would have
wished.
The ritual service of the Church is her prayer, and melody is the
almost universal form of expression employed in its celebration.
Whatever music is sung or performed at her solemn rites is supposed
to be sung and performed by her not as a musical performance, but
as a prayer. These are the points more or less ignored in all the
discussions on what is or may be made suitable music for the Church.
The different sentences, anthems, psalms, etc., appointed to be
sung by the choir, are all so many prayers offered by the Church.
Therefore it is plain that what is proper as music at her offices
must as a first principle be a worthy expression of the voice of
the Church lifted in prayer. When the priest, robed in his garments
of sacrifice, intones the Gloria at the altar, he does so in the
name of the Church, not as the Rev. Mr. ---- performing a short,
effective, and fine tenor solo; and when the choir continues the same
angelical anthem, they do so--or rather, are supposed to do so--as
his assistants in the divine action. The priest takes his seat to
await its conclusion, not to make one of an audience who for the time
being are to be relieved from the more engrossing thoughts of prayer
by criticising the _Gratias_ as rendered by Mr. A., enjoying the _Qui
tollis_ by Miss B., or the _telling_ chorus of the _Cum Sancto_.
That the musical portions of the church offices are in a true sense
prayer, and are based upon that idea alone, namely, the union of
the soul with God; that such is the chief intention of the Church,
and should be the only object sought in the choice of music and the
execution of it, to the absolute subserviency, even if not to the
completely ignoring, of every other sentiment, is therefore beyond
question; but who will not be able to count upon his ten fingers the
churches in the United States where the music would be likely to
leave any such impression upon the minds of the worshippers?
We say this not in any cynical spirit. We know the "straitness of
the times," and we ourselves have been straitened, and are still,
as well as our neighbors; but the general uneasiness and discontent
felt among all classes because of the wretched performances of sacred
music to which we have been subjected, utterly at variance as they
are with the spirit of the sublime and solemn functions of religion,
is beginning to find a voice to make audible complaint, and exciting
some laudable efforts to rid the holy place of harmonies which savor
more of the world, the flesh, and the devil than they do of divine
prayer. So common is the ignorance of what the true music of the
Church is, that it is a rare thing to find even a Catholic who has
any idea that the Mass has not yet been fully sung when he has heard
the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, and not a note of
the Introit, Gradual, Prose, Offertory, or Communion. And as for the
Vespers, we think the fingers of one hand might suffice to count
the churches where any attempt is made to perform them entire. Of
the compositions executed in every style of musical art at Mass,
will not the first person to whom you may address yourself, be he a
devout Catholic well instructed in other matters, or a music-loving
Protestant who is fond of "attending service" in our churches on
account of the "glorious music of the Catholic Church," which he
thinks he hears there--will they not both tell you, if you are at the
pains to interrogate them, that Mozart and Haydn hold the place of
angelic doctors of music in the Catholic Church, and Webbe, Farmer,
Concone and Co. have equally honorable titles for small churches and
country choirs?
Would not either of them return you a stare of incredulity if you
told them that not one composition of any of these authors has ever
been recognized by any authority in the Church, and that the singing
of them has, in point of fact, been only barely tolerated; that the
great mass of these musical _morceaux_ are wholly unfit for the
purpose for which they were written, and that, ten chances to one,
neither of these good friends have ever heard, save the chanting of
the priest, one single note of the music sanctioned by the Church in
all their lives? Yet all this is true to the very letter. Lamentably
true; for religion, in the grandeur, power, and spiritual beauty of
its sacred offices, is the loser by it, and the devout and prayerful
spirit which such offices are calculated to excite in the souls of
the faithful is to a great extent hindered, and replaced by a spirit
of sensuousness and worldly amusement.
The fact beyond dispute is, that the faithful are deprived of the
true expression of the divine prayer of the Church, both on account
of the profane character of the music performed and the entire
omission of those portions of the Mass and Vespers which give a
distinctive color, tone, and meaning to the seasons and festivals,
such as the Introit, the Gradual, Prose, Offertory, Communion, and
Antiphons.
Not to speak of the wholly inexcusable practice of reproducing
well-known arias from different operas to which the words of some
devout hymn are adapted in the most shockingly garbled manner,
without regard to grammar or sense, a cursory examination of "the
masses" popular among us, and sung, without distinction, at any
season and on any festival, would be sufficient to condemn them as
totally unfit as vehicles of expression for the words set to them, or
the occasion of their performance. Let us quote some true words from
the Rev. Mr. Nary:
"Would any one contend that the rollicking tunes of many a modern
Kyrie express the meaning of the supplicatory ejaculation, _Lord,
have mercy on us_?... It may fairly be questioned whether any
one unaccustomed to our florid church-music, upon hearing one of
the jigs which render the sweet prayer, _O Lord, give us peace,
dona nobis pacem_, in some of our modern masses, would be able
to tell, not only that it aptly describes the words, but even
that it expresses any religious feeling at all. That in numerous
instances, modern church music, instead of being descriptive
of the holy words to which it is joined, rather expresses the
sensuous languor of the stage, or the airy joy of the ball-room,
could not well be disputed.
"Indeed, it is exceedingly remarkable that what Haydn, Mozart,
Weber, and others would have been ashamed to do for the stage,
they have, seemingly without a qualm of conscience, done for the
house of God. They knew that they must have been accused of folly,
had they in one of their operatic works given to earnestness the
tones of jesting, to prayer those of mirth; but this is precisely
what they have done for the services of the Church. The most
touching supplications of the liturgy are often clothed by them
in strains of mockery.... It is not implied here that there are
not in the works of the great modern composers beautiful passages
full of genuine religious feeling; but will any impartial judge
contend that there are many masses in which there is no blundering
at all between the words and the music?... Nay, is it not true
that certain masses by those composers, if separated from the
sacred words and applied to some libretto of the late Eugène
Scribe, would only gain in naturalness and meaning by the change?
What, then, it may be asked, is there no other music for the
Almighty than that of the theatre?... It can hardly be disputed
that some of our own churches have too often, in their musical
efforts, exhibited scenes bordering very closely upon downright
desecration of the house of God.... There is no need to describe
the sad feelings which arise in the heart of a Catholic who finds
the adorable sacrifice of the Mass turned into a Sunday morning
amusement.
"Some people, who allow that the music of some of our churches
is thoroughly profane, still justify its use on the plea that
it allures strangers, who may be favorably impressed with other
and more religious portions of the service. But this is a poor
justification of practices which annoy the real congregation, and
hinder devotion. No doubt a priest should seek to draw strangers
to his church, but all means are not equally legitimate toward
attaining this laudable end. Besides, the writer though entirely
unable to form any judgment which he could commend to the belief
of others, much doubts whether any priest could trace more than
a few conversions, if any at all, not to his church music, which
may partly be very ecclesiastical, but to his florid or orchestral
music, as to their origin."
We need to add little to this. The impressions left upon the mind
after being subjected to any one of such performances is well
known to all who have suffered. What religious feelings might one
reasonably expect to have pervaded (may we not say the audience?)
or what devotion could possibly be excited in the hearts of any
unfortunate worshippers present on the occasion of which the
following is a report:
"Haydn's Mass No. 16 was the great selection. The _Kyrie_ was
coldly given, the alto and bass, in the _soli_ parts, being
hardly strung up to tune. In the _Gloria_, however, both chorus
and soloists warmed to their work, and several of the finest
choral passages were given with great power and precision. The
_Credo_ was not taken up firmly, but every praise is due to the
manner in which the choir acquitted themselves at the finish,
and in the exquisite _Et Incarnatus_ and succeeding quartette
the four principal voices blended beautifully together, and the
alto (Miss ----) told well in the delivery of the leading and
interwoven subject, the _Sub Pontio_. The most critical would have
been satisfied with the evenness with which the principal voices
were balanced in this and the subsequent _soli_ passages. The
_Sanctus_ and _Hosanna_ were very fairly given, the _Benedictus_
being perhaps the most telling effort of all. The opening of the
_Agnus_ was not delivered sufficiently _staccato_, as the chorus
did not hang well together. The _Dona Nobis_ made up for all, and
throughout the principals acquitted themselves in unexceptionable
style, being well supported at the finish by the chorus."
We are aware that some, while agreeing with us, as they cannot help
but do, that "masses" in figured music, and "figured vespers,"
are in the style of their composition essentially profane, yet
choose them, and cause them to be performed, on the plea that the
sacredness of the place and the occasion of the divine office is
a sufficient corrective of their innate profanity, or that, being
"magnificent," "sublime," "classic," etc., such music may justly
be employed to adorn the grand functions of religion, and that
the theatre ought not to boast of _better_ music than the house
of God; that--as one such admirer of classic music said to us--we
ought to "spoil the Egyptians;" or again, that Protestants are
attracted to churches where such music is given, and may be led by
the charm of the music to inquire into the truths of our religion;
and finally, that there is nothing else to take its place; the
antiquated Gregorian chant being wholly unfit for the cultivated
musical ears of the nineteenth century, and to banish this music
from Catholic churches would be to do an irreparable injury to high
art. But all these pleas fail absolutely in producing any influence
upon our judgment, the words of Dom Gueranger sounding so loudly
in our ears as they do, and our own experience to the contrary.
In point of fact, the sacredness of the place where this kind of
music is sung is no corrective of the unworthy nature of the music
itself. Doubtless the cantatrice is denied the clapping of hands and
the _encore_ which her splendid singing calls for, and the _primo
basso_ retires from the front of the organ-gallery without a bow
to his fashionable auditory--nevertheless interiorly disgusted, we
warrant, by the lack of some visible appreciation of one of his
best efforts--and a well-behaved congregation will quietly resume
their attitude of prayer at the close of some crashing _finale_;
but are these sufficient evidences of the very opposite impression
being produced upon the worshippers to that which the music from its
character, aside from the similar manner of its rendering, is not
only calculated but is expected to produce? "I hold it for certain,"
said good old Saint Alphonsus, "that vanity and the devil usually get
more by it than God."
What those who defend the use of figured music in our solemn offices
must show is, that it not only edifies the faithful, but that it
edifies equally with, or more than, the authorized chant. That
it is the source of no little disedification; that it distracts
the soul from the great object upon which all its powers ought
to be concentrated; that it is always more or less an imperfect
performance, and, in most cases, a mere makeshift; and that where the
organist and singers are in power the sacred ministers play but a
subordinate part in a scene in which, as it has been well said, the
music from the choir gallery is the magnet which attracts the gold
and silver, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt.
But this is not all. Is figured music in conformity as to its style
with the spirit of the other portions of the divine office? Will
its most strenuous adherents claim for it the title of being a fair
and true expression of the Church's prayer? Does it harmonize with
those other parts of the office performed in the sanctuary? Here we
can speak feelingly. How often have we not been tempted to smile
at our own voice intoning the _per omnia sæcula sæculorum_, as the
echoes of that galloping _finale_ of an interminable "offertory
piece" or Benedictus were yet resounding in the aisles of the
church! What feelings of vexation have not arisen in our breast as
the response came back to our ears in slovenly haste, as if our
inharmonious cadence had too quickly disturbed the well-merited
repose of our choir after, we must confess, their too successful
effort to captivate the attention of the congregation, and put the
priest in the very pillory of singularity and discord! Why must our
mind at such times suffer the painful distraction of remembering the
well-known sarcastic remark, that "the Rev. Mr. ---- then put up a
supplication which was one of the most eloquent prayers ever offered
to a Boston audience!"
The second plea, that these classic harmonies, so rich, so melodious,
so sublime, etc., etc., should not be denied to the greater glory of
God, is of equally small weight, since there are many other things in
nature and art extremely beautiful in themselves, truly classic in
their conception and execution, which, it must be confessed, would
hardly bear transporting to the house of prayer, and which it would
take the heroic virtue of a saint to refer to the greater glory of
God if exhibited in any place. We do not object to the offering of
these harmonies to God, but the question is, Do these harmonies,
by their religious tone and devout style, offer themselves to God?
Does the Church judge them to be suitable for her divine offices? Let
these questions be answered in the affirmative, and our own personal
judgment and sentiments shall go to the wall.
The plea that the music as now commonly heard in our churches
allures Protestants, and thus brings them within sight and hearing
of Catholic truth, has been already well answered in our quotation
from Mr. Nary. For ourselves, judging from the behavior of the mass
of these visitors, we are forced to the conclusion that they frequent
our churches where fine music is given because they can get it at a
cheaper rate than they would have to pay for it elsewhere.
That there is nothing else to take its place, and that the antiquated
Gregorian chant is unfit for our ears of modern cultivation, is
simply the plea of ignorance. The established chant of the Church
not only _can_ take its place, as we shall attempt to show further
on, but as a fact it has never ceded its right to any other style
of music; and those who know any thing of the Gregorian chant
scientifically, know that it is our modern ears that are at fault,
perverted as they have been in their sense and appreciation of true
religious melody by the sensuous and effeminate spirit which pervades
all modern art.
It is strongly urged that the reintroduction of the Gregorian chant
in our churches, now wholly committed to the use of modern music,
is impossible, for the hired singers will have nothing to do with
it. To which we answer that, as the execution of the Gregorian chant
necessarily excludes female vocalists from the choir in accordance
with the sacred canons, the _prima donna_ will undoubtedly have to
look elsewhere for an engagement, and very likely the _tenore_ and
_basso_ who sing in the Mass on Sunday in our church, and perform
in the _opera buffa_ all the rest of the week, may refuse to employ
their highly cultivated voices in singing music that affords them so
little opportunity of exhibiting their artistic powers; but, we may
ask, are these the only favored beings whom God has endowed with good
voices and the ability to use them? We propose to enter more fully
into this question of difficulty, and think we shall be able to show
that in this as well as in other matters, "where there's the will,
there's a way."
In the interests of art, it is asked, ought not the composition,
and by consequence the reproduction of sacred music be encouraged?
Will not its banishment from our churches be a species of vandalism
in art greatly to be deplored? Let us look at this fairly. What
is this so-called "sacred" music? Is it more or less than the
adaptation of the words of prayer uttered by the church to concerted
harmony composed as an artistic expression of the sentiment conveyed
by the sacred words? Surely nothing more. But what is concerted
harmony, as a rule, "sacred" or "consecrated" to? To the words of
the offices of the church? By no means. There is but one kind of
music consecrated to that--the Gregorian chant. And, with our hands
upon our hearts, can we say that modern music has received such an
aid in its development through the composition and execution of
Masses, Magnificats, Offertories, Tantum Ergos, and the like, that
its present state of advancement is as much indebted to them as
is popularly supposed, or that their withdrawal from the service
of the Church would prove any very serious detriment to it? As
pieces of musical art, the operas and oratorios of composers are
far superior to the masses they have written, and we who may choose
would much rather listen to them. We must not be understood to decry
the composition of so-called sacred music, or the singing of it.
On the contrary, we would do all in our power to encourage it; but
we object to its usurping the place of music better fitted for the
divine offices of the Church, and vastly surpassing it for such use
in every particular. There is plenty of time, outside of the hour
or two in which we are present at Mass or Vespers, to hear all the
sacred music we desire or can bear. All we ask is, let the Church
pray her own prayers and sing her own divine song without hinderance,
or the intrusion of harmonies as ill-suited to her voice as they are
powerless to express the emotions of her more than human soul.
This leads us to the utterance of a grave complaint against modern
sacred music, namely, the absurd settings of words by which the
divine offices are not only prolonged to a tedious extent, but the
Holy Church is made to stammer, repeat, hesitate in her speech, and
fall at last into an inextricable confusion of tongues. Did our pious
congregation below stairs know what their singers are singing up
aloft, they would not unfrequently be reminded of certain warnings
against "vain repetitions." The Masses of composers who wrote in the
seventeenth and eighteenth century are not only open to the charge of
being replete with these vain repetitions, but are full of the most
ridiculous blunders.
We subjoin a specimen. The words given are those sung by the
leading soprano; the lines (--) show where the text is broken up by
instrumental interludes:
"Glory to God in the highest----in the highest----to
God glory----to God glory----to God glory, glory to
God in the highest, to God in the highest, to God in
the highest, to God in the highest----to God in the
highest----and on earth peace----peace----peace to men,
and on earth peace----peace----peace to men----of good,
good----will----will----of good, good will, of good, good, good
will----of good, good will, of good, good, good will----of good
will----of good will----of good will----We praise, we bless----we
adore----we glorify----we give thanks to thee for thy great
glory, for thy great glory, for thy great glory, for thy great
glory----thy glory----thy glory----O Lord God, God, heavenly King,
God the Father Almighty----O God the Son----only begotten----Jesus
Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father----Son of
the Father----Son of the Father----Son of the Father----O Lord
God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father----O Lord God, Lamb of God,
Son of the Father, Son, Son of the Father----who takest, who
takest away the sins of the world, have mercy, have mercy, have
mercy on us----who takest away, who takest away the sins of the
world, receive our prayer, our prayer, our prayer, our prayer,
our prayer----who sittest, who sittest at the right hand of the
Father, have mercy, have mercy on us----have mercy, have mercy
on us----For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord----only
art the highest, Jesus Christ----For thou only art holy----thou
only, thou only art the highest----thou only, thou only art the
highest, Jesus Christ----Jesus Christ----For thou only----thou
only art holy, thou only art highest----Jesus Christ, Jesus
Christ----For thou only, thou only art highest, Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For thou only art holy, thou only
art the Lord----thou only art highest, Jesus Christ----For thou
only art holy, thou only, only art holy, thou only, only, art the
Lord.----For thou only art holy----thou only art the Lord----thou
only art holy, thou only art the Lord, only, art highest. For thou
only, thou only art holy----thou art the Lord----only art highest,
thou only art highest, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For thou
only----thou only art highest----Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For
thou only, thou only art highest----Jesus Christ----Jesus, Jesus
Christ----Jesus, Jesus Christ----Jesus----Christ----With the Holy
Ghost----in the glory of God the Father. Amen, amen. With the
Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen, amen----Amen,
amen----With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen,
in the glory of God the Father----Amen----Amen----Amen----Amen,
amen, amen, amen.----With the Holy Ghost----in the glory of God
the Father. Amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the
Father, Amen, amen, amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God
the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen.----With the Holy Ghost----With
the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Ghost, in the
glory of God the Father, of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen,
amen, amen, amen----With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the
Father, Amen, amen, amen----in the glory of God the Father, Amen,
amen----of God the Father, Amen; in the glory of God the Father,
Amen; in the glory of God the Father, Amen----of God the Father,
Amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen,
amen----of God the Father, Amen----of God the Father, Amen, amen,
amen, amen, amen."
And this from Doctor Mozart's renowned Mass No. 12, which we have
heard so often, and enjoyed so much! But he is not alone. We quote
from an able paper from the _Dublin Review_ on "Church Music and
Church Choirs:"
"Thus we have a 'Credo' beginning with the four phrases, _Credo in
unum Deum_--_Genitum non factum_--_Qui propter nos_--and _Et ex
Patre natum_--all sung simultaneously by the four voices. Again,
we have a 'Gloria' beginning with the four phrases, _Gratias
agimus_ (for the soprano)--_Domine Fili_ (alto)--_Domine Deus_
(tenor)--_Et in terra pax_ (bass)--the whole being dispatched in
two short pages of music!
"As for instances of garblings by the omission of words and
clauses in much of the popular mass music, they are too numerous
to be mentioned.
"One of the most grotesquely absurd settings, perhaps, is that
of the 'Alma Redemptoris' of Webbe. The words are divided into
three parts, the first ending with 'cadenti,' the second with
'genitorem,' the same music being used for each, _and a repeat
and musical interlude coming between_. The consequence is that the
adjective '_cadenti_' is entirely cut off from its substantive
'_populo_;' and the whole, as sung, is of course sheer nonsense.
The reason is plain. Webbe found an air which, by a threefold
repetition, could be applied to the words of the antiphon, and
for this every thing, even to the grammar of the piece, was
sacrificed. No doubt this is the history of many of the absurd
adaptations we meet with.
"Nothing can go beyond the examples we have quoted, except,
perhaps, the instance of a composer of the 'light Italian school,'
who by way of producing an original and striking musical effect
in the 'Credo,' made one voice sing 'Genitum non factum,' and
another respond 'Factum non genitum!' It will be said that these
are extreme cases, and that many of the pieces are not likely to
be used in our churches. Be it so; still they show what it was
the fashion of certain composers to provide for the use of the
Church, and what is apt to come of the theory that it does not
matter what is sung by the choir, provided the people do not hear
it. But whether heard or not, the rules of the Church (and we see
how strict they are on these points) remain the same. Besides, do
we sing merely to satisfy the ears of an audience? Rather, is not
this the true principle--_In conspectu Angelorum psallam tibi,
Domine_?"
To the ignorance, alas! so general, of what the Church is actually
saying in her holy offices, and what the choir is singing in her
name, as well as of what they are omitting to sing as in duty
bound, may be attributed in great measure the apparent indifference
with which the people of our congregations listen to any musical
production from the choir, be it in harmony with the season or the
festival, as the case may be, or not, provided only that the voices
are in harmony with each other. Did they know better, they would say
with Pope Benedict XIV., who, it seems, had some of our own abuses
to contend with and reform in Rome itself, as other popes have had
since his time. Speaking of St. Augustine, who used to be moved to
tears by the singing (be it well understood, not of such music as we
possess) in the churches, he says that "the music moved him indeed,
but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for
grief; for, although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish
the words."
Let us hear something more of the opinions of the same holy pope
about figured "sacred music." "The Gregorian chant is that song
which excites the minds of the faithful to piety and devotion; it is
that music, therefore, which, if sung in our churches with care and
decorum, is most willingly heard by devout persons, and is justly
preferred to that which is called figured or harmonized music. The
titillation of figured music is held very cheaply by men of religious
mind in comparison with the sweetness of the Church chant, and hence
it is that the people flock to the churches of the monks, who, taking
piety for their guide in singing the praises of God, after the
counsel of the prince of psalmists, skilfully sing to their Lord as
Lord, and serve God as God with the utmost reverence."
Did we add no more, we think we have said enough to show that the
employment of figured music for the divine offices is an abuse. It
does not answer its purpose, and its permission is nothing better
than a winking at our weakness, (the wisdom of which, considering all
things, we by no means presume to condemn for the past,) while the
prevailing sensuousness and libertinism of the times has debased and
emasculated our taste in true religious art.
But it is a comfort to know that such music has never received from
the supreme pastors and rulers of the church any thing more than a
reluctant permission, that the concessions they have made in its
favor have always been exacted by the force of circumstances, and
that they have constantly raised their voice in opposition to it as
an abuse, and urged in the strongest terms of command and persuasion
its abolition, and a return to the authorized chant, the universal
song of the Church, ever ancient and ever new.
Dilettanti talk, with an air of superior knowledge, of the Gregorian
chant as if it were something obsolete, the uncouth production of
a barbarous and unartistic age. We think there are not a few other
fashions and modes of religious expression besides her chant, that
the Church has persistently adhered to, which modern ideas might with
equal justice denounce as obsolete and of unartistic origin. As has
been well remarked,
"This conservatism, if we may so call it, of the Church, is not
confined to plain chant. The same may be said of the language and
the style of her offices, the dresses of her clergy and religious
orders, and many of her rites, ceremonies, and customs. The chant
is, therefore, no stranger than any part of the Church system; and
that system being what it is, the antique character of the music
seems in every way suitable."
To be sure. What would we think of an archbishop to-day standing
before the altar dressed in a frock-coat with a stove-pipe hat on
his head, and a pair of patent leather boots on his feet, giving his
solemn benediction _en roulade_?
What we have said in regard to the wishes and commands of the Church,
as expressed by the papal bulls and decrees of councils in regard to
this matter, we propose to prove by referring the reader to several
of these authorities.
Alexander VII., in his Constitution 36, _Piæ sollicitudinis_, 23d
April, 1657, excludes all singing of pieces not contained in the
liturgy or approved by the Congregation of Rites, and all profane
styles of music. (Bullar. t. 6.)
The Congregation of the Apostolical Visitation, July 30th, 1665,
enforced and explained more fully the constitution of Alexander
VII. The character of the music at Mass and Office is to be
ecclesiastical, grave, and devotional. Only what is prescribed for
the day or season is to be sung. It prohibits prolonged solos. It
prescribes that the words are to be sung as they were written,
without any inversion, addition, or other change.
The popes, Innocent XI., 1678, and Innocent XII., 1692, renewed and
enforced similar rules, imposing, as their predecessors had done,
heavy penalties on choir-masters for disobedience. (V. Bullar. t. 7.)
In the Council of Rome, 1725, Benedict XIII. insists upon the
ecclesiastical character of the music to be used in church. (Tit. 15,
cap. 6.)
Benedict XIV., in a circular letter, enters at large into the subject
of church music, and, while he does not wholly condemn the use of
figured music, yet deplores the bad taste of those who employ it,
as well as the great neglect of religion which he attributes to the
careless performance of the divine offices of the church. As we have
seen already, he distinctly prefers the Gregorian chant, and refers
in this letter to the decree of the Council of Trent in regard to it.
Clement XIII., Sept. 17th, 1760, issued an edict against the abuse of
prolonging the music in church "to the detriment of devotion and of
the approved rites, and in violation of the canons and rubrics."
The cardinal vicar of Gregory XVI., 1842, inveighs against tiresome
repetition and arbitrary inversion of words.
Pius IX., June 28th, 1853, showed his great wish for the thoroughly
religious character of church music; for in his letters establishing
the Seminario Pio, in connection with the Roman Seminary, he ordered
that the students should be taught the Gregorian chant, and no other.
"Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur." (Tit. 5, de
studior. ratione.)
The latest instruction issued by the cardinal vicar, Nov. 18th,
1856, denounces the scandals caused by the introduction of profane
theatrical music in the churches, and the interminable length of
their execution, and, "by express command of his holiness," lays down
a set of rules which are to be observed in future. At the same time
the cardinal issued a series of instructions to composers, from which
it is evident very little encouragement is given them to write for
the Church, and they are so restricted that we very much doubt if
they care to put their Pegasus in such a cumbrous harness as the good
cardinal prescribes.
The late Plenary Council of Baltimore confirms a decree made in the
former one, which reads as follows:
"That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the
solemn rites of the Church be preserved in their integrity, we
admonish pastors of churches to earnestly labor in removing those
abuses which, in our country, have crept into the church chant.
Let them, therefore, provide that the music be subservient to the
holy Sacrifice of the Mass and other offices, and not the divine
offices to the music. Let them also bear in mind that, according
to the ritual of the Church, it is not lawful to sing hymns in the
vernacular language at High Mass nor at solemn Vespers."[85]
The wishes of the fathers of the Council in regard to the Gregorian
chant may be seen in the decree _De Vesperis_:
"Moreover, we judge it to be most desirable that the rudiments of
the Gregorian chant be taught and practised in parochial schools,
and thus, the number of those who can chant the psalms well
increasing more and more, gradually the greater part, at least,
of the people, according to the usage of the primitive church yet
preserved in many places, may be able to join with the sacred
ministers and choir in singing Vespers and other similar offices;
which will be the source of edification to all, according to that
saying of St. Paul, 'Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns
and spiritual canticles.'"[86]
In the same strain many bishops in Europe have raised their voices
against the profane music which has crept insidiously into the holy
place, and urged a speedy return to the use of the ancient chant.
From the authorities we have adduced we get at the mind of the
Church, and see that it is plainly adverse to the introduction of the
modern style of music in our sacred offices, and we have not been
able to find one instance where its use has been officially permitted
in any particular diocese but with the utmost reluctance, and not
without expressing at the same time an earnest wish that the old
chant of the Church might be restored to its primitive universal use.
There is also a significant fact not unworthy our notice. Looking at
the Protestant churches around us, we see that it is only in those
which are fast losing their former hold upon some form of ritual in
their religious meetings, that elaborate figured music is finding a
home, and garbled portions of "the masses" of Mozart, Haydn, and
other Catholic composers are being sung to a nauseating adaptation
of English words: while, on the other hand, those which are with
equally rapid advances returning to the bosom of unity with the
Catholic Church are cultivating the Gregorian chant to a degree which
ought to put us to the blush, and imitating, as best they may, the
ecclesiastical and devout order of Catholic worship, and hold our
figured and florid music in deserved contempt. Straws show which way
the wind blows.
Sudden revolutions, however, are not to our mind; and we know
something of the difficulties in the way of such a reform in the
matter of church music as the Church evidently desires, and a general
movement toward the ancient discipline which she would encourage
and bless. Because we cannot do all in a day is no reason why we
cannot do something in a week. In England, the clergy have taken
the whole subject to heart, and have already accomplished wonders.
There are many churches where the whole services are given entire.
All that is prescribed _de rigueur_ to be sung at Mass is sung.
Vespers and Compline strictly according to the breviary are chanted
in more than one church by the whole congregation. They have not
entirely eliminated figured music, but are reducing it to its lowest
terms.[87] Few churches are without their boy choirs, trained to
sing the devout song of the sanctuary. The zealous Archbishop of
Westminster has issued an order that no new church be opened in his
diocese unless provision be made for a sanctuary choir. He has not
thought it right, as he says, to enforce the orders of the former
vicars apostolic, "_Foeminæ voces ne audiantur in choro_," yet he
adds, "All that I can effect by the strongest expression of desire
and by persuasion, I shall endeavor to effect."
Surely we can also do something toward aiding the Church in
liberating herself from this captivity to an expression of her
majestic offices so foreign to the true sound of her own voice.
Looking back upon the days when the untiring voice of prayer was
ascending to heaven from the holy sanctuaries of religion, when the
festival days were kept and the faith was strong and the people
devout, a faith and devotion due in a great measure to the sacredness
of liturgical worship and the inspiration of the holy chants, may
we not justly mourn the loss of this ancient fervor, and earnestly
strive to awaken an interest in what, for so many good reasons,
appears to hold more than an accidental relation to it?
We have no doubt that the coming Oecumenical Council will speak in
yet stronger terms in favor of a reform so vital to the interests of
religion in the whole world.
In subsequent articles we propose to consider some propositions made
to ameliorate the present state of things, the characteristics of
the Gregorian chant as the true song of the Church, and offer some
hints as to the manner of its execution, and the means of obtaining
and holding a permanent chorus of singers who shall make the divine
praises resound in our consecrated Houses of Prayer in a manner more
edifying to the faithful, and more becoming the Divine Majesty.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] "Ut omnia juxta ordinem fiant, et solemnes Ecclesiæ ritus
integre serventur, monemus rectores ecclesiarum ut sedulo invigilent
ad abusus eliminandos qui in cantu ecclesiastico in his regionibus
invaluerunt. Curent igitur ut sacrosancto Missæ Sacrificio et aliis
officiis musica, non vero musicæ divina officia inserviant. Noverint,
juxta Ecclesiæ ritum, carmina vernaculo idiomate, inter Missarum
solemnia, vel vesperas solemnes, decantare non licere."
[86] "Insuper valde exoptandum esse censemus, ut rudimenta cantus
Gregoriani in scholis parochialibus exponantur et exerceantur,
sicque numero eorum qui psalmos bene cantare valeant, magis
magisque in crescente, paulatim major saltem pars populi, secundum
primitivæ ecclesiæ adhuc in variis locis vigentem usum, Vesperas et
alia similia cum ministris et choro decantare possit. Qua ratione
omnium ædificatio promovebitur, juxta illud S. Pauli, 'Loquentes
vobismetipsis in psalmis et hymnis et canticis spiritualibus.'"
[87] We are not a little surprised to see the _Rules for Singers and
Composers_ issued by the cardinal vicar of Rome, only, as far as we
can learn, for Rome itself, taken by certain English musical authors
and publishers as a positive sanction of figured music, which has
resulted in the recent publication of several masses both in unison
and in parts, named after some saint. We commend most heartily the
well-meant effort, but augur for them but a very mediocre success.
If figured music is to be permitted at all, it will be found that
neither priest nor organist, singers nor congregation are going to
put up with what is second-rate.
We hope the prospectus of the publishers will be faithfully carried
out and the rules of the cardinal vicar will be strictly adhered to.
"The masses," although baptized with the names of all the saints in
the calendar, will soon disappear from the "holy courts of Christian
song," where, in our humble judgment, they have ever done more harm
than good.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW
YORK.[88]
THE COLONIAL DAYS.
The appearance of a new edition of the brief but valuable and
attractive work which the present Bishop of Newark issued in 1853,
is a matter of congratulation. The Catholics of New York City have
a history in this land, and it is too little known. Bishop Bayley
was the first to supply the want; he wrote, as the title-page shows,
while still connected with the diocese of New York as secretary
to the late distinguished archbishop; and of course with singular
advantages for correctness of details and for a just view of his
subject. We may here ask our readers to pause and look back with us
at the early history of Catholicity in this busy metropolis, and
trace the progress of the church from its small beginning toward
its present development, when we behold it with its archbishop, its
zealous and active secular clergy, its regular clergy, embracing
Franciscans of the Observance and Capucins, Dominicans, Jesuits,
Redemptorists, Priests of Mercy, Paulists; its various orders and
congregations devoted to the instruction of youth, the care of the
orphan, the foundling, the wayward and the erring, whom it shelters
in its asylums, hospitals, and protectorates, with a Catholic
Publication Society, and several publishing houses and journals.
This progress the _Brief Sketch_ of Bishop Bayley enables us to trace
down to the year 1853, his duties as bishop depriving him of the
leisure needed to collect and arrange materials to continue it to the
present time, by including an account of the progress since the work
originally appeared. But even then, as the title shows, it professed
to treat rather of the earlier history than of that which is almost
contemporaneous.
The early history of the Catholic Church on the island of New York
is indeed an attractive and interesting theme. It opens with the
romantic story of the early Jesuit missions; for of the visits of
the Catholic navigators, Verazzani and Sebastian Gomez, we have too
little detail to know whether a priest actually said mass on our
island.
The first priest who is known to have set his foot on the island of
Manhattan was an illustrious missionary, who, while on his way from
Quebec to his mission ground on the upper lakes, was in 1643 taken
by the Mohawks, tortured almost beyond the power of human endurance,
spared to become the slave of savages, bearing their burdens in
their winter hunts, in their fishing trips to Saratoga Lake and the
Hudson, on their trading visits to the Dutch Fort Orange, where
Albany now stands, bearing all, enduring all, with a soul ever wrapt
in prayer and union with God, till at last the Dutch overcame his
reluctance and saved him from the hands of his savage captors, as
they were about to put him to death. Covered with wounds and bruises,
mutilated, extenuated, scarce human in dress or outward form, such
was Isaac Jogues, the first Catholic priest to enter our great city,
then in its infancy, to meet with respect and kindness from the
Dutch, with the reverence due to a martyr from the two Catholics,
sole children of the ancient faith then in New Amsterdam.
The stay of this illustrious missionary was brief, and his ministry
was limited to the confessional, his chapel and vestments having
fallen into the hands of the Indians, and greedily seized as trophies.
Governor Kieft displayed great humanity in his care of the
missionary, and seized the first opportunity to enable him to return
to Europe. Panting for martyrdom, Father Jogues remained in his
native land only to obtain needed dispensations and permission to
return to his labors. On reaching Canada, he found peace almost
made with the Mohawks, and, proceeding as envoy to their territory,
concluded a treaty. He was invited to plant a mission among them, as
his associates had done among their kindred, the Hurons. But when he
returned to do so, prejudices had sprung up, a hatred of Christianity
as something baneful had seized them, the missionary was arrested,
treated as a prisoner, and in a few days put to death on the banks of
Caughnawaga Creek, on the 18th of October, 1646.
The next priest known to have visited New York was the Italian Father
Bressani, who underwent a similar course of suffering, was captured,
tortured, enslaved, and ransomed by the kindly Dutch; and by them
sent to France. Although he subsequently published a short account of
the Huron missions, he is entirely silent as to New Amsterdam, and
we know nothing in regard to any exercise of the ministry during his
stay on our island.
The first priest who came here actually to extend his ministry to
any Catholics in the place was the Jesuit Father Simon Le Moyne,
the discoverer of the salt springs at Syracuse, and the successful
founder of the Mohawk and Onondaga missions. His visit was repeated,
and there would seem to be a probability that he may have actually
offered the holy sacrifice. The real field of his labors, and those
of his associates, was, however, the castles of the Five Nations
of Iroquois, in which, for many years, regular Catholic chapels
subsisted, winning many to the faith, and saving many by baptism in
infancy or in fatal illness. The converts at last began to emigrate
to Canada, where three villages of Catholic Iroquois still attest the
power of the gospel as preached by the early missionaries. Political
jealousies, infused by the English, gradually intensified the innate
dislike of the pagans to Catholicity, and prejudice, debauchery, and
penal laws at last drove the Catholic missionaries from a field in
which they had labored with such courageous and unremitting zeal.
For years the only Catholic missionary in their territory was Father
Milet, held at Oneida as a prisoner. Flying visits alone after this
kept up the faith, and in 1709, Father Peter Mareuil, on the outbreak
of war, retired to Albany, and the mission in the Iroquois country
virtually closed. The later and tardy Protestant efforts were in
a measure built on these early Catholic labors, and from Dellius
to Zeisberger they gladly availed themselves of the pupils of the
Jesuits to form their own instructions.
This Iroquois church has its martyr missionary Jogues; its martyred
neophytes, who died at the hands of their countrymen rather than
renounce Jesus to bow the knee to Aireskoi; and its holy virgin in
Catharine Tehgahkwita, the Genevieve of New France. Then came the
growth of mustard-seed in the Dutch colony. We hear of the freedom
of worship achieved and established by the founders of the Dutch
republic. It is indeed a favorite theme. Catholic and Protestant
alike battled with Spain, and the blood of both won the liberty of
the Seven United Provinces. Then as now Catholics formed nearly half
the population of Holland. But as soon as freedom was obtained, the
Protestants turned on the Catholics, who had fought by their sides,
deprived them of civil rights, put their religion under a ban,
expelled them from their ancient churches. In fact, they halted in
their course of tyranny and oppression, only when fear dictated a
little prudence.
The very church given to the English Puritans under Robinson, by the
Dutch authorities, was the church of the Catholic Beguines, whose
residences encircled the chapel of which Dutch laws deprived them, in
order to give it to foreigners who reviled the creed that erected it
and the worship of the Most High so long offered within its walls.
When New Netherland was colonized, this fierce intolerance of the
dominant party in Holland excluded Catholics from the new settlement
as rigorously as Puritan fanaticism banished them from the shores
of New England. The Catholic Hollander could not emigrate to the new
land. No worship was permitted but that of the Protestant church
of Holland. It is well to talk of Dutch toleration, but it is the
veriest myth ever concocted; and in New Netherland, though men were
received who had denied Christ and been pirates on Salee rovers,
Catholicity was excluded.
Gradually a few Catholics did creep into the colony. Father Jogues
on his visit in 1643 found an Irishman and a Portuguese woman,
forerunners of the four hundred thousand now on Manhattan Island.
Le Moyne, as we have stated, subsequently visited the island, and a
Dutch domine avers that he did so in order to give the consolations
of religion to some Catholic sailors and residents; but the
fanaticism of Holland was here, and as an illustration of the freedom
of worship supposed to exist, we find that in 1658 a Catholic in
Brooklyn was punished for objecting to support a Reformed minister.
By the reduction of New York, in 1664, to the English sway,
restrictions were really if not explicitly removed. James, Duke of
York, was a Catholic, and his province of New York was for a time
governed by Colonel Thomas Dongan, also a Catholic. His character and
career are known to our readers. Under his administration Catholic
priests for the first time took up their residence on the island.
Unfortunately, we have little more than the names of three clergymen
and some indication of the period of their stay; though hostile
notices tell us of one terrible crime they perpetrated--they actually
did erect a "Jesuit colledge," and taught boys Latin. The King's
Farm was assigned as the place for this institution of learning;
but before Catholicity could take an enduring form, James II. was
hurled from his throne for trying to make the Anglican bishops speak
a little toleration. As has often happened, intolerance, with the
banner-cry of "Liberty," became the order of the day. New York soon
enjoyed the benefit of a governor of a true bigot stamp, grandson of
one of the bloodiest butchers in the blood-stained annals of Ireland,
Coote, Earl of Bellomont. He disgraced the colonial legislation
with penal laws against Catholics, and characteristically lied in
the preamble of his act. But he was a stanch Protestant, and had
some curious dealings with Captain Kidd. The result of this change
in New York affairs was that the King's Farm slipped into the hands
of the Episcopalians, and they built Trinity Church on it. There is
some squabbling now about this property; why not settle the matter
amicably by devoting it to the object originally intended--"a Jesuit
colledge"?
Under the harrying that began with Leisler's usurpation of authority
in the province on the fall of James, and his mad brain full of
plots and "diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel papists," such
Catholics as had settled in New York seem gradually to have removed
elsewhere; or, if they remained, reared families who were strangers
to the faith.
Thus far Catholicity in New York had a strange history. Is it a
dream? Fact first: Enlightened Dutch Protestants, champions of
liberty of conscience, exclude Catholics, and when they creep in, tax
them to support a church against the dictates of their conscience.
Fact second: Enlightened English Protestants, after a great and
glorious revolution, and of course full of toleration, passed penal
laws subjecting Catholic priests to imprisonment for life with
murderers and criminals. Fact third: Catholics during the brief
period of their influence gave the colony a legislature, a bill of
rights, freedom of worship to all Christians, and a college, and
first attempted to elevate and christianize the negro slave. Bishop
Bayley thus narrates one of these glorious works:
"The first act of the first assembly of New York convened by
Colonel Dongan was the 'Charter of Liberty,' passed October 30th,
1683, which, among other things, declares that 'no person or
persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ shall, at any
time, be any ways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in
question for any difference of opinion, or matter of religious
concernment, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the
province; but that all and every such person or persons may, from
time to time and at all times, freely have, and fully enjoy,
his or their judgments or consciences in matters of religion,
throughout all the province--they behaving themselves peaceably
and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness, nor to
the civil injury or outward disturbance of others.' By another
enactment, all denominations then in the province were secured in
their liberty and discipline, and the like privilege was granted
to others who might come into it."
For fifty years the history of Catholicity on New York island is
a blank. A priest was occasionally brought in as a prisoner on
some Spanish ship taken by a privateer; that is all. Catholics are
scarcely alluded to. But an awakening came in 1741 in one of the
wildest excitements in our annals. Catholics had, indeed, nothing
to do with it, and for a long time no breath implicated the few
Catholics with the supposed dangers, till a silly letter of General
Oglethorpe put the idea into the heads of the New York authorities.
Then the negro question and the Catholic question, which have so long
alternately afforded a topic for sensation, and have at times been so
oddly combined, met for the first time in New York annals.
Bishop Bayley thus describes the negro plot:
"The year 1741 was made memorable by one of those popular
excitements which shows that whole communities as well as
individuals are sometimes liable to lose their wits. Upon a rumor
of a plot made by the negroes to burn the city and massacre the
inhabitants, the whole body of the people were carried away by a
sudden excitement. The lieutenant-governor offered a reward of
one hundred pounds and full pardon to any free white person who
would make known the author or authors of certain attempts to
set fire to houses in various parts of the city. A servant-girl,
named Mary Burton, living with a man named Hughson, who had been
previously condemned for receiving stolen goods, came forward to
claim the reward, declaring that certain negroes who frequented
her master's house (he kept a small tavern) had made a plot; one
of the accused, named Cuffee, she declared had said that 'a great
many people had too much, and others too little,' and that such
an unequal state of things should not continue long.[89] The
pretended disclosures increased the excitement, and the lawyers
of the city, to the number of seven, with the attorney-general,
were called together to take council in regard to the matter. They
certainly manifested very little coolness or judgment, and may be
said to have led on the unfair and unjust trials which followed.
The accused had no counsel allowed them; the attorney-general and
the whole bar were on the side of the prosecution; the evidence
was loose and inconclusive, and came without exception from
the mouths of interested persons of bad character. Yet, upon
such evidence as this, four white persons were hanged, eleven
negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, and fifty
were transported and sold, principally in the West Indies.[90]
Among those hung was the unfortunate Mr. John Ury. Whether he
was really a Catholic priest or not, he was certainly condemned
and hung as such. We have no other evidence upon the matter than
Horsmanden's account, and from this it does not clearly appear
whether he was really a priest or a nonjuring clergyman of the
Church of England.[91] The most conclusive fact in favor of
his being a priest is founded upon the circumstance that, when
arraigned as a priest, tried as a priest, and condemned as a
priest, he never formally denied it, nor exhibited any evidence of
his being ordained in the Church of England.[92]
"The persons most to blame were the judges and lawyers. The
speech of the attorney-general on the trial of Ury, the sentence
given by Horsmanden upon certain of the negroes, and that by the
chief-justice on others, are so harsh, cruel, and abusive that we
could hardly believe it possible that they had uttered them, if
they were not published with the authority of Horsmanden himself.
It is evident, however, that their 'holy horror of Popery' had as
much to do with the whole matter as their fear of insurrection
among the blacks."
Of course after this attack of insanity New York was scarcely a place
for a Catholic to reside. There must have been a few; but evidently
they avoided attracting attention. The next Catholic sensation was
that of a poor creature whose life had been a sad defiance of all
religion and morality, but who, at her death, sent some money to the
Rev. Mr. Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, with a request that she
should be buried in the church. She was indeed interred there, till a
clamor rose fierce and loud. She was not only a public sinner but a
Catholic; the latter, too terrible a sin to forgive, so she was taken
up; but Mr. Inglis never recovered from the stigma.
Not long before the Revolution, the few Catholics in New York were
again the object of the zeal of the Jesuit fathers, with whom so much
of our history is connected. The mission of the sons of St. Ignatius,
which in Maryland was coeval with the settlement of that colony,
gradually extended to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, aided chiefly by
the bequest of Sir John James. The mission was one involving some
danger, and hence required great caution; but finally a Catholic
priest stood in New York to begin to gather the faithful, and
administer the sacraments of which they had been so long deprived.
The priest who formed this first congregation, the nucleus of St.
Peter's, and thus of all the Catholic institutions on the Island of
Manhattan, was a German Jesuit, Father Ferdinand Steinmeyr, known on
the American mission as Father Farmer. A man of extensive learning,
not only in the theological studies of his church, but in the natural
sciences, the Royal Society of London had been glad to add his name
to their list of members. Here he would have been a fit associate for
Colden, Franklin, and Barton, but the gratification of this taste
would have made him too conspicuous in a prejudiced and hostile
community; and the man of science submitted to be passed by without
notice, anxious only to do his duty as a missionary, and gather the
lost sheep of Israel. The reticence required unfortunately leaves
us without any direct information as to his visits, and we do not
positively know when or where this man, whose learning would have
adorned the colony of New York, first offered the holy sacrifice for
the pioneer congregation of Catholics in this city. Bishop Bayley
has collected the various early notes and hints on this interesting
point, but it is after all involved in great obscurity. Yet this
founder of Catholicity in New York City lived so recently, that
the writer, who can claim neither gray hairs nor advanced years,
remembers several who had received the sacraments of the church at
his hands.
Father Farmer came undoubtedly with the address of some German
Catholic, and his visit would thus be less likely to attract
attention, as German clergymen of various denominations often passed
through the city. Mr. Idley, a German of the early day, claimed that
mass was first said in his house in Wall street, and the claim may
not be unfounded.
Father Farmer continued these occasional visits until the breaking
out of hostilities with England. The defeat of Washington on Long
Island threw New York into the hands of the English, and for the next
seven years his pastoral visits became impossible.
So long as the colonial dependence prevailed, the British government
stimulated anti-Catholic fanaticism, because while this spirit
was fanned the colonies readily gave men and money to aid in the
reduction of Canada. That French colony, after many fruitless
attempts, at last fell under the combined efforts of the mother
country and the colonies; but Canada, once reduced, became the object
of sounder and more dispassionate statesmanship. By the surrender,
the Canadians were guaranteed certain rights, as the Irish were
by the treaty of Limerick. Protestant governments have never been
over-scrupulous on such points, and it was as easy to break faith
with the Canadians as with the Irish, but this time England was
honest. The Catholic Church was left almost intact in Canada; nay,
its clergy continued under British rule to gather tithes and receive
certain traditional honors.
This was too much for the people of the older colonies to brook.
They had not lavished blood and treasure for this. The very bigotry
nurtured by English rule now turned against it. And what wonder,
then, that the first standard of revolt reared in New York expressed
this long-cherished feeling, this hatred of Catholics so long
encouraged by government, what wonder that the flag of American
freedom that first floated to the breeze in New York bore the motto,
"No Popery"!
How little we can fathom the designs of the Almighty! Who looking on
that flag could see in it the germ of a freedom of the church which
she then nowhere out of the patrimony of St. Peter really possessed?
Yet it was there. Down to the French alliance, this anti-Catholic
feeling nerved the Whigs and discouraged the friends of British rule.
Then it changed, and the Tory papers caught up every occasion to show
how zealously Protestant the British party was. While the selectmen
of Boston followed a Catholic procession through the streets, and
Congress went to mass, the British authorities in New York are
pointed out by a pamphleteer of the day as beyond reproach. They
showed their anti-Catholic zeal in this way:
"In 1778, in the month of February, a large French ship was taken
by the British, near the Chesapeake, and sent for condemnation
into New York, at that time still in possession of the English.
Among her officers was a priest, of the name of De la Motte,
of the order of St. Augustine, who was chaplain of the vessel.
Being permitted to go at large in the city, he was solicited by
his countrymen, and by those of his own faith, to celebrate mass.
Being advised of the existence of a prohibitory law, he applied to
the commanding officer for permission, which was refused; but M.
de la Motte, not knowing the language very well, mistook what was
intended for a refusal as a permission, and accordingly celebrated
mass. For this he was arrested, and kept in close confinement
until exchanged. This was under Governor Tryon's administration."
Benedict Arnold--for even this precious worthy may come in as
an illustration--when he sat down in New York in his uniform
of a British brigadier, to write his address to his countrymen
justifying the step which he had taken, and which we are accustomed
to characterize by the ugly name of treason, made his strong
anti-Catholic feeling justify his course. He had entered the movement
as a thorough Protestant; but when Congress began to favor popery,
he foresaw the ruin of his country, and as a true Protestant made
his peace with England. Strong as the anti-Catholic feeling had been
in the hearts of the colonists, we do not find that this appeal
of Arnold to their prejudices induced a single man to desert the
American ranks; it is far more likely that it may have sent some
Irish soldiers from the British ranks to swell Washington's regiments.
We are apt to associate our republic with the idea of unbounded
religious toleration. As we have shown, hostility to Catholics was
a potent element in arousing the people to declare against Great
Britain, and the State governments as originally framed bear deeply
impressed the traces of that common feeling which once, in Lyons,
proclaimed in one line free toleration in matters of religion, and in
the next prohibited the mass under terrible penalties. If freedom
was dreamed of, it was to be one which we were not to enjoy.
The anti-Catholic feeling that characterized the first national
movement was displayed in the convention which in 1777 formed a
constitution for the State of New York. There no less a personage
than John Jay, subsequently minister to England and chief-justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States, was the ardent, fiery
advocate of intolerance. Catholics of New York owe a debt of
gratitude to Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston for the
manliness with which in that convention they fought the battle of
human freedom and sought to check the onslaught of intolerance.
But they failed. Under that constitution no Catholic could be
naturalized, and the liberty of worship granted was couched in
such terms as to justify the legislature at any time in crushing
Catholicity, and in point of fact they at once adopted an iron-clad
oath that effectually prevented any Catholic from holding office.
The _Brief Sketch_ gives the debates on the interesting questions
before the convention; and it notes how, in that curious system
of language so common with our public speakers and writers, this
constitution found an advocate in the late polished Benjamin F.
Butler, of New York, who praised it in an address before the New York
Historical Society for its liberality in containing no provision
repugnant to civil and religious toleration, as though laws excluding
Catholics from citizenship and office were not slightly repugnant.
In point of fact, however, the hostile feeling of the earlier days
was soon neutralized, and at the close of the war New York was
virtually free to receive a Catholic Church.
How, then, Catholicity took root and grew under the protecting work
of men who
"Builded better than they knew,"
how it has spread and done its work of struggle and triumph under the
federal government, will be the matter of another article.
FOOTNOTES:
[88] _A Brief Sketch of the Early History of the Catholic Church
on the Island of New York._ By the Rev. J. R. Bayley, Secretary
to the Archbishop of New York. Second edition. New York: Catholic
Publication Society. 1869.
[89] The city of New York at this time contained about 12,000
inhabitants, of which one sixth, in all probability, were negro
slaves. (Preface to second edition _Negro Plot_.) The foolish fears
and prejudices of the inhabitants were not a little increased by a
silly letter written to them at this time by the good-intentioned
but visionary founder of the colony of Georgia, in which he warned
them to be on their guard against Spanish spies and incendiaries,
especially priests, whom he accused of having made a plot to burn the
chief cities in the Northern colonies.
[90] Several of the negroes were Catholics. Horsmanden mentions
that they held crucifixes in their hands and kissed them before
they died. This act of faith and piety on the part of these poor
victims of prejudice of course only served to confirm the enlightened
inhabitants of Manhattan in the conviction that they had a very
narrow escape from being delivered over body and soul to the pope. It
is a curious circumstance that a law made against Catholic priests
should have been enforced only once, and then resulted in the death
of a Protestant clergyman.
[91] Campbell, in his _Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll_, has
given a clear and able analysis of the trial and of the evidence,
upon which he concludes that the unfortunate Ury was undoubtedly a
priest. Horsmanden always speaks of him as "Ury the priest," in his
history of the plot. It is my own opinion that he was a nonjuror.
[92] Smith, in his _History of New York_, vol. ii. p. 73, says "that
Mr. Smith, his father, assisted at the request of the government on
the trial against Ury, who asserted his innocence to the last. And
when the ferments of the hour had subsided, and an opinion prevailed
that the conspiracy extended no further than to create alarms for
committing thefts with more ease, the fate of this man was lamented
by some and regretted by many, and the proceedings against him
generally condemned as harsh, if not cruel and unjust." Ury was the
son of a former secretary of the South Sea Company. He was executed
on an island in the Collect, near where the Halls of Justice now
stand. "Hughson was executed on the south-east point of H. Rutgers's
farm, on the East River, not ten rods from the south-east corner of
Cherry and Catharine streets."--_Notes on New York in the Appendix to
Watson's Notes on Philadelphia._
MATTERS RELATING TO THE COUNCIL.
The following items are condensed from a letter written to the
_Correspondant_, and from other European periodicals.
Tribunes have been prepared in the chapel of SS. Processus and
Martinus, where the council will be held for princes, or their
ambassadors, who will be permitted to attend the sessions, without,
however, enjoying the privileges conceded to them in former councils.
It is in contemplation to cover the chapel with a roof of glass,
in order to make the voices of the speakers more easily audible,
as the chapel is equal in size to an ordinary cathedral. If this
is not done, the ordinary sessions will have to be held in the
great hall, where the mandatum is performed on Maunday-Thursday.
It is probable that the public will not be admitted, even to the
solemn sessions, although the doors leading into the basilica will
be thrown open. The entire pavement of the chapel will be covered
by the magnificent carpet presented by the King of Prussia. It is
definitely decided that the council shall be called the First Council
of the Vatican. The first stone of the monument of the council was
laid on the 14th of October. It has been determined to admit the
generals of orders and honorary abbots without jurisdiction to seats
in the council. Two of the four legates who are to preside in the
absence of the sovereign pontiff have been named, the Cardinals
Bilio and De Reisach. The preliminary labors of the theologians
have been completed, the commissions dissolved, and the results
of their work have been formulated ready for presentation to the
council. The Holy Father has declared that the most complete liberty
of discussion will prevail, and that no decisions will be approved
which have not been passed by a vote approaching to unanimity. Mgr.
Gianelli, secretary of the permanent congregation of the council,
has said that the session of the council will necessarily be a long
one, on account of the great number of questions to be proposed for
discussion. The mode of publishing the decisions has not yet been
determined. Some propose that the official journal of Rome publish
a daily _compte rendu_ of the acts of the session; others, that the
_Civilta Cattolica_ be published more frequently, with an account
of the debates and decrees; while others think that no publication
will be made until the close of the council. The report that the Holy
Father was displeased with the _mandement_ of the German bishops
assembled at Fulda is contradicted. On the contrary, he was well
satisfied with it, and a favorable notice of it has appeared in the
_Civilta Cattolica_. It is reported that M. l'Abbé Freppel has been
charged with an important commission in reference to those English
Protestants who may be disposed to come to the council.
A superb history of the council, illustrated in the highest style of
art, is to be published at Rome as a private enterprise, in six folio
volumes. The first will contain the life of the sovereign pontiff,
Pius IX.; the second, the biographies of the cardinals; the third
will contain a description of all the grand functions and ceremonies
which are celebrated at Rome; the fourth will contain a history of
all the preceding councils; the fifth will contain the biographies of
all the prelates who assist at the council; the sixth will contain
the acts of the council. These volumes will contain a great number of
lithographic portraits, and of chromo-lithographic illustrations of
the places, scenes, costumes, etc.
All anxiety which may have been felt in regard to the disposition of
the French Liberal Catholics toward the council is completely set at
rest by the clear and emphatic declaration of their principal organ,
the _Correspondant_, that they will submit most unreservedly and
joyously to all its decisions, as expressing the infallible judgment
of the church.
The Grand Master of the Free-Masons of France has published a
circular calling an extraordinary convention of the order, to meet
on the 8th of December, in order to issue a manifesto declaring
the principles of universal human right. The Anti-Council of
Free-Thinkers will also assemble at Naples on the same day.
FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.
It was simply natural that the universal desire to hear and learn
something concerning the approaching Oecumenical Council--a desire
that with some meant anxiety for serious knowledge and with others
mere idle curiosity--should be responded to by writers willing and
able to gratify it. We should far transcend our prescribed limits
were we to undertake to do more than give a list of works on the
subject possessing the mere qualities of serious treatment and some
degree of merit. Of a large class of works on the council whose
object is to vulgarize the subject we of course make no mention. Not
to speak of pamphlets without number, France and Germany have been
most prolific in literary productions concerning the council. Indeed,
in these two countries alone, books of solid erudition and elevated
tone are so numerous as almost to form a special encyclopædia,
treating of the council from the various stand-points of history,
law, politics, social philosophy, liturgy, and theology. And now,
scanning more narrowly the long list, we find ourselves obliged to
pass over in silence many of them that present the subject simply
as historical, doctrinal, or specially theological, and to confine
our brief mention to those which distinguish themselves from the
mere treatise by an exceptional style and tone that render them
more spirited and militant. We begin with _La Société devant le
Concile, par le Chanoine Martinet_. For the great majority of persons
outside of the Catholic Church in England and the United States,
the mere title of this work is in itself a surprise. They have been
so absorbingly occupied in arraigning the council before society in
general and before their own little societies in particular, that it
never appears to have occurred to them that a counter-arraignment
was among modern possibilities. They have busied themselves, and
for that matter still busy themselves, in squaring the ability and
jurisdiction of the church by what they are pleased to call the
demands of modern society--the ideas of modern civilization; as
though these demands and these ideas were so perfectly recognized,
classified, and codified as to present a compact and intelligible
system. And yet, if, going from one to another of the entire chorus
so loudly chanting the hosannas of the assumed system, we ask what
is this system, you will find that no two of them agree. If the
Oecumenical Council were to commence its work by a decree that should
meet the views of any given one out of a hundred of them, there would
arise a shout of malediction from the other ninety-nine. Suppose the
orthodox Episcopalian to be satisfied, the Unitarian would inevitably
be discontented. And if the Socialist could with any reason
approve of what was done, just so certainly it would not suit his
Presbyterian neighbor. Thus, for instance, take the first fourteen
articles of the so-called "Papal Syllabus," of December, 1864, and
will any one undertake to point out the Protestant country in Europe
or in America in which one half the community would not be at once
arrayed against the other half on the question as to whether they are
truth or error? People talk of modern civilization and the spirit of
the age as though these expressions conveyed a clear and definite
meaning, and represented certain ideas distinctly recognized as truth
by all; as though this so-called spirit of the age were something
as definite, as tangible, and of as efficacious an application as a
code of civil law; and as though its practical working were one of
truth and harmony; whereas, in reality, no incomprehensible jargon
of words, no jumble of ideas, no jungle of thicket is so helplessly
confused and impenetrable as the maze of struggling, confused, and
contradictory theories supposed to constitute the spirit of the age
and serve as the exponent of modern enlightenment. We are not aware
that the author of the work before us takes this view of the matter;
but it is one so irresistibly suggested to us by the juxtaposition
of the two statements--society before the council, and the council
before society, that we cannot avoid expressing it. The enemies of
the church, whose fear of her and whose ignorance concerning her
are equally great, have long announced that she is in her decline;
and yet she is now about to affirm her existence by a movement of
prodigious vitality--an oecumenical council. The council, pronounced
impossible by a great number, will obtain its first success by
showing the falsity of the asserted impossibility of the attention of
the world. "The council," says the Abbé Martinet, "will do all that
needs be done to classify and render coördinate without destroying,
all those ideas whose want of unity distracts us, whose opposition,
real or apparent, creates strife and destructive collision among
social classes and nations. Not only will it place in the light grand
principles, great truths, but it will show to all right-minded men
universal Catholic truth, which, in enlightening and conciliating all
truths, all principles, prevents them from degenerating into serious
errors in theory, into great iniquities in application. Possessing
the centre of lights that do not deceive, it will elevate the source
of the vital forces which save individuals, families, and nations."
* * * * *
_Le Concile Oecumenique et la Situation Actuelle, par M. l'Abbé
Christophe_, presents the main ideas of the preceding work, with more
concision.
* * * * *
_L'Influence Sociale des Conciles_ is by M. Albert Du Boys, already
known as the author of a meritorious work on jurisprudence.[93]
The work now under consideration is a historical study in which
the author describes the influence former councils have exercised
upon the past. From a social point of view, the author shows that
the councils have powerfully contributed to the enfranchisement and
amelioration of humanity by victoriously combating the material and
moral disorders of rude and barbarous ages, by their promotion of
the foundation of hospitals and institutions of charity, by their
denunciation of errors and superstitions injurious to public order
or social well-being, by their gradual renunciation of clerical
privileges and immunities whenever those immunities and privileges
appeared to have become anomalous in a new social order. Showing that
all the elements of modern civilization come to us from and through
the church, the author concludes that the coming council will not be
less inspired by the spirit of the gospel than the councils that have
preceded it. The work is accompanied by a complimentary letter of
the distinguished Bishop of Orleans, who says in it that the council
assembles no less for the good of civil than of religious society.
FOOTNOTE:
[93] _Du Droit Criminel des Peuples Anciens et Modernes._
* * * * *
The _Lettre sur le Futur Concile Oecumenique_, by the Bishop of
Orleans, a translation of which was given in THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
has already reached its seventh edition. The immense notoriety
acquired by this small book in the Catholic world, and the letter
of felicitation received by its author from the sovereign pontiff,
have made it so generally known as to dispense us from very special
mention of it. Bishop Dupanloup thus assigns the council its place
in the firmament of truth. "It will be," he says, "a rising, not a
setting sun." Addressing himself to the human mind separated from the
church, he says, "While you disperse, we unite; while you lose, we
retain." And again, "In all this world, only the church and the sun
are able to affirm positively that they will arise the next day, and
this is what the church does in daring, amid the existing tumult, to
announce a council."
* * * * *
_Le Concile Oecumenique, son Importance dans le Temps Présent_, is
the title of a work equally well known in Germany and in France. It
is translated from the German, and is from the pen of the Bishop of
Mayence, Rt. Rev. Dr. Ketteler. He demonstrates, with his well-known
learning and eloquence, than for eighteen centuries the infallible
teaching of the church has had no eclipse.
* * * * *
Another work not less remarkable is by Monseigneur Deschamps,
Archbishop of Malines, and entitled, _L'Infaillibilité et le Concile
Général_. It discusses the question of the infallibility of the head
of the church.
* * * * *
Finally, the Abbé Jaugey, in his _Petit Traité Théologique sur le
Concile Oecumenique_, appears to have addressed himself to the class
commonly known as "worldly people." In an easy and pleasant style he
explains on this grave subject all that such people desire to know,
and at the end of his work groups under five headings the subjects
most likely to be passed upon by the council. These are,
First. Speculative truths, or the natural and supernatural orders and
their mutual connection.
Second. Moral truths concerning civil society.
Third. Truths concerning marriage.
Fourth. Truths concerning the authority and the infallibility of
popes.
Fifth. Truths concerning the rights of the church, and its relation
to the state.
* * * * *
Catholic England has lately made a solid contribution to the
historic-critical literature of the Pentateuch in _The Book of Moses,
or the Pentateuch in its Authorship, Credibility, and Civilization_.
By the Rev. W. Smith. Vol. I. London. 577 pages. It is highly spoken
of by the best German biblical critics, and specially commended for
its strength in the historical treatment of the subject.
* * * * *
Some two years since, Alfred Ritter von Arneth edited a volume of
the correspondence between Maria Theresa and her daughter Marie
Antoinette, and a collection of the letters of the unfortunate queen
of France to her brothers Joseph and Leopold. Both these works
were not only valuable contributions to history, but of the most
touching interest to every class of readers. The same author has
now published[94] at Vienna, the remarkable correspondence between
Catharine, Empress of Russia, and Joseph II., Emperor of Austria.
Better than the most eloquent essay or the most erudite history,
these letters show us these two personages in the truest of colors,
and they form edifying reading for any one not fully and blindly
committed to the belief in the "right divine of kings to govern
wrong." Under profound assurances of esteem and the most hyperbolical
compliments, you see an utter absence of respect or of belief in
the honesty, the one of the other. Each had his or her designs to
accomplish--that is to say, the stealing of other people's land
and the annihilation of other people's rights; the manner of the
transaction proposed being similar to the disposal of a flock of
sheep or the transfer of a turnip-field. Of their sincerity, take a
single specimen. Joseph writes to Catharine, January 9th, 1781, and
forwards the letter to his prime minister Kaunitz, with the following
confidential note:
"MON CHER PRINCE: Voici ma lettre à l'impératrice; je vous prie
d'y ajouter ou retrancher ce que vous voudrez, mais il faut savoir
qu'on a à faire avec une femme qui ne se soucie que d'elle et plus
de Russie que moi; ainsi il faut la chatouiller. Sa vanité est son
idole; un bonheur enragé et l'hommage outré et à l'envie de toute
l'Europe l'a gâtée. Il faut déjà hurler avec les loups: pourvu
que le bien se fasse, il importe peu de la forme sous laquelle on
l'obtient."[95]
Death could not wait for the fruition of most of their selfish
combinations. Even at this day, nearly a century later, several
important projects discussed between them have not yet received a
solution.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] _Joseph II. und Catharine von Russland, ihr Briefwechsel._ Wien.
1869.
[95] "MY DEAR PRINCE: I send you my letter to the empress. Make such
alterations in it as you please, bearing in mind that we have to do
with a woman who cares only for herself, and more for Russia than for
me. So then tickle her vanity which is her idol. An insane good luck
and the exaggerated homage of all Europe have spoiled her. We must
howl when others yell; provided good is effected, it matters little
how or in what manner it is obtained."
* * * * *
An elaborate work on China is _France et Chine. Vie Publique et
Privée des Chinois Anciens et Modernes, etc. etc._ Par M. O.
Girard. 2 vols. 8vo. This is not a mere book of travels, but a work
descriptive of the political, social, civil, military, and religious
institutions of China, its philosophy, literature, science, and
art. It appears to be the joint result of personal observation
during a residence in the country, and of long and careful study
of Chinese history and literature. Coming from an ecclesiastic,
we might naturally expect to find a large portion of the book
filled with accounts of the missions of the church in China. That
subject, however, receives scarcely more than mere mention, the
author evidently thinking that such information is already elsewhere
accessible, and that it is now of more importance to make the country
known in its more peculiar aspects. The book is too ambitious in
its scope to be thorough, and we think it is to be regretted that
the author did not rather give us an account of his residence (if
residence he had) in China, grouping about facts and incidents as
they arose the varied and extensive knowledge he appears to possess
of the Flowery Kingdom.
* * * * *
In accordance with the desire of several American bishops of the
Catholic Church, and under the auspices of the Bishop of Münster,
(Westphalia,) the college of St. Maurice, near Münster, was founded
in the spring of 1867, expressly for the education of theological
students destined for the priesthood in missions of the United
States. Not only young men from Germany but from America, enter
the college, of whose course of studies the English language forms
an important feature. The institution has already sent forth seven
priests. Persons desiring special information concerning the
institution, may address, "Rev. Mr. Witte, St. Maurice, Münster,
Westphalia, Germany."
* * * * *
There has lately appeared at Venice a work[96] equally curious and
interesting on Abyssinia, (Ethiopia,) or rather on its relations
with the republic of Venice. It shows that centuries ago Abyssinia
had reached as high a degree of civilization as Europe.
FOOTNOTE:
[96] _Lettera sulla cogniziani che i Vèneziani avevano dell'
Abissinia, etc. etc._ 1869. 8vo.
* * * * *
On the occasion of the late centennial anniversary in honor of
Macchiavelli, there was produced a singular literary work of
his, hitherto entirely unknown.[97] It is a translation, made by
Macchiavelli himself, of a work written by Saint Victor, Bishop of
Utica, on the persecution of Christians in Africa, under the reign of
Huneric, King of the Vandals, in the year 500.
FOOTNOTE:
[97] _Niccolo Macchiavelli ed il suo centenario, con una sua versione
storica non mai publicata._
* * * * *
The question so familiar to all Americans some dozen years ago, Have
we a Bourbon among us? is now practically asked in England,[98]
and one Mr. Augustus Meves disputes the place claimed for the
Rev. Eleazar Williams. For any one who has seriously examined the
historical paradox involved in this question there can remain no
doubt that the son of Louis XVI.--called Louis XVII.--died in Paris,
and was buried in the cemetery of the church of St. Margaret, in the
Faubourg St. Antoine, on the 10th of January, 1795. There can also
be as little doubt that Messieurs Williams and Meves were, with more
less sincerity, impostors.
FOOTNOTE:
[98] _The Authentic Historical Memoirs of Louis Charles, Prince
Royal, Dauphin of France, second son of Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette, etc. etc. The Memoirs written by the veritable Louis
XVII., etc._ London. 8vo.
* * * * *
The great and justly celebrated work of the Chevalier Rossi on
subterranean Rome has just been published in England in a translated
abridgment.[99] It is a superb volume, beautifully and profusely
illustrated. All that is essential in Rossi's work has been preserved
in the present, and important additions made. The work is especially
full and satisfactory concerning the frescoes of the catacombs, the
transition from pagan art to Christian symbolism, the sarcophagi, the
ceremonies of the primitive church, and other similar subjects. MM.
Northcote and Brownlow establish irrefutably that the catacombs were
never used as a burial-place for any but members of the Christian
church, and moreover, conclusively show that the objections presented
to this hypothesis will not bear examination.
FOOTNOTE:
[99] _Roma Sotterrenea._ Compiled from the Works of Commendatore
Rossi. By J. S. Northcote, D.D., and Rev. W. Brownlow, M.A. London:
Longman. 1 vol. 8vo.
* * * * *
M. Athanase Coquerel fils is well known as a preacher in one of the
Protestant churches of Paris, and as the author of two or three works
on literature and the fine arts. During the past year he delivered
a series of lectures at Amsterdam, Strasburg, Rheims, and Paris,
which, being revised and corrected, have lately appeared in a small
volume under the title of _Rembrandt et l'Individualisme dans l'Art_.
M. Coquerel is troubled--and very much troubled--by the superiority
of Catholicity in art--is desirous of convincing the world that it
labors under a mistake, and, if we will consent to look through M.
Coquerel's spectacles, we will see that it is not only doubtful if
Catholicity possesses the superiority so generally attributed to it,
but rather certain than otherwise that Protestantism rightly claims
it. Here are two of the processes by which M. Coquerel arrives at
the results mentioned, and they are remarkable for their simplicity.
First. Rembrandt was a great genius, and he owes his greatness to the
liberal element, to the spirit of individualism of the reformation.
Second. Leonardo da Vinci, says M. Coquerel, "was certainly great
in the domain of art, and we cannot say that he was absolutely a
stranger to Christian sentiment." Really, a very handsome admission
on the part of M. Coquerel when we remember that da Vinci is the
painter of the immortal "Last Supper." "But what is there in all
this," continues our author, with an apparently serious countenance,
"what is there in all this that is Catholic?--a Protestant would not
have conceived the subject otherwise!" And here was the opportunity
for M. Coquerel to mention the names of half a dozen or so of
Protestant da Vincis; but, strange to say, he neglects it. The
gentlemen referred to have thus far eluded public observation. One
fact in connection with this subject is very suggestive. It is that
the superiority of Catholicity in art may sometimes be disputed by
Protestant ministers and controversialists, but by artists, never.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A LITTLE BOY'S STORY. (MÉMOIRES D'UN PETIT GARÇON.) By Julie
Gouraud. Translated from the French by Howard Glyndon. With
eighty-six illustrations from designs by Emile Bayard. New York:
Published by Hurd & Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press. 1869.
This is a pleasant story for children; simple, full of real life,
and the more interesting from being apparently written by one
of themselves. It will interest American boys and girls to know
how French children live, how they play and think and study. The
illustrations are excellent, and will be a perfect delight to the
little ones.
* * * * *
A MEMOIR ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE REV. PRINCE DEMETRIUS A.
DE GALLITZIN, FOUNDER OF LORETTO AND CATHOLICITY IN CAMBRIA CO.,
PA.; APOSTLE OF THE ALLEGHANIES. By Very Reverend Thomas Heyden,
of Bedford, Pennsylvania. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.
It is impossible that any one at all interested in the history of
the faith in our country should fail to welcome the appearance of
this memoir of the great and good priest Father Gallitzin. A Russian
prince of high rank, baptized and educated as a child in the Greek
schismatical church, he early became a convert to the Catholic faith.
Though destined by his father, the Prince Demetrius, for the military
service, Providence directed his steps to America, where he had
scarcely landed when he felt himself urged, as he says, "to renounce
all his schemes of pride and ambition, and to embrace the clerical
profession for the benefit of the American mission."
Ordained priest by Bishop Carroll in 1795, he was sent as a
missionary to labor single-handed in the immense district of country
which now embraces the dioceses of Pittsburg, Erie, and Harrisburg.
One can easily imagine the severe hardships and sacrifices that fell
to his lot, and which were nobly sustained for forty-six years with
that apostolic zeal which always and in every place distinguishes the
Catholic missionary.
Amid the incessant labors and unrespited fatigues of his career he
still found time to devote himself to literary pursuits. His _Defence
of Catholic Principles_, and _Letter on the Holy Scriptures_, to-day
so widely known, are clear, logical expositions of the Catholic
faith surpassed by few controversialists. This little memoir of the
learned, holy, and self-sacrificing priest needs no commendation from
us to insure its extensive circulation among the Catholics of our
country, while we would say to those who are not of us: Read here
the life and character of a true priest, and the labors of a real,
_bonâ-fide_ missionary.
* * * * *
CANTARIUM ROMANUM: PARS PRIMA: ORDINARIUM MISSÆ. Studio et
sumptibus Monachorum Ord. S. Benedicti. Conv. St. Meinradi, Ind.
1869. Benziger Brothers. New York and Cincinnati. Harmonized
edition.
We are sorry not to have had this volume before our eyes when called
upon to notice the same work, in simple melody without accompaniment,
issued some months ago. The harmonies enable us to interpret
the movement, which alone we deemed ill regulated. We are aware
that it is extremely difficult to express in musical notation the
melodic movement of Gregorian chant, and that even the same phrase
is dependent, as to the style of its execution, upon the spirit of
the season or festival when it is sung. Pure Gregorian chant is not
rhythmical in its measure, yet we think that a work intended for
the use of our singers and organists, who, as a class, are utterly
ignorant of its traditional expression, might very well be so
arranged as to afford an approximative notion of it. The notation
in this work does not make any such attempt, but gives a simple
translation of the ancient Benedictine melody into semibreves and
crotchets, without further direction. If sung rigidly according to
the relative length of the notes as they are written, most certainly
the singer would fail to give the true expression either of the Latin
or of the melody in several phrases. A careful study would perhaps
correct this in many instances. Since our reception of the book we
have had the pleasure of hearing this chant rendered by one perfectly
competent to give its true meaning, and must confess that it disarmed
all adverse criticism. On principle we object to the introduction
of the sensible note which prevails throughout, but do not wish to
quarrel with those who, contrary to us, deem it only a matter of
taste. Every organist would do well to procure and study this most
praiseworthy contribution to the much to be desired reformation in
our church music.
* * * * *
GERMAN TALES. By Berthold Auerbach. With an introduction by C. C.
Shackford. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
This volume, containing five short German tales, is a charming book,
replete with life and spirit, full of beautiful descriptions of
quaint German customs, and overspread with wise and gentle teachings
that are "like apples of gold in pictures of silver."
Pure morals, kindliness, and heartfelt interest in the brotherhood of
man breathe through these pages.
It is entirely free from that vein of self-conceit so visible in
_Villa Eden_, by the same author, and the pages are not sullied by
the infidel opinions which mar that volume; opinions "that have
no sure, firm soil out of which they grow, but skip about like a
'will-o'-the-wisp' in the blue ether, very readily changing from
transcendental to nonsensical." Indeed, we think these early German
tales a great _improvement_ on his later works.
Auerbach displays a keen power of analyzing hearts and motives,
bringing to light the hidden springs of action; and in these stories
it is done with such kindliness and evident desire to look on the
best side of human nature, that his searchings of the heart leave no
sting.
The book is in excellent type and paper, and, being of the "Handy
Volume Series," would make a most comfortable and pleasing travelling
companion.
* * * * *
THE MYSTERIES OF THE OCEAN. Translated, edited, and enlarged from
the French of Arthur Mangin, by the translator of _The Bird_. With
one hundred and thirty illustrations by W. Freeman and I. Noël.
London: T. Nelson & Sons, Paternoster Row; Edinburgh and New York.
1868.
M. Mangin has chosen a grand subject, and treated it in a masterly
and comprehensive manner. He takes us back to the very beginning of
Old Ocean, when "Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." These ages of chaos
give him an opportunity of setting forth innumerable theories--enough
to suit even the most scientific; and fancies enough to please
the most imaginative. Here is his picture of the primeval ocean:
"Imagination not unwillingly pictures to itself the strange and
superb spectacle of a limitless ocean seething over its volcanic
bed, and heaving in every direction its contending billows, kindled
here and there by the blood-red lustre of a glowing sky, struggling
through a dense and stifling mist; while in its waves myriads of
invisible beings, embryos of future organisms fighting for life, and
rising to the surface in quest of inspiring light, wait expectant,
amidst the throes of the terrible stir and tumult all around them,
the dawn of the true day upon a completed world." However, from
the time that ocean becomes the ocean that we know it, he gives
innumerable facts regarding its tides, circulation, convulsions,
atmosphere, winds, and tempests. The living sea-weeds, the plant
animals, the fishes of the ocean and even the sea-birds, are not
forgotten in this study of the mysteries of the ocean.
The relations of man to the ocean are also treated of--navigation,
whale and seal fishing, etc. Altogether the book is most interesting,
is finely got up, and is fully illustrated with excellent engravings.
* * * * *
ADVENTURES ON THE GREAT HUNTING GROUNDS OF THE WORLD. By Victor
Meunier. Illustrated with twenty-two wood-cuts. New York: Charles
Scribner & Co. 1869. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 297.
This is another volume of the interesting series of _Library
of Wonders_, the object of which is to present to the reader a
collection of well-authenticated facts illustrative of the nature,
habits, and various modes of capturing some of the largest and
fiercest of the animal world, and to describe some of the numerous
adventures, terrible fights, and hairbreadth escapes to which the
hunting of the animals has given rise.
* * * * *
THE DESERT WORLD. From the French of Arthur Mangin. Edited and
enlarged, by the translator of _The Bird_. With 160 illustrations.
London, Edinburgh, and New York: T. Nelson & Sons. 1869.
This is a companion book to the _Mysteries of the Ocean_, and the
best notice we can give this elegantly printed and illustrated volume
is to let the author, in his preface, speak for himself:
"The area of our present work would be very limited if we understood
the word _desert_ in its more rigorous signification; for we should
then have only to consider those desolate wildernesses which an
inclement sky and a fertile soil seem to exclude for ever from
man's dominion. But by a license which usage authorizes, we are
able to attribute to this term a much more extended sense; and to
call _deserts_ not only the sandy seas of Africa and Asia, the
icy wastes of the poles, and the inaccessible crests of the great
mountain-chain, but all the regions where man has not planted his
regular communities or permanent abodes; where earth has never been
appropriated, tilled, and subjected to cultivation; where nature
has maintained her inviolability against the encroachments of human
industry."
The author has made a most interesting and instructive work, one that
can be read with much interest and profit. His description of the
mountain regions of the world is especially good.
* * * * *
NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
A very good description of New York City. The illustrations of its
churches, public and other buildings, are well executed, and the
description of each must prove a valuable assistance to strangers
visiting our city.
* * * * *
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC; OR, A MEMORIAL
TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE. By the Rev. Father Lacordaire. Member of the
same Order, of the French Institute, etc. New York: P. O'Shea, 27
Barclay Street. 1869.
All that was mortal of the great Lacordaire sleeps in the grave;
but men such as he are not born to die--they belong to all time;
their spirit for ever lives and breathes in their works. His was
the eloquence that possesses the true trumpet ring that stirs men's
souls; even when read, it is powerful.
The work before us was first published in 1839. In a masterly manner
it exposes the absurdity of liberty proscribing liberty; of giving
license for all things save serving God in the most perfect manner,
and according to the very _beau ideal_ of Christianity. Then, in a
summary and graphic manner, it sketches the history, and points out
the great names and the eminent services of one of the great bodies
of the church militant--an order from whose ranks have been taken
four popes, seventy cardinals, archbishops by hundreds, and bishops
by thousands; which has produced theologians, artists, and architects
who rank with the first; which has sent forth tens of thousands of
missionaries, who have preached the Gospel in every language under
the sun, and which has the glory of being able to point at the same
time to Aquinas, the Corypheus of theologians, and to Las Casas, the
slave of the enslaved Indians.
This book is especially _à propos_ at the present, when the dogs of
the press, after scouring the world through years of famine and lack
of popish horrors, have just dropped the sorry bone picked up four
thousand miles away in Cracow, hungrily passed from mouth to mouth,
and found, alas! to be in reality without a vestige of consolatory
meat--dry bone, "and nothing more."
Let those who love "fair play" read this short defence of a religious
order by the Bossuet of the nineteenth century.
* * * * *
THE BOOK OF MOSES; OR, THE PENTATEUCH IN ITS AUTHORSHIP,
CREDIBILITY, AND CIVILIZATION. By Rev. W. Smith, Ph.D. For sale by
the Catholic Publication Society. (Second Notice.)
At the time of writing our first notice of the first volume of this
great work, we had merely glanced at its contents, and were only able
to give a first impression of its merit. Since that time we have read
it carefully, and made use of it in giving a course of lectures to a
theological class. We deem it, therefore, due to the author and to
the interests of sacred science that we should express our deliberate
judgment that it is a work of the highest erudition and merit.
The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is proved by the learned
author with all the cogency and conclusiveness of a complete moral
demonstration. Not only is it by far the best work on the subject in
the English language, but it is admitted by Dr. Reusch, the learned
editor of the Bonn _Litteratur Blatt_, to be equal to the best of
the German treatises, and acknowledged by the _Katholik_ of Mayence
to be superior to any of them. The latter periodical criticises Dr.
Smith for the statement made by him that Moses imitated several
things in the Egyptian sacred rites in his ritual laws. The critic
admits the similarity between them, but asserts that Moses prescribed
these rites by divine revelation. We venture to suggest that this is
an irrelevant remark. The inspiration of the Divine Spirit may have
directed him to imitate whatever was really excellent in Egyptian
institutions, whether sacred or secular.
We hail this admirable work with the greatest joy, and await with
anxious expectation the publication of the succeeding volumes. No
professor of sacred science or student of the Holy Scriptures should
be without it. Neologians and irrationalists are being crushed by the
very science of criticism which they have so loudly vaunted as their
own peculiar and irresistible engine of destruction for the overthrow
of revelation. It is perhaps needless to add that Dr. Smith is a
young, hitherto unknown priest of a small country mission in Wales.
* * * * *
LANGE'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.
This is one volume of a commentary on the Old and New Testament,
prepared by several learned Protestant divines of Germany, and
translated by competent scholars into English. It is esteemed among
the orthodox Protestants as the ablest work of the kind which they
possess. It is certainly far superior to the dull, old-fashioned
commentaries which were formerly used to produce compression of the
brain in their unfortunate readers. To a Catholic scholar the work
may be useful in so far as it throws the light of patient German
investigation on critical and historical questions. Its exposition
of doctrine is chiefly interesting as showing the views at present
prevailing among the sounder portion of Protestants, which we may
add are a decided improvement on the original doctrines. In the
volume on Genesis we were surprised to see two ridiculous statements
dictated by anti-Catholic bigotry, one that a pope condemned the
doctrine of the antipodes, the other that Cardinal Cullen denounced
the Copernican system. This is not creditable to a professor in Bonn
University.
* * * * *
MORAL TALES. By Maria Edgeworth. With original designs by Darley.
A new edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.
POPULAR TALES. By Maria Edgeworth. With original designs by
Darley. A new edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.
THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT; OR, STORIES FOR CHILDREN. By Maria
Edgeworth. A new illustrated edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co.
1870.
These are new editions of what were in their day among the best known
and most popular of books. They deserve to become well known and
popular again. When Miss Edgeworth, at the beginning of the present
century, commenced her series of novels, the public, says one of
her later critics, "was surprised by novels which contained neither
ruinous towers, terrible subterranean cells, nor mysterious veils,
and in which the characters were neither peers nor foundlings." The
works, too, were remarkable for their humane sympathies and their
moral tendencies, as well as for their disregard of the materials
out of which it was then the fashion to construct romances. The same
writer mentions the fact that among the most ardent admirers of them
was Sir Walter Scott, who avows that it was her humorous, tender,
and admirable delineations of Irish character which prompted him to
attempt similar portraitures of his own country.
We trust that the publishers will continue the series thus begun, and
give us others of her numerous and excellent works.
* * * * *
MINOR CHORDS. By Sophia May Eckley. London: Bell & Daldy. 1869.
The poems of Mrs. Eckley have received some very high encomiums from
the British press, more flattering though no truer than what we
ourselves are disposed to award them after a sufficiently careful
perusal. They possess a pure, elevated tone, are deeply religious
in sentiment, smooth in their rhythm, with here and there a rhyme a
trifle too mechanical, yet abounding in evidences of poetic genius.
* * * * *
MANUAL OF THE THIRD ORDER OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, CALLED ALSO
THE ORDER OF PENANCE. 2 vols. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale
by the Catholic Publication Society.
This manual has been compiled in order to enable members of the Third
Order of St. Francis to follow the precepts and the spirit of their
rule. They are, we believe, quite numerous in this country, and
many of them will be very glad, no doubt, to obtain this book, well
calculated as it is for their instruction and edification.
* * * * *
CASEINE: being Rural Meditations. By Joseph Fitzgerald, A.M.
Cincinnati: John P. Walsh. 1869.
To those persons especially who have a leisure hour to while away in
reading a pleasant, chatty book, we commend this volume with hearty
good-will. The first paper, "Concerning Boys," abounds in sallies of
wit, with a good deal of what we would call "wholesome thought." The
author need not have given us an apology for its publication, as he
does in his preface; but we think the one he offers deserves more
than a favorable notice on account of its singularity. We reproduce
it, therefore, in this place, hoping that many will purchase Father
Fitzgerald's little work, not only because of its intrinsic merits,
but with a view to thereby increase their own:
"I must build a church for a poor and sparse congregation, and I
propose to get a portion of the necessary funds from the sale of
my book.... I do not rush into print because I judge that these,
my literary wares, of themselves and on their own merits, have any
valid claim to acceptance; nor because I suppose that I have any
thing novel or striking in point either of expression or matter to
offer. Far from me be such presumptuous thoughts! In sending forth
this little volume I do but, as it were, don my beggar's garb, and
take my stand in public places, which any beggar may do without
offence. It is by this view of the case alone that I justify my
cause, which else would surely require an ampler apology. This
consideration alone led me to address a circular to the reverend
clergy which, I doubt not, was by many regarded as the height of
impudence. Now, however, after this explanation, I hope I shall
be pardoned my intrusion, and aided in a good work, in spite of
my awkward presumption. I will say this, however, that I was
encouraged to try this means of collecting money for my church by
two considerations. The first was, the well-known generosity of
the clergy as patrons of books; and then the novelty of the thing,
which could hardly fail to get me some subscribers."
* * * * *
THE FIRST CLASS BOOK OF HISTORY. Designed for pupils commencing
the study of history. With questions. Adapted to the use
of academies and schools. By M. J. Kerney, A.M., author of
_Compendium of Ancient and Modern History, Columbian Arithmetic_,
etc. etc. Twenty-third revised and enlarged edition. Enlarged by
the addition of Lessons in Ancient History. Baltimore: John Murphy
& Co. 1869. Pp. 396.
In this small volume we have an abridgment of the world's history,
ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Commencing with the creation,
it brings its well-digested record of events down even to the
present day. We are positive that there has not been, and we are
morally certain that there never will be an abridgment of history
satisfactory to all. This being premised, we can safely assert that
this little book is, of its class, as nearly perfect as is possible.
While as a text-book this work has deservedly enjoyed a very large
circulation in its previous editions, the present one has several
additional and weighty claims to general approval. We are told in the
preface "that the portion embracing sacred and ancient history has
been, in a measure, rewritten. In modern history, the chapters on
Greece and Switzerland, and portions of other chapters, are new, the
whole being brought down to the present time. Errors and inaccuracies
of whatever kind have been carefully rectified. Superfluities have
been retrenched, and facts equally important to be known as those
already stated, introduced." After a thorough and careful perusal of
the book, we can fully indorse the above, and give the publishers our
best wishes for its success, trusting with them that "it will now
find its way into a still wider circle of institutions than those in
which it has been heretofore known and appreciated."
* * * * *
THE PATRIOT'S HISTORY OF IRELAND. By M. F. Cusack, author of _The
Illustrated History of Ireland_. New York: Catholic Publication
Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1869. Pp. 320.
This _History of Ireland_ has been written in order to comply with a
very generally expressed desire that the author of _The Illustrated
History of Ireland_ would furnish a compendium of Irish history for
the use of schools, and for the benefit of those who have not time to
read a larger work.
The good sister has, we need hardly say, well performed her task,
and literally left nothing to be desired. The book is very neatly
got up, well illustrated, and sells at a low price. As the profits
are entirely devoted to purposes of charity in Kenmare, Ireland, we
earnestly hope for it an extended circulation.
* * * * *
A TEXT-BOOK OF CHEMISTRY. A Modern and Systematic Explanation
of the Elementary Principles of the Science. Adapted to use in
high-schools and academies. By Leroy C. Cooley, A.M. New York:
Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.
This text-book lacks one important chapter, no attempt being made
to explain the manner of preparing the necessary articles for
successful experiments. The fundamental principles are well presented
and clearly explained, while the carefully arranged nomenclature
is all that can be desired in an elementary work. The series of
illustrations are excellent. The book will be found useful to all
teachers who wish to give their pupils a general knowledge of
chemistry.
* * * * *
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS. Popular Edition. 2 vols. 12mo.
Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1869.
Of the literary merit of these sermons there can be no two opinions.
It is also undeniable that there is much to admire in the character
of the man, and much that is true and valuable in his discourses.
There is too much of the poison of rationalism in them to make them
profitable or even safe reading for any except well-instructed
theologians. Clergymen will find them, however, valuable to
themselves as models of style and of the art of sermonizing,
especially in regard to the use to be made of the narratives of
Scripture history, and the application of religious doctrine to the
affairs of human life. The portrait of the author presents him before
us as a man of strikingly handsome and prepossessing physiognomy, and
accords perfectly with the idea we have formed of his manly character.
NOTE.
THE LIFE OF FATHER FABER.--We have received from Mr. Murphy a
copy of this work, reviewed in our last number, printed on tinted
paper, and very handsomely bound. It is one of the most tastefully
and beautifully executed books which we have ever seen from the
press of any American publisher, and we take occasion with the
greatest pleasure to make this acknowledgment to Mr. Murphy of
the favor he has conferred on us and the Catholic public in
reproducing an edition of Father Bowden's excellent biography
which is worthy of the gifted and beloved subject. The portrait of
Father Faber is very fine, and adds much to the value of the book.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 58.--JANUARY, 1870.
THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICITY.[100]
This work of serious and conscientious learning by the Abbé Martin,
former curé of Ferney, noted as the residence of Voltaire when exiled
from France, has been written mainly for the purpose of making
known to Catholics of the old Catholic nations of Europe the real
character and tendencies of contemporary Protestantism--a work not
uncalled for, since those old Catholic populations, seldom coming
into personal contact with Protestants, have not kept themselves
well posted in the changes, developments, and transformations that
Protestantism has undergone during the last two centuries, and
are hardly able to recognize it in its present form, or to meet
and combat it with success. The great controversial works of the
seventeenth century, excellent as they were in their time, only
imperfectly serve the present wants of Catholic polemics; for the
dogmatic Protestantism they met and vanquished is, save in its
spirit, not the Protestantism that now confronts the church. That
primitive phase of Protestantism has passed away, never to reappear,
and a new and a very different phase has been developed, which
demands a new study and a new and different mode of treatment.
The learned Abbé Martin, favorably situated for his task, during
several years, at the gate of Geneva, the Protestant Rome, has
embodied in his volume the result of much serious and conscientious
labor devoted to this new study, and has so well accomplished his
task as to leave nothing to be desired, till Protestantism undergoes
another metamorphosis, which it is not unlikely to do; for to assume
new forms or shapes according to the exigencies of time and place, is
of its very essence. For this reason, the labor of refuting or even
explaining it can never be regarded as finished.
It is the characteristic of Protestantism to have no fixed and
permanent character, except hatred of Catholicity. It has no
principles, doctrines, or forms, which in order to be itself, it must
always and everywhere maintain. It may be biblical and dogmatic,
sentimental or sceptical, combine with absolutism or with the
revolution, assert the divine right of kings and passive obedience
with the old Anglican divines, or shout, _à bas les rois_, and _vive
le peuple! vive liberté, égalité, et fraternité!_ with the old French
Jacobins and contemporary Mazzinians and Garibaldians, as it finds
it necessary to carry on its unending warfare against the church,
without any change in its nature or loss of identity. It is not a
specific error, but error in general, ready to assume any and every
particular form that circumstances require or render convenient.
It, like all error, stands on a movable and moving foundation; and
to strike it we are obliged to strike not where it is, but where it
will be when our blow can reach it. The abbé is well aware of this
fact, and sees and feels the difficulty it creates. Hence he regards
Protestantism as imperishable, and holds that our controversy with
it must, under one form or another, continue as long as error or
hostility to the church continues, which will be to the end of the
world.
To those of us who were brought up Protestants, who have known
Protestantism in all its forms by our own experience, the Abbé Martin
tells little, perhaps nothing that had not previously in some form
passed through our own minds, and not much that had not already been
published among us by our own Catholic writers. It is not easy to
tell an American Catholic any thing new of Protestantism. There is no
country in the world where Protestantism is or can be so well studied
as our own; for in no other country has it had so free a field for
its development and transformations, or in which to prove what it
really is and whither it goes. It has suffered here no restraint from
connection with the state, and till quite recently the church has
been too feeble with us to exert any appreciable influence on its
course. It has had in the religious order every thing its own way,
has followed its own internal law, and acted out its nature, without
let or hinderance. Here it may, therefore, be seen and studied in its
real character and essence.
But if the Abbé Martin has not told us much that we did not already
know, or which American writers had not already published, he
has given us a true and full account of the present aspects and
tendencies of Protestantism throughout Europe, very instructive to
those Catholics who have had no personal acquaintance with it, and
not unprofitable even to those who, though converts to the church,
were familiar with it only as seen in some one or two of the more
aristocratic sects, in which large portions of Catholic tradition
have been retained. We in fact wonder how a man who, like the abbé,
has had no personal experience of Protestantism, who has never had
any internal struggle with it, and has been brought up from infancy
in the bosom of the church and in the Catholic faith, can by study
and observation, by prayer and meditation, make himself so fully
master of its real character, and come so thoroughly to understand
its spirit, its internal laws and tendencies. No doubt one who has
been a Protestant, and knows thoroughly its language, can find in his
work proofs that Protestantism was not his mother tongue, and that he
knows it only as he has learned it; but learned it he has, and knows
it better than it is known by the most erudite and philosophical
Protestant ministers themselves, and the Catholic reader may rely
with full confidence on his expositions. The work is, in fact, an
admirable supplement alike to Bossuet's _Variations_ and to Moehler's
_Symbolik_.
It will startle some Catholics, no doubt, to hear the well-informed
author assert, as he does, that Protestantism is not dead or dying,
that it is imperishable, its principle is immortal, and never was
it a more formidable enemy to the church than it is at this present
moment; but they will be less startled when they learn what he means
by Protestantism.
"Protestantism," he says, "differs essentially from all the
heresies that have previously rent the bosom of the church.
It is not a particular heresy, nor a union of heresies; it is
simply a frame for the reception of errors. Vinet, one of the
most distinguished Protestants of the day, softens, indeed, this
expression, and says that 'Protestantism is less a religion than
the place of a religion.' He would have been strictly exact,
if he had said Protestantism is less a religion than the place
of any negation of religion under a religious garb. It is a
circle capable of indefinite extension, of being enlarged as
occasion requires, so as to include any and every error within
its circumference. A new error rises on the horizon, the circle
extends further and takes it in. Its power of extension is limited
only by its last denial, and is therefore practically illimitable.
What it asserted in the beginning it was able to deny a century
later; what it maintained a century ago it can reject now; and
what it holds to-day it may discard to-morrow. It may deny
indefinitely, and still be Protestantism. It can modify, change,
metamorphose, turn and return itself without losing any thing
of its identity. Grub, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly, it is
transformed, but dies not." (Pp. 1, 2.)
All this is perfectly true. Protestantism undoubtedly differs
essentially from all the particular heresies of former times, such
as the Arian, Macedonian, Nestorian, Eutychian, Pelagian, etc.; but
we think it bears many marks of affinity with ancient Gnosticism,
of which it is perhaps the historical continuation and development.
Gnosticism was not a particular or special heresy, denying a
particular article, dogma, or proposition of faith. The Gnostics
held themselves to be the enlightened Christians of their times, men
who had attained to perfect science, been initiated into the sacred
mysteries concealed from the vulgar, professed to be spiritual men,
spiritually illuminated, and looked down with contempt on Catholics
as remaining in the outer court, sensuous and ignorant, knowing
nothing of the Spirit. This is no bad description of contemporary
Protestants. They call themselves the enlightened portion of mankind,
claim to be spiritual men, spiritually illumined and instructed
in the profoundest mysteries of heaven and earth; while from the
height of their science they look down on us Catholics as simply
sensuous men, having only a sensuous worship, and hold us to be a
degraded, ignorant, superstitious, and besotted race. We are very
much disposed, for ourselves, to regard Protestantism as Gnosticism
modified to suit the taste, the temper, the mental habits, and the
capacity of modern times.
The author makes Protestantism not a special heresy, nor yet a union
of heresies, but the receptacle of illimitable denials; yet he
throughout distinguishes it from absolute unbelief in Christianity,
and maintains that even as so distinguished it is imperishable, and
its principle immortal. We confess that we do not see how he can make
this distinction without giving to Protestantism a specific character
and making it a positive heresy, and not simply a frame for the
reception of heresy or heresies. Assuming it to be a positive heresy,
and not the general spirit of error adapting itself to any and every
form of error, his reasoning is far from satisfying us that it is
imperishable. The assertion that "its principle is immortal," can
in no case be accepted; for all error must ultimately die, and only
truth survive, if our Lord is to overcome all his enemies, and God,
who is truth itself, is to be all in all. It is not to be supposed
that they who are eternally lost continue to err and to sin for ever.
They know and confess the truth at last, and it is their severest
hell that they know and confess it when it is too late for it to
liberate them. Understanding Protestantism to be the general spirit
of error, we can concede it to be imperishable, in the sense that the
world is imperishable; for men will hate Christ and deny him as long
as the world stands; but in no other sense are we prepared to concede
it.
The author defines the essence of Protestantism to be hatred of
the church, and yet throughout his book distinguishes it from
absolute infidelity or unbelief. We do not see the propriety of this
distinction, nor understand how he can consistently exclude from
Protestantism any form of error that hatred may assume. He makes
Protestantism not a particular, a specific heresy, but the frame in
which any negation of religion under a religious garb may be set.
We see no ground for this restriction, and it seems to us that it
contradicts his own assertion that Protestantism is a circle capable
of indefinite extension, and practically illimitable; for if the
circle can include only the denials of religion that wear a religious
garb, it is not illimitable, or capable of indefinite extension.
The learned abbé, we suspect, has been led into this real or
apparent contradiction by neglecting to distinguish sharply between
Protestants and Protestantism. Protestants are of all shades,
from the Calvinist down to the unitarian or rationalist, from the
high-churchman down to the no-churchman. The great majority of them
retain some shreds of Christian belief, read the Bible, look to
Christ as the redeemer of mankind, and are governed more or less in
their opinions, sentiments, and conduct by Christian tradition. It
would be a great mistake as well as gross injustice to represent all
or even many of them as actually or intentionally unbelievers in
Christ, or to hold them to be, in the way of error, any thing more
than heretics. But Protestantism is not a form of heresy, is nothing
in itself but hatred of Catholicity or hostility to the church of
God; and there are no lengths in the way of denial it will not go,
if necessary for its gratification. It is potentially absolute
infidelity.
This seems to be in reality the abbé's own doctrine, and its truth
is evident from the fact that the general tendency of Protestants is
not toward Catholicity, but farther and farther from it. Individuals
among them, in certain times and places, even in large numbers,
manifest decided Catholic tendencies, and ultimately find their way
back to the church; but whoever knows Protestants well, knows that
the mass of them, if driven by Catholic polemics to choose between
the church and the denial of Christianity, indeed, of all religion,
will not choose the church. "If I can be saved only by becoming a
Catholic, I do not wish to be saved," said a Protestant minister
to us one day. "I would rather be damned than be a Catholic."
We politely assured him he could have his choice. This minister
expressed only the too common sentiment of Protestants. A certain
number among them, when convinced that Catholicity and Christianity
are identical, will, the grace of God moving and assisting, become
Catholics; but every day's experience shows that the larger number
of them love Christianity less than they hate Catholicity, and will
become infidels sooner than they will become Catholics. In doing so,
are they illogical? Do they reject Protestantism, or simply follow
out its spirit to its last logical consequences?
The learned abbé restricts Protestantism to such negations as wear a
religious garb. But with us, in what is called Free Religion, we have
seen infidelity itself wearing the garb and speaking the language
of religion. In France there are the positivists, real atheists,
who clothe themselves with a religious vestment, adopt a ritual,
and observe a regular worship. These, if the author insist on his
restriction, must be included within the Protestant circle, and if
these are included, it will be difficult to say what class of enemies
of Christ and his church are to be excluded. We see no good reason,
therefore, for any restriction in the case. Protestantism is made
up of negations, without any affirmation or positive truth of its
own; and no reason can be assigned why we should not hold it capable
of including within its circumference, without loss of identity or
essential alteration, any or all errors against the Catholic Church,
and if as yet only heretical with the many, why it is not capable in
its developments of becoming downright apostasy or complete denial of
Christianity.
Taken in this sense, we admit that Protestantism is not dead, nor
dying; but will continue to confront the church to the end of time.
The church in this world is always the church militant. She will
always have her enemies with whom she can never make peace so long as
she remains faithful to her Lord. "Think not," said our Lord, "that
I am come to send peace on the earth; nay, a sword, rather." The
synagogue of Satan stands always over against the church of God, and
the world will always hate the church as it hated our Lord himself;
for she is not of the world as he was not of it. Yet we attach no
great importance, if this be its meaning, to the proposition,
"Protestantism is imperishable," which the Abbé Martin labors hard
and at great length to sustain; for it is only saying in other words
that hatred to the church will continue till the consummation of the
world.
But if the proposition means that Protestantism under its original
or even its present form, as held by the mass of Protestants, is
imperishable, we can only say, nothing proves it to our satisfaction.
That the essence of Protestantism, which the author defines to be
hatred of Catholicity, will continue as long as the world stands we
do not doubt; but nothing proves to us that it may not change its
form in the future as it has done in the past, or that the great
body of Protestants may not gradually eliminate all that they have
thus far retained of Christian tradition or Christian belief, reject
even the Christian name, and lapse into pure Gentilism, as they are
already lapsing into carnal Judaism.
The abbé, while he is strictly correct when telling us what
Protestantism is, that it is less a religion than the frame for the
reception of all possible anti-Christian negations, yet seems in much
of his reasoning with regard to its future to proceed as if he held
Protestantism to be, not an immutable system indeed, but, after all,
something definite and positive or affirmative. He knows as well as
we do, and abundantly proves in his book, that Protestantism affirms
nothing, contains as peculiar to itself no affirmative proposition
whatever. The affirmative propositions held by Protestants are simply
fragments of Catholic truth taught and held fast in their integrity
by the church long ages before Luther and Calvin were born, and
constitute no part of Protestantism. The Protestantism is all in
the perversion, corruption, or denial of Catholic truth. There is
nothing in it of its own but its negations and hatred of the church,
her faith, her discipline, and her worship, to be continued, or that
can be the subject of any predicate. Protestantism receives into its
bosom one form of error as readily as another, and complete unbelief
as the inchoate apostasy called heresy, though we readily grant that
the majority of Protestants are not, as yet, prepared to accept
infidelity pure and simple; and many of them, we trust, are, in their
intentions and dispositions, prepared to accept and obey the truth
when made known to them, and may yet in God's gracious providence
find their way into the Catholic communion and be saved.
The Reformers, or the fathers of the modern Protestant movement,
did not intend to give up Christianity or the church. They thought
they could reject the papacy and the sacerdotal order, and still
retain the Christian faith and the Christian church. But they were
not slow to discover that this was impracticable, and that, if they
gave up the papacy and the sacerdotal order, they must give up the
sacraments, save as unmeaning rites, infused grace, the merit of good
works, the church as a living organism, the whole Mediatorial work
of Christ in our actual regeneration, and fall back on immediatism,
and deny all living or present Mediator between God and man. Their
successors have found out that an irresistible logic carries them
farther still, and requires them to reject all creeds and dogmas as
superfluous, to resolve faith into confidence, and to rely solely on
the immediate internal illumination and operations of the Holy Ghost.
A new generation is beginning to discover that even this is too
much, and is preparing to attribute to nature and the soul what its
predecessors had attributed to the immediate supernatural operations
of the Spirit. There is but one step farther, and you have reached
the goal, that of resolving God himself into the human soul, or the
identification of God with man and man with God, and not a few have
already taken it.
Protestant experience has proved that the Catholic system is
homogeneous, self-consistent, all of a piece, so to speak; woven
without seam, and not to be parted; that it must either be accepted
or rejected as a whole. We do not say that all or the majority of
Protestants see this; but many of them see it, and their vanguard
loudly proclaim it, and declare the issue to be, Catholicity or
rationalism, that is, naturalism. There is no middle ground tenable,
to a logical mind with a courage equal to its logic, between the two.
It must be either the church or the world, Catholicity or naturalism,
God or atheism. We know great bodies move slow, and the great body
of Protestants will not come to a full conviction of this to-day nor
to-morrow; but they are tending to it, and can hardly fail, in the
natural course of things, one day to reach it. Having reached it, we
think the sincere and earnest Protestants, who love and study the
Bible and mean to be Christians, will be gathered into the Catholic
fold, and the others most likely, other things remaining as they are,
will follow their Protestant spirit into naturalism, and give up
Christian baptism and Christian faith altogether.
The author tells us that there are two very obvious tendencies among
Protestants: the one a tendency to return to the church, and the
other a tendency to rationalism and complete infidelity; but he
thinks there will always remain in the non-Catholic body a certain
number of honest, pious souls who shrink from unbelief, and yet,
while they hold on to certain shreds of Christianity, will, from
ignorance, prejudice, and other causes, continue to protest against
the Catholic faith. He supposes that among Protestants there are
large numbers of such persons, who really believe in Jesus Christ,
who really love his religion as far as they know it, who have
real Christian piety, and actually believe themselves to be true
Christians in faith and practice. These, he contends, preserve to
Protestantism a certain religious and Christian character, and will
prevent it from ever lapsing into complete unbelief and irreligion.
They will always insist on some form of Christianity; and whatever
the form they adopt, it will be Protestantism. He may be right; but
we think, in discussing the future of Protestantism, he makes too
much account of these pious persons; for if as well disposed as he
assumes them to be, they can hardly fail, as time goes on and the
real character of the Reformation becomes more and more manifest, to
follow out their Christian tendency, and return to the communion of
the Catholic Church.
Looking at the two tendencies among Protestants, studying them as
thoroughly as we are able, and considering especially the essential
nature of Protestantism, together with what we may call the logic
of error--for error as well as truth has its logic--we think
Protestantism as pretending to be Christian will, as we have said,
finally disappear, and prove itself practically, as it is logically,
the total rejection of the Christian religion, and therefore of
Christ himself. In point of fact, Protestantism in its spirit and
essence, as the author shows beyond contradiction, is only the
revival under a modern form of the great Gentile Apostasy that
followed the building of the Tower of Babel, and must, if it run
its course, lapse either into no-religion, as it has already done
with our modern scientists, or into demon-worship and gross idolatry
and superstition, as it is actually doing with modern spiritists
right under our eyes. We look, as we have already intimated, for a
separation of the wheat from the chaff, and believe the time will
come when the real issue will be made up, and the battle we must wage
be not with heresy, but with undisguised and unmitigated infidelity,
rationalism, naturalism, or pure secularism.
We cannot give a complete analysis of the Abbé Martin's work; for
it is itself little else than an analysis. But an interesting and
important portion of it is devoted to the Protestant revival and
propaganda, beginning in the latter half of the last century, and
continued so vigorously in the present. Protestantism, seeking from
the first the aid and protection of the princes, soon assumed in each
country that adopted it the form and state of a national religious
establishment, defended and governed by the secular power. Having no
true spiritual life within, and defended without and provided for by
the government, it fell, as soon as the religious wars occasioned
by its origin had subsided, into a state of torpor, and the people
under it fell almost universally into a religious somnolence. The
establishment was sustained even with rigor, but personal religion
was generally unknown or disregarded. Some individuals, seeing this,
applied themselves to awaken in the torpid masses a personal interest
in religion. From them began a religious revival, or a movement in
behalf of personal religion, known in Germany as Pietism, in Great
Britain and elsewhere as Methodism, which holds principally from
John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Lady Huntington.
This revival, which has done much to increase individualism, and to
weaken the influence of dogma and church principles, and which has
developed a species of evangelical illuminism resulting in a sort of
infidel illuminism, as seen in our American transcendentalists and
free religionists, has, upon the whole, the author thinks, injured
more than it has advanced Protestantism. Such, we are sure, has been
the fact in this country, unless we identify Protestantism with pure
unbelief and indifference. Not one fourth of those assumed to be
"hopefully converted" in revival seasons stay converted, while the
backsliders are worse Christians, and those who remain pious are no
better Protestants, than they were before their conversion.
The revival has, however, given birth to a vigorous propaganda in
pagan and Catholic countries, and even in Protestant countries
themselves, by means of Bible societies, tract societies, home and
foreign missionary societies, supported on a large scale and with
apparently inexhaustible means. The author discusses this Protestant
propaganda in relation to infidel nations; to mixed nations, or
nations composed of Protestants and Catholics; and finally to old
Catholic nations. In infidel or pagan nations he maintains that
it has thus far been null. He maintains also that in all those
Protestant nations, or nations in which Protestantism became the
established church, but in which some remnants of the old Catholic
population still remained and adhered to the Catholic faith and
worship, the propaganda has, upon the whole, proved a failure, and in
nearly all of them Catholicity has gained, and is still gaining, on
Protestantism. This, counting from the date of the institution of the
Protestant foreign and home missions in the beginning of the present
century, is certainly true in Great Britain and Ireland, in Holland,
Switzerland, especially in Sweden and Norway, and in this country;
though the principal gains in England, Scotland, and the United
States are due to the immigration of Catholics from countries under
Protestant governments, or governments not friendly to the church. In
the United States we are almost wholly indebted for the astonishing
growth of the church to the migration hither of Catholics from
Ireland and Germany. We have numerous conversions, indeed; but they
form hardly an appreciable element in our entire Catholic population.
In the English-speaking world there have been many conversions from
the upper classes and from the ranks of the Protestant ministry,
especially of the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal communions;
but very little impression is as yet made on the middle and lower
classes, who must be converted before much progress is made in the
conversion of a nation. We have certainly gained ground in Protestant
nations, but probably not much more than we have lost in old Catholic
nations.
While the Protestant propaganda has failed with infidel or pagan
nations, and with the Catholic populations of Protestant nations, the
author maintains that, allied with rationalism and the revolution, it
has not been wholly unsuccessful in old Catholic nations, as France,
Italy, Spain, Austria, and Hungary. It is, he maintains, "worse than
idle" to pretend that Protestant missions in these nations are wholly
barren of results, or have met with only insignificant success. Their
success has been considerable, not perhaps in making Protestants, but
in unmaking Catholics. Their missions are generally favored by the
press, by the higher literature, and by the governments, which, even
though nominally Catholic, are always jealous of the church, and ever
encroaching on her rights and restraining her freedom.
The success of the Protestant propaganda in these old Catholic
nations, the author thinks, is due to the reputation Protestant
nations have of surpassing Catholic nations in material well-being;
of having founded civil and religious liberty; and chiefly to
the unpopularity of the clergy, the supineness of Catholics, and
the ignorance of the Catholic clergy of the real character of
contemporary Protestantism. All these causes no doubt are operative;
but the real cause, we apprehend, is to be sought in the ascendency
acquired by the world in the fifteenth century, and which has invaded
Catholic nations hardly less successfully than Protestant nations.
Protestantism is the child of this ascendency, and its legitimate
tendency is to place the world above heaven, and man above God; or
the complete supremacy of the secular over the spiritual.
In its origin Protestantism seemed to be an exaggerated
supernaturalism, denying to the natural all moral ability since the
fall, and consequently assigning to the human will no active part
in the work of justification or sanctification. But extremes meet;
and the exaggerated supernaturalism in relation to the world to come
proved to be only an exaggerated naturalism in relation to this
world. To deny all activity of the natural in the work of sanctity is
only emancipating the natural from the supernatural, from the moral
law, and leaving it therefore free from all moral accountability, to
follow without restraint its own inclinations and tendencies; for
what is incapable of meriting is necessarily incapable of sinning.
As the affections of the natural fasten on this world and the goods
of this life, Protestantism soon lost practically all sense of the
divine, as it is now rapidly losing it theoretically, and turned the
whole activity of the nations that embraced it to the cultivation of
the material order and the acquisition of material goods, leaving
the spiritual order behind as a popish superstition, or an invention
of priestcraft for enslaving the soul and restraining the natural
freedom of mankind.
The spirit that generated and operates in Protestantism, and which
its doctrine of free or sovereign grace only fortifies, is, in fact,
only the old heathen spirit that seeks only the goods of this life,
and so pointedly condemned by Christianity. It reverses the word
of our Lord, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and
all these things shall be added unto you;" and says, "Seek first
these things--the goods of this life--and the kingdom of God and
his justice shall be added; if, indeed, such kingdom or justice
there be." This spirit was not originated by the Reformation. It had
preceded it. It had originated the great Gentile Apostasy, and caused
the carnal Jews to misinterpret the prophecies and to expect in the
promised Messiah a temporal prince instead of a spiritual redeemer
and regenerator. It had even entered the garden and induced the fall
of our first parents. It has always subsisted in the world; nay, is
what St. Augustine called the City of the World as opposed to the
City of God, and which had its type and representative in the Roman
republic and empire. It is the purely secular spirit emancipated from
the spiritual, and substituting itself for it.
This spirit is everywhere warred against by Christianity, therefore
by Catholicity; and during the temporal calamities of the barbarous
and middle ages was held in check by the church; but the advancement
of political and social order, the progress of well-being, the
revival of pagan literature and art, the opening of new or long
disused routes of commerce, and the discovery, in the fifteenth
century, of a new continent with its untold treasures, gave new force
and activity to the pagan spirit, and enabled it to pervade and take
possession of the governments, never very submissive to the church,
of the emperor, of kings, princes, and nobles, and, in general,
of the upper classes of European society. Christendom was well
prepared at the opening of the sixteenth century for a revival of
Gentilism, which found able and magnificent supporters in the Medici
of Florence, so dear to modern uncatholic scholars, but so fatal in
their influence on Catholic interests.
With the revival of Gentilism or secularism there came the revival
of the quarrel of pagan times between Germany and Rome; and Luther's
movement derived its chief strength from its appeal to the old German
hatred of Roman domination, represented in the fifteenth century, it
was assumed, in part by the pope, and in part by the emperor, who
pretended to revive the old Roman empire and to succeed to the Roman
Cæsars of the West. The Germanic nations, never thoroughly Romanized,
rebelled against the church, not because the secular spirit was more
or less rampant with them than with the Romanic nations that remained
Catholic, but because the centre of her authority was the old hated
city of Rome; and they looked upon her authority as Roman, and
incompatible with their own national independence. Nothing is farther
from the truth than to suppose that they were moved by a desire
to emancipate the human mind from its pretended thraldom under
the pope, or to establish free inquiry and the liberty of private
judgment; for they yielded from the first to the secular or national
sovereign all the authority in spirituals which had been previously
exercised by the Roman pontiff. Wherever Protestantism gained a
political status, the two powers, as under paganism--unless we except
Geneva, Scotland, and, subsequently, New England--were united in the
secular sovereign or the state. Calvin in Geneva, Knox in Scotland,
and the Puritans in New England, though they sought to unite the
two powers in the same governing body, sought to unite them in the
hands of the church rather than of the state, in consequence of their
misinterpretation of the Hebrew commonwealth, which, in fact, gave us
the first example in history of the separation of the two powers, the
sacerdotal and the secular, always asserted and insisted on by the
Catholic Church.
The real character of the Protestant movement was a movement in
behalf of nationalism--the distinctive feature of Gentilism--revived
by the insurgent worldly spirit. The church herself, in the
nations that adhered to her, was defended against the so-called
Reformation, except by the theologians, not on Catholic principles,
but on national principles; and hence the secular authority sought
constantly to exercise a supervision over the church, and, as far
as possible, to convert her into a national church. The so-called
Catholic governments did not differ in principle from the Protestant
governments, and have never done so since. They protected the church,
to a certain extent, from recognized heresies, and provided for the
pomp and splendor of her worship; but restrained in every possible
way her full freedom of action, and compelled her to yield to their
respective national policies in order to avoid a greater evil. The
church could not fully instruct the people in any Catholic nation
in the principles which should govern the relations of church and
state without incurring the persecution of her pretended protectors.
Hence, there grew up in all Catholic nations a false view of those
relations, which greatly weakened the church and aided the growth
of the secular spirit. Catholicity, having been supported, not as
Catholic but as a national religion, by Catholic governments and
their courtiers, we find now, when the governments cease to defend it
even as a national religion, and are more hostile than friendly to
the church, that the Catholic populations of old Catholic nations,
never allowed by the secular authority to be fully instructed in the
secular relations of their religion, and never accustomed to act
personally in the intellectual defence of their faith, incrusted
over with the secularism encouraged by their governments, are almost
universally unarmed and defenceless before the Protestant propaganda,
having in its favor the prestige of the worldly power and supposed
well-being of Protestant nations, and of the championship of civil
and religious liberty.
Here, we apprehend, is the real secret of the success of Protestant
missions in old Catholic nations; not in the ignorance of the
Catholic clergy of the real character of contemporary Protestantism,
as the Abbé Martin maintains. He shows, perhaps exaggerates, the
danger which the church runs in these old Catholic nations, and
admits that it is becoming apparent, if not to all, at least to many
of the clergy, and asks,
"How could it be otherwise with the French clergy, so learned, so
pious, so vigilant, and so zealous? They are preparing themselves
for the struggle; they proceed to the battle with the energy
of faith; they lack not ability; but they _lack a knowledge of
contemporary Protestantism_. If they would struggle with success,
if they would revive the glorious days of the Catholic apologetic
of the seventeenth century, or rather, if they would create a new
apologetic in harmony with the wants and errors of the times,
they must study Protestantism in its latest evolutions and in its
actual physiognomy." (Pp. 178, 179.)
No doubt there is more or less ignorance even among the French
clergy as to the various phases and wiles of Protestantism, and
which their text-books will hardly help them to dissipate; but what
seems to us to stand most in their way is precisely their need of
studying Catholic theology more thoroughly in its relations to human
reason and the secular order--a study they could hardly prosecute
under what are facetiously termed "the Gallican liberties;" that is,
liberties of the government to enslave the church. No man who has
learned Catholic theology as catholic instead of national, who has
learned that the church represents on earth the spiritual order,
and has the freedom and courage to maintain that the spiritual is
superior to the temporal, is, in fact, the end for which the temporal
exists, and therefore that which prescribes to the temporal its
law, can ever be at a loss to understand or to know how to meet
Protestantism the moment he sees it, whatever the particular phase
it may exhibit. Protestantism is not and never was any thing but a
series of negations, and all the advantage it has ever had or ever
will have over Catholics is precisely in their ignorance of the real
or intrinsic relation of the Catholic doctrine or doctrines it denies
to the whole body of Catholic truth.
Protestantism, the author himself sees, is simply revived paganism;
but what he does not see is, that the state in all European nations
has always been pagan, and never in its principle or constitution
been truly Christian. Our own political constitution may be very
imperfect, may be destined to a speedy end; but it is the first
and only instance in history of a political constitution based on
Christian principles; that is, on the recognition of the independence
of religion and the supremacy of the spiritual order. It recognizes,
in our modern phrase, the inalienable rights of man as its basis;
but what the American statesman calls the rights of man are, in
reality, the rights of God, which every human authority must hold
sacred and inviolable. We pretend not that the American people or
American statesmen fully understand or adhere practically to the
American constitution, or that they ever will till they become
Catholics and understand, as comparatively few Catholics even now
do, the principles of their church in their political and social
applications. Nevertheless, the constitution is based on the
independence and supremacy of the spiritual order, which the secular
order must always and everywhere recognize, respect, and defend. This
is in direct contradiction of the principle of the pagan republic,
which asserts the independence and supremacy of the state alike in
temporals and spirituals.
But this pagan principle of the supremacy of the state has always
been the basis of the European public law, and the church, though
she has always maintained the contrary, has always been held in the
civil jurisprudence to have only the rights accorded her by the civil
government. This has always been the doctrine alike of the Civil Law
and the Common Law courts, always rigidly enforced by the French
parliaments, and not seldom yielded by courtly prelates afraid, as in
England, of the statute of _præmunire_. There have been individual
sovereigns who personally understood and yielded the church her
rights; but their lawyers never recognized them save as grants or
concessions by the prince. Hence the interminable quarrel of the
legists and the canonists, and the sad spectacle of the bishops of
a nation not seldom deserting almost in a body the supreme pontiff
in his deadly struggle with their civil tyrants in defence of their
own rights, and the freedom and independence of the spiritual order.
Hence, too, we see Italian statesmen, while pretending to acknowledge
and confirm religious liberty, confiscating the goods of the church,
and prescribing in the name of the state the conditions on which the
bishops of the church will be permitted to exercise their pastoral
functions. Hence it is, also, that we have seen pious and devout
Catholics defend the revolution and preach political atheism in one
breath, and the most rigid orthodoxy in another.
With all deference to M. l'Abbé Martin, we must think that what is
wanting in the Catholic populations of old Catholic countries in
order to resist the Protestant propaganda, is not so much a better
knowledge of Protestantism, as a more thorough knowledge of their
own faith, and of Catholic principles themselves, in relation to
one another and to the secular order--a knowledge which has been
hindered, and to a great extent prevented, by the paganism of the
state, which has disabled the church from freely and fully giving
it. Happily, the European governments by ceasing to be protectors of
the church have in great measure lost the power, if not to afflict
and persecute, at least to enslave her. The bishops, with only here
and there an exception, no longer take the side of Cæsar against
Peter, and see that their interests and those of the church can be
saved only by the strictest union with and submission to the supreme
pastor, the vicar of Christ. The supreme pastor himself, without
consulting earthly potentates or conferring with flesh and blood, has
pronounced in his Encyclical and Syllabus, a rigorous judgment on
political atheism and paganism in modern society, and set forth the
Catholic principles in which the faithful need to be instructed in
order to resist the Protestant propaganda, supported by rationalism
and the revolution. He has asserted the independence and freedom of
the church in convoking by his own authority, almost in defiance
of the secular powers, an oecumenical council, to be held in his
own palace of the Vatican, in which the universal church, aided by
the Holy Ghost, will, we presume, deliberate and pronounce upon the
errors of the times, and indicate the means of arresting the evils
that now so grievously afflict society, both spiritual and secular.
Hereafter, we may hope, the faithful, cost what it may, will be more
thoroughly instructed as to the relations of the two powers, and of
faith to reason and civil society, so that an end will be put to
the progress in Catholic nations of Protestantism, rationalism, and
political atheism.
The Abbé Martin succeeds better in describing Protestantism as it is,
and in setting forth the danger it threatens, than in pointing out
the remedy to be applied by Catholics, or in assigning the causes of
the defects he finds or thinks he finds among them. He does not see
that these defects, in so far as general, are almost wholly due to
the pagan constitution of the state, which has survived the downfall
of pagan Rome, and to the fact that the church has never yet in the
Old World had her full freedom and independence, but has always been
more or less restrained in her action by the jealousy or hostility
of the state. The lack of individual energy and self-reliance of
Catholics in asserting and defending the rights of the church, which
the abbé deplores, has its origin in the restraint imposed by the
civil authority on the freedom of the church.
"Catholics," he says, "relying on authority, full of confidence in
its unfailing promises, are quite ready to think that it is enough
for them to preserve the faith in their hearts, and to perform
its works, while the defence and preservation of the church
is the care of Providence. This sentiment, very commendable,
no doubt, is yet, when not joined to a masculine energy which
counts no sacrifices, if needed, in sustaining the work of God,
only an enervating sloth. Catholics--may I say it?--need the
activity of individual forces, not, indeed, of that excessive
individualism which, puffed up by pride, drives the Protestant
over the dark waves of doubt, but that Christian individualism
which, accepting by conviction the compass of authority, knows
how to employ all its personal forces in its service. This
individualism, Protestants reproach us with lacking; let us prove
to them the contrary, and show that individual action is quite
as powerful and far more productive, when it is well balanced,
measured, and subjected to wise rules, as when it wanders without
law or discipline, and acts only under the varying impulses of
free inquiry. It is, moreover, necessary to enter into this way;
for the time has come for Catholics to understand that they can
henceforth nowhere on earth count on any support but from God and
themselves." (Pp. 175, 176.)
The author adds that Catholics, not only nominal but even many
practical Catholics, lack the individual energy that
"springs from profound faith, the faith which goes to the marrow,
and enters even the centre of the soul, and radiates from it
in earnest convictions over all religious practices, over the
entire life, giving to them their true sense and to it the right
direction and end. Protestants accuse our church of materialism in
her worship....
"The charge is false when applied to the church and her worship,
but is only too true when applied to her members. Hence the
painful inconsistencies in their conduct. They are Catholics in
the church, Catholics in essential religious practices, sometimes
even in works of supererogation, but are elsewhere and in other
matters hardly Christians. The _petit devotion_ is sterile; manly,
robust piety alone is productive, and it is it alone that we must
labor to diffuse. We should seek to make it enter into souls and
become fused with their very substance. Catholic worship is the
most admirable vehicle of the spirit of life; but souls must
comprehend it, and be instructed to draw the spirit of life from
it." (Pp. 176, 177.)
There is no doubt truth in this, and with but too many Catholics
their religion is little more in practice than a lifeless form; but
this, so far as due to the clergy, is due rather to their want of
earnestness and zeal, which the author says they do not lack, than
to their ignorance of contemporary Protestantism. We pay little
heed to the reproaches of Protestants, more likely to mislead than
to instruct Catholics; but we are quite willing to concede that in
old Catholic nations there may be a want among Catholics of the
sort of individual energy defined and demanded by the author; but,
in the first place, we are disposed to think that his long study of
Protestantism, which is based on individualism, and his observation
of the part played by what Protestants call personal religion, have
led him to overrate the importance of this outward individual zeal
and energy in the church; and in the second place, he seems not to
have sufficiently considered that they can hardly be looked for in
a community accustomed for ages to rely on the civil power to look
out for the defence of the church, and for her protection against
heretics and heresies. In such communities the free action of the
church has been crippled by the attempt of the state to do her work
and only bungling it, and in which no call for personal effort
in preserving and defending the church externally has been made
on Catholics as individuals. The evil results naturally from the
condition in which Catholics must be found when abandoned by the
government that had hitherto saved them from all necessity of any
personal activity in their own defence against external enemies. It
can be only temporary, if the church is left henceforth free by the
government to appeal to the individual faith, love, and exertions of
the faithful under her direction.
There is, no doubt, much tepidity, formalism, and momentary
imbecility in the face of the enemy in old Catholic populations;
for not the just nor the elect only are members of the church;
but abandoned or opposed as the church now is by the governments,
and thrown back as she is everywhere upon her own resources as a
spiritual kingdom, forced to be even in old Catholic nations once
more a missionary church in every thing except in outward form, and
obliged to appeal directly to the faithful individually, there can
hardly fail to be developed in Catholics the personal qualities which
the author thinks they do not now possess. The need of a robust and
manly piety to struggle with the world and the enemies of the church
will very soon call it forth, where religion is free and faith is not
extinct.
We cannot but think, if the author had experienced the vexations
and annoyances that we have from the personal and individual zeal
and activity of Protestants of the revival stamp, each one of
whom acts as if he were an Atlas and bore the whole weight of the
religious world on his individual shoulders, he would much prefer
its absence among Catholics to its presence. Not more troublesome
were the frogs of Egypt, that came up into the kneading-troughs and
the sleeping-chambers. It is not easy to describe the sensation of
relief a convert from Protestantism feels on coming into the church
and learning that he has now a religion that can sustain him instead
of needing him to sustain it. With Protestants, the member bears the
sect; with Catholics, the church bears the member. The sacraments are
effective _ex opere operato_. We are disposed, moreover, to believe
that Catholics best serve the Catholic cause by each one's doing in
his own sphere his own allotted work. The unity of faith, and the
unity of the spirit that works alike in all the faithful to will and
to do, are sufficient to secure unity of action, and action to one
and the same end, and to effect with marvellous rapidity the grandest
and most magnificent results. This, we think, is the Catholic method,
quiet, peaceable, orderly, and, if less showy and striking than
the Protestant method, less noisy and prosy, far more fruitful in
results. The Catholic is sustained, the Protestant must sustain.
For our part, we are grateful to the author for his masterly
exposition of contemporary Protestantism; but we hope we may be
permitted to say that, while we do not deny the danger with which
it threatens the populations of old Catholic nations, we think he
exaggerates it, and supposes Protestant negations are more powerful
than they really are. It may be that the Catholic populations are not
at present very well prepared to withstand the Protestant propaganda,
allied as it is with rationalism and the revolution; but they cannot
long remain unprepared. The revolution having, wherever attempted,
resulted in the loss of old liberties without the acquisition of
any additional civil freedom, must gradually lose its credit with
the people, who must ere long be disillusioned; rationalism is
too cold, too absurd, and too destitute of life to hold them in
permanent subjection. Scientists and sciolists may adhere to it while
its novelty lasts, but both the reason and instincts of the people
reject it, and demand faith, religion. Protestantism severed from
the revolution and rationalism is too much what the great Catholic
controversialists met in the seventeenth century and vanquished for
its revival to be able to gain and hold much new territory.
The real danger, in our judgment, is in the spread of secularism
or the secular spirit among Catholics themselves. This is the only
serious obstacle we see to the conversion of the American people
to the church. Catholics here and elsewhere conform to modern
civilization, and are carried away by its spirit. They follow the
spirit of the age without knowing it; and though a Catholic may
accept without scruple all the positive results of what is called
modern civilization, he cannot imbibe and follow its spirit without
great loss on the side of religion, which requires the renunciation
of the world as the end for which one is to live and to labor. But
there are even among Catholics very worthy men, men of excellent
parts and rare learning, who virtually subordinate the spiritual to
the secular. They have so far yielded to the secular spirit of the
day as to place the defence of the church on secular rather than
on spiritual grounds, and defend her claims as the church of God
rather as necessary to secure civil liberty and advanced civilization
than as necessary to save the soul and secure the beatitude of
heaven. They are, in some degree, affected by the philanthropy
or humanitarianism of the age, and occasionally confound it with
Christian charity, which loves God supremely, and our neighbor as
ourselves in God, or for the sake of God.
These men pursue a line of argument that draws off the Catholic
mind from the kingdom of God and his justice, and fixes it on those
things after which the heathen seek, secularize it, and lead it to
think that our Lord's mission had for its object the multiplication
of earthly goods and securing earthly felicity. They unintentionally
play into the hands of radicals and revolutionists, by influencing
Catholics to strive after social instead of spiritual progress, and
making them feel that the great work for the church is less to train
men for heaven than to make the earth a more pleasant abode for them;
or that the proper way for men to work out their salvation hereafter
is to work earnestly and perseveringly for the progress of civil and
political liberty, and the reform of political and social abuses.
It can hardly have any but a bad influence on the Catholic mind to
find prominent Catholics urging their Catholic fellow-citizens to
make common cause with the most notorious and irreligious infidel and
radical leaders of the revolution, as if there could be any thing
in common between Catholics and men who demand liberty only to
emancipate themselves from the divine law and to suppress the church,
or at least to restrain her freedom.
But we are forgetting our author. Of the three causes he assigns
for the partial success in old Catholic nations of Protestant
missions, we have considered only the third and last--the alleged
ignorance of the clergy of contemporary Protestantism, the supineness
of Catholics, and their lack of individual zeal, energy, and
self-reliance. We have ventured to differ in some respects with
regard to this alleged cause from the eminent author, and to take a
deeper and a broader view of the real cause of Protestant success.
We have traced it to the ascendency of the worldly spirit which has
given birth to Protestantism itself, and, even in Catholic countries,
deprived the church of her rightful freedom of action. We see the
cause in the false relations of church and state that have hitherto
subsisted in Christian nations, in the oppression and restraint of
the church by the state. The other two causes, the impression that
Protestant nations surpass Catholic nations in material wealth and
well-being, and that Protestantism has founded and sustains civil and
religious liberty, we must reluctantly reserve for a future article.
FOOTNOTE:
[100] _De l'Avenir du Protestantisme et du Catholicisme._ Par M.
l'Abbé Martin. Paris: Tobra et Haton. 1869. 8vo. pp. 608.
HURSTON HALL.
The great avenue of Hurston was all aglow with the golden sunset.
Stray beams trembled among the shadows of the massive oaks, bathed
the stone terrace in a flood of crimson radiance, and lingered
lovingly among the quaint parterres, where all day long they had
given life and beauty to the flowers. The "parting smile of day"
illumined lawn and garden, mellowed the rugged outlines of the
ancient hall, and threw over its gloomy grandeur a golden mist that
seemed to spiritualize it.
But more brightly and lovingly than elsewhere it rested on the fair
brow and golden curls of young Lord Hurston, as, reclining on his
couch with his face turned to the sunset, he watched with boyish
delight the beauty of the scene.
"Close the book, Aunt Caddy," he said, turning to a pale, graceful
lady, who, seated on an ottoman beside him, had been reading to the
young invalid the most beautiful of the great poet's _Idylls_. "Close
the book; for you are tired, and I want you to look at the sunset
and talk to me. Isn't it beautiful? See that great oak at the bend
of the avenue! Every leaf seems woven with gold. I wonder if that
little squirrel has his nest among the roots yet. What a pile of nuts
I found there long ago, before I was sick! I wonder if I will ever be
well enough to hunt squirrels again?" And the little speaker sighed
as he turned restlessly on his couch.
"I hope so, darling," Aunt Caddy replied fondly. "But we must be
patient, you know."
"Yes, I know. But it is hard sometimes--only sometimes--Aunt Caddy;
for boys are not like girls; _they_ might lie still and not care so
much. But when Lady Rayburn and Percy and George were here, and I
saw how the boys could climb and ride and jump; and when I had Floy
brought out from the stable for them and I heard her call me just as
she used when I could ride--I wouldn't tell any one but you--but O
Aunt Caddy! I cried when I was all by myself--cried like a great baby
girl."
Aunt Caddy's eyes were bright with tears of pity.
"My poor pet! was it so hard for you? Then grandmamma will not ask
them here again."
"No, no! dear auntie; that would never do. I am not such a coward
as to mind feeling badly; and then, I would bear it better next
time. No, no! Hurston Hall must be open to every one, as it was in
grandpapa's time, as it would be if papa had lived, even though its
lord is only a sick boy who can but lie on his cushions and let his
guests amuse themselves as they please. Only I wish I were as good
and patient as you would be in my place. You are just like Elaine. If
you were grieved or sorrowful, no one would ever know it. You would
only grow pale and quiet and silent, until some morning you would
float away from us over the dark waters with the story of your sorrow
folded over your still heart."
The crimson glow of sunset seemed to flush Aunt Caddy's cheek as she
bent to kiss the pale, little, earnest face.
"You are a poet yourself, Arthur. Who knows but that you may prove a
second Sir Philip Sidney. We have had so many bold barons of Hurston
that Sir Arthur may well afford to win gentler fame and more peaceful
laurels."
The boy was silent for a moment; then replied with touching
seriousness,
"Auntie, dear, you are all kind and loving to me; but you try to
deceive me. I saw Doctor Woodley's face when he sounded my lungs the
other day, and I know what it meant. Poor papa did not live to be
twenty-four; and I--I was reading a book the other day, and I saw in
it the sentence, 'Born to die.' It seemed as if it were written for
me--born to die, not to live and win laurels, Aunt Caddy."
"My darling, you must not talk so! Think of poor grandmamma, think of
us all if we should lose you. You are only twelve, and youth can hope
for every thing."
But even as she spoke a flood of memories welled up from her heart;
sweet yet mournful voices of the past, whispering sadly of _her_
youth--its vanished hopes, its faded dreams. The sunset radiance had
paled now, and dim shadows were gathering over the rosy, western
horizon as Aunt Caddy thought of her life, with its early sunset, its
shadowy twilight, that would be so cheerless did not the starry gleam
of other worlds sometimes pierce the gloom.
But Arthur's voice aroused her from her reverie.
"I don't think it seems so dreadful now to die, Aunt Caddy. When
I was well and strong, it seemed so; and I used almost to shiver
when I passed the tomb where poor papa and mamma lie side by side,
beneath the painted window in the chancel. It seemed so hard that
he should not live long enough to bear the title. But now I
sometimes lie awake at night and think how strange it will look to
see beside grandpapa's monument that tells how very, very old he
was, another with a broken column, or something like that, and the
inscription, _Arthur, seventeenth baron of Hurston, aged twelve_, or
_thirteen_--not any more I think, auntie."
"My darling, my darling, these morbid fancies grieve me sadly."
"I don't want to grieve you, Aunt Caddy; but why should we fear
to talk of what must be? I will leave you here in my place--you
and grandmamma. You will be the lady of the hall, and help the
poor people around, and keep the old place from getting ruined and
desolate; and make Johnson spare those oaks that he wanted to cut
down; grandpapa's oaks must not be touched. O Aunt Caddy! you will
always stay at Hurston, even when I am gone, won't you?" And the
earnest eyes pleaded eloquently.
"Your Uncle Charles would be the owner of Hurston, my darling," was
the low reply. "He would live here or send some one in his place.
Grandmamma and I would have a right here no longer. So you must get
well and strong, if you want to keep us at Hurston," she added with
an attempt at playfulness.
"My Uncle Charles!" said the young lord in amazement. "Why must he
come here? Where is he now? Why should he be owner of Hurston?"
"He is next heir--your father's younger brother; he has been with his
regiment in Canada for a great many years," she replied hurriedly.
"But do not let us talk of sad fancies any longer. You will be strong
as Cousin Percy in the spring, and will ride Floy as gayly as ever."
"But I want to hear about my Uncle Charles," said Arthur eagerly.
"Did I ever see him?"
"When you were a little baby, perhaps. He has been in America ten
years."
"Did _you_ ever see him, Aunt Caddy?"
"Very often, dear," was the low reply.
"But why does he not come to England? Why did not grandpapa hear from
him?" continued the eager little questioner.
"My dearest, you are too young to weary yourself with others'
troubles. Your grandfather and his younger son parted in anger. They
were both proud and passionate, and neither would forgive or yield;
and now death has come between them," Aunt Caddy said sadly.
"And would he come to Hurston if I should die?"
"I scarcely think so, dear; he has few pleasant memories connected
with it."
"Then you would stay, dear auntie?"
"No, dearest, I could not," she replied with deepening color. "When
my sister wrote to your grandma and to me that she was dying, and we
must take her place to her orphaned boy; when your grandfather, old
Lord Hurston, placed you in my arms, then Hurston Hall became our
home; but when Colonel Charles Thornbury is its master, it ceases to
be so."
"How old is my uncle, Aunt Caddy?"
"Thirty-one, I think, Arthur."
"Thirty-one," was the thoughtful reply. "And he will be Lord Hurston
when I die. I wish I knew him, Aunt Caddy. Do you think he would come
to England if you wrote him? You knew him, auntie. I want to see him;
I want to ask him not to leave Hurston to ruin and desolation; I
want to ask him to let you stay and take care of the dear old place
that grandpa was so proud of. I want to ask him not to let Johnson
cut down the oaks that he wanted to thin out last fall. Dear, dear
Aunt Caddy, won't you write for me?" pleaded the earnest little
speaker.
"My darling Arthur," she replied with a deepening blush that
freshened her pale face wonderfully, "I cannot. It--it--would be
impossible."
"But _why_, Aunt Caddy?" continued the persevering boy. "Is he so
very bad, so wicked, that you never speak? Is my uncle a bad man,
Aunt Caddy? Has he"--and the boy's cheek flushed with the pride of
his noble race--"has he disgraced us in any way?"
"My dear Arthur," was the hurried response, "oh! no; a thousand times
no! Your uncle was proud, passionate, headstrong; but he was--he is,
I am sure, all that is noble, brave, generous; and, Arthur, he loved
your father as fondly as brothers could love."
"But why did he go away? Why do we not hear from him?"
"My darling," the words came reluctantly, "your grandpapa--in short,
they had some disagreement when your uncle came of age about--about
a marriage that the old lord had set his heart upon. But your uncle
was unwilling; that is--the lady was rich, and he feared he would
be thought mercenary--and--and--we must speak reverently of the
dead, dear Arthur," and she bent to kiss his pale, pure brow; "but
your uncle was not to blame. Let us talk no more about it now. See,
the moon is rising. Look how large and beautiful it is! Have you no
sonnet for such a scene, my gentle troubadour?"
But Arthur was not to be deceived. Spite of the gathering twilight,
he could see the large tears brimming Aunt Caddy's still beautiful
eyes; could hear the tremor in her playful tone; could feel, boy as
he was, that some chord had been touched that thrilled with saddening
memories.
The boy baron almost idolized the fair, gentle aunt who had replaced
to him the mother he had never known, and it was with a remorseful
sympathy that he flung his arms around her neck, kissed her flushed
cheek, and whispered fondly, "Your tiresome little troubadour knows
but one, and that is for you alone, dear auntie--_Je t'aime, je
t'aime_; yes, more than any one in the world, dear Aunt Caddy."
He was not prepared for the long, low sob that shook her slight frame
as she replied, in trembling accents,
"I believe you, my darling, my own Arthur; the one sunbeam of a
cheerless--but never let us talk again as we have done to-night."
So Arthur was silent; but with a strange, precocious wisdom he
"pondered these things in his heart."
And the result was that a letter, indited in a clear, boyish hand,
sped like a white-winged messenger of peace across the broad
Atlantic, bearing the address of Colonel Charles Thornbury, --th
Dragoons.
And months after that twilight talk, when the leaves of Hurston Park
fell in showers of crimson and gold on the broad avenue, when the
last roses breathed their sweet farewells around Arthur's latticed
window, and the autumn winds began to sigh through the leafless
vines, far away beneath the clear blue sky of another hemisphere a
bronzed, bearded man read those frank, boyish words of welcome that
bore the proud seal of his ancient race, and, with a tear and a
smile, whispered a blessing on "_Arthur's boy_."
Christmas snow lay white and pure on the fields and groves of
Hurston, and Christmas moonlight fell like a benediction on the
spotless earth. The old hall stood boldly out with every rugged
outline clearly defined against the frosty winter sky. A strange,
irregular old pile, with little architectural symmetry; for it
had grown with the fortunes of the race that had ruled there for
generations, dating its foundation far back in the mist of centuries
before England bent to Norman William's sceptre. Tradition pointed
to the grove where the mistletoe was culled with many a sacred rite;
to the tower where the fair bride waited and watched in vain for her
lord, who lay cold and stiff on the lost battle plain of Hastings;
to the gate whence issued the stout Baron of Hurston, stern in his
demand for right, to the rendezvous at Runnymede. The long, low
building stretching into the shadows of the grove was said to have
been built by Ethwold the Saxon, when, weary of the toils of war, he
retired into the quiet "Hurst," beneath whose leafy shelter his race
grew and flourished for generations.
Remnants of fearful tales still were heard around the cottage
fires--tales of awful orgies held by the fierce Saxon, and of
invocations of Woden and Thor, and rude banquets when the wild chant
of the bard and the pledge of Waeshael echoed through the ancient
Hurst. It was even whispered that these fierce, unbaptized spirits
still lingered around their earthly haunts, watching the fortunes of
their race and guarding it from extinction.
But the young Baron of Hurston resting in his dainty sick-chamber,
surrounded by all that wealth and affection could bestow, yet feeling
with a strange, peaceful resignation that his young life was fast
ebbing away, bestowed little thought on the name and fame of the
proud ancestors that had ruled Hurston before him.
"I can do nothing, Aunt Caddy," he said with gentle sadness; "nothing
great, noble, glorious; I am only a sick, helpless boy. But for the
little while I am with them, I would like my people to be happy. I
would like every heart to be light and free that I can render so. I
will never live to add any thing to the lustre of the old name, never
win fame or laurels in camp or court. Only I would like, when I am
gone, to have it said that Sir Arthur, their boy-lord's rule was a
light and happy one. So don't let me hear any more of unpaid rents,
Johnson," he would add, smiling merrily at the faithful steward.
"What do I want with poor Farmer Cropper's few guineas? Let my heir
attend to all such matters, if he will; no one must be troubled while
I can prevent it."
They had learned ere this not to be astonished at these strange,
unchild-like speeches, and all tried to carry out their young lord's
wishes with almost worshipping fondness and devotion.
So it happened that this Christmas the old Saxon hall was decked
gayly with holly and ivy; mistletoe boughs hung temptingly from the
dark old rafters, and the oaken floor was polished till it shone
again.
Sir Arthur had determined that the servants' ball this year should
be an unprecedented success; and he himself--"blessings on his sweet
young face," as the good old housekeeper said when she announced the
great event--was "to be present in person."
Scores of wax lights winked merrily between the heavy wreaths of ivy,
and a yule log, parent of a hundred oaks, blazed like a royal bonfire
on the spacious hearth.
Already the old fiddler, blind of one eye, and the old harpist,
lame of one leg--a pair of musicians whom Sir Arthur patronized
extensively, had taken their places; already many a bright eye
and nimble foot danced expectant, and many a rosy cheek flushed
deeper with anticipated pleasure. Stately Lady Nesbitt, Arthur's
grandmother, was there, smiling benignantly; Aunt Caddy--or the
"sweet Lady Caroline," as some of her devoted pensioners called
her--with her Madonna face, waving hair, and soft silvery robe,
looking like some gentle moonlight spirit; and Arthur, his fair cheek
flushed--ah! too brightly--his golden ringlets, soft as a maiden's,
clustering on his pale white brow, his clear blue eyes radiant with
pleasure, sat looking on, the happiest baron of Hurston that ever
reigned in that grim abode.
Old Johnson, the steward and master of ceremonies, alone was wanting;
and the impatient dancers began to grow restless awaiting his signal
to open the ball. "Where _can_ Johnson be?" questioned Arthur for
the twentieth time; when the door suddenly burst open, and Johnson
appeared, not a vestige of color in his usually ruddy face, and every
white hair on his aged crown bristling with terror.
"Great heavens!--I beg pardon, my lord and ladies," panted the old
man breathlessly. "But I've seen him at last! The Lord forgive me!
I'll never doubt that there be spirits return again. I saw him with
these very eyes--the master, old Sir Ralph himself. O my poor blessed
lamb! I beg pardon, my lord--Sir Arthur, I mean. I hope this portends
nothing awful." And the faithful old servitor wiped the great beads
of moisture from his brow.
"What _do_ you mean, Johnson? What has terrified you?" asked Lady
Nesbitt, calming in her stately way the excited group that had
gathered around her.
"This, madam--simply this, my lady," replied the terrified old man.
"I was in the chapel, putting the last wreath on Lady Edith's, my
young lord's blessed mother's tomb, when I felt a sort of cold chill
creep over me, and says I to myself, 'It's only the dampness'--for I
have the rheumatics occasionally, as my Lady Caroline well knows. So
says I, 'It's only the dampness;' for I never believed the stories
the country folk tell about the barons of Hurston leaving their holy
graves to walk on earth again. And so I was walking slowly out, when
I heard a sort of groan, and I turned, and, O my lord and ladies!
sure as the Lord sees me here, I saw old Sir Ralph, our young lord's
grandfather, standing beside his own tomb, with his head bent down
and his arms folded, as I've seen him over and over again in life. O
my dear young lord! I couldn't be mistaken; it's he himself and no
other. I could take my Bible oath to his back and legs; begging your
pardon, ladies, I could indeed." And poor Johnson paused for breath.
It was Arthur's clear tone that broke the silence. "If it be my
grandfather," he said with that reverence that pure young minds
feel for the unseen, "it is my place to go and speak to him; he has
returned from the other world for some good purpose, and I will speak
to him."
"O my blessed lamb!--my dear young lord, I mean," cried poor Johnson
in a fresh fit of terror; "don't, for heaven's sake; don't go near
him! I am only afraid," and the faithful old man fairly sobbed, "it
is to take you away that he has come."
"Yes," and though the boy's cheek grew pale, his voice was firm, "it
is my place to go. Aunt Caddy," he whispered, "he died, you know,
without having forgiven my uncle."
"Arthur, my dear, this is nonsense!" began Lady Nesbitt nervously.
"Grandmamma, I must go," was the firm reply.
"Come then, Arthur," said Lady Caroline in a low voice; "for it is my
place as well as yours, to hear the message of peace and forgiveness."
"My lord, my lord!" pleaded the terrified servants. But he had gone.
With his little, thin hand clasped in Aunt Caddy's, he ascended the
winding stone staircase that led to the chapel.
The lords of Hurston had adhered through poverty, change, and
persecution to the ancient faith, and worshipped for centuries
beneath their own roof.
The chapel of Hurston was rich with quaint carving and mediæval
ornament. Six graceful columns supported the Gothic roof, each
column bearing tablets to the memory of the lords of Hurston who
slept beneath. Old Sir Ralph's tomb lay in the shadow of the altar,
while that of Arthur's parents--a snow-white shaft supporting a
broken pillar--stood in the full light of the chancel window, whose
richly-colored panes bore witness to the virtues of the early dead
who slept beneath. Lady Caroline felt Arthur's hand tremble, and she
herself grew pale with awe; for there indeed, in the bright moonlight
that streamed through the painted window--there, close to the tomb of
old Sir Ralph, in the shadow of the altar, there stood a form with
bowed head and folded arms, a form that Arthur's silver, trembling
voice called "Grandfather!"
"Grandfather!" and the boy with his pale face and golden curls looked
in the falling moonlight like a seraph. "Grandfather, speak to me!
What is it that you wish of me? Speak, dear grandfather! It is your
little Arthur; he does not fear you. Grandfather," and his voice grew
lower and more musical, "is it the thought of my uncle that disturbs
your rest? I will tell him that he is forgiven; that you sent him the
angels' Christmas greeting--'_Peace on earth to men of good-will_--'"
"My brave, my saintly boy! Arthur's boy!" sobbed a deep, manly voice;
and the young lord found himself clasped in a warm, living, loving
embrace, while a bronzed, bearded face with great luminous dark eyes
looked almost reverently into his.
"Nephew, you have done what I believed no mortal could do. You have
brought tears into Charles Thornbury's eyes, and peace into his
heart!"
"O Aunt Caddy, Aunt Caddy!" cried Arthur joyfully; "speak to him. It
is Uncle Charles; dear Uncle Charles, that I wrote to so long ago!"
Aunt Caddy was pale and speechless as the marble shaft against which
she leaned for support; but Colonel Thornbury had a more potent
spell. "Caroline!"--the low whisper brought a flush to cheek and
brow--"Caroline, my long lost love, whose tender heart I wounded so
deeply, can you too join your voice to this angel boy's, and whisper
peace? Caroline, I was mad with wounded pride and jealous love--love
that scorned the thought of gain, that snapped every tie when they
said it was for your wealth I sought you. God forgive me! I cast
the words back in their teeth, and swore I would roam the world a
penniless adventurer rather than be enriched by my wife. Caroline,
if my sin was great, my punishment has been bitter. Ten years; ten
long, weary, loveless years! Arthur has welcomed me with the voice
of peace. Have you no Christmas gift for the penitent wanderer? None
for the faithful heart that has ever been yours alone?" Lady Caroline
was pale again; but a radiance fairer than moonlight seemed to light
up her brow.
"Arthur has given you peace; and I--I, Charles, have only the love
that has waited for you these long, weary years--that would have
waited for you until death!"
* * * * *
And the sequel to this little Christmas romance? Need we tell of the
wild joy and amazement that reëchoed through the hoary old hall?
Of the girlish roses that deepened in Aunt Caddy's still beautiful
cheek, and the radiant light in the wanderer's clear dark eye as,
a few months later, the merry peal of wedding-bells succeeded the
Christmas chimes?
"A blithe bridal for a bonnie bride," Arthur had said when the
long-parted lovers pleaded his fast failing health as a reason for a
quiet wedding.
"Uncle Charles, if you don't have a real glorious wedding, I'll marry
Aunt Caddy myself." Brightest and merriest of all was the lordly
young host as he welcomed his guests with the princely grace that so
well became him, though many a living heart was sad, and kindly eye
grew dim, as they marked in the glowing cheek and wasted form the
fatal heritage of his youthful parents.
Once only he himself betrayed amid his graceful gayety the
consciousness of his early doom.
After their young lord had been repeatedly toasted by the joyous
tenantry, some one merrily proposed, "Sir Arthur's bride;" and "Our
future lady" was pledged in brimming bumpers.
Arthur's face flushed for a moment as he caught the unthinking
shout; then, raising his own glass to his lips, he bowed to his
uncle's bride. "Aunt Caddy, we drink your health. Long life and
happiness to the future lady of Hurston!"
* * * * *
A year later, and hushed voices and noiseless steps alone were heard
around the dying couch of the fair boy-baron. Patient and gentle as
ever, he waited with his own angelic smile upon his lips the summons
that was to call him from life.
His uncle, pale with anxiety and sorrow, watched with paternal love
over the dying boy's pillow, until an attendant whispered something
which Arthur's fast failing ear caught.
"Bring him here, uncle; let me see him before I go; let me see Aunt
Caddy's boy."
Colonel Thornbury called the attendant, and they laid a little
slumbering babe in the dying boy's outstretched arms. "Call him
Arthur for me, dear uncle, and do not grieve. He has come to take my
place; to perpetuate the glorious old name; to be all that I would
have been if God had so willed it. I am happy now; so very, very
happy!" He died with the words yet on his lips, the smile still on
his face, the light scarce faded from his eye.
* * * * *
Years afterward, when the proud spirit of her impetuous boy
threatened to burst from her gentle restraint, and the fierce blood
of his fiery ancestors showed itself in his kindling eye and mantling
cheek, the gentle Lady Hurston had one spell that calmed his angriest
moods. She would whisper of that young cousin who had breathed his
last sigh with her Arthur's first breath, with the baby form clasped
to his dying breast, of those last words of hope and happiness
murmured over the slumbering babe from the very portals of eternity.
"He said you were to take his place, dear Arthur; be worthy of him
and of his name." And the boy's eye would grow calm and peaceful as
it rested on the snowy column--the column of which Arthur had spoken
when he foretold his own doom:
ARTHUR,
SEVENTEENTH BARON OF HURSTON.
BORN MAY 2, 1830. DIED MARCH 5, 1844.
AGED 14 YEARS.
_Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God._
DECEMBER EIGHTH, 1869.
I.
There came an hour, and words were uttered then
That live to-day and echo evermore.
ONE spoke them to a knot of simple men,
Who simply took the simple sense they bore:
A promise--such as never tongue or pen
Of sage oracular had made before;
And a design no _wisdom_ could have planned,
Save His who holds the nations in his hand.
II.
Had less than God so spoken, he had been
The wildest of all dreamers. What! to make
A poor rude fisher, who had never seen
A gloom upon his Galilæan lake
But feared the menace of its boding mien,
A rock no surge should fret, no tempest shake--
The baffled ages foaming at its feet
The broken malice of their ceaseless beat!
III.
God saith; and who shall gainsay? Devils first;
Then fools, their ready dupes. To these, forsooth,
'Tis nobler to resist, and dare the worst,
Than own the gentle majesty of truth--
As came the church to free a world accurst,
And heal its heartache, and renew its youth:
A spring to thaw the universal frost--
Fire-dowered from her natal Pentecost.
IV.
But principle is something to defy,
That may not swerve to give a falsehood breath;
Or call masked anarchy its stout ally,
And offer God an honorable death.
And so along the ages rolls a cry--
The din of onset at the gates of faith:
'Tis Arius now, now Luther heads the fray;
Or bristles up the hydra of to-day.
V.
And patient Rome sits victor over all:
Her strength in seeming feebleness increased.
She smiles to hear "the storm against the wall,"
And lavished names of harlot and of beast,
And prophets raving of her speedy fall:
While Satan counts his failures with at least
The joy that such solidity of rock
Draws none the fewer to the fatal shock.
VI.
Press on, close in, ye gallant ranks of hell!
Concentrating the might ye think to bow.
Stood ever Holy Church, do records tell,
More one, more conscious, more herself than now?
When was the chair of Peter loved so well?
Wore ever pontiff a serener brow?
He calls: earth hears; her utmost realms resound;
And lo, a thousand mitres gird him round!
VII.
And they who trembled, and had been content
To scorn with quiet mirth a voice so weak,
Are forced, they find, to yield their panic vent.
"Another Trent!" rings out the indignant shriek;
"This nineteenth century, another Trent!"
'Tis not so sweet to have the Master speak,
When passion, weary of his peaceful sway,
No longer deems it freedom to obey.
VIII.
But speak he will--the blessed words of life;
How welcome to the soul that thirsts to know,
Or views alarmed the too successful strife
Of earth with heaven--truth's ebb and error's flow.
We murmur through, our tears, "Decay is rife!
The sound, the old, the sacred--all will go!"
Fond fear! Whatever faithless thrones expect,
_Christ's_ kingdom stands: he garners his elect.
IX.
The serpent writhes--his last convulsions these--
Beneath the foot that tramples his crushed head.
O Lady! worker of thy Son's decrees,
Thy Rome, thy Pius trust thee. Deign to shed
Thy gracious light, lone star of troubled seas,
At whose sweet ray the ancient darkness fled!
The serpent writhes beneath thee: deign to show
He is indeed the Woman's vanquished foe!
X.
This day we hymn thy victory; and claim
Thy prayer omnipotent. Nor let it rise
For us alone, that boast to love thy name,
But those, unhappy, that have dared despise!
Who came for them, by thee it was He came,
Through thee must break unclouded to their eyes.
Ah Mother's Heart! How long, then, wilt thou wait
Till _all_ thy children sing "IMMACULATE"?
B. D. H.
VANSLEB, THE ORIENTAL SCHOLAR AND TRAVELLER.
"Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires et des hommes est
souvent la vérité.
La justice qui nous est quelquefois refusée par nos contemporains,
la postérité sait nous la rendre."[101]
LA BRUYERE.
CHAPTER I.
Count De Maistre somewhere says that during the last century a
reputation was made much in the same manner as you make a shoe, "_Au
dernier siècle, on faisait une réputation comme on fait un soulier_."
The manufacturing process indicated by De Maistre was known and
practised long before the last century, and is even at the present
time by no means to be counted among the lost arts. This very day the
reader may look around him and easily find numerous specimens of the
peculiar industry here described. And going back two hundred years,
we may, out of many cases, select that of a learned, laborious,
self-sacrificing and pious man, who, driven to a premature grave by
ingratitude, neglect, and calumny, has been falsely handed down to
posterity as untruthful, dishonest, brutal, and grossly immoral. His
transmitted reputation was not the reflection of his deeds. It was
manufactured of shreds and patches. Dying in the disgrace caused by
the displeasure of the prime minister of a powerful monarch, it would
have been remarkable, indeed, had any one at that day so forgotten
himself as to become the advocate of a cause hopelessly lost. And so
his enemies had a clear field.
Writers of history and biography of the years immediately succeeding
took their word, and subsequent biographers and historians had merely
to repeat what their predecessors had said. His story is fraught with
more than one moral, and the impressive vindication of his character
after the silence of two centuries has something in it that seems
higher than mere human agency.
John Michael Wansleben was born at Sommerda, near Erfurth, November
1st, 1635. His father was the Lutheran minister of the place. At a
proper age he was sent to the University of Erfurth, and afterward
completed his studies at the University of Königsberg in 1656. He
held for a short time a position as private tutor, and entered the
army of the Elector of Brandenburg in 1657, serving as a private
soldier through the campaign of that year.
With some idea of embracing a commercial career, he then visited
Schleswig, Amsterdam, Glückstadt, and Hamburg, but without result,
and returned to Erfurth in 1658. Job Ludolf, a distinguished _savant_
of Erfurth, was then in the meridian of his fame. Ludolf had been
sent to Rome in 1649, to make search for the memoirs of John Magnus,
Archbishop of Upsal, a man noted for his learning and piety, who,
after an unsuccessful struggle against the kingly power of Gustavus
Vasa, and the introduction of Lutheranism into Sweden, retired to
Rome, where he died. Ludolf, failing to find the memoirs he sought,
remained some time in Rome, occupied in the study of the Ethiopian
tongue. He was, unquestionably, a man of remarkable acquirements, and
was in his day credited with knowing twenty-five languages.
Vansleb[102] attracted the attention of Ludolf, and was received by
him partly as a pupil, partly as an assistant, specially devoting
himself, by Ludolf's direction, to the study of the Ethiopian
language. In 1661, when he was thought sufficiently advanced, Ludolf
sent him to London to supervise the publication of his Ethiopian
dictionary. Vansleb performed his task, and the dictionary was
published the same year. At this time, the English polyglot edition
(six vols. folio) of the Bible, by Walton, Bishop of Chester, was in
course of publication. There was in that day no dearth of imitators
of Cardinal Ximenes. Although bearing the name of Walton, it was
the work of several learned men, and its oriental versions were
copied from the Bible of Le Jay, (Paris.) Distinguished among its
collaborators was Edmund Castell, Canon of Canterbury, an oriental
scholar, who afterward published his _Lexicon Heptaglotton_, the
fruit of eighteen hours' daily labor for a period of seventeen
years.[103] Castell met with Vansleb, and engaged him as his
assistant, taking him into his house and admitting him to his
table. For three years and a half Vansleb labored with Castell, who
thus mentions him in the preface to his _Lexicon_: "_In ethiopicis
per idem tempus operam impendebat suam D. M. Wanslebius, qui ad
perpoliendum in eisdem ingenium in varias orientis oras, longa atque
periculosa suscepit itinera._"[104]
Returning to Germany, Vansleb found that Ludolf, as the tutor of the
young princes of Saxony, had obtained great credit and influence
with Duke Ernest, surnamed the Pious. Ludolf had long cherished the
singular project of bringing about an alliance between some German
prince and the King of Ethiopia, (modern Abyssinia,) and by dint
of long conferences on the subject with the duke, had succeeded in
enlisting Ernest's enthusiastic interest in his plan. This it was:
An ardent champion of what is called Luther's Reformation, he
was assiduous in seeking for it moral support wherever it could
possibly be found. He imagined that he saw a certain degree of
conformity between Lutheranism and the Coptic rite, and the idea of
the appearance of antiquity the new religion would receive from a
union with one of the oldest oriental churches was more than enough
to awaken his warmest enthusiasm. Ludolf, moreover, hoped, through
superior German civilization, that Protestantism would be enabled
to exercise a decided influence upon the retrograde population of
Abyssinia.
The duke fully entered into all these views with the most sanguine
hopes.
The better to appreciate Ludolf's project, let us take a rapid glance
at the history of Abyssinia and its condition at that time.
Ethiopia embraced Judaism during the reign of Solomon, following the
example of Queen Sheba, who, according to the best authorities, was
sovereign of that country.
It was also one of the first nations converted to Christianity
through the baptism of the treasurer of Queen Candace, by the Deacon
Philip. (Acts of the Apostles, viii. 27-38.) And this result was
predicted by God. _Ethiopia præveniet manus ejus Deo._[105] (Psalm
lxvii. 32.) In the fifth century, Ethiopia was drawn into the
Eutychian heresy, and, under the name of Jacobites, her people to
this day persevere in it.
In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese having rendered some signal
service to the reigning king, they obtained from him authority
allowing Jesuit missionaries to enter the country. They did so
enter, and made numerous conversions. But persecution undid their
work. Catholicity was placed under ban, the faithful pursued, and
the dispersed missionaries put to death. The two last Jesuits, who
remained with their neophytes, were taken and hung in 1638. Others
sought to penetrate Abyssinia; but all who entered the country were
arrested and decapitated. The king, Basilides, was the most furious
in persecution. He persuaded himself that the king of Portugal was
organizing against him a league of all the monarchs in Europe. The
very name of Catholic was made treasonable; and he sent his own
brother to execution simply on suspicion of leniency to the hated
religion.
It was mainly from his enmity to it that he permitted, contrary to
law, the introduction of Mohammedanism, and even sent for doctors to
preach it to his people. These so-called "disasters of the papacy"
were far from being a subject of grief to the German reformers,
particularly to those inspired with the desire of proselytism. Duke
Ernest was called the Pious, and was now fired with the ambition of
adding illustration to his surname.
The circumstances looked favorable in the highest degree. Any thing
was sufficiently recommended to King Basilides if it were only
anti-Catholic; and therefore, the success of the Protestant mission
was a foregone conclusion.
But who could be found capable of executing such a mission? He should
be, independently of the requisite religious qualification, a person
of experience and superior education--at once a man of the world and
a scholar--and more, an oriental scholar.
"I have him here in Erfurth," said Ludolf to the duke; "an _alter
ego_, as familiar as I am with the language, literature, and customs
of the Ethiopians."
He referred, of course, to Vansleb, who was already fully advised in
the matter from long conferences with Ludolf.
Duke Ernest assumed all the expenses of the mission, drew up the
necessary instructions, and traced the itinerary to be followed.
Vansleb was to make his way to Egypt, and thence to Abyssinia, with
no more apparent object than the ordinary curiosity of a traveller
desirous of studying the language and the natural history of the
country. In case he found influential men favorably disposed, he was
to advise them confidentially that a German prince named Ernest,
who held the Abyssinians in high esteem, as well for their warlike
qualities as for their attachment to the ancient faith of their
fathers, had given him letters for them in their own language, and
that he was willing to make the necessary advances in money to
bring to Europe a certain number of well-disposed young Abyssinians
desirous of instructing themselves as to the condition of the
Christian reformed churches, and thus bring about, between the two
peoples and confessions, a sincere and lasting friendship.
In every respect the proposition suited Vansleb. The arrangement was
soon completed, and he was invested with all the necessary powers of
an ambassador, but in a disguised and indirect form, with special
instructions not to exhibit his credentials until fully satisfied
that his advances would be met.
The result of this remarkable embassy is soon told. Ludolf himself
relates that he does not know whether to attribute the failure of a
plan conceived with all possible prudence to the parsimony of the
duke or to the imprudence of Vansleb. That Ludolf, who, after this
period, never hesitated to paint Vansleb in the blackest colors,
should make it a matter of doubt, is quite enough to justify the
latter.
And now let us accompany Vansleb on his route to Ethiopia. He reached
Cairo in January, 1664, and spent a year in visiting Egypt, and
in studying and copying Abyssinian books. The Coptic Patriarch of
Alexandria, Matthew de Mir, whose jurisdiction extended over the
churches of Ethiopia, dissuaded Vansleb from attempting to penetrate
that country, and he addressed Duke Ernest a letter in Arabic, giving
the reasons for his advice, which letter is still preserved in the
ducal library of Saxe-Gotha.
And now the grand project of Ernest was visited--humanly
speaking--with poetic justice. The Coptic patriarch, who was pleased
with Vansleb, obtained from him an exposition of the history of the
reformation and of Lutheran doctrine, and Vansleb, instructed in
return, could, as he listened to the patriarch, compare the German
novelties with the antique symbol of the oriental communions. The
result was inevitable, and he began to see a light that illuminated
his mind and made evident his errors. He soon afterward embarked for
Italy, fully resolved to seek admission to the Catholic Church.
Landing at Leghorn, he went to Florence, where he spent some time,
and was protected by the prince, who was afterward Cosmo (de' Medici)
III. Here, also, he made the acquaintance of the British ambassador,
Finch, whom he subsequently met at Smyrna. Going to Rome, he there
abjured Protestantism, was received into the church, and entered the
Dominican convent of the Minerva. This order, specially devoted to
teaching and preaching, was best suited to his tastes and habits.
And here, for a period of four years, Vansleb disappears from the
world and from history. He passed them in solitude, exclusively
occupied with study and religious exercises.
Meantime, imagine, if you can, the storm that broke at Erfurth. Duke
Ernest was bitterly disappointed, as was natural; but it would be
difficult to describe the fury of Ludolf. It burst forth never to
be extinguished but with his death. Vansleb, so warmly recommended
by Ludolf to the duke, suddenly became a monster not only of
ingratitude, but of every other possible vice. There were no limits
to the abuse nor to the accusations of the angry professor.
All this did not then trouble Vansleb, but he was made to feel their
effects long afterward.
FOOTNOTES:
[101] The truth is frequently the very contrary of the reports
current concerning men and things.
Posterity frequently does us the justice refused us by our
contemporaries.
[102] Through the Latinization of Wansleben, _Vanslebius_, his name
subsequently in France took the form of Vansleb, by which he became
known as an author, and which he retained.
[103] He spent large sums in its preparation, and twelve thousand
pounds in its publication, to say nothing of the sacrifice of his
repose and health. The success of the work was far from commensurate
with its merit, or with its author's sacrifices. After his death,
five hundred copies of it were found abandoned in a garret, a prey to
rain and to rats.
[104] At the same time Vansleb applied himself with all his power to
the study of Ethiopian, and afterward, in order to perfect himself
therein, undertook long and perilous voyages in various oriental
countries.
[105] Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hand to God.