He does injustice to the people of Boston especially, who, when they

heard of the death of the saintly Bishop Cheverus, tolled the bells of

the churches of their city to show in what veneration they held his

memory; and if he was not of the age to have listened, he must have

read the eloquent and appreciative eulogium preached by Dr. Channing

on this great and good man. And Bishop Cheverus was the guide and

teacher of the religion of the Irish people of Boston!

Mr. Frothingham will not attempt to make a distinction between the

“Catholic religion” and “the religion of the Irish menial and laboring

classes”—a subterfuge of which no man of intelligence and integrity

would be guilty. The Irish people—be it said to their glory—have from

the beginning of their conversion to Christianity kept the pure light

of Catholic faith unsullied by any admixture of heresy, and have

remained firm in their obedience to the divine authority of the holy

church, in spite of the tyranny, of the bitterest persecution of its

enemies, and all their efforts of bribery or any worldly inducements

which they might hold out. When our searchers after true religion

shall have exhausted by their long and weary studies Zoroaster,

Pythagoras, Svenalis, Plato, Epictetus, Brahma, Buddha, Confucius,

Mahomet, and any other notable inventor of philosophy or religion;

when they have gathered up all the truths scattered among the

different heresies in religion since the Christian era, the end of all

their labors will only make this truth the plainer: that the Catholic

Church resumes the authority of all religions from the beginning of

the world, affirms the traditions and convictions of the whole human

race, and unites, co-ordinates, and binds together all the scattered

truths contained in every religious system in an absolute, universal,

divine synthesis.

[147] _Transcendentalism in New England._ A History.

By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York: G. P.

Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON.[148]

[Illustration]

Charles Carroll’s is a household name in the American family—the name

of a man marked among his peers for a purity of character on which a

Christian mind loves to dwell: _integer vitæ scelerique purus_! His

independence was so noble and sublime, yet so toned with homeliness

withal, that of him it was said he walked the streets of his

regenerated country with brow erect and mien expanded, because he was

_sans peur et sans reproche, a preux chevalier_—the idol in the family

sanctuary. He alone of the great founders chosen by the angel of this

land was destined to witness, beyond the span of days usually allotted

to man, the unparalleled prosperity and unequalled development of the

resources of a virgin country. Such was the well-earned reward of a

career marked by the purest disinterestedness in motives, justice in

the choice of means, and humblest dependence on the assistance of the

Lord God of nations.

On the anniversary of that day when the covenant that saved mankind

was announced by an archangel from the highest heavens, and ratified

on earth by the assent of the lowly maid of Jesse, the _Ark_ and the

_Dove_ moored on the American waters of the Potomac. A stalwart band

of men who were to herald—and they alone of all the Pilgrims—the great

covenant of true liberty leaped on shore and planted the standard of

salvation. They planted the cross on a new land to be added to Mary’s

dowry. Truer men were never hailed by an uncivilized people—men who

had learned how to fulfil their destinies in the schools of Bethlehem

and of Golgotha.

The Catholic student of American history feels his heart glowing with

sentiments of the holiest pride, as, reverting to the twenty-fifth day

of March, 1632, he reads that the Catholic pilgrim alone, with his

descendants after him, has held steadfastly and without swerving, even

to this day, to the true dictates of that moral and religious economy

whereby man can secure his happiness and moral independence here, with

a never-wavering certainty of thereby securing a claim to an

everlasting welfare hereafter. Cardinal McCloskey to-day represents

and enacts these very same principles and laws among and to the

millions of Catholics in America, which the humble Jesuit missionary

Andrew White proclaimed among and to the tribes of the Potomac two

hundred and forty-three years ago—nay, the same principles and laws

which were, by the Lord’s mandate, proclaimed by Peter and the

apostles when for the first time they announced their mission to the

throngs gathered in the city of David.

We love to dwell on these facts. The child who was christened in his

mother’s arms in Jerusalem on the day after Pentecost became endowed

with the same heavenly prerogatives as the Indian babe regenerated in

the laver of redemption by Father White sixteen ages later or by any

priest of the church on this very day! In very deed, the indelible

marks and divine perfections of the heavenly court are mirrored and

reflected by the city of God on earth. That same and one Christ who

reigned, with his laws, in the church of Jerusalem, and a thousand

years after in Vineland of North America, reigns and rules to-day,

with the same laws, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Meanwhile, where is the church of the Puritans? Where are her

antecedents? Has any of her aspirations been fulfilled? Is there any

mark of benediction left by her professors?

The past of Charles Carroll clusters around his life in manifold

benedictions; his name is borne aloft on the waters of that grand

stream over which the bark of Peter has triumphantly glided for

eighteen centuries, and will continue its triumphant course to the

consummation of the world. Such is the perpetuity of faith!

A half-century had hardly passed away since the landing of the

Pilgrims when Daniel Carroll, the grandsire of our Charles, came to

America (A.D. 1680). He was an Irishman, of that prodigious stock

which, in the wonderful ways of Providence, being transplanted on our

shores, was on some future day to give to America most energetic and

determined laborers in the rearing of our independence. Surely did the

orator of Concord, amid the festivities of the last Centennial, prove

himself miserably ignorant of what his sires owed to the Irish[149] of

Pennsylvania.

For let it be recorded for the hundredth time: but for those men our

cause would have been lost, in the straits to which the public weal

was brought. They came to the rescue, and George Washington took good

heart and went on to victory.

Daniel was born in Littemourna, King’s County, Ireland. During the

reign of James II. he held responsible offices. Lord Baltimore was his

patron, and by his favor, close application, sterling honesty, and

persevering industry he became the owner of large estates, and the

family prospered and increased in wealth, although not in social or

political position, during the second and third generations.[150]

Daniel Carroll rose very high in the estimation of the colony, and was

chosen to offices of important and delicate trust. So great was his

renown for spotless integrity, extraordinary ability, and love of the

public weal that when Protestant bigotry obtained the upper hand, and,

in the language of McMahon, the non-Catholic historian of Maryland,

“in a colony which was established by Catholics, and grew up to power

and happiness under the government of a Catholic, the Catholic

inhabitant became the only victim of religious intolerance,” he was

exempted from the opprobrious and hateful disqualifications inflicted

upon his coreligionists by the penal code—an exemption, at first

sight, of doubtful honor, were it not for the exceptional nature and

circumstances of the case. It entailed not the least compromise on the

part of the recipient, who accepted it without hindrance to an open

profession of his faith; moreover, it enabled him to shelter less

favored colonists in the enjoyment of rights most dear to their hearts

and indispensable to their happiness.

Charles Carroll, the father of the signer, was born in 1702. He was a

high-spirited man, but he had no chances to display his talents, nor

field on which to exert his energies. He chafed under the wrong and

ingratitude with which the children of mother church were harried in

the “Land of the Sanctuary” which they had opened to the oppressed of

all climes. Alluding to the legislation of the Maryland colony in

1649, Chancellor Kent says: “The Catholic planters of Maryland won for

their adopted country the distinguished praise of being the first of

American States in which toleration was established by law. And while

the Puritans were persecuting their Protestant brethren in New

England, and Episcopalians retorting the same severity on the Puritans

in Virginia, the Catholics, against whom the others were combined,

formed in Maryland a sanctuary where all might worship and none might

oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from Protestant

intolerance.”

But Protestant intolerance demolished the sanctuary, the handiwork of

noble and loving Catholic hands. In accord with the wish of many, Mr.

Carroll entertained the idea of seeking freedom of action, liberty of

conscience, and equality of rights under another sky. Thus, in one of

his journeys to Europe, he applied to the French minister for the

purchase of a tract of land in Louisiana. The project was far

advanced, when the minister growing alarmed at the vast purchase which

it was their wish to make on the Arkansas River, the negotiations were

(providentially?) broken off. The project, viewed in the light of

succeeding events, may appear, as it was then by many deemed,

injudicious. Yet great praise is due to Charles Carroll, Sr., for his

taking the lead in the movement at a time when, as Mr. Latrobe

observes, “the disqualifications and oppressions to which Catholics

were subjected amounted to persecution. Roman Catholic priests were

prohibited from the administration of public worship. The council

granted orders to take children from the pernicious contact of

Catholic parents; Catholic laymen were deprived of the right of

suffrage; and the lands of Catholics were assessed double when the

exigencies of the province required additional supplies.”… Nay, more:

a Catholic was levelled to the condition of a pariah or a helot—he was

not even allowed to walk with his fellow-citizen before the

State-house. Things were carried to a point beyond endurance. No

wonder the Catholics of Maryland felt relief even in the thought of

fleeing from home. And yet, with these facts, admitted by all American

historians, staring him in the face, the British ex-premier has dared

to flaunt a lie in the face of the whole world!

Charles Carroll, Sr., died at a patriarchal age, more than four-score

years. Like Simeon of old, he had long waited for the consolations of

Israel, for the day when the spouse of Christ would cast aside the

slave’s garb, and, emerging from American catacombs, come forth in the

radiant panoply of freedom and celestial splendor. He himself never

had faltered in this hope. He always felt that Mary’s land would not

be forsaken by her in whose name it was first held. He saw his country

free, and he rejoiced. He witnessed around him the beneficent results

accruing from the influences of mother church. He raised his hand to

bless God, to bless his kin, to bless the land. But how shall we

portray the emotions of his heart when no more in hiding-places, but

in full noon-day, openly and freely, he saw the clean Sacrifice

offered by the priests of the Most High? And when the form of his

beloved son knelt before him for a last blessing, how with the

father’s benedictions must have mingled feelings of pride and

gratitude because even by the untiring labors of that son had the

blessings of liberty to church and state been won!

It was the writer’s good-fortune, a great many years ago, to seek for

rest in what, among Catholic Marylanders, was formerly known as the

“Jesuit Tusculum.” In a secluded nook in Cecil County, on the Eastern

Shore, lies embosomed within dense thickets and shady lanes the

Bohemia Manor, a dependency of Georgetown College. When the Catholic

youth of Maryland were debarred the privilege of collegiate training

in their native schools, the members of the Company of Jesus had, at a

very early period, opened there a boarding-school, especially for such

of the American boys as would afterwards, like their persecuted peers

in England, seek for a sound education and a thorough Christian

training at the well-known academies of Belgium and France. Wandering

through those woods, rowing over the meandering streams whose soft

murmurings give life to the silent homes of the crane and gentle game,

the youthful forms of the Carrolls and Brents, Dorseys and Darnells,

haunted the imagination and brought one back to those days of fervent

Catholic spirit, pure hearts, and high-minded youths who waxed in

years and strength under the saintly training of Hudson and Manners,

Farmer and Molineux. To the care of experienced, learned, and saintly

Jesuits was entrusted the training of that part of the Lord’s vineyard

which, amid persecution and manifold dangers, mirrored the days of

primitive Christianity.

Young Charles Carroll, who was born in 1737, was sent thither to drink

the first pure waters of secular learning and Christian training. At

one time well-nigh twoscore of the sons of the more fortunate

colonists were there united with him at the Tusculum of the Company of

Jesus.

But a day of separation dawned. Charles was in his eleventh year when

not the swift steamship of our time but a laggard craft was to convey

him to distant shores. He was accompanied in his journey by his

cousin, John Carroll, with whom many years after he accomplished a

most delicate and important mission at the command of the government.

Thus he added to the ties and sympathies of blood a link of such

friendships as are so apt to knit in college life and ever after

congenial souls and hearts beating in unison. True, when the day

arrived on which each was to enter an avenue of life that would lead

to the career for which each was fitted by nature, they chose

different gates, but came forth on the great drama of life to be the

leaders of two generations, one in the church, the other in the state.

Charles Carroll with unerring finger points to the Catholic layman the

resources which he should improve for the perfect execution of his

part; John Carroll has represented him who is the infallible guide of

the church, becoming at the same time the model of bishop and priest,

the pride and the joy of the anointed minister of that same church in

the United States.

Six years did young Carroll spend at St. Omer’s, in French Flanders,

in the study of the classics of ancient and modern times under Jesuit

tuition; thence he passed to Rheims; and lastly he entered the college

of Louis le Grand in Paris. In the two last places he applied himself,

under the guidance of learned Jesuits, to the study of logic and

metaphysics, mathematics and natural sciences. When at Louis le Grand

the elder Charles crossed the ocean a third time to feast his eyes and

gladden his doating heart on the son who had waxed in years as well as

in grace. He found the promising boy grown into a manly youth, and

bade him say farewell to the charms of a life whose days glided on in

unruffled peace, breathing in an atmosphere of religion and science.

His intercourse there was with men whose aspirations were to the

greatest glory of God, whose conversation was in heaven. These men, so

noble, so learned, so perfect, had entwined the hearts of their pupils

with their own.

In 1757 Charles Carroll removed to London to enter upon the study of

law. Admitted to the Inner Temple, an inmate, or at least a

frequenter, of those halls wherein surely the Holy Ghost did not hold

an undisputed sway, the noble-minded and pure-souled Maryland youth

must have felt the change to the quick. What a contrast to the

simplicity of his western home at the paternal manor, the sweet

influences and innocent life at the Bohemian Tusculum, and in the

blessed halls of Bruges and St. Omer’s! At the Temple he spent the

five years requisite in order to be called to the bar; but he remained

in Europe until 1764, when he again set sail for his western home.

A great change had meanwhile come over the moral atmosphere of his

native State. Whilst bickerings about religion were growing

distasteful, a rumbling noise of threatened disasters in the distance

drew the hearts of the colonists together. Indistinct and sombre

figures of enemies lurking around the premises counselled measures of

internal peace, equal distribution of civil rights, and a unity of

sentiments and aims as the only hope of averting ruin and of

conquering a powerful foe. Ties of friendship were strengthened,

measures of concerted action were discussed, whilst religious

questions were laid aside, and arrogant claims of superior rights on

the part of non-Catholics forgotten, in the presence of an impending

danger; the more so because it was felt that there was a party

brooding in their midst which was in accord with the enemy outside.

When the boy left the land of his birth, and the prow of the ship that

bore him ploughed the waters of the Atlantic, his soul expanded with a

heretofore unexperienced sentiment of liberty; for only then did he

begin to feel that freely under the canopy of heaven he could practise

his religion without let or hindrance, without the sneers or

intermeddling of his neighbors. Add to this the anticipated enjoyment

of the liberty in wait for him on the eastern lands of Catholic faith.

Yet the prospective and future return to the land of bondage must from

time to time have thrown shadows of sadness over the gushing and

joyful youth at school. But now comes a truce to religious dissensions

and family quarrels; a victory is gained: the church is free, her

shackles broken. Catholic and non-Catholic worship at the altar of

their choice freely and publicly. They are all children of the same

political family, members of the same moral body!

But the liberties of the colonies are crushed by the mother country,

and Charles Carroll lands on these shores only in time to be one of

the mourners at the funeral of liberty. His countrymen had been galled

with bitterness by the contempt, insolence, and arrogance of the

British soldiery, and felt a contempt for the martinet leaders of the

Braddock defeat, while at the same time a feeling of superiority was

engendered in their heart by the warlike qualities displayed by rank

and file under the leadership of him who was already first in the

hearts of his peers. They chafed at being made the hewers of wood and

drawers of water to British indolence; they felt the sanctuary of

their homes desecrated by the writs of assistance; their inmost souls

were moved with indignation at being ordered to sacrifice their

hard-earned comforts, their very subsistence, to the pleasure of a

ribald soldiery. Such things could not be endured by the sons of

liberty. And thus it happened that Charles Carroll was not welcomed

with the cheers of a hearty greeting; he only heard the groans, the

smothered curses, the oaths of vengeance deep and resolute, uttered by

his oppressed fellow-colonists.

His soul was fired with wrath and zeal; but a wrath subdued by

self-control, a zeal swayed by prudence. His was a self-possession

that was never thrown off its guard. He seemed ever to be on the alert

against surprises—a foe more fatal to armies than cannon and shot.

During the excitement of the Stamp Act Charles Carroll, who had

returned from the Continent “a finished scholar and an accomplished

gentleman,” was at first a silent but careful and discerning observer.

He studied the tendency of events, and the moral elements on which

these events should work some remarkable development. Cautious but

firm, he gradually entered the lists, and then in the struggles which

seemed so unequal he fought heart and soul with that noble galaxy of

Maryland patriots who, bold and undismayed, opposed an unbroken front

to those first encroachments which were even countenanced by

interested parties in the colony. But for a prompt resistance a breach

would have been opened for such inroads into the domain of our

liberties as would break down its ramparts, overwhelm our defenders,

and enslave the people.

It is not necessary for us here to relate how the obnoxious law was

repealed—a tardy and unwilling act of atonement (“an act of empty

justice,” as McSherry well defines it); yet its revocation was hailed

by the colonies with great rejoicings as the harbinger of a better

rule and the dawn of a day of just polity in the home government.

Surely, the rulers in the mother country had felt the temper of her

children abroad; they loved her fondly as long as she proved herself a

mother; woe were she to forget the ties of love and harshly deal with

them!

Charles Carroll was neither blinded nor hoodwinked by this sporadic

token of motherly justice. Those years of residence in England were

not lost to him. He well knew the temper of the British lion, his

arrogance and his treachery. Sooner or later another paroxysm of

exigencies would come over him; they must be met, cost what it may.

“_Wicked_ is the only word which I can apply to the government of your

colonies. You seem to regard them as mere material mines from whence

the mother country is to extract the precious ore for her own luxury

and splendor.”[151]

The victory gained and the danger averted for the nonce, Mr. Carroll

devoted himself to promoting the welfare of the colony. In fact,

whilst a short period of comparative peace lasted outside the

colonies, Maryland was not free from internal disturbance. Two sources

of disquietude were then opened—the Proclamation and the Vestry Act.

Nor was the colony less annoyed by the unfaithfulness of leading

merchants in Baltimore, who, goaded by thirst of money and not

prompted by feelings of love for their country, had slackened in their

opposition to the encroachment of the government at home. They only

followed in the wake of New York and Philadelphia, and even of Boston.

The love of lucre and the diseased tastes of what was then called _the

quality_ allowed the merchants of those cities to fall away from the

compact entered upon with the sister colonies. To advance their

interests and to satisfy a portion of the community, they forsook

their principles and paid the hated tributes for proscribed

commodities. But outside Baltimore the people in the counties remained

firm and unshaken in their patriotism.

Charles Carroll was young in years, but ripe in judgment. The future

statesman lost no opportunities. It was of the utmost importance that

he should thoroughly know the habits of his fellow-citizens and their

calibre, whether he looked upon them as a distinct colony or in their

relations to the other provinces; what were the materials and the

resources of the whole country; what guarantees could be drawn from

the past for the welfare of the future; how far or within what bounds

should the liberties of the colonies be restrained; what security for

the rights of conscience; were the rights of each colony to be

paramount over the exigencies of the whole family of provinces?… To a

mind well stored with the choicest theoretical lore it became an easy

matter to trace its course and clearly see the way ahead. Thus

prepared, he grappled with Charles Dulany, the champion of those who

opposed the people’s claims and remonstrances. Dulany was his senior

by many years, had grown up identified with the selfish interests of

office-holders and of the established clergy, himself high in the

councils of the government, whilst his opponent had just arrived from

a long sojourn abroad, and was a “papist” enthralled and

disfranchised.

The main point of dispute turned on the rights of the government of

the colony to tax the people arbitrarily for the payment of officers

and the support of the clergy. The history of the Proclamation, drawn

up by Dulany himself, and the burial thereof amid a most solemn

pageant by the freemen of Annapolis on the 14th of May, 1673, are too

well known to require detailing here. It is enough to say that by

general acclamation the people acknowledged Charles Carroll as their

champion. He could not be selected as a delegate, enthralled as he

was, but in public meetings held in Frederick, Baltimore, and

Annapolis they unanimously voted and formally tendered him the thanks

of the people.

Mr. Carroll entered the lists veiled under the name of _First

Citizen_, whilst Dulany met him in combat as _Antilon_—an unnecessary

disguise, for he was too well known, being the patriot “who,” says

McSherry, “had long stood the leading mind of Maryland.” The war was

carried on in the columns of the _Maryland Gazette_, and Mr. Carroll

sustained his character of “finished scholar and accomplished

gentleman.” Never did he swerve from the high tone of a writer who was

conscious of his own powers. Assailed with offensive names by his

adversaries, he never descended to their level. When the real name of

the _First Citizen_ was yet unknown, the excitement created by his

articles, written in a style ready and incisive, and withal most

graceful, was enhanced by and received a keener zest from the stimulus

of curiosity. Wonderful was the avidity with which they were sought

and read. These articles fed the public spirit, inspired the people

with courage, and shaped the course to be pursued not only by the

colonists of Maryland, but even in sister colonies. The articles by

_First Citizen_ were held in so much esteem that Joseph Galloway, when

speaker in the Pennsylvania Assembly, would copy them with his own

hand, on the loan from a fortunate subscriber, and send them to

Benjamin Franklin.

Thus the popular party triumphed. The party of oppression, with the

established clergy at their back, was discomfited. Hammond and Paca

were elected. Maryland was saved, and her saviour was Charles Carroll.

Amid these controversies arose a young man, spirited, wealthy, and

highly educated, who threw himself headlong into the struggle, and,

growing with its trials, became renowned in its darkest hours, and

honored and cherished in its glorious success” (McSherry, p. 170).

That young man, only seven-and-twenty, was already a renowned

statesman.

A distinguished non-Catholic historian remarks that Charles Carroll

brought to play on whatever he undertook “a decided character, stern

integrity, and clear judgment.” Truly, the star of his name had

reached the meridian of its course already. There it became fixed. His

countrymen were guided by it during the dark days of the most perilous

events, through battles and storms, dissensions and heart-burnings,

the exuberancy of victories and the dejection of defeats. Thirty

years, the best of his life, his whole manhood, a long manhood—for he

grew old only when others cease to live—he devoted to the welfare of

his country.

The life of Charles Carroll becomes at this period so entwined and

blended with the history of the country that our article would swell

into a portly volume were we to undertake a narrative of the details

of his public career. We have endeavored to give a faithful portrait

of the character of a man who is the pride of the secular history of

the Catholic Church in America. It has been our aim to give a key to

open the inmost recesses of that soul the noblest of the noble, that

heart the purest of the pure, that mind greatest among the great.

Therefore we shall only hint at the events of his public life, _omnia

quæ tractaturi sumus, narratione delibabimus_, as Quintilian would

teach us.

As foreseen, the British lion awoke from his apparent lethargy, and

with a roar and a spring he bounded anew. Stung to the quick at being,

even only once, foiled in his endeavors to saddle on the colonies

unjust burdens, he made renewed attempts, and the tax on the

“detestable weed” was revived. The people arose in their indignation,

and gave vent to it in the hazardous but successful festivities of the

famous Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts was disfranchised. Indeed, it

was the vent of a petty spite. Not the Bay State alone, but all the

colonies, would soon disfranchise themselves, all in a body, and in a

way of their own. But Massachusetts had given the example, and

Maryland followed close in the wake. The latter even improved on the

act of the former; for what had been achieved in the Boston Bay under

disguise the citizens of Maryland consummated at Annapolis openly and

undisguised. And yet brave Maryland had intestine troubles that

engrossed her attention—troubles which were aggravated even by the

fact that the abettors thereof were interested in carrying out the

measures of the home government. But there shone above them the

guiding star—Charles Carroll led them to victory. Undaunted and

uncompromising, Mr. Carroll looked coming events in the face; and when

Mr. Chase indulged in the hope that there would be no more trouble,

for “had they not written down their adversaries?” he would not thus

flatter himself with illusions of enduring peace. To other means they

would have yet to resort. “What other means have we to resort to?”

asked the other. “The bayonet,” calmly rejoined Charles Carroll. And

so firm was his conviction that they should resort to arms that he

held his opinion against many at home and abroad. His reply to the

Hon. Mr. Graves, M.P., who averred that six thousand soldiers would

easily march from one end of the colonies to the other, is too

characteristic of the statesman not to copy it here: “So they may, but

they will be masters of the spot only on which they encamp. They will

find naught but enemies before and around them. If we are beaten on

the plains, we will retreat to our mountains and defy them. Our

resources will increase with our difficulties. Necessity will force us

to exertion, until, tired of combating in vain against a spirit which

victory after victory cannot subdue, your armies will evacuate our

soil, and your country retire, a great loser by the contest. No, sir;

we have made up our minds to abide the issue of the approaching

struggle, and, though much blood may be spilt, we have no doubt of our

ultimate success.” In these few lines the spirit, the gallantry, the

tactics, the greatness of our armies from Lexington to Yorktown are

both eloquently and accurately described.

And when a second cargo of the “detestable weed” entered the waters of

Maryland, the friends of Mr. Stewart, a leading merchant in the

colony, to whom the brig _Peggy Stewart_ belonged, and to whom the

cargo was consigned, appealed to Charles Carroll for advice and

protection. The _First Citizen_ was ever consistent. Was not the

importation an offence against the law? Was not the majesty of the

people insulted? To export the tea to the West Indies or back to

Europe was no adequate reparation—what if Mr. Stewart was a friend of

his?… “Gentlemen, set fire to the vessel, and burn her with her cargo

to the water’s edge!” With sails set and colors flying, she floated, a

sheet of fire, amid the shouts of the people on shore.

Besides the powerful promptings of a heart burning with love of

country, Charles Carroll felt moved to deeds of heroism and

self-defence by motives of equal, if not superior, importance. He

became, nay, he seemed to feel that he was, in the hands of

Providence, the chosen champion to assert Catholic rights and

liberty—ay, might we not look upon him as the O’Connell of America in

the eighteenth century? It can be proved beyond all doubt that the

Catholics of the colonies placed great trust in him. Surely he became

their representative. There was power in his name. He had become a

leading genius, inspiring with wise resolves, and determination to

carry them out, those valiant men of his faith who had clustered

around the Father of his Country, or were admitted to the councils of

the nation, or formed part of the rank and file in the American army,

or had it in their power to swell with generous hands the national

resources. This power of Mr. Carroll was felt even outside the pale of

his own church. The case of the _Peggy Stewart_ is one to the point.

Another and far more important illustration of his power is the

following: Thomas Conway, a meteor of sinister forebodings, with his

plots of disaster and ruin, has defiled a very short page of American

history. Yet, brief as his career was in this country, it worked

mischief. “Conway’s Cabal” is well known. It is well known how the

despicable adventurer was bribed into a conspiracy against Washington

in favor of an unpopular superior officer. Charles Carroll was a

member of the Board of War. In that board there was a party covertly

yet powerfully at work to displace the commander-in-chief in favor of

Horatio Gates. Mr. Carroll, as usual, always on his guard, watched his

opportunity. He was approached cautiously and warily, even before a

vote was taken. Then calmly and stoutly, yet with that rock-like

firmness of his that had become proverbial, he said: “Remove General

Washington, and I’ll withdraw.” Words were those pregnant with weighty

consequences. Carroll was at the head, he was the representative of

the Catholics. Maryland went with him; the Catholics of Pennsylvania,

nine-tenths of the whole population, an element of great power,

indispensable to success, were with him. The colonies needed the aid

of Catholic France sadly. What if Charles Carroll withdrew to

Carrollton? What if he recrossed the ocean? George Washington was

_not_ removed; and under God’s favor was not George Washington _the_

chosen leader, _the_ appointed conqueror, the Moses of his day, the

Josue of his people? Who was there to take his place as _the first_

over those fierce legions of sturdy and resolute assertors of a

nation’s life?

We must be allowed here to transfer to these columns, in words far

more eloquent and true than we could ever command, both the source and

the development of the ideas to which the deeds of those two men in

the infancy of the nation has given rise in our mind.

In a dialogue between himself and a mysterious apparition on the

threshold of that Temple whose entrance was forbidden to the Emperor

Theodosius, Frederick Faber, yet an Anglican, thus addresses his

companion:

“Do you not think that we should be in a more healthy state if there

were a greater indifference to politics amongst us?”

“No,” replied he; “I know of no indifference which is healthy, except

indifference to money. The church has a great duty to perform in

politics. It is to menace, to thwart, to interfere. The Catholic

statesman is a sort of priest. He does out in public the secular work

of the retired and praying priesthood; and he must not be deserted by

those spiritual men whom he is arduously, wearily, and through evil

report conscientiously representing.”

Could modern publicist ever utter words more squarely tallying with

the circumstances of our own times?

We have followed our hero only to the performance of his first acts in

the great drama in which the Ruler of nations had appointed him to

bear such important parts. Charles Carroll, in his adjuncts and

circumstances, as regards both his cast of religion and politics,

stood alone among his peers. Much he had to destroy ere he could

build. But he addressed himself to his work with well-appointed tools,

a clear mind, a steady hand, a glowing heart, and an immovable

reliance in Him who hath said that “unless the Lord build the house,

they labor in vain that build it; unless the Lord keep the city, he

watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Ps. cxxvi.) Thus appointed, he

never faltered. On, on he advanced, step after step; stretching forth

himself to those things that were before him, he pressed towards the

mark, until he had received the prize.

More than onescore years and ten he labored as man never did labor for

the well-being of his country. When he had reached the sixty-fourth

year of his life, and only then, he rested; he unbuckled his armor and

laid it down, to enjoy the blessings which his own heart and mind had

drawn on America. How beautifully were his talents apportioned, in

equal distribution—thirty years of study in the best schools of

Europe; thirty years of the most faithful service in the greatest work

that it ever was the lot of man to be engaged in; thirty years of

unruffled peace in the bosom of his family, in the home of his youth,

which became the Mecca of the people, as a writer calls it—a shrine of

wisdom and goodness! There “the patriarch of the nation” taught two

generations; he laid before their appreciative minds the principles

and inspired their grateful hearts with those sentiments of Christian

polity of which he himself was such a shining ornament and faithful

embodiment.

We well remember how, in days long passed away, old men who had known

him in the days of his manhood were wont to speak of him; how that

heart, so noble and so pure, fondly watched the healthy growth of that

tree of liberty to plant which he himself had lent a strong hand.

These men would tell how the ripe and veteran statesman felt as much

zest in the enjoyment of surrounding events as when, a boy and a

youth, he applied himself to literary studies, or pursued the more

arduous acquisition of scientific lore in the halls of philosophy or

in those of law and jurisprudence. His was an equanimity of character

seldom witnessed in man. And that placid, calm bearing which made his

countenance the mirror of a soul preserved in patience and perfect in

self-control never forsook him to the very last hours of his life. A

very old member of the Company of Jesus, a professor and superior of

the Georgetown University, has more than once related, within hearing

of the writer, that the appearance of Charles Carroll riding into the

college enclosure, on a docile and yet lively pony, when the great

patriot had already overstepped the fourscore years of life, conveyed

the impression of a youthful and innocent old age, so full of charm

and gravity, pensiveness and gayety, authority and condescension, that

it was felt indeed, but could not be described. It was the reflection

of a past without reproach, and of a future without fear. His very

carriage, the manner of his conversation, were an embodiment of his

last words: “In the practice of the Catholic religion the happiness of

my life was established!” Holy words! Sublime expression of the hopes

of Christianity! May the example of such a man never fail, and be for

ever the mould in which the young American spirit should be cast!

Providence seems to have granted him so long an existence because he

was the purest of the Revolutionary patriots, and he wished his

example to last the longest!

After his death no page was ever written to vindicate his character or

plead in behalf of one single shortcoming! No word of merciful

forgiveness was heard at his grave. His peers, his descendants, had

naught to forgive. With one voice of acclamation from one end of the

country to the other, amid wreaths of unspotted lilies and fragrant

roses, his name was emblazoned on the fair escutcheon of the American

nation as the name of

THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT WITHOUT

FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH.

On the shield of this untrammelled and free American Church let two

names for ever be emblazoned with undying fame—John and Charles

Carroll; one the father of his clergy, the other the leader of his

people; John Carroll, the first vicar-apostolic, the first American

bishop; Charles Carroll, a signer of our Magna Charta, the assertor

and defender of those rights which shall for ever be the palladium of

religious freedom. Could a line of conduct be laid before us in more

unmistakable words and surer meaning?

Not by the ties of blood alone were those two souls knit to one

another, like David and Jonathan of yore; but inspired with love of

country, and deep, holy, unswerving affection for the church, they

fully appreciated the resources, moral and physical, which with proper

culture would make of this land a favorite portion of the mystical

Vineyard and the asylum for the oppressed. John within the sacred

enclosure of God’s tabernacle, Charles in the halls of legislation,

they worked in different departments, yet with one accord, the former

to give the great garden fit husbandmen, and provide it with every

appurtenance in nurseries of virtue and learning; the latter to lead

the instincts born with a people, purified by trials and trained to

justice, into a current which, swelling in its course within the

bounds of Christian discipline, would, the one directing,

strengthening, hallowing the other, run to endless days in great

majesty and overwhelming power.

Charles outlived the archbishop by many years, and witnessed the

triumphs of the Redeemer’s spouse to the achievement of which his

great kinsman had devoted the resources of his extraordinary mind, the

most tender and inviolate affections of his exuberant heart, and the

untiring exertions of a long apostleship.

And here we feel as if we may lay down our pen and look upon our task

as accomplished. We have endeavored to be the faithful limner of a

character noblest among the noble, the pride and the guide of our

Catholic laity in the American Church.

How grand that figure loometh in the galaxy of our greatest men! Great

and grand, pure, unselfish, guileless, wise, loving, he stands on a

pedestal of imperishable renown, religion blended with wisdom, charity

with prudence, firmness with condescension!… When shall we look upon

his like again? Yea, the memory of his deeds is fresh, and his many

virtues as a Christian and as a statesman are even mirrored in the

lives of many noble, devoted, valiant followers—bright examples of

true patriotism and golden righteousness to our rising youth, on whose

stern vigor, unfaltering courage, and sterling virtues mother church

will lean for comfort and defence—a youth called, may be, to fight

even fiercer battles than our great ancestor, their shining model, had

to meet; battles that will need stout hearts, level minds, souls

prompt in bold resolves. But the God of yesterday is the God of

to-day; and with Charles Carroll in the van our gallant youth will

advance to the battle, sure also of the victory.

[148] The medal of which the above is an engraving

gives its own history. It was struck, we are informed

at the expense of the Carroll family. It was suggested

long since that if the _fiftieth_ anniversary of

American Independence was so befittingly honored by

thin tribute of love and heartfelt gratitude of a

whole nation to the only survivor of the signers, and

he a Catholic, it would be _dulce et decorum_ for the

Catholics of these United States to restrike it for

distribution, and as a lively reminder on the dawn of

the _hundredth_ anniversary. Nor would it be a

difficult or costly undertaking. We are told the die

is still preserved, although not at the mint. The only

alteration should occur in the legend of the reverse,

thus: d. Nov. 14, 1832, æt. 98. The exergue should

read: July IV. MDCCCLXXVI.

[149] “We enter upon the second century of the republic

with responsibilities which neither our fathers nor

the men of fifty years ago could possibly foresee.”

Again: “This enormous influx of strangers has added

an immense ignorance and entire unfamiliarity with

republican ideas and habits to the voting class.”

And: “It has introduced powerful and organized

influences not friendly to the republican principle

of freedom of thought and action,” etc.—Geo. W.

Curtis, LL.D., of New York, oration before the town

authorities of Concord, Mass., April 19, 1875.

Printed by permission. The _New England Historical

and Genealogical Register_, vol. xxix., October,

1875.—Strange that Mr. Curtis should have forgotten

the foreign _influx_ among the signers! Yet Thornton

was born in Ireland; Smith also, Taylor also; Lewis

in Wales; Witherspoon near Edinburgh; Morris in

Lancashire, England; Wilson in Scotland; Gwinnett in

England. Strange that of fifty-nine signers so many

should be strangers, besides those who were born of

foreigners! And strange that the most refined and

elegant civilians George Washington associated with

in Philadelphia were Irishmen. And was not that a

strange influx of Nesbitt saving Washington’s army

from starvation? And what of the $25,000 that Barclay

gave, and the $50,000 given by McClenaghan, etc.,

etc.?—an influx _in infinitum_. The influx worked

well a hundred years ago; fear not, it will work well

even now, but keep demagogues and false patriots

aside. Yet on what side are most of them to be found?

[150] Hence sprung the qualification added to the

name of Daniel’s grandson. When Charles, as one of the

members delegated by the State of Maryland to attend

the Convention in Philadelphia, advanced on the 2d of

August, 1776, to the secretary’s desk to sign his name

to the Declaration, allusion was made to the great

wealth of the Maryland delegate, who would thereby

jeopardize it all. “But,” remarked a bystander “it

will be hard to identify; are there not several

Charles Carrolls?”

“Ah! yes,” rejoined the signer; and dipping the pen

anew in that famous ink-stand, with that noble grace

of person so peculiar to him, he bent over the

parchment once more, and added, of _Carrollton_.

Surely Carrollton was the only manor of that name, and

our Charles was the only master thereof. Hence the

qualification which has since become useless—Charles

Carroll of Carrollton. In our days the great American

family knows only one Charles Carroll.

[151] A supernatural interlocutor in Father Faber’s

_Sights and Thoughts_. London: Rivingtons, 1842, p. 181.

THE CATHOLIC SUNDAY AND PURITAN SABBATH.

“Mamma, what kind of a place is heaven?” inquired a boy, after a two

hours’ Sunday session in a parlor corner, with the Bible for mental

aliment. “Why, my child, heaven is one perpetual Sabbath!” “_Well, ma!

won’t they let me go out sometimes, just to play?_” Absurd as was his

mode of expressing it, the boy was right as to the fundamental idea;

and though he could not have given the steps by which he reached the

conclusion, yet he judged well that the Almighty, when sending us into

this world, did not decree that we should be perpetually miserable in

it. The enforced performance of what was intended for a devotional

exercise was, in his case, beginning to bear its legitimate and

inevitable fruits of irksomeness at the outset, wearisomeness while it

lasts, and loathsomeness at the end.

All who claim the name of Christians observe, with greater or less

strictness, one day in seven as a day of rest and worship; the

devotional exercises conjoined therewith, emanating from the authority

of the church in the case of Catholics, and from the varying taste and

fancy of the sect, congregation, or even, it would seem, of the

individual, among non-Catholics. We propose in this article to inquire

into the origin of the Catholic usage regarding the Sunday; the

grounds and mode of its observance among Protestants; the difference

between the sectarian modes of keeping it and that enjoined by the

church. And as about every religious practice where variance exists

there must be a right and a wrong—a method of observance consistent

with authority and reason, and one either less so or entirely

incongruous therewith—we shall try to find (apart from the authority

of the church, which, though ample for us, would be of little avail

for _outsiders_) on which side right reason is, and to show the

absurdity of wrong custom in the matter.

The church tells us simply what the law of nature informs us of, the

existence of God the Creator, and of our duty of worshipping him; but

the time when all other things must be abandoned for this special

purpose is subject to another law—the ceremonial—and as under the

Mosaic dispensation that law was only a shadow of future good, to be

laid aside when the true Light should descend upon earth, so the

Jewish Sabbath, which was clearly established in the third commandment

of the Decalogue, is no longer to be held sacred, but the first day of

the week, which was consecrated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

and the descent of the Holy Ghost, is _by her_ ordered to be kept

holy; and she enjoins on all her children at least to hear Mass

devoutly and to abstain from servile labor on that day. Having to

provide, however, for all sorts and conditions of men, the church adds

that reasons of necessity or transcendent charity will excuse us from

either obligation. And this is all that our holy mother enjoins on the

subject. As Catholics we accept and celebrate the Sunday wholly on her

authority; and, _à fortiori_, we are not bound to any further

observance of it than she dictates.

While it is clear from Holy Scripture that the apostles did meet with

each other and with the early converts to Christianity twice on the

_Dominica_ or Lord’s day, yet there is nothing to show that it was

even habitual with them to convene on that day; still less is there

anything, either in the form of precept or exhortation, in the entire

New Testament, that would manifest the fact of any change in the

ceremonial law of Moses on the subject. There is no announcement

whatever either of the abrogation of the Sabbath of the Jews or of the

establishment of Sunday instead; so that, had we but the Scripture to

refer to, we should grope in the dark both as to the obligation itself

and the mode of its fulfilment. But when we come to the fathers of the

Church, the very earliest of them indicate distinctly that the

Christians of their day did habitually meet together on the first day

of the week (called by them κυριακὴ, or _Dominica_). As we go on we

find them frequently enjoin, both expressly and by clear implication,

the obligation resting upon all Christians of meeting together on that

day for participation in the Holy Mysteries. Later still we find them

affirm this duty as of apostolic institution. To give a single example

of many, St. Saturninus, before suffering martyrdom at Abitina, in

Africa, in the year 304, under Diocletian, _for celebrating Mass on

Sunday_, exclaims, in presence of his judges: “_The obligation of the

Sunday is indispensable; it is not lawful for us to omit the duty of

that day!_” From the earliest Christian records to the present day

there is no break, no link wanting. Historians have clearly shown the

practice of the faithful, and councils have firmly enjoined and

reiterated it. So much for the origin and history of Sunday worship in

the Church.

It is, of course, one of the cardinal principles of Protestantism—in

fact, its sole _raison d’être_—that “the Bible is the only rule of

faith and practice”; that everything therein commanded should be

performed literally; and that whatever has no clear and direct warrant

of Scripture is purely of man’s device, and, by consequence, of no

authority whatsoever. All very fine, in words; but when we examine how

the doctrine works in point of fact, we shall find an amazingly great

discrepancy between the expressed faith and the actual, tangible

practice. There has certainly been no considerable drain upon the

reservoirs of our large cities in carrying out the injunction that “if

ye wash not one another’s feet, ye have no part in me.” It is not, so

far as we are informed, peculiarly characteristic of any sect of

Protestants, when “smitten on one cheek,” immediately to “turn the

other” for a repetition of the blow. No special alacrity has ever been

shown, even by the straitest sects, in eager obedience to the command,

“From him that borroweth from thee, turn not thou away”; and so far

are they from obeying the absolute injunction of the Apostle James to

“call in the priests of the church to the sick,” and to “anoint them

with oil in the name of the Lord,” that they rave and rage against

Catholics for doing so, and affirm it to be a superstitious

observance. If St. Paul ever expressed himself clearly on any point,

he certainly does so most unmistakably when he says that “it is a

shame for a woman to speak in the church”; yet the sectarian world is

now very largely supplied with “reverend” ladies, widowed, married,

and maiden, who evangelize with great acceptance, and even officiate

as regular pastors to various congregations throughout the country. It

would seem, therefore, that the cardinal principle aforesaid must have

either disappeared or some ingenious mode have been discovered by

which it works only when wanted, to be set aside whenever its

admission would run counter to the whim which may happen to be in

vogue.

Now, the only texts of the New Testament that mention the Sunday in

such way that it would be possible to draw from them any inference in

regard to its observance are Acts xx. 7 and 1 Cor. xvi. 1, neither of

which declares the abolition of the ancient Sabbath or enjoins the

observance of Sunday. But notwithstanding this fact, Protestants at

large have accepted our Sunday, whether _on tradition_, which they

reject; _or on the authority of the church_, which they despise; or,

finally, of their own good pleasure—certainly not _on Scripture_,

since it is not instituted therein. It is hardly worth while, owing to

their paucity, to mention as exceptions the Sabbatarians, who maintain

that Christians have no authorization for changing the divine

institution of the Jewish Sabbath, and who consequently observe

Saturday. Luther does not pretend any divine authority for the change,

but takes for granted that “mankind needs a rest of one day, at least,

in seven; and the first day, or Sunday, having prescription in its

favor, ought not lightly to be changed.” He says elsewhere that “if

any man sets up its observance on a Jewish foundation, then I order

you to labor on it, to ride or dance on it, or to do anything whatever

on it that shall remove its infringements on Christian liberty.” The

Augsburg Confession pointedly says: “Those who judge that in place of

the Sabbath the Lord’s day was instituted, as a day necessarily to be

observed, do very grossly err.” Calvin says in his Institutes: “It

matters not what day we celebrate, so that we meet together for the

desirable weekly worship; there is no absolute precept”; and he adds

that the sticklers for Sunday are “thrice worse in their crass and

carnal view of religion than the Jews whom Isaias (ch. i. 13)

denounced.” The doctrine of the English Reformers on the subject is

most concisely and strikingly put by Tyndale, who, in his _Answer_ to

Sir Thomas More, thus speaks:

“As for the Sabbath, _we be lords over the Sabbath_, and may

yet change it into Monday, or into any other day, ass we see

need, or may make every tenth day holy day, only ass we see

cause why. We may make two every week, if it were expedient

and one not enough to teach the people. Neither was there

any cause to change it from Saturday, but to put a

difference between ourselves and the Jews; neither need we

any holy day at all, if the people might be taught without

it.”

Even in Scotland John Knox, who attached himself to the innovators

with a bigoted zeal, did not pretend to find any Gospel warrant for

what he was pleased to call _the Sabbath_; and Dr. Hessey candidly

acknowledges that the strained sabbatarianism of Scotland is by no

means to be attributed to him or his coadjutors, mentioning at the

same time that Knox, when on a visit to Calvin at Geneva, found that

eminent Reformer occupied, on the Sunday of his arrival, at a game of

bowls! If, then, it be plain that the arch-innovators are not

responsible for that peculiarly unlovely, rigid, and ultra-Judaic

observance of the Sunday (the traces of which, growing fainter year by

year, are yet plainly discernible in the laws, institutions, habits,

and manners of the English-speaking portion of the Protestant world),

whence did it originate? Why are the ideas of English-speaking

Protestants so widely different from those of their brethren, and even

of their own founders, on this subject?

Fuller (in whose pages much quaint and naïve information about the

history of those transition days is to be found) tells us that the

_Puritans_, “who first began to be called by that name about 1564,”

and who dissented from the church of King Henry on the ground that the

Reformation had not gone “far enough,” were, like all other renegades,

anxious to distinguish themselves by hostility at every point to the

camp they had abandoned. They preached that to throw bowls on the

Sabbath “were as great sin as to kill a man”; to make a feast or

wedding dinner on that day “were as vile sin as for a father to cut

the throat of his son with a knife”; and that to ring more bells than

one “were mickle sin as is murder.” Of this brood was Vincent Bownde,

whose great work on the _Observance of the Sabbath_ first appeared in

1595; and to this book, which began the polemical controversy on the

subject, is due the rabid sabbatarianism of the English Puritans

during the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth and the dynasty of the

Stuarts. The Scottish Calvinists eagerly seized the cry, and from both

sects (their influence, pertinacity, and numbers being much greater

than those of the Anglican Establishment, which was itself, of

necessity, largely tinctured by their practice), through our own

hard-headed but harder-hearted Puritans of New England, who practised

this unmitigating observance of the day with the same zeal of

enforcement that they displayed in many other grimly ludicrous things,

we of this age and country are still to a great extent under the sway

of an intolerant and enforced sabbatarianism which the spread of

intelligence and liberality is gradually wearing away, but which,

after all, dies very hard. Just as no enmity is so envenomed, no

hatred so intense, so in like manner no distinctive practice or usage

disappears so slowly, as those originally engendered by religious

faction. It was clear that no Scriptural authority existed for the

abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, and equally evident that the denial

of the authority of the church destroyed for ever all ecclesiastical

sanction for Sunday. There remained, consequently, no possible

authorization for it but to insist that the mere meeting together of

the apostles on that day (which, so far as anything to the contrary

can be shown from Scripture, _might have been accidental_) constituted

sufficient warrant; and next to regulate the observance of the day by

the practice of the Jews with regard to the Sabbath. This Bownde did

without hesitation. His book, gratifying as it did at once the

malignity of the Puritans against the church, their envy of the

established sect, and their own exclusiveness, became exceedingly

popular, was largely read and quoted, and its influence remains to the

present day. Here in the United States we yet retain traces of it in

our laws; as, indeed, we still do of that other intolerance by which

Catholics were, in former days, not allowed to hold civil office. In

some of the New England States Sunday (or _Sabbath_, as they

wrong-headedly insist on calling it) begins at sunset on Saturday; but

in most of them it legally begins at twelve o’clock on Saturday night,

lasting twenty-four hours. In some States contracts made on that day

are void; but generally they are binding, if good in other respects.

Of course the name Sunday is the Anglo-Saxon _Sunnan-dœg_, equivalent

to the Roman _dies solis_, so called in both tongues from its being

anciently devoted to the worship of the sun. Sabbath is the Hebrew

noun _shabbāth_ (rest) from the verb _shābath_ (to rest).

To ourselves and those who think with us that the state, in

legislating about matters of religion, whether doctrinal or merely of

exterior observance, is overstepping her proper limits—nay, who go

further, and insist that government was no more instituted to educate

our children than to feed and clothe them; that there is not an

assignable ground for the former which would not be even more

conclusive for the latter—it follows that all such legislation, from

that of Cromwell’s Puritans and the Six Sessions of Scotland, down

through the Blue Laws of Connecticut, to the last municipal regulation

that allows no concert on Sunday unless it be a “sacred” one, and no

procession accompanied by a band of music on that day, seems, what it

really is, an absurdity and a monstrosity, a relic of odious strifes

and bitter hates; and we would be glad, in common, we think, with

sensible and tolerant men of all creeds, to see our statute-books rid

of its remotest traces.

In speaking of any religious practice enjoined by the Catholic Church

we have this advantage: viz., that what it is at one place or time it

is in all places and at all times. The practice, then, of Catholics,

in accordance with the church teachings above stated, is to hear Mass

on Sunday, and, except in cases of necessity, to abstain from servile

labor. Most Catholics also attend Vespers on that day, though there be

no absolute obligation. We take no extreme cases, either of the very

pious on the one side who for their souls’ sake may be said to make a

Sunday of every day in the week, or of those on the other hand whose

religion sits so lightly upon them that it is sometimes difficult to

tell whether, beyond a feeble claim to the name of Catholic, they have

any religion at all. Among the 200,000,000 Catholics of the world are

to be found many of both descriptions. We speak, however, of the

average. Among these, Mass and Vespers being over, there will be found

no strait-lacedness; no tone peculiar to a Sunday, put on for that

day, and not observable on other days; no hesitation in conversing

about sublunary affairs of all kinds that can and may engage the

attention during the week. Should a concert-hall be open, as in Europe

is often the case, the Catholic hesitates not to go there, providing

it be one to which he would go on any day—_i.e._, if it be a proper

place for himself or family under any circumstances. He converses on

business or for pleasure with his friends in the public gardens, at

the _cafés_; with his family he visits other families with whom they

may be intimate. He does not hesitate to write a business letter, to

view a lot which he thinks of purchasing, or to take the railway train

on that day. It is needless to go further. He has complied with the

command of the church, and, not being a _law unto himself_

spiritually, he invents for himself no obligations superadded to those

of the church, which, in accordance with the commands of Scripture, he

believes himself _bound to hear_.

In speaking of Protestant doctrine or practice we are, of course, more

at a loss to speak definitely than when we lay down Catholic usage;

since the former rarely remains the same on any single point, even

within the same sect, for an ordinary generation of man. Why, fifty

years ago Christmas was an abomination, “a rag of popery,” to all but

the Anglicans. The sign of the cross was “the mark of the beast.” An

organ in a meeting-house was “a seeking out of their own inventions.”

Of the least approach to a liturgical observance, were it but the

repetition of the Creed, it was said: “In vain do they worship me,

teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Now nearly all the

sects make a feint of some sort of service or observance of the

Christmas season; the cross is displayed within and without many

church buildings; not merely organs but string and brass bands fill

the choirs of Protestant fashionable churches; they may nearly all be

heard falsely repeat, Sunday after Sunday, that they “believe in the

holy Catholic Church”; and the prophet who should now foretell their

changes in another half-century would run the risk of being mobbed in

the public streets.

We give the doctrinal teaching of the Presbyterians on Sunday and its

observance, or at least of so many of the different religious bodies

going under that name as still subscribe to, and say they deduce their

doctrines from the Bible _via_ the Westminster Confession of Faith. It

was formerly, and is to some extent still, the most generally

received teaching on the subject of observing the Sabbath among

English-speaking Protestants, who seem to have had a monopoly of

spiritual information and an exclusive enlightenment on this whole

matter. How much the bitter hatred existing between Roundhead and

Cavalier had to do with the firm hold the said observance took on

Puritans and their descendants is not to the present purpose to

inquire. In response to the question, “How is the Sabbath to be

sanctified?” we have this answer:

“The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting _all that day, even

from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other

days_; and spending _the whole time_ in public and private exercises

of God’s worship, except so much as may be taken up in works of

necessity and mercy.”

What was meant by this is sufficiently indicated by the legislation

effected both before and subsequent to the meeting of the “Assembly of

Divines.” We are assured by excellent authorities that in England,

some twenty years after the appearance of Bownde’s book, people “dared

not, for fear of breaking the Sabbath, kindle a fire, or dress meat,

or visit their neighbors; nor sit at their own door nor walk abroad;

nor even talk with each other, save and it were of godly matters.” In

1643 the Long Parliament enacted laws “for the more thorough

observance of the Sabbath,” and caused to be burnt by the hangman

James I.’s _Book of Sports_. In the next year the Court of Six

Sessions forbade in Scotland all walking in the streets on the Sabbath

after the noonday sermon; and soldiers patrolled the streets,

arresting both old and young whom they should find outside their

houses and not on the way to or from church. The gates of Edinburgh

were ordered to be shut from ten P.M. of Saturday till four A.M. of

Monday; and the case is on record of a widow who had to pay a fine of

two merks for having “had a roast at the fire during sermon time.”

It is told of an English lady of rank in our own day that, having

procured some Dorking fowl, she some time after asked the servant who

attended to them whether they were laying many eggs; to which the

latter replied with great earnestness: “Indeed, my lady, they lay

every day, _not excepting even the blessed Sabbath_!” Nor is the

puritanic feeling still existing to a considerable extent among some

few of the sectaries in Scotland badly illustrated by Sandie’s remark

when he saw a hare skipping along the road as the people were

gathering for sermon: “Ay! yon beast kens weel eneuch it’s the Sabbath

day!” And the countryman passing on his way to “meeting,” who, when

asked by a tourist the name of a picturesque ruin in the vicinity,

answered: “It’s no the day to be speerin’ sic like things,” gives the

reader an idea of certain peculiarities (formerly quite prevalent

among Protestants, and still too common for the comfort of those who

have many of the straiter sort for neighbors) which, we believe, are

gradually but surely fading out before the progress of intelligence

and with the wave of superstition and intolerance. For it must be

borne in mind that the same Westminster Confession, relying too on

Scripture, insists on the right and power of the civil magistrate

_circa sacra_, contends that “he beareth not the sword in vain,” and

that kings should be “nursing fathers” and queens “nursing mothers” to

the church. We will do our modern Presbyterians the charity to believe

that in subscribing to this instrument, they do so with some “mental

reservation”; otherwise the cry against union of church and state that

we so frequently hear from them would (when taken in connection with

their former antecedents as a sect and their present professed

standards) be quite unintelligible.

Now, of the mode of keeping Sunday followed by Protestants in

Continental Europe we need not speak, nor of the practice of Anglicans

in the same regard, save in so far as the latter have (principally

through the lower or _evangelical_ division of their body) been

modified and influenced by its former subjection and present proximity

to the Puritan element of the English population. In the countries of

Europe claimed as Protestant, and as a very natural as well as logical

result of the indifferentism taught by the so-called fathers of

reform, Luther and Calvin, it is difficult for the tourist to discern

in Prussia, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, save by the greater

number of people at the theatres, concerts, and exhibitions, in the

beer-gardens, taverns, and other places of resort, whether the day be

Sunday or not. Some, of course, attend church on that day, it being

almost the only day of the week on which such service is ever held.

Geneva and the non-Catholic cantons of Switzerland may be passed with

the same description, which completely exhausts Protestant Continental

territory in Europe. Nor of the mode of observing Sunday inculcated by

the Anglicans in England can we say that it is at all overdone or

puritanical. They have, at least, escaped the dismal parody of

asceticism which distinguishes such of their Scotch neighbors as have

any trace of the ancient practice left.[152] Let us glance a moment at

the laws of our Puritan friends of New England, that we may get an

idea of bigotry run mad, and of the deductions that may be drawn from

Vincent Bownde’s book and the teachings of the Westminster divines.

“Having themselves,” as Washington Irving well observes,” served a

regular apprenticeship in the school of persecution, it behoved them

to show that they were proficients in the art.” The Puritans of

Massachusetts thus legislate in regard to the “_Sabbath_” in the

“Plymouth Code”:

“This court, taking notice of the great abuse and many

misdemeanors committed by divers persons profaning the

Sabbath, or Lord’s day, to the great dishonor of God,

reproach of religion, and grief of spirit of God’s people,

do therefore order that whosoever shall profane the Lord’s

day by doing unnecessary servile work, by unnecessary

travelling, or by sports or recreations, he or they that so

trespass shall forfeit, for every such default, forty

shillings, _or be publicly whipped_; but if it clearly

appear that the sin was proudly, presumptuously, and with a

high hand committed, against the known command and authority

of the Blessed God, such a person, therein despising and

reproaching the Lord, SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH, or grievously

punished, at the discretion of the court.”

In support of the same wretched Sabbath superstition the colonies of

Hartford and New Haven issue the following edicts:

21. “No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his

garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.”

22. “No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep

house, cut hair, or shave on the Sabbath day.”

23. “No woman shall _kiss her child_ on the Sabbath or

fasting day.”

Omitting, for very shame’s sake, to say anything of No. 38 of Governor

Eaton’s code, the reader will perceive in the above quotations to what

absurd results logical consistency drives the fanatic when he becomes

so by cutting adrift from the safe moorings of God’s church and trusts

his salvation to the puny cockboat of private judgment. These Puritans

had disclaimed the title of the church which originated the Sunday;

they would not, like Cranmer, accept it as “_a mere appointment of the

magistrates_”; so there was nothing left for them but to slur over the

utter vagueness of its mention in the New Testament, and refer the

whole observance back to Moses and the Third Commandment. In doing

this why were they not consistent throughout? Why did they not _let

their lands rest in the seventh year_? Why not observe the _year of

Jubilee_ ordered by the sanction of the same Lawgiver?

As before stated, Protestant practice, like the doctrines from which

it emanates, is Proteus-like in form and phase; nor is the method

followed in the observance of Sunday any exception to the general

rule. But, upon the whole, the offspring of Knox, the descendants of

Bownde, and the adherents of the straiter sects stand up more

strenuously and make a stouter fight (not in argument, but by sheer

persistence) for the rigorous keeping of the “Sabbath” than they have

found it convenient to do for many doctrines and usages which,

logically speaking, were of far more importance to Protestantism as a

system. Our outward and visible life in the United States, in Canada,

and in the British Isles is to this day, in this one matter, largely

tinctured and deeply infected with the plague of stupid and

superstitious keeping of the Sunday, begun in factious opposition to

the English state establishment, propagated by the work of Bownde,

eagerly appropriated by Andrew Melville and the Scottish

politico-religious agitators of his day, and transmitted to us through

the Rump Parliament and the Puritans of New England. The “able and

godly” ministers of these latter, who, in the words of Mr. Oliver,

“derided the sign of the cross, but saw magic in a broomstick,” though

their descendants have recoiled from the teachings of their childhood

into Unitarianism or infidelity; though not one-half the adult

population of New England now belongs to any Christian sect; and

though of all bodies of men that ever existed under a guise of

religion in the face of day they were the most inconsistent, the most

bigoted, the most superstitious, the most intolerant, and the most

relentlessly persecuting, are yet often forced upon our admiration. It

has somehow become the fashion to laud these bigots to the heavens in

annual _palavers_ of New England Societies, Plymouth Rock orators,

Fourth of July and other spread-eagle speakers; and though their other

doctrines and practices have vanished, leaving on their chosen ground

scarce a trace behind, yet we are reminded of their spirit and

_quondam_ influence by the shackles of legal enactment in regard to

Sunday observance; by the tumult that rises from certain classes of

Protestants as silent custom or outspoken enactment from time to time

sweeps out of existence some one or other of the trammels with which

Puritanism, in its day of power, enthralled us. With what persistent

zeal do they not agitate in the newspapers and petition authorities,

municipal, State, and federal, against the running of the horse-cars,

the rail-cars, and the mail steamers on the Sabbath! How terrible, in

their eyes, are the Sunday excursions of the laboring people of our

large cities! How clearly do they not perceive that liberty is a good

thing only so long as everybody thinks and acts exactly as they do!

Did they not prove that we lost the day on a famous occasion during

the civil war by delivering battle on Sunday? How insanely anxious are

they not to have the Almighty (their Almighty, that is to say) in some

way constitutionally harnessed to the already hard-racked instrument

which consolidates the government of these States! It is true that

these men are the _têtes montées_ of fanaticism of this sort, and we

are far from affirming that a majority of their co-religionists go

with them. Indeed, we know, from daily observation, that in many of

the sects there exists but little of the spirit indicated, and that

what remains is fast disappearing. But there exists enough of the

embers to render walking amid them very annoying, and, with the

assistance of a good breeze from the preachers, these embers may

easily, and on small provocation, be fanned into a flame! Has not

fanaticism displayed an unexpected vigor in connection with the

question of opening our great Centennial Exposition on the only day on

which the industrious poor can have the chance of seeing it without

manifest injury to their temporal interests?

Our Protestant friend of the stricter sort awakes on the Sunday

morning, bethinks himself of the day, dresses (having shaved himself

provisorily on Saturday night), schools his countenance into the most

malignantly orthodox cast, takes in hand the Bible, Baxter’s _Call_,

or Boston’s _Fourfold State_, and descends to the parlor; that is, he

would descend but that he hears one of his boys whistling in an

adjoining room, who must at once be reproved therefor, to be more

fully punished next day.

“To Banbury came I, O profane one!

There I saw a Puritane one

Hanging of his cat on Monday

For killing of a rat on Sunday.”

Having thus effectually “borne testimony” and quenched the spirits of

the juvenile members of the family, who, fully knowing what Sunday

means to them, have learned experimentally that

“Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage,”

he sits down gazing at his book, fancying, in some vague way, that he

is doing God service (though how or to what end would seem indistinct,

since, according to his most cherished doctrine, there is no merit

whatever in good works). He hears with disgust the bell of the

irreligious milkman, sees the unsanctified horse-car pass his door,

the irreverent baker make his round, and notes the profane newsboy cry

the Sunday papers. This last is the most afflictive dispensation of

all, and the one against which he has most vainly and frequently

petitioned, never thinking that, even on his own grounds, the real

gravamen is in the papers of Monday morning, the work for which must

necessarily be done on Sunday. Breakfast comes at length—eaten in

solemn silence—the children being “hard up” for an apposite moral or

religious observation, and fearful lest, should they say anything, it

might be something mundane. Nor can the mother help them to diminish

the gloom of the occasion, having been herself furtively engaged in

eking out the shortcomings of the servant in preparing the meal, and

painfully aware that, according to the family scheme of orthodoxy, she

has not been sanctifying the Sabbath. Family worship (on this day

longer in the prayer than usual) adds in no way to the general

cheerfulness. Each boy and girl, supplied with a Sunday-school book of

the stereotyped pattern and contents, and given to understand the

enormity of even the desire to take a walk on that day, longs in the

inmost heart that the day were over. Church time comes, when, with a

warning that they will be expected to answer on the text, the sermon,

and an admonition against drowsiness, all are trooped off to meeting,

the parents bringing up the rear. Then ensues an hour and a half of

dreary listening to what most of them cannot, by the remotest

possibility, comprehend. More than likely some of them may have been

overcome by sleep; in which case even the negative pleasure of apathy

is taken away, and its place supplied by a fearful looking-for of

judgment, either by rebuke or castigation. The dinner is, in want of

hilarity, a repetition of the breakfast; for no secular idea may be

expressed, and the spirit does not move the younger branches, in any

special degree, to an interest in the rather languid remarks of the

paterfamilias upon the theological tendencies of the sermon; said

observations being delivered in his Sunday tone, compared with which a

gush of tears would be exhilarating. Books are retaken; no cheerful

game or romp among the children; no free play or interchange of ideas

between the parents. To write a letter would be a crying sin for the

father. It is a heinous fault when his mind spontaneously wanders to

that note of his due on Wednesday next; and although the mother had

the interesting and enlivening lucubrations of _Edwards on the Will_

in her hands, yet there is much reason to believe that the washing of

to-morrow has more than once intervened to prove Edwards in the right;

not to mention the occasion on which she caught herself recalling the

trimmings of Mrs. X—‘s bonnet in the front pew. No visit from, none

to, any family of their acquaintance; either would be a sin against

the sanctity of the Sabbath! We need not visit the Sunday-school, to

which the superstitious folly of the parents, fear of their fellow

church-members, the Mrs. Grundyism of sects, or an unfounded belief

that something valuable is learned there compels the parents to send

their children. Probably most of our readers know how these things are

managed; what is the _causa causativa_ of a Sunday-school

superintendent; what is the calibre of the young men who teach, and

the object which takes them there. We all, of course, know and

recognize the high moral aims as well as the literary and theological

ability of the misses who form the grand staff of instructors in those

institutions! But we must not be diverted from our sabbatarian Sunday.

Then follows a dreary tea, meeting and sermonizing again, from which

two of the children, having gone hopelessly asleep soon after the

exordium, are brought home in a dazed state, nor does a protracted

bout of family worship much assist in arousing them therefrom; and

then to bed! We suppose the father to be honest. Many such men are. We

doubt not but many of the Puritans were sincere, and slit the ears of

the Quakers with the serenity of good men engaged in the performance

of a virtuous action. But let us put the question squarely to

reasonable men: Will it be a matter of surprise if this man’s

children, when they grow up, loathe and abhor all religion, thinking

it all of a piece with that in which they were brought up—if they turn

out, in short, what the descendants of the Puritans have become? Why,

the writer is acquainted with a school, kept by a well-meaning man, in

which, by tedious Bible-reading, hymn-singing, and long-winded prayers

at the school opening and closing, the teacher is unwittingly the

cause of more of what _he_ would consider sacrilege, in an hour, than

is heard of profanity among all the hackmen of New York on the longest

day of the year; and his great object, which is to bring up

Presbyterians, is thereby rendered as utterly futile as though he were

an ingenious man doing his utmost to make infidels of them.

Curiously enough, people of this kind (we refer to the strict keeping

of Sunday) are never satisfied with the liberty they enjoy (and which

nobody wishes to curtail) of observing the day just as rigorously as

they may desire. Not at all. There is no happiness or ease of spirit

for them until by legal pains and penalties they can force you, me,

and all their neighbors to their own peculiar way of thinking and

acting. This was well illustrated by the Scotchman who, in telling how

pious a people he had got among, said: “Last Sabbath, joost as the

kirk was skailin’, there was a drover chiel comin’ alang the road,

whustlin’ an’ lookin’ _as happy_ as gin it was the middle o’ the week.

Weel, sir, oor lads is a _God-fearin’_ set o’ lads, an’ they wur joost

comin’ oot o’ kirk. Od! they yokit on him, an’ amaist kilt him.” This

is, after all, the point of the matter. We neither can, by right,

ought to have, nor have we any objection to any observance of the

Sunday, however rigid or however much (to our mind) it may seem

strained, overdone, and even ludicrous. That is the affair of the man

himself, and should lie between his own conscience and his Creator,

where we have no right to interfere. But we all want and have a right

to the same privilege for own conviction, or want of conviction, that

we cheerfully accord to him. Now, this such people as he never will

accord to us so long as they can possibly prevent it. They never have

done so in the history of the world, and, taking experience for our

guide, we have no reason to suppose that they ever will. They prate

largely of liberty of conscience, but that phrase means in their mouth

liberty to think as you please, _so long as you think with them_.

Though he is my neighbor, may not my daughter play the piano on Sunday

on account of his tender conscience? Must I not, because he fancies

the Sunday thereby desecrated, practise the flute? I do not attempt to

interfere with his drone of family worship; why should he be eternally

petitioning to stop the delivery of my letters, or to prevent my going

down-town in the horse-cars on that day? I insist that he has as much

as he is called on to do in attending to the affairs of his own

conscience; that the contract is quite as much as he can conveniently

and creditably get through with and I object (I think with reason) to

giving up mine to his charge. I want a keg of beer in my cellar, or,

it may be, a basket of champagne. _Because he is virtuous, shall there

be no more cakes and ale?_ Shall his being scandalized because I think

proper to take a walk on Sunday confine me all that day to the house?

Must his scruples of conscience prevent myself and family from

entertaining our friends on Sunday? In short, must I always be on

tenterhooks to know how his conscience regards every act of mine on

that day? It would seem, though, as if that were just what my neighbor

and his atrabilious friends have been aiming at. For, now that I think

of it, they have been since ever I remember the self-same people, who

have all along got up meetings, been active in urging petitions, and

done their utmost to thwart every convenience or facility that for the

past twenty-five years has been contrived for public accommodation on

Sunday.

On further reflection, they are the identical individuals who have

publicly and privately been marplots in every matter in our vicinage,

during the same length of time, which did not fully recognize their

little _Ebenezer_ or _Bethel_ as its fount and origin; and though they

are possibly not to be convinced, yet it is highly important for these

people and all their class to learn once for all that the days of

Puritanism are gone, and that nowadays every man is responsible for

his own acts to his Creator, and not to Mr. Jones next door, nor to

the congregation with which he worships. We do not wish Mr. J—— to

read his letters on Sunday, nor will we force him to patronize the

street-car on that or any other day; but we want him and his friends

to cease from making laws that interfere with our freedom, while

thrusting upon them nothing which, _willy nilly_, they are bound to

accept.

Thus it will be seen that our objection is not to our friends of the

various illiberal “schemes of salvation” as individuals, nor to their

practice of a peculiar and, to us, by no means an alluring primness of

speech and gait on Sunday; but to their unwillingness to allow us, who

see things differently, to follow our own convictions, and to their

manifest determination that we shall, in the event of their ever

having the power, be forced to adapt ourselves to their views and

practices. This overbearing spirit seems to be inseparable from their

pharisaic practice and its resultant prejudices, so that our dislike

to both is well founded. As to the sanctification of the Lord’s day,

they have an indisputable right to celebrate it just as austerely as

may best suit them, though we think them grossly and foolishly wrong

therein. They may call the day _Sabbath_, if they please, though we

know that word to signify Saturday, and nothing else. But in return

for this (not _concession_, for it is their right) we wish to suggest

mildly that _we_ also have certain inalienable rights; that among

these, according to a highly-respectable and much-lauded document of

which we sometimes hear, “are life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness”; and we modestly venture the additional suggestion that the

municipal and other laws which already exist, and those which these

people would fain enact, touching an enforced observance of the Sunday

after _their_ fashion, interfere largely with our _just liberty_ and

militate strongly against our chances of success in the _pursuit of

happiness_.

Finally, which method of observing the day seems the more in accord

with right reason? And here we wish the Protestant to lay aside a

moment, if he can, the prejudice engendered by the tyranny of early

education, surrounding usage, and personal habit. Our having been

accustomed from early youth to a specific article of diet, clothing,

or to a habit of any kind, physical or mental, does not necessarily

make an entirely different usage wrong or the direct reverse _sinful_.

If it be a command of God that Sunday shall be observed after the

fashion of the ancient Jews with their Sabbath, we have nothing to

say, except that even _then_ we object to its observance being made a

matter of legal enactment. No man was ever yet driven to the Almighty

by fear of temporal pains and penalties; nor is any worship acceptable

to our Creator unless it be a free-will offering of the heart. But

when Protestants admit with us that the Mosaic dispensation is past

and the type done away with in the fulness of that which it

prefigured, we certainly cannot consider the law of the Pentateuch any

more binding upon us in this respect than in regard to the rite of

circumcision, the usage of polygamy, or the obligation of a brother to

marry his deceased brother’s wife. But there is, in the New Testament,

no warrant at all for the change of the day, much less any rule for

its special observance; and consequently, on Protestant principles,

any day in the week—indeed, any one in ten days, a fortnight, or a

month—would answer the purposes of religion equally well; and as there

is no Scriptural command, the mode of observance is purely of human

invention.

We of course do not speak here of the Sunday, or of any one day in

seven, employed (apart from religious purposes) solely for the purpose

of recruiting the jaded physical energies of him who toils on the

other six days in the week. The necessity for a periodical suspension

of toil and labor depends on physical laws to which no reference is

now made; and as the turmoil of trade and the competition of labor go

on increasing, the necessity for the regular recurrence of a day of

rest becomes more and more evident. The laboring classes are too

numerous and too deeply interested in the preservation of the stated

holiday for it ever to die out. In this view of the question—the

purely physical one—the mode of observance would be simply a matter of

discretion and utility, and would not come within the purview of the

civil law at all; though the actual appointment of the day might, for

the sake of uniformity and for many other reasons, very properly be

considered as pertaining to government. We, however, speak of the day

as a divine or an ecclesiastical institution, in which light its

observance will depend upon the direct word of God or command of his

church; but in no case will the civil law have any right to interfere

either by dictum or permission.

But even supposing, for argument’s sake, what we by no means

admit—viz., that the Sunday should be observed in accord with the

prescriptions of the Pentateuch—we do not see how it follows that

innocent and healthful recreation should be denied on that day, either

to the young, for whom it is absolutely necessary, or to the

middle-aged and the old, to whom it is at least desirable. There is a

great and palpable distinction between recreation and labor. The

latter is forbidden on the Sabbath in the Decalogue; but does the

former stand in the same case? The words are: “_On it thou shalt not

do any work._” It does not say: “On it thou shalt take no recreation,

nor shalt thou play.” It is one thing to say to the hod-carrier or the

navvy that he shall not mount the ladder with the heaped hod or ply

the mattock and spade; and it is another and quite a different thing

to say to either that he shall not take a walk in the suburbs, go with

his family on an aquatic or rural excursion, or visit the “Exhibition

buildings” on a Sunday. It is against such superstitious abuses, which

had, in course of time, grown up on the authority of the sophistical

Rabbins touching the Sabbath, that our Saviour so frequently and

pointedly protests; and against the same or similar illiberal

practices we now protest.

We Catholics say that the Sunday is like other holidays of obligation,

of the same enactment, and on the some footing with them—_i.e._, they

are all instituted by command of the church. Now, with the Sunday, as

well as with the other church festivals of obligation, comes the duty

of hearing Mass and refraining from servile labor; but the law of the

church ceases at that point, and “where there is no law there is no

transgression.” The Catholic believes the other days ordered by the

church to be observed just as binding as Sunday; but it never enters

his head to attempt to coerce Protestants either into the same belief

or observance. His Protestant friend says to him in effect: “I have a

very tender conscience touching the observance of this day. Your

cheerfulness interferes with my devotional feelings; your Sunday

recreations, walks, visits, and travel scandalize me, and offer a bad

example to my rising family. On last Sunday morning yourself and

family rode out in the horse-cars to the park; in the afternoon you

entertained a houseful of visitors, during which time you, with the

flute, accompanied your daughter on the piano. The Sunday previous you

took the train for an adjoining city. The Sunday papers are frequently

taken at your house. You write, post, receive, and read letters as

unconcernedly on the Lord’s day as though it were the middle of the

week. When we had the power you would have been _firstly fined_, then

_whipped_, and for stubborn persistence _put to death_ for this; but

in these degenerate days all I can do is to put every legal and social

obstruction in your way that our decaying numbers but ever persistent

determination will enable us to do. Alas for the days that are gone!”

Now, with the parents on either side we have little to do. The mind of

the Catholic is made up; his conscience is informed from the precepts

and instructions of the church; and we have no desire to change his

views or practice in the premises. And, in the case of his opponent,

there are few tasks so hopelessly wanting in results as that of

convincing a man against his will; as that of trying to surmount

religious prejudice in the adult. But we put it to fair reason, to

common sense, to the community (which has a manifest interest that its

members shall be under the influence of some religion, and not utter

infidels), to answer: In which of the two families exists the stronger

likelihood that the children will grow up stanch and ardent believers

in religion? Will any one tell us that it will be in that in which a

dark, overshadowing pall, under the name of piety, was made “to press

the life from out young hearts”; in which every thoughtless, merry, or

exuberant word or act of theirs was represented as sin “_deserving

God’s wrath and curse for ever_”; in which no memory of youth

connected with religion can be other than sombre, dismal, and

remorseful? Or will it be in the Catholic family, where the child is

taught, not merely in words, but in fact, that “_my yoke is easy and

my burden is light_”; where, as he grows up, religious observance

constantly appeals to him as a privilege, not as an infliction; where

cheerfulness, mirth, and jollity are by no means considered hostile

to, but rather the concomitants of, true religion; and where no day of

the week is definitely consecrated to unnatural gloom and false

(because enforced, and consequently hypocritical) devotion?

The answer is plain. Statistics of the result, with children brought

up under each set of influences, bear us triumphantly out; and, in

fine, thankful as we are for the daily and yearly decrease in numbers

and influence of those who maintain this rigorous observance of the

Sunday, we shall be still better pleased, and it will be a happy day

for this and the other English-speaking peoples among whom they ever

existed, when the quibbling, narrow-minded, and sophistical principles

and practices represented by such persons shall have been entirely

stamped out beneath the onward march of tolerance and Christian

charity.

[152] Not having had an opportunity of extensive travel

in Scotland, we cannot speak of anything but Edinburgh

and Glasgow; but on the few Sundays that we passed

there, if there was any more specific and noticeable

observance of the day than by _more copious drinking_,

we failed to see it.

THE ETERNAL YEARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”

CONSUMMATION.

We have spoken of the way in which the arch-enemy, the seducer of

God’s children, is aping the mysteries of the still hidden future,

according as his subtlety and his enmity direct him. But while his

rage and cunning are devising new deceits for those who are not

enlightened by divine truth, or who have hid their light under a

bushel, our attention is called in a special manner to her whose

office it is, and ever has been, to crush his head. Whenever and

wherever the deceits of men and devils are putting out the light and

wrapping the soul of man in darkness, there does the Virgin Mother

come more openly and more directly to counteract the fatal influence.

It has been reserved for the cold, matter-of-fact, utilitarian last

half of the nineteenth century to see awakened in the multitude the

simple and romantic faith in pilgrimages and in the childlike,

pathetic histories of Mary’s appearances upon earth that lent such

charm to the ages of faith. If the enemy of mankind seems to have more

power allowed to him in the evil days on which we have fallen, so the

Mother of fair love, from whose pure hands the divine odyle streams,

is deigning to speak to children and childlike souls, showing herself

to be the great channel of special graces, the medium of divine

communications, and the sure refuge against Satan’s acted prophecy and

pantomime of God’s loving intentions. “We will come to him, and dwell

with him”—and Mary is the precursor and the channel now as she was

then to his first coming, when he took flesh in her womb. The promise

to the individual soul is the promise to the church: and _vice versa_.

The revelation of God in the church is also the life of God in the

soul—the two are bound up in one. The life of the church is the

guarantee of the life of the soul; it is the only sure foundation of

such life; and the golden house, the _domus aurea_, of that life is

devotion to the divine Mother. For as her presence, her sweet virginal

life, was the necessary preliminary to the first coming of Christ, so

will the Son of God not appear on his glorious second mission till

Mary has come in the hearts of her people as an army with banners; all

her prerogatives known and worshipped, all her position, flowing from

her rights as the mother of the God-man, acknowledged and understood,

and her court of angels following in her mystic footsteps upon earth,

even as the bees follow their queen wherever she may choose to alight;

and so preceding the second coming of our dearest Lord and ushering in

the new glories of the kingdom of God upon earth.

The Holy Ghost could only be sent by Jesus glorified. The sacrifice of

the cross needed to be accomplished and the precious blood shed,

before the promised Paraclete could come. And thus between the one

stupendous event and the other there lies an epoch of forty days, when

he had not yet ascended into heaven, and when therefore his risen

glory was in a measure incomplete. At the beginning of that dread

time, full of the deepest mystery, of which we but imperfectly

comprehend the meaning, he was seen first by Mary Magdalene in the

garden. And as she fell at his feet with extended hands, he said,

“Touch me not.” We have probably all of us at some time meditated

sadly on those repelling words.

Time was when she might touch those blessed feet, not with her hands

only but with her lips. Does he love her less now that her repentance

is complete, and her salvation accomplished? Do not her rapid thoughts

go back in one rush to the time when she sat at his feet unrebuked,

whiling away the contemplative hours as she listened to his words and

heard him say she had chosen “the better part”? Does she not with a

pang of wounded love recall the moment when she wiped the precious

ointment with her hair from the feet she had bathed with it and with

her tears? But now he says, “Touch me not!” Yes, there is a change.

But, O loving heart! it is not a change of loss but of gain. It is

true there is an interim in which our beloved Lord is shrouded from us

in too much glory for our human sense. The cradle-time of his sweet

infancy is past, the grace of his youth, the glory of his manhood, and

all the bitter-sweet ignominies of his cross. He has passed somewhat

beyond our ken. He is risen, but not yet ascended. The first Mass[153]

had not then been offered. The bloody sacrifice was over; the

Eucharistic Sacrifice had not been celebrated by mere priestly hands,

only by his own divine hands on Holy Thursday. Until Mass had once

been said, there was something as it were incomplete in the condition

of the church. The next touch, the only touch possible for us (save by

a special command to St. Thomas and his faltering disciples), was in

the Blessed Sacrament.[154] Now we touch him daily, and fear no

rebuke. Jesus is ascended, and the Paraclete has come, and is ever

coming more and more; and as the Holy Dove sheds the light of his

wings upon the church and speaks through her utterance, so the

privileges and the status of Mary are more revealed and more

developed. We know more of our queen, and we are learning more of her

court, and when both have taken their place in the hearts of men and

have prepared for the reign of the Holy Ghost, when the angels have

accomplished their mission, the far-off glories of which are hardly

dawning on us, then will he make us know all that lies hidden in the

deep mystery of his second coming, and God and man and angels will be

united in the sweet bonds of Jesus, and through the mediation of her

who is clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a

crown of twelve stars on her virgin head.

This is the divine progression, and this is leading to the divine

consummation.

* * * * *

Our task is drawing to a close. It has been our endeavor to encircle

the whole creation with the chain of faith, and to bind each to all in

endless links of the divine love. We have dared to glance back before

time into the bosom of eternity. We have beheld time, as it appears to

our human ken, in a manner detach itself from eternity, and seem to

become an entity—which indeed it is in a certain sense. We have

marvelled at its slow-flowing course and its distant results, as

compared with our own rapidity of thought and grasp of imagination.

And we have seen that time is patient because it is the offspring of

eternity, and because it is the mode and vehicle of God’s revelation

of himself to us. God is patient because he is almighty and

omniscient. For a little space we have strained our endeavors to look

upon the flowing stream as God sees it, and not as we break it up into

moments and hours. Our motive for doing this has been to realize so

far as is possible the continuousness of God’s action with the

indivisibility of his being as he is in himself, and to prove that

this indivisibility and intrinsic unchangeableness lie at the root of

all his manifestations of himself through the _nunc fluens_ of time.

Wherever we have fancied a contradiction to exist, or even a

disparity, the error has lain in our partial vision and not in any

shadow of change in the great God. He meant always what he means now,

but mankind could not always equally bear that meaning. Therefore, as

pitying his creation, he has condescended in past ages to pour the

divine waters of revelation in diverse colored vessels; so that at one

time the limpid liquid seemed to us of a different hue from what it

assumed subsequently, until at last the waters of life were held in

the crystal vases of the church, pure and white as they. We perceive

and understand that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is the

same God as our God of Bethlehem and Calvary. And the unity of God’s

nature becomes ever more and more obvious to us as we study the

characteristics of his government. At no period and in no place has

the loving Creator forgotten the work of his own hands. And lest we

could not find him, he has adapted the light he poured upon us to the

weakness of our sight. In the unity of God and in his unchangeableness

we find our own link to the past, and discover how we are the

inheritors of former ages and the heirs of the years to come. We have

indicated (we could do no more) the great fact that all is because God

is; that he has and can have no other end than himself; and that it is

exactly in that great truth that lies all our hope and all our

salvation. For he is absolute goodness as certainly and as necessarily

as he is absolute being. This being so, it is impossible for us to

wish anything that he has made not to be. Dreadful as is the thought

of hell, we could not wish hell were not—we cannot wish evil to exist.

But we find it there, and we are silent because he has permitted it.

We hate it, because, though he permits it, he hates it. But we see how

it grows out of the free will of men and angels; and that, as all

merit lies in deliberate choice, there could be no choice if virtue

were a necessity. Evil is not, like good, an original and universal

principle. It is the negation of that; and required, to give it an

actual existence, the free power of deliberate selection, like that of

the devils when they fell. We see as we read the history of the world,

in the light thrown by the knowledge of God, that evil works greater

good. And as we can see this in part, we believe that it exists in the

whole, though our perception is limited. We know that good must

triumph in the end. If we thought otherwise, we should make the devil

stronger than God, and the scheme of redemption a comparative failure.

As we enumerate all these things, what is the result we arrive at

except one of illimitable joy and confidence—exultation beyond all

expression in the might and majesty of our God—a hopefulness that

exceeds language—a courage too large for a narrow heart, and a

boundless, passionate yearning towards all living souls, that they may

learn how great a God is our God, and how good and grand a thing it is

to be alive and to serve him?

We can only measure life with any accuracy by the amount of thought

which has filled it—that is, by the quantity of our intellectual and

spiritual powers which we have been able to bring to the small

aperture in the camera obscura by which to contemplate the

ever-flowing eternity that lies beyond, and cut it up into the

sections we call time.

Another example will show us how plastic is the nature of time. Take

the life of an animal. We are inclined to give the largest possible

and reasonable importance to the brute creation. It is an open

question in which we see great seeds of future development, all

tending to increased glory to the Creator and to further elucidation

of creative love. Nevertheless it is obvious that brutes perceive

only, or chiefly, by moments. There is, as compared with ourselves,

little or no sequence in their perceptions. There is no cumulative

knowledge. They are without deliberate reflection, even where they are

not without perceptions of relations and circumstances, past or

future. Consequently, they are more rigorously subjected to time than

ourselves. Therefore, when we deprive an animal of life we deprive him

of a remainder of time that is equal to little more than no time, in

proportion to the degree in which his power of filling time with

perception is less than our own.[155] All we have said tends to prove

that time has in itself only a relative existence; it is a form or

phase of our own being.[156] It is an aspect of eternity; the aspect

which is consistent with our present condition.

From the way in which we have seen that God has made use of different

races to work for the establishment and development of his church, we

have opened a glorious vista of hope in the future, and we have

rejoiced over the work to be done, and the laborers who at the

eleventh hour shall be called into the vineyard, until even the

fragments that remain shall be gathered up, so that nothing may be

lost. We have dared to maintain, against all those who cavil at the

evil days on which we have fallen, that Christianity has infiltrated

its influence in regions where it is blasphemed, or, as in the past

Roman Empire, where it was denied. We have endeavored to impress on

our readers the importance, and in a certain sense the sacredness, of

matter, as the vehicle of God’s demonstration of himself. For, as

Fénelon says, “God has established the general laws of nature (which

involve all the laws of matter) to hide under the veil of the

regulated and uniform course of nature his perpetual operation from

the eyes of proud and corrupt men, while on the other hand he gives to

pure and docile souls something which they may admire in all his

works.” In proportion as we honor God’s laws, so should we honor the

means of their manifestation, the substance through and in which they

work, and without which they would fall back into the abstract and

have no existence outside God himself. We say in proportion, because

the manifestation is second to the principle manifested, and the

_modus operandi_ is inferior to him who employs it. We have as much

difficulty in conceiving of God apart from his operations as we have

in realizing eternity apart from time. And therefore is all honor due

to the vast creation whereby we see the evidence of things not seen,

and everything becomes to us “holy to the Lord.” It is for this reason

that the true and intelligent love of nature is essentially the

offspring of the Christian faith. The ancients cannot be said to have

had it in any degree beyond a remote possibility in their intellectual

nature. To them nature was a weird enchantress, hiding her terrible

secrets with a jealous care. The silence and solitude of the forests

and the mountains were full of a sense of horror. The separate trees

held a lamenting and imprisoned spirit; the gay, sparkling streams

were a transmuted nymph, which, like the perfumed shrubs and flowers,

told some tale of the anger of the gods and their swift revenge. All

that was inanimate inspired sadness. And when their pastoral tales

rose into cheerfulness, it was that the lowing herds and bleating

sheep formed a part. The sounds and motion of at least animal life

were essential. The solitudes of nature were simply awful and

terrific; for nature was then only a mystery to unredeemed humanity.

She held deep secrets in her bosom, but the curse had set its seal

upon them all, and she waited in long mournful silence for the hour

when the human feet of the Creator should press her varied fields, and

by his thrilling touch break the iron bars of her captivity, and teach

her to tell of him in the whispered music of her thousand voices. In

truth, her secrets were his, nor dared she break silence until he had

come to set free the mystery of love for which she was created and

instituted. But when Love himself had walked the earth, and mingled

his tears—ay, and his precious blood—with the dews of his own

creation, then the dark melancholy of nature grew into sweet pathos,

and her solitudes were filled with secrets of his presence.

But what was then hidden from the pagan world could hardly be so to

the first father of our race, he who out of the vast stores of his

infused science named all created beings. When Adam saw the corn

growing bright in thick array, and the vine bending down with purple

fruit, surely he understood, as in a prophecy, the great symbol of the

bread of life and of the Holy Eucharist. The body and blood of the

Incarnate God, albeit unbroken and unshed, must have been present to

his ardent expectation as he beheld their antitype in the garden of

Paradise. The rose with her mystic bosom deep enfolded must ever have

awakened some passing thought of the _Rosa mystica_. And when to sad

Eve, after her exile beyond the gates guarded by the flaming sword of

the cherubim, the rose appeared bearing thorns among her five or seven

leaved foliage, she guessed at the sacred crown and the divine wounds

of the God-man, and at the sevenfold desolation of the mother who bore

him. And what to us are the bright autumn hedgerow leaves dabbed with

blood, not red now but tawny? Are they not tokens that he has trod

that way and left the traces of his past glorious passion—past,

because that blood was shed once for all, but still and for ever

remaining; while the scarlet poppy takes up the theme, and in every

corn-field, on barren tracks, and meeting the way-worn traveller by

the road’s dusty side, reminds him that the sacrifice is renewed hour

by hour the wide world over, fresh and life-giving as ever? Can the

rich woodlands fail to bring before us the thought of him who gathered

from the forests of his own creation the wood for his own cross? Can

we sit beneath the dappled sunshine of the flickering boughs without

remembering how it dared to lay its quick vibrating touch upon his

sacred head, as he walked amid the olive groves of Gethsemane, but

withdrew itself, and gave place to the cold moon before the scene of

his great agony?

Surely these shadows are full of uncreated light; and from time to

time the church retrims her lamps of dogmatic theology, and each time

the light streams further down into the still, dim, uncertain regions

of natural science, another precious secret is revealed, another

ancient doubt dispelled; and matter and natural laws prove themselves

each more and more to be the depositories of divine truth and the

faithful creatures of the omnipresent Creator.

While acknowledging the force of law, we have denied that law can have

an independent existence apart from a self-existing, self-conscious

lawgiver, of whom it is the exponent. We have asserted the same as

regards force, which is but another name for law, or, rather, which is

law _in posse_. And we have stated that as science proves the absence

of all direct contact in the material world, the world of atoms, so

the only real contact is that of spirit on matter, of the divine

Creator on his own creation. For he is nearer to us than we are to

ourselves. All forces, all active powers, emanate from God. They are

the evidences to us of his existence. They could as little exist

without him as a shadow can exist without light. They are one in their

nature, though they are diverse in their effects, because they are

God’s constant _touch_ on his own creation. He exists formally in all

space and beyond all space. And everywhere he is the same: the

immutable and absolute _Ens_. In his touch on his creation he gives

rise to the active forces which virtually declare his being, and which

are extended throughout space, but under a million varied degrees of

being and a million varied forms. They are virtually everywhere

equally. But their manifestation in mind and degree is as diverse as

all that exists in the vast cosmos, inside and outside of which God

is, infinite and entire.

We have not enlarged upon this theme as we might have done. We have

only pointed out to our readers how God’s touch on his creation is the

only absolute contact that exists, and that science goes to prove the

absence of all other, that is, of all material contact. We have

abstained from trying to demonstrate how this truth sweeps away a

hundred doubts respecting God’s ways towards man, and a thousand

difficulties that might prove stumbling-blocks to our faith. We have

desired no more than to put the thought, nay, we might say the fact,

before them, and leave them to work out all its corollaries in love

and devotion. We are not writing for sceptics but for those who

believe, and would fain believe yet more surely, giving a reason for

the faith that is in them, and dwelling in prayer on thoughts which

reveal more of God’s character to the soul. We are to be perfect as

our heavenly Father is perfect. That is, in our measure and degree, we

are to aim at a faint reflection of the harmony, the proportion, the

justice of God. To do this, and to aim at doing it, we need to form in

our own minds an accurate though but a limited view of the character

of God. And to effect this, we must as it were look at his character

all round—for which purpose the past, the present, and the future are

all-important to us; and we have to view him as he reveals himself to

us in his creation, in his government, and in his promises. We have

ventured to maintain that the whole of his creation is with a view to

his Incarnation; that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the

Blessed Trinity is enhanced by his glorious passion and most precious

death working our redemption; that it is glorified by his resurrection

and ascension; and only completed in his sacramental presence; that as

this sacramental presence is the one great fact virtually enclosing in

itself all the others, as it is the coping-stone of the great mystery

of the Incarnation, its lowest depth and greatest height, so is it the

link that rivets the creation to the God-man, and the keystone to all

the science of matter and dynamic force. For it is the divine epitome

of all the laws that govern both, the reason of their being, and the

last exponent of their rootedness in God. It completes the circle

within whose bounds lies the entire cosmos as a globe environed by the

serpent. It is the golden ring with which the divine Spouse has wedded

himself to his church and to all the world, if they but know it. Words

fail us. We cannot say enough; for these are thoughts too deep for

words, and which seem to be rather darkened than expressed by

language. And, like all that is greatest, they come to us from that

which seems most simple and most hidden of all—a silken-curtained

Tabernacle; and behind the little closed door lies all; every secret

has its solution within the round white limits of the Host, for that

Host is the great ultimatum of the creation, and the absolute

consummation of God’s giving himself to man, while the latter is in

the condition of viator.

We have entreated our readers not to be deluded by the dimness of the

present times, but by prayer and solitary thought to strain their

spiritual vision to behold the brightness of the future which is

coming upon us like the rays of the sun behind a mist; the reign of

the Holy Ghost—the enlargement of the church’s border, and the

spreading of the cords of her tent; the devotion to the Mother of God

taking root in an honorable people; and thus, through the mediation of

her who is the first among all created beings, bringing the whole

outer world nearer to the spiritual world. This, and the future

mission, may be a very distant one, of her messengers the angels, are

all certain because they are written, and even now the signs of the

times indicate their advent. In whatever form they may come, whatever

may be the details filling up the wonderful picture of the future,

whatever, in short, may be the literal working-out of the wonderful

promises of the Gospel, one thing at least is certain: they mean peace

to men of good-will. We may be quite unable to define or explain them;

we are waiting for the hour when the church shall teach us more. But

we cannot exaggerate their importance, nor can we deny that our

blessed Lord has left a rebuke on those who make no attempt to discern

the signs of the times. There are souls among his special servants who

are the men of the future. They are those who are called to stand on

the watch-towers of prayer, and to hear the cry, “Watchman, what of

the night?”

The time of figs was not yet. Nevertheless, he in his eternal justice

cursed the fig-tree that yielded him no fruit, when he deigned to look

up among the broad, scented leaves of its knotted branches. There are

souls who are called to bear fruit out of season as well as in season,

and woe to them if they fail in their higher and exceptional spiritual

vocation. They are to be beforehand with time; they are to be, though

in a silent, hidden way, the spiritual heralds of the future, the

harbingers of God’s coming spring, the pioneers of prayer. They are

the human messengers that are to prepare his way before him, in those

never-ceasing conquests which multiply in proportion as our hearts are

ready to receive him. They are to live, as all the great saints have

done, in advance of their age. St. Francis was centuries before his

time in the refinements of his exquisitely spiritualized nature; St.

Vincent of Paul was the same in the creations of his charity; and St.

Francis of Sales like St. Philip Neri in the blending of deep piety

with the exigencies of modern life. The nearer we approach to the

consummation, the more numerous will become the watchers of the night,

the souls that are looking out for a new dawn, and who meanwhile are

leading an inner life in advance of the present. God alone can know

them, and those on whom he has bestowed the gift, though but

partially, of the discernment of spirits. To others they will appear

as men walking in a dream, visionary and unpractical. It matters not

to them. Even here they have in a measure their great reward, for they

can say, with their divine Master, “I have meat to eat which you know

not.”

We are often tempted to complain that we have fallen upon evil times.

The past seems to us to have been more full of heroism, the future we

believe will be richer in knowledge. We have slid into a period of

prosaic piety mingled with many doubts. Without pausing to argue how

much of this is false, we would remark that the present is an epoch

which may yield a larger amount of merit to those who know how to

profit by it than perhaps any other—we may make a rich harvest of

faith and hope. And we must bear in mind that both these are virtues

that will ultimately be swallowed up in the greater and crowning

virtue of perfect charity. When we see, there will be an end of faith;

when we know, hope will expire in certainty. “There remain now faith,

hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity.” In

proportion to the extension of our knowledge, the area of our blind

faith is diminished. “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” There is

a special grace attending these twilight days, when a larger demand is

made upon our faith. The light will gradually increase unto the

perfect day—not only the real absolute perfect day of heaven, but in a

measure here upon earth. The merit of faith will be less, when the

angels are obviously carrying out their mission upon earth, than it is

now, when the good lies so hidden, and the evil is so rampant and

open. We are foolish not more truly to value the advantages of our own

time, and to rejoice that we are called upon to have a greater and a

stronger faith than may be possible in those who will, as it were, put

their hand into the wounded side where beats the Sacred Heart of

Jesus. Whatever has an appearance of discouragement about it is in

fact a fresh demand from God upon our larger faith and deeper trust.

It is as if he said to us, “You are my friends, and therefore I can

count upon you.” We should make haste to lay up a larger harvest of

meritorious faith from every doubt that falls across our path and

every cloud that veils the sunshine, and by this very act we shall

hasten the dawn and bring on the joyous fruition of our prayer. “Thy

kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—for surely

this prayer is intended to be granted in a far greater degree than

anything the world has ever seen from the creation to the present

hour. Remember who taught us that prayer; and remember the centuries

that it has been breathed by all the church of God from infancy to

age. It is not a poetic phrase. It is not a hyperbole. It is God’s

word, expressive of God’s will and God’s intention; and, therefore,

has he made it the universal petition of all his children. It is the

epitome of all he demands in every separate soul, until the many units

have become a large multitude of the faithful, greater than any man

can number.