"Departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."
But the coming age will not take your wisdom--will not follow your
footmarks--will experiment for itself. Tell your passionate son that the
fair face he now dotes on, in ten years he will have forgotten, and he
cannot believe you. It is just as vain to believe that the section who
believe in Rome will cease to do so. Roman Catholicism has some
congeniality with man, and therefore Protestantism will always be in
danger from it--and the more honest this Protestantism is--the more it
takes its stand upon the truth and nothing but the truth--the more it
relinquishes the political ascendancy it has assumed, the greater that
danger will become. Cardinal Wiseman is an illustration of this. Queen
Elizabeth or Oliver Cromwell would have soon put a stop to Cardinal
Wiseman's career, but they would have done so in spite of the principles
of religious liberty. Now those principles are acknowledged, and England
trusts in Exeter Hall--and Dr. Cumming. Protestantism may well be in
danger.
One Sunday, hearing that the Cardinal was to preach at Brook Green,
Hammersmith, I made the best of my way thither. The church was crowded,
and I considered myself lucky in being shown by the woman who acted as
pew-opener into a good seat. Yet this good luck had to be paid for. 'A
shilling, sir, if you please,' said the woman curtseying. 'A what?' I
repeated. 'A shilling, sir, if you please,' was the reply. The woman
seemed to consider it so reasonable a charge that I of course complied
with her request. At the same time, recollecting that for half that sum
you are admitted into what I suppose is considered the dress circle in
St. George's Cathedral, I did think that sixpence would have been
sufficient. The service was conducted in the usual manner. It was
longer than that of the Church of England as practised at St. Barnabas,
and a good deal more attractive. After mass had been celebrated, there
was a hush, and immediately a procession from the side door; what the
procession consisted of I cannot say. My eyes, and those of every one
else, I suppose, were turned upon the Cardinal alone.
And first let me describe the Cardinal's gown;--it was composed of rich
red silk; besides he had a red cap, which he laid aside when preaching,
and, in addition, he had a very handsome robe round his neck, and a lace
or muslin gown of shorter extent than the red one, which came down to his
feet. Only that fluent writer the Court newsman, or he who tells in the
columns of the _Morning Post_ of the finery of Drawing Rooms, when the
beauty of England prostrates itself before royalty, could do justice to
the dress the Cardinal wore. Of course it was a grotesque one--but it
was a finer dress than that of an English Bishop, who seems all sleeves,
and if you do make an object of yourself, the more striking the object is
the better--so that, as far as dress is concerned, the Cardinal beats one
of our Archbishops hollow. I think also in his preaching he would be
more than a match for them. Him you can hear. He is a tall, stately
man. There is an air of power about him. His voice is loud, and brassy,
and unpleasant, but it is not monotonous, and his action is very animated
and good. He stands before the altar, and takes a text which generally
forms an appropriate introduction to his discourse, and delivers a
well-reasoned, argumentative address, not cut up into heads, as the
manner of some is, but connected and complete. With a fine voice, the
Cardinal would be a very effective preacher. As it is, he does very
well. I should say he has little imagination, little sentiment, little
rhetoric, but that he has great stores of learning and power of argument.
He is very plausible, and seems very earnest and sincere, he preaches
principally of the peculiar doctrines of his Church; how it is the one on
which God's Spirit rests; how it is the one true guide to heaven; how it
has the one true Divine utterance, to which, if man do not listen, he is
lost for ever. The Cardinal has a square, massive face, with anything
but a pleasant expression. He is yet in his prime. His hair is brown,
his complexion fresh, but inclined to be dark. His eyes are concealed by
spectacles. A fat, double chin, and large cheeks, minus whiskers, give
him a very sensual appearance. But it is not a pleasant sensuality, the
jolly sensuality of a Falstaff or an alderman, the sensuality suggestive
of good dinners, with good company to flavour them. It is the sensuality
of a proud, arrogant, and imperious monk.
Cardinal Wiseman is by birth a Spaniard, and by descent an Irishman. He
was born in 1802. At an early age he was sent to St. Cuthbert's Catholic
College at Ushaw, near Durham. From thence he was removed to the English
College at Rome, where he was ordained a priest, and made a Doctor of
Divinity. He was Professor for a time in the Roman University, and then
made Rector of the English College at Ushaw. Dr. Wiseman came to England
in 1835, and in the winter of that year delivered a Course of Lectures on
the connection between Science and Revealed Religion, which, when
published, obtained for him a high reputation for scholarship and
learning in all divisions of the Christian church. He subsequently
returned to Rome, and is understood to have been instrumental in inducing
Pope Gregory XVI. to increase the Vicars Apostolic in England. The
number was doubled, and Dr. Wiseman came back as coadjutor to Dr. Walsh,
of the Midland District. He was appointed president of St. Mary's
College, Oscott. In 1847 he again returned to Rome. This second visit
led to further preferment. He was made Pro-Vicar Apostolic of the London
District, in place of Dr. Griffiths, deceased. Subsequently he was
appointed coadjutor to Dr. Walsh, and in 1849, on the death of Dr. Walsh,
he became Vicar Apostolic of the London District. In August he went
again to Rome, not expecting, as he says, to return, 'but delighted to be
commissioned to come back' clothed in new dignity. In a Consistory held
on the 30th of September, Nicholas Wiseman was elected to the dignity of
Cardinal by the title of Saint Prudentia, and was appointed Archbishop of
Westminster--a title which drove silly churchmen into fits, and which
made even Dissenters wild. Under the Pope he is the head of the Roman
Catholic Church in England, and a Prince of the Church of Rome, at which
place he now principally resides. His sojourn in England is understood
to be but temporary. He has published several sermons, and a few
volumes, in support of transubstantiation and the other doctrines of the
church of which he is such an ornament. But his literary reputation is
principally based on the series of lectures to which I have already
referred.
The Cardinal has no great love for our age, and little love for England,
if we are to judge by his epistle to his clergy on the Indian Mutiny. In
a sermon on the Social and Intellectual State of England, compared with
its Moral Condition, published in 1850, he asks, 'Are we convinced that
the real moral tone of society in every part is on the increase? Is it
not notorious that crimes, and crimes even that were unknown among us a
few years ago--that deeds of violence which not even the hot passionate
blood of the South is here to palliate--that such crimes as these are
increasing in the great masses of our population? Is it not well known
that the relations of the family are sadly isolated, and that multitudes
live without a consciousness of their sacred nature? Are we improving
the people in regard to these things? Are we doing anything to convince
them more thoroughly, and upon true Church grounds, of their great duty
to God, to society, to their families, and to themselves? I fear we must
answer no; and I will say boldly that there are reasons why it should be
so. There are immense obstacles in the religious institutions of the
country to this being possible--because it is not in their power to come
home to the feelings, to the affections of the poor. They raise not up
any who devote themselves to them--who sacrifice themselves for them--who
find a higher reward than man can give in making themselves servants of
the servants of God. And what is the visible result of this? That any
great institutions which make us think that we are acting so powerfully
on the masses, reach not to the very depths of the miseries which have to
be probed, and which have to be healed. We are content with raising the
position of the artizan, with making him more intelligent, with providing
him with the means of education, with instructing him in his leisure hour
to store his mind with knowledge. All this is good, and yet the
institutions that work upon that class have not of their own nature a
direct moral tendency.' All this may be true or not, yet it is clear
that the institutions which the Cardinal would recommend, equally fail,
so far as morality is concerned. A Protestant is not less moral than a
Catholic. The population of England is as moral as that of France.
Roman Catholic Ireland can boast no superiority over Protestant Scotland.
Luther has not to answer for all the sins of the world.