"Every nation," it has been said, "makes most account of its own, and
cares little for the heroes of other nations. Don John of Austria, as
defender of Christendom, was the hero of all nations." He was the hero
of "the battle of Lepanto which," as Alison remarks, "arrested forever
the danger of Mahometan invasion in the south of Europe." As De Bonald
adds, it was from that battle, that the decline of the Turkish power
dates. "It cost the Turks more than the mere loss of ships and of men;
they lost that moral force which is the mainstay of conquering nations."
It is not necessary in this sketch of the life of Don John, to enter
into any details about the tedious negotiations which preceded the
coalition of the naval forces of Spain, Venice, and the Pope. Suffice it
to say, that repulsed from Malta by the heroism of the Knights of St.
John, the Turks next turned their naval armaments against Cyprus, then
held by the Venetians. Menaced in one of her most valuable possessions,
the Republic of Venice, too long the half-hearted foe of the Turks,
turned in her distress, for help to the Vatican and to the Escorial. St.
Pius V. sat in the See of Peter. He turned no deaf ear to an appeal that
seemed likely to bring about what the Roman Pontiffs had long desired--a
new crusade against the Turks. Philip the Second, ever wary, ever
dilatory, more able than the Pope to assist Venice, was less ready to do
so. Spain would willingly have done what she could to destroy the
Turkish power, but her monarch was not sorry to humble Venice, even to
the profit of the infidel. So diplomatic delays and underhand intrigues
delayed the relief of Cyprus, and the standard of the Sultan soon was
hoisted over the walls of Famagusta--to remain there until replaced in
our times--thanks to the wisdom of a great statesman--by the "meteor
flag of England."
The terror caused by the fall of Cyprus, brought about after many
negotiations, a league between the Republic, the Papacy, and the Spanish
monarchy. A mighty naval armament was to be gathered together, and its
commander was to be Don John of Austria. His success in subduing the
Moriscoes naturally designated him, in spite of his extreme youth, for
this high command. His operations, indeed, had been so far chiefly on
land, but in the sixteenth century, a man might one day command a
squadron of cavalry and on the next, a squadron of galleys. General and
admiral were convertible terms. There was, indeed, some division of
labor. Sailors navigated and soldiers fought the ship. And, as there is
more resemblance between the row-galleys of Don John's epoch and the
steam driven vessels of our times than there is between these and the
ships which Nelson and Collingwood led to victory, perhaps we shall
return to the old state of things and again send our soldiers to sea!
To return, however, to our hero, who has meanwhile subdued the Moriscoes
and returned to Madrid before setting out to take command of the great
fleet at Messina. One, however, there was who did not return with the
Prince to Madrid, one who was no longer to be his "guide, philosopher,
and friend." The faithful Quijada had been struck by a musket-ball in a
fight at Seron, in which Don John himself, in rallying his troops, had a
narrow escape. After a week of suffering, the brave knight expired in
the arms of his foster-son, February 24, 1570. "We may piously trust,"
says the chronicler,[A] "that the soul of Don Luis rose up to heaven
with the sweet incense which burned on the altars of St. Jerome at
Caniles; for he spent his life, and finally lost it, in fighting like a
valiant soldier of the faith."
Before relating the episodes of the great victory of Lepanto, it will
not be inopportune to glance at one of the great evils, that of slavery,
which the Turkish power entailed on so many thousands of Christians.
Nowadays, thousands of travellers pass freely, to and fro, from the
Straits of Gibraltar to the Suez Canal, and from one part of the
Mediterranean to another. Our markets are supplied with fruits and
vegetables from Algiers. Our Sovereign has no fears, except as to
sanitary arrangements, when she sojourns on the northern shores of the
Mediterranean. A cruise in an unarmed yacht on its waters is the
pleasantest of pastimes. It is, therefore, hard for us to conceive what
three centuries, nay, even three generations since, were the fears of
those who dwelt along the coast of Southern France, of Spain, and of
Italy, or, who, as pilgrims, merchants, or sailors navigated the blue
waters of the inland sea. Every year, even after the battle of Lepanto,
and still more before it, the corsairs of the northern coasts of Africa
scoured the Mediterranean and carried into captivity hundreds of
Christians, of all ages, nations, and of both sexes, from vessels they
encountered or from villages along the shores of France, Italy, or
Spain. Hence it is, that to this day, those shores are studded with the
ruins of castles and forts, erected as defences against those corsairs.
So great was, however, their boldness that even as late as the
seventeenth century, Algerian pirates ventured as far as "the chops of
the Channel."
When we read the annals of those religious orders devoted to the
redemption of captives, we can more fully realize the terrible extent to
which the Christian slave trade was carried by the infidels. As
Englishmen, we do well to cherish the memory of Wilberforce. As
Catholics we should not forget the religious men who risked all,
slavery, disease, and death, to rescue Christians from the chains of
slavery. Let us recall to mind a few facts about them. One single house
of the Trinitarians, that of Toledo, during the first four centuries of
its existence, ransomed one hundred and twenty-four thousand Christian
slaves. The Order of Mercy, during a similar period, procured freedom
for nearly five hundred thousand slaves. As to the number of slaves in
captivity at one time, it may be mentioned that Charles the Fifth
released thirty thousand by his expedition against Tunis, and about half
as many were set free by the battle of Lepanto. It was estimated that in
the Regency of Algiers, there was an average of thirty thousand slaves
detained there. As late as 1767, in Algiers itself, there were two
thousand Christians in chains. Of such slaves many were women, many mere
boys and girls. And as late as 1816, Lord Exmouth, after the bombardment
of Algiers, set many Christian slaves free. It is, as we said, hard to
realize that in times almost within the memory of living men, Christians
toiled in chains for the infidel, in the way some may have seen depicted
by pictures in the Louvre. Similar pictures are kept in the old church
of St. Giles, at Bruges, where a confraternity existed for the
redemption of captives. This association is still represented in the
parochial processions, by a group of children. Some are dressed as
white-robed Trinitarians, leading those they have redeemed from slavery.
Others are gorgeously attired as Turkish slave owners; others represent
Turkish guards, leading Christian slaves, coarsely garbed and bound with
chains. Happily Lepanto made such sights as these the processions of
Bruges commemorate, of less frequent occurrence, until at length they
have been relegated to pageantry, and the once powerful Turk is simply
suffered to linger on European soil, because the jealousies of Christian
nations will not allow of his expulsion.
Salamis, Actium, Lepanto and Trafalgar are the four greatest naval
battles of history and of these Lepanto was perhaps the greatest.
Salamis turned back the invasion of the East; Actium created the Roman
empire; Trafalgar was the first heavy blow dealt against a despotism
that threatened to strangle Europe. Lepanto, however, saved Europe from
a worse fate--the domination of the Turk. The name of this great victory
is derived from the picturesque town, with its mediæval defences still
left, of Naupaktos which the modern Greek designates as Epokte, and the
Italian as Lepanto. The engagement, however, was in reality fought at
the entrance of the Gulf of Patras, ten leagues westward from the town.
The facts of the fight of the seventh of October--a Sunday--of the year
1571, are so well-known, that we need merely recall to the memory of our
readers the leading features of the contest. Spain, Venice, Genoa,
Malta, and the Papal States were represented there, but "the meteor flag
of England" was not unfurled in sight of the Turkish, nor were the
fleurs-de-lys to be seen on the standards that gaily floated from the
mast-heads of the great Christian armada. England, alas! was in the
clutches of a wretched woman, and France was on the eve of a St.
Bartholomew's Massacre, and for all that France and England cared, at
that time, Europe might have become Mahommedan.
Don John led the centre of the long line--three miles in length--of
galleys, while on his right, Doria the great Genoese admiral, from whose
masts waved the cross of St. George; and on the left, the brave
Barbarigo, the Venetian, his flank protected by the coast commanded.
Against the wind, the sun shooting its bright rays against the ships,
the Turkish fleet, in half-moon formation, two hundred and fifty great
galleys and many smaller craft, carrying one hundred and twenty thousand
men, slowly advanced "in battle's magnificently stern array." The brave
Ali Pacha led the van.
As the hostile fleets met, the two admirals exchanged shots. At noon,
the Christians, among whom was one of the greatest soldiers and one of
the ablest authors of that age--Farnese and Cervantes--knelt to receive
absolution from their chaplains, and then rose up to fight. In many a
quiet village away in the Appenines, or in the Sierras of more distant
Spain, the Angelus was ringing, and many a heartfelt prayer was aiding
the Christian cause, then a wild cry arose from the Moslem fleet and
"from mouth to mouth" of the cannon the "volley'd thunder flew." The
combat deepened and became hand to hand. The two admirals ships grappled
together in a deadly struggle. Don John, foremost in the fray, was
slightly wounded. At a third attempt, Ali Pacha's galley was boarded,
captured, himself slain, and the Standard of the Cross replaced the
Crescent. Victory! Victory! was the cry from one Christian ship to
another. In less than four hours, the Turkish ships were scattered,
sunk, or burning, until darkness and storm drove Don John to seek
shelter in port, and hid the wreckage with which man had strewn the sea.
The Christian loss was eight thousand, the Turkish four or five times
greater. Don John hastened to console and comfort his wounded. Did he
not, perchance, visit, on his bed of suffering, the immortal Cervantes?
After the wounded, he turned to his prisoners, whom he treated with a
generosity to which the sixteenth century was little accustomed.
One there was, let us not forget it, who not bodily present, had a
lion's share in the victory. A second Moses, with uplifted hands, St.
Pius V., had prayed God and Our Lady, to aid Don John's arms. "The night
before the battle, and the day itself, aged as he was, and broken with
disease, the Saint had passed in the Vatican in fasting and prayer. All
through the Holy City the monasteries and the colleges were in prayer
too. As the evening advanced, the Pontifical treasurer asked an audience
of the Sovereign Pontiff on an important matter. Pius was in his
bedroom, and began to converse with him; when suddenly he stopped the
conversation, left him, threw open the window, and gazed up into heaven.
Then closing it again, he looked gravely at his official, and said,
"This is no time for business; go, return thanks to the Lord God. In
this very hour our fleet has engaged the Turkish, and is victorious." As
the treasurer went out, he saw him fall on his knees before the altar in
thankfulness and joy."
The great writer, from whom we have taken the above account of St. Pius
the Fifth's supernatural knowledge of the victory, remarks "that the
victories gained over the Turks since are but the complements and the
reverberations of the overthrow at Lepanto."
Here we may take leave of the hero of Lepanto, leaving him in the midst
of his glory, receiving the thanks of Christendom, from the lips of a
Saint--its Supreme Pontiff. We need not follow Don John of Austria on
his expedition against Tunis--a barren conquest his too imaginative mind
dreamed of converting into a great African empire. Nor need we follow
him when he goes, disguised as a Moorish page, accompanied by a single
cavalier, to undertake the bootless task of pacifying the revolted
Netherlands. The incidents and intrigues of this task rather belong to
the history of the Low Countries than to the story of our hero. In the
midst of them, worn out by too ardent a spirit, or stricken by an
epidemic, Don John expired, in his camp near Namur, at the early age of
thirty-two, on October 1, 1578. The task of saving a part of the
revolted provinces to the Spanish crown, he left to the strong arm and
genius of his cousin Alexander Farnese.
Don John's desire was to be buried beside his father in Spain. His body,
says Strada, was dismembered and secretly carried across France, onwards
to Madrid, where it was, as it were, reconstructed and decked with armor
to be shown to Philip, who might well weep at such ghastly display. The
heart of the hero is kept, to this day, behind the high altar of the
Cathedral of Namur.
Generous, high-spirited, courageous, he was a true knight-errant, the
"last Crusader whom the annals of chivalry were to know; the man who had
humbled the crescent as it had not been humbled since the days of the
Tancreds, the Baldwins, the Plantagenets." Endowed with a brilliant
imagination, he dreamed of founding an African empire, and it faded away
as the mirage of some oasis amid the deserts of the dark continent. With
his sword, he thought to free, some day, Mary Queen of Scots, from her
prison, and to place her on the throne held by Elizabeth. But the object
of his ravings died on the scaffold, while he himself passed away,
leaving behind him little more for history to record than that he was
the brilliant young soldier--the Hero of Lepanto.
W. C. R. in _Catholic Progress_.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Hita, "Guerras de Granada," quoted by Prescott, "Philip" II., III.,
133.
The Church and Progress.
One of the favorite mottoes of revolutionists consists in the formula,
"The Catholic Church is opposed to the progress of the age;" and the
general tone of the day's literature, apt in adopting popular cries,
criticises the Church as the arch-opponent of every effort of the human
intellect. The foundation of this charge may be broadly rested on two
counts, radically differing in their nature, and which I may be allowed
to state thus: First, there is a large class nowadays, and this genus is
always especially rampant and noisy, that uses the current shibboleths,
"Civilization," "Liberty," "Equality," "Fraternity," etc., either with
sinister designs beneath them, or, if dupes,--and it amounts to the same
in the long run,--then without at all knowing what those words mean.
With that large vision that usually characterizes her in matters even
not of faith, and which makes her hated by political quacks and mad
sciolists, the Church detects the real objects and aims of these
innovators, and is not afraid of facing obloquy by condemning them in
spite of their false banners. For this attitude we have no excuse to
offer; we glory in it, and regard it as a sign of that innate divine
energy and life imparted to her by the source of all life and power. The
second count on which this charge is based may be found in the utterance
of private Catholics, or in that of prelates and bodies, in the latter
of whom is lodged a power that extorts obedience, it is true, and ought
always to be treated with respect, but which can claim to act in no
infallible manner, and which, in pronouncing on matters outside the
domain of faith, must rest upon the suggestions of reason and external
evidence alone. For instance, Catholics are often confronted with
extracts from this or that author, or the pronouncements of this or that
provincial council, and asked to say whether, after that, the Church may
pretend not to be opposed to the natural aspirations of man? These
objectors do not, or will not, see that the Church, by enlarging the
domain of her teaching to cover all things with the mantle of
infallibility, would most effectually crush the action of the human
intellect, which was meant for use, not rust, which must be allowed
something to act upon, and which in independent action is bound to rush
into a variety of differences according to the bent of the individual
mind. However, to answer thus merely opens up a multitude of questions,
and launches one into a sea of chaos, across which he will have to sail
without chart or compass. Accordingly, I usually answer that these
various utterances of individuals and provincial bodies are not
infallible; that the only utterance absolutely binding on the conscience
of the Catholic is that of a general council with the Pope at its head,
or that of the Pope speaking _ex cathedra_; and that all the other acts
of men or bodies, high or low, are subject in their degrees to human
infirmity, though we are to receive them with respect and judicious
obedience, and that at most they are but temporary in time and limited
in space.
No idea could be more extravagant or more unjust than that usually
entertained by Protestants on our doctrine of the Pope's infallibility.
They imagine that a Catholic dares not utter a word upon any subject
until the Pope has spoken. Or, if they advance beyond this, that he
dares not say anything about religion except what comes direct from
Rome. Or, if they can stretch their imagination to realize that the Pope
speaks only after discussion, that we must look to have our every word
snatched at, and a damper put upon us, before we have well begun. This
last is the central objection of intelligent Protestants, who know well
that it will never do to fly in the face of facts like their more
ignorant neighbors. They have taken the trouble to examine the
definition of the dogma; and it cannot be denied that to their minds it
does bear this sense. Any one familiar with the minute despotism of
those thousand little Protestant Popes, the reverend offspring of the
"Reformation," would see at once what a charter such authority would put
in the hands of a set of Chadbands only too eager to use it. Enlightened
Protestants have begun to feel the burden of this one idea,
dead-dragging officialism, and to kick against it. They are probably
religious men, by which I mean men with devout minds, who earnestly feel
the need of belief. They become inquirers, run through the sects nearest
at hand, and finally come before the Church and gaze upon her. Written
on her front they see "Infallibility." Here lies their stumbling-block.
They begin to question. Arguments are exhausted on each side, and if
they be deeply imbued with the knowledge that there is a God, with the
consciousness thence following of their fallen nature, and with an
ardent hope to re-unite themselves to God, they will admit, perhaps, the
truth of the dogma, viewed in the abstract. But they will say, how will
it work in practical affairs? Judging by their former experience, they
will picture the Pope as a thousand Protestant preachers rolled into
one, and invested with an authority undreamed of before, and using that
authority to tyrannize over the least thoughts of men. What room, they
will exclaim, will men have to advance in the arts and science, not to
speak of development of doctrine, if this incubus is to rest upon them,
and weigh them down, and terrify them into silence and inaction?
The best answer to this is doubtless an enlarged view of Catholic
Christendom, from the earliest times down, for in that period the Pope
did possess the prerogative of infallibility, though it has only
recently been defined as a dogma. Here it must be recollected that I am
not arguing; it would be mere presumption in me to attempt a scientific
exposition altogether out of my power. Suffice it to say, that
theologians have exhausted the inward reasonings upon it, and though I
am not able to set them forth, I am at least convinced by them. Still
the concrete world remains, and things are to be seen in them from
historical and exterior aspects. It is this last which strikes the
imagination most, and to all men a ready test. Minds have various ways
of approaching the truth; and right reason has a way of arguing and
apprehending simply impossible to men in bulk and to myself. For which I
have thought it not unuseful to draw out my way of viewing the
historical aspects of the Church in relation to the progress and freedom
of man; and perhaps many will look at the subject from a similar
standpoint.
Why I believe in God I cannot express in words. Only I know there is an
inward monitor constantly reminding me of that fact, vividly impressing
it on my imagination, and punishing me with the lash of remorse when I
do wrong. I have never doubted when the matter was brought home to my
mind. Still, there are periods when this intense conviction has been
clean wiped out of me; else, how could I have sinned, as I know I have
done, and feel this keen remorse? I do not see how men can sin with the
full consciousness that a God of truth, purity, and justice is looking
upon them with terrible eyes. This is the reason for my faith;
conscience is the charter of my belief. Far be it from me to deny the
arguments drawn by great intellects from the outward course of events,
and which appeal, perhaps, to most minds, as evidence of a Creator and
Sustainer of the universe. I can only say they do not touch me, nor
cause the revivified life to relieve the winter of my desolation, and
the leaves and buds of the new spring to bloom within me. For when I
look forth into the world, all things--even my own wretched life--seem
simply to give the lie to the great truth which possesses and fills my
being. Consider the world in its length and breadth, its contradictory
history, its blind evolution, the greatness and littleness of man, his
random acquirements, aimless achievements, ruthless causes, the triumph
of evil, the defeat of good, the depth and intensity and prevalence of
sin, the all-degrading idolatries, the all-defiling corruptions, the
monstrous superstitions, the dreary irreligion--is not the whole a
picture dreadful to look upon, capricious as chance, rigid as fate, pale
as malady, dark as doom? How shall we face this fact, witnessed to by
innumerable men in all ages and times, as the natural lot of their kind?
Much more so when suffering falls upon us, as it does inevitably on all,
and forces upon us an attempt to solve the riddle of our chaotic
existence?
There is only one way out of the difficulty. If there is a God, the
source of all truth and goodness, how else can we account for this
desperate condition of his highest creation, except we admit man's
fallen condition? It is thus that the doctrine of original sin is as
clear to me as is the existence of God.
But, now, supposing that God intended to interfere with this state of
things, and to draw his prodigal children to Him again, would it not be
expected that He would do so in a powerful, original, manifest, and
continuous new creation set amid His old? So intensely is this felt,
that atheists have drawn an argument from it against the Creator, and
their feeling is expressed by Paine, when he says, that if there be a
revelation from God, it ought to be written on the sun. So it should; so
it is. So was it gloriously shining forth once, in a city set upon a
hill, full of noon-day splendor, and visible to the eyes of all. Still
is it there, discernible to the eye of faith; but clouds obscure the sun
on occasions, and the miserable doings of the sixteenth century have hid
its light to uncounted millions.
And, now, where shall I find that shining light, that overcoming power,
which my reason tells me to expect? I quote the words of one who sought
for many years and at last found:--
"This power, viewed in its fulness, is as tremendous as the giant evil
which has called it forth. It claims, when brought into exercise in the
legitimate manner, for otherwise, of course, it is but dormant, to have
for itself a sure guidance into the very meaning of every portion of the
Divine Message in detail, which was committed by our Lord to His
Apostles. It claims to know its own limits, and to decide what it can
determine absolutely and what it cannot. It claims, moreover, to have a
hold upon statements not directly religious, so far as this, to
determine whether they indirectly relate to religion, and, according to
its own definitive judgment, to pronounce whether or not, in a
particular case, they are consistent with revealed truth. It claims to
decide magisterially, whether infallibly or not, that such and such
statements are or are not prejudicial to the Apostolical _depositum_ of
faith, in their spirit or in their consequences, and to allow them, or
condemn and forbid them accordingly. It claims to impose silence at will
on any matters, or controversies, of doctrine, which on its own _ipse
dixit_ it pronounces to be dangerous, or inexpedient, or inopportune. It
claims that whatever may be the judgment of Catholics upon such acts,
these acts should be received by them with those outward marks of
reverence, submission, and loyalty, which Englishmen, for instance, pay
to the presence of their sovereign, without public criticism upon them,
as being in their matter inexpedient, or in their manner violent or
harsh. And lastly, it claims to have the right of inflicting spiritual
punishment, of cutting off from the ordinary channels of divine life,
and of simply excommunicating those who refuse to submit themselves to
its formal declarations. Such is the infallibility lodged in the
Catholic Church, viewed in the concrete, as clothed and surrounded by
the appendages of its high sovereignty; it is, to repeat what I said
above, a supereminent prodigious power sent upon earth to encounter and
master a giant evil."[B]
Such is the weapon placed by divine power in the hands of the Church for
her conflict with the world. And this being so, the inquiring
Protestant, after realizing its tremendous nature and scope, will draw
back perplexed, imagining that a weight like it would crush the human
intellect. He does this only because he loses sight for the moment of
the terrible power of the earth giant. The human intellect is no baby,
weakening under every stroke; it is a tough, wild, elastic energy,
struggling up in every direction, and is never more itself than when
suffering beneath the blows of heaven. Moreover, its natural tendency is
to explain away every dogma of religious truth, from the lowest to the
highest. In that old pagan world this natural process is to be seen.
Everywhere that human genius opened up a way for itself, and had a
career, the last remnants of primeval truth were well-nigh banished.
Look, too, at the educated intellect of the non-Catholic world to-day.
Genius, talent, eloquence, and art, what are they in England, Germany
and France, if we may not describe them as simply godless? Why is this?
Now turn your gaze on the Middle Ages, and observe the difference. It is
scarcely necessary to say that in those times the Church was
pre-eminent, not only having the spiritual power, but often also the
secular. If she had wished it, she could have crushed out every form of
inquiry, and firmly established herself as the one and only source of
all truth. But she did not do it. Never since the world began were such
daring inquiries set on foot, such subtile propositions offered, such a
vast and varied display of the human intellect in all the departments of
theology. The office she claimed was that of arbiter; and surely nothing
was more reasonable. A man would work out some original view or
deduction; he hoped it was true, but could not be certain; he would put
it forth; it would be taken up by an opponent, come before some
theological authority of minor note, pass on to some university, be
adopted by it and opposed by some other; higher authorities would be
appealed to, and at last the subject would appear before the Holy See.
Then, perhaps, no decision would be made, or a dubious one, or minor
details would be rectified, and so the whole matter sent back for a new
discussion. Years and years would pass before anything like a final
decision would be reached; and then, when every defect had been rubbed
off, and every minute bearing of the matter evolved, the Church would
either reject it, or adopt it, and stamp it with the seal of dogma. I
say this is an epitome of doctrinal development in the Catholic Church.
If there is any one thing more manifest in her ecclesiastical history
than others, it is her extreme slowness and caution in final
pronouncement, and the general wise treatment with which she has
fostered the growth of mental development, so excellent in itself, so
erratic in its courses, and so needful of her strong guiding hand.
Indeed, it has been used as a reproach against her that Rome has
originated nothing. It is true. It was not her function. She was
instituted as the guardian of the Apostolical _depositum_ of faith, over
which, of course, her control was supreme; and her jurisdiction was to
extend over all other subjects, because they necessarily touched this.
But without citing other names, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas
stand forth as the formers of the western intellect. Men saintly in
character they were, but they had no special relations to the central
See, and were only fallible mortals like the rest of their fellows; yet,
as I say, they are to be counted the very originators of modern
Christian thought. Rome did nothing but stamp their teachings with the
seal of her approval. So was it throughout. Her work has been to check
and balance the erratic courses of the human mind, allowing it free play
within certain limits, but firmly preventing its suicidal excesses. How
tenderly has she dealt with schismatics; how forbearing has been her
conduct in regard even to the worst heretics; patiently hearing all they
had to say, allowing the force of their plea where it was possible, and
only casting them out when they proved incorrigible.
Most Protestants suppose that whereas there are two religious principles
at work in Christianity, private judgment, and authority, they have all
the private judgment, while we are weighed down by an unmitigated
authority. Nothing could be more false. This aspect of Christianity is
complete without them; they represent simply a negation, and no positive
force at all. Show me the doctrine that Protestantism has originated,
and it will then deserve to be treated in a philosophical manner. It
has had no innate life, nothing to develop from, and has simply withered
down from the first, until now the advance guard of it has reached the
shadowy ground of natural religion, and Mr. James Antony Froude, its
special champion in its past acts, can write that it is dead. On the
contrary, when I view the external aspect of Catholicism as a whole, I
behold within it the active forces of life at work from the first. The
human intellect is no passive instrument, merely being filled by the
reception of faith, but a living organism, feeling a void in it for
faith when it has it not, and eagerly receiving and digesting it when it
comes. Forthwith it begins a process of development, explaining,
proving, modifying, enlarging, in all the various ways that suit the
multiplicity of man's nature. This process is observable in all times
and places, as the inevitable outcome of civilization. Barbarous nations
do not reason, but receive their religion as an outer cloak; as they
stagnate in all things else, so also in their creeds. Witness the Turks.
Intellectually, morally, religiously, they are the same as they were six
hundred years ago; and unless overthrown from the outside, they will
probably so remain to the end of time. No heresy has arisen amongst
them; no progress in civilization is to be marked; no change even in
decline; for power is relative, and the Moslem empire is weak now only
in comparison with the vigorous young empires of the West. But the
action of civilization is different. Under its influence States are in
constant movement, changing from day to day. The change may be good in
this detail, and bad in that; it may on the whole be for the good, or it
may on the whole be for evil. But what I say is the distinct mark of
civilization, as contrasted with barbarism, is emphatically and simply
change; change, in the natural order, is its law. For the intellect is
alive and vigorous, seizing on everything within its scope, shaping it
by its individual bent, and, hemmed as it is by walls of sense,
naturally rushing into error on every side. These are effects of private
judgment, and they are not less to be seen in the whole Catholic world,
from its beginning until, to-day, than anywhere else; but Catholics have
had a safeguard against the rebellious and suicidal excesses of fallen
reason, and this safeguard is the infallibility of the Church.
The meaning and scope of that infallibility has been given in words
fitter than mine. Viewing the nature of things on the whole, and then
taking it for granted that God has made a revelation, and intended it to
be set up and maintained alongside of and within a civilization anxious
to get rid of it, what more reasonable to be expected than that an
infallible abiding authority should be His human instrument. It is a
thing we should be led to expect if it did not exist; as is fully proved
by Paine's saying about its being written on the sun. How convincingly,
then, is the truth forced home on us, when we do learn that there is an
institution that exactly fulfils our foregone conclusion!
So far as theory goes, the infallibility of the Church can be a burden
to none; so far as actual facts go, it has not demonstrably, to my
knowledge, acted as a damper on intellectual effort, but merely as the
restrainer of its excesses.
I shall be quite candid in giving my views on this inexhaustible
subject, merely letting them stand for what they are worth, and knowing
full well that there are depths in it, as in all things else, not to be
sounded by me. And I shall now go on to state what are the real
difficulties and burdens to me, as to many other Catholics perhaps, in
this doctrine of infallibility; always premising that ten thousand
difficulties do not make one doubt. And here some may be inclined to say
that, as touching the papal headship of it, the evil deeds of many Popes
and their apparently immoral lives, do inevitably tend to throw
discredit on it as being lodged in them. But let all that can be said be
admitted; what then? Why, I answer, David was a man after God's own
heart, and stood nearer to Him as being inspired than any Pope as being
infallible; yet one of God's Prophets could say to him, "Thou art the
man!" The lesson of which is not to judge men's inner lives entirely by
outward facts, as the young and inexperienced are too apt to do. Our
Blessed Lord foretold scandals to come in the very sanctuary of His
dwelling, and we know the doom pronounced upon those by whom they come.
And if we view the action of these individuals in relation to the
Apostolical _depositum_, we can actually draw thence an argument awful
as it is startling. These Popes, so frail as men, were yet wise as the
Vicars of Christ; never have they dared lay hands on the faith committed
to their care.
The difficulty lies in another direction. As has already been explained,
the Church claims infallibility only in matters of faith; but a little
reflection will show us that there are many things not coming directly
under this head yet appertaining to it. In these latter she claims
unquestioning outward obedience at least. Thus she has the right to
determine when any scientific theory or other controversy bears upon
matters of faith, or has a dangerous tendency to do so; also to check
the usurpation of State, when they begin to reach in this direction; and
in the exercise of this prerogative she is not guarded from error. I
have already shown how slow, cautious and gentle, has been her dealing
on the whole with controversies that do relate to faith; much more so
has she been in the kindred but outer domain. Still, to our fallible
reason, it may sometimes appear that she acts hastily and wrongly in
forbidding certain things. She forbids at one epoch what she allows in
another; tacitly withdrawing the former condemnation. This, I repeat,
_is_ a difficulty, and, stated baldly thus, must often perplex even
Catholics.
But let our opponents be as candid as I have been. Let them admit--what
is no more than a fact--that this prerogative of the Church has been
exercised very seldom; and that even on the most of these occasions, the
Church has in the end proved to be in the right, and the supposed martyr
in the wrong. Things are not to be judged simply in themselves, but a
course of events prove them; and there is a season for all matters, and
a season when they are not in order. This right or power is a necessity
to every constituted body of whatever kind. A State, for instance, may
wrongly condemn a man for some offence; but that is no argument against
the State having the right of judging in such matters, even if it must
incur the danger of wrong judgment once more. If this prerogative were
taken from the Church, all outside the simple domain of faith would fall
into a mere chaos. Now, let the man who holds that this would be as it
should be, let him consistently carry out his doctrine into all the
concerns of life, and a hideous chaos would be the result. Has not such
been the result in religious matters outside the Catholic Church? And as
chaos has resulted there from revolt against the constituted authority,
so would it be in society at large, were the theory consistently carried
out. To say that non-infallible exercise of authority should, on account
of occasional error, be resisted and overthrown, is simply suicidal; and
an objection founded on it is no more than an objection founded on the
fact of evil in man's nature, of which it is a necessary part. And into
this bottomless pit of doubt I for one do not purpose to fall.
Let the problem, then, be fully grasped. It is to secure sufficient
liberty and a stable authority. Freedom in itself is a good; but such is
man's fallen nature, that it cannot be enjoyed without a partial
sacrifice of itself, which it yields up to authority. This becomes the
domain of authority, and the two interact on each other. So much is
clear; but conflicts arise, and the precise issue is, not exactly
between the two, but as to where their boundaries meet. We Catholics
believe that we hold the solution in our hands, and I shall now merely
state how I look at it, admitting, of course, that I may be in
incidental error.
The conflict is supposed to lie now between science and the Church.
Well, stated simply I would say, let scientists become theologically
founded, and let theologians become scientists. At first blush this may
sound like a paradox; but it is not. If theologians would honestly
strive to master scientific theories, there would be less danger of
hasty action on their part. Many of them would not stand committed, as
they do, to a condemnation of evolution, while on the other hand it was
not their business to sanction it; and if scientists had not allowed
themselves to become narrow-minded in their studies, they would not have
similarly placed themselves in a false position by trying to make their
legitimate discoveries bear upon matters not within their range. The
point is, that a Catholic, whether scientist or theologian, should not
allow himself to be alarmed by the rash utterances of individuals; but,
conscious of a right purpose and true faith, pursue his track to the
end, knowing that natural truth cannot clash with supernatural; if at
times it appears so, then he knows that this is only temporary, and that
in the end difficulties will clear away. Charity on each side will go a
long way. However, I think the Church has forborne remarkably in these
matters, not committing herself to any precise attitude, but awaiting
the issue of the struggle. No idea could be falser than that the
scientist would hamper himself in submitting to the Church. Quite
otherwise. He would, by this step, secure a central pillar of support,
and thence venturing could go further than any of them now dream of. The
separation of science and the Church is the distinctive evil of the day.
Both would gain, in strength and freedom, by a union, and the progress
of the next century would thus redouble that of this.
HUGH P. MCELRONE.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] Newman's "Apologia," pp. 274, 275.
Honor to the Germans.
Letters from those missionaries in Annam, who have escaped the fate
which has befallen so many of their flocks, agree in charging the
representatives of France with a negligence, which, under the
circumstances, assumes the very gravest aspect. Père Dourisboure, for
instance, writing from the Seminary at Saïgon, where he has taken
refuge, declares that the presence of French vessels at some of the
ports, and the firing of a few shots without hurting any one, would have
been the means of saving the lives of some thirty thousand Christians,
and securing their homes and possessions against injury. Formerly, he
says, the mandarins contented themselves with putting missionaries and
the leading converts to death; but this time, the persecution and hatred
of France, rather than of Christianity, has been the cause of what can
only be called a war of extermination, and France has done nothing for
those who have suffered for their supposed loyalty to her. When the news
of the massacre at Qui-Nhon, where there were seven thousand Christians,
reached Mgr. van Camelbeke, he at once requested the commandant of the
_Lyon_, which was lying at that port, to see to the safety of Father
Auger and Father Guitton; but that officer replied that his instructions
would not allow him to fire a single shot in defence of the missionaries
or the native Christians, and all representations and entreaties on the
subject proved ineffectual. In this difficulty aid came from an
unlooked-for quarter. Deserted by their own countrymen, the missionaries
applied to the captain of a German merchantman, which was in the port,
and the request being acceded to, two of the Fathers and five German
sailors rowed ashore, armed to the teeth, to arrange for the escape of
as many Christians as possible. They were met by three mandarins, one of
whom was the bitterest enemy of the Christians. These the sailors
captured and put in irons on board their vessel, and secure in the
possession of these hostages, they proceeded to bring off some seven
hundred Christians, the utmost number which the ship could contain,
forcing the natives to assist in the work. One of the mandarins was then
sent ashore charged with a message that any act of violence against the
Christians would be visited upon the two who remained in the custody of
the Germans. Père Dourisboure's narrative ceases with the safe arrival
of the seven hundred Christians at Saïgon; but we may well hope that the
brave Protestant sailors on their return to Qui-Nhon found that their
device had proved effectual.
* * * * *
A WRITER in the _New York Commercial_ gives facts and figures to prove
that there is no quarter of the globe so much in need of missionary
enterprise as New England. The Puritans have ceased to be a churchgoing
people.
Vindication.
From the German of Reinick.
"Why lingerest here in the greenwood,
All day in a childish dream,
Toying with leaves and flowers,
Watching the wavelets gleam,
While a world grown old and hoary
With the spirit of change is rife,
And the outworn past and the present
Are grappling in deadly strife?"
Still here will I dwell in quiet,
Tho' without the tempests rave;
And while all things reel and totter,
Will seek me an oaken stave,
Plucked from a tree that has weathered
The storms against it hurled,
While into the dust are crumbling
The props that uphold the world.
Yes, I'll choose this silent garden
Tho' around me deserts lie,
And bask in the ancient glories
Of earth and sea and sky.
While alone on dark thoughts of ruin
Your pulseless bosoms brood,
I'll build me a bower of roses,
And rejoice in my solitude.
"Rejoice! Verily we've forgotten
The sound of so strange a word;
Nowadays notes of scorn and anger
May well in youth's songs be heard;
For the woes of our earthly existence
Should find a voice in your rhyme,
Since the word of the poet is ever
The mirror of his time."
No, no, in the heart of the poet
Can no scornful spirit live--
He is wroth at human baseness,
Can over the sorrows grieve
That round this old earth are woven
Like some fateful web of doom,
And he weeps that bright gleams of radiance
So seldom pierce the gloom.
But whenever a ray out-flashes,
Drink it in with heart and mind,
And a hopeful premonition
Of the future in it find:--
Rejoice, when the sun is shining!
Joy purifies the breast,
And whoso with pure heart rejoiceth,
Even here below is blest!
"What! you believe in the bliss of Heaven
In a happiness yet to be?
Your faith, like your other emotions,
Is mere childish fantasy.
Remain as you have been ever,
A child from your very birth,
Unworthy with men to hold counsel
On the woes and the welfare of earth."
Yes, I believe in the word of promise,
I believe in each holy word,
In the power that clothes the lily,
And that feeds the nestling bird;
"Be like unto children, of such is
God's Kingdom." Ah! well, in sooth,
If all were as little children
In purity and in truth!
To the weal and the woe of the nations
I do not seal my breast,
Tho' my Motherland is dearer
To me than all the rest.
If to fold universal being,
'Neath its wings the mind aspires,
Still the heart needs narrower limits
For the growth of its sacred fires.
REV. JOHN COSTELLO.
* * * * *
JULES JANIN, a witty French writer, nicknamed lobsters "Naval
Cardinals." He probably imagined that lobsters in the sea are as red as
they are when served on our tables or placed in the windows of our
fishmonger's shops. Curiously enough sailors call the ships used to
carry our red-coated soldiers from one part of the world to another,
lobster-boxes.
Tracadie and the Trappists.
The flourishing village of Tracadie, in the county of Antigonish,
Eastern Nova Scotia, well sustains for its French inhabitants, the
prestige, as industrious husbandmen, which their ancestors'
contemporaries established in Western Nova Scotia--the land sung of by
Longfellow in his "Evangeline;" and the much-vaunted superiority of the
Anglo-Saxon, reads like a melancholy sarcasm, in the face of the fact
that the lands from which the inoffensive Acadians were mercilessly
hunted, are, to-day, far, very far, removed from the teeming fertility,
which charmed the land-pirates in the last century. Simple-minded folks
are wont to say, that the lands of the dispersed Acadians, languish
under a curse, nor need we, of necessity, dissent from this theory, if
we consider the manifestation of the curse to be shown, in a lack of
skill, or industry--or mayhap both--in the descendants of those who
profited by that infamous transaction. Certain it is, that these lands
are now much less fertile than of yore.
Arriving at Tracadie, as we drive from the Eastern Extension Railway
Station, we notice as a curious coincidence of alliteration, the sign,--
+-------------------+
| HALF-WAY HOUSE. |
| H. H. HARRINGTON. |
+-------------------+
and remark that with the super-addition of "_Halt Here_," the signboard
would be an unique curiosity.
Leaving the hospitable farmhouse of Mr. DeLorey, on a bright October
Sunday, after hearing Mass in the neat and commodious parish church
dedicated to St. Peter, a pleasant drive of three miles, bring us to the
Trappist Monastery of _Our Lady of Petit Clairvaux_, the buildings of
which are of brick, and form a quadrangle, of which one side has yet to
be erected.
Ringing the porter's bell we are admitted and handed over to Brother
Richard, the genial and amiable guest master, who is most assiduous in
his attentions to us.
The monastery was founded as a Priory, early in the present century by
Father Vincent, a native of France, and was raised to the dignity of an
abbey nine years ago, when the present Abbot, Father Dominic, was
consecrated. The community at present number thirty-seven, of whom
sixteen are priests and choir-religious, the remaining twenty-one being
lay brothers; the monks being chiefly Belgians, with a few from
Montreal, and a few from this vicinity.
The abbey is surrounded by four hundred acres of land, tolerably
fertile, though rough in part, and has excellent limestone quarries--the
monks burning as much as one hundred barrels of lime at once in their
kiln; they also manufacture all the bricks required for the multifarious
works which are incessantly in progress. Their domain is well watered
by a stream upon which the indefatigable monks have had a mill erected.
At the date of our visit, they had just finished a new dam composed of
immense blocks of limestone, and had almost completed a new and larger
mill--to supersede the old one--and which in addition to the ordinary
grist grinding will also be utilized, simultaneously, for carding,
sawing boards, and sawing shingles. The new mill has dimensions of 150 x
40 ft., and the main barn 220 x 40 ft. The latter building now
accommodates fifty heads of horned cattle, including some Jersey
thoroughbreds and Durhams and six horses. We were also shown some
Berkshire thoroughbred pigs, enormous, unwieldy brutes, one rather
youthful porker being estimated to weigh nearly six hundred pounds.
The monks make a large quantity of butter, all the year round, the sale
of which forms an important item of their revenue. The abbey has made
its repute all through the surrounding country, and it is scarcely
possible to over-estimate the benefit of this _model_ farm to the
inhabitants of adjacent lands; combining as it does the latest
improvements in agriculture with the untiring industry of the Trappist
Monk. For several years, their grist-mill was the only one for a great
distance, and even now wheat is brought in, for grinding, from a radius
of fifteen miles.
The monks contain among themselves all the trades necessary to their
well-ordered community, _ex-gr_ two blacksmiths, two tailors, two
millers, a baker, shoemaker, and doctor, not forgetting the wonderful
Brother Benedict, who is at once architect, carpenter, mason and
clockmaker. In the last-mentioned capacity his ingenuity is shown by a
clock which has four faces; one visible from the road approaching the
abbey, the second from the chapel, the third from the infirmary, and the
fourth from the refectory, where the modest table service of tin plates
and wooden spoons and forks, offer but few attractions to those who
overlooking the final end of all created things, look at life from the
animal point of view.
We are also taken to the dormitory, and look into the narrow
compartments, where the good brothers sleep, with easy consciences, upon
their hard beds; and are also shown the _discipline_, which, though no
doubt a wholesome instrument of penance, does not in any way resemble
the article of torture under which guise it masquerades in the average
anti-Jesuit novel.
Descending again we are taken to the neat cemetery where the brothers
are deposited in peace after life's course is run, covered only by their
coarse serge habits, and without coffins. Every grave has painted in
white letters, on the black ground of a plain, wooden cross, the name in
religion once borne by him, whose mortal remains rest below.
In the centre of this final resting-place stands a tall cross, and near
by we observe a bare skull, whose mute lips powerfully preach the folly
of worldliness, and like an accusing spirit warns all beholders of the
dread day when every wasted minute, as well as every useless word, must
be strictly accounted for.
The costume of the monks, in its coarseness and simplicity, would not
commend itself to our modern dudes; but, then, life is a terrible
reality to these brothers, who, hearing the voice of God, have hastened
to follow his call, fully realizing, that without the one thing
necessary, all else is vanity.
These reflections are interrupted by the abbey bell, calling us to
Vespers, which are chanted by the monks (the music being supplied by the
organist Father Bernard), upon the conclusion of which, we take our
departure, deeply and favorably impressed with our visit to this
monastery, which stands alone, in the Maritime Provinces of the Canadian
Dominion, and sincerely grateful, for being enabled to see with our own
eyes the works of those much-abused monks, who in general are so
frequently defamed by the thoughtless boys who write for the secular
press, and by the equally empty-headed old women--of both sexes--who
write for that class of periodical which by a curious misnomer is
designated _religious_. These are the people, who, it is to be feared,
shut their eyes to the truth, lest they should be compelled to
acknowledge it.
In the face of so much prejudice, it is pleasant to be able to record
that quite recently some Protestant clergymen visited the monastery, and
did not refrain from expressing their honest and undisguised admiration
for what they beheld.
J. W. O'RYAN.
Gladstone at Emmet's Grave.
HOW THE UNMARKED TOMBSTONE OF THE MARTYR LOOKED.
The day Mr. Gladstone went to Dublin to receive the freedom of the city,
which the town council had unanimously agreed to confer upon him, he
spent a day in the docks and courts and in visiting St. Michael's
Church--a place full of historical interest. On the vestry table lie two
casts of the heads of the brothers Shears, who were beheaded in the
rebellion of 1798. Such are the properties of the soil in the cemetery
that the bodies of those are as perfect as the day on which they were
hanged.
The church itself is eight hundred years old, having been built by a
Danish bishop during the ascendency of his race.
Mr. Gladstone examined the communion plate, some of which came out of
the spoils of the Spanish Armada.
But these were light trivialities! The grave of Robert Emmet is here.
"Let no man mark my tomb," said he, "until my country takes her place
among the nations of the earth."
Mr. Gladstone stood beside the rough granite, unchiselled, unlettered,
silent slab. No name, no date, no word of sorrow, of hope. The sides are
clipped and hacked, for emigrants have come from afar to take to their
home in the new world bits of the tomb of Robert Emmet. How he comes to
lie here is simply said. When his head was cut off in Thomas Street,
his body was taken to Bully's Acre,--what a name!--and buried.
Rev. Mr. Dobbyn, a sympathizer in the cause, was then Rector of St.
Michael's; he ordered the body to be disinterred that night, and he
placed it secretly in St. Michael's church-yard. A nephew of Robert
Emmet, a New York judge, corroborated this statement some years ago. But
Emmet is not the only rebel that lies here in peace.
Oliver Boyd sleeps here, with God's noblest work, "an honest man,"
written on his tombstone. Here, too, is the grave of the hero, William
Jackson, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. While the
judge was still pronouncing the awful doom, the man grew faint and in a
few minutes fell down dead. He had swallowed poison on hearing the
verdict from the jury. In this vault, over which Mr. Gladstone peers
anxiously, you can see a group of heads, all of 1798 men and there on
one of them, is the hangman's crape as it stuck in the wounded neck
since the day on which it and its owner parted company. Mr. Gladstone is
silent as he sees all this and at last mournfully moves away.
Is there ever a tragedy in which clown is wholly absent? As he steps
over the graves, up comes a man as drunk as a goat, and cries out, "Ah!
Mr. Gladstone will you take the duty off the whiskey?" Upon which he of
Hawarden Castle turns him round and says slowly--"My friend, the duty
does not seem to stand much in your way."
JOHN W. MONAHAN.
Gerald Griffin.
That part of Limerick formerly known as Englishtown, and at present
localized in city ordinances and surveying maps as King's Island,
consists of a knot of antique houses crowding thick around a venerable
cathedral. An ancient castle, its dismantled tower within easy bow-shot,
overrun with weeds and ivy, overlooks the noble river, whose expansive
sweep of waters is at this point of passage spanned by an old, but still
substantial bridge. In the shadow of the cathedral and within hearing of
the river, Gerald Griffin, dramatist, poet and novelist, was born on the
12th of December, 1803. His father, who had succeeded to a goodly
estate, a considerable fortune and an honored name, sold the fee simple
of his landed inheritance, and removed to Limerick, that his children
might enjoy all the advantages of a good education, which at that period
were best obtainable in large towns and great cities. He established
himself in the business of a brewer; and, as in every speculative walk
of life where personal energy is not well supplemented by judicious
management and long experience, time alone was needed to diminish his
capital by rewarding his unremitting industry with profitless returns.
The natural disposition of this good man presented a medley of those
attractive qualities which secure for their fortunate possessor an
immediate share of the sympathetic good-will alike of the friend and
the stranger. He had a kind heart and a winning manner. He could enjoy
and exchange a good joke, and to the end of his life was a sterling and
an uncompromising patriot. Yet his admiration for valor and virtue was
circumscribed by no political limits, by no narrow-minded prejudices. An
ultra-volunteer in '82, and an O'Connellite in '29, he was enthusiastic
over the victory at Waterloo, and wept at the melancholy fate of Sir
Samuel Romilly. Gerald's mother was a gentle and accomplished lady,
whose affection for her child was tempered and regulated by the
treasures of a refined and cultured mind, and by a sensitively religious
disposition. When he was in his third year, Mrs. Griffin, with her
family, removed to a country district, which, from local association
with the escapades of lepracauns and phookas, had inherited the
significative title of Fairy Lawn. The new home was romantically
situated amid the umbrageous woods and pastoral meadow-lands through
which the Shannon flows at its confluence with the little Ovaan River.
His infancy thus cradled in a landscape rich in the diversified
picturesqueness of storied ruin and historic tradition, what wonder that
Gerald at a very early age should feel the inspiration of his poetic
surroundings as he looked towards the winding river, the green fields,
the islands mirrored in the tributary Fergus, and the solemn shade and
cloistered loneliness of ruined abbeys and gray cathedrals. To the
careful training of his good mother he was indebted for the exquisite
taste and truthfulness with which he interpreted nature; for the nice
sense of honor which distinguished him through life, and which often
rose to a weakness; for the delicate reserve which made absence from
home a self-imposed hermitage; and for the deep, devotional feeling and
healthy habit of moral reflection which ever shaped and inwove the pure
current of his thoughts and writings.
A visiting tutor gave Gerald an elementary knowledge of English until
the year 1814, when he was sent to Limerick. He remained in the city
attending a classical school till he had acquired a familiarity with the
works of the great Latin authors. At an age when it is scarcely
customary to emancipate children from the prim decorum and polite
restraint of the nursery, young Griffin was pouring with unmixed delight
over the pages of Horace, Ovid and Virgil. Of the three, he preferred
the sweet pastoral of the gentle poet of Mantua, and to the end of his
life retained this partiality. Inspiration caught from so pure a source
wrought itself into innumerable songs and sonnets, which Gerald managed
to write clandestinely, when some new frolic drew away the attention of
his brothers and sisters, and left him in the enjoyment of a peaceful
hour and a quiet corner. During these intervals of busy writing he was
insensibly acquiring that light and graceful style, by the gentle charm
of which the most sober strain of serious thought became the most
acceptable kind of agreeable reading. Though still young, he could well
realize how indispensable a good style is for literary success. He lived
at a time when books were comparatively scarce, in a district remote
from easy access to well-filled libraries; when the cost of
transportation often equalled the advertised price for the newest canto
of "Childe Harold," or the latest novel by the "Great Unknown." But what
would have been disadvantages to many a beginner proved to have been of
incalculable benefit to Gerald Griffin. His knowledge of books and
authors was limited to the extent of his mother's library, and it
contained, among other choice works, the writings of the inimitable
author to whose graceful allurement Washington Irving owed half his fame
and all the classic sweetness of his fascinating style. He copied out
whole chapters of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and rarely went out of doors
without bringing for a companion a copy of the "Animated Nature."
In the boy, pensive and serious beyond his years, might be traced the
different characteristics of mind and heart which eventually made up the
texture of his later manhood, the yearning desire for retirement, the
habit of sober reflection, the trait of gentle sadness, and the
passionate love for home and country. The years of his childhood passed
unattended by a single sorrow. Time, however, brought a change, which
broke rudely in upon the even tenor of his happy life. The pretty
homestead on the banks of the Shannon was to be broken up, old poetic
haunts had to be forsaken, and the sheep of the little fold were to be
dispersed.
In the year 1820 his father suffered such heavy losses that a slender
competency was all that remained at his disposal to resume, if he had
been willing, a business which had hitherto been productive of only
disappointments and regrets. The family, not wishing to run further
risks, set sail for America, and settled in another Fairy Lawn, in
Susquehanna County, Pa., leaving Gerald and two younger sisters to
remain with their brother, a physician, who was at that time living in
the town of Adare. Here Gerald remained for two years, pounding drugs
and manipulating pills, ostensibly to study medicine, but in reality to
devise plots for projected dramas, and to sketch character and incident
for tales in prose and poetry. The pathway of his future career had
already been carefully mapped out. He had long pined in secret for a
literary career, and years only whetted his eagerness to put his
unspoken wish into practical execution. Like poor Kirke White, he felt
the irresistible influence of an unmistakable destiny drawing him, as he
fancied, from lowly walks to ways of loftier prospect and more uncertain
enterprise. In the prophetic fervor of anticipated triumph, he foresaw
himself the lion of the literary coterie, the courted favorite at titled
levees and fashionable dinner parties. He occasionally contributed short
essays and fugitive poems to the _Limerick Reporter_, a sheet of news on
which were wont to be chronicled the gossip of the city, critiques of
provincial dramas, statistics of the Baldoyle steeplechases, or the
latest speech by the Liberator. Sometimes he ran into the city to have a
chat with a young man, who had begun to be recognized in the circuit of
provincial journalism as a literary star of rising magnitude. The young
man was John Banim, whose noble services under trying circumstances
Gerald had reason some years later to experience and appreciate. During
the two years immediately preceding his departure for London, he devoted
his attention almost exclusively to dramatic composition. Banim's "Damon
and Pythias" appeared in 1821, and the success which had at once raised
its obscure author into prominence, must have had no slight influence in
confirming the resolution which Gerald had already made. A religious
motive, too, entered into the spirit and outlined the object and policy
of his work. His plays, when they should be produced, were not to
terminate with uproarious applause and calls for the "gifted author" at
the fall of the curtain. The spirit of the drama had at this time
wofully departed from the sphere of its legitimate function received
from historic tradition. The design of the great dramatic master had
been in his own words to hold the "mirror up to nature." The interest of
London stage-managers led them to pander to public taste, and crowd the
boards with sensational makeshifts and spectacular unrealities. Otway's
"Venice Preserved" and Heman's "Vespers of Palermo" could not attract a
pit full; while scenes introducing battlefields, burning forests, and
cataracts of real water crowded the houses to overflowing. It was at
this juncture that Griffin hoped to bring about his dramatic revolution.
It was with this object in view that he composed a tragedy and read it
for his brother, who, seeing that it contained much that was excellent
and much that gave evidence of future success, no longer withheld his
permission for Gerald to try his future in the heart of the English
metropolis.
One cold morning, in the autumn of the year 1823, Gerald Griffin found
himself a bewildered stranger in the streets of London. The sense of
utter loneliness, the feeling of timid embarrassment, which overpowered
him in the bustle and uproar, amid the winding streets and smoky
labyrinths of the densely populated Babel, had been experienced by many
another aspiring adventurer, whom the glitter of a great name and the
hope of literary preferment had drawn from happy retirements to battle
through adversity to fame and fortune. His first object on his arrival
in town was to seek the shelter of respectable lodgings; his next, to
introduce himself, to explain his projects and to submit his tragedy to
the manager of a London theatre. The manuscript was returned after some
months delay, with the intimation that it was too poetic and too
didactic, and would require extensive revision before it could be
brought upon the stage. Accident, rather than good luck, threw Banim
across his path, and he proved to be a valuable and a faithful friend.
In the little sanctum at the rear of No 7 Amelia Place, Brompton, where
Curran had written his speeches and Banim had composed his tragedies,
Gerald sat down to reinspect the returned work, and at the suggestion of
his friend to omit whole scenes, to substitute others, to lop off
epithets which were too glaringly poetic, and to abbreviate speeches
which were too discursively long. But despite all the author's revision
and Banim's abler experience "Aquire" was fated never to occupy the
boards. No amount of labor could redeem the fault of a drama which
conveyed moral precepts in the classic solemnity of select and studied
periods. Despairing, at length, of ever having it produced, Gerald
withdrew it in disgust; but what he did with the manuscript, whether it
was purposely destroyed, or accidentally lost, we are unable to say.
"Aquire," however, must have contained many excellencies, judging from
other poetical work of the author written at the same time, and from the
testimony of his accomplished brother, whose excellent literary taste
made him a competent judge. "Gisippus," a tragedy written at this
period, was produced with great success two years after the author's
death, Macready sustaining the title rôle. A series of continued
failures to satisfy the wants of exacting stage managers, slightly
altered the plan, though not the purpose, of the work which Griffin had
set himself to accomplish. He was compelled to give up writing
tragedies, and write for a livelihood; but London was overcrowded with
impecunious journalists, and he received the merest pittance in return
for the most arduous species of literary drudgery. The author of
"Irene," on his arrival in London, was not more incontestably the
literary helot at the mercy of Cave, Millar, and Osborne, than was
Gerald Griffin the typical booksellers' hack amid shuffling reviewers
and extorting publishers. Johnson at the outset of his literary career
received but five guineas for a quarto English translation of "Lobos
Voyage to Abyssinia." Griffin, after working for weeks received two
guineas for a translation of a volume and a half of Prevot's works. But
he was not to be easily dismayed by first reverses of fortune. He had
long ago made himself familiar with the catalogue of miseries in the
literary martyrology beginning with Nash and Otway, and ending with his
friend Banim. Early intimacy with distress and disappointment would but
stimulate him the better to conquer both. He would sacrifice everything,
consistent with a stainless name and an honorable career, in the
attainment of his cherished end--the society of friends, the little
luxuries of a frugal table, the modest though comfortable room in which
he had hitherto lived and toiled. Poor Gerald! he had yet to learn when
his most ambitious yearnings had been fully realized, that worldly
honors do not satisfy the cravings of a Christian heart, that the most
imperishable coronal of true success is woven of deeds little, lowly,
and seemingly contemptible, and that labor spent in purely secular
pursuits is labor spent in vain. But the nobler promptings of his nature
were as yet unheard amid the discord in which he lived.
He now removed to a miserable garret in a lonely corner of a lonely
street in the loneliest part of London. The forlorn solitude of his
dreary room was, however, somewhat cheered by the thought, that in such
dizzy eeries, amid the eccentric gables and rheumatic chimney pots of
great capitals, works were often composed which were destined eventually
to confer lasting honors on their obscure authors. Goldsmith had written
his "Vicar of Wakefield" in the memorable, dingy eminence at the head of
Breakneck Steps. Pope, walking with Harte in the Haymarket, entered an
old house, where mounting three pair of creaking stairs he pointed to an
open door and said: "In this garret Addison wrote his 'Campaign.'"
Gerald Griffin, however, had yet to experience all the hardships which
were endured by Goldsmith before his landlady threatened eviction, and
by Addison before he received the fortuitous visit of Henry Boyle, Lord
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He wrote prose and poetry for which he was
often glad to get sufficient money wherewith to purchase a cup of coffee
and a crust of bread. He studied Spanish, and when he had so mastered
the language as to be able to translate fluently, his publisher said
that on second consideration he would prefer to receive original
contributions. And now commenced a period in Griffin's life, which, for
exceptional want and misery, might claim a certain pre-eminence in the
long list of hapless victims, who made up the literary hecatomb of the
Johnsonian era. Without the grosser elements, which enter into their
methods of living and disfigure their character, the abject squalor of
vulgar surroundings, the love for pot-houses and low companionships, the
utter disregard for personal respect, he otherwise underwent all the
pain, the want and uncertainty of their impoverished condition. But the
roughness of the road was unthought of in the anticipation of a rich
reward at the end of his journey. He would redouble his efforts to
ensure its nearer approach. He abandoned old companionships; invitations
to dinners and literary soirées, which came from his friends Banim and
McGinn, were politely declined. He locked himself in his lonely room and
wrote through the hours of an unbroken day. Only at night when the lamps
were lit, and the crowds had left the street, would he venture out of
doors, and then merely to take a ten minutes' walk to ease his aching
head, and to rest his wearied eyes. Once he remained three whole days
without tasting food, till a friend accidently came to see him and found
him pale and faint but still writing. Yet in all the sunless gloom of
this dreadful time his letters home were most cheerful. The want of
actual nourishment he felt, the evil influences by which he was
surrounded, the chances of certain success which awaited him if he would
but do violence to a certain portion of his scrupulous orthodoxy,
counted for nothing with one whose good sense could see no grave
inconsistency between temporary poverty and the first efforts of
struggling genius. Nor is poverty so fatal to the efforts of genius as a
superficial thinker would suppose it to be. To a noble nature it
presents no feature of degradation or terror. Its supposed evils are,
for the most part, begotten of the pride of those who are its victims.
If it forbade Griffin to ask or receive favors from those who were able
and willing to help him, it thereby conferred self-independence and
ceaseless energy, the constant forerunners of inevitable success. His
industry was speedily rewarded, and in a manner which seemed the result
rather of good luck than of strenuous effort or personal merit. One day
Gerald made bold to write an article after the manner of those in the
great reviews. He sent it anonymously to the proprietor of a leading
periodical, and in return received unsolicited a cheque for a handsome
sum of money, with an invitation to continue sending contributions of a
similar kind. This was the first hopeful speck in the horizon of a
brilliant future. The benevolence of the kindly publisher did not end
here. He sought out the anonymous writer, invited him to dinner, treated
him handsomely, and obtained for him the editorship of a new
publication. "It never rains but it pours," is a true old maxim
attributable with equal propriety to good and evil happenings. Hitherto
he had been unable to make his time profitable either in a literary or
pecuniary sense. His later contributions had all at once begun to
attract attention, and the amount of time at his disposal seemed too
short to enable him to satisfy all the requirements of numerous
engagements. He was employed as a parliamentary reporter and as a writer
of short plays for the English Opera House. He reviewed books which
were published, and revised books which were unpublished. He contributed
essays, stories and poetry to the _News of Literature_, the _European
Review_, and the _London Magazine_, for the smallest one of which he
received more money than for the huge translation of Prevot two years
previous. He was now enabled to take more comfortable chambers; but he
miscalculated his powers of endurance; when in such a stage of mental
anxiety and mental application he would remain up at literary work till
he heard the church clocks strike four in the morning. The evil results
of this abuse of health soon made themselves manifest. He had lost all
appetite for food. His rest was broken by fits of insomnia, during which
his heart would beat so loud as to be distinctly heard by his brother in
the same room. In the streets he would be suddenly attacked by swooning
fits, during which he would have to support himself by leaning on gate
posts and sitting on door-steps. At the earnest solicitation of his good
brother he set out for Ireland with the hope of recruiting his failing
energies by a few months' leave of absence. His vacation was productive
of literary as well as of sanitary results.
He returned to London with a volume of stories for the press, and sold
the copyright to the Messrs. Simpkin Marshall & Co., for £70. The work
appeared in December 1826, under the title of "Hollandtide Tales." It
was well received. The style was original, graceful and easy. The three
novels, which comprised the series, were interesting and free from the
taint of grossness and immorality, so erroneously deemed essential when
describing the habits and customs of the poorer classes. It was an
eloquent vindication of a much-wronged portion of the Irish peasantry,
and like Banim's contemporary writings, it was hailed with universal
exultation in Irish literary circles. The success of his first work was
so immediate and decisive that he resigned his editorship, abandoned the
magazines and reviews, and continued with few interruptions to appear
annually before the public as a novelist. "Tales of the Munster
Festivals," which appeared in two series, and for which he received
£250, was the title of his next work. In 1858 appeared "The Collegians"
which placed him with one bound in the fore front of the great writers
of his country. It was not only the best Irish novel that had appeared
previous to its first publication, but is admittedly the best that has
ever been written since.[C] "The Invasion," "The Rivals," "The Duke of
Monmouth," and others which he wrote subsequently, are all far inferior
when placed side by side with this great master-piece of fiction. In it
may be seen to best advantage the wonderful power and versatility of
Griffin's genius as a great novelist, for within its single compass he
has touched with a master hand the whole gamut of human passion and
human affections. As a literary artist of the "dark and touching mode of
painting," which Carleton has set down as the chief characteristic of
his brother novelist, Griffin has few equals and no superior. To depict
the more sombre tints of human nature, to trace the unbroken events
linked together in a career of crime, from the first commission of evil
till its last expiation in the felon ship, or on the gallows, he
especially delights. He does not delay the progress of the plot to
impress upon his reader the exact frame of mind in which his hero felt
at certain trying conjunctures. This suggests itself unconsciously, in
occasional snatches of vague and emotional distraction, in half uttered
replies, in the joke that mechanically escapes the lips, in the
capricious laugh that best discovers the anguish preying on the mind and
the despair eating at the heart. But it is in the ingenuity with which
he makes local surroundings play such an important part in the drama of
human destiny, that Griffin excels to a remarkable extent. What reader
of the "Collegians" has not realized all the perils of the windy night
and the stormy sea with trepidation and horror scarcely surpassed by the
occupants of the little craft tossing amid the boiling breakers--Eily,
the hapless runaway, Danny, the elfin hunchback, and Hardress, the
conscience-stricken victim of conflicting thoughts and passionate
impulses? How much more tragic the finding of the dead body of Eily, the
"pride of Garryowen," since it occurs on the hunting field, surrounded
by the half maudlin squires, and before the bloodless face of the
horrified murderer? But Griffin deserves mention other than as a
dramatist and novelist. It is saddening to know that in an age where so
much weak sentiment, scarcely discernible in its wealth of verbose
ornamentation, is so easily imposed upon the public under the name of
poetry, that so much really good poetry should be forgotten and unread.
One is often provoked to regret that the scalping knife has become
blunted in the hands of the "buff and blue," and that the race of useful
parodists should seem to have expired with the wits of "Fraser." As a
poet Griffin is comparatively little known; and yet, to make a seeming
paradox, few poets have been more universally popular. The exquisite
songs, "A Place in Thy Memory," "Schule Agrah" and "Aileen Aroon" have
been read and sung wherever the English language is spoken. Yet very few
young Irish ladies and gentlemen are aware that Gerald Griffin is the
author. The religious spirit which exhibits its moral influence through
the thread of his stories appears more extensively and more perceptibly
in his poetry. If his shorter poems are the best of all he has written,
the best of all his short poems are those which breathe a religious
spirit. To verify our assertion we need only mention, "Old Times, Old
Times!" "The Mother's Lament," "O'Brazil" and "The Sister of Charity."
It is a matter for much regret that Griffin should have written so
little poetry. Had he devoted more exclusive attention to this
department of literature, he would undoubtedly have become the Burns of
his country; for his muse had taught him a kindred song, and given him
to write with equal tenderness and simplicity.
In the year 1838, Gerald Griffin had attained a popularity which would
have satisfied the wishes of the most ardent literary enthusiast. He was
no longer the literary hack, the despised minion, the swindled victim at
the mercy of harpy publishers and newspaper knaves. He could now write
at his leisure, and be handsomely rewarded for his labor. Positions from
which much emolument might be derived were offered him, but he answered
them with a polite refusal. Contributions were solicited to no purpose.
The desultory articles written under pressure of hunger in the
confinement of the garret near St. Paul's were hunted for by publishers,
who were too happy to pay a handsome premium for any thing printed over
the name of the now popular author. To those who have never tried to
realize the working of divine grace in the hearts of the pure and
virtuous, Gerald Griffin would now seem to have nothing more to wish
for, no unacquired honor to enkindle a new aspiration, no need of money
to compel him once more to write for a living. The wisdom of advanced
years, and a religious discernment guided by the spirit of God, and
becoming more devotional day by day, began at last to discover the
sophistry and the deceit of human glory and human praise. He still
yearned after a mysterious something which he began to realize could
never be found amid the jarring discord and empty distractions of the
secular world. A new light irradiated the thick gloom by which he had
long been encompassed. Gradually the mist and shadow of doubt and
difficulty rolled away, disclosing at length the gray walls of a silent
monastery in spirit of unpretentious work and pious exercise, far
sequestered from the busy haunts of worldly men. Step by step he was
approaching the humble cell of recollection and prayer, in the religious
solitude of which he was to find true peace and lasting happiness. From
the cottage cradled on the Shannon's breast to his later home in the
poetic solitude of sweet Adare; from the three-cornered garret in the
London back street to the tables of the rich and the titled, he had
experienced every vicissitude between the antithetical extremes of joy
and sorrow. When, at length, the final step was taken, it was not the
rash or eccentric choice of momentary impulse, but the matured result of
wise and cautious deliberation. He prepared to enter the noble order of
the Christian Brothers, whose humble office it is to instruct the
children of the poor, and whose labors in the cause of Christian
education have been of incalculable benefit to the Irish race. One
morning previous to Gerald's final departure, an elder brother entered
his bedroom. He found him in a kneeling posture holding the last
fragment of a charred heap of manuscript over the blazing fire. He had
made the final sacrifice to God of all that could wed his heart to
future worldly honors. In the year 1838 he entered the Christian
Brothers at Cork, and after a short novitiate received the habit and the
vows by which these holy men consecrate themselves to the service of
their Maker and the spiritual welfare of their fellow men. But the
splendid genius of the new Brother was not destined to remain idle. It
was now to be exercised more energetically than ever, consecrated as it
had been to the service of religion and the glory of God. He had just
completed a small number of Catholic tales, written in his happiest
vein, when a fatal attack of malignant fever struck the pen from his
hand. Every remedy that the skill of great physicians could devise,
every attention that loving confrères could bestow was procured for him
during his last illness. But the invisible decree had gone forth, and
the near passing was inevitable. He lingered but a few days, edifying
his attendants by his fervent piety and resignation under suffering. He
died consoled by the rites of Holy Church on the 12th of June, 1840. In
the humble cemetery, of the monastery at Cork, a modest grave, unnoticed
amid rows of similar ones, is surmounted by a small cross. The cross
bears the name of Brother Joseph, the grave holds all that was mortal of
the good and gifted Gerald Griffin.
Oxford, N. J.
JAMES H. GAVIN.
FOOTNOTES:
[C] Mr. Justin McCarthy, speaking of "Irish Novelists" at Cork, in
September, 1884, said: "We have some Irish novels which ought to be
classic, and about which I have over and over again taxed all the
critical experience I can summon up why they have failed to become
classic in the sense of Sir Walter Scott's novels. I cannot understand
why Gerald Griffin's 'Collegians' fails to take a place in the public
estimation beside the best of the novels of Sir Walter Scott."
Rev. Father Fulton, S. J.,
Condescended to notice the ravings of Mr. Robert Ingersoll, at Boston
College Hall, on the evening of the 11th of November. We should be
pleased to publish a full report of the lecture, but our limits will not
permit us to do so. We merely give a few extracts: "Once upon a time
there was a person named Scholasticus, who suffered by death the loss of
his child, to whose obsequies came the people in great throngs. But our
friend, instead of receiving their expressions of condolence, hid
himself blushing in a corner, and, on being expostulated with, and asked
why he was ashamed, replied: 'To bury so small a child before so large
an assembly.' This lecture is the child, and the concourse is the
audience before me. I have been engaged on matters foreign to literary
and scientific pursuits, and have had no time to prepare a regular
lecture, but I think it will not need much time to demolish Mr.
Ingersoll. I will take his book on 'Orthodoxy,' in which he declares
that 'he knows that the clergy know that they know nothing.' Mr.
Ingersoll is not a philosopher, nor a theologian, though he may be, as
we hear, an orator of matchless voice and gesticulation. He is witty, as
any one may easily be who attacks what we most revere. Let us look at
his scholarship. He has no argument whatever, except the old objections
brought up in the schools. In the whole book there have been no
references nor authorities cited. His only method of reasoning is that
by interrogation, why? why? why? Suppose I answer I don't know! The
proper test of an argument is to put it in syllogistic form, which is
impossible with Mr. Ingersoll's arguments. Again, the very importance of
the subject demands a respectful and reverential treatment, which Mr.
Ingersoll denies it. I will try to make a synopsis of the work. Mr.
Ingersoll declares himself sincere in his belief, thereby insinuating
that they who believe in Christianity are hypocrites. Then follows an
examination of the Congregational and Presbyterian creeds, under the
supposition, absurdly false, '_ex uno disce omnes_.' 'Infidelity,' says
Mr. Ingersoll, 'will prevail over Christianity.' This does not prove
that Christianity is not the true religion, for infidelity may triumph
only because the intellect is obscured by passion. 'The Christian
religion,' says he, 'is supported only because of the contributions of
some men.' Would those men have supported it had they not firmly
believed in it? Again, Mr. Ingersoll says the Christian religion was
destroyed by Mohammed, and yet no one knows it. Nor were the crusades
unjust and destructive wars, for the land which they fought for was one
dearest to them; their Saviour died there. Was it not a just war? And
this war saved all Europe, for the power of Mohammed was rising rapidly
and was about to inundate all Europe. But the war was carried into the
enemy's country, and by the attack all Europe was saved. Again, we were
freed from the ignorance of the dark ages (dark, as I may say, only
because we have no light on them), by the introduction into Italy of
some manuscripts, according to Mr. Ingersoll. But the truth is, all the
learning of that period was centred in the church, and by her alone were
erected seats of learning. It was from the barbarian that this ignorance
arose. Nor has the church been inimical to the sciences, more
particularly to astronomy and its promoters, for among the most able
astronomers of Europe are to be found Catholic priests." The lecture was
delivered to a large audience completely filling the College Hall.
Private Judgment a Failure.
It is a common fallacy of Protestants that the scepticism, which is so
prevalent, affects the Catholic Church equally with Protestant sects.
Now, this is a great and pernicious error, for it tends to divert
sincere inquirers from seeking true, infallible doctrine in the church.
When I witness the strenuous efforts made by Protestant writers against
scepticism, and their ill success, I am led to execrate the miscalled
"Reformation." Had that horrible event not taken place, instead of the
desultory warfare by detached guerillas, we should have had the full
strength and power of an organized, disciplined, compact army, against
scepticism. To speak even of the learning displayed by Protestant
writers is to suggest how much more vast the learning, that would now be
the portion of England, if the church property were in the hands of the
Abbots of former days instead of being held by its present possessors.
In force of reasoning, too, Protestant vindicators of religion are at an
immense disadvantage. They are hampered by principles, which they should
never have adopted. Private judgment is to them what Saul's armor was to
David, ill-fitting, and cumbersome. To borrow an illustration from
Archbishop Whately, "They are obliged to fight infidelity with their
left hand; their right hand being tied behind them." One of the
specialties of this age is "historical research." The application of the
historical criticism inaugurated by Niebuhr has dealt Protestism a fatal
blow, while, on the other hand, it has been favorable to the cause of
Catholicity. This has happened for the reason that the Catholic Church
is not founded exclusively on the Bible, as Protestantism is. Catholics
take the Bible as an authentic history. This authentic history
establishes the divine mission of our Lord, and the institution of the
church by His divine authority. This church, "the pillar and ground of
truth," attests the divine authority of Holy Scripture. There is no
_circulus vitiosus_ in our argument. With us the individual must bow to
the collective wisdom of the church, divinely established. Protestants
cut a pretty figure with private judgment. In political elections, and
in clubs, meetings, and so forth, the Protestant very properly allows
that the voice of the majority must prevail. This is common sense; and
yet in religious matters forsooth, the private judgment of an ignorant
and illiterate individual must be permitted to overrule the decision of
the collective wisdom of learned theologians. This shows how far men are
liable to be blinded by prejudice. In fact, if men had an interest in
denying that "two and two make four," they would unquestionably do so.
We may also deduce from this violent aberration in religion an argument
to prove the doctrine of original sin, and the existence of evil spirits
exercising a malignant influence on the souls and minds of men.
Physicists experience that longing for religion natural to man; and
hence they endeavor to patch up some sort of a religion from the shreds
of truth that are found in physical science, "_rari nantes in gurgite
vasto_." Unfortunately, they are unacquainted with Catholic doctrine,
and they see in the conflicting sects of Protestantism no good ground to
base their faith upon. Accustomed to deal with matter, they are unable
to elevate their minds to the supernatural. They dissect the human
corpse, and stupidly wonder that in a dead body they cannot discover a
living soul; they search the empty tomb for the resurrected Saviour.
The minds of those men are set in a wooden, mechanical way. They are
impervious to logic at the very time that they are asserting their loyal
adherence to its rules. They have a horror of Catholic conclusions as,
it may be also remarked, have Protestants likewise. On this account,
both classes prefer rather to accept the most untrustworthy theories of
physical science, even when they verge on gross and laughable absurdity,
than to grant the conclusions of Catholic theologians.
It must be borne in mind that the Bible is not one book, as popular
Protestantism regards it. It is seen now in the light of historical
criticism, that the amount of knowledge requisite for the proper
exercise of private judgment on the Bible is immense, and such as can
only be acquired by a few, comparatively speaking. Protestantism is,
therefore, moribund. Infidelity is to be combated by the church; by this
only can it be conquered. Nor is it hard to conquer. We should see it
disposed of very soon, if it ventured to put forth a system. But its
strength lies in grumbling. It asks, like Pontius Pilate, What is truth?
And goes away without waiting for an answer.
Burlington, N. J.
REV. P. A. TREACY.
* * * * *
HIS Holiness the Pope having written a letter to the Mikado of Japan
thanking him for the kindness extended by him to the Catholic
missionaries, his Majesty has replied in cordial terms, assuring the
Holy Father that he would continue to afford them protection, and
announcing the despatch of a Japanese mission to the Vatican.
Priests and People Mourning.
The Great and Gifted Redemptorist Father, Rev. John O'Brien,
Deceased--Beautiful and Appropriate Tributes to his Memory.
A pillar of the Lord's temple, a lustrous light of faith departed, a
glorious soldier of the church militant on earth, is the sorrowful, but
withal grateful, subject of our memoir. Taken from this life suddenly in
the very bloom of a magnificent manhood, and from the career of his
saintly priesthood, fragrant with thousands of tests of the divinity of
his ordination; aye, taken from the multitudes who so much needed his
spiritual guidance and support, may we well exclaim that the ways of our
Almighty Father are wondrously mysterious and hidden beyond the ken of
our feeble understanding. The great and gifted young priest was truly of
that royal race of him, Boroimhe, who was slaughtered by the hand of a
desperate assassin, as he prayerfully knelt in his tent, on the
battle-field, offering thanks to the Lord of Hosts for victory over the
hordes of northern barbarian invaders. He of Clontarf was king, soldier
and saintly Christian. His descendant, transplanted in his youth, as if
by divine ordination, from Ireland to America, was soldier, Christian,
king of hearts and saver of souls. Majestic in person, gentle in
deportment, tender of heart, Rev. John O'Brien, C. SS. R. through
wondrous graces of mind and soul won upon all; brought the wayward into
the paths of holy places, and readily summoned sinners to repentance. He
achieved miracles, temporal as well as spiritual. It will be recollected
how agreeably our whole community was startled by the corroborated
recital, not so very long since, that the young daughter of Col. P. T.
Hanley, of Boston Highlands, was healed of her chronic lame infirmity
through the efficacy of his ministrations and her own pure prayers and
strong faith. How heroic he was in "apostolic zeal and saintly fervor,"
like one of those heroic, primitive soldiers of the Cross, the martyrs
of the catacombs, his reverend and eloquent panegyrist attests, when he
reminds us how little terrors for him and his pious associates had the
murderously-inclined orangemen and other bigots of Newfoundland, when
these Fathers were there not long ago on the mission.
Rev. Father O'Brien had been for some years connected with the
Redemptorists' Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, at Boston
Highlands. He was in his thirty-sixth year at the time of his decease,
which occurred suddenly on November 8th, from rheumatism of the heart,
at Ilchester, Md., the parent house of the order. He had, only a few
days previous to his death, closed a most arduous but successful mission
in Philadelphia, where, but a short time previously, Rev. Father
McGivern was taken with his fatal illness through overwork in his
missionary labors. The remains of Father O'Brien were conveyed here by
Mr. Cleary, one of our undertakers, and reposed in the main aisle
fronting the altar of the Tremont Street basilica, during the evening
and night of November 11, where many thousands visited them in tears,
and rendered upward their silent and heartfelt prayers for the purposes
which animated his sanctified soul. The emblems of mourning in the
edifice, the varied and beautiful and artistic floral tributes, the
grief depicted on the features of young and old of the people, and many
other evidences, attested most unerringly the great bereavement which
the Catholics of Boston sustain by his death.
[Illustration: THE LATE REV. JOHN O'BRIEN, C. S.S. R.]
On the morning of the 12th, at 9 o'clock, the Redemptorist Fathers'
Church was thronged with a great congregation, and hundreds were unable
to get in when the office of the dead was recited. Over fifty priests
participated in the sanctuary devotions. The clergymen offering up the
Solemn High Mass of Requiem were as follows: Celebrant, Rev. Father
Welsh, C. SS. R.; deacon, Rev. Father Wynn, C. SS. R.; sub-deacon, Rev.
Father Lutz, C. SS. R.; master of ceremonies, Rev. Father Licking, C.
SS. R.; Father Licking also preached the panegyric. The Reverend Father
took for his text:
ECCLESIASTES xii. 5 and 7. "Man shall enter into the house of
his eternity, and the mourners shall go roundabout in the
street.... And the dust shall return to the earth from whence
it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it."
He began most impressively and substantially as follows: "What shall I
say to you on this sad occasion? How shall I find words to express the
sorrow and sadness, which I see depicted on your countenances? The
zealous, the learned, the whole-souled Redemptorist, Rev. John O'Brien,
is laid low on the bier of death. A young warrior has fallen on the
battle-field of duty. A strong worker has sunk beside the vines he was
preparing for the heavenly kingdom.
"Oh, brother, if thou hadst not died in the prime of youth! If thou
hadst not within thee the strength and energy to labor long and
successfully in thy sublime vocation! If thou hadst grown gray in the
service of God, I should congratulate you on this day, the day of thy
espousals to Jesus Christ. I should say to thee: well done thou faithful
servant, thou hast labored long and well in the service of thy maker.
Thou hast gone to thy well-merited reward." Father Licking continued at
some length in this strong strain of apostrophe to the name and memory
of his beloved brother, and then entered into reminiscences, in which he
said, "I remember well when first I met the departed. It was in the year
1870. We were then students at the preparatory college of the
Redemptorist order. He was even then the picture of health, and a model
for every student. Never was he known to infringe upon the slightest
rule of the institute; never (and this is saying a great thing), never
did he lose a single moment of time. Always at his books by day and by
night, even stealing from his well-merited rest some hours in order to
acquire knowledge which he might employ in after years in the service of
God and for the good of souls. So well pleased were his superiors with
his conduct, that they appointed him, together with the late lamented
Rev. Father McGivern, overseer of the college boys in the absence of
their superiors."
He received the habit of the order in 1875, with Rev. Fathers Beal and
Licking. The panegyrist made most feeling allusion to the occasion, when
the lamented dead took "the profession of those holy vows, those
tremendous vows, those eternal vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience.... Thank God, he kept those vows to the end."
Father O'Brien was next sent to the Redemptorist Theological Seminary of
Ilchester, Md., to further pursue the great studies that fitted him for
his calling.
"It often required an express command of his superiors to take him from
his books that his body might not succumb, and the mind gain the
necessary rest. So exact was he in all his ways, that we, his fellow
students, could, at any hour of the day, point out the very spot where
he might be found, either going through the Way of the Cross, or praying
before the Blessed Sacrament, or reciting his rosary, or studying at his
books. Is it a wonder, then, that God should allow him to die on a spot
which had so often been the witness of so much piety and so many of his
good works."
He was ordained priest in 1880, and the following February found him at
the Boston Highlands in the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Here
he administered for the first time the Sacrament of Penance; here he
preached from the pulpit of his panegyrist his first sermon; here he
entered upon "that career of zeal and usefulness which made his name
proverbial in every family of the parish." ... "He possessed a powerful
and comprehensive mind, a prodigious memory, and a most fertile
imagination; and, above all, a most generous spirit and tender heart.
Graced besides with every form of manly beauty, strength and vigor, of a
powerful frame, nothing seemed wanting to him. It might be said of him
as the poet sang of the ancient hero:
"'He was a combination and a form indeed,
Where God did seem to set his very seal,
To give the world the picture of a man.'"
Father Licking dwelt at length upon the great extent of the work done in
the parish by the beloved deceased. "Every interest in the large parish
received his particular attention." All were participants of his zeal
and charity. In 1883 he passed through his second novitiate after a
retirement of six months, which fully equipped him for the missions.
"And now his soul rejoiced, indeed, in the Lord."
"It is related," said the preacher, "of a Southern officer, that when he
returned from a successful expedition, the first question he put to his
general always was: 'Where is the next blow to be struck? Send me
there!' So it was with the young warrior of the Cross, whose death we
mourn. His zeal knew no bounds except those of obedience. Hardly had one
mission been finished when he hastened to another.... North, South, East
and West were witnesses of his Apostolic zeal and saintly fervor. The
cold weather, the fierce storms, and still fiercer spirits of hostile
sects in Newfoundland, had not terrors enough to deter him, and the
hottest sun of July and August could not draw from him a single word of
complaint, when engaged in arduous task of giving retreats. And though
comparatively a young man, when only four years had elapsed since his
ordination, his superiors trusting in his zeal, his prudence, and his
wisdom, selected him, from out of many, to the important office of
giving retreats to the clergy of the land." ... "I see among the floral
tributes one bearing the letters 'Apostolic Zeal.' It shows me that you
have understood his spirit."
In the panegyrist's recital it was told that six weeks before his death
he was returning from missions in Pennsylvania. He saw in New York the
very Rev. Provincial, who told him that the Fathers at work on the
missions at Philadelphia were becoming exhausted, and that even then the
Rev. Father McGivern was on a dying bed there. Father O'Brien stood up,
and stretching himself to the full height of his massive frame, he
exclaimed, "Look at me! Am I not a strong man? Send me. I'll do the work
for them!" "Does it not remind you of the brave general who said, 'Where
is the next blow to be struck. Send me there.'" When that, his last
mission, closed, the Fathers had heard thirty-five hundred confessions,
and he retired to Ilchester for a cursory visit, where the joy he
experienced in meeting his old Alma Mater superiors was beyond
description. While there he remarked: "Father, this would be a nice,
quiet and holy place to die in." That night he was attacked with the
fatal malady. His limbs became racked with pain. The rheumatism reached
his great heart, and he is found at five o'clock in the morning
insensible. The last sacraments were administered, and at seven o'clock
his noble soul took its flight from its mortal abode.
With an eloquent peroration, Rev. Father Licking closed by craving the
prayers of the faithful for the departed hero of the Cross.
The pathetic musical services were rendered by the regular choir of the
church, and comprised the Gregorian Requiem Mass, Miss Nellie M.
McGowan, organist. The twelve pall-bearers were Colonel P. T. Hanley,
Frank Ford, John J. Kennedy, M. H. Farrell, Thomas Kelly, E. J. Lynch,
James McCormack, Thomas O'Leary, James B. Hand, William S. McGowan, John
Reardon and Timothy McCarthy. Mount Calvary Cemetery was the place
selected for the interment. In His Grace Archbishop Williams' vault the
body will repose until the completion of work now in progress on a lot
specially intended for Father O'Brien. It is estimated that the services
at the church were attended by over twenty-five hundred people, and the
funeral was likewise largely attended. Every kind attention was paid to
his bereaved mother, father, and sister, who came on here from New York
State.
SLEEP ON.
In Memory of Father John O'Brien, C. SS. R.
How short is life, a flitting cloud
Before the blast.
The storm wind roars, the thunder rolls
Then, peace at last.
Oh! Brother, life to thee was short;
A summer's morn
A floweret blooming in the sun,
Then, left forlorn.
Thy heart was fired with zealous love,
Thy courage high.
But list! Thy Captain softly calls
And thou must die.
No more thou'lt lead His forces on
To victory grand;
No more thou'lt join with beating heart
That glorious band.
Thou'rt fallen on the battle field
With burnished arms.
O soldier, sleep in peace, secure
From war's alarms.
O glorious life! Thy heart was free
From aught of earth,
From glittering gold, or bauble fair
Of little worth.
Thy gaze was fixed on Heaven's courts,
Thy heart's desire
On Calvary's top where Jesus burnt
In love's fierce fire.
O noble champion of the cross,
Thy course is run.
Like heaven's light, thy soul returns
To heaven's Sun.
O beauteous death! No worldly grief
Is blustering there,
The Church's voice, her tender plaint
Scents all the air.
How sweet to die, when voice of prayer
Doth rend the skies.
Released from earth, the soul ascends
In glad surprise.
And what is left? The house of clay
Where dwelt the soul.
That temple grand, where hymns to God
Did often roll.
Ah! guard it well, its blessed walls
Will rise again.
Again the soul in heaven will chant
Its glad refrain.
His tomb will blossom fair with flowers--
A mother's tears.
In memory's halls, his name will live
Through countless years.
Sleep on, brave soldier, sleep
And take thy rest.
Like John thou sleepest now
On Jesus' breast.
Crown and Crescent.
A great event was witnessed on the evening of Monday, November 23, when
the new electric crown and crescent, which adorn the statue of Our Lady
on the dome of the university, were lit up for the first time. There,
lifted high in the air--two hundred feet above the ground--the grand,
colossal figure of the Mother of God appeared amid the darkness of the
night in a blaze of light, with its diadem of twelve electric stars, and
under its feet the crescent moon formed of twenty-seven electric lights.
Truly, it was a grand sight; and one, which, though it is becoming
familiar to the inmates of Notre Dame, must ever strike the beholder
with awe and reverence, realizing as it does, the most perfect
expression, in a material representation, of the prophetic declaration
of Holy Writ: _And there appeared a great wonder in heaven: a woman
clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a
crown of twelve stars._
It must, indeed, have been an inspiration, or a prophetic foresight of
the great advance soon to be made in the domain of science, that, a few
years ago, caused the venerable founder of Notre Dame to conceive the
grand idea which to-day we see so perfectly realized. In 1879, when the
new Notre Dame was being raised upon the ruins of the old, comparatively
little progress had as yet been made in electric lighting. In
particular, the great problem of the minute subdivision of the light
remained unsolved. Edison had not then begun his experiments, and the
incandescent light was not even dreamed of. To employ the arc light
around the statue was out of the question, not only because the
necessary appliances would detract from the beauty of the figure, but
also on account of the daily attention which the lamps would require.
But the idea had taken possession of the mind of Very Rev. Father Sorin,
and was tenaciously clung to, in spite of discouraging report through
the years that followed, until, at length, the success of subsequent
experiments, and the invention of incandescent electric lighting,
revealed the complete practicability of carrying out the grand design of
the venerable founder.
Now, twelve of the Edison incandescent lamps encircle the head of the
statue, while at the base are three semi-circles of nine lamps in each,
which form the crescent moon. These, together with the lights in the
halls of the college, are fed with the electric current by a powerful
dynamo, situated in the rear of the building. Thus the visitor to Notre
Dame, as he comes up the avenue at night, or the wayfarer for miles
around, can realize and revere that glorious tribute to the Queen of
Heaven, the Protectress of Notre Dame, as he sees her figure surrounded
with its halo of light, typifying the watchful care she constantly
exercises, by night as well as by day, over the inmates of this home of
religion and science, which has been specially dedicated to her honor.
_Notre Dame_ (Ia.) _Scholastic_.
Four Thousand Years.
Four thousand years earth waited,
Four thousand years men prayed,
Four thousand years the nations sighed,
That their King delayed.
The prophets told His coming,
The saintly for Him sighed,
And the Star of the Babe of Bethlehem
Shone o'er them when they died.
Their faces toward the future,
They longed to hail the light,
That in after centuries
Would rise on Christmas nights.
But still the Saviour tarried
In His Father's home,
And the nations wept and wondered why
The promised had not come.
At last earth's prayer was granted,
And God was a child of earth,
And a thousand angels chanted
The lowly midnight birth.
Ah! Bethlehem was grander
That hour, than Paradise;
And the light of earth, that night, eclipsed
The splendors of the skies.
ABRAM J. RYAN.
Abolishing Barmaids.
A bill "for the Abolition of Barmaids" sounds like a joke from "Alice in
Wonderland," or from one of Mr. Gilbert's burlesques. Nevertheless it is
a serious legislative proposal now pending before the Parliament of
Victoria. It is actually in print, and makes it penal for any keeper of
a public house to employ women behind the counter. Of course, the
advocates of this astonishing idea have their arguments. They do not go
quite as far as Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who would disestablish not only
barmaids, but barmen and bars; they would not shut up all dram-shops;
but they would make them as dreary as possible, so as to repel
impressionable young men. In Gothenburg the spirit-drinker is served by
a policeman, who keeps an eagle eye upon him that he may know him again,
and refuse him a second glass if he asks for it before a certain
interval has expired. The Victorian reformers have a corresponding idea
of diminishing the attractions of intoxication by surrounding the
initial stages with repellent rather than enticing accessories. Instead
of the smiling Hebes who have fascinated the golden youth of the colony,
men will serve as tapsters, and without note or comment hand across the
counter the required draught. The effect may be considerable, as male
drinkers do undoubtedly take a delight in the pleasant looks and bright
talk of the young ladies who, as the French say, "preside" at these
establishments. But should not the Victorian apostles of abstinence go
further? It is well to replace girls by men, and thus subdue the bar to
masculine dullness; but could not the Act of Parliament go on to declare
that none save plain, grim-visaged males should be tolerated as
assistants? The most inveterate toper might hesitate to enter twice if
he were always met by the ugly aspect of some dark, forbidding
countenance. A kind of competition might take place for the posts,
which might be given to the most repulsive people the Government could
select. Fearful squint would be at a premium; scowls would be valued
according to their blackness and depth; a ghastly grin would be
desirable; while a general cadaverousness might be utilized as
suggesting to drunkards the probable end of their career. The gods of
Olympus laughed loudly when the swart, ungainly Vulcan for once replaced
Hebe as their cup-bearer; but it would be no joke for the young idlers
of Melbourne to find stern, grim men frowning over the counters where
once they were received with "nods and becks and wreathed smiles."
Christianity in China.
The arrangement which the Pope has made with the Emperor of China
promises to be productive of the happiest results, and to open the
Flowery Kingdom fully to the spread of the gospel. For many years the
French assumed the position of protectors of Christian missionaries in
barbarous countries. The first expedition to Annam was avowedly sent to
put an end to the murders of missionaries and converts so frequent in
that country; and for a time it did serve to put a check on the ferocity
of government and people. In the treaty of Tienstin it was stipulated
that the French Government should have the right to protect missionaries
in China. For a time that seemed to work well. But the many complaints
made through the French consuls, and the punishments inflicted on
Mandarins at their demand, served to irritate the Mandarins and the
populace. The indiscretion of some French missionaries, who interposed
to protect converts not always deserving of protection, and who flaunted
the flag of France in the faces of the Mandarins in their own courts,
increased the irritation. Some of the missionaries boasted also in
letters, which the Chinese saw when published, of the respect for France
which they instilled into their converts. The consequence was, that,
although the missionaries are from all nations, the Chinese learned to
regard them as French; and when the French made the late war on China,
to regard all Chinese Christians as traitors. Formerly the government
persecuted the Christians. Latterly Chinese mobs massacred the
Christians and destroyed their churches, convents, schools, etc., and
the French scarcely made an effort to protect them even in Tonquin. The
Holy Father, in the letter which we published some time ago, assured the
Emperor that the missionaries who are of all nations are of no politics
and desire only to preach the Christian religion, and begged the Emperor
to protect them. It has now been arranged that the Pope shall hereafter
be represented by a Legate at Pekin to whom the rank, etc., of an
ambassador will be given, and who will receive any complaints the
missionaries may have to make and will seek redress for them. Thus the
interests of religion will, in the minds of the Chinese, be entirely
dissociated from the interests of all foreign countries, and the
feelings which now prevail will subside in time. The French Government
infidel, though it is, will not like, it is thought, to be thus put
aside; but if the missionaries cease to appeal to its agents it will be
powerless.
"Faro's Daughters."