Chapter VIII. Faith And Science Of Progress.

Seraphin usually took an early ride with Carl. The banker was overjoyed at

the wager, about the winning of which he now felt absolute certainty. He

expressed himself confident that before long he would have the pleasure of

going over the road on the back of the best racer in the country. “The

noble animals,” said he, “shall not be brought by the railway; it might

injure them. I shall send my groom for them to Chateau Hallberg. He can

ride the distance in two days.”

Seraphin could not help smiling at his friend’s solicitude for the horses.

“Do not sell the bear’s skin before killing the bear,” answered he. “I may

not lose the horses, but may, on the contrary, acquire a pleasant claim to

twenty thousand florins.”

“That is beyond all possibility,” returned the banker. “Hans Shund is now

chief‐magistrate, has been nominated to the legislature, and in a few days

will be elected. Mr. Hans will appear as a shining light to‐morrow, when

he is to state his political creed in a speech to his constituents. Of

course, you and I shall go to hear him. Next will follow his election,

then my groom will hasten to Chateau Hallberg to fetch the horses. Are you

sorry you made the bet?”

“Not at all! I should regret very much to lose my span of bays. Still, the

bet will be of incalculable benefit to me. I will have learned concerning

men and manners what otherwise I could never have dreamed of. In any

event, the experience gained will be of vast service to me during life.”

“I am exceedingly glad to know it, my dear fellow,” assured Greifmann.

“Your acquaintance with the present has been very superficial. You have

learned a great deal in a few days, and it is gratifying to hear you

acknowledge the fact.”

The banker had not, however, caught Gerlach’s meaning.

But for the wager, Seraphin would not have become acquainted with Louise’s

intellectual standpoint. He would probably have married her for the sake

of her beauty, would have discovered his mistake when it could not be

corrected, and would have found himself condemned to spend his life with a

woman whose principles and character could only annoy and give him pain.

As it was, he was tormented by the fear that his father might not coincide

in his opinion of the young lady. What if the old gentleman considered her

hostility to religion as a mere fashionable mania unsupported by inner

conviction, a girlish whim changeable like the wind, which with little

effort might be made to veer round to the point of the most unimpeachable

orthodoxy? He had not uttered a word condemning Louise’s infatuation about

Renan. On taking leave he had parted with her in a friendly, almost

hearty, manner, proof sufficient that the young lady’s doubtful utterances

at tea had not deceived him.

Upon reaching home, Gerlach sat in his room with his eyes thoughtfully

fixed upon a luminous square cast by the sun upon the floor. Quite

naturally his thoughts ran upon the marriage, and to the prospect of

having to maintain his liberty by a hard contest with his inflexible

parent. He was unshaken in his resolution not to accede to the projected

alliance, and, when a will morally severe conceives resolutions of this

sort, they usually stand the hardest tests. So absorbing were his

reflections that he did not hear John announcing a visitor. He nodded

mechanically in reply to the words that seemed to come out of the

distance, and the servant disappeared.

Soon after a country girl appeared in the entrance of the room. In both

hands she was carrying a small basket made of peeled willows, quite new. A

snow‐white napkin was spread over the basket. The girl’s dress was neat,

her figure was slender and graceful. Her hair, which was wound about the

head in heavy plaits, was golden and encircled her forehead as with a

_nimbus_. Her features were delicate and beautiful, and she looked upon

the young gentleman with a pair of deep‐blue eyes. Thus stood she for an

instant in the door of the apartment. There was a smile about her mouth

and a faint flush upon her cheeks.

“Good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin!” said a sweet voice.

The youth started at this salutation and looked at the stranger with

surprise. She was just then standing on the sunlit square, her hair

gleamed like purest gold, and a flood of light streamed upon her youthful

form. He did not return the greeting. He looked at her as if frightened,

rose slowly, and bowed in silence.

“My father sends some early grapes which he begs you to have the goodness

to accept.”

She drew nearer, and he received the basket from her hands.

“I am very thankful!” said he. And, raising the napkin, the delicious

fruit smiled in his face. “These are a rarity at this season. To whom am I

indebted for this friendly attention?”

“The obligation is all on our side, Mr. Seraphin,” she replied trustfully

to the generous benefactor of her family. “Father is sorry that he cannot

offer you something better.”

“Ah! you are Holt’s daughter?”

“Yes, Mr. Seraphin.”

“Your name is Johanna, is it not?”

“Mechtild, Mr. Seraphin.”

“Will you be so good as to sit down?” And he pointed her to a sofa.

Mechtild, however, drew a chair and seated herself.

He had noted her deportment, and could not but marvel at the graceful

action, the confiding simplicity, and well‐bred self‐possession of the

extraordinary country girl. As she sat opposite to him, she looked so

pure, so trusting and sincere, that his astonishment went on increasing.

He acknowledged to himself never to have beheld eyes whose expression came

so directly from the heart—a heart whose interior must be equally as sunny

and pure.

“How are your good parents?”

“They are very well, Mr. Seraphin. Father has gone to work with renewed

confidence. The sad—ah! the terrible period is past. You cannot imagine,

Mr. Seraphin, how many tears you have dried, how much misery you have

relieved!”

The recollection of the ruin that had been hanging over her home affected

her painfully; her eyes glistened, and tears began to roll down her

cheeks. But she instantly repressed the emotion, and exhibited a beautiful

smile on her face. Seraphin’s quick eye had observed both the momentary

feeling, and that she had resolutely checked it in order not to annoy him

by touching sorrowful chords. This trait of delicacy also excited the

admiration of the gentleman.

“Your father is not in want of employment?” he inquired with interest.

“No, sir! Father is much sought on account of his knowledge of farming.

Persons who have ground, but no team of their own, employ him to put in

crops for them.”

“No doubt the good man has to toil hard?”

“That is true, sir; but father seems to like working, and we children

strive to help him as much as we can.”

“And do you like working?”

“I do, indeed, Mr. Seraphin. Life would be worthless if one did not labor.

Man’s life on earth is so ordered as to show him that he must labor. Doing

nothing is abominable, and idleness is the parent of many vices.”

Another cause of astonishment for the millionaire. She did not converse

like an uneducated girl from the country. Her accurate, almost choice use

of words indicated some culture, and her concise observations revealed

both mind and reflection. He felt a strong desire to fathom the mystery—to

cast a glance into Mechtild’s past history.

“Have you always lived at home, or have you ever been away at school?”

She must have detected something ludicrous in the question, for suddenly a

degree of archness might be observed in her amiable smile.

“You mean, whether I have received a city education? No, sir! Father used

to speak highly of the clearness of my mind, and thought I might even be

made a teacher. But he had not the means to give me the necessary amount

of schooling. Until I was fourteen years old, I went to school to the nuns

here in town. I used to come in of mornings and go back in the evening. I

studied hard, and father and mother always had the satisfaction of seeing

me rewarded with a prize at the examinations. I am very fond of books, and

make good use of the convent library. On Sundays, after vespers, I wait

till the door of the book‐room is opened. I still spend my leisure time in

reading, and on Sundays and holidays I know no greater pleasure than to

read nice instructive books. At my work I think over what I have read, and

I continue practising composition according to the directions of the good

ladies of the convent.”

“And were you always head at school?”

“Yes,” she admitted, with a blush.

“You have profited immensely by your opportunities,” he said approvingly.

“And the desire for learning has not yet left you?”

“This inordinate craving still continues to torment me,” she acknowledged

frankly.

“Inordinate—why inordinate?”

“Because, my station and calling do not require a high degree of culture.

But it is so nice to know, and it is so nice to have refined intercourse

with each others. For seven years I admired the elegant manners of the

convent ladies, and I learned many a lesson from them.”

“How old are you now?”

“Seventeen, Mr. Seraphin.”

“What a pity you did not enter some higher educational institution!” said

he.

A pause followed. He looked with reverence upon the artless girl whom God

had so richly endowed, both in body and mind. Mechtild rose.

“Please accept, also, my most heartfelt thanks for your generous aid,” she

said, with emotion. “All my life long I shall remember you before God, Mr.

Seraphin. The Almighty will surely repay you what alas! we cannot.”

She made a courtesy, and he accompanied her through all the apartments as

far as the front door. Here the girl, turning, bowed to him once more and

went away.

Returning to his room, Seraphin stood and contemplated the grapes.

Strongly did the delicious fruit tempt him, but he touched not one. He

then pulled out a drawer, and hid the gifts as though it were a costly

treasure. For the rest of the day, Mechtild’s bright form hovered near

him, and the sweet charm of her eyes, so full of soul, continually worked

on his imagination. When he again went into Louise’s company, the grace

and innocence of the country girl gained ground in his esteem. Compared

with Mechtild’s charming naturalness, Louise’s manner appeared affected,

spoiled; through evil influences. The difference in the expression of

their eyes struck him especially. In Louise’s eyes there burned a fierce

glow at times, which roused passion and stirred the senses. Mechtild’s

neither glowed nor flashed; but from their limpid depths beamed goodness

so genuine and serenity so unclouded, that Seraphin could compare them to

nothing but two heralds of peace and innocence. Louise’s eyes, thought he,

flash like two meteors of the night; Mechtild’s beam like two mild suns in

a cloudless sky of spring. As often as he entered the room where the

grapes lay concealed, he would unlock the drawer, examine the fragrant

fruit, and handle the basket which had been carried by her hands. He could

not himself help smiling at this childish action, and yet both great

delicacy and deep earnestness are manifested in honoring objects that have

been touched by pure hands, and in revering places hallowed by the

presence of the good.

Next morning the banker asked his guest to accompany him to the church of

S. Peter, where Hans Shund was to address a large gathering.

“In a church?” Gerlach exclaimed, with amazement.

“Don’t get frightened, my good fellow. The church is no longer in the

service of religion. It has been _secularized_ by the state, and is

customarily used as a hall for dancing. There will be quite a crowd, for

several able speakers are to discuss the question of common schools. The

church has been chosen for the meeting on account of the crowd.”

The millionaires drove to the desecrated church. A tumultuous mass swarmed

about the portal. “Let us permit them to push us; we shall get in most

easily by letting them do so,” said the banker merrily. Two officious

progressionists, recognizing the banker, opened a passage for them through

the throng. They reached the interior of the church, which was now an

empty space, stripped of every ornament proper to a house of God. In the

sanctuary could yet be seen, as if in mournful abandonment, a large

quadrangular slab, that had been the altar, and attached to one of the

side walls was an exquisite Gothic pulpit, which on occasions like the

present was used for a rostrum. Everywhere else reigned silence and

desolation.

The nave was filled by a motley mass. The chieftains of progress, some

elegantly dressed, others exhibiting frivolous miens and huge beards,

crowded upon the elevation of the chancel. All the candidates for the

legislature were present, not for the purpose of proving their

qualifications for the office—progress never troubled itself about

those—but to air their views on the subject of education. There were

speakers on hand of acknowledged ability in the discussion of the

doctrines of progress, who were to lay the result of their investigations

before the people.

Seraphin also noted some anxious faces in the crowd. They were citizens,

whose sons were alarmed at the thought of yielding up the training of

their children into the hands of infidelity. And near the pulpit stood two

priests, irreverently crowded against the wall, targets for the scornful

pleasantries of the wits of the mob. Leader Schwefel was voted into the

chair by acclamation. He thanked the assembly in a short speech for the

honor conferred, and then announced that Mr. Till, member of the former

assembly, would address the meeting. Amid murmurs of expectation a short,

fat gentleman climbed into the pulpit. First a red face with a copper‐

tipped nose bobbed above the ledge of the pulpit, next came a pair of

broad shoulders, upon which a huge head rested without the intermediary of

a neck, two puffy hands were laid upon the desk, and the commencement of a

well‐rounded paunch could just be detected by the eye. Mr. Till, taking

two handfuls of his shaggy beard, drew them slowly through his fingers,

looked composedly upon the audience, and breathed hotly through mouth and

nostrils.

“Gentlemen,” he began, with a voice that struggled out from a mass of

flesh and fat, “I am not given to many words, you know. What need is there

of many words and long speeches? We know what we want, and what we want we

will have in spite of the machinations of Jesuits and the whinings of an

ultramontane horde. You all know how I acquitted myself at the last

legislature, and if you will again favor me with your suffrages, I will

endeavor once more to give satisfaction. You know my record, and I shall

remain staunch to the last.”

Cries of “Good!” from various directions.

“Gentlemen! if you know my record, you must also be aware that I am

passionately fond of the chase. I even follow this amusement in the

legislative hall. Our country abounds in a sort of black game, and for me

it is rare sport to pursue this, species of game in the assembly.”

A wild tumult of applause burst forth. Jeers and coarse witticisms were

bandied about on every side of the two clergymen, who looked meekly upon

these orgies of progress.

“Gentlemen!” Till continued, “the _blacks_ are a dangerous kind of wild

beast. They have heretofore been ranging in a preserve, feeding on the fat

of the land. That is an abuse that challenges the wrath of heaven. It must

be done away with. The beasts of prey that in the dark ages dwelt in

castles have long since been exterminated, and their rocky lairs have been

reduced to ruins. Well, now, let us keep up the chase in both houses of

the legislature until the last of these _black_ beasts is destroyed.

Should you entrust to me again your interests, I shall return to the seat

of government to aid with renewed energy in ridding the land of these

creatures that are enemies both of education and liberty.”

Amid prolonged applause the fat man descended. The chieftains shook him

warmly by the hand, assuring him that the cause absolutely demanded his

being reelected.

Gerlach was aghast at Till’s speech. He hardly knew which deserved most

scorn, the vulgarity of the speaker or the abjectness of those who had

applauded him. Their wild enthusiasm was still surging through the

building, when Hans Shund mounted the pulpit. The chairman rang for order;

the tumult ceased. In mute suspense the multitude awaited the great speech

of the notorious usurer, thief, and debauchee. And indeed, progress might

well entertain great expectations, for Hans Shund had read a pile of

progressionist pamphlets, had extracted the strong passages, and out of

them had concocted a right racy speech. His speech might with propriety

have been designated the Gospel of Progress, for Hans Shund had made

capital of whatever freethinkers had lucubrated in behalf of so‐called

enlightenment, and in opposition to Christianity. The very appearance of

the speaker gave great promise. His were not coarse features and goggle

eyes like Till’s; his piercing feline eyes looked intellectual. His face

was rather pale, the result, no doubt, of unusual application, and he had

skilfully dyed his sandy hair. His position as mayor of the city seemed

also to entitle him to special attention, and these several claims were

enhanced by a white necktie, white vest, and black cloth swallow‐tail

coat.

“Gentlemen,” began the mayor with solemnity, “my honorable predecessor in

this place has told you with admirable sagacity that the kernel of every

political question is of a religious character. Indeed, religion is linked

with every important question of the day, it is the _ratio ultima_ of the

intellectual movement of our times. Men of thought and of learning are all

agreed as to the condition to which our social life should be and must be

brought. The friends of the people are actively and earnestly at work

trying to further a healthy development of our social and political

status. Nor have their efforts been utterly fruitless. Progress has made

great conquests; yet, gentlemen, these conquests are far from being

complete. What is it that is most hostile to liberalism in morals, to

enlightenment, and to humanity? It is the antiquated faith of departed

days. Have we not heard the language of the Holy Father in the Syllabus?

But the Holy Father at Rome, gentlemen, is no father of ours—happily he is

the father only of stupid and credulous men.”

“Bravo! Well said!” resounded from the audience. Flaschen nudged

Spitzkopf, who sat next to him. “Shund is no mean speaker. Even that

fellow Voelk, of Bavaria, cannot compete with Shund.”

“Gentlemen, our good sense teaches us to smile with pity at the infallible

declarations of yon Holy Father. We are firmly convinced that papal

decrees can no more stop the onward march of civilization than they can

arrest the heavenly bodies in their journeys about the sun. ’Tis true, an

œcumenical council is lowering like a black storm‐cloud. But let the

council meet; let it declare the Syllabus an article of faith; it will

never succeed in destroying the treasures of independent thought which

creative intellects have been hoarding up for centuries among every

people. Since men of culture have ceased to yield unquestioning

submission, like dumb sheep, to the church, they have begun to discover

that nowhere are so many falsehoods uttered as in pulpits.”

Tremendous applause, clapping, and swinging of hats, followed this

eloquent period. A distinguished gentleman, laying his hand upon Till’s

shoulder, asked: “What calibre of ammunition do you use in hunting _black_

game?”

“Conical balls of two centimetres,” replied Till, with no great wit.

“Yon fellow in the pulpit fires shells of a hundredweight, I should say.

And if in the legislative assembly his shells all explode, not a man of

them will be left alive.”

Till thought this witticism so good that he set up a loud roar of

laughter, that could be heard above the general uproar.

Stimulated by these marks of appreciation, Shund waxed still more

eloquent. “Gentlemen,” cried he, “no body of men is more savagely opposed

to science and culture than a conventicle of so‐called servants of God.

Were you to repeat the multiplication table several times over, there

would be as much prayer and sense in it as in what is designated the

Apostles’ Creed.”

More cheering and boundless enthusiasm. “Gentlemen!” exclaimed the

speaker, with thundering emphasis and a hideous expression of hatred on

his face, “the significance of religious dogmas is simply a sort of

homœopathic concoction to which every succeeding age contributes some

drops of fanaticism. Subjected to the microscope of science, the whole

basis of the Christian church evaporates into thin mist. We must shield

our children against religious fables. Away with dogmas and saws from the

Bible; away with the Trinity; the divinity and humanity of Jesus, and

other such stuff! Away with apothegms such as this: _Christ is my life, my

death, and my gain_. Such things are opposed to nature. Children’s minds

are thereby warped to untruthfulness and hypocrisy. In this manner the

child is deprived of the power of thinking; loses all interest in

intellectual pursuits, and ceases to feel the need of further culture. The

times are favorable for a reformation. Our imperial and royal rulers have

at length realized that minds must be set free. For this end it was as

unavoidable for them to break with the church and priesthood as it is

necessary for us. If we cherish our fatherland and the people, we must

take the initiative. We are not striving to effect a revolution; we want

intellectual development, profounder knowledge, and healthier morality.

“Shall peace be seen beneath our skies,

The spirit’s freedom first must rise,”

concluded the orator poetically, and he came down amidst a very hurricane

of applause.

There followed a lull. In the audience, heads protruded and necks were

stretched that their possessors might obtain a glimpse of the great Shund.

In the chancel, the chiefs and leaders crowded around him, smiling,

bowing, and shaking his hand in admiration.

“You have won the laurels,” smirked a fellow from amidst a wilderness of

beard.

“Your election to the Assembly is a certainty,” declared another.

“You carry deadly weapons against Christ,” said a professor.

Mr. Hans smiled, and nodded so often that he was seized with a pain in the

muscles of the face and neck. At length, the chairman’s bell came to the

rescue.

“The Rev. Mr. Morgenroth will now address the meeting.”

The clergyman mounted the rostrum, but scarcely had he appeared there,

when the crowd became possessed by a legion of hissing demons.

“Gentlemen,” began the fearless priest, “the duty of my calling as well as

personal conviction demands that I should enter a solemn protest against

the sundering of school and church.”

Further the priest was not allowed to proceed. Loud howling, hissing, and

whistling drowned his voice. The president called for order.

“In the name of good‐breeding, I beg this most honorable assembly to hear

the speaker out in patience,” cried Mr. Schwefel.

The mob relaxed into unwilling silence like a growling beast.

“Not all the citizens of this town are infected with infidelity,” the

reverend gentleman went on to say. “Many honorable gentlemen believe in

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in his church. These citizens wish their

children to receive a religious education; it would, therefore, be

unmitigated terrorism, tyrannical constraint of conscience, to force

Christian parents to bring up their children in the spirit of unbelief.”

This palpable truth progress could not bear to listen to. A mad yell was

set up. Clenched fists were shaken at the clergyman, and fierce threats

thundered from all sides of the church. “Down with the priest!” “Down with

the accursed black‐coat!” “Down with the dog of a Jesuit!” and similar

exclamations, resounded from all sides. The chairman rang his bell in

vain. The mob grew still more furious and noisy. The clergyman was

compelled to come down.

“Such is the liberty, the education, the tolerance, the humanity of

progress,” said he sadly to his colleague.

To Be Continued.

Christian Art Of The Catacombs.

By An Anglican.

“I do love those ancient ruins:

We never tread upon them but we set

Our foot upon some reverend history.”—_Webster_ (1620).

“Quamlibet ancipites texant hinc inde recessus,

Arcta sub umbrosis atria porticibus;

Attamen excisi subter cava viscera montis

Crebra terebrato fornice lux penetrat;

Sic datur absentis per subterranea solis

Cernere fulgorem luminibusque frui.”

—_Prudentius, Peristephanon_, Hymn iv.

The Catacombs of Rome were the birthplace of Christian art as well as the

sepulchre of the children of the early church. It is only within a few

years that the modern traveller has been induced, through the careful

study which the Catacombs have received, to visit these subterranean homes

of the persecuted Christian, so filled with the symbolism of his faith.

From 1567, the year in which Father Bosio began his investigations in the

Catacombs, till the present century, some minds of kindred interest in

these burial‐places of the martyrs have been fascinated with their

Christian archæology, and from time to time have appeared works upon

subjects connected with the Catacombs. F. Bosio spent thirty years in

making explorations, and left for posthumous publication his _Roma __

Sotterranea_, which F. Severano issued from the press in Rome in 1632.

Seventy years later came _Inscriptionum antiquarum explicatio_ by the

learned Fabretti, and eighteen years later still, F. Boldetti, who had

devoted the greater part of his life to the examination of the monuments,

inscriptions, and paintings of the Catacombs, embodied the results of his

patience and industry in the great work _Osservazioni sopra i Cimiterii

dei Santi Martiri, etc., di Roma_. Then came Bottari’s wonderful studies

on the Christian art of the Catacombs entitled _Sculture e pitture sagre,

estratte dai Cimiteri di Roma_. Following in the paths opened by these

zealous Italian students, M. D’Agincourt, M. Raoul Rochette, Abbé Gaume,

and the eminent artist M. Perret, have contributed to the archæological

literature of France several important works on the Roman Catacombs.

To the pontificate of Pius IX. belongs the honor of producing the two

greatest antiquarian scholars of our age. The one, the Cavaliere Canina,

has treated with remarkable acuteness and judgment of the Appian Way from

the Capenian Gate to Bovillæ;(150) the other, the Cavaliere de Rossi, of

the Catacombs,(151) and it is of the latter that we propose to speak. It

is impossible, in the brief space that is allotted to us, to do more than

select one of the interesting subjects with which his works on the

Catacombs abound, and as an Anglican student of the Catholic Church, its

doctrines, its discipline, and its literature, there is none which so

enkindles our enthusiasm as the Christian art of the early ages, and the

symbolism with which it is clothed. We approach these pictures in the dark

crypts and amid the countless tombs of the first martyrs of the faith with

no little reverence. We lay aside our shoes, for the ground consecrated to

the early dead is sacred, and the earnest wish of our heart is to put away

the prejudice of ecclesiastical education and association. With this view

before us, we make the noble words of Montesquieu our own: “Ceux qui nous

avertissent sont les compagnons de nos travaux. Si le critique et l’auteur

cherchent la vérité, ils out le même intérêt; car la vérité est le bien de

tous les hommes: ils seront des confédérés, et non pas des ennemis.”(152)

From the early ages of the church till the close of the Vth century, the

Christians of Rome were driven by the sword of persecution to seek a

hiding‐place wherein to exercise the holy mysteries of their religion, and

to inter the remains of their dead. The vast subterranean caverns, now

known as Catacombs, but more anciently called _Areæ_, _Cryptæ_, and

_Cœmeteria_, afforded a shelter for the living and sepulture for the

faithful departed. These Catacombs doubtless had their origin in the sand‐

pits, or _arenariæ_, _arenifodinæ_, which the pagans had excavated to

procure materials for building purposes.(153) Suetonius(154) describes how

Phaon exhorted Nero to enter one of these caverns made by excavations of

sand, and Cicero alludes to the _arenariæ_, outside of the Porta

Esquilina.(155) In the admirable essay by Michele Stefano de Rossi,

entitled _Analisi Geologica ed Architettonica_, and annexed to the work of

his brother, it is stated that the Catacombs, with perhaps the exception

of two that are Jewish, are the work of the early Christians.(156)

By singular perseverance and careful discrimination in the study of

documents running far back into the centuries, the Cavaliere de Rossi

transferred the situation of the Catacombs of S. Callistus from the church

of S. Sebastian, where they had erroneously been located, to a place a

half mile nearer Rome, between the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina; on the

left of the road was the cemetery of S. Prætextatus, and on the right that

of S. Callistus. The discovery of these hallowed crypts and sarcophagi of

the early saints and popes, is of inestimable value in elucidating

intricate questions of doctrine and practice, of history and tradition,

which have vexed the theological world for centuries. We can scarcely

resist the temptation to follow M. de Rossi through these dim cathedrals

of our Christian ancestors, and reproduce a part, at least, of his

masterly elucidation of their general topography, together with the

history of heroic suffering and Christlike courage which the sites and

names of those dark ages of danger suggest. But we must forbear, and

proceed to the pictures and emblems in order to draw from them some

lessons of that early fortitude, which the child of the church of the

first centuries learned, as he knelt by the tomb of his companion in the

faith, and looked up to the ceilings of crypts and semicircular

compartments to catch by the glimmering light of smoking lamps the

lineaments of some design of the religion which he professed.

The paintings of the Catacombs represent the cardinal truths of

Christianity, and their types are taken from both the Old and New

Testament Scriptures, as also, in rare instances, from heathen mythology.

The picture, perhaps most common to the eye of the worshipper at those

shrines of the martyred dead, was the representation of the Saviour in

that character which exhibits the tenderest attributes of his sacred

humanity, and appeals to the sympathetic element in man. Christ as the

Good Shepherd conveys in its fulness of meaning what perhaps no other type

of our Lord does. It is variously represented, and under different forms

may refer to the foreshadowing of the Messiah’s coming in the Old

Testament and its fulfilment in the New. King David had been a shepherd,

and understood the needs and labors of the shepherd life, and it may be

that in the days of his pastoral innocence, when the lion and the bear

were the destroyers of his flock, he wrote that psalm whose tone is one of

quiet and trustfulness: “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack

nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the

waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of

death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff

comfort me.”(157) Thus, in the days of persecution, the Christian of the

Catacombs might read the sacred legend of our Lord under the figure of a

shepherd—bearing the sheep upon his shoulders. The Good Shepherd was

pictured again as bearing a goat, and in the Catacombs of S. Callistus he

stands between a goat and a sheep; the former occupies the more honorable

place, the right hand, and the latter the left. Often the Good Shepherd

leans on his pastoral crook, and bears in his hand a pipe. All these

typical allusions refer to his character as exhibited in the Gospels. They

teach the merciful watchfulness of our Lord, and the readiness with which

he takes back into his fold, the church, yea, to the more honorable place

by his side, the wayward and the erring. “I am the good shepherd, and know

my sheep, and am known of mine. And other sheep I have which are not of

this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there

shall be one fold and one shepherd.”(158) Protestant critics have not been

wanting in an attempt to trace the symbolism of this figure of the Good

Shepherd to a heathen origin, and adduce as an argument in behalf of their

theory that its prototype is in the Tombs of the Nasones. Even in

questions of Christian archæology is exhibited the same polemical spirit

which animated the accomplished English scholar, Conyers Middleton, who

lent all the resources of his vast learning in classical history to prove

the resemblance and identity of pagan and Catholic rites. But a more

learned and reverent critic in the field of antiquities is the

incomparable Marangoni, whose splendid work, _Cose Gentilesche trasportate

ad Uso delle Chiese_, sets at rest for ever many problems which Mr.

Poynder, a shallow pretender to scholarship, revived in the _Alliance of

Popery and Heathenism_.

While the ancient heathen lived in the atmosphere of a religion which

incited to cheerfulness and pleasure in the present life, it portrayed but

faintly any idea of immortality. The world around him was peopled with

unseen spirits. They inhabited woods and streams, and he was ever watchful

to interpret the slightest signs or omens which might yield him some token

to enlighten the spiritual darkness of his soul. The mythological system

of the pagan was a vital reality. It accompanied him not only to the

solemn festival in the temple, but on the march, in the camp, and in the

market‐place. It was with him in hours of joy and of sorrow; but it

penetrated not beyond the boundaries of this world. It offered no _cross_

here, and knew nothing of the _crown_ hereafter. There were no bright

pictures of the rewards of eternity. This life was the narrow limit of his

hope and his labor. Hades or the grave was dreaded because of its

sunlessness. Iphigenia entreats her father for life in an impassioned

appeal, which sums up the heathen’s belief:

“To view the light of life,

To mortals most sweet; in death there is

Nor light nor joys; and crazed is he who seeks

To die; for life, though full of ills, has more

Of good than death.”

Occasionally the ancient philosophers and poets give intimation of a

belief in immortality, but not in resurrection, as Cicero in that eloquent

longing for the day when he shall meet his illustrious friend Cato.(159)

But, as we have said, of the great doctrine of the resurrection, which

solved the dark enigmas of humanity, they were ignorant. The hold which

classical mythology had upon the human mind was relaxed before this august

mystery of the Catholic faith. Pagan temples were deserted, and the

sacrificial fires on their altars extinguished.

“The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The power, the beauty, and the majesty,

That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain,

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.

They live no longer in the faith of reason!”(160)

It is not remarkable, therefore, that delineations of the doctrine of the

resurrection should not have been unusual in the church of the Catacombs.

Two such representations, one from the Old Testament, and the other from

the New, will exhibit the forms under which it was presented. Jonas as a

type of the resurrection of our Lord has its authority from S.

Matthew.(161) “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s

belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart

of the earth.” Four scenes from the history of Jonas are found in the

chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs, sometimes represented singly,

sometimes all compressed under one type. The first is the prophet being

thrown into the deep, the second as swallowed by the great fish which “the

Lord had prepared,” the third as “vomited out upon dry land,” the fourth

as lying under the shadow of a gourd. As we have seen, according to the

Gospel of S. Matthew, the swallowing of Jonas by the whale, and being cast

forth in safety after three days, was typical of the burial and the

resurrection of our Lord himself; and may not the pictures of the fourth

series denote not only the sufferings of the individual Christian, and the

care which his risen Master bestows upon him, but also the vicissitudes of

the Church Catholic in every age of the world? “Sometimes she gains,

sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in

different parts of her history.... Scarcely are we singing Te Deums, when

we have to turn to our Misereres; scarcely are we in peace, when we are in

persecution; scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a

scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our

consolations; we lose Stephen to gain Paul, and Matthias replaced the

traitor Judas.”(162) When the eye of the early Christian rested upon this

fourth representation from the prophet’s life, it caught another and a

more subtle signification, which is read perhaps oftener in the night of

affliction and persecution than in the day of joy and prosperity. Our

century, Catholic and Protestant alike, needs to study its outlines as

much as the first century and the worshippers in the Catacombs. “Should

not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore

thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their

left?”(163) Here is a beautiful symbolism of the tender mercy of our God

for all who are in error and in sin. It opposes the spiritual Pharisaism

of our day, and exacts meekness and charity from all men. It is the

destroyer of malevolence and anger and strife.(164)

Another picture, taken from the New Testament, and of frequent

representation, is the “man sick of the palsy.” It is generally regarded

by Protestant writers as belonging to that series of symbolical

illustrations which embody the doctrine of the resurrection; and, to give

greater force to their interpretation of the painting, they place much

stress upon the words of the sacred text: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go

unto thine house.” So far as we have examined copies of this picture, we

are inclined to believe that it is connected with these which refer to the

resurrection, except in one remarkable instance, in which it clearly

symbolizes the sacrament of penance as it is taught in the Roman

communion. In the Catacombs of S. Hermes is a representation of a

Christian kneeling before another, which seems from its close proximity to

the series of pictures of the Paralytic to point more directly to that

other passage of the Gospel narrative: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be

forgiven thee.” If our Lord delegated “such power unto men”—and the only

logical and intelligent interpretation of the words of S. John(165)

conveys this doctrine or it conveys nothing—here is a clear illustration

of the power of the priesthood, which admits of no evasive contradiction,

of no complicated and artificial hypothesis for the sake of escaping the

recognition of the belief of the early Christians in the doctrine of

sacerdotal absolution.

As resurrection is the portal of the church triumphant, so is baptism to

the church militant. The former is but the complement and fulfilment of

the latter. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus

Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by

baptism into death.”(166) The blessedness of the final consummation of the

faithful departed was pictured in the symbols of the resurrection, and, as

baptism is the foreshadowing of that glorious change which shall come over

our vile bodies, it became a common subject of Christian art in the

Catacombs. Its types are somewhat complex, and often susceptible of a

twofold explanation. From the four scenes in the life of Moses, which are

constantly repeated in the different Catacombs, we select _that_ which

prefigures Christian baptism—the miraculous supply of water in Kadesh. Art

critics who have bestowed any attention upon the sacred pictures of the

early ages place the representation of this miracle of Moses in the

Catacombs of S. Agnes among the finest specimens of primitive delineation.

Moses is pictured as bearing a rod, the emblem of power, with which “he

smote the rock twice, and the water came out abundantly.” It is worthy of

remark in passing that on vases found in the Catacombs, and on the

sarcophagi as early, perhaps, as the IVth century, this same scene is

depicted, and the rod, instead of being in the hand of Moses, is in that

of S. Peter, and, in a few instances, the two are represented together,

but the person who smites with the rod has inscribed over his head the

name of S. Peter. Catholic writers on subterranean symbolism draw from it

an artistic argument, which, coupled with the historical, seems an

unanswerable statement of the question of the primacy of S. Peter. _Quando

Christus ad unum loquitur, unitas commendatur; et Petro primitus, quia in

Apostolis Petrus est primus._(167) S. Peter bears the same relation to the

Christian church that Moses did to the Israelitish. The one received from

God the decalogue, which was to govern the actions of the Jews; the other,

the keys, which were to open the kingdom of heaven. _Nam et si adhuc

clausum putas cœlum, memento claves ejus hic Dominum Petro, et per eum

Ecclesiæ reliquisse._(168) Another type of baptism taken from the Old

Testament, and capable of two expositions, is Noah in the ark. Here again,

on the authority of an apostle, the church in the early ages read the

history of Noah by the light of the new revelation made through the

institutions founded by Christ. S. Peter, speaking of the small number

saved by water at the deluge, adds: “The like figure whereunto, even

baptism, doth now also save us,... by the resurrection of Jesus

Christ,”(169) The ark is generally represented by a small box in which

Noah sits or stands, receiving from the dove the olive branch of peace.

Some writers on Christian archæology find in it a secondary meaning,

regarding it as typical of the church, and the danger of those who are

without the ark of safety.

Among favorite Old Testament subjects familiar to art students of the

Catacombs are—Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three children of Israel

in the fiery furnace at Babylon. Both are types of persecution, and of

final deliverance through the miraculous interposition of God. In the

cemetery of S. Priscilla, each of these pictures is to be seen, varying

but slightly in the details of the portraiture. The three children appear

clothed, and standing on the furnace. In a compartment beneath, the figure

of a man is represented as feeding the fire with fresh fuel. Daniel, in

the same cemetery, stands with outstretched arms between lions. The

attitude in both these scenes from Jewish history appears to exhibit the

ancient posture of the suppliant when in the act of prayer. A late writer

on the Roman catacombs, the Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., formerly of

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, spent much time, in company with the

Cavaliere de Rossi and M. Perret, the French artist, in collecting

materials for his small work on the burial‐places of the early Christians

in Rome. He is so trustworthy a guide in everything that appertains to

their archæology, that we gladly accept the explanation which he suggests

of the position of Daniel and the three children of Israel. Speaking of

the ancient attitude of Christian prayer—the hands extended in the form of

a cross—he says:(170) “This form, which, as we learn from the Fathers, was

universal among the early Christians, is still retained in some measure by

the priests of the present day in the celebration of Mass, by Capuchins

and others in serving Mass, and by numbers among the poor everywhere; it

is worth noticing that S. Gregory Nazianzen expressly speaks of Daniel

overcoming the wild beasts by stretching out his hands, meaning, of course

by the power of prayer; but the explanation might almost seem to show that

S. Gregory himself was familiar with this usual way of representing him.”

The publication of the Cavaliere de Rossi, which has so greatly alarmed

the Protestant controversialist, is _Immagine Scelte della B. Vergine

Maria, tratte dalle Catacombe Romane_. It is most beautifully illustrated

with chromo‐lithographic engravings, and reflects great honor on the

present state of art in Rome. The purpose of the work is to exhibit the

veneration with which the Christians of the Catacombs esteem the Mother of

our Lord. At a period of time in the history of the church, almost

apostolic, that purest of human feelings, maternal love, subdued the soul

of the artist, and kindled his imagination to trace with the brush or

carve with the chisel the Blessed Virgin and her Divine Son.

The Virgin Mother,

“Who so above

All mothers shone,

The Mother of

The Blessed One,”

is depicted by the artist with a tender and devout affection. The scenes

are taken from the sacred narrative of the Evangelists, and an examination

of them, simply from an æsthetical point of view, will more than repay the

connoisseur of art. But to the conscientious archæologist and the sober

inquirer, they occupy a grave relation. They throw additional light on the

writings of S. Justin, S. Irenæus, S. Cyril, S. Jerome, and Tertullian, in

regard to that dogma which, of all others, has perplexed the minds of

earnest men outside the Roman communion. The honor paid to the Blessed

Virgin is to‐day the especial “crux” of Dr. Pusey,(171) as it is, perhaps,

of many not so learned as he, but as thoroughly dispassionate in the

temper of their souls toward the attainment of divine truth. The poet of

_The Christian Year_ reached a lofty strain in behalf of a long‐forgotten

doctrine in the Anglican Church when he gave in his verses for the

Annunciation:

“Ave Maria! blessed Maid!

Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade,

Who can express the love

That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,

Making thy heart a shelter meet

For Jesus’ holy dove?

“Ave Maria! Mother blest!

To whom, caressing and caress’d,

Clings the Eternal Child;

Favor’d beyond Archangel’s dream,

When first on thee with tenderest gleam

Thy new‐born Saviour smil’d.”(172)

But Keble caught from an excursion to Ben Nevis, as his biographer

conjectures, the hints of that beautiful poem, “Mother out of Sight,”

which was intended for the _Lyra Innocentium_, but through the influence

of two friends, Dyson and Sir John Coleridge, was withheld by the author,

and only saw the light as one of his posthumous pieces. It has a clearer

doctrinal ring than the stanzas for the Feast of the Annunciation, which

foreshadow something of the intercessory power of the Mother of God. It

merits the high praise which Keble’s ever‐faithful friend and, for years,

his gifted ally bestows upon him. We more than regret that space forbids

us giving the entire poem. It loses much of its beauty and continuity by

fragmentary quotation, yet, from the fourteen stanzas, we are only able to

reproduce four:

“Yearly since then with bitterer cry

Man hath assailed the throne on high,

And sin and hate more fiercely striven

To mar the league ’twixt earth and heaven.

But the dread tie that pardoning hour,

Made fast in Mary’s awful bower,

Hath mightier prov’d to bind than we to break;

None may that work undo, that Flesh unmake.

“Thenceforth, whom thousand worlds adore,

He calls thee Mother evermore;

Angel nor saint his face may see

Apart from what he took of thee;

How may we choose but name thy name,

Echoing below their high acclaim

In holy creeds? since earthly song and prayer

Must keep faint time to the dread Anthems there.

“Therefore, as kneeling day by day,

We to our Father duteous pray,

So unforbidden we may speak

An Ave to Christ’s Mother meek

(As children with ‘good morrow’ come

To elders, in some happy home),

Inviting so the saintly host above

With our unworthiness to pray in love.

“To pray with us, and gently bear

Our falterings in the pure, bright air.

But strive we pure and bright to be

In spirit. Else how vain of thee

Our earnest dreamings, awful Bride!

Feel we the sword that pierced thy side;

Thy spotless lily‐flower, so clear of hue,

Shrinks from the breath impure, the tongue untrue.”(173)

Another poet, once an Anglican, then a Catholic priest, and now passed

into the land where the mists of controversy are cleared away, attained a

higher plane of truth in regard to the Mother of our Lord:

“But scornful men have boldly said

Thy love was leading me from God;

And yet in this I did but tread

The very path my Saviour trod.

“They know but little of thy worth

Who speak these heartless words to me;

For what did Jesus love on earth

One‐half so tenderly as thee?

“Get me the grace to love thee more;

Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead;

And, Mother, when life’s cares are o’er,

Oh! I shall love thee then indeed.

“Jesus, when his three hours were run,

Bequeathed thee from the cross to me;

And oh! how can I love thy Son,

Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?”

We return to these pictures of the Catacombs, and we will content

ourselves with an allusion only, preferring that the reader who is

interested in them should examine them through his own, rather than

through another’s eyes. From a lunette in an _arcosolio_ in the cemetery

of S. Agnes is a picture which of late years has been frequently copied.

It represents the Blessed Virgin with uplifted hands, seemingly in the act

of intercession, with the Infant Jesus in her lap. In the cemetery of

Domitilla is a picture of the Mother and Son, and four Magi offering their

oblations. It may be well to remark that the Gospel history of the

Adoration of the Wise Men from the East does not limit their number. We

have somewhere seen it suggested that the restriction to three had its

rise from the offerings presented—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Another

scene of the Adoration of the Magi is given with some difference of

detail. The Virgin Mother is seated holding the Divine Son in her lap,

above her head appears the star which guided the wise men to where the

Infant lay. To the left is a somewhat youthful person, supposed to be S.

Joseph. He holds in his hand a book, which the Cavaliere de Rossi very

wisely and ingeniously interprets to be the writings of the evangelical

prophet Isaiah, whose prophecies concerning the Messiah had now their

fulfilment in the Infant Jesus.

Such are some of the many beautiful pictures which Roman art, through the

indefatigable industry of de Rossi, has given us of the Blessed Virgin as

represented in early ages. To other than jaundiced eyes, calmly and

candidly studying them, they reveal the light in which they were so often

viewed by the suffering children of the church amid the persecutions which

attended the conflict between paganism and Christianity. In teaching us to

honor the Mother of our Lord—Θεότοκος—they impress us with more distinct

and more tangible thoughts of the incarnation of her Son.(174) With his

usual discrimination and mastery of style, Dr. John Henry Newman has well

said: “The Virgin and Child is _not_ a mere modern idea; on the contrary,

it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in

the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant

in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the

attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the

doctrine of the high dignity of the Mother, and, I will add, of her power

over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be so dear

to Christians and so carefully preserved? The only question to be

determined is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first

age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans

call the ‘undivided church’ is certain, but lately investigations have

been pursued which place some of them at an earlier date than any one

anticipated as possible.”(175)

One other topic remains to be considered before we pass on to some general

reflections which early Christian art suggests. It was not uncommon for

the artist in the first ages of the church to take subjects of heathen

mythology, and invest them by his art with a Christian symbolism. The

genius of Michael Angelo, so truly Catholic in taste and devout in

expression, transplanted pagan forms from the broken temples of the elder

civilization to the Christian churches of the new. He retouched them under

the aureate light shed upon them by the reverent imagination of the

Fathers. On the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are painted by

this master‐hand the Sibyls, who in early times were regarded as the

unconscious prophets of divine truth, uttering in their blindness crude

intimations of the glory of him who was to be the fulfilment and

completion of all shadows and of all types.(176) In the Catacombs may be

seen a representation of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and subduing by

his melodious strains the ferocity of man and beast, and drawing even from

inanimate creation by the power of music the subjects of his sway. Rocks

and trees yielded to his lyric sweetness, the region of Plato opened to

the sound of his “golden shell,” the wheel of Ixion ceased its

revolutions, and Tityus forgot for the nonce the vulture that preyed on

his vitals. The Thracian bard was the representative of the civilizer of

savage men.

“Silvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum

Cædibus et victu fœdo deterruit Orpheus;

Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones.”(177)

The symbolism of the picture seems to be this, that as Orpheus drew the

whole creation to him by the music of his lyre, and called from the realms

of Hades his beloved Eurydice to the regions of light, so Christ by his

compassion commanded the love of all men, as well by his divine power the

hidden forces of nature. Hades, or the grave, opened to him on that first

Easter morning, as it will open to us on the last.

“Prisoner of Hope thou art—look up and sing

In hope of promised spring.

As in the pit his father’s darling lay

Beside the desert way,

And knew not how, but knew his God would save

Even from that living grave;

So, buried with our Lord, we’ll close our eyes

To the decaying world, till angels bid us rise.”(178)

The late Dean of S. Paul’s, Dr. Milman, remarks, with an air of triumph,

in his _Ecclesiastical History_,(179) that “the Catacombs of Rome,

faithful to their general character, offer no instance of a crucifixion.”

For the absence of the crucifix in the Catacombs, we as a Protestant can

conceive of two causes, either of which would to our mind be sufficient to

account for it. First, in the early ages it was highly important for the

growth of the church, especially in the Roman Empire, to guard against the

introduction of any symbol which would suggest pain or repugnance to

Jewish converts; secondly, it was essential to clothe truth under a type

which would not inspire mockery on the part of pagans, and so assist in

keeping alive the persecuting spirit of the times. This in a measure no

doubt led the early artists to use the heathen symbol of Orpheus as

typical of Christ. A beautiful passage in the work of D’Agincourt affords

still another general cause: “Entirely occupied with the celestial

recompense which awaited them after the trials of their troubled life, and

often of so dreadful a death, the Christians saw in death, and even in

execution, only a way by which they arrived at this everlasting happiness;

and, so far from associating with this image that of the tortures or

privations which opened heaven before them, they took pleasure in

enlivening it with smiling colors, or presenting it under agreeable

symbols, adorning it with flowers and vine‐leaves; for it is thus that the

asylum of death appears to us in the Christian Catacombs. There is no sign

of mourning, no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance; all

breathes softness, benevolence, charity.”(180)

Many emblems denoting the cardinal virtues are sculptured on the walls of

the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs. Flowers, garlands, and

grapes intertwine each other and embellish these ancient crypts. The

laurel speaks of victory, the olive of peace and reconciliation, and the

palm of final triumph. The lyre is significant of the æsthetical element

of religion, and the anchor of hope for the heavenly port. The dove

represents the Holy Spirit, the lamb the adorable Saviour—the Agnus

Dei—the stag the thirsting of the soul for the paradise of God, and the

peacock the belief in immortality. Among these general symbols so familiar

to the saints of old, none is more prominent than the fish. Its history is

ingenious, and, therefore, we will tarry for a moment ere we conclude. It

naturally calls to mind the solemn parting of our Lord with the apostles

by the Sea of Tiberias, when their nets were filled with fish, and Jesus

“taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” In the church of the

Catacombs this tender scene from the Evangelic record is always associated

with the Holy Eucharist. As ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for a fish, contains the

initial letters of the name and title of Christ—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς

Σωπὴρ—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour—the figure was constantly

used as a symbol of the divinity of Christ. In his _Iconographie

Chrêtienne_, M. Didron assumes that this emblem on the sarcophagi of the

Catacombs is simply indicative of the fact that the person buried beneath

was by trade a fisherman. Certainly the numberless instances proving the

falsity of this position render the opinion utterly worthless.

We must take leave of the Cavaliere de Rossi and the Christian art of the

Roman Catacombs. Feeble as may be the execution of these pictures, crude

in conception, and often colorless through the lapse of time, yet they

speak of the ardor of the early Christian artists, and of the devotion and

doctrine of the children of that church which is the mother of us all. In

parting with the Cavaliere de Rossi, we say with all sincerity, that we

have found nothing in his volumes unworthy of the reverential regard of

honest and candid minds. Passages there are, which the timidity of

Anglican churchmen would regard as dealing too freely with the symbolism

of the Catacombs. Without accepting his conclusions in detail, we

gratefully acknowledge that the Cavaliere de Rossi has shown English

writers in what spirit all the grave questions of theology connected with

subterranean art should be treated. His has been a great subject, and he

has written with humility and ripeness of learning and clearness of

apprehension, which well become the Christian scholar and the sacred

theme. In closing his masterly work, we seem again bidding adieu to Rome,

the reflection of whose classic greatness and Christian glory mellows hill

and plain, pagan ruin and Catholic shrine.

“Gran Latinà

Città di cui quanto il sol aureo gira

Ne altera più, nè più onorata mira.”

And because of the house of the Lord our God, we utter from the depths of

our heart the wish of the Psalmist of old: “_Fiat pax in virtute tua: et

abundantia in turribus tuis. Propter fratres meos, et proximos meos,

loquebar pacem de te_.”

Beating The Air.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great

magician.

“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”

We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to

have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises

will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and

practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we

are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform.

Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no

longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom‐house

duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime.

This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if

not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary

of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a

creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends

belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson’s

daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why

they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and

not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief

at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on

well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out

of the world without having committed any special faults against society,

leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and

honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved

themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects,

where each one claims to be _the_ one, the only one, the church of Christ.

One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all

good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come

at all if this is to be the result, this wrangling and jangling and

eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people,

who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting

parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God

of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife.

Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most

intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing

but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing

wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting

asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals;

which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a

consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a

strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to‐day, as it

has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church

founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is

salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in

their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of

human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after

all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so

strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it

would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the _Nation_ said the

other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of

the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of

Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is

going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution

have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands

today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in

the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice,

though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away;

and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting‐place over the barren

waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the

waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.

Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus

Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the

world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to‐day

as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The

Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling‐block in the way of

the much‐desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not

come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices,

but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are

mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only

give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the

doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another,

and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up

the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church

replies now as always: “_Non possumus_.” We cannot; God gave the laws to

his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those

of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her

adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you

are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget that

they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to

break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what

would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of

sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or

maliciously, as at least fixed and united to‐day as to‐morrow, as

yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly

speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be

farther off than ever.

The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last

great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation.

Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it

was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor

the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all

constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of

unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private

interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations

broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger,

fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result?

What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure;

a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out

into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct,

oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to

be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it

for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth

to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and

caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all

religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good

perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.

No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many

turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and

a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the

Protestant _religion_ today, it could not be given him; and the only right

answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non‐

Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most

striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne.

There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in

the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new

faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended

there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and

all‐sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While

Döllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling

fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly

and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson

to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such

as they see alone in the Catholic Church.

In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has

been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once

for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth,

pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover,

we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the

thousand‐and‐one such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is

somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less

distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which

body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been

delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may

be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore,

be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for

we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a

bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist _vs._ Catholic,” for he

recognizes(181) no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic

ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it

cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the

rest may think of this high‐handed mode of dealing with their several

pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as

all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of

salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and

Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each

other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at

present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.

It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an

individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church,

notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and

philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the

author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth

in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the

end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must

not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his

theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly

unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope

of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing

for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic

system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to

sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good

Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the

will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our

author’s mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every

reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him

for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,”

we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be.

Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and

controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are

compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably

pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is

thrown away.

A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered

under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital

truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same

conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was

probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the

dissensions that seem racking and threatening to rend that body at

present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives

members of his community who “would give up their vantage‐ground by

concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their

“maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he

fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning‐note—like

the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like

Mr. Winkle’s “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all

wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer’s

“conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight

doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their

productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no

very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the

troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church

stands precisely at its first starting‐point of some nineteen centuries

ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region

of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard

to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive

at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued

by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.

The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church,

Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so

clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one

or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the

controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a

pamphlet of forty‐two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least

original.

“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the

common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic

succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go

deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”

Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items,

which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary

fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject.

He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the

church to be a divine society”—human‐divine, Catholics would say—“governed

by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”

Here we have, then, according to the author’s own words, a society,

established by a person, at a certain date, which has come down from that

person to to‐day. Men say that it has altered from its original. Two

societies claim to be the original, the Baptist and the Catholic. It lies

in one or the other, not between. We want to find out which it is. In this

inquiry, history is nothing, legality is nothing, succession is nothing,

validity is nothing. That is not the true method of going to work to find

out what this society is; whether it has ever been broken, whether it

contains and carries out what Christ its founder gave it, whether its

members practise to‐day what they practised at the beginning—all that is

nothing. The question is “the idea which underlies it all. What then is

the true idea of the church? This is the great question.”

If the author proposed to argue in this style, he should have stated at

starting his definition of the true idea of the church. He should have

defined the term in order to explain clearly what he was seeking. But he

does nothing of the kind. In fact, he soon loses the very word “idea,” and

substitutes for it in one place “view,” in another “theories.” So that

after all it comes down in plain English to what is your opinion on the

subject, or what is your notion about it, despite his trite “challenges of

the Catholic idea of the church at the bar of reason,” and so forth.

In fact, there is just that show of shallow learning sprinkled throughout

the whole pamphlet which a preacher endowed with more words than weight

generally uses to a thick‐headed congregation, who take his words for

wisdom from the very fact that they cannot understand them. There are the

divisions and subdivisions: the 1, 2, 3, in large and small figures, and

occasionally in Roman characters; the appeals to this, that, and the

other; the citing of “well‐known facts” and “notorious things” without

substantiating them by any references, as in p. 17. “Witness the Baptist

originators of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Carey, Judson, and

their successors” in support of the view that with Baptists originated the

desire for the revision of the Bible. Again, speaking of Catholic

doctrine: “If men leave the church, they part from grace and are lost.”

_Apropos_ of which telling fact he informs us in the next sentence that

“the history of Augustinianism is an instructive illustration. Augustine,

Bishop of Hippo, was, in many respects, what would now be termed a high

Calvinist. His fervid eloquence and mental power made a deep impression

upon the theology of the Catholic (not then _Roman_ Catholic) Church of

the Latin world.” And that is all he says about him. As far as any

evidence he furnishes to support it goes, he might just as well have

substituted the name of S. Thomas Aquinas for S. Augustine, or Pius IX.,

or, as far as the majority of his readers know to the contrary, Tippoo

Sahib. And in the very opening of the pamphlet the same shallowness is

strikingly exemplified. He chooses the text, Acts ii. 47, “And the Lord

added to the church daily those who are saved,” which, as he observes,

reads in the version of King James, “Such as should be saved.” This

text—his own rendering—“is one of those passages in which an incidental

statement, as by a flash of lightning, reveals a whole body of doctrine.”

In what it involves we find the true idea of the church, that is, the

Baptist doctrine that we are regenerated in Christ by his death, and that

baptism is, as it were, only a symbol, a sort of mark, by which we are

known as belonging to the church, but not necessary for salvation,

inasmuch as we are _saved_ before we receive it. He alleges, with

reference to the Greek version, that “should be saved” is wrong and “are

saved” is right. And there the matter rests. Now, while on this very

important point, whereon indeed rests his theory, he might as well have

been a little more exact and explicit. A Greek reference is such a vague

thing to build on. We agree with him that “should be saved” is a wrong

rendering; as “are saved” happens also to be. The verse runs: Ο δε κυριος

προσετιθει τους σωζομενους καθ᾽ ημεραν τη Εκκλησια. The present participle

σωζομενους means being saved; but a present participle following a verb in

the imperfect or aorist tense must be rendered imperfect, and therefore

the passage should run, “And the Lord added daily to the church such as

_were being_ saved,” that is, such as were in the act or state of coming

into the church through the merit of the death of Christ and the movements

of his divine grace; a fact which throws altogether another light on the

author’s fixed starting point. These things we mention to show how little

trust can be placed on men who talk so loudly and pretentiously in this

loose style. It shows also how very weak and treacherous is this absolute

dependence on the private interpretation of the word of the Bible, whereon

the Baptists stake their doctrine and salvation; and how insufficient the

absolute creed which hangs for life or death on the possibly dubious

rendering of a passage in a dead language.

But let us examine this doctrine, which all, whether Catholic or Anglican,

Methodist or Jew, are bound to accept if they would be saved. We Catholics

are asked to surrender for it the faith which we have held through the

centuries of the Christian era, in defence of which we have poured out our

blood so lavishly, tracing the martyr stream down through the long vista

of ages, from the death on the cross to the stoning of Stephen, to the

massacre of the nuns in China but yesterday. We are told to‐day that all

our history, our sacraments, our doctrine, the faith on which we are

built, our succession of pontiffs, the sacred orders of our priests, the

church itself, which we define as the union of all the faithful under one

head, which head is Jesus Christ, whose successor is the pope, are one and

all “a diabolical imposture,” and that if we hope for salvation we must

surrender them for the true doctrine as explained by this author.

“The Baptist holds that men receive salvation directly from Christ, and by

virtue of an independent transaction with him; that a believer’s salvation

is secured by a personal union with Christ; and that he is divinely

commanded, after being thus saved, to unite with the church for the sake

of personal profit and of usefulness; and that the church so constituted

is to be governed by the law of Christ. He makes doctrine and conversion

come first. Out of doctrine and out of conversion proceeds the church. And

the saved man, already saved, comes into the church for training, for

work,” etc.

Now, this passage is the author’s exposition of the true idea of a church,

and on this everything else hangs. We may be obtuse, but we confess the

exposition is somewhat misty to us; at all events, it does not captivate

our intellect so completely as we would wish in a matter all‐

important—eternal salvation. We are told here that salvation is a personal

matter between the individual and Christ; that there is no person or

nothing intermediate. In plain English, that a man’s own conscience is his

rule and guidance; that it instructs and satisfies him on all points of

doctrine and conduct as a Christian. Now, it is Catholic doctrine that

salvation is an entirely personal affair between the individual soul and

Jesus Christ. The individual is not saved or condemned on the merits or

demerits of the society, the church of which he is a member: in exactly

the same way that a prisoner at the bar is held answerable to the law of

the land for his wrong actions, and judged on them, and it avails him

nothing to speak of the respectability of his relations, or of their evil

behavior which may have partly led him into crime; such evidence may

constitute to an extent extenuating circumstances, but a man is condemned

finally on his own act. If the prisoner, on the verdict being given

against him, pleads: But you condemn me; you do not take into

consideration my relations; you tell me that all that has nothing to do

with it; that I knew myself what was right and what was wrong; that, in

fact, I was the best and only judge in the matter; well, I acknowledge it,

I am the only judge, and if I am the only judge, and I make a mistake, you

cannot punish me, there is nothing between you and my conscience. The

court would respond: There is the law written plain for all men to read.

The government made the law, you are judged by that. And this is precisely

the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Though it be a final question between

the individual soul and Jesus Christ, the law of Christ comes between

them, as the law of Moses came between God and his people, and that law

being made for the whole world, for the universal society of human beings,

rests in the hands of the government duly constituted and appointed from

that society by Jesus Christ himself, who no longer abides among us

visibly, and is only known to us by faith.

Well, then, faith is enough; faith saves us, say the Baptists. If this be

true, then, are the devils saved since they must have a far more vivid

faith—belief in God—than the generality of human beings? If faith is

enough to save a man, why not stop there? Why be baptized? Why join a

church at all? “For the sake of personal profit” (a phrase apt to be

misunderstood), “and of usefulness,” replies our author. After all, this

idea of the church reduces itself to that of Mr. Beecher, which the author

stigmatizes—a church of “expediency.” Later, on page 22, in “challenging

the Catholic idea of a church at the bar of reason,” he says: “Now, in the

case before us, what is the effect? Salvation.” Well, here we have it; the

effect; the thing that the whole world is looking for—salvation. Why, that

is everything; that is all we want, no matter how it comes. You are saved

before entering the church. Then, what more is necessary? There is no need

to go beyond that. Stay outside; live and let live; our safety is

attained; let people wrangle as they may, there is no further fear. There

is no need of a _church_ at all, of communion, and the rest, if we are

saved before entering it. That is all God asks of us, to save ourselves.

It is already accomplished by regeneration and faith in him. There we

stop, happy and contented, without any more quarrelling with our

neighbors.

Then comes the further and final question: After all, who is Christ? How

do we know him? Where do we find him? When and how does he speak to us? Of

course, to “regenerate persons,” it is unnecessary to put these questions:

But our author proposed going deeper into the matter than the common

method, and, if the world is to become Baptist, it must know why. The

regenerate enjoy “a personal union” with him, says the Baptist, and know

when he speaks; when the Spirit impels them. This will never do for human

nature. We must have something stronger than assertion, however strong.

Christians can believe and understand S. Paul, when he tells them that he

was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words which it is not

granted to men to utter. The great apostle excuses himself for bringing

this to the knowledge of the faithful, and only mentions it as a single

act in his life, and one that affected his salvation in no wise. If the

Baptists hold that they are continually in the third heavens, well and

good. That at least has the merit of a clear, defined ground to stand on;

but they will scarcely win many converts. Who is Christ, then, with whom

you have this personal union? He is the founder of the Baptist Church, our

author would respond; of what is known as Christianity? That is to say, of

the system or systems of religion held by all people of the present day

who call themselves Christians, but among whom the Baptists only hold the

true church. Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society

and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our

author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New

Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the

resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every

page,(182) and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of

salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. If you doubt, search for

yourselves the Scriptures, like the noble Bereans, and see whether these

things are so.”

In support of this loose, sweeping assertion, this author contorts his

text into a puny quibble, which any well‐instructed child might see

through at once. He says: “We do not read the priests or the apostles

added sinners to the church in order to save them,” but we do read: “The

_Lord_ added to the church daily those who are saved.” _Ergo_, “salvation

was dealt with as a personal matter.”

If the Baptist Church rests on no better foundation than this, and if its

teachers can only support its truth and doctrine on distorted meanings and

texts of this description, we fear it will not hold together much longer,

and we feel half inclined to apply to it a few of the “truths spoken in

love” of which our author is so lavish in dealing with the Catholics. This

very use of the word “Lord” is eminently Catholic. When we speak of a

conversion, of a mercy gained, or a favor bestowed from heaven, though all

these things happen through the hands and sometimes ministry of

individuals, we always say, “The Lord did it; God Almighty wrought it; No

man converted me, but the grace of God; No medicine saved my sick child,

but the favor of God which accompanied its workings,” as the child answers

to the first question of the catechism, Who made you? God. But for all

this God works through human instruments. His priests are an ordination of

his own for the government of his church, and by a worthy probation and

preparation receive certain graces of God necessary for their state

involved in the reception of what the church calls the sacrament of Holy

Orders: a certain form to be gone through which Christ ordained for the

reception of the special powers and graces conferred on that particular

office, as in human governments a judge receives his insignia, a minister

his portfolio, a doctor his diploma, in order to prevent everybody taking

the administration of the law into his own hands, or every quack

practising as he pleases. And so with the other sacraments.

But apart from appeals to texts, which we are almost weary of producing in

favor of Catholic doctrine, and of the church who watched over and

preserved those texts from destruction, the mutilation of which was

wrought, as our author himself complains, not by us, but by the

Protestants in the version of King James, and because we know that version

to be mutilated, we appeal against its use in the schools which our

children frequent: let us look at the broad Christian system, how it would

stand as built up by this writer.

People who believe in Christ at all, and indeed all who acknowledge, as

they must, Christianity to be a fact, a vast social system, existing under

our eyes, looking back, see a time when it did not exist. A man came into

the world at the point of time in its history which we fix upon as the

beginning of the Christian era. At that time religion, speaking largely,

consisted of the Hebrew and the pagan. The Hebrews were the chosen of God,

and preserved the only true system which corresponds to the rational idea

of the foundation and aim of humanity. This it kept to itself and did not

seek to spread. Christ came, the man‐God, and founded a new order,

enlarging upon the old, which was to embrace in its bosom the universe,

and lead all nations back and up to God. The change contemplated was the

vastest that could possibly be conceived, the union of the discordant

elements of human nature in a system entirely above the capabilities of

that nature. Men were to be chaste, to be humble, to love poverty, to

speak no evil, to obey, to mortify themselves always, to pray always, to

acknowledge the nothingness of their nature. This man, Jesus Christ, came,

and, before he had converted people enough to form a single city even, was

crucified, rose from his grave, and ascended into heaven, leaving twelve

poor ignorant, timid men, and a few others to spread this new doctrine,

this new and all‐absorbing social system, throughout the world and through

all time. What did he leave to guide them in this tremendous work; a

system, an order perfect in all its details, and capable of spreading with

the contemplated growth of the church? or did he leave each to follow his

own will and do what he could, by means of what is called personal union

with himself, a being who no longer was present, visibly and palpably,

before the eyes of men? As he chose men to do his work, to build up

Christianity, he let them accomplish it after a human fashion, assisted by

the saving fact that he would allow them never to err in the doctrines

which he bade them preach: and to this end he gave them an order which was

to be handed down forever: the apostleship. That was his government, and

at this government was a head, Peter. And Peter, like all other human

governors, at his departure handed his authority down to the next chosen

to fill his place, the promise of the abiding Spirit passing to all, or

the system must have broken down; and so to‐day Catholics recognize in

infallibility nothing more than the apostles recognized in the decisions

of Peter at Antioch. And so this author is correct in saying that the

church with Catholics comes first, and not the Bible; for the church

embraces the Bible, which is only the written document of the laws and

ordinances of God to man, the letter of the law resting in the hands of

the government which has charge of it, but that government itself subject

to the law. The government existed among the Hebrews before the law was

ever written. This system which we have endeavored faintly to sketch here

is denied by the Baptist. He says: Christianity comes this wise: Christ

came, died, and thus regenerated us. All who believed in him were saved.

“The apostles preached the Gospel. Men were pierced to the heart and asked

what they must do.” They must be immersed, not as a necessity, for they

were saved by the fact of believing; but this act of immersion gave them

the entry to the church of Christ. Then the New Testament was written, not

by Christ, though inspired by him, and left in the hands of everybody to

interpret the law as he pleased.

Now, we ask, can this system commend itself to the human reason as rounded

and complete enough to fulfil the Christian idea of a church, which should

receive and embrace the whole world in one union of religious harmony? A

book thrown into the world—for so it must look to human eyes who knew

nothing of its divinity—which each one was to take up and interpret as he

pleased; a book subject to more or less of change in transmission from

language to language, and in the absolute loss of the living tongue in

which it was originally written, and the verdict of its genuineness, the

verdict for or against the teachings of a living God, resting upon the

dictum of a grammarian.

If Christianity hangs on this, for we have not misrepresented the

writer—then we refuse to be Christian at all; for such a system does not

and cannot, as he alleges, “sustain the test of sound reason, of stern

experience, and of infallible Scripture, which ordeal the Baptist idea of

the church endures.”

We need trouble ourselves with this writer no further. There is a great

deal more in the pamphlet that might be touched on as showing the either

absolute or wilful ignorance under which writers of this stamp labor when

speaking of Catholics. He speaks of the Catholic doctrine with regard to

sacraments in this loose way: “They are useful to infants and the dying.

Men come to them for grace apart from the state of their own hearts.” Now,

Catholics will perceive the utter absurdity of such a statement at once.

The sacrament of baptism is necessary to infants, who of course are

unconscious recipients of it, as they are unconscious of the sin in which

they are born. This stain which they inherit, but do not incur by any act

of their own, is washed away by the sacrament ordained by Christ, which

admits them into the society of the church at the same time that their

birth admits them to human society, its privileges as well as its trials.

Extreme unction is administered to the dying person, even though he be

unconscious, and is the most touching token of the love of the universal

Mother for her children, who at the last moment will, although the dying

man cannot ask it, administer the sacrament which God has ordained for

that occasion, because she _knows_ that his heart desires such aid at its

passage from the world. But all sacraments given to adults give grace only

in proportion as the recipient receives them worthily.

“If the priest refuses to come, then the sufferer, infant or adult, must

die unbaptized and unsaved.”

If this gentleman had only taken the trouble to consult a Catholic

catechism, he would have been spared the trouble of putting this further

absurdity into print. He would have found little children taught at school

that “in a case of necessity, when a priest cannot be had, any one may

baptize,” and the instructions for administering the sacrament; and

furthermore, that, if a person were placed in such a position that even

this means could not reach him, the very desire is sufficient, as

sometimes happens in the case of sudden conversions and martyrdoms.

As for Catholicity necessitating a ritual, all religions must more or

less. Do men object to the old law because of its glorious ritual? Is not

the very Baptist‐act of immersion a ritual, and their singing in common?

So much so that, for neglect of this observance, Baptists cut off the

whole Christian body from community with them. Which is harder to

believe—the Catholic doctrine which teaches that we must obey the church

which we believe to be the only church of Christ, and in support of which

teaching we bring forward some very substantial proofs, or this? You may

interpret God’s Word as you please; that alone is sufficient; but you are

not in communion with his church unless you are immersed; a fact which it

is very difficult to twist out of the Scriptures.

Again, he shows his weakness in saying that “Francis Xavier, working on

the Catholic idea, baptized millions of Asiatics, and believed that in so

doing he had saved their souls. But the heathen remained heathen still.

There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that under his labors one

solitary soul was transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.” Not one,

but millions, so that Sir James Stephens, a Protestant lecturer on history

in a Protestant university, calls him a saint, not only of the Catholic

Church, but of the world. Colleges were founded by him, and thousands of

Christians suffered martyrdom for the faith. But “Judson” is the apostle

after our author’s heart. Judson “lived to see thousands of civilized and

christianized disciples in that dark Burman land; and the work still goes

on, self‐sustained by the power of a true hidden life.” This latter is a

very saving clause; so truly hidden is the work that our author can point

to no fruit resulting from it. And as for those “thousands of civilized

and christianized disciples,” we took the trouble to look for them, and we

regret to say, for our author’s veracity, found them all “wanting.” Judson

did not succeed in converting one either in Burmah or anywhere else; and

his own sufferings seem to have been reduced to the martyrdom of marrying

successively three wives.

If then, as our author says, “Logically there is no middle position

between the high rock ground of Baptist truth and the low marsh ground of

Catholic error; all things follow their tendencies, and it is easier to go

down an inclined plane than to go up,” we fear that, for all he can do to

prevent them, people will follow their natural tendencies. As a last word,

we would strongly recommend him, before undertaking to set a church in its

true colors before the eyes of men, to consider a little whether he knows

anything of the subject he is writing about, and not stultify himself by

an ignorance which looks like malice, though he calls it truth spoken in

love.

A Retrospect.

And it fell out, says the chronicle, that Childebert, hunting one day in

the forest of Compiègne in company with his wife Ultragade, was suddenly

accosted by S. Marcoul, a holy man who stood in great repute of sanctity

even during his lifetime; he seized the king’s bridle, and boldly

petitioned alms for his poor and his church of Nanteuil, which was in a

state of shameful unrepair. While he was yet speaking, a hare, pursued by

the hounds, flew to the spot and took refuge under his mantle. S. Marcoul,

letting go the bridle to place his hand protectingly on the trembling

refugee, the king’s horse broke away, seeing which his piqueur rushed

forward, and in tone of arrogance exclaimed:

“Miserable cleric! how durst thou interrupt the king’s chase? Give back

that hare, or I will strike thee for thine insolence!”

The saint, humbly unfolding his cloak, set free the hare; it bounded away,

and the dogs dashed after it. But lo! they had not made three strides,

when they were struck motionless, rooted to the ground as if turned to

stone. The piqueur, infuriated, flew after the hare, but he had not taken

many strides, when he fell fearfully wounded by a large stone that had

been hurled at him, no one saw whence, and laid his head open. The

huntsmen, seized with terror, fell upon their knees, and implored the holy

man to forgive them and intercede for the life of their companion. S.

Marcoul forgave them, and then, going towards the prostrate body of the

piqueur, he touched it and prayed over it, and presently the stricken man

rose up healed. Childebert, being quickly informed of the two miracles,

hastened after the man of God and knelt for his blessing, and took him

home that night to the shelter of the castle, and dismissed him the

following day loaded with presents for his church and rich alms for his

poor. So stands the legend.

A witty Frenchman once said to a sceptic who sneered at the story of

Mucius Scævola: “My friend, I would not put my hand in the fire that

Mucius Scævola ever put his in it, but I should be desolated not to

believe it.” How much wiser was that Frenchman than the dull criticism of

our XIXth century, that goes about with a broomstick sweeping away all the

lovely fabrics that less prosaic ages have raised to mark their passage on

the road of history—a vicious old fairy, demolishing with her Haussmann

wand the storied, moss‐grown monuments of the past, giving us naught in

their stead but ugly, rectangular blocks built with those stubborn bricks

called facts, statistics, and such like! Why try to prove to us that

François I.’s heroic _Tout est perdu fors l’honneur!_ was only the

poetized essence of a rigmarole letter written not even from the field of

Pavia, but from Pissighittone? Why insist that Philip Augustus never said

to his barons, gathered with him round the altar, before the battle of

Bouvines, “If there be one among you who feels that he is worthier than I

to wear the crown of France, let him stand forth and take it”? True,

Guillaume le Breton, who wrote the history of the campaign and never left

Philip throughout, makes no mention of it, but what of that? The story is

far too beautiful not to be true. Let us turn a deaf ear, then, to this

old hag called Criticism, or deal with her and her bricks and mortar as

the Senate of Berne did with a man who wrote a book to prove that William

Tell never shot the apple, and, in fact, that it was doubtful whether he

and the apple were not both a myth. The Senate burnt the book by the hand

of the hangman publicly in the market‐place. We will deal in like manner

with any profane mortal who questions the authenticity of the legend of S.

Marcoul’s hare, which furnishes the first mention we find in history of

the château of Compiègne.

The forest was its chief attraction to the kings of old Gaul, as it has

been in later days to their successors. Clotaire I. met with an accident

while hunting there in 561, and died of it; he was interred at Soissons,

whither his fourteen sons accompanied him, bearing torches and singing

psalms all the way. Fredegonda made the merry hunting‐lodge the scene of

atrocities never surpassed even by her, fertile as she was in inventive

cruelties. Her infant son fell ill of a fever at Compiègne and died, while

the son of the prefect, Mumondle, who was taken ill with the same illness

at the same time, recovered. The courtiers, thinking to allay the despair

of the terrible mother by giving it an outlet in revenge, whispered to her

certain stories that were current in the village about a witch who had

sacrificed the royal infant to secure the potency of her charms in favor

of the life of the other. Fredegonda caught at the bait like a tiger at

the taste of blood. She scoured the country for decrepit old women, and,

afraid of missing the right one, caused the entire lot to be seized and

put to death before her eyes. The details of the tortures inflicted on

them by the ruthless mother are too terrible to be described.

Clotaire II. lived many years at Compiègne, much beloved for his gentle

and benevolent disposition, but nothing particular marks that period. King

Dagobert made it likewise his principal residence, and enriched the

surrounding country with many fine churches and noble monasteries. The

most celebrated of these was the Abbey of S. Ouen’s Cross. The king was

out hunting, one hot summer’s day in the year of grace 631, and emerging

from the forest to the open road, he suddenly saw before him a gigantic

cross of snow. Marvelling much at the unseasonable apparition, he sent for

S. Ouen, who dwelt in the wood hard by, and bade him interpret its meaning

to him. The saint replied that he saw in the sign a command to the king to

build a church on the site of the miraculous cross. No sooner had he said

this, than the cross began to melt, and presently vanished like a shadow.

Dagobert at once set about obeying the mandate uttered in the peaceful

symbol, and raised on the road from Compiègne to Verberie the stately pile

called the Abbaye de la Croix de S. Ouen.

Many other foundations followed, but no event of note took place at

Compiègne till Louis le Debonnaire appeared on the scene in 757—unless,

indeed, we may record as such the arrival there of the first organ ever

seen in France. It was sent as a present to Pepin by the Emperor

Constantine, and the first time it was played a woman is said to have

swooned, and awoke only to die. Louis le Debonnaire lived chiefly at

Verberie, the magnificent palace of Charlemagne, a right royal abode,

befitting the greatest monarch of France. Bronze, and marble, and precious

stones, and stained glass, and all costly and beautiful materials were

lavished with oriental prodigality on this wonderful Verberie, whose

colossal towers and frowning battlements and elaborately wrought gates and

gables were the marvel of the age and the theme of many a troubadour’s

song. But what monument built by the hand of man can withstand the ravages

of man’s ruthless passions? The palace of the Gallic Cæsar was not proof

against the successive wars and sieges that battered its massive walls,

till not even a vestige of the wonderful pile remains to mark where it

stood.

The sons of Louis le Debonnaire, Louis, Pepin, and Lothair, rebelled

against their father; Lothair got possession of his person, stripped him

of all the ornaments of royalty, clothed him in sackcloth, and in this

unseemly plight exhibited the old king to the insults and mockeries of the

people. After this he compelled him to lay his sword upon the altar, and

sign his abdication in favor of the unnatural son, who presided in cold‐

blooded triumph at the impious ceremony. As soon as this was done he sent

his father, bound hand and foot, to Compiègne, where he was kept a close

prisoner. Lothair’s brothers, however, hearing of this, were moved to

indignation, and, stimulated perhaps not a little by jealousy of the

successful rival who had started with them, but secured all the winnings

for himself, they set out for Compiègne, stormed the fortress, and set

free the king. But the unhappy father was not to enjoy long the freedom he

owed to these filial deliverers. Louis again rose up in arms against him,

and the king was forced to take the field once more in defence of his

crown; he fell fighting against his three sons on the frontiers of the

Rhine, and expired with words of mercy and forgiveness on his lips.

In 866, Charles the Bald held a splendid court at Compiègne to receive the

ambassadors whom he had sent on a mission to Mahomet at Cordova, and who

returned laden with costly presents from the Turkish prince to their

master. Charles did a great deal to improve Compiègne; the old château of

Clovis, which was no better than a hunting‐lodge grown into a fortress, he

threw down and rebuilt, not on its old site, in the centre of the town,

but on the banks of the Oise. Louis III. and Charles the Simple spent the

greater part of their respective reigns at Compiègne, and added to the

number of its institutions—primitive enough some of them—for the

instruction of the people. “Good King Robert” comes next in the progress

of royal tenants (1017): his name was long a household word among the

people to whom his goodness and liberality had endeared him. One day at a

banquet, where he was dispensing food to a multitude of poor and rich, a

robber stole unobserved close up to him, and, under pretence of doing

homage to the king, clung to his knees, and began diligently cutting away

the gold fringe of his cloak. Robert let him go on till he was about

halfway round, and then, stooping down, he whispered discreetly: “Go, now,

my friend, and leave the rest for some other poor fellow.” Like many

another wise and good man, Robert was harassed by his wife; she was a hard

and haughty woman, who, while professing great love for him, made his home

wretched to him by her quarrels and her domineering temper. The people

knew it, and hated Constance; but, like the king, they bore it rather than

quarrel with the shrew. “Let us have peace, though it cost a little high!”

the henpecked husband was for ever repeating; and his people seemed to

have been of one mind with him, for Constance ruled both him and them with

her rod of nettles to the end, and had her own way in everything.

Philip II.’s occupation of Compiègne, which in those days of simple faith,

when religious fervor ran high, had a significance that can hardly be

appreciated in our own chill twilight days, so slow to see beyond the

material world, so reluctant to recognize the supernatural as an aim or a

motive power in the great movements that enlist men’s energies and direct

them, changing the face of nations. This was the translation of the holy

winding‐sheet from the casket of carved ivory—in which it had been given

to Charlemagne, along with many other relics of the same date,(183) by

Constantine II. and the King of Persia, as a reward for his services in

expelling the Saracens from the Holy Land—into a reliquary of pure gold,

inlaid with jewels. The holy shroud, when it was taken by Charles the Bald

to the Abbey of S. Corneille at Compiègne, is thus described in the

_procès‐verbal_ of the translation, given at full length in the _Grandes

Chroniques_: “It was a cloth so ancient that one could with difficulty

discern the original quality of the stuff, being two yards (_aunes_) in

length and a little more than one yard in width.... The liquors and

aromatic ointments used in the embalmment had rendered it thicker than

ordinary linen, and prevent one from discerning the color of the stuff,

esteemed by the greater number of the spectators to be of pure flax, woven

after the manner of the cloth of Damascus.” There are old pictures still

extant, representing Charles amidst a vast concourse of prelates and

nobles, accompanying the relic with prayer and solemn ceremonial.

In 1093, Matilda of England, on rising from an illness which had been

considered mortal, sent as a thank‐offering for her recovery a costly

shrine of gold and precious stones to Philip II., with a request that the

holy shroud might be placed in it. Philip, in a charter drawn up and

signed by himself, thus testifies to the gift and the translation: “It has

pleased us to place in a shrine (_chasse_) of gold, enriched with precious

stones, and given to this church by the Queen of England, the relics of

our Saviour; we have beheld this cloth (_linge_), in which the body of our

Lord reposed, and which we call shroud (_suaire_), according to the holy

evangelist, and which has been withdrawn from the ivory vase.” We cannot

realize, we say, how an event like this would stir the hearts of men in

those days. Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade; his burning

eloquence, like a lever, uplifting the arm of Christendom, and compelling

every man who could draw a sword to shoulder the cross and go forth to

fight and die for the deliverance of the tomb, where for three days their

Lord had lain wrapped in this winding‐sheet. The union of mystical

devotion and enthusiastic service which characterized the crusaders was

fed by every circumstance that tended to embody to their senses those

mysteries which had their birth in that remote eastern land towards which

they were hastening, and the transfer of this sacred memento of the

Passion from its simple ivory casket to a sumptuous one of gold and gems,

the offering of a powerful sovereign, occurring at such a moment, was

calculated to arouse a more than ordinary interest. They hailed the honors

so apportioned paid to the holy shroud as a symbol and a promise; their

faith, already quickened by the renunciation of all that made life dear,

home, kindred, nay, life itself, for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, was

stimulated to more heroic sacrifice; their hope was intensified to

prophecy, by what appeared like a typical coincidence, a manifestation of

divine approval that must ensure beyond all doubt the success of their

enterprise. We should not be astonished, then, at the paramount importance

assigned by the historians of that time to this event, but recognize

therein the sign of our own condemnation, and of a spirit that is no

longer of our day, but belongs, like those glorious relics, to a bright

and glowing past.(184)

Philip’s son, Louis le Gros, like his father, lived principally at

Compiègne; while he was away carrying on the second crusade, his

incomparable minister, Suger, took up his abode there, and, dividing his

time between prayer and the business of the state, governed wisely during

the king’s absence.

When another crusading hero, Philip Augustus, offered his hand and his

crown to the fair Agnes de Méranie, destined to expiate in tears and exile

the ill‐fated love of the king and her own short‐lived happiness, it was

at Compiègne that he presented her to the court and the people; it was

here that amidst pomp and popular rejoicing the marriage was celebrated.

But the most curious episode in the whole range of the annals of Compiègne

is perhaps that of a claimant whose story opens at this date. Baldwin IX.,

Count of Flanders and Hainaut, usually called Baldwin of Constantinople,

before starting for the Holy Land came to Compiègne to swear fealty to the

King of France, who invested him with knighthood on the same day that

Agnes, like a softly shining star of peace and love, rose upon the

troubled horizon of the kingdom. At Constantinople Baldwin was proclaimed

emperor, and solemnly crowned by the pope’s legate at S. Sophia (1204). He

immediately sent off his crown of gold to his beloved young wife, Marie de

Champagne, desiring her to hasten to rejoin him, and share his new‐found

honors. The countess obeyed the command and set sail for Constantinople,

but, overcome by the unexpected news of her husband’s election to the

throne, she died upon the journey. Baldwin’s grief was inconsolable; he

laid her to rest in S. Sophia, the scene of his recent honors, and swore

upon her tomb never to marry again, but to devote himself henceforth to

the sole business of war: he kept his vow, and began that series of

brilliant feats which culminated in his triumphant entry to Adrianople.

Such was the fame of his prowess that powerful chiefs trembled at his very

name: Joanice, the formidable king of the Bulgarians, sent a message to

“the great French warrior,” humbly praying for his friendship. But the

warrior mistrusted these overtures, and haughtily repulsed them. Whereupon

Joanice, full of wrath, vowed vengeance, and in due time kept his vow. He

raised an army, made war on Baldwin, whom he took prisoner after a fearful

slaughter of his army at the battle of Adrianople. When the news of the

disaster reached Flanders, Henri of Hainaut, brother of Baldwin, was at

once proclaimed regent; he continued the war against Joanice, but without

success, nor could he by bribes, concessions, or threats obtain the

emperor’s release; Joanice would not even vouchsafe to reply to any of his

overtures on the subject. All else failing, the pope interfered, and

besought the conqueror not to sully his triumph by revenge, worthy only of

a savage, but to treat magnanimously, or at least according to the rules

of civilized warfare, for the ransom of his captive. To this appeal

Joanice condescended to reply that, alas! it was no longer in his power,

or any man’s, to comply with the desires of his holiness. The answer was

taken for an announcement of Baldwin’s death, and universally accepted as

such. Stories soon began to eke out concerning the horrible tortures

practised on the unfortunate prince by his cruel captor; some accredited

eye‐witness declared that he had been barbarously mutilated, his hands and

arms cut off, and in this state thrown to the wild beasts, his skull being

afterwards made into a drinking‐cup for the brutal Joanice, who had stood

by gloating over the spectacle of his victim’s agony. Years went by and

nothing transpired to throw the least doubt on the fact of Baldwin’s

death, though the accounts as to the manner of it were somewhat

conflicting. Henri of Hainaut was proclaimed sovereign of Flanders; after

reigning ten years he died, and was succeeded by Jeanne, eldest daughter

of Baldwin. She was not long in possession of the throne when the report

was bruited about that her father was alive; he had been seen by some

pilgrims journeying through Servia, who having lost their way in the

forest of Glaucon came upon the grotto of a hermit, and were taken in and

restored by him and sheltered for the night. This hermit, they recognized

as their former prince, Baldwin; he was much altered by suffering, and his

long white beard and uncouth garb were calculated to disguise him from any

eyes but such as had known him well, but the pilgrims recognized him at

once; they, however, discreetly forebore announcing the fact till they

brought other witnesses to corroborate their own assurance. They returned

soon with several trustworthy persons who had known Baldwin too well to

mistake his identity after any lapse of years, and these declared

unhesitatingly that the hermit was no other than the hero of Adrianople.