CHAPTER XIV.

THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE.

CONCLUSION.

The morning they started for Monte Cassino the Signora had a Mass said

for her intention, and the intention was that she might be enabled to

decide speedily on her state of life, and to decide so clearly and

wisely as never again to have a doubt about it. Never had she been

nearer to accepting Mr. Vane, and never had she been more tremblingly

afraid of doing so. The suspense and trouble were becoming intolerable.

She felt that it must be settled within these three days.

But no sooner was the journey begun than all else was lost sight of. It

was impossible to pass with a preoccupied mind amid all that beauty;

impossible not to feel one’s individual life dwindle in view of the life

of centuries there made visible. The Campagna slipped past like an old

monotonous song that has been sung over one’s cradle, and heard in quiet

intervals all up the years, till every note has grown to be something

more than a simple sound, and is rather a long series of octaves caught

along the heart-strings. Then

“The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,”

pressing near the track, and looking over each other’s heads at the

train as it went, as if wondering what new Jason was ploughing with

fiery-snorting monsters down through the green fields of the south. Dim,

gray cities stood petrified on their heights, without a sign of life;

and the torrent-beds on their sides were like silvery paths up which the

souls of all the dead had climbed, and so faded off into space. What

fancies went up those converging paths, and spread their wings in the

shining clouds that moored themselves on crest after crest! Or, fair as

any fancy, what brooks and torrents came rushing down in the rainy

October and petulant April, catching the sunshine as they ran, and

bringing flowers and harvests and fountains for the thirsty plains. On

they went through the smiling, luxuriant paradise waving with solid

green and bloom in the valleys. Dark forests hung suspended in gorges,

cities lifted themselves between the mountains to look, here and there a

castle sat on its rock like a king on his throne. They could no more

have pointed out the rapidly-succeeding beauties to each other than they

could have indicated the swift flashes of a tempest.

At length, and before they had begun to think they were tired, the cars

stopped at the station of San Germano, and here a very tall old man,

bent into the shape of a new moon, recognized them as the party he was

on the watch for, and informed them that the donkeys were waiting for

them outside, and that they were expected to dine at Monte Cassino.

They recollected that they were a little tired and a little hungry, and,

very opportunely, a pretty young _contadina_ presented herself with a

basket of bread, fruit, boiled eggs, and wine. So they seated themselves

in the waiting-room, a circle of admiring _contadini_ standing about and

watching every mouthful they ate, as a dog watches.

“Are we expected to take more than we want and give them what remains?”

Isabel asked.

The Signora glanced over the company, and demanded to know which men had

charge of the donkeys.

Five stout young fellows stood forward, and a sixth made haste to

explain that four of them would attend to the party, and a fifth would

carry their baggage up on another donkey.

“And have you anything to do with us?” she inquired politely of this

informant.

“I belong to the hotel of San Germano,” he replied, and then went on to

explain the situation still further.

“Oh! thanks; but don’t trouble yourself,” the Signora interrupted quite

coolly. “You need not wait for us. Five men are quite enough to do all

we want done.”

He withdrew a little, but did not go away. There was not the slightest

sign of resentment or mortification. He was actuated by a simple and

unadulterated desire for money, and meant to stay by till the last

minute, in the hope that he might snatch at the chance of some small

service which would give him a claim.

“Now, girls,” the Signora said, “don’t you give a penny to any one,

unless I tell you. Here are twenty people on the watch for money. Don’t

let any one do the smallest thing for you, except these five men. We

will give them some bread and wine. That is all they will want. The

Italian poor live on bread. What does that old man want of us?” she

inquired of one of the donkey-men.

The old man, who had been constantly hovering near, came forward at

once. He was the letter-carrier for the monastery.

“Oh! I did not know but you had something to do with the donkeys,” she

remarked.

He came a step nearer. “I do not go up till evening,” he said with an

insinuating smile.

“Go whenever you like,” she answered obligingly. “If you should bring us

up any letters, however, we will give you a _soldo_ for each one.”

He glanced longingly at the bread and wine, but she rose without taking

any further notice of him.

“How much is your wine a bottle?” she asked of the pretty young vendor.

“Fifteen _soldi_, Signora,” was the innocent reply.

“Nonsense! I will give you five.”

Exclamations, deprecation, grieved reproach on the part of the young

woman. The wine was too good for that, she protested. It was the best

dry wine of the country, and sincere, as the Signora could see.

The Signora was not so new as they had supposed. She had bought better

wine in larger bottles, in Genzano, close to Rome, for seven cents a

bottle, and this was high at six. It was not, however, worth while to

multiply words about it, and they made a compromise by paying seven

_soldi_ a bottle, with which the young woman seemed to be perfectly well

satisfied.

Then they went out and mounted their donkeys, followed by the

reproachful eyes and extended hands of fourteen men and children, and

closely attended by the young hotel servant, who attached himself to

Bianca. Marion, having visited Monte Cassino thoroughly not long before,

had not accompanied them, being a little delicate, too, about joining

himself to a party without an invitation from the monastery, though he

would certainly have been included had his connection with the family

been known.

Bianca dropped her pocket-handkerchief, and the young volunteer esquire

rushed to pick it up and present it to her with a gallant touch of the

cap and a smile that displayed a fine set of teeth. She accepted it with

blushing thanks.

“My dear, he counts on half a _lira_ for that,” the Signora remarked.

“Don’t get any romantic ideas into your head. He would be as gallant as

that to a witch, if he thought she would pay him. You must really put on

a more severe expression. You have precisely the look at this moment of

some young princess of fairyland who goes about giving bags of gold to

everybody. If you keep on that sweet face, you will be as surrounded by

beggars as a lump of sugar with flies.”

“You are a terribly forbidding and obdurate woman,” Mr. Vane said,

looking into the Signora’s laughing face.

“I am sometimes,” she protested. “I pity one beggar, or two beggars, or

sometimes three beggars; but when I see a score of healthy cormorants

surround poor travellers, and ready for any pretence or any servility to

get money out of them, I lose patience. I’ve been victimized too much in

days that are gone to be very long-suffering now. Besides, I work for my

money and have a feeling of indignation when I see a strong, healthy

person stretch out a hand that has done me no service. Aren’t these

donkeys little darlings? I do think they are the most useful, faithful

creatures in the world.”

“If I could only know just where the backbone of mine is situated,”

Isabel said pathetically; for her saddle had been constantly slipping

either backward or forward ever since she mounted. “It really seems to

me that I could ride a rail more securely. There I go! Oh!”

The hotel-servant rushed enthusiastically to catch the back of her

saddle, and lift the rider from her nearly horizontal position, and help

her off while they tightened the girths.

“It’s a sort of knack which you will soon learn,” the Signora said

consolingly. “The poor little animals are as thin as a rail, but the

saddles are like a chair. Just let yourself go, humor the motion of the

donkey, and in a little while you will sit like—like Bianca there. Look

at that child! All she wants is an infant in her arms!”

They had passed the narrow and stony loops of the path out of the town,

and reached the mountain-side, and, as the Signora spoke, Bianca,

leading the procession, went round a turn before them and came back

higher up. She sat in the saddle as easily as if in a chair, upright,

her hands folded in her lap, and her fair face uplifted as she gazed at

the great pile of the monastery on the peak above them.

She needed, indeed, but an infant in her arms to be a ready picture of

the Holy Mother and Child in the Flight into Egypt. She had taken off

her hat and laid a large veil over her head. A blue mantle hung over her

shoulders and came close to her white neck. The beast she rode, the

saddle, the rocky path—all were perfect. She passed under a cypress-tree

that pressed her eyes down with its black shadow, and, in that downward

glance, caught their looks directed to her. She smiled, clasped her

hands, and glanced around in mute rapture.

To and fro, to and fro they wound up the height, every turn unwinding

and enlarging the scene below. The low hills of the plain disappeared,

leaving only a vast level laid out in an exquisite mosaic of varied

greens, with houses here and there, single or in clusters, forests that

had dwindled to groves, and groves that looked like bouquets. The

shining turns of a river lay amid that verdure, like a silver chain

dropped and half-hidden in the grass. All round the mountains circled

close and jealous, guarding this little paradise. Now they were skirted

with trees; now they rose in harsh masses of stone that looked as if not

even a blade of grass could find a foothold. A picturesque castle stood

on a spur sent off from the mountain they were ascending.

Above them the vast square of the monastery, with its many windows and

balconies, grew every moment nearer. After an hour’s ride trees shut

them into an avenue, and they found themselves close under the grand

walls of the building. They alighted at the lofty open archway and saw

before them a long, ascending passage that looked strong enough to

support even that pile on its solid arches. The first half was dim, and

part way up, at the right, was a shrine in the wall, with its floating

flame burning before some saintly face only half-visible behind the wire

screen. The upper half was lighted by arched windows at the left,

showing a double wall there, with some sort of room or passage between,

arched openings in the inner wall answering to the windows. At the upper

end of this avenue of stone shut the great black valves of a double iron

door, studded thickly with nails, pierced with a little cluster of holes

to peep through at one side, and showing the outline of a smaller door

in the right valve.

The massive walls and doors, the long, sloping ascent, the light and

shade, the one little golden flame, were like nothing of the nineteenth

century. The action and business of such a place were not the action and

business peculiar and suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical processions

might go up there; the scarlet fire of a cardinal’s robe in the midst of

a group of attendants would well befit that dim and echoing passage; a

cavalcade of knights and ladies, with horn and hound and nodding plumes;

a company of soldiers with shield and helmet—these were the figures to

animate such a scene. Or, most perfect picture of all, one might imagine

there that sublime company, the very thought of which brings tears to

the eyes—that long procession of ecclesiastics and people, with their

banners and crucifixes and candles, chanting funeral hymns as they

ascended, bearing up to the mountain-top for burial the twin saint of

the glorious founder and father of the monastery—Santa Scholastica. It

is but yesterday, it seems, that the brother and sister parted, having

their last conference together under a little roof down the

mountain-side, while the tempest stormed about them. It is but this

morning that St. Benedict has sent his monks down to bring the holy

relics up and lay them in his own tomb under the grand altar, where soon

he will join her. So the colossal saints of all time know how to

recognize the grandeur of a true woman. These men are so near the most

sublime and regal of creatures—the awful, immaculate Virgin—and the very

type of penitents—the thrice-purified Magdalen—that the shining veil of

the one and the sacred tears of the other flow about their sisters, and

woman is honored in whatever work her Creator calls her to do. It was in

the times, still illuminated by the twilight of the scarcely-departed

presence of the Morning Star and the Son, that St. Gregory the Great

ordered his mother’s portrait painted with the mitre of a doctor on her

head, and one hand raised in benediction, while with the other she

taught her son from the sacred Book on her knees—the queenly St. Sylvia!

It was in such days that St. Chrysostom proclaimed that women may

participate, as well as men, in combats for the cause of God and the

church; that St. Melania, the younger, disputed so eloquently with the

Nestorians that she converted many and frightened the rest, showing

herself so powerful that Pelagius, who drew away priests and bishops,

strove, but in vain, to convert her into an assistant; the same Melania

who converted the persecutor, Volusianus, whom all the eloquence of St.

Augustine could not convert. It was in such days that saintly women

inspired the Fathers of the church to write, and that St. Gregory

conceived his Treatise on the Soul and on Resurrection while sitting at

his dying sister’s bedside and listening to her discourse on death, as

she consoled him for the death of St. Basil.

And not only such thoughts and recollections, dear to women, flowed in

as they went up the path that St. Scholastica had passed before them,

but other recollections, dear to scholars and precious to the church and

to civilization. Here was one of the citadels of learning in times when

barbarous invasions overran the land and threatened to extinguish every

spark of intellectual and spiritual wealth that the race of man had

accumulated. Here the monks, with a zeal kindled to passion, hoarded and

preserved the remains of their devastated treasures, and spent unwearied

days and nights in multiplying copies of writings that must not die.

Here, with the devotion of the bridegroom who brings the most precious

gems he can procure to deck his bride, or of parents who shower upon

their only child every gift in their power to bestow, genius the most

exquisite consecrated itself to the work of adorning the page of the

text of praise and prayer with such marvellous miniature beauty of form

and color as only the fairy pencil of Nature can rival.

Wrapt and exalted in such recollections, the Signora moved as one in a

dream, forgetting her companions entirely. It was only when the great

iron doors swung open before her, and she saw a tall gentleman in a

black robe hurrying forward, with his hand extended in cordial welcome

to Mr. Vane, that she came back to the nineteenth century, and made an

effort to salute in a sufficiently-composed manner the prior of Monte

Cassino, Father Boniface.

But it was a very beautiful nineteenth century that she recalled herself

to. They were within the monastery buildings, which completely

surrounded them in a massive square, broken in the middle at the left by

a long portico of white travertine supporting a superb terrace called

the _Loggia del Paradiso_, and at the right, in the centre, also, by the

grand stairs that go up to the higher level of the mountain peak, around

which the monastery is built. This _loggia_ and the grand stairs are at

the opposite sides of a court with a picturesque well in the centre, and

colossal statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The paved court is

between two others, which are turned into gardens, the three separated

by double colonnades and surrounded by porticos. At the head of the

stairs, which are the whole width of the court, another portico opens

into the upper court—that of the church—and has a door at either side

leading back to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. The church court, also

surrounded by porticos and adorned with statues, is closed on one side

by the church. This is built on the very mountain-top, the confession

being hewn out of the solid rock.

This plan they caught at first, though but in a glance; for, after

welcoming them all, the prior conducted them through two or three

dimly-lighted rooms, all of stone, unfurnished and unadorned, into a

bright parlor, where a balcony window gave them a view of all the

beautiful valley with its surrounding mountains. In a few minutes dinner

was announced as prepared in the next chamber, and here they found a

table laid out with the freshest of linen, old silver as white almost as

the cloth, and a well-cooked and well-served dinner.

Weakening their wine before drinking it, they all observed the quality

of the water, limpid and light as some third element half-water and

half-air, and the prior explained to them that the monastery used

rain-water filtered.

“We have a great cistern, ninety feet square, hollowed out in the

mountain under the central court. The well you saw there is in the

centre of it. The water is thoroughly filtered. Moreover, the conduits

that admit it to the cistern are closed during the four hot months, so

that only cold water enters.”

This prior, the “urbane librarian” of Longfellow’s recollections of

Monte Cassino, was not only a kind and generous host and an intelligent

_cicerone_, but a most agreeable and interesting man. He had a noble

figure and a handsome, bright face, and combined in his character

qualities which might have been thought to be inharmonious; for he was

at the same time an enthusiastic monk, proud of his venerable order, and

devoted heart and soul to his monastery, and a man quite up to the times

in all that the times have of praise-worthy.

After dinner he led them up to see the church, pointing out the statues

as they went. Here were the father and mother of St. Benedict, and with

them popes, royal dukes, kings, and emperors. Before entering they

paused to look at the great door of bronze, cast in Constantinople, in

which is written in silver letters the list of the possessions of the

abbey at the time the door was made, in 1066. At this time, more than

eight hundred years later, nothing was left of these riches.

Entering the church, they stood astonished. If it had been built of

simple marble, moderately varied and ornamented, there would still have

been enough to praise warmly in the beautiful form and proportions of

the three naves, the grand altar by Michael Angelo, the raised tribune,

and the beautiful paintings of the dome, roof, and eight chapels. But

these were only the frame-work of a mosaic the most splendid covering

every part of the edifice to the dimmest corner or the smallest nook

behind a column. And this mosaic is not that comparatively simpler kind,

made of small bits, but each flower and figure is cut from a single

piece of marble or precious stone, and so perfectly fitted into the

groundwork that the point of a pin could not be introduced between them.

It was hard at first to believe that the whole was not exquisitely

painted in every possible color and shade, and it needed a touch or a

near sight of that fine, inimitable gloss of marble to convince one of

the incalculable riches of the whole. The very floor was superb enough

for the walls of a splendid church; the very steps of the tribune were

set with mosaics.

The Signora took pencil and paper, and attempted to make a memorandum of

only one chapel, to enumerate its alabaster columns, its flowers of

mother-of-pearl, amethyst, agate, and lapis-lazuli, its

infinitely-varied marbles and precious stones and its infinitely varied

designs, and, after ten minutes’ rapid work, gave up the task. A week

would have been necessary for that one chapel; and there were seven

more, besides the altar, the confession, and the tribune.

“You like carved wood?” the prior asked, with a smile of anticipated

triumph, as they went up the tribune steps.

“Who does not?” the Signora exclaimed. “Carved wood and lace are two of

my passions. I have never stolen any lace, and I hope I never shall.

Wood-carving is fortunately usually in too heavy pieces to suggest the

possibility of being carried away in one’s pocket.”

“We must, however, first visit St. Benedict and Santa Scholastica,” said

their guide, too charitable, as well as too enthusiastic for beautiful

things, to be shocked at this little escapade.

Thirteen silver lamps burned before the screen at the back of the grand

altar, and under that screen reposed the bodies of the twin saints.

Above them, written in golden letters, was the inscription:

“Benedictum et Scholasticam

Uno in terris partu editos,

Una in Deum pietate cœlo Redetos,

Unis Hic Excipit Tumulus,

Mortalis depositi pro Aeternitate custos.”

Rising from their knees, they turned and faced the choir—a double row of

stalls forming three sides of a large square open to the altar. Looked

at from a little distance, these stalls had the appearance of having

been closely overgrown at some past time with the finest of vines, which

had turned black and petrified there, preserving perfectly every little

leaf and tendril, and still covering entirely the plain wood beneath.

Looking longer, one saw little figures and faces, and birds and animals.

Going nearer scarcely dispelled the illusion, so finely was every

particle carved—the vines and leaves in some places quite separated from

the ground, so that one slipped the finger-tip behind them. Every stall

was different, every one provoked a new exclamation of admiring wonder.

Then they went into the sacristy, a long hall with the sides completely

lined with presses of dark wood with gilded metal ornaments. These

presses also were carved finely, each department, in front of which a

priest would vest himself for Mass, having a bas-relief of a subject

suggesting some particular virtue, as that of the Pharisee and the

publican in the Temple, suggesting humility.

Back of the sacristy was the relic-chamber, where, in addition to the

more sacred treasures, the ladies admired especially two little antique

caskets, one of smalt, bright as a jewel, the other of carved ivory of

the most delicious tint of creamy white—that tint so soft that it seems

as if the material itself must yield like down to the touch. They gave

one glance at a crosier by Benvenuto Cellini, on the inner curve of

which stood a tiny group, then tore themselves away. The afternoon was

waning, and there was left them but a day and a half more, with

“Such rooms to explore,

Such alcoves to importune.”

The air of this place was an ideal atmosphere; one breathed it like a

fine wine that exhilarates delicately, but does not inebriate. It was

soft but not warm, fresh but not chilly, and as pure as pure can be. The

fresh, rosy faces of the troop of young students they met going out

showed how this mountain air agreed with them.

“What a place to send boys to!” Mr. Vane exclaimed. “It is a little

world in itself, where they can have every amusement and companionship,

as well as instruction; and one has but to look at them to see that they

are as happy as they are healthy.”

The boys were coming in from their afternoon walk down the

mountain-side, and all glowing with just-subsiding fun. Each one,

passing the prior, caught at his hand to kiss it; but as he would not

permit himself to receive such an homage, they resorted to the amusing

substitute of kissing their own hands after they had touched his.

“What beautiful recollections of their school-days those boys will carry

with them through their lives!” Mr. Vane remarked, as they went out over

the colonnade to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. “In no way, it seems to me,

except by being educated here, unless one spend one’s life here, could

one become perfectly familiar with the riches, visible and invisible, of

the place; and such a familiarity would be of itself an education,

especially for the impressible minds of the young.”

The front of the _Paradiso_ fills the gap in the middle of one side of

the monastery—that part opposite the church—and is on a level with the

church, or the second story of the monastery. It is probably the same

width as the church. Leaning on the parapet there, one looks off on a

view which may well give the place its name—the beautiful plain and the

beautiful circling mountains, with the still, blue splendor of the

southern sky gazing down upon them as if enamored of their beauty. There

was no need of imagination in such a place. Simple, literal eyes were

enough to flood the soul with beauty.

Familiar as he was with the scene, the prior was sympathetic enough to

say but little; and even Isabel, whose impressions, being more

superficial, ran a good deal into words, hushed herself out of respect

for the others.

“Until we reach Rome again,” the Signora remarked to her friends as they

went down the stairs to the great court, “I should like to be excused

from all social intercourse, except the mere being with you bodily. I

don’t want to speak or be spoken to, except to learn of this place. We

have no right to talk; we are ghosts. We have come here in a dream or a

vision. Father Boniface talks, of course, because he is a part of the

place.”

They laughed and agreed.

“But I hope,” the prior said, “that you are not too ghostly to taste the

water they are just drawing up now. See how it sparkles!”

Two columns support a cross-piece over this beautiful well, and from the

centre drops an iron chain with a copper bucket at each end. When one

goes down the other comes up, dripping full of airy water.

They all drank silently—each, probably, to some friend, absent or

present. Bianca blushed as she drank, and her pretty mouth seemed to

kiss the water. Then, standing on the upper step of the well, they

leaned over the stone curb and looked down to where, far below, the

surface of the water shone like a huge black diamond set in a gray

border.

Tired out with travel and with pleasure, the ladies were not sorry when

the prior proposed that they should go down to the house where they were

to sleep.

This house is the only building on the mountain except the monastery,

and is under the control of the monastery. It was built merely to

accommodate lady relatives of the students who might wish to see their

sons, or brothers, or nephews without the fatigue of coming up and going

down the mountain the same day, and without suffering the embarrassment

of spending the whole day in a house inhabited and served only by men.

Now and then some benefactress or a friend of the superiors of the

monastery has the privilege of stopping there. The house is small and

plain, and kept by a _contadine_ and his wife. The ladies stopping there

have their coffee in the house, but they dine always in a private

dining-room at the monastery, from whence, also, their supper is sent

down to them in the evening—supper being after Ave Maria, when the gates

are closed.

Mr. Vane stayed with the prior, and the three ladies followed their

guide. Their way led them a five minutes’ walk back as they had come up,

then turned through an open gate in the stone wall at the right, where

they found their lodgings. A _contadina_ with dark cloth draperies

pinned smoothly about her, and a huge white edifice of starched linen on

her head, overshadowing a pair of bright eyes, met them at the gate and

welcomed them with a pleasant voice, but in a tongue where the soft

Roman consonants seemed to have each and every one turned itself into

the hardest kind of a Z.

The windows looked out on a long terrace with a parapet, and outside the

parapet the mountain dropped steeply to the plain.

A stair, which belonged entirely to the strangers’ house, led up to the

second floor, and here they found three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting

them. An hour later, as they sat at their windows looking out into the

twilight, they saw their _donna_, Catarina, come into the terrace with a

huge basket on her arm. Her head-dress and sleeves shone white in the

light of the rising moon, and there was a soft richness where the

scarlet stripe ran round her petticoat, and where the rainbow colors of

the apron-like upper mantle bound her without a fold. Her solid step

sounded on the stair the next minute, there was the spurt of a match in

the outer room of the suite, and, looking through the open doors, they

saw the woman, more like a picture than any picture they recollected to

have seen, standing with a curious brass lamp in her hand, carefully

lighting its wick, the basket she had brought sitting on the floor at

her feet.

She came into the Signora’s room with that red light all over her from

the lamp she carried in her hand, smiled so as to show two rows of

snowy-white teeth, and, with a “_Buona sera_,” announced that their

supper had come and would be on the table in a few minutes.

The three went out into the dining-room to witness the preparations and

listen to the woman’s pleasant voice as she half-talked, half-sang an

account of her life and adventures there, her manner of speech being

that so common among the lower classes of Italy, especially at the

south—almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly soft and touching. The

peculiarity of this manner of speaking consists more, perhaps, in the

ending of the sentences than in their progress; for they never come down

to the definite tone that ends a period, but stop on some swinging note

a little higher up, it may be only half a tone above. It is the voice of

weeping, which never has a positive tone, as if the whole gamut were

washed over and blurred by tears.

Talking so, the woman brought out from her basket a linen cloth for the

table, next a pair of cruets with vinegar and oil, next a decanter of

white-wine, next an omelette made with herbs, after that a salad that

looked like sliced cucumbers, but was something else. Bread followed,

then the necessary dishes.

“I’m ashamed to confess that I am hungry,” Isabel said. “It is a

miserable coming down, but we won’t say anything about it.”

“My dear,” responded the Signora, “you are very ungrateful to say so.

Let us be just. Our bodies have brought our souls up to this beautiful

place, and carried them about from point to point of it, and kept as

quiet as possible about their own affairs. Now, if they are hungry, let

us feed them. Poor bodies! they have the worst of it. They are extremely

useful, and we sublime creatures are always turning up our noses at

them; they suffer, and we protest that we want to get rid of them, when,

in nine cases out of ten, we have wantonly caused their suffering. Can a

body take care of itself, or even know how it should be done? No; the

soul has to do it, and ought to do it in gratitude for house-rent, or

body-rent. Then, at last, the poor things have got to corrupt, and be

devoured by worms, and go to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings will

not be felt. It is also a satisfaction to know that this arrogant

spirit, which is for ever crowing over its poor companion, will have to

suffer consciously for it all and pay the uttermost farthing. You will

please to recollect, Miss Isabel Vane, that if ever you should have the

happiness of going to heaven, your body will go there too. Sometimes,”

she said, holding her hand up before the light, which shone through and

made a ruby of it,—“sometimes I think that my poor flesh has a

glimmering, a presentiment of the possibility of being one day

glorified.”

“Most worshipful body,” said Isabel to herself with great respect,

“would you like a piece of that omelette—a large piece, a half of it,

say, leaving the other half to those two? Yes? Well, you shall have it.”

And she proceeded with all possible dignity to help herself to a hundred

and eighty degrees of the circle of herbs and eggs before her.

The _donna_, who, of course, had not understood a word, looked with

astonishment at this shocking piece of voracity; and when Bianca, in

protection of her client, clasped her arms around the wine, and the

Signora, with an air of determination, took possession of the salad, the

poor creature evidently thought that she was waiting on a company of

maniacs.

“Do let’s laugh,” said the Signora, and at once set the example. “We are

frightening the poor soul to death.”

Their supper and their nonsense finished, the three took possession of

their rooms.

A full moonlight was filling all the valley, or plain, which looked like

the bottom of an emerald chalice full of golden wine. A pure and sacred

silence reigned over all—the silence of peace and lofty contemplation.

Had it been some such silence that suggested to Charlemagne, when,

almost eleven hundred years before, he came to venerate the relics of

St. Benedict, the beautiful thought of bestowing on the abbot, with all

the other singular privileges he gave him, that of being the sole

mediator between the emperor and the rebellious barons—the only person

by whose means they could make their peace? It was doubtless by virtue

of this ancient title that the prior had written “Pax” at the head of

his letter to Mr. Vane.

Yes, Charlemagne came up here ages ago, and popes, and princes, and

kings came, and the Saracens swarmed up with fire and sword, and the

Lombards and the Normans; and the Crusaders came to pray at the shrine

before going to the East. They had seen on the pilasters of the church

the different crosses in precious mosaic of the orders of knights which

had been formed under the Benedictine rule, among them the familiar

names of Calatrava, Alcantara, St. Stephen, St. James of the Sword, and

Templars. Ignatius of Loyola came up and stayed fifty days.

“But, _signora mia_,” said the lady who was going over all this part, as

she gazed out into the night, “since you are not going to stay here

fifty days, you will be so good as to shut your mind and your eyes and

go to sleep.”

The next morning they went to see the monastery proper, for which they

had a special permission from the Pope, and spent hours in the library,

archives, printing and lithograph rooms. It would be vain to tell what

old books—worth their weight in gold, printed on creamy vellum in

characters that modern type has never excelled, if it has equalled—what

drawers filled with scrolls, what autographs, what illuminations, they

saw. It were vain to fancy with what feelings one sees for the first

time the writing of Charlemagne, of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great, of

Frederick II., of Countess Matilda. Then there was the long, long

dormitory of the boys, with a row of snowy beds at either side, and the

immense arched window at the end framing a superb outside picture, with

Monte Cairo in the centre, and long, long corridors that dwindled people

seen from opposite ends, with cracks made by earthquakes in their walls,

and solid groined arches that only an earthquake could shake down. Then

the nooks, courts, and passages, which they came upon without guessing

in the least in what part of the building they were; the round window in

the wall—_occhio_, or eye, they call it—through which they looked as

through a lens, and saw the three courts and the colonnades. Finally,

coming down a stair with a wall at either side and a door at the foot,

they were told: “When you have crossed that threshold you cannot return.

The cloister ends there.”

“What!” exclaimed Isabel, “if I should run out a minute, couldn’t I come

back on to the stairs again for another minute?”

The prior shook his head. “It would be excommunication. That seems

unreasonable; but listen: This is a cloister which women can enter only

by special permission of the Pope. That permission is not lightly

granted, and is for but once. Your running back a minute would do no

harm in itself, but would do harm to the principle. If you can return in

one minute, you could come back in five, or ten, or half an hour, or an

hour, or a day, and so on; and so one visit might be made to cover an

indefinite time. The only way, you see, is to be strictly literal in

excluding from a second entrance.”

That afternoon they were presented to the Abbot—“Abbot of Abbots” he was

called in the palmy days of Monte Cassino—and received, not only his

benediction, but each a little souvenir of the place: a tiny photograph

of the tomb of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, with a wreath of

flowers pressed round it that had been on the tomb, and at the back his

own name written, with the date, and under it “Ora pro me.”

They stood in the church speaking with him a few minutes, then went out

to the _Paradiso_.

A storm was coming up from the east, and round the angle of the building

they could just see that the mountains in that direction were

obliterated and mists fast filling the plain. Standing up against these

mists, as if to impede their progress, was the lower end of a rainbow,

set straight and solid on the green like a jewelled column. The cloud

advanced and pushed the column before them.

“It is like the pillar of light leading the Israelites,” Isabel said.

The cloud unrolled itself above, and down through the rainbow ran a

crinkling line of white fire.

“How plainly lightning asserts its own force!” Mr. Vane remarked.

“Seeing it for the first time, without knowing what it was, one would

know at once that it is an irresistible power. What an experience it

would be to stand just near enough to a passing flash to perhaps hear it

hiss through the air, to be between it and its thunder, and yet not so

near nor so in its track as to be smitten!”

Little by little the sun was vanquished, and the rainbow grew dim,

faltered, blushed along the line of the advancing shadows, and

disappeared. There was an odd murmur growing up, fine and pervading—the

sound of rain in the plain below. All the tiny noises of each falling

drop joined in a multitude, countless nothings making themselves heard

in pauses of the thunder. It was to solid sound as fine carving is to

plain wood, as embroidery is to a fine web—a continued succession of

millions of infinitesimal watery strokes separated by millions of

infinitesimal silences.

The others went into the house at the first drop that splashed on the

_Paradiso_, but the Signora went back to the portico and seated herself

under its shelter. Behind her the court of the church looked weird and

strange. The pillars of the porticos appeared to move as the lightnings

came and went, the statues and busts behind them seemed to lean forward

and retreat, and the one window in the church front looked blue, as if

there were light inside it.

She took herself out of the draught, and went to lean on the wall

between the doors. In front of her the grand stairs went down to the

central court, and the gardens shone green and wet through the

colonnades at either side. On a level with her, across the space,

stretched the _Paradiso_, and under the portico that supported it a

large, arched door led from the court out on to a beautiful _loggia_.

Two or three monks, who had been standing in this _loggia_ watching the

storm, were driven in by the rain, and in a minute the whole place

seemed to be deserted. The rain and the lightning had it to themselves

and were washing and purifying all “so as by fire.”

This one visible witness felt her soul expand as she gazed. If only she

also might be purified and enlightened in that time and place! If the

littlenesses of life might be washed away from her, and only the

realities remain!

“Come, Holy Spirit!” she said, and blessed herself.

Then, content and confident, without saying another word, she waited

with her two inarticulate but eloquent companions—Art, consecrated to

God, and Nature, informed by God—and felt above and about the

illuminating Presence. For faith is the rod that calls the divine

Lightning down, whether it came as a dove, or a tongue of fire, or a

pointing finger, or a whispering voice.

The landscape of the plain, seen through the arched door under the

_Paradiso_, was dim and gray with rain, or glittering and red with

lightning; the mountain-tops above it, and the sky, were a changing

tumult of shadows veined with threads of fire, and rolled hither and

thither in visible thunders. The white pavement of the court below

changed every instant into jaspers, the beautiful columns and curb and

steps of the well became jewels, and one of the copper buckets that

stood on the brink was like a vessel of red gold brimming over with red

wine.

St. Benedict with his crosier, and St. Scholastica with her dove, stood

immovable but living, and their calmness in that tumult was like a song

of triumph. Did he sing with Moses?—“_Thou shalt bring them in, and

plant them in the mountain of thy inheritance, in thy most firm

habitation which thou hast made, O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which

thy hands have established._” And did she reply, like Miriam with her

timbrel?—“_Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified, the

horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea._” Such silence in a

tumult seems ever a singing.

When the Signora went down, slipping from colonnade to colonnade,

dry-shod, the storm was spent. From the little balcony of the parlor,

where she found her companions, she saw a grand arch of rainbow

trembling out over the east, as if astonished at its own glory,

trembling as it grew, but as strong and bold as light.

Flocks of birds were swinging by in a great circle, screaming impudently

as they passed the balcony, as if to say, “Catch us, if you can!” There

was a little parallelogram of garden under the window, with a rough pole

frame-work supporting a dripping vine, and, below the dropping fields, a

crest of land and rock, curling over like a pointed wave, rose boldly in

the foreground; then, the plain.

Mr. Vane came to stand beside her, looking at her keenly one instant,

then averting his eyes.

“Well,” he said, “what has the storm been saying to you up there?”

“It has washed the drift-wood out of my path, and made it as clear and

white as one of those torrent-beds up the mountain-side,” she answered.

“I think I ought to work a little harder for the future. Life is short,

and I have, perhaps, sometimes played with my talents. They were given

me for serious use. When you shall have left me alone, instead of

sitting weakly down and thinking that it is rather lonely, I shall begin

to carve a new book out of the next year. Do you know that year to come

looks to me as the block of marble looked to Michael Angelo when he

said, 'I will make an angel of it.’ I am not a Michael Angelo,” she

added, smiling; “but I am something, and, firmly and intelligently set

to work, I may do what need not be despised. My mind is clear.”

He was answered.

If a shade passed over his face, it was slight. If his lips were

compressed a moment, she did not look to see. He stood and watched the

rainbow grow and fade, and, as its colors went out, so faded out of his

life a sweet hope. But he reflected: “Denials make strong. And the light

that made the rainbow is not dead.”

“Yes, life is short,” he said presently, and half-turned away. “God

bless you!” he added and hastily left her.

The next morning they made their last visit to the monastery, and the

prior, after showing them the tower of St. Benedict and the fine

collection of pictures there, had some of the choir-books brought into

the parlor for them to see. There are fifty-seven in all of these great

volumes, bound in leather, with metal corners and knobs. These are all

in manuscript, beautiful black scores and lettering on white parchment.

Every capital letter is painted, every one different and every one

beautiful, and occasionally the page has a border, and in some cases a

picture in the corner, so exquisitely beautiful that one could never

tire of examining it—such leaves and flowers, and birds and figures and

arabesques, fine as the finest pencil and most delicate imagination

could make them, and so executed that one had to touch them to be sure

they are not in relief. One long, silver leaf slightly curled over to

show a golden lining; Bianca stretched her finger to touch, and drew it

back immediately, fearing to break.

Not a tint was faded of them all, though they had been in constant use

three hundred years. They are not used every day now, however.

One page was especially rich—the first page of the Christmas service.

The whole ground of this inside the border is a deep velvety crimson,

the score and text being of gold. On the border imagination had

exhausted itself, and in the left upper corner is a picture of the

Nativity, delicate and pure, with its cool, pale mountains of Syria, and

the heavenly faces of the Mother and Child.

“You should see that at the Midnight Mass of Christmas,” the prior said,

“with the light of all the candles shining on it as it lies open on the

desk. It is splendid then. I copied that picture in the corner of the

page to send the Pope on his great anniversary,” he added, “and it took

me a year.”

For the prior was an artist as well, and not only made exquisite copies

from these old manuscripts, but played the organ, and had the evening

before done the honors of their grand instrument for his visitors,

displaying its orchestra stops.

The hours slipped away, and regretfully at length they took leave of

this beautiful and sacred place, and the kind host who had made it so

pleasant for them. The donkeys stood ready at the gate, and they mounted

and went down into the world again. In the valley, before going to the

station, they stopped a minute and gazed back with a mute farewell to

Monte Cassino. The Signora thought, but did not say aloud: “I will lift

mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh help.”

The road they took through the plain to the station ran along the

river-side. This river—the Rapido—narrowed to a swift, yellow sluice

that one could toss a penny across, to be caught by the beggar at the

other side, did not look very imposing to American eyes, accustomed to

the grand crystalline floods of the New World; but every drop of it

moved to the tune of a memory, and farther on it meets the Carnello, and

the two, the ancient Vinius and Liri, join to make the Garigliano, the

river made famous by Bayard.

Then back to Rome, through crowding mountains at first. But, by dark,

the mountains began to draw back, the level widened, they passed the

city wall by the stars, and rolled into the _Città vecchia_.

“Now we must begin to look respectfully at the guide-book,” Mr. Vane

said the next morning. “We have been sipping the foam of the wine as it

came. We must drain the cup, if we can.”

There was nothing more to be said. Their story was finished, and the

remaining few weeks were but a study of what all travellers study in

Rome.

“I am laying up riches for my life,” Mr. Vane said to the Signora. “I

have learned of you to work, and I hope that the last of my life will be

more useful than the first has been. These memories that I am preparing

now will be the only recreation of my future and my only dream.”

He did not trouble her with sadness or importunities, but took his life

up with manly cheerfulness, and she honored him for it and liked him

better than ever. But never for an instant did she waver in her

decision. Her mind, once cleared, was cleared for ever. She would not

have married him, nor any other man, to have possessed the world.

One bright October day they left her. There was sadness and tears, but

no heart-break for any one. Marion’s tender sympathy threw a rainbow on

Bianca’s gentle sorrow, and Isabel clung to her father’s arm and dropped

her head on his shoulder, soothing and soothed.

“I shall never leave you, papa,” she whispered.

Did she suspect what he had missed?

The Signora watched the train roll away, then went back to her silent

house, wiping her eyes as she entered.

“What a pity it is that you will have to be alone now!” said Annunciata.

“Alone!” the Signora’s eyes flashed out through the tears. “I am not

alone. I never was alone in my life!”

She smiled as she shut herself into her room. “Alone? How little they

know!”

What, indeed, did they, who cannot live a day without their gossip,

without trying to fill their emptiness with the husks which make up by

far the greater part of the world’s talk, of the life of one whose mind

was as a fountain for ever overflowing, who had eyes in her finger-tips,

and who listened with every pore of her body? What knew the readers of

daily newspapers of the hoarded treasures of literature, ever ready with

eloquent voices? What knew the Christians of one communion in the year,

and one Mass when there was obligation, of long, delicious hours in

churches when there was no function to stare at, nor music to talk

through? The world has no such society as the cultivated mind can fill

its house with; and there are no receptions so splendid as those given

by the imagination. Bores never come, tattlers and enemies never are

admitted, late hours never weary, and the wine never inebriates. And,

better yet, those who are invited are always present and ready to stay.

How the possessors of such a society laugh at the “societies” of the

outer world, and how truly they can exclaim, “Alone? I never was alone

in my life!”

DOUBTS OF A CONTEMPORARY ON THE DESTINY OF MAN.

The New York _Sun_ gave us (March 25, 1877) a short but thoughtful and

substantial review of a little work lately published by Rev. Dr. Nisbet,

of Rock Island, Ill., on _The Resurrection of the Body_. The reviewer

very justly affirms that the author’s conclusions are anti-Scriptural,

and that his method of interpretation lays the way open to a general

disregard of dogmatic truth; for if the Bible, as the doctor contends,

does not really teach what the whole world has hitherto believed it to

teach concerning the resurrection of the flesh, it is plain that we can

never be sure that we understand the doctrine of the Bible, even when it

seems perfectly clear; and, if this be so, we can have no definite

knowledge of revealed truth. The critic makes some very pertinent

remarks on the baneful effects that such works as the one he criticises

are apt to produce; and, although he does not point out explicitly the

root of the evil, yet he gives us a clue to it by averring that any

interpretation of Scripture which conflicts with the universal and

traditional interpretation received in the church is calculated to shake

the very foundations of faith, and exposes every dogma to the attacks

and sneers of unbelievers. This is to say that the Protestant principle

of freely interpreting the Bible without regard to ecclesiastical

tradition leads to infidelity—a truth which is painfully confirmed by

daily experience, and which accounts for the sympathy of all the

anti-Christian sects with Protestantism; but which the writer in the

_Sun_—an excellent Protestant, we presume—could not very consistently

insist upon. Yet the whole tone of his article shows his sincerity. He

is evidently an intelligent scholar; and though he finds himself

somewhat entangled in the solution of some important questions, yet he

does not imitate the folly of such flippant scribblers as blaspheme what

they do not understand, but he shows forbearance and circumspection, a

wholesome reverence for religion, and an ardent love of truth, and

expresses an earnest desire to be taught how the resurrection of the

flesh and the immortality of the soul can be successfully established

and vindicated against the allegations of modern sceptics.

As we anticipate that Protestant divines will probably not take the

trouble to investigate the objections of the infidel school with which

they too often sympathize and of which they are the unconscious props

and promoters, we will consider the honest appeal of the writer as

addressed to Catholic thinkers; and we intend to do briefly what we can,

from our doctrinal point of view, to solve his difficulties and to set

at rest his doubts. The more so because, as he remarks, whoever can

furnish a way out of such difficulties will confer, by so doing, an

immense benefit upon a whole world of anxious but sincere doubters on

the subject of immortality.

“It cannot be denied,” says he, “that while the Christians generally

believe in some kind of continuance of human existence after death,

there is a great diversity of opinions among them in regard to its

nature and characteristics. The men of the primitive church were not

perplexed about the matter, as they were not about many others which

are actively debated among us.”

This introductory remark is exceedingly important. The primitive church

“was not perplexed” about the matter. Why? Apparently because the

faithful were in the habit of accepting the Gospel with humility and

simplicity as it was given to them by the apostles and by their

successors; because the Protestant method of interpreting Scripture

according to every one’s individual bias was not thought to be

consistent with the profession of Christianity; because the teachers of

the faith did not contradict one another, as our modern Protestant

preachers and writers are wont to do to the scandal and ruin of their

bewildered flocks. When we see that our Lord’s words, “This is my body,”

can be construed by Protestant divines as meaning “This is _not_ my

body,” we may form an idea of what must be the result of the Protestant

system of Scriptural interpretation. No one can be surprised that such a

system creates perplexity, fosters debate, and ends in discord and

ultimately in unbelief. But if there is “a great diversity of opinions”

among Protestants, such is not the case with us Catholics. We members of

the universal church are not perplexed about such matters. We still

believe with perfect unanimity as the primitive Christians believed; our

teachers teach all the same Gospel—the Gospel of Jesus Christ as

transmitted to us by legitimate channels, not the contradictory gospels

and the doctrinal crotchets of free-thinking divines. That is what makes

the difference.

The critic whose words suggested to us these passing remarks will not

fail to see that it is mainly to the rebellious spirit and presumption

of the Protestant reformers that the present age owes its theological

perplexities and the loss of religious unity. Would it not be better,

therefore, to give up at last the gospels of men, and return to the

Gospel of the primitive Christians?

“They believed,” as our critic points out, “that at the last day the

bodies of the dead would be raised to life, and that the faithful

would once more, in flesh and blood, inhabit their former abodes.

The most ancient versions of the Apostles’ Creed teach explicitly

the resurrection of the flesh, and the earliest Christian apologist,

Justin Martyr, writing only a hundred years after the death of

Christ, defends the doctrine by asking whether it be any more

difficult for God to create a body anew from its dust than for him

to create it the first time in its mother’s womb. And Mr. Nisbet

concedes that all the succeeding Fathers of the church maintain the

same view. Tertullian declares: 'The flesh shall rise again wholly

in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity.’

Irenæus agrees with him, and so do Jerome and Augustine.”

It would appear that these authorities, to which many more of the same

kind might be added, should leave no doubt in the mind of a Christian

about the legitimate interpretation of the dogma of resurrection. For,

when an article of faith is clearly expressed in the Gospel and has been

uniformly understood in all ages by the doctors of the universal church,

it is difficult to see how a man who makes profession of Christianity

can think himself authorized to twist it according to his individual

bias. Yet this is what Dr. Nisbet has had the courage to do.

“It is remarkable,” says the reviewer, “with what confidence Dr.

Nisbet overrides this primitive interpretation of Scripture and

declares it to be incorrect. He allows no weight whatever to the

obvious fact that men living so much nearer than he does to the days

when the New Testament was written, and with whom its very language

was still in colloquial use, would be more likely than he to

perceive its true meaning. He lays great stress upon the famous

passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 35-53),

which, he thinks, asserts the resurrection-body not to be of flesh

and blood. But he fails to perceive that all that Paul is contending

for is a finer and more glorious form of flesh and blood. Paul’s

language is: 'The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised

incorruptible, and we shall be changed’ (v. 52). This he further

explains in writing to the Thessalonians: 'We which are alive and

remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are

asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,

with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the

dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain

shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the

Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord’ (1 Thess.

iv. 15-17). It was the expectation of the apostolic church that the

Lord would come again in their time, agreeably to his prediction in

Matthew xxiv.: 'This generation shall not pass, till all these

things be fulfilled’; and in John v.: 'The hour is coming, and now

is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they

that hear shall live.’ They know that the Lord had raised Lazarus

and many others in their own flesh and blood, and had himself, after

his resurrection, offered his body to the touch of Thomas; and they

would have had to do violence to their own reasoning faculties had

they conceived of any different fulfilment of his promises. When,

therefore, Dr. Nisbet denounces, as he does, Mr. Talmage’s picture

of the final resurrection, with its general scramble of souls for

their old bodies, the flying of scattered limbs through the air, and

their reconstruction in their pristine integrity, he discredits what

has been for eighteen centuries the accepted faith of the Christian

Church.”

One would scarcely expect that the writer, after so judicious a

criticism, should hesitate to condemn Dr. Nisbet’s view; and yet he

seems afraid of passing too severe a judgment on it, as he immediately

adds: “Not that this proves him to be in the wrong, but only that, if he

is in the right, no dogma, however venerable, is safe from attack.”

The conception that a man who professes Christianity may not be in the

wrong while he throws discredit on the most venerable dogmas of

Christianity is a monstrosity not only in a religious but also in a

logical point of view. Unless the expressions of our critic can be

construed as a figure of speech conveying under a mild and civil form

the merited censure, every Christian reader will say that the critic

himself is in the wrong. A pagan, or a man absolutely ignorant of the

divine origin and glorious history of Christianity, might hesitate about

the right or wrong of tampering with our revealed dogmas, for he would

have to learn first how the fact of divine revelation has been

ascertained; but a man who has read the New Testament, who lives in a

Christian atmosphere, who knows the life, the miracles, the death, and

the resurrection of Christ, and who consequently cannot conceal from

himself the great fact of revelation—such a man, we say, astonishes us

when he assumes that a Christian doctor may not be in the wrong, though

he deal with revealed truth in such a loose manner as to expose every

dogma, however venerable, to the attacks of our modern pagans. But let

us proceed. To show how suicidal is Dr. Nisbet’s method of

interpretation the reviewer says:

“In fact, men more daring and less respectful than Dr. Nisbet have

employed his method of reasoning against the resurrection of what he

calls the grave-flesh to controvert the idea of any resurrection at

all. He assumes as unquestioned the proposition that human beings

must in some way survive the death of the body, and is only

solicitous to determine what that way is. But just as he shows the

irrationality of expecting that the cast-off flesh and blood which

served the soul for a tabernacle during life shall be taken up

again, so do sceptics undertake to show the irrationality of

expecting any kind of future existence whatever.”

The reviewer is perfectly right. If the teachers of Christianity are to

be free to twist the word of God as they please, why shall their

followers and other men be denied the same privilege? And what can be

the ultimate result of such a reckless meddling with truth but universal

unbelief? Faith must rest on unquestionable authority; when this latter

is shaken, faith is replaced by doubt, opinion, perplexity, despondency,

and all the vagaries of a weak, distracted reason. The present growth of

unbelief is therefore nothing but the logical development of the

Protestant method of free interpretation, which has engendered a

thousand conflicting opinions and thwarted all honest efforts of its

followers in the search after truth. The Catholic Church alone has a

remedy for this plague of religious scepticism, for she alone has the

power to teach with authority, as she alone has faithfully preserved in

its primitive entirety the sacred deposit of revealed truths.

And now the reviewer comes to the most important part of his article,

which consists of the objections urged by the modern unbelievers against

both resurrection and immortality. He says:

“Let us briefly state some of the various reasons which they adduce,

in the hope that Dr. Nisbet, or some other writer of ability, may be

led to meet and overthrow these reasons, and to furnish the world at

last with a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration of the

doctrine of immortality.”

It was after reading this passage that we resolved to write the present

article. Not that we consider ourselves “a man of ability”; but we are

in possession of truth, and are confident that we can vindicate it

successfully, though we may lack the ability of our opponents. Let us

proceed, therefore, without further observations, to the reviewer’s

arguments.

“In the first place,” he says, “those who deny that there is any

immortality of the individual human soul say it is contrary to all

the analogies of nature to suppose that the death of the body does

not end its individual being. Throughout creation, whenever any

organization is destroyed, it is destroyed for ever. A new

organization may arise similar to the old one, but it is not that

one. A crystal crushed into powder ceases to be a crystal. Its

particles may be dissolved and be crystallized anew; but they will

form another and not the same crystal. Every vegetable runs its

career from the seed to the mature plant, and, when resolved into

its elements, perishes as a plant. If those elements be made to

constitute a new plant, that plant begins its round as a new plant,

and not as the old one. In like manner, when animals die and their

bodies decay, they never reappear as the same animals. They may

furnish materials for new forms of mineral, vegetable, and animal

organisms, but these organisms are essentially new, and not the old

ones under the new forms. And, in the same way, these sceptics

contend, so far as our observation goes, human beings die once and

finally, other men are born and succeed them, but they are other men

and not the men who have died. Whether their dissolution took place

yesterday or thousands of years ago, it is alike, so far as our

ordinary experience goes, complete and irreparable.”

To answer this argument it suffices to point out that the resurrection

of the flesh and the immortality of the soul are two distinct truths, of

which the first is known to us by divine revelation only, the second by

revelation and by reason. To say that “throughout creation whenever any

organization is destroyed it is destroyed for ever,” is to say that we

find nothing in the order of nature that authorizes us to infer the

resurrection of our bodies. This, of course, is true; but what of it? No

one pretends that the future resurrection will be brought about by

natural causes acting in their natural manner and obeying natural laws.

Resurrection will be the work of the Omnipotent. We believe it, not

because it agrees with the analogies of nature, but because God himself,

infallible truth, has informed us that he will raise us from death

against all the analogies of nature. We concede, then, that whenever an

organization is destroyed, it is, in the natural course of things,

destroyed for ever; and consequently we concede that the course of

nature affords no proof of our resurrection. But the course of nature is

not the standard by which we have to judge of things supernatural. The

analogies of nature did not prevent the resurrection of Lazarus, of the

son of the widow, and of others of which we read in the Gospel and in

other Scriptural books; nor did Christ respect the analogies of nature

when he rose glorious from the tomb, as he had promised. Hence the

argument from the analogies of nature has no strength whatever against

the dogma of the resurrection.

Has it at least any weight against the immortality of the soul? On the

contrary, it proves that the soul is naturally immortal. For, though

nature can destroy the organic form, it has no power to destroy the

substances of which the organism consists. The organic compound is

destroyed, but all the components remain. If, then, no substance is ever

destroyed by nature, how can we fail to see that the human soul, which

is a substance, cannot naturally perish when the organism of the body is

destroyed? We may be told that the sceptic does not concede that our

soul is a substance; he rather believes that what we call _the soul_ is

a mere result of organic movements which must cease altogether when the

organs are destroyed. But we answer that, if the sceptic honestly

desires to be enlightened on this subject, he must not rely on the

assertions of ignorant or perverse scientists who profess to know

nothing but matter and force; he must read and meditate what has been

written on the subject by competent men. If he has sufficient ability to

understand their philosophical reasonings, he will come to the

conclusion that the substantiality of the human soul is a demonstrated

truth; if, on the contrary, he has too little stock of philosophy to be

able to follow such reasonings, then he has no right to be a sceptic,

and it becomes his duty humbly to recognize his incompetency, and to

accept without demonstration what more cultivated minds consider a

demonstrated truth. This last remark is very important. Scepticism and

unbelief are the offspring of pride. Men pretend to see the _why_ and

the _how_ of everything; but they often forget that they are born in

ignorance, and that, as their knowledge of material things is the fruit

of long and varied experience so, the knowledge of supersensible things

is the fruit of long and methodic study. He who has not studied

astronomy, may say very honestly that he does not know how to determine

the mass of the sun or the distance of the moon; but he cannot honestly

deny what astronomy teaches on the subject. To do this, to declare

himself sceptic, would be accounted folly. How, then, can those be

justified who, without having applied to philosophical studies, refuse

to accept the soundest conclusions of philosophy about the nature of the

soul? If they are at all anxious to know how to prove the substantiality

of the soul, let them apply to philosophy; and they will learn that

matter, owing to its inertia, cannot think, and that the organic

movements cannot be the thinking principle.

The writer in the _Sun_ answers the preceding objection in the following

manner:

“In answer to this it is usually alleged that, though the body of a

man dies and decays, his soul survives, and either, as Dr. Nisbet

maintains, continues its existence in a purer or more ethereal

world, or, as the Christian Church believes, retaining its

potentiality of life, will clothe itself again, at some future time,

with a bodily form and enter upon a new career.”

Let the writer take notice that, according to the doctrine of the

Christian Church, the soul, when separated from the body, retains not a

mere “potentiality of life,” but actual life and the exercise thereof.

The life of the soul does not depend on the organism of the body; its

spiritual operation has no need of organs; for reason and will are not

organic faculties, though in the present life they are associated with

the sensitive faculties which work through the organs. The potentiality

of life, in the language of philosophy, means the capability of

receiving life; and it is the organism, not the soul, that has such a

potentiality.

The writer continues:

“This idea of the distinction between soul and body is as old as the

history of the world. The ancient Greeks illustrated it by the

example of the butterfly emerging from the hard chrysalis and

winging its flight through the air. Like the butterfly, the soul of

man, they said, when it casts off its material envelope, soars aloft

in the enjoyment of a purer atmosphere. The symbol, and the argument

drawn from it, have been adopted by moderns, and they represent the

common opinion on the subject. The assertion is that the soul exists

within the body as a separate entity, and that when the body dies

the soul is merely set free.”

We wonder if any “argument” has ever been drawn from the example of the

butterfly to prove that the soul survives the collapse of the body.

Similitudes are simple illustrations of things, and they serve to help

the imagination, not to convince the intellect. Yet the author seems to

believe that the common opinion which holds the soul to be a substance

distinct from the body owes its demonstration partially to an “argument”

drawn from the butterfly; and he undertakes to show that such an

“argument” has no weight. He says:

“But those who maintain this view fail to note that the butterfly,

like the worm, is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of

matter; and, moreover, that the butterfly, when it has fulfilled its

function in the economy of creation, perishes and is never seen or

heard of more. If the soul is enveloped in the body as the butterfly

is in the worm, it should appear to sight when its covering is

removed. This notoriously does not happen, and therefore the

argument is unsatisfactory.”

Of course the “argument” would be unsatisfactory; and therefore it is

that philosophers do not use it. But the critic should not condemn the

similitude as wrong on the ground that “the butterfly is visible to the

eye and subject to the laws of matter,” whilst such is not the case with

the soul. Similitudes are used for illustrating something different from

them; hence they cannot agree in all points with the things illustrated.

When the visible is used as a symbol of the invisible, it is by no means

pretended that we can see the one as we see the other, or that there is

in the one every property of the other. A genius may be compared to an

eagle; but the eagle has feathers, a beak, and a tail, which the genius

has not. So the butterfly is visible to the eye, subject to the laws of

matter, and perishable; and in all this it differs vastly from the human

soul. But it is not on these points that the comparison is based. Hence

it is idle to argue from these points against the use of the comparison.

The writer concludes the preceding in these words:

“The argument from analogy, therefore, does but little towards

supporting a belief in the future existence of the soul either

separately or in connection with a restored body.”

We admit that the analogies of nature, as alleged by the writer, do very

little indeed towards proving a future resurrection; but we have seen

that the same analogies afford an irresistible proof of the natural

immortality of the human soul: _No power in nature can deprive a

substance of its being; the human soul is a substance; therefore no

natural power can deprive it of its being._ We have, then, in this

argument, a first demonstration of the natural immortality of the soul.

But let us follow the reviewer. He mentions four proofs adduced by

philosophers and divines in favor of the immortality of the soul—namely,

the reasonableness of immortality, the promises of Scripture, the

legendary stories of apparitions, and, in our time, the phenomena of

what is called spiritualism.

“Without in any way admitting the sceptic’s proposition,” he says,

“we must yet recognize the striking fact that in the construction of

the argument from reasonableness, or the _à priori_ demonstration of

the survival of the soul, our philosophers have not, so far, got one

step beyond the point arrived at by the old Greeks two thousand

years ago. No one has written more convincingly on the subject than

Plato in his _Phædo_, nor is there any more thorough and exhaustive

presentment of it extant than the one given by that diligent student

of Greek literature, Cicero, in his _Tusculan Disputations_. Plato

begins by appealing to the general belief of men in their

immortality, which is like appealing to the general belief in

fairies and witches as a proof of their existence. He then argues,

from the soul’s readiness in acquiring knowledge, that it must have

learned the same things in a previous state of existence; and hence,

as it existed before the body, it will exist after the body ceases

to be, which nowadays is not worth refuting. Next he says that the

soul, being uncompounded and invisible, is indissoluble, and

therefore immortal; but this is begging the question. Finally, he

argues that the soul is in itself life and the opposite of death,

and therefore cannot die; which is another _petitio principii_. In a

similar manner Cicero enumerates in favor of the soul’s immortality

the wide-spread conviction that it is immortal; the thirst for fame

which inspires heroic deeds, and which would be absurd if death were

the end of all existence; the volatile nature of the soul, which

preserves it from destruction; and its superior powers over those of

the body.”

We beg to remark that this passage is full of gratuitous assertions.

What the writer calls “a striking fact” is not a fact. Our philosophers,

as he himself proceeds to show, have added much to the reasonings of the

old Greek philosophers. How can it be true, then, that they have gone

“not one step beyond the point arrived at two thousand years ago”? And

if this were true, how could the writer disclaim any intention of

admitting “the sceptic’s proposition,” considering that the old proofs

of immortality are, in his opinion, quite unsatisfactory?

A second gratuitous and unwise assertion is that to appeal to the

general belief in immortality is “like appealing to the general belief

in fairies and witches as a proof of their existence.” To say nothing of

witches (for we need not enter into this controversy), it is not true

that belief in fairies is, or has been, general, except perhaps among

nursery children. But let this pass. There is a difference between

belief and belief. The belief of men in the immortality of the soul does

not originate in nursery tales, but in natural reason; nor is it a

belief extorted by imposition, but a conclusion of which thinking men

find sufficient evidence in their own nature. It is because the nature

is common that the belief in immortality is common. To question it is to

ignore the _sensus naturæ communis_, and to forfeit all claim to a fair

philosophical reputation.

A third assertion, equally gratuitous and manifestly false, is that we

cannot, without begging the question, infer the soul’s immortality from

its simplicity. It is not easy to understand how the writer could fall

into such a tangible error. The simplicity of the soul and its

spirituality are demonstrated independently of the question of

immortality. This being the case, it is plain that no begging of the

question is possible in arguing from the known spiritual simplicity of

the soul to its immortality. The writer might probably object that to

assume the simplicity and spirituality of the soul is to assume its

immortality. This is to say that to assume the premises is to assume the

conclusion. But, if the premises are only assumed after demonstration,

the conclusion which they involve will be based on demonstration and

will be demonstrated. And this is the case with the soul’s immortality.

If the simplicity and spirituality of the soul were assumed without

proof, the argument would be worthless; but, since both are established

by independent considerations, the conclusion is unquestionably valid.

The fourth gratuitous assertion consists in denouncing as a _petitio

principii_ the argument which says that the soul cannot die, “because it

is life in itself.” The words “the soul is life in itself” mean that the

life of the soul is not, like that of the body, borrowed from a distinct

vital principle, but constitutes the very being of the soul and is

involved in its essence. Hence, if the substance of the soul cannot be

blotted out of existence by natural agencies, the soul is naturally

immortal; for its very existence is life. And, since it is known and

admitted that natural agencies are wholly incompetent to cause any

created substance to vanish out of existence, the consequence is that

the soul, as Plato very justly remarks, cannot naturally lose its life.

To complete the demonstration, however, something more is needed. For,

although the preceding arguments show that the soul cannot be destroyed

by natural agencies, they do not prove that the Author of nature, who

has created it, will keep it in existence after its separation from the

body. In other terms, it is necessary to show that the soul is no less

extrinsically than intrinsically immortal. This the Greek philosophers,

owing to their pagan notion of Divinity, have been unable to do; but it

has been done by Christian philosophers, as our writer himself

recognizes. He says:

“One argument, indeed, is employed by Christians which the heathens

do not seem to have thought of—namely, the necessity of a future

existence to compensate men for their sufferings, and to punish them

for their misdeeds, in this world, and thus vindicate God’s mercy

and justice. Virtuous human beings, it is said, are more or less

unhappy in this life, while the wicked are happy; and therefore we

must suppose that so just and benevolent a being as God will reward

the one class and punish the other in a life to come.”

To this argument nothing can be objected. God cannot be more partial to

the wicked than to the good. Such a course would evidently conflict with

his sanctity, which necessarily loves all that is right, and necessarily

hates all that is wrong. Hence the prosperity of the wicked and the

trials of the good, though permitted by God for our present probation,

are not final, but must be reversed when the time of probation is

over—that is, at the end of the present life. A final triumph of virtue

and a final punishment of vice are therefore as certain to come after

this life as it is certain that God cannot forfeit his sanctity.

Nevertheless, the writer in the _Sun_ thinks that he can get rid of the

argument by remarking that, if it proved anything, it would prove top

much.

“As if God’s goodness,” he says, “does not much more require him to

reward the virtuous here, if it requires him to reward them at all,

and as if an uncertain future punishment, in a problematical state

of existence, would offset a present sin.”

But this reply is extremely futile; for how can it be proved that God’s

goodness requires him to reward the virtuous here? The assertion is

quite arbitrary, not to say absurd; for if God’s goodness does not

actually reward the virtuous here, it is evident that God’s goodness

does not require that they should have their reward here. Then the

writer seems to question the very necessity of reward and punishment;

but he gives no reason for his doubt, as in fact no reason could be

found for assuming that the moral law can be either observed without

profit or violated with impunity. If there be no retribution, right and

wrong are empty names, virtue becomes vice, and vice virtue. If no

happiness is to be expected after death, he is most reasonable and

virtuous who strives to satisfy all his passions, and he is most vicious

and unreasonable who renounces his present gratification for the sake of

morality. The sceptic, therefore, who denies a future life is

constrained logically to admit that all virtue is foolishness, and all

wisdom consists in self-indulgence and pleasure. The evident absurdity

of this conclusion shows the falsity of the opinion from which it

proceeds.

The writer imagines also that the future punishment is “uncertain,” and

that after death there is only a “problematical” state of existence. To

this we need not make a new answer, as we have seen that a future

retribution is absolutely certain and not at all problematic.

“It may still further be said,” adds our writer, “that when we turn

to the Scriptures, we do not find them by any means so clear and

positive in regard to the survival of the soul as people generally

suppose. The five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all

allusion to the subject. The Jews were told by the great lawgiver

nothing whatever concerning a life beyond the grave. They were

promised rewards in this world if they behaved well, and threatened

with punishments in this world if they behaved ill. Their whole

subsequent history illustrates this fundamental principle. When they

rebelled against Jehovah and worshipped other gods, they were

smitten with war, pestilence, famine, and captivity. When they were

obedient to him, they were blessed with peace and plenty, and

victory was granted them over their foes. In the prophetical

writings, full as they are of rebukes and warnings, there is no more

explicit teaching of a future life than in the Pentateuch; and, down

to the advent of Christ, the sect of Sadducees, who prided

themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers, stoutly

denied it.”

Let us make a few remarks on this argument. First, were we to concede

that Moses is absolutely silent about a future life, it would make no

difference as to the question of the soul’s immortality. For if we argue

with Christians, Moses’ silence is abundantly compensated for by other

inspired writers; and if we argue with unbelievers, we know that Moses

with them is no authority whether he speaks or remains silent.

Secondly, it is not true that “the five books of Moses are absolutely

destitute of all allusion to the subject.” We are not going to write a

dissertation on this Biblical question; it will suffice to point out a

few passages which would have no meaning apart from a belief in a future

life. We read in Genesis (xv. 1) that the Lord said to Abraham: “I am

thy protector, and thy reward exceedingly great.” Can these words have

any other meaning than “protector in the troubles of thy present life,

and reward exceedingly great after the end of the struggle”? Again we

read that Jacob at the approach of his death, while blessing his

children, exclaimed: “I will look for thy salvation, O Lord” (_ib._

xlix. 18)—that is, “though I shall soon die, yet my soul will not cease

to rejoice in the earnest expectation of the Redeemer who is to

come”—_Salutare tuum expectabo, Domine._ And the same patriarch, when

mourning for his son (Joseph), “would not receive comfort, but said: I

will go down to my son into hell, mourning” (_ib._ xxxvii. 35). He

therefore believed that his soul would survive its separation from the

body. It is not true, then, that the books of Moses are absolutely

destitute of all allusion to a future life. Nor is it lawful to argue

that, because the great lawgiver promised rewards and threatened

punishments of a temporal order, the eternal rewards and the eternal

punishments must have been unknown to the children of Israel; for we

must reflect that Moses’ menaces and promises were made to the nation or

the political body, not to individual persons, and that the political

body was not destined to last for ever; whence it follows that all the

promises and all the menaces addressed to the nation ought to refer

exclusively to the temporal order.

Thirdly, it is not true that the prophetical writings do not teach a

future life. We read in Daniel (xii. 2) that “many of those that sleep

in the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, and

others unto reproach.” These words are decisive. Death is but a sleep;

we shall awake to a new life, and this future life will last for ever.

“On the last day,” says Job, “I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall

be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God” (c.

xix.) David says: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations

that forget God. For the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the

patience of the poor shall not perish for ever” (Psalm ix.) “Thy dead

men,” says Isaias, “shall live, my slain shall rise again: awake, and

give praise, ye that dwell in the dust” (c. xxvi.) Ezechiel (c. xviii.)

intimates to the wicked that they shall die, while the just shall live;

where _living_ and _dying_ cannot refer to the course of natural events,

but must be interpreted as meaning salvation and damnation. David says

again: “But God will redeem my soul from the hand of hell, when he shall

receive me” (Psalm xlviii.) These passages, to which many others might

be added, suffice to show that our writer is not more accurate in

speaking of the prophetical writings than he is in speaking of the

Pentateuch.

Fourthly, he does not seem to know that the Sadducees, notwithstanding

their “priding themselves of their adherence to the faith of their

fathers,” were nothing but a heretical sect; they denied the

resurrection of the flesh, just as modern Protestants deny

transubstantiation; and it is as absurd to appeal to the Sadducees for

the right understanding of the Jewish faith as it would be to appeal to

our modern heretics for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.

The writer adds:

“The historical books, indeed, show that in later days the doctrine

gained admission into some Jewish minds, having most probably been

communicated to them from their Assyrian, Persian, and Babylonian

captors; but the form it took on was that of the resurrection of the

flesh, which, Dr. Nisbet says, was erroneously adopted by the

Christian Church. If, therefore, the Old Testament be silent on the

topic, and the New Testament, as interpreted by contemporary

critics, teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept, what is

there in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection

whatever?”

We have shown that the immortality of the soul was known to the Jews

from the time of the patriarchs. The Assyrians, the Persians, the

Babylonians, and the Egyptians were also acquainted with the same truth,

but they seem to have been altogether ignorant of a future resurrection,

and many of them thought that their souls were destined to transmigrate

from one body to another. These errors may have been communicated to

some Jews by their captors; as we know that the Sadducees denied the

resurrection, and most of the Pharisees believed in metempsychosis,

according to Josephus (_Antiquit._ l. xviii. c. 2). But if the captivity

of the Jews may have been the source of these errors, it has certainly

not been the origin of the belief in immortality and resurrection, which

pre-existed among the Jews long before their captivity.

As to the argument which the author draws from Dr. Nisbet’s view of

resurrection, we need hardly say that, if it may have some weight

against Dr. Nisbet, it can have none against the Christian doctrine. The

New Testament, “as interpreted by contemporary critics”—that is, by Dr.

Nisbet—“teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.” What then? Then,

concludes the writer, “there is nothing in the Bible to require a belief

in any resurrection whatever.” We are at a loss to understand the

logical connection of the consequence with the antecedent. Can we not

suppose that there is something in the Bible which requires a belief in

the resurrection of the flesh, and that Dr. Nisbet, whose infallibility

is far from being demonstrated, has failed to understand it? When a man

is bold enough to say that the Christian Church has “erroneously

adopted” a doctrine which has been preached by the apostles and believed

in without interruption for eighteen centuries by the Christian world,

there is little doubt that such a man is himself in error, and that his

assertions cannot be made the ground of any argumentation. On the other

hand, if Dr. Nisbet “contends for a resurrection in a form composed of

finer substances than flesh and blood,” he may indeed err theologically,

but we fail to see how he thereby “teaches a doctrine which reason

cannot accept.” In fact, reason is incompetent to decide what mode of

resurrection should be accepted and what rejected; it being evident that

in a question of this sort the province of reason is to submit to

revelation, and to accept the doctrine universally received by the

members of the church. If therefore the Old or the New Testament, or

both, as interpreted by the Fathers of the church, teach a doctrine

against which reason has nothing whatever to object, it is the duty of

every wise and reasonable man to accept the doctrine without the least

regard to the vagaries of “contemporary _Protestant_ critics.” Now, this

is the case with the doctrine of immortality and resurrection.

But our writer has more to say:

“Moreover, it is urged, if the survival of the soul is a fact at

all, it is a fact to-day as much as it ever was, and, like other

facts, susceptible of proof. There are departed souls enough now, if

there ever were any, to make it easy to demonstrate their existence.

If it be true, as so many multitudes believe, that when the body

dies the soul of the man, the woman, or the child who inhabited it

survives as a real man, woman, or child, with all that is requisite

to personal identity, why, ask the doubters, does it not in some way

manifest itself? From every home on this planet there go up daily

and hourly passionate demands for the return of loved ones whom

death has snatched away. Were they still in the flesh, no obstacle

would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection;

and the sceptic finds it inconceivable that if, as is said, they

hover about us in spirit form, they should not make their presence

felt in some undeniable way.”

It is perfectly true that the survival of the soul is, like other facts,

susceptible of proof. Yet not all facts are proved by the same kind of

proofs. There are, even in the natural sciences, facts which must be

proved by reasoning, owing to the impossibility of ascertaining them

directly by the experimental method. We must not expect, therefore, that

souls, which are spiritual and invisible, should, after departing from

their bodies, give sensible signs of their survival in a different

state. Nor do we need any such sensible proof of their survival; for we

have proofs of a higher order, by which we show that the human soul

cannot die. We therefore establish not only the fact of its survival,

but also the necessity of the fact. On the other hand, if a soul were to

appear before us, we might suspect the objective reality of the

apparition; at best we might simply conclude that such a soul has been

kept in existence; but we would have no ground for concluding that all

other human souls are likewise kept in existence, and that they must

remain in existence for ever. In fact, could not that soul be

annihilated some time after its apparition? Or could we logically

maintain that the survival of one soul suffices to prove the survival of

all other souls? It is therefore impossible to prove the immortality of

all human souls by means of individual apparitions; to establish it a

general principle is indispensable, and this principle is drawn from the

very essence of the soul and from the sanctity and justice of its

Creator.

But “why does not the soul in some way manifest itself”? This question

is very easily answered. The departed souls are either in heaven, or in

hell, or in purgatory. If in hell or in purgatory, they are there like

prisoners, and cannot freely roam about. If, on the contrary, they are

in heaven, they have none other than spiritual relations with this

world, except by special dispensation of divine Providence. And again,

why should departed souls manifest themselves in a sensible manner? To

convince us that the Scriptural doctrine of immortality is true? As if

our faith in the word of God were based on the testimony of our senses,

not on the authority and truthfulness of God himself. “Because thou hast

seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed,” said our Lord to his sceptical

disciple: “blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.”

Miracles, in the present order of Providence, are not the rule, but the

exception: hence the sensible manifestation of departed souls, as being

above the requirements of nature, is not to be made the test of their

survival.

“Were they still in the flesh,” we are told, “no obstacle would prevent

their hurrying to join the objects of their affection.” Certainly; for

if they were still in the flesh they would belong to this world; but,

since they are no more in the flesh, they now belong to the world of

spirits, which is invisible to our eyes of flesh, and from which they

cannot communicate with us in sensible forms without a special command

or permission of God. It is not true that they “hover about us in spirit

form”; this is a pagan conception. Nor is it true that the soul survives

“as a real man, woman, or child.” Souls have no sex, and man cannot be

without a body; hence no departed soul is either man, woman, or child:

it is a soul simply, and its “personal identity” consists in its being

the same soul which was in the body.

To the question, “Why do not souls manifest themselves in a sensible

way?” a second answer can be given by replying that many souls have thus

manifested themselves. This answer, good and legitimate as it is, is

ridiculed by sceptical critics, who, while constantly appealing to

facts, are invariably determined to spurn all facts contrary to their

theories. Our writer says:

“Equally inconclusive is the little we have of positive testimony on

the subject. It is true that in all ages there have been some who

have asserted the power of actually seeing and speaking with

departed souls, and the whole tribe of spirit-mediums pretend to it

now. As to what has happened in bygone times it is, of course,

impossible now to base any conclusion upon it. The circumstances

cannot be inquired into, and, moreover, one single witness coming

before us and submitting his testimony to our scrutiny is worth more

than a thousand who are out of our reach. The question is: Does

anybody at this day really have intercourse with the spirits of the

dead? The spirit-rappers and their followers say Yes, but the great

incredulous world, after hearing all they have to present in

confirmation of their assertions, still says No. There is so much

fraud and nonsense connected with the business that the scientific

mind rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena themselves are

clouded with a suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while there is a

wide divergence of opinion as to their interpretation, even granting

them to be honestly produced.”

We agree with the author that spiritists have no intercourse with the

spirits of the dead, and we add that no mortal has the power to call

back to this world a departed soul. This, we think, is certain both by

authority and philosophy. Hence, if any spirits are really made to

appear and to answer questions—which we know to be a fact, though not so

frequent as simpletons are apt to believe—those spirits are not the

souls of the departed, but the lying spirits of hell, who volunteer to

play nonsensical tricks for the amusement and the perversion of their

foolish consultors. But that departed souls have now and then appeared

to men in visible form is a fact established on indisputable historical

evidence. Do we not read in the Bible that the ghost of Samuel appeared

to Saul, rebuked his recklessness, and intimated to him the impending

defeat of his army and his own death? Nor can it be objected that the

ghost was a devil, for devils do not know the future actions of men; nor

can it be said that the apparition was a delusion, for the ghost was

seen by the witch before it was seen by Saul; and the whole narrative of

the sacred writer is so worded as to exclude the possibility of

explaining away the fact by such a loose interpretation. It will be

said, however, that “the scientific mind” rejects all such facts with

absolute contempt. To which we may reply that “the scientific mind” has

no right whatever to reject historical facts. Science is based on facts;

its duty is to account for them by a sufficient reason, not to deny them

when they transcend our comprehension. We know that there is a class of

modern scientists who contend that everything must be explained by the

properties of matter, and that no exception can be admitted in favor of

supernatural facts. But we do not see how this mental disposition can be

called “scientific.” If physicists refuse to acknowledge all the facts

which transcend the limits of their sphere, why could not the musician

reject all the phenomena which transcend his musical knowledge, or the

chemist ridicule all the astronomical calculations? It is evident that

every science must dwell within its proper limits, and therefore no

weight can be attached to the opinions of mere physicists when they

presume to decide questions entirely extraneous to their profession.

Thus the facts remain, and all attempts at discrediting them must be

accounted idle and unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead and buried, at the

voice of Christ revived. The fact was public and recognized by Christ’s

enemies. “The scientific mind” will not deny it. But then, we ask, how

could the soul of Lazarus retake possession of his body, if it had

ceased to exist? and what else was the rising of the body from its tomb

than a sensible manifestation of the soul returned to its primitive

office? We read in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in

ecclesiastical history of many dead recalled to life either by Christ or

by his disciples and followers. In all such facts souls have manifested

themselves. We might mention a great number of genuine apparitions well

known to all readers of the lives of saints; but as we have neither time

nor intention to enter into a critical discussion of the evidence by

which they are supported, we shall content ourselves with citing the

glorious apparitions of Lourdes, of La Salette, and of Marpingen, which,

as all the world knows, are unquestionable facts, accompanied and

followed by a continuous series of public miracles, to which “the

scientific mind” of modern thinkers has found nothing to object, though

it has been formally and repeatedly challenged to disprove them by its

pretended superior knowledge. Our Catholic readers know most of the

facts to which we allude; but it is probable that the writer to whom we

reply is not acquainted with them, and we would suggest to him to read

M. Lasserre’s book on the apparition of Lourdes, where he will find, we

trust, sufficient evidence concerning the reality and nature of the

facts just mentioned. But we repeat that a Christian and a philosopher

has no need of sensible manifestations to believe in the immortality of

the human soul. Reason and the Gospel afford such a strong evidence of

this truth that all further evidence may seem superfluous. When

unbelievers ask for apparitions or sensible manifestations, we may

answer them as Abraham answered the rich man: “If they hear not Moses

and the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the

dead” (Luke xvi. 31).

Our writer sums up his arguments as follows:

“The fact, then, seems to be—and we would earnestly press it upon

the attention of religious thinkers of every kind, and especially

upon theologians and clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to deal

with such subjects—the fact seems to be that analogy, reason,

revelation, and human testimony alike fail to establish the doctrine

that man can exist as a man without a material body. Books such as

that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to than remove the philosophical

difficulties of the subject so long as they leave the main question

untouched. Moreover, in explaining away the popular interpretation

of the Scriptures in regard to it, they tend to produce very much

the same results as have been produced by the efforts to reconcile

Genesis with geology. The conclusion that the Bible does not teach

science correctly has been followed by the conclusion that it does

not teach science at all; and so, if we agree with Dr. Nisbet that

what it says about the resurrection is not to be taken literally, we

shall be in great danger of rejecting its testimony altogether.”

This is to say that the Scriptures, in the Protestant system of free

interpretation, lose all authority, inasmuch as the word of man is

thereby substituted for the word of God. Thus far we agree with the

writer. But that religious thinkers, theologians, and clergymen should

undertake a new demonstration of the soul’s immortality and of the

resurrection of the flesh, we consider unnecessary. Theologians and

clergymen have done their duty on this point with such completeness as

to make all sceptics inexcusable. All that is wanted is that the

sceptics themselves undertake to study the works of such theologians and

philosophers as have answered the objections of the materialists of the

last century. Scepticism is ignorance. There is no remedy for it but

study—the study of that special branch of knowledge on which the

solution of any given question depends.

Our writer imagines that some “efforts” have been made “to reconcile

Genesis with geology.” This, however, is not the case. The truth is that

a class of scientists have made some “efforts” to turn geology against

Genesis, and that those efforts have been unsuccessful. A science which

denies to-day what it considered yesterday as demonstrated, and which is

apt to deny to-morrow what it teaches to-day, needs none of our

“efforts” to be reconciled with Genesis. When the facts of geology shall

be well known, and when the theories built on those facts shall be

logically correct, then we shall have no need of “reconciling” geology

with Genesis; for geology will teach us nothing in opposition to the

revealed origin of things.

As to the conclusion “that the Bible does not teach science correctly,”

or “that it teaches no science at all,” we will only remark that the

Biblical record of creation is a history of _facts_, not a treatise of

science. Hence the proposition that the Bible does not teach science

correctly has no meaning, whilst the proposition that the Bible teaches

no science at all is perfectly true, although the facts themselves which

it relates must be looked upon as the groundwork of geological science.

But our writer seems to take a different view of the subject. He says:

“Many believers in Christianity deny that the world was made in six

days, although the Bible says it was made in six days; deny that a

flood ever covered the tops of the mountains, that there ever were

witches and magicians, and that Joshua made the sun and the moon

stand still, although the Bible asserts all these things; why may

they not likewise safely deny as unscientific the dogma of a future

existence of all individual human beings? This is the dilemma into

which speculations like those of Dr. Nisbet bring us; and if he and

his school can furnish a way out of it, they will confer an immense

benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters upon

this great subject.”

Such is the end of the article we have been examining. We would tell the

writer that if there are believers in Christianity who deny anything

revealed by God in the Bible, such believers are not consistent with

themselves; for why should they believe in Christianity if they

disbelieve the Bible? If the word of God in the Old Testament does not

command their assent, why should the same word of God in the New

Testament cause them to believe? It is clear that, if they believed on

God’s authority, they could not reject anything based on that authority.

A belief of this sort is not divine faith, but human opinion; it is not

submission to God’s authority, but a denial of God’s authority in all

things which man chooses to disbelieve; and consequently such a belief

is not that faith “without which it is impossible to please God.” It is,

however, the faith of many advanced Protestants; and thus we are not

surprised that the writer considers such an irrational form of belief as

consistent with the mutilated form of “Christianity” with which he is

familiar. But we Catholics—we heirs of the apostolic doctrine

transmitted to us in an uninterrupted manner by the universal church—we

believe everything that has been revealed either in the Old or in the

New Testament. We do not question the fact that there have been witches

and magicians, nor do we see any reason for questioning it; we believe

in like manner what the Bible says about the Flood, the six days of

creation, Joshua’s great miracle, and everything else; by which we mean

that those facts which we read in the Bible, whether we have a true

appreciation of them or not, are all true, and that the difficulties we

may find in their explanation arise from our ignorance, which the modern

progress of science has done very little to dispel. Thus, while we are

free to choose among the various explanations of Biblical facts, we all

agree in believing the facts themselves. But, if this is true of those

passages of Scripture whose meaning is obscure, and whose interpretation

has not been settled by the authority of the church or by the

_consensus_ of the doctors, it is not true of those other passages whose

meaning is obvious and unmistakable, or whose interpretation has been

sanctioned by the unanimous decision of the universal church. Hence,

while we may freely discuss the six days of creation and the

astronomical result of Joshua’s dealings with the sun, we have no

reasonable ground for discussing or doubting “the dogma of a future

existence of all individual human souls.” To say that this dogma is

“unscientific” is to assume what neither has been nor can be proved;

unless, indeed, we call “unscientific” every truth which ranges above

the compass of experimental science; in which case even logic itself

would be utterly unscientific.

Whether Dr. Nisbet or his school can furnish a way out of the

difficulties complained of by our writer we do not know. It is probable,

however, that neither Dr. Nisbet nor any other doctor of the same school

can successfully combat the invading spirit of infidelity so long as

they do not give up their Protestant method of reasoning and their

Protestant profession. Protestantism is itself one kind of infidelity;

it cannot contribute in any way towards the restoration of sound

philosophical or theological ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord, and

inconsistency, thus paving the way for religious scepticism and its

concomitant evils. The history of Protestantism is sufficient evidence

of the fact. It is vain, therefore, to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his

school will “confer any benefit upon the whole world of anxious but

sincere doubters” by establishing either the immortality of the soul or

the resurrection of the flesh on impregnable proofs. Let, then, all

anxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic

books; let them hear the church—the old, calumniated church, the column

of truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs,

and the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason

with faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and

consistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest

liberty of judgment in regard to all other things. Yet we must warn

these “anxious but sincere doubters” that no benefit will accrue to

them, if they approach our divines or read our books with that spirit of

contention which is so common among all the Protestant sects. If they

are “anxious” to know the truth, they must not rely exclusively on the

strength of their reasoning powers, but must be ready to yield to

authority in all things connected with Christian faith. If they are

“sincere,” humility must be a part of their sincerity.

To conclude: We have met and answered the reasons alleged by the writer

in the _Sun_ against the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of

the flesh; and although we have scarcely developed the reflections

suggested by those reasons, yet we confidently believe that our brief

remarks will be found sufficient to set at rest the arguments of the

sceptic. As to the doctrine of immortality in particular, of which the

same writer desired “a solid and impregnable philosophical

demonstration,” we have shown that the human soul neither can be

destroyed by any created cause nor will be destroyed by God;

accordingly, the human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically immortal.

Our proofs have been few, but simple and intelligible; and we trust that

the writer who gave us occasion to speak of this subject, if he chances

to read these pages, will soon acquire the conviction that the doctrine

of immortality was really in no need of a new philosophical

demonstration.

SANNAZZARO.

One Sunday morning, while at Naples, we went to hear our Mass of

obligation in the church of the Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro

in honor of the divine Maternity of Mary, and called after his famous

poem, _De Partu Virginis_. It stands on the Mergellina, that _pezzo di

cielo caduto in terra_, as the Neapolitans say—“a fragment of heaven to

earth vouchsafed”—and certainly the most beautiful shore on which the

sun shines. It was this shore that inspired the ardent Stazio. Not far

off is the tomb of Virgil, and the place where Pollio lived, and the

grove where Silius Italicus conceived the idea of his _Punica_. Here,

too, Sannazzaro had a charming villa which tempted the very Muses to

descend from the mountain to dwell on the sandy shore, as Ariosto says:

“Alle Camene

Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.”

Here he wrote most of his poems and gathered around him all the wit and

talent of Naples on those _Dies geniales_, which were as famous at that

time as the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ of Christopher North at Edinburgh in our

younger days, though not quite so convivial, perhaps. This villa had

about it a certain perfume of antiquity of which we know nothing in

these times, and which we affect to despise. It was the natural

atmosphere of this Virgilian region, and it had an inspiration of its

own which must be taken into account in reading the works of Sannazzaro.

He has celebrated his villa in an ode worthy of Horace. He did not,

however, notwithstanding his classical tastes, dedicate his household

altar to Apollo, or even to Venus—he was too genuine a Christian for

that—but to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro, whom he reckoned among his

ancestors. When nearly done with life, he built a church on the spot, in

memory of that divine Birth which he had so sweetly sung, and attached

thereto a convent of Servite monks, to whom he gave the income of eight

thousand florins for the solemn celebration of Christmas and certain

expiatory services for himself, his ancestors, and King Frederick III.

of Naples. Here he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro, and ordered his

own tomb to be built.

We had repeatedly passed the Church del Parto without being able to find

it, so embedded is it among houses on the side of the cliff. And the

entrance is from a side terrace, to which you ascend by a flight of

steps, as to the court of a private dwelling. This terrace commands a

view that surpasses all the most vivid imagination could conceive. The

Castel del Ovo advances directly before you into the incomparable bay,

the waters of which, generally blue as the heavens, were at this early

hour all crimson and gold and amethyst, with great floods of silver

coming in from the sea. Behind them were islands, such as we see in

dreams, rising out of the magic waves: Capri, with its marvellous

grottos, clouded with the memory of Tiberius; Procida, with its fort on

the volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where the beautiful Vittoria Colonna,

beloved of Michael Angelo, retired to mourn her husband’s loss, and

beneath which the giant Typhœus, transfixed by a thunderbolt from

Jupiter, lies imprisoned, at long intervals groaning with pain, and

sending forth in his rage fearful eruptions of burning lava. On the

inner curve of the bay sits Naples like a queen, with her palaces, her

citadels, her white villas gleaming like jewels—her glance all flame,

and her heart all fire. Beyond rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone of

perfect symmetry, full of mystery and terror, its summit now flecked

with patches of snow, looking like great white flowers that bloom

“Around the crater’s burning lips,

Sweetening the very edge of doom.”

A light vapor, rather than smoke, issued from the top, no longer dark

and foreboding like the evil genius whose vase was unsealed, but of

soft, dove-like hues, as if some pacific herald. At its foot sleep fair

villages among peaceful olive-trees, wreathed with vines, and lulled

into forgetfulness by the gentle waves that caress the shore. Harmonious

tints blend earth and sky and sea, but they are constantly varying with

the rolling hours. There is nothing monotonous here, except the languid

air which wearily plays among the odorous trees without the force to

agitate their branches. Nature is here a genuine siren, half-earth,

half-sea, whose magic voice wooes many a wanderer still to forget his

native shore. We feel its charm as we survey the matchless landscape. An

electric fire comes over the soul—admiration, wonder, emotions no words

can express. Poetry is in the golden air, the bright waves, the

enchanting shores, the intense hues that color everything—yes, even in

the awful scars and lava streams that furnished the ancients with their

ideas of Tartarus, and made Virgil place his descent thereto near the

_tenebrosa palus_—the gloomy lake of Avernus, formed from the

overflowing of the Acheron—

“Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.”

The church bell awoke us from this delightful vision, and we entered the

open door. It is a small building whose walls within are tinged a

delicate sea-green, and have white mouldings, as if to harmonize with

the foam-crested waves of the bay without. The windows are mere

lunettes, high up in the arches, and below are five or six deep recesses

with altars and paintings. The white marble basin at the entrance, for

holy-water, looks like a flower on its tall, slender stem. On it is

graven a shield like a chess-board—perhaps the arms of some noble of

this _farniente_ land to whom life was a mere game. We were at once

struck by a singular crucifix on a kind of a tripod, under a canopy like

a penthouse. Near by stood the _Addolorata_—the Madonna of Many

Sorrows—in black like a nun, with wimple and veil, a stole embroidered

with gold, and a wheel of gilt arrows piercing the silver heart on her

breast. One poor dim lamp was burning before her. Opposite was a more

cheerful altar with the Virgin _del Parto_, the titular of the church,

gaily dressed after the Italian taste, and surrounded with lights and

flowers. These two Madonnas seemed to personify Bethlehem and

Calvary—the Alpha and Omega of the Christian mysteries—and between them

we knelt to hear Mass.

The church was nearly full of people in bright holiday attire, quite

absorbed in their devotions, and, though mostly of the lower classes,

so-called, they all responded in Latin to the litany at the close of the

service. Near by us, in the pavement, was a tomb-stone with the

bas-relief of a boy with a book under his head, another in his hand, and

one at his feet. This was a promising youth named Fabrizio Manlio, who

so loved the Mergellina that, when ill, he wished to be brought here to

die, and here be buried, as his touching epitaph relates. But that was

three hundred years ago, and the father who here records the tears he

shed long since rejoined his son, and now there is not a smile the less

at sunny Naples. Why lay aught too much to heart?

In a recess at the right is a noted painting, generally known at Naples

as the _Diavolo di Mergellina_. This is no new fiend, but the old

outcast from heaven vanquished by St. Michael, the great captain of the

heavenly host, a picture by Leonardo da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of the

Da Vinci school. The archangel, “severe in youthful beauty,” is girded

with a vest of heavenly azure, and from his shoulders spring broad wings

of many hues—green, yellow, and purple—with rays like long arrows of

gold. His right hand seemingly disdains to use its sword—“Satan’s dire

dread”—but holds it behind him, while with the left he thrusts his long

spear through the demon’s neck and nails him to the ground. His face is

perfectly passionless, as if not even so terrible a combat could ruffle

the serenity of his angelic nature. The _Diavolo_ is one of those

strange demons that entice souls down to the gulf of perdition, common

in the middle ages, with two faces, not Janus-wise, but with the second

face on the bowels, of most startling character. The fiend before us has

the beautiful face and bust of a woman, said to be the genuine portrait

of a lady who became passionately enamored of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of

Ariano, who lies buried at the foot of the altar beneath, with the

triumphant inscription: _Et fecit victoriam, halleluja!_ which may be

applied both to the bishop and the archangel. The round arms of this

fair demon are drawn up under her head. Her long, golden locks

“In masses bright

Fall like floating rays of light”

around her shoulders and half-veil her bosom. Her youthful face is

deadly pale, but not contracted, and her eyes are cold and vigilant. The

lower face, on the contrary, is old and convulsed, as if crying with

pain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like. The legs are like two scaly

serpents, twisted and writhing, and the bat-like wings shade off to a

lurid brown and yellow. The contrast in these two faces is very striking

and has a deep moral. It is a common proverb at Naples to compare too

tempting a project, or too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo di

Mergellina.

The high altar of the church is of inlaid marble. At the sides are

niches containing statues of SS. Jacobo and Nazzaro, the patrons of the

founder. On what is called the arch of triumph over the head of the nave

is an old painting of the Annunciation, the Virgin in one spandrel with

the dove on her hand, and the angel in the other with the lily stem.

Along the connecting arch is the distich from Sannazzaro:

“Virginitas Partus discordes tempore longo,

Virginia in gremio fœdera pacis habent.”[82]

Footnote 82:

Virginity and Maternity, long at variance, have made peace in the womb

of the Virgin.

In a neighboring recess is an Adoration of the Magi, which contends with

that of the Castello Nuovo as being the one given Sannazzaro by

Frederick of Aragon, painted by Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to be the

first oil-painting ever brought to Italy.