She shook her head.

“If I lay on it lovingly, as he did,” she said; “but I don’t—not always,

at least. I wriggle, and kick, and try to slip off it every now and

then.” And she heaved a deep sigh.

“You are not a saint,” I said; “of course you have your ups and downs,

but you would rather stay on the cross for any length of time than get

off it, if you could, against the will of God, would you not?”

“Oh! yes, that I would,” she answered impulsively.

“Then you are all right,” I said. “Never mind the wriggling and the

kicking; your heart is loyal to God, and that’s what he looks to. Set

about asking for Mademoiselle Gray’s conversion, and he will not refuse

it to you. Offer up all your sufferings for it from this time forth, and

I feel perfectly certain our Lord will grant it to you.”

“Well, I will try,” she said, in an accent of simplicity and earnestness

that sounded already like a guarantee of success; and then, looking at

her _Mater Dolorosa_, she added suddenly: “I will ask _her_ to get it!”

I had brought some fresh flowers, and was arranging them in a pretty

vase that Millicent had given her, when my eye fell upon a new book that

lay beside it. It was _Notre Dame de Lourdes_, which Sœur Lucie had

brought her the day before.

“I will get Mademoiselle Gray to read me some of it every morning,” said

Mme. Martin; “they say it is beautiful. Do you think she will mind

reading it?”

I thought not, and was delighted with the suggestion.

“I have a beautiful life of St. Francis de Sales which I will bring

you,” I said, “and you will ask her to read it to you when this is

finished. He was a charming saint, and had a great deal to do with

converting Protestants; ask him to help you.”

We consulted what other books it would be advisable to get, and what

snares were to be set in other ways for Millicent. Sœur Lucie was, of

course, to be actively established in the service, the orphans were to

be set to pray—nothing was to be left undone, in fact, for the capture

of the unsuspecting soul. Of course this was all very treacherous and

base, and we were no better than a pair of designing Jesuits—so our

Protestant friends will say, if they should happen to light on my little

story. I cannot help it if they think so.

We left Paris, my mother and I, and during the three months of our

absence Millicent devoted herself like a real Sister of Charity to the

service of our poor friend. The weather became intensely hot, but she

never let this deter her; she never missed a day. She was inexhaustible

in her devices for amusing and comforting the poor paralyzed invalid:

she made her bed, and dusted her room, and kept it fragrant with

flowers; she brought her little delicacies of every sort; she read to

her by the hour—for, though it had been understood that she was only to

devote from eleven to twelve to this visit of charity, she managed

generally to spend double that time there. All this kindness called out

passionate love and gratitude from Mme. Martin. She longed with the most

intense longing to requite it by drawing down a blessing upon Millicent;

she told me afterwards that the yearning to obtain the faith for her

grew to be a kind of thirst that never left her day or night. She

offered her sufferings—and they were manifold and terrible—her weary,

sleepless nights, her long days of feverish loneliness, every pain and

trial of soul and body, not once nor many times a day, but constantly,

for her dear benefactress’ conversion, till it became an _idée fixe_

that was never absent from her mind, and found vent continually in

interior aspirations or ejaculatory prayers; waking or sleeping, there

it was, a part of herself, something that never left her. If she lay

awake at night, restless and throbbing with pain, she comforted herself

with the thought that it was so much suffered for this dear object; she

fell asleep praying for it, and woke up to pray for it again.

We returned to Paris just as Mrs. Gray and Millicent were getting ready

to start for some watering place, from which they were to proceed to the

south and not return until the spring. Their departure was a real sorrow

to me. I had grown sincerely attached to Millicent, and she to me. I had

struggled at first to keep my feelings within the proper bounds, not to

let myself slip into bondage and so prepare the day of reckoning that

waits on all human affections; but the chains had coiled round me

unawares, and when it came to saying good-by I found myself hopelessly a

captive. We parted with full hearts and promises of mutual remembrance.

Millicent was afflicted with that common vice, hatred to letter-writing,

which so many of our friends make us suffer from, so we exchanged no

vows in this respect, I steadily refusing to write unless my letters

were answered. Our separation was therefore likely to be complete.

“You will pray for me, at all events?” she whispered as we embraced.

“Yes,” I said, “but on condition that you pray for me.”

Sybil went with me to the railway station to see the Grays off. She was

sorry to lose Millicent, but I could see at the same time that she was

glad to have her out of the way.

“I never expected to see Milly come so safely out of it!” she exclaimed

as we turned away, after watching the train puff out of the station. “I

could have staked my head on it that you would have made a Romanist of

her by this.”

“You would have lost your head, then, and, such as it is, you would be

worse off without it,” I answered crossly. “One really would imagine, to

hear you talk, Sybil, that the faith was a disease that people caught

like measles or the small-pox.”

“And so it is—that is—I don’t mean exactly that—but it certainly is

contagious; everybody says it is, and that there is nothing so dangerous

as living amongst good Catholics. I was terrified out of my life for

Milly; I told her so over and over again, and did my very best to

protect her. But I must say you have behaved very honorably, Lilly; I

suppose there is hardly a Roman Catholic you know who would have behaved

as well.”

“You mean to be complimentary, so I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,’”

I replied, while I could not but laugh at her impertinence. “Just tell

me one thing, Sybil,” I said: “You admit the right of private judgment,

don’t you?”

“Do I? Why, I admit nothing else!” screamed Sybil.

“Then if Protestants, in right of their private judgment, choose to

believe in the Catholic Church, what have you to say against it?”

“Only this: that in becoming Catholics they don’t exercise their private

judgment, they renounce it,” said Sybil.

“_After_ they become Catholics; but in the first instance? The act of

renunciation involves an exercise of the judgment, does it not?”

“Oh! if you are going to be metaphysical, I give in,” said Sybil; “I

hate and detest metaphysics!”

“Well, just answer me this much,” I pleaded: “Do you think Catholics are

all certain to be damned?”

“Good gracious! I don’t believe one of them will be damned. Not the good

ones, at any rate—not such as you, Lilly!” replied Sybil with

extraordinary vehemence.

“Then why, in the name of wonder, should you have such a horror of any

one becoming a Catholic?” I asked.

“Why? Why, because it’s a dreadful thing to ... change one’s religion,

and the Roman Catholic religion is full of superstitions, of mistakes of

all sorts.... But look! I declare that’s Mr. Halsted on the other side

of the street, and he sees us and is coming across!”

“In time to rescue you from metaphysics,” I said. “I hope he won’t stand

and speak to us; do you think he will?”

“I won’t let him; I’ll make him walk on at once with us,” said Sybil.

“O Sybil!” I cried, “you must not do that; mamma would be very angry if

I were seen walking with him alone.”

“What nonsense! You’re not alone; _I_'m here,” said Sybil.

“You don’t count,” I said; “you know you don’t.”

“Well, you talk of being complimentary,” protested Sybil, “but that

beats all _I_ ever said in the way of polite compliments.”

“You must dismiss him at once,” I said hurriedly, for he was close on us

now; “if you don’t, I’ll call a cab and go home alone.”

Mr. Halsted, serenely unconscious of being a cause of terror or

contention, approached, smiling, with his hat in the air. He rather

affected the extreme of French courtesy in his demeanor towards ladies;

which was a mistake, for his native American urbanity, frank and free

from grimace and palaver, was much more formidable, if he had but known

it. Strange to say, it had not occurred to me before that he was here on

invitation; but this fact flashed on me suddenly as I noticed Sybil’s

embarrassment. It was certainly hard on her to have to turn him away

after inviting him to meet her. I saw but one way to rescue her and

myself.

“I am so glad you have come; you will accompany Miss Segrave,” I said.

“I am rather tired, and shall be thankful now to drive home. Will you

kindly call a cab?”

There was a little pretence of protest, from Sybil, of offering that we

should both drive, but I overruled this and had my own way. I was glad

to be alone. I wanted to think about Millicent, to look back over the

short history of our intercourse, to look forward to its possible issue.

I felt disappointed. I had hoped to find her, if not a Catholic, at

least very near it, on my return; I had built so much on Mme. Martin’s

prayers, on the example of her patient piety, and the living triumph of

the faith which she presented. Then I began to reflect that after all I

was quite in the dark as to how far these hopes had been disappointed. I

had had scarcely any opportunity of judging. Millicent and I had not

been once entirely alone since my return, and it was impossible to enter

on the subject in a room where others were present. By the time I

reached home I had cheered up, and began to take a more hopeful view of

things. God works slowly, I said to myself; what are three months to his

eternal patience? Mme. Martin was full of hope, though, like myself, the

delay seemed long to her.

Her own day of trial was drawing to a close. I found her very much

weaker, and altogether more worn and exhausted than when I left. Her

soul, on the contrary, seemed to have risen to a higher and purer

region, and to be breathing the air from the heavenly hills; her spirit

of detachment, her love of the cross, had reached those heights where I

could only follow her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken admiration.

I had always felt a poor creature by the side of her, but I had felt

justified in offering her sometimes what little help I could, reminding

her of consolations and truths that temptation or overpowering physical

pain had momentarily obscured. From this time forth I never dared to do

so. Indeed, the opportunities which she herself had formerly furnished

for it never occurred. That folly of the cross which had been a source

of mild scandal to Millicent on the occasion of their first meeting had

come to be her normal state. She had chewed the bitter wood until it had

become sweet. The winter wore on and brought no change in her condition,

except the gradual, almost imperceptible decay of strength which

foretold the approaching close of the struggle. She continually asked

for news of Millicent; I was able to tell her that she was well and

happy. There were some American families at Cannes who wrote now and

then to the Segraves, and generally reported of mutual friends; but

Millicent herself perversely refrained from writing to me. I half

suspected that there was a motive in this. I said so to Mme. Martin, and

it consoled her greatly.

“Yes, it is very possible,” she remarked. “I often fancied Mademoiselle

Gray wished to speak more openly to me than she did; the life of St.

Francis of Sales evidently made a great impression on her. Sometimes,

when she was reading to me, she would stop and look up as if she were

going to ask a question, but, after hesitating a moment, she would go on

without saying anything.”

“You must pray harder than ever,” I said; “there is nothing else to be

done.”

“When I am in purgatory, please God, I will pray for her,” she replied.

“I hope you may go straight to heaven without going through purgatory at

all,” I said; “you have suffered so long and so patiently!”

But she shook her head, and answered, with a look of austere humility I

shall never forget:

“What are my sufferings compared to my sins—compared to the holiness of

God?”

“Do you long very much to see heaven—to know what it is like?” I said,

after we had been silent a while.

“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied. “I only long to see God.”

“Do you realize at all what the vision will be?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were

lifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was

indescribable. “I realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the

most wonderful peace stealing over me—a sense of safety, of rest, of

happiness. I can’t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss

of Paradise—_to see God_! That is what makes Paradise!”

She was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely

above a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed

attic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a

thrilling solemnity.

Presently I said: “You will remember me when you see God, will you not?

You will pray for me by my name?”

“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered, with a loving smile; “after my

mother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how

kind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all

back to you.”

“There is very little to pay,” I said; “it has been a privilege and a

delight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some

commissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.”

I gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray’s

conversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she

would execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there

straight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.

It was wonderful to see the calmness with which she lay there discussing

the prospects of the life beyond, the simplicity and childlike

fearlessness with which she watched the approach of death, while at the

same time her soul was filled with a sort of awful reverence at the

thought of appearing before God. It was impossible to witness it without

having one’s faith quickened.

Christmas came. The winter was unusually severe, and the intense cold,

from which it was impossible to protect her fully in her miserable room

close under the thin roof, brought terrible aggravation to Mme. Martin’s

sufferings. It interfered, too, with my daily visits; when the snow came

I was compelled to limit them to one or two a week. This was a privation

to both of us. I had grown not only deeply interested in her, but

sincerely attached to her, and she, on her side, had come to love me

with a love of sympathy as well as gratitude that was very precious. It

was like being in the companionship of a soul in purgatory; she seemed

so _loosened_ from this life, so lifted up, as if the nearness of God

were all but a visible reality to her. The more the shadow of death

closed round her, the more fully the light from the heavenly mount

seemed to shine upon her. My visit was the solitary break in her long

day—the only little breeze of human sympathy and comfort that came to

refresh her. I knew it was a great trial to her to be deprived of it;

she had often said the sound of my steps on the stairs was like a drink

to her when she was parched with thirst; sometimes she greeted me

playfully with the salutation, “_Bonjour, mon verre d’eau fraîche_!” But

she had now grown so strong in sacrifice that it was difficult to trace

the slightest symptom of regret in her. She would reproach me for coming

out in the severe weather, declaring that she would rather never see me

than have me take cold; that it was wrong of me to run such risks; and

that there was no necessity for it, because she wanted for nothing, her

mother came up twice a day to look after her, and so on.

One day she asked me if I had any news of Millicent. I had heard that

very morning from Sybil that she was figuring with great success in some

private theatricals at Mentone. But I did not like to tell Mme. Martin

this; I feared it might shock her, or at least jar painfully on her

present mood.

“She is very well,” I said. “You know she is very bad at writing

letters; I only hear of her through friends.”

“I was dreaming of her last night,” she answered musingly. “How I wish

she might become a Catholic before I die! It would be such a consolation

to me to hear of it!”

“You will hear of it in the next world, please God,” I said.

“You think souls know what goes on on earth?” she inquired.

“Of course they do!” I said. “How could there be joy in heaven for the

return of the sinner unless they heard of it?”

“Ah! yes, in heaven, to be sure; but I was thinking of purgatory. Do you

think they know there what happens here below?”

“I see no reason for not believing it,” I replied. “Many saints and

doctors have believed it; why should not our guardian angels carry

messages from us to the angels of holy souls, if not to themselves

direct, and tell them when we are helping and praying for them, and ask

their prayers for us in return? It is a belief that fits in perfectly

with the doctrine of the communion of saints.”

“It is a most consoling idea,” she said. “I shall be longing for a

message from your guardian angel to tell me I have obtained all your

requests.”

“Pray hard, then, that you may not have long to wait,” I said, kissing

her face, that was looking up at me with a smile. I smoothed her pillows

once more, and fussed about the bed and the room, with a pretence of

busily setting things to rights, but in reality to hide an emotion that

I could neither explain to myself nor master. I remember turning back,

as I was closing the door, to have a last look at her. She made a sign

with her head, and answered me with an affectionate smile.

On the stairs I met Sœur Lucie.

“She seems just the same, _ma sœur_,” I said. “How long do you think it

will last like this?”

“Oh! not very long now,” she replied. “This cold will soon bring it to

an end. She may be carried off at any moment.”

My heart gave a great thump against my side. I could not realize it, and

yet it had been borne in upon me that this was the last visit I should

pay her. The longing to kiss her once more, to say good-by with the full

consciousness that it was to be for the last time, was so strong that I

could not resist it. I turned back with Sœur Lucie, and went up again to

her room. She did not seem surprised—at least, she said nothing about my

reappearance. I waited a moment while Sœur Lucie questioned her, and

then kissed her and said good-by.

“_Au revoir_,” she said, “_au revoir_. I will not forget your

commissions; and mind you pray for me _always_.”

I was laid up with a violent attack of neuralgia for several days after

this. One afternoon, about four days after I had seen her, a messenger

came from Sœur Lucie to say that Mme. Martin was dying; she was to

receive the Viaticum and Extreme Unction in an hour, and had expressed a

wish that I might be present. The doctor was in the room when the

message was delivered. I entreated him to let me get up and go, if it

was possible.

“You will do as you wish,” he replied, “but you will do it against my

emphatic prohibition. I won’t answer for the consequences, if you

attempt it.”

Of course this settled the question. Had I been rash enough to try to

disobey him, my mother was there to prevent it. I was greatly

distressed. I had looked forward for so long to being with her at the

last, to receiving her last kind word of farewell, and helping her with

my love and my poor prayers through the great passage. My mother saw how

pained I was, and volunteered to go and take my place, and tell Mme.

Martin how grieved I was at being prevented. She just arrived as the

room was being made ready for the coming of the priest. The dying woman

had insisted on being taken out of bed and placed sitting up in a chair,

that she might receive our Lord more befittingly on this his last visit

to her; this was done accordingly with great difficulty and immense

suffering to herself. She insisted, too, on being washed, and dressed in

her best clothes, and, what struck me as still more characteristic at

such a moment, she entreated her mother to put on her Sunday clothes,

and to wear a cap which was only taken out on very great occasions. When

all was ready, and the three assistants sat praying in silence, Mme.

Martin signed to my mother that she wished to speak to her. “Give my

love and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,” she whispered, “and tell her I will not

forget her commissions.” Then, after a short silence, she said, as

quickly as she could gasp out the words: “He is coming! Make haste!

Light the candles!”

They did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the

silver bell was heard on the stairs. Sœur Lucie told me this incident

was not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they

announce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a

long way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual

faculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was

performed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest

gave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he

had finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.

About five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent,

informing me that she had become a Catholic. “It has been all so quickly

done; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the

church,” she said, “that I cannot help thinking some powerful

supernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I

had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning

Mohammedan—although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the

church by you and Mme. Martin—when one evening I went to act Racine’s

_Athalie_ at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the

people were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a

gentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was

a Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible

narrative and Racine’s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as

I had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking

very pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My

mother will be happy to see you, M. l’Abbé, if you would not object to

call upon a heretic!’ I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say

this. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He

replied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very

glad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics

only knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy

water! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I

saw him alone. I met him several times again, and—well, dear, before the

month was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me

that I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any

conscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead

of some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of

myself, and here I am safe in St. Peter’s net and happily landed in his

bark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has

invisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward,

silly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for

me?”

“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my

commission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!” I cried out to my

dead friend on reading Millicent’s letter. She has kept me waiting for

the other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.

You can imagine Sybil’s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall

certainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine

displeasure, there was a high note of satisfaction—the exultation of a

prophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was

a great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly

see she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other

hand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written;

I was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent’s

destiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed

from the beginning.

In the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and

Sybil sailed away to New York.

A few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high

excitement.

“Will you believe it!” she cried. “Mr. Halsted has taken his place in

the _Tiger_ and is going back with us!”

“Well, and why not?” I said. “You and he will have delightful

opportunities for discussing life on deck every day.”

Soon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they

had discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be

married to him in a month.

THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.

Among the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part

of New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy

Lake—called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks

abound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for

English and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what

specially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit

missionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in

the year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake of the Blessed

Sacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred

upon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake

George, after George I. of England.

May its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now

stands on the right shore—about a mile and a half from the head—a

building known as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,” from which, through the

summer months, a silvery bell rings out the _Angelus_ at morning, noon,

and evening. Strangers are informed that this building is “the

monastery”; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses

with all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross

upon the roof—for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable

“encroachment of popery” in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.

Among the curious who have ventured upon visiting “the monastery,” a

certain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and

looking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she

replied, in the accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives me a feeling as if

something was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the

Saviour so small! It’s the Saviour that ought to be big.” Now, this

sentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology.

To one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt;

but to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though

poorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our

friend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the

figures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her

remark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us,

in her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and

almost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated,

she would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and

not as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the

writer’s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but

that we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at

all; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially

iconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a

Madonna-and-Child.

Here are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially

iconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the

presence of a Madonna-and-Child.

The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged

in the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its

condemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical Council. It

sought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their

being idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the

Isaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and “manifesting

itself” (to borrow the words of Döllinger) “as a blind and senseless

hatred of the imitative arts,” we wonder that such a fanaticism could

gain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting

heresy which “shed more blood,” says the same writer, “than any which

had preceded it.”

Now, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous

heresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation;

for, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study,

that our mind had entertained, at some time or other—though not always

culpably, we trust—nearly every heresy ever known. But that

Protestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic

zeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.

We say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is _necessarily_

iconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name

implies—from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to

the rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a

soul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally

seeks to _image_ his ideas—to place them outside of himself in a

representative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters

of religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations

in all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were

peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most so the Greek (the _word_ “symbol”

is Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of

negations—which finds its vitality in protesting against

authority—cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has

nothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes

images, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive,

affirmative, dogmatic.

Again, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a

tradition of iconoclasm—the principle of a false supernaturalism. The

supernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our

nature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was

wanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with

grace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by “faith only”; the

righteousness of Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown over our

depravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an

immediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were

no better than ordinary mortals—possessing no merit of their own and

nothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.

Furthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of

the visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural

being evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the

natural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and

sacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a

visible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now,

images—representations of any kind—come under the sacramental system,

inasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to

commune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to

invoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to

us. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental

system.

But, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as

elements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the

subject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is _God made

visible_—God with a human soul and a _material_ body. Surely, then, to

maintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the

material is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the

Incarnation.

This unfamiliarity will become the more apparent when we shall have

considered an objection to what has been said on the iconoclastic

tendencies of Protestantism. We may not unreasonably be reminded that

Protestantism has passed through various important changes in the course

of its career, and especially within the last half-century; that the

doctrine of total depravity has long gone out of fashion and is

practically extinct; and, again, that Protestants do use symbols

now—such as the cross and the triangle—while some of them encourage

painted windows, and even images, in their churches. Very true. And the

change is not surprising—what with unnaturalness of doctrine on the one

hand and conflict of principle on the other. “_Naturam expellas furca,

tamen usque recurret_,” says Horace—“You may drive nature off with a

pitchfork, yet she will keep running back.” Then, as to principles,

logic, like murder, “will out.” The doctrines of the Reformation, though

negations of Catholic dogmas, took a positive aspect for themselves; and

the right of private judgment, which had made them, was only consistent

in destroying them. Within the last half-century—and particularly within

the last quarter—the principle of self-sufficiency has found its extreme

in the complete rejection of the supernatural. Its votaries who have not

reached that terminus are drifting thither, if unconsciously. And hence

a reaction, in favor of what are called “orthodoxy” and “churchmanship,”

is perceptible among all earnest Protestants who retain belief in

Christianity as something more than philanthropy, something with a

divine meaning. Not that they at all suspect (except those in the front

ranks of the movement—the Ritualists, who openly avow it) that they are

going back upon the Reformation. But they are. And as they advance they

take in ideas which are less and less compatible with genuine

Protestantism. One of these ideas is symbolism, the representation of

doctrines by signs or images—as the triangle signifies the Blessed

Trinity and the cross the Redemption.

Our argument, therefore, that Protestantism, _as such_, is necessarily

iconoclastic or hostile to images, holds good in spite of the fact that

modern Protestants are returning to the use of symbols. This return

means that they have abandoned the position taken by the Reformers, and

have set their faces—how little so ever they think so—Romeward and

homeward.

Here, then, comes in a very appropriate question. If Protestants are

gradually relinquishing their old iconoclastic spirit—if nowadays they

set up the cross to express their faith in the Atonement, and use the

triangle as an affirmation of their belief in the Trinity—where is their

symbol for the Incarnation? Of course they acknowledge the Incarnation.

They bracket it with the Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of

Christianity. Then why do they not equally symbolize it? Evidently,

their not even attempting to do so—their having no symbol for it—is

abundant proof of what has been just said, that, while they profess to

receive the doctrine, they are strangers to its meaning. They understand

by it merely the divinity of Christ, and beyond this keep it in the

background and give it no practical bearing. The Atonement is everything

with them; the Incarnation nothing. But Christianity is _the religion of

the Incarnation_. For call it, if you will, the religion of the cross,

that term does not designate it as a whole. The truth expressed by the

cross depends on the truth of the Incarnation; and so does every other

Christian dogma. Christianity, therefore, is either the religion of the

Incarnation or it is nothing. _As that_ it must stand or fall. And if we

would express it as a whole, we must symbolize the Incarnation. Now, the

crowning proof (were any needed) that the Incarnation, rightly

understood, has no place in Protestant theology lies in the fact that,

besides not attempting to symbolize the doctrine themselves, all

Protestants agree in a common aversion (not to say abomination) to the

only symbol possible, which is—the Madonna-and-Child.

And why is the Madonna-and-Child the only symbol of the Incarnation?

Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express

the truth that God is man, except by showing that he has a Mother? In

his divine nature he has no mother; then, if he has a mother, he is man.

Whence the creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or

that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that he was “_born of the

Virgin Mary_”; “_Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary_”—thus setting

forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of

Mary. That is, they show us Incarnate God as a Child in his Mother’s

arms; they _symbolize_ the Incarnation (a creed is called a “symbol”) by

the Madonna-and-Child.

* * * * *

Thus far, then, we have seen that the genius of Protestantism is hostile

to images in general, and to the Madonna-and-Child in particular,

because it is out of joint (so to speak) with the genius of the

Incarnation. We have here a very singular spectacle: a vast body of

professing Christians, who hold, with us, the doctrine of the

Incarnation, and have not formulated any heresy about it in their

“confessions of faith” (we are not including Unitarians among

Christians; for they have no more right to the name than Mohammedans); a

body of Christians who say with us that they “believe in Jesus Christ

... born of the Virgin Mary”; who keep “merry” Christmas, too, with

us—Christmas, the feast of the Madonna-and-Child—who yet, for all this,

instead of dwelling with delight on a representation of the Infant

Saviour in the arms of his Blessed Mother, invariably show that they are

not at home with it as a religious symbol.

Can it be that they are insensible to what is beautiful and touching?

No; their hearts are as human as ours. Any other mother and child by an

artist of moderate skill could scarcely fail to interest them. Moreover,

it is fashionable with cultivated Protestants to admire _this_ Mother

and Child where the question is one of art, not of religion. They

display a very creditable taste for the Madonnas of Raphael and other

great painters. Or if the association of religion add a charm, it is

nothing more to them than the glamour which invests a symbol of pagan

superstition. And in saying this we speak from experience. When, as a

school-boy, the writer became acquainted with the mythologies of Greece

and Rome, he found them full of poetry, and soon came to envy the

religion of those old pagans—a religion so much in contrast with the

aridity of his own. So, too, when, a year or two later, he first saw

Catholic worship (it was Benediction, of all lovely rites), he remarked

as he came away: “That religion is full of poetry.” “Yes,” was the

answer—“of pagan poetry.” And then he was told how all the “corruptions”

of Rome had been introduced from paganism; and, as an instance, the

Madonna was cited. “They call her the Mother of God,” said the informant

(a clergyman of the Church of England, who had learnt his lesson well).

“You remember Cybele, the 'mother of the gods’? Well, there’s their

Madonna—the Virgin Mary in place of the goddess Cybele.” He was told

this and other things of like nature, and so became imbued with the idea

that the Catholic religion was a paganized Christianity. Still, for this

very reason (as we are free to confess), it had a fascination for us;

and the greatest charm of all was its supposed goddess-worship.

At sixteen, again, our attraction to the Madonna was greatly increased

by some stanzas of Lord Byron, in which that most wonderful of poets,

inspired by the beauties of the Mediterranean twilight, and with some

famous painting in his mind, thus apostrophizes Our Lady:

“Ave Maria! Over land and sea,

That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!

“Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of love!

Ave Maria! _May our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!_

Ave Maria! O that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath th’ Almighty Dove!

What tho’ ’tis but a pictured image strike,

_That_ painting is no idol—’tis too like!

“Ave Maria! Blessed be the hour,

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft

Have felt that moment in its fullest power

Sink o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft!

As swung the deep bell in the distant tower,

And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft:

While not a breath crept thro’ the rosy air,

Yet all the forest leaves seem’d stirred with prayer!”

Perhaps, too, we were even more impressed by a single stanza in another

canto of the same poem, where, in his description of Norman Abbey (his

own Newstead), he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child which had been

standing amid the ruins:

“But in a higher niche—alone, but crown’d—

The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,

With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round:

Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil’d.

_She made the place beneath seem holy ground._

This may be superstition, weak or wild:

But ev’n the faintest relics of a shrine

Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.”

Lord Byron, it is true, was not a Protestant, but a deist. But this

makes it all the more evident how full of poetry the Catholic religion

is—and particularly in its worship of the Madonna—when it could so

attract a mind that rejected Christianity altogether. Other

non-Christian poets have proved the same thing, and none more so than

our own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow, whom, when we first read

“Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,” we supposed to be a Catholic. But

Protestant poets, too, and of various persuasions, have evinced a

sympathy with particular features of the Catholic religion as it appears

to those outside of it, and especially with the Madonna. These see an

_ideal_ in our Virgin-Mother. And none has expressed this higher view so

well as Wordsworth in his celebrated sonnet—to which, perhaps, we are

indebted for our own first glimpse of her as an ideal. It is one of his

_Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and comes among a series in which, as a true

poet, he is forced to lament the destructive work of the so-called

Reformation.

“Mother, whose virgin bosom was _uncrost

With the least shade of thought to sin allied:_

Woman above all women glorified—

_Our tainted nature’s solitary boast!_

Purer than foam on central ocean tost:

Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn

With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon,

Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast!

Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,

Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,

As to a visible Power, in which did blend

All that was mix’d and reconciled in thee

Of mother’s love with maiden purity—

Of high with low—celestial with terrene!”

Clearly, therefore, it is _not_ an obtuseness to the beautiful, or even

to the ideal, that alienates the Protestant mind from our symbol of the

Incarnation. No; the key to the puzzle is this: that the system of

Christianity known as Protestantism cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child

a symbol _of itself_—has nothing in it capable of being symbolized by

either Madonna or Child.

* * * * *

The Incarnation, once more, is God made visible. As such it must needs

create for itself a visible kingdom on earth: a kingdom over body as

well as over soul—a kingdom in the world of mind, and equally into the

world of sense and matter. The kingdom thus created will, of course, be

in harmony with that which created it—the Incarnation—and, therefore,

with the symbol of the Incarnation—the Madonna-and-Child; and so will

find in the Madonna-and-Child the symbol _of itself_—the mould upon

which it was cast.

Here, then, the reader will perceive what we mean by calling the

Madonna-and-Child a _test_-symbol. Whatever system of Christianity is

not at home with this symbol, or not entirely in harmony with it, is

thereby convicted of being false, as not the kingdom of the Incarnation.

So that, to demonstrate the true Christianity, out of all existing

systems calling themselves Christian, we have only to confront them with

the Madonna-and-Child.

Let us do this. And, first, we will call up all the Protestant

communions, and particularly the two most important and respectable—the

state church of England and her daughter in America; excluding on the

one hand whatever sects deny the divinity of Christ, and on the other

that party in the said Episcopalian churches which is working, more or

less consciously, to bring back “popery without the pope.” Neither of

these extremes is genuine Protestantism.

All classes of genuine Protestants, when confronted with the

Madonna-and-Child, acknowledge it, of course, the representation of an

historic fact in which they believe—the birth of Jesus Christ from the

Virgin Mary—but instinctively feel that it _means a great deal more_.

They principally object to the Madonna, as giving the Blessed Virgin too

much prominence. “We all know,” they argue, “that she is the Mother of

our Saviour; but, beyond this, what is she to _us_?” They are not

accustomed to speak of her, except when they mention her in the Creed;

or even to think of her, except when they pity or abuse their

“idolatrous” fellow-Christians. At the same time neither do they care to

see the Child, particularly in Mary’s arms or by her side. “He did not

remain a child all his life,” they say. “It was not as a child that he

came out in public to work miracles and preach the Gospel; it was not as

a child that he suffered and died. Then what is his childhood to _us_?”

In a word, our symbol of the Incarnation reminds them of nothing with

which they are familiar.

The secret is, they are not within the visible kingdom of the

Incarnation; they are outside the visible church. Each sect will call

itself a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians have something to show

for theirs, because, in its outward form, it is a fair imitation of a

real hierarchy. But when they say in the Creed, with us, “I believe in

the Holy Catholic Church,” they do not mean at all what we mean. To them

the Catholic Church of the Creed is the collective multitude of

omnigenous believers in Christ, instead of signifying a visible

institution divinely endowed to teach and govern, and standing to them

in the relation of a _mother_—carrying them in her arms and feeding them

at her breast. If they _did_ mean _this_ by the Catholic Church, they

would recognize at once in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of that church

with them in her arms, and would, so far, feel at home with the

Madonna-and-Child.

Neither, again, have they the Blessed Sacrament—that lovely “second

infancy” of Jesus—or they would joyfully acknowledge in the

Madonna-and-Child an image of the church with the Blessed Sacrament in

her keeping.

But especially would their attitude towards Our Lady be different from

what it is now. Believing in a visible church, they would not insist, as

now, on having nothing between themselves and Christ, who, by

instituting the church, chose to place an entire system between himself

and them. And, seeing the type of this church in Mary, they could not

vituperate our doctrine of the latter’s maternal mediation; not only

because of the church’s mediation, but also because Mary, as the type of

mother church, must needs be _Mother_ Mary.

Now, to the writer this is all the more clear because it is the history

of his conversion. Having come—and, thank God! not so late as it might

have been—to feel the necessity of a visible church as a mother and

guide, at whose feet we could sit child-like and learn from her “the

words of eternal life”—to hear whom would be to hear Christ; to go to

whom, to go to Christ—we gradually discovered that the Church of

England, in which we had been reared, and to whose ministry we were

looking forward, was no such mother and guide, nor ever could be. We

found that she did very well as a state church, a moral police, a “part

of the civil service”; but that her success in being _fashionable_ was

owing—_not_ to any _divine_ commission, _not_ to her speaking “as one

having authority,” _not_ to her teaching one definite body of

doctrine—but, on the contrary, to her being the creation of Parliament;

to her _disclaiming_ all authority to teach, except as a fallible human

witness; and to her leaving the utmost latitude for every variety and

_contradiction_ of opinion, so that her clergy were equally at liberty

to hold or deny such vital doctrines as baptismal regeneration, the Real

Presence, sacerdotal absolution, and apostolical succession. Added to

these doctrines—which we had come to believe from joining first the

moderate High-Church party, and then the extreme, or the Ritualists—was

a parallel attraction to the Blessed Virgin, whom we had discovered to

be truly the Mother of God. And the two ideas of a mother in the church

and a Mother in the Blessed Virgin rose together and grew together, till

we found them both realities in the kingdom of the Incarnation.

* * * * *

And now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting

us to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when

we take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of

Christianity—to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and enter that

sanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home

there, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from

establishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed

Christianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as

neither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and

therefore—virtually and logically—not Christianity at all.

The Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet.

There is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent

communions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?

While on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church.

Most Anglicans of the “High” school are—because they know very little

about her. (A case where “distance lends enchantment”—and a very hazy

distance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to

know about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her

worship of the Blessed Virgin is more “excessive” (to use their own

phrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess

that, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So

far, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least—unlike other

Anglicans, who protest especially against our “Marian system” (as they

call it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of

union with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church

was not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly

imbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was “Antichrist” and

the “Man of Sin,” that the influence of this monstrous superstition

haunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in

some shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist

was yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he.

Nevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a

usurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the

Latin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out

of communion with the other western churches. While under instruction

for reception into the church we read Mr. Allies’ _See of Peter_; and

our amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our

indignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with

such pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof

from the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.

Well, then, the Greek Church _is_ in harmony with our test-symbol to a

certain and considerable extent. In the first place, she holds the

Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the

background, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy.

And since she teaches the devotional use of representations,

particularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are

with the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly,

although (as must be the case) they have not the same tender _mother_ in

their church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith

being by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of “our mother

the church.” And, again, though they are made much less familiar with

the Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a

sham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real

Presence is a living fact with them. So that they _may_ see in the

Madonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.

The Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon

which the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any

single particular. If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox” Greek

Church be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point,

she is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in

harmony with it at no point.

Now, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point:

viz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the

Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a _divided_ church. But the Madonna

can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who

say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe _one_ Catholic and

Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be _visibly_ “one,”

are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an

invisible church. That a visible church, of which _oneness_ is a mark,

need not be _visibly one_!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go

further?

Again, if this theory of the church as a whole—that she is no longer

visibly one as her divine Author made her—renders it impossible to see

the type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will

it find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a

unity which it denies; and in the Child—either nothing at all, or

something which it consciously rejects.

What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All

churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a

church are a _bishop_ with a clergy and laity in his communion. The

bishop is its nucleus, and _makes_ the church in the sense in which the

head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this

is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession.

So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old

Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they

set at defiance both authority and logic.

A bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or

representative church. Now, we see in this representative church the

form of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is

not. Every priest is “another Christ”—in the celebrated words of St.

Bernard; and the bishop is the _complete_ priest, as having the power to

confer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the

Christ-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more

the episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a

Daughter and a Spouse—for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer

and Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy Son!”) and her Spouse as the Spouse

of all elect souls, among whom she is “as the lily among thorns”—so,

too, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a

spouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold

relation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is “the first-born

among many brethren,” his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an

elder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother;

and, if the priest, much more the bishop.

There is nothing fanciful, then, in our view of the Madonna-and-Child as

a symbol of the normal or representative church. But what does this

mean, if not that the collective church, consisting as it must of a

multitude of single churches, has equally the form of the

Madonna-and-Child—is equally capable of being symbolized thereby? or, in

other words, that all single episcopates must be subordinated to one

universal episcopate? Now, the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting (at

least in theory) the principle of hierarchical subordination from the

bishop up to the patriarch, stupidly contradicts her own assertion of

this principle, and destroys the church as a whole, by rejecting the

supremacy of the Pope. She is, therefore, in this all-important point,

as much out of harmony with our test-symbol as the Anglican and the

other Protestant sects; and is ruled out of court, in her turn, as

neither the kingdom of the incarnation nor any part of that kingdom.

* * * * *

So at last we have only the Roman Church to contrast with the

Madonna-and-Child. And small need have we to show how harmoniously at

all points she corresponds with our test-symbol. The Catholic recognizes

in the Madonna-and-Child not only the Incarnation but its kingdom. He

sees there the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her hands; and,

again, the church our _mother_ with her Christ-child at her breast; and,

lastly, this same mother as our lady and queen, with her eldest son the

Pope ruling his brethren from his throne on her heart, the _Sancta

Sedes_.

With regard to this last point we think it strange that

controversialists have made so little use of the Madonna-and-Child of

the Apocalypse.[164] We proposed to conclude our subject with a proof of

the Papacy from this vision, but must reserve it for a separate article.

Footnote 164:

Chap. xii.

COLLEGE EDUCATION.

The schools of the country have held their days of exhibition or of

graduation, the young men are enjoying their holidays, and the teachers

are preparing themselves for a new year of work. It would seem to be a

favorable moment to say a word about the question that more or less

occupies all who think seriously of the future—education. This word, so

often used, conveys different ideas, according to the person who speaks.

Its etymology undoubtedly gives it a certain definite meaning: _educo_,

_erudiri_ are two words that signify the bringing forth from a negative

state to a positive one—from ignorance and rudeness to knowledge and

culture. But this general idea does not cover the whole matter. We have

to consider the end to which this process is directed in order to have

an adequate idea of what it should be. Now, this end we shall have

clearly before us if we call to mind the end for which man is here on

earth. Christians all acknowledge and teach that man is here to know,

love, and serve God and save his soul. These two, therefore—redemption

from ignorance and a rude state, and the end for which man is here—give

us the right idea of what education ought to be. The appreciation of

both will enable us to avoid two fatal obstacles—presumption and error.

The proper state of mind of any one beginning a course of education is

the recognition of his want of knowledge. There is nothing so hurtful as

a spirit of pride; for this blinds the mind, makes one overweeningly

confident of his powers, attached to his own opinions, and loath to

receive instruction. We have heard in our day young people discussing

the question whether a man were not able to work out the most difficult

problems of human science of himself; whether he absolutely stood in

need of the guidance of others; and whether there were any branch of

human knowledge or achievement of past times _any one_ might not be able

to attain to or accomplish, provided he turned his attention to it, and

circumstances were favorable. And when a young man had succeeded in

mastering a certain amount of learning or science, we have been

witnesses of the very remarkable phenomenon of seeing him set himself up

as one whose opinion should cut short every discussion, and form the law

of belief or action for those around him. Any one having had any

experience of truly learned men, who even may not have been models of

virtue, must have been struck at the humility of mind they give proof

of. They, more than others, appreciate how little they know of what it

is possible to know; they see the vast field of knowledge of which they

individually can but cultivate a part, and common sense keeps them from

thinking themselves possessed even of all that can be known of what they

are actually engaged in. They agree in spirit with the celebrated master

of Plato, whose saying is familiar to us: “I know only this: that I know

nothing.” The first requisite, therefore, for sound education is a

humble state of mind, a disposition to be taught and receive the lessons

with docility—a disposition not only needful in a beginner, but required

even more the further one advances into the domain of knowledge. When

one adds to the original and relative ignorance of us all the further

fact of the ease with which we go astray, fall into error—a facility so

great as to have given rise to the adage in universal use, “_Humanum est

errare_”—it is impossible a man of sense should not recognize the

necessity of keeping down the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and

confess that, in not having controlled himself in this respect, he has

given the most complete proof of the adage in his own case. We are

therefore all in the same condition, all in need of learning, and stand

in want of a teacher to instruct us and lead us in the path of truth.

What is the truth we are to seek after, who the teacher we are to go to,

results from the study of the end to which education is to be directed.

We have seen that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God and

save his soul, and this tells us what education should be. Anything that

conflicts with this end is to be rejected; whatever aids us in attaining

it is to be embraced; and as all truth is in harmony with that end, it

follows that education can embrace all sciences that are truly such,

while it must eliminate all error; for error has a logical effect of

keeping us from the attainment of that end, especially where that error

regards the higher branches of speculative education.

Here, then, comes in the most important element in the education of

man—religion; religion, that is, to teach his head and train his heart.

If, as is most certainly the fact, man was made for God and for immortal

life hereafter, education that would exclude this element—religion—which

regulates the relations of man with God, and teaches him how he may gain

that everlasting state for which he has been created, is wanting most

deplorably in the one thing needful. Such an education fits a man only

for matter; is of the earth earthy. It has no higher aim than the

objects around him; it is a guide that does not bring into the presence

of the King, but takes one no further than the domain over which the

King’s power is exercised. However much it may delight the eye with

grandeur of scenery, proofs of power and of wisdom, it has no right or

ability to introduce into a close communion with the Sovereign, the

source of all it beholds. It is simply an unworthy servant banished for

ever from the face of his Master. This kind of education, which we shall

style secular, professedly excludes all religious control of any kind

whatsoever, and it consequently relies only on reason and scientific

examination. Now, reason has been found wanting. In the brightest

examples of pagan times, familiar to students of history, are to be

found not only actions nature itself condemns, but principles laid down

by them subversive of natural society and of all Christian

virtue—pantheism and immorality. And we owe it to Christianity that we

have been rescued from the social life in which such principles

prevailed and were in practice. Any one nowadays who knows something of

men will bear witness to the fact that both the one and the

other—pantheism and immorality—are on the increase and show themselves

publicly in the speech of the men and women of to-day. This can be owing

only to one cause—the divorce of religion from education. And because

this is so, because secular education does not lead us to God, but takes

us from him, a dividing line must be drawn between religious education

and secular education; an insuperable barrier exists between them, which

must and ought to keep all that believe in revelation on the side of a

training under the eye of religion. And if this be the case with regard

to all who profess belief in Christ, how much truer is it with reference

to those who have given their names to the Catholic Church and look to

her infallible voice for their guidance! In saying this we do not wish

to speak disparagingly of the learning, the ability, or the zeal of

those engaged in the cause of education who are not with us. We respect

all those who are striving to increase the treasure of human knowledge

or dispense it to their fellow-men. We join hands with all who are

earnest in their study of true science, and rejoice in their success. We

have no right to question their sincerity. But between their efforts and

success in discovery, or in acquiring and imparting learning, and the

way in which they educate, there is a difference most vital and

essential. The one investigates the works of the Creator, while the

other leads men practically, where it does not absolutely tell them as

much, to ignore the Creator himself. Godless science can only fill a man

with himself, while it offers no guarantee for the preservation of his

morals and the attainment of his last end.

On the other hand, religion goes before the education which is allied

with her. With her torch of faith she illumes the darkness of men’s

minds. She shows them how much more beautiful is the Author of all the

beautiful things they contemplate than are the objects themselves. She

makes them behold in him the original essential beauty of which the

universe is only a faint participation, and yearn for the possession of

that Beauty and sovereign Good she tells them is within their reach; and

she shows them how, under her direction, they may not be carried away by

transient allurements, by what they see around them, but attain to an

indissoluble union with that Beauty and sovereign Good—with God himself.

But it may be said religion has nothing to do with natural science; it

cramps man’s mind, fetters his intellect, stops his investigation. It

will do well enough in its sphere, but its action is hurtful to

scientific pursuits.

Is this true? It is not true; and we can refute the charge by principle

and by fact.

All that exists belongs to God. All science, all truth comes from him,

the great First Cause, from whom all things proceed, in whom there can

be no contradiction. His works, therefore, cannot contradict him nor

contradict each other. Natural truth and revealed truth must, then, be

in harmony, and we do not fear a conflict between them. The Catholic

student of science is as fearless an investigator as is his rationalist

_confrère_; but the former will not rashly give himself up to

speculations the other’s further experience will oblige him to retract.

The facts of science will never be in opposition to revelation, though

the interpretation of scientific men may be, to their discomfiture later

on. Even if the teacher of revelation, the church, should by any

possibility, as is asserted in the case of Galileo, fail in a

_disciplinary_ decree with regard to scientific research, such decrees

not being infallible utterances of the Holy See, there remains always

the remedy of a reversal when the incontestable proof of the contrary,

such as he did not bring forward, shall be produced. So spoke Cardinal

Bellarmine, one of Galileo’s judges. Though we may safely say that those

in charge of the interests of the church do well in being exceedingly

careful how they interfere with scientific investigation, it

nevertheless may become necessary at times to curb the license of those

who undertake to interpret the truths of revelation according to their

ideas or appreciation of science. How many scientific theories fall to

pieces every day! And is it not reasonable that those who believe in a

revelation should not be left at the mercy of every clever scientific

man who is pleased to have a tilt against it? Let any scientific truth

be fully proved, and the Catholic Church will be the first to applaud,

for it redounds to the glory of her Head.

We need not, however, confine ourselves to this negative way of

advocating the cause of revelation as friendly to science, for there is

no dearth of positive proof of the fact.

Revelation is positively of advantage to the study of science. It is

clear that any one who keeps me, when on a journey, from going out of my

way saves me an amount of time and trouble. Instead of wandering in the

woods and bypaths, I am enabled to keep the highway and so reach sooner

my destination. This is one of the important services revelation renders

science. It tells us: Don’t direct your attention hither or thither; for

you will find out you are wrong, after losing precious time and making

yourself a laughing-stock. Don’t go in search of the “missing link,” for

you won’t find it. Don’t divide the unity of the human race, for it is

one—of one man and one woman. Don’t grovel with the materialists; for

man has a spirit, and he is destined for a better life hereafter. Such

like warnings we have from revelation, and, instead of going astray with

evolutionists and so-called philosophers, we employ our time and talents

on points that are serious and practical in science and nature; and

Heaven knows there are plenty of these to engage us. The result is

useful knowledge that does not undo but builds up society and perfects

civilization. For this our grateful thanks are due revelation.

Then, again, revelation opens up to us new fields of thought. It gives

us an insight into what we could not otherwise know. It is as if chance

discovered to us some principle of art or science no one had before

suspected. Once presented, reason can occupy itself on it, explore it as

far as possible, make deductions and applications. How much human ethics

have gained in clearness and usefulness by the light of the command to

love our neighbor, and by the example of the Redeemer of man! How much

speculative philosophy with regard to personality, responsibility, good

and evil, and the future life! The crude theories of pagan times excite

our compassion nowadays, though we honor the ability of their original

propounders; yet these same theories we see now broached by those who

have cast aside revelation, but often with less depth and less wisdom

than the pagan in whose mind not all the light of natural religion was

quenched. No! revelation is the friend of science; science divorced from

religion, the vaunted glory of to-day, is the enemy of progress;

retrograde in all save the energetic talent that is lost in its service.

A few examples will show what revelation or the church has done and is

doing for the cause of education; whether it has checked the development

of man or favored it.

We will go to the “dark ages,” in which those who oppose the church as

an educator are wont to find their _cheval de bataille_, their bugbear

to frighten off those inclined to trust her. We say nothing of the

unfairness of Protestants who wilfully ignore the sad state of the Roman

world consequent on the barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth, and

seventh centuries, and the struggles with the Saracens, who penetrated

even into Italy—a condition of things most inimical to the quiet

requisite for study; who pass over the conquest of those barbarians and

their civilization by the church; who pretend to know nothing of what

was done by the monks to preserve learning in their monasteries, to whom

the preservation of the classic, philosophic, and ascetic works of

antiquity and of the early church—the Bible among them—is due. We come

to the thirteenth century. There we see, burning with a light that is

celestial, a luminary not of the church only but of human reason—St.

Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. There was hardly a branch of

intellectual pursuit of which he was not a master. His works are

wonderful, and have always been a precious and useful legacy in every

subsequent age. His great work, the Sum of Theology, has remained the

text-book of theologians. In fact, no theologian is master of his

subject who has not made St. Thomas the object of his constant study.

Though at times somewhat neglected, we may safely say that at present

there is an increasing appreciation of his works. Certainly this is true

of his philosophical treatise _Contra Gentiles_. There is now a

wide-spread movement in all civilized nations to return to the use of

the metaphysical and ethical teachings of St. Thomas, and it will be the

means of regenerating such philosophical studies in this epoch of

individual self-assertion, of _ipse dixits_, when every man of talent

who lists puts forth his own hazy speculations as the truth, and strives

to force down his deductions as the _ne plus ultra_ of science. Domenico

Soto, at the Council of Trent, defined scholastic theology to be reason

illumined by faith; we may, like him, style scholastic philosophy reason

kept in its right path by the torch of faith. In the works of St. Thomas

will be found the refutation of the pantheism of Spinoza and the present

German school, of the materialism of Hobbes and Büchner, of the

utilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer, and others of the followers of

Puffendorf. We shall find, too, in his writings the ablest defence of

revelation, and the sound principles that will enable us to put to

flight the whole host of mythical theorists of the age. So much for

theology, metaphysics, and ethics.

If we wish to speak of the work of the church in poetry, science, and

literature, we have a monument of what she could do, even in the middle

ages, in Dante. We hardly know which to admire most in this

extraordinary man—his native genius, his extraordinary powers of

imagination, the beauty of his imagery, the remarkable knowledge of

theology and philosophy he exhibits in his writings, or the beauty of

the language he created. His culture was due to the church; his

inspiration was drawn from revelation; and his science he drank in at

the great schools established and carried on by the church in Italy, in

France, and in England. So pre-eminent is this writer, philosopher, and

poet, that even in the nineteenth century our own poet whose works are

read and justly appreciated wherever the English language is

spoken—Henry W. Longfellow—has deemed it well worthy of his own genius

to be his translator. Yet Dante is the product of the Catholic Church.

But the fashion to-day is to extol physical science. Of a truth,

physical science does not hold, and should not hold, the first place. If

man were only matter, it might and should; but he has a soul, and the

spiritual and intellectual world is his proper sphere. Scientific

knowledge is useful for the arts that serve to make commerce prosper,

and should be sought after; but to make commerce and what pertains to

it, and the material comforts of man, the main object of his thoughts

and aims is a monstrous disorder.

However, even in this sphere of physical science the church is not

afraid of her competitors. We leave to one side old Friar Bacon and

other patriarchs of science, and we come to our own day. The church can

point to Angelo Secchi, one of the first of living astronomers and

physical scientists, and a member of a society that counts among its

members men distinguished in every branch of human knowledge—the Society

of Jesus. So great is the pre-eminence of this distinguished _savant_ in

his native Italy that, since the city of Rome has been in the hands of

the present rulers, they have left nothing undone to gain him over to

their side. And it is a pleasure to us to pay this public tribute to the

noble fidelity he has shown to his faith, his church, and his society,

giving as he does a splendid example of the alliance between the most

advanced physical science and the Catholic Church.

As faithful adherents to revelation, though not Catholics, we may

mention the late Prof. Faraday and the no less distinguished Dr.

Carpenter, who show that revelation and science do not war against each

other.

But we need not content ourselves with showing that the church is not

hostile to human learning. It is easy to bring forward facts that put

her before the world in her true character as the real friend of man,

the guardian of his dignity, the zealous protectress of the truth of his

intellect and of the freedom of his will. _In medio stat virtus_—Virtue

avoids extremes. Our tendency to go wrong is by doing too much or too

little, and we need something to keep us from either of these two

extremes. It is here the church comes in to fulfil this friendly and

much-needed office.

There was in the fourth and fifth century an intellectual movement that

attributed more than its due to human nature. The Pelagian errors gave

to man a power he does not possess, and those errors are very widely

spread in this nineteenth century. They ignore the efficacy of grace, or

the help the will stands in need of to serve God. Grace, according to

their most favorable view, was only a light for the intellect. Here was

an excess; too much was claimed for human nature. Such doctrine is

contradicted by Scripture and by the Fathers. Our Lord tells us: “I am

the vine, and you are the branches; without me you can do nothing.” And

St. Paul says: “We are not able to think of anything [conducive to

salvation] of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.” And St.

Augustine, against those who spoke of some of the precepts as

impossible, writes: “God does not command what is impossible; but

commanding [thereby] counsels us to do what we can, to ask for aid to do

what is beyond our power, and aids us that we may be able to do it.” In

this case we have the church curbing human pride and keeping the

intellect and will within its true limits.

In the sixteenth century there was a movement, resulting from pride and

rebellion, that had its own punishment in the degradation to which it

reduced man’s nature. Luther’s dogmatic system had, and has—for it lives

in Protestantism—the effect of so debasing human nature as to deny light

to the intellect and power to the will to do anything that was not

sinful; for he held that the will of man is essentially changed, so that

it depends on who directs it, God or the devil; and, besides, whatever

it does is sinful, though covered by the merits of Jesus Christ, which,

like Esau’s garments, prevent the knowledge or sight of the true state

of things and the imputation of sin.

Here was a defect; human nature was denied some of its powers.

The church fulminated this doctrine, and taught formally that man’s

intellect and will, though weakened by sin and passion, are not

essentially changed, and that all man’s acts are not sinful. She

recognized something of his original dignity in man. Hers is the spirit

of the great St. Leo, whose eloquent words made the Christians and

Romans of his day remember their origin, and the height to which they

had been raised by the Incarnation. He exclaims: “Remember, O man! thy

dignity, and, having been made a partaker of the divine nature, return

not by degenerate conversation to thy former vileness.” She bade man

remember that his nature, never essentially corrupt, had been purified

by the grace of God, and that “in those that please God there is nothing

defiled.”

Luther’s teachings shed a sinister influence far and wide that tainted

even Catholic universities and affected writers who still professed to

be in union with the church.

In the former University of Louvain Jansenius went so far as to say that

some of the gospel precepts were impossible, and that no grace was given

to fulfil them. The words that were used by St. Augustine to refute the

Pelagians were turned against Jansenius, and the voice of the church was

heard anew vindicating man from the necessity of committing sin. Later

on came Baius, of the same university, teaching also a doctrine of

universal depravity; and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed that negative

infidelity—that is, idolatry in good faith—is not a sin; that

consequently those who have not grace or the illumination of faith can

do many good actions, though such actions have not the merit of those

which are made available through the merits of Christ. Thus again did

the church prove herself the friend of human dignity.

Further on we meet those who, suffering the infection of the air caused

by the doctrines of universal depravity, deny to the intellect the power

of discovering the truth by itself. The traditionalists wish to trace

everything to an original revelation; man has nothing he has not

received from outside. Even his knowledge of God comes from tradition.

And this doctrine the church, through her supreme teacher,

discountenanced. She bade them recall to mind the words of the Book of

Wisdom and of St. Paul, where we are told that God can be known from the

contemplation of this visible world.

We will crave indulgence if we go so far as to venture the assertion

that the doctrines of Malebranche and his school had their origin in

this same depreciation of the powers of the human intellect. It may be

said that the idea of intuition is a nobler one than that of painful

analysis and deduction; that intuition—vision—is the lot of the blessed,

and therefore a higher state. But this is a state above nature, for the

blessed; not a natural state in our present condition. Moreover, there

are reasons to make us believe that Malebranche did not escape the

infection of the world of thought prevalent in his day—the disesteem of

human nature; an infection not, indeed, logically connected with the

system of Luther. It was, if we may be permitted so to speak, a

psychological effect—a habit of mind being induced, whereby one was led

so to think. This would appear to be evidenced by his doctrine of

occasionalism, which made God always acting because man could not—a

doctrine the authority of the church obliged him to modify, for he would

thereby have made God the author of sin. Though no official condemnation

of the theories of Malebranche, regarding the primary mode of knowing

truth, has ever been given by the church, or is at all likely to be

given, the deductions of certain of his followers have been condemned;

and it is well known that the weight of the influence of the Holy See

has been cast in the scale of the psychological theories of St. Thomas,

whose principle, clearly laid down, is: “Operatio intellectus præexigit

operationem sensus”—“The operation of the intellect prerequires the

operation of sense”—I. 2, quæst. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his first

part, quæst. xviii. art. 2, he writes: “Intellectus noster qui proprie

est cognoscitivus quidditatis rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a sensu;

cujus propria objecta sunt accidentia exteriora. Et inde est, quod ex

his quæ exterius apparent de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam essentiam

rei”—“Our intellect, that properly takes cognizance of what a thing is

(its essence) as its proper object, receives of the senses, the proper

objects of which are external accidents. Hence it is that from what

appears externally in a thing we come to know its essence.” Of course

sense is to be taken in its widest meaning, so as not to exclude the

perception of the modifications going on in our internal being, which

are the accidents of our spiritual essence. Man, therefore, has no

natural revelation, but he arrives at knowledge by the essentially

inherent powers of his mind—perception, abstraction, generalization. God

sees by intuition everything in himself—this is essential in him;

created intellects see what is, or intellectual truth, the archetype in

God, reflected from creation as from a mirror.

From these instances, then, it is evident that the church has always

been the friend of human nature, asserting for it the possession of

faculties denied it, protecting it from error, and guiding it in the

search of truth. She is, therefore, worthy of the gratitude of mankind

for what she has done in the cause of education, as well as of the

confidence of men as an instructor of youth in the future.

We come now to a more directly practical part of our assumed task, and

shall consider it our duty to speak plainly, and perhaps in a way to be

censured by some; but we do it in what seems to us the interest of our

people and country. The Rev. Father. T. Burke, O.S.D., while in this

country some years ago, addressing a society of young men, told them

that Americans could not expect to take their position among the

civilized nations of the world unless they studied, and studied not

superficially but well. For our part, we thank him for this word. It is

time to put out of our heads that we are the most cultivated, civilized,

well-informed people of the world. We are not. Alongside the generality

of the educated men of Europe the generality of the educated men of

America do not appear to advantage. Who and what is to blame for this?

In the first place, we blame parents. They ought to know better; they

have had experience of the world. They are the natural guardians of

their offspring, and should provide by their experience a remedy for the

inexperience of youth. Yet they, and especially Catholic parents, are

those who put the greatest obstacles in the way of those engaged in

teaching. They want their boys hurried through school; they can’t see

the use of Latin, much less of Greek. As for philosophy, a man can make

a fortune without philosophy; as if a fortune were the only thing worth

living for! If that were the case, your California stage-driver who has

struck a “bonanza” is the type of what a man should be intellectually.

Heaven save the mark! We have had such men say to us: “I assure you,

sir, it is a very great misfortune my education was neglected; I have

wealth and don’t know how to enjoy it.” There are numbers of unhappy

wealthy Americans travelling in Europe whose children are looking

forward to brilliant futures, but who themselves rush from one place to

another, tortured by the necessity of having to come in contact with

educated people and learn daily their own inferiority. We have met such

people, and, out of sheer pity for their unhappy lot, have done what was

in our power to make them forget for a while their troubles.

The fact is, no greater boon can a wealthy parent bestow upon his child

than a thorough, careful education, and every effort should be made to

secure such education. And one of the first steps to be taken is that

parents second the efforts of zealous educators in our Catholic

institutions. These institutions have their defects, but those defects

can hardly be remedied without the co-operation of parents. What that

co-operation should be will be seen further on.

There are defects in our institutions of education. This is our next

point. These defects are in the manner of teaching and in what is

taught.

We acknowledge that there have been great improvements in the manner of

teaching since we were boys; but with all this the want of uniformity,

scarcely attainable in this country, will always leave the door open to

defects in teaching. As a rule, the mind of a boy is too much taxed with

speculative matter, and his memory comparatively neglected. The memory

is one of the first faculties to show itself active, and it is also

capable of wonderful development. In the earlier education of the child

the exercise of the memory should predominate; as little strain as

possible should be put on the mind yet tender. As the education

progresses the exercise of the memory should be kept up; choice extracts

from the best poets and writers should alternate with the useful storing

in the mind of facts and definitions. The preliminary education should

consist in the learning of languages, which are means of acquiring

further knowledge by intercourse and reading, not by any means the sum

total of education. We wish our Catholic parents would understand this;

for when a boy succeeds in knowing a little French and German they seem

to think everything done. These languages are only the keys to the

treasures locked up in the writings of other nations. They are

principally to be acquired by memory; and, in fact, this is the way the

most successful and generally used method—that of Ollendorf—adopts.

There is no reason why the boy should not be put at a very early age to

learning foreign languages. There is, too, one great advantage in this:

that his work at such languages will be lighter and less absorbing when

he comes to be engaged in scientific study. Again, care should be taken

not to put into the hands of a child books of an abstruse or relatively

difficult character; for excessive caution against straining the mind of

such a scholar can scarcely be taken. A great deal of harm is sometimes

done from the too high standard exacted by school-boards of the various

categories of boys. We have never ceased to praise the judicious

interference of our father, who, finding us with an analytical

arithmetic put into our hands at seven years of age, took it away and

placed it on the highest shelf of his closet.

When a boy is well under weigh in the languages—we do not speak of

religious education, which we take for granted—he may very properly be

introduced to the study of experimental science and the more difficult

problems of analytical arithmetic and mathematics. But these branches

should not be arranged in such a way as to compete, as it were, with

that much-neglected study, so lightly thought of—mental philosophy. If

one visits our different Catholic institutions of learning, and examines

their system, still more looks into the practical working of it, he will

find that the year of philosophy, much talked of, is employed in a most

perfunctory manner. We would not be understood as attributing any _culpa

theologica_ to the instructors. We consider this state of things owing

first to parents, and consequently to their children, and in part to the

want of appreciation of the need of such philosophical training on the

part of the teachers; though also, sometimes, to want of competency in

the teachers themselves, whose previous education has been on the old

plan. We conceive that too great attention and zeal cannot be expended

in the correction of these defects. Corrected they can be, and they must

be, if we wish to take and keep our proper standing. We cannot have a

university for the present, and therefore it is all important that the

one essential thing a university can give—a higher mental

training—should be given to our young Catholic men. They must receive

this in our colleges; they will not have it elsewhere. Of the need of it

there can be no question. The great number of able, educated Europeans

who, from political causes, have had to leave their native country and

come to us, and the large number of Americans who nowadays study in

European universities, all of whom, in conversation and through the

press, retail to us the wildest phases of infidel, metaphysical, and

social doctrine, is a sufficient argument to decide the matter, should

any one hesitate. The church, to be sure, is our infallible guide, but

there are many questions she does not treat, or, if she has treated

them, her decisions can be understood only by careful study and

explanation in the language of philosophy. So far from discouraging the

study of philosophy, of metaphysics, and of ethics—possibly the more

important of the two—she encourages us to make a good use of this

handmaid of theology. It is therefore a duty incumbent on those in whose

hands is placed the education of our young men to pay more attention

than ever to this kind of instruction. We know of efforts in some

instances that have been made in this direction, but which have failed.

We are afraid they were not very numerous. In some instances a tincture

of metaphysics was deemed enough; ethics were wholly neglected. How this

could be has always been a puzzle to us. But it should not be any

longer. A careful course of metaphysics that would embrace particularly

the refutation of pantheism and materialism, besides establishing

thoroughly the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of

the soul; and an equally careful course of ethics that would refute the

utilitarians and socialists of the day, while making clear the claims of

authority, the nature of law, the origin of right in the eternal fitness

of things as seen in the divine Mind, and such kindred questions, should

be the object of the most earnest solicitude of the superiors of our

Catholic colleges. The young students should be made to apply their

knowledge thus received either by short compositions in addition to the

repetition of the lessons taught; or, far better still, by academic

exercises in which one student defends in the school-room before his

teacher and fellow-students a thesis or proposition already explained,

while one or two others object against it all they can think of or

learn, and this, too, in strict syllogistic form. Exercises such as

these would be of the greatest advantage in training the mind to the

ready use of logic, and to refuting the arguments possible to be urged

against sound doctrine. Nothing better than this would tend to take away

the reproach so often, and perhaps in some cases most unjustly, made

against our educational institutions, of incompetency for thorough

education. Did it depend on us to have the recasting of the system of

education, we should be inclined to add on a year of further study as a

requisite for graduation, and during the last two years of a young man’s

course we would employ him entirely in the study of metaphysics and

ethics, including the principles of political economy, of the philosophy

of history—in which the great questions of history, as far as possible,

might be reviewed—and in the further polish of his literary English

training. The philosophy of history is most important, for it is a

powerful teacher. History is not to be studied as a bare narrative of

facts; the facts have a language of their own which needs an

interpreter. The polish of literary education is of great necessity, as

it is the one thing those educated in the non-Catholic colleges may be

said to excel us in. We do not dwell much on scientific education,

because that is really of secondary importance, and it is impossible to

give boys more than an elementary training in this branch, which may

serve as a ground-work for further pursuit of it, if one is destined to

turn his attention in that direction. To enable the superiors of our

colleges to carry out such a plan would depend upon the parents of young

students having the fortitude to oblige their sons to remain the

requisite time and make a diligent use of their opportunities. Herein

lies their co-operation in the great work of the future education of the

young Catholic men of America; and our word for it, if they follow this

counsel, they will never have cause to repent. They will give us, too,

far abler champions of truth than our young men have shown themselves to

be in the past.

THE DANCING PROCESSION OF ECHTERNACH.

FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.

In the year of our Lord 690 a vessel from the island of Britain left

upon the coast of Catwyk, in Holland, twelve young Anglo-Saxons who had

abandoned their newly-converted country to carry the blessing of the

Gospel to their brethren of the Continent. Chief among these young men,

several of whom were of noble birth, was Willibrord, predestined from

his mother’s womb to be a glory to the church and famous in the

estimation of men. The young strangers separated, to work, each in his

own way, in the vineyard of the Father. Willibrord began that very day

the long and heroic apostolate of fifty years which ceased only with the

pulsations of his heart. If we except his two journeys to Rome, where

the great servant of the Papacy twice received the blessing and

encouragement of the Sovereign Pontiff, he did not relax for a single

day his labors in the vast region which stretches from the mouths of the

Elbe and the Rhine to the banks of the Moselle. At his voice nations

sitting in darkness rose up to behold the light, idols crumbled before

the amazed eyes of their worshippers, churches arose from the soil and

gathered about their altars multitudes of Christians, lay society

organized itself little by little after the model of spiritual

society.[165]

Footnote 165:

_V._ Alcuin in _Vita Willibrordi_ ap. Mabillon. _Acta Sanctorum_, Ord.

S. Benedicti, t. iii. p. 567, Venetian edition.

Tradition and history show us by turns the great Anglo-Saxon apostle in

Friesland as the master of St. Boniface; in Denmark, preceding by more

than a century the famous St. Anscarius; in the island of Helgoland,

destroying the idol of Fosite and braving King Radbod’s wrath; in the

Isle of Walcheren, where he nearly fell a victim to his heroism and

apostolic zeal; in Campine as the friend of St. Lambert, another

untiring athlete of Christ; and, finally, in Luxembourg, where even more

than elsewhere his name is glorified and revered. For half a century he

stood with Lambert and Boniface in the breach, the father of

civilization in Western Germany and one of the most signal benefactors

of mankind.

The common people, though they forget great poets and great generals,

preserve the memory of saints. Seventeen churches in Belgium and

fifty-eight in Holland are under his patronage, without counting those

in the valleys of the Moselle and the Rhine, where his fame is equally

wide-spread. Sixty-three leagues apart, a small section of St.

Willibrord’s vast itinerary, two villages to-day preserve in their own

names the undying memory of his works: Wilwerwiltz on the sterile moors

of the German Ardennes, and Kleemskerk on the low, fertile plains of

maritime Flanders.[166] Drawn, as it were, from nothingness by this

great man, these two localities, were other witnesses wanting, would

tell to later ages the glory of their sublime founder. Answering one to

the other across the whole extent of Belgium, they testify to his vast

labors and his devotion to the Roman Church, which we unworthily defend

to-day against the barbarism conquered by him twelve centuries ago.

Footnote 166:

Wilwerwiltz is a contraction of Willibrordswiltz. As to Kleemskerk

(Clement’s Church), we know that in Rome Willibrord received the name

of Clement, as did Winfrid that of Boniface, under which he is

venerated.

I.

During his apostolic missions through the forests of Luxembourg

Willibrord remarked one of the most charming and romantic spots in that

fine country. It was at a turn of the Sûre, which even to-day flows on

beneath the shade of savage rocks and deep forests. The valley, widening

at this place, must at that time have presented a most imposing aspect,

while it offered every facility for a settlement of human habitations.

Indeed, the dwellings were even then of ancient date. The place bore a

name recalling incontestably its first Celtic occupants: Epternacum.

There, too, the Romans had left traces of their passage. A short league

from Echternach archæologists may still read beneath the great shadowy

oaks and thick brushwood that half hide it the following inscription

engraved on the base of a monument:

DEÆ DIANÆ

Q. POSTVMIVS

POTENS. V. S.

The upper part of the monument is gone, but enough remains to show that

it represented two persons—no doubt the goddess and her worshipper, with

a hunting-dog crouched at Diana’s feet. He who overthrew the false gods

of Helgoland and Walcheren must have crushed in holy ire this monument

of the paganism he had just destroyed.[167] At all events, the image of

Diana, once proudly throned above the valley at the edge of the wood,

now hides, degraded and mutilated, in the dank gloom of brambles and

brushwood—an eloquent emblem of St. Willibrord’s work in this country.

Echternach, where even then two little Christian oratories stood on the

site of the two churches of to-day, attracted the great man’s attention

and heart. He built there a Benedictine monastery, which was favored

from its foundation by the bounty of two royal families, the

Merovingians and Carlovingians. Around this focus of Christian life

habitations gathered, and, as always happened, the monastery expanded

and became a town. Such was the origin of the commune of Echternach, one

of the most flourishing in that happy country of Luxembourg which knows

neither great cities nor great miseries.

Footnote 167:

This, at least, is the plausible conjecture of a scholar of the first

rank—F. Alexander Wiltheim—in his fine book, _Luxemburgum Romanum_.

The monastery of Echternach was always dearer to its founder than his

other foundations. There he loved to pass his rare hours of repose.

There, on the 6th of November, 739, at the age of eighty-one years, he

reached the term of his mortal career. His remains were laid in the

basilica of the abbey among his monks and his people. Even in the tomb

he continued to be the father of that country and to exercise over men

the sovereign authority which his virtues and labors had won. Death has

no hold upon the saints; when we lower their bodies into the grave we

rear their images upon our altars. St. Willibrord, more than any other

patron of the country, is one whose sepulchre may be called glorious.

Few tombs have inspired a veneration so extraordinary, attracted the

faithful in such crowds, excited acts of faith so intense. No sooner was

he laid in his grave than multitudes came to invoke the apostle of

Luxembourg, and frequent miracles bore witness to his powerful

protection. A century had not elapsed when this wonderful devotion was

spoken of by the greatest writer of his time—Alcuin, the biographer of

our saint.[168] His festival was celebrated by an immense concourse, who

filled the air with his praise. “See, brethren,” says St. Alcuin.

“Behold the glory of serving God. Our holy patron, for love of Christ,

left his native country and led the life of a pilgrim. He trampled under

foot the riches of this world; he loved, he clung to poverty. And you

know the glory he acquired among men. But preferable far is that which

he possesses for all eternity among the angels.”[169] And the

illustrious friend of Charlemagne, speaking to his contemporaries of

facts of which he had been an eye-witness, told of the iron fetters on

the wrists and ankles of devout pilgrims which burst asunder when they

came to do penance for their sins at the venerated tomb.[170]

Footnote 168:

Ibi usque hodie divinâ operante misericordia signa et sanitates ad

sancti viri et sacerdotis reliquias fieri non cessant.—_Alcuin O.C._,

iii. p. 571.

Footnote 169:

Id. in _Mabillon_, iii. p. 575.

Footnote 170:

Id. ib. iii. p. 572.

Two centuries afterward the voice of Theofrid, St. Willibrord’s

successor and later biographer, echoes the powerful voice of Alcuin and

tells of the ceaseless devotion which brings crowds to Echternach every

year. He, too, bears witness to the saint’s miracles—so numerous, he

says, that a yoke of oxen could not drag the chariot that would hold the

votive offerings of wax and metal. And among these wonders, as in

Alcuin’s day, were to be seen broken chains and instruments of torture

worn by slaves, which were shattered into splinters.[171] No miracle is

oftener recorded of our saints than this one. I confess I never read the

record in the quaint and simple narrative of our ancient hagiographers

without emotion. Wherever they went the breakers of idols were also

breakers of fetters; that word which called men to the knowledge of the

true God called them also to the enjoyment of true liberty. _Christus

nos liberavit._ Therefore the church has been honored by the opposition

of all the tyrants who have wished to subjugate nations. They have felt

that liberty could be easily destroyed, if they could destroy her who is

the fertile mother and the fearless guardian of freedom. But nothing can

avail against the church nor against the liberty which is her offspring,

which her voice called into life, which she has bathed in the blood of

her idol-breakers.

Footnote 171:

_Theofridus vita S. Willibrordi_, c. 24 (sæc. xii.) This life of St.

Willibrord is still unpublished; only a few fragments having appeared

in _Mon. Germ. Hist._, t. xxiii. Script. The fact I mention is taken

from M. Krier’s pamphlet, _Die Springprocession_, p. 33, from the MS.

life.

It was St. Willibrord’s destiny to see crowned heads bow among the

crowds that pressed around his altars, and the imperial purple of

Germany trailing in the dust before his coarse robes of haircloth. In

the imposing procession of generations marching towards the saint’s tomb

it is difficult to distinguish the royal forms mingling with the crowd

of pilgrims, so petty seem to him who gazes from the altar the earthly

grandeur which sets them apart from other Christians.

Many a time in earlier days the Carlovingians had come to pray and

humble themselves in the sanctuary at Echternach. They came with hands

filled with gifts, and, by one of those strange vicissitudes which the

finger of Providence points out, it was one of their number who, blind,

outcast, and bereft, came later to eat the bread of St. Willibrord and

seek refuge in the shades of his monastery. History hardly mentions the

wretched Carloman, rebel son of Charles the Bald, whose eyes were put

out by his father’s orders, and who received in charity from his uncle

Louis the Abbey of Echternach _ad subsidium vitæ_.[172] The families who

succeeded the Carlovingians in Germany never forgot the saint or the

duty of paying him homage. In the year 1000 the list of imperial

pilgrimages was opened by Otto III., the young and brilliant prince who

planned so many great expeditions, and whom death had already marked

with his mysterious seal. Lothaire of Saxony, and Conrad of

Hohenstaufen, came in their turn to pray before the saint’s relics, the

one in 1131, the other in 1145. Then, in 1512, Maximilian joined in the

procession, and in memory of his visit gave to the town the bell which

bears his name and still rings on feast days. Thus, except the

sacrilegious house of Franconia, all the dynasties of the German Empire

seem to have been represented at Echternach, and to have paid court to

this prince of peace, greater and more respected than they.

Footnote 172:

M. G. xxiii. Script., _Catalogus abbatum Epternacensium primus_.