nations of the world who have neither the revelation of the faith nor
the sacraments, how much more must we believe his presence and grace
in those who are regenerate by water and the Holy Ghost? It would be
impertinent for me to say to you--whose name first became celebrated
for a tract on baptism, which, notwithstanding certain imperfections
inseparable from a work written when and where you wrote it, is in
substance deep, true, and elevating--that baptism, if rightly
administered with the due form and matter, is always 'valid by
whatsoever hand it may be given. [Footnote 57]
[Footnote 57: _Concil. Florent. Decretum Eugenii IV. Mansi Concil._,
tom, xviii. 547. "In casu autem necessitatis non solum sacerdos vel
diaconus sed etiam laicus vel mulier, immo etiam paganus et
haereticus baptizare potest, dummodo formam servet Ecclesiae, et
facere intendat quod facit Ecclesia." The Council of Trent repeats
this under anathema, Sess. vii., can. iv.: "Si quis dixerit
Baptismum qui etiam datur ab haereticis in Nomine Patris, et Filii,
et Spiritus Sancti, cum intentione esse verum Baptismum, anathema
sit." See also Bellarm. _Controversial, De Baptismo_, lib. i., c.]
Let me, then, say at once
1. That in denying the Church of England to be the Catholic Church, or
any part of it, or in any divine and true sense a church at all, and
in denying the validity of its absolutions and its orders, no Catholic
ever denies the workings of the Spirit of God or the operations of
grace in it.
2. That in affirming the workings of grace in the Church of England,
no Catholic ever thereby affirms that it possesses the character of a
church.
They who most inflexibly deny to it the character of a church affirm
most explicitly the presence and the operations of grace among its
people, and that for the following reasons:
In the judgment of the Catholic Church, a baptized people is no longer
in the state of nature, but is admitted to a state of supernatural
grace. And though I believe the number of those who have never been
baptized to be very great in England, and to be increasing every year,
nevertheless I believe the English people, as a mass, to be a Baptized
people. I say the number of the unbaptized is great, because there are
many causes which contribute to produce this result. First, the
imperfect, and therefore invalid, administration of baptism through
the carelessness of the administrators. You, perhaps, think that this
is exaggerated, through an erroneous belief of Catholics as to the
extent of such carelessness among the Protestant ministers, both in
and out of the Church of England. It is, however, undeniable, as I
know from the evidence of eye-witnesses, that such carelessness has,
in times past, been great and frequent. This I consider the least, but
a sufficient, reason for believing that many have never been baptized.
Add to this, negligence caused by the formal disbelief of baptismal
regeneration in a large number of Protestant ministers. There are,
however, two other reasons far more direct. The one is the studied
rejection, as a point of religious profession, of the practice of
infant baptism. Many therefore grow up without baptism who in adult
life, for various causes, never seek it. {292} The other, the sinful
unbelief and neglect of parents in every class of the English people,
who often leave whole families of children to grow up without baptism.
Of the fact that many have never been baptized, I, or any Catholic
priest actively employed in England, can bear witness. There are few
among us who have not had to baptize grown people of every condition,
poor and rich; and, of children, often whole families together. There
has indeed been, in the last thirty years, a revival of care in the
administration of baptism on the part of the Anglican ministers, and
of attention on the part of parents in bringing their children to be
baptized; but this reaction is by no means proportionate to the
neglect, which on the other side has been extending. My fear is that,
after all, the number of persons unbaptized in England is greater at
this moment than at any previous time.
Still the English people as a body are baptized, and therefore
elevated to the order of supernatural grace. Every infant, and also
every adult baptized, having the necessary dispositions, is thereby
placed in a state of justification; and, if they die without
committing any mortal sin, would certainly be saved. They are also, in
the sight of the Church, Catholics. St. Augustine says, "Ecclesia
etiam inter eos qui foris sunt per baptismum generat suos." A mortal
sin of any kind, including _prava voluntatis electio_, the perverse
election of the will, by which in riper years such persons chose for
themselves, notwithstanding sufficient light, heresy instead of the
true faith, and schism instead of the unity of the Church, would
indeed deprive them of their state of grace. But before such act of
self-privation all such people are regarded by the Catholic Church as
in the way of eternal life. With perfect confidence of faith, we
extend the shelter of this truth over the millions of infants and
young children who every year pass to their Heavenly Father. We extend
it also in hope to many more who grow up in their baptismal grace.
Catholic missionaries in this country have often assured me of a fact,
attested also by my own experience, that they have received into the
Church persons grown to adult life, in whom their baptismal grace was
still preserved. Now how can we then be supposed to regard such
persons as no better than heathens? To ascribe the good lives of such
persons to the power of nature would be Pelagianism. To deny their
goodness, would be Jansenism. And, with such a consciousness, how
could any one regard his past spiritual life in the Church of England
as a mockery? I have no deeper conviction than that the grace of the
Holy Spirit was with me from my earliest consciousness. Though at the
time, perhaps, I knew it not as I know it now, yet I can clearly
perceive the order and chain of grace by which God mercifully led me
onward from childhood to the age of twenty years. From that time the
interior workings of his light and grace, which continued through all
my life, till the hour in which that light and grace had its perfect
work, to which all its operations had been converging, in submission
to the fulness of truth of the Spirit of the Church of God, is a
reality as profoundly certain, intimate, and sensible to me now as
that I live. Never have I by the lightest word breathed a doubt of
this fact in the divine order of grace. Never have I allowed any one
who has come to me for guidance or instruction to harbor a doubt of
the past workings of grace in them. It would be not only a sin of
ingratitude, but a sin against truth. The working of the Holy Spirit
in individual souls is, as I have said, as old as the fall of man, and
as wide as the human race. It is not we who ever breathe or harbor a
doubt of this. It is rather they who accuse us of it. Because, to
believe such an error possible in others shows how little
consciousness there must be of the true doctrine of grace in
themselves. And such, I am forced {293} to add, is my belief, because
I know by experience how inadequately I understood the doctrine of
grace until I learned it of the Catholic Church. And I trace the same
inadequate conception of the workings of grace in almost every
Anglican writer I know, not excepting even those who are nearest to
the truth.
But, further, our theologians teach, not only that the state of
baptismal innocence exists, and may be preserved out of the Church,
but that they who in good faith are out of it, if they shall
correspond with the grace they have already received, will receive an
increase or augmentation of grace. [Footnote 58] I do not for a
moment doubt that there are to be found among the English people
individuals who practise in a high degree the four cardinal virtues,
and in no small degree, though with the limits and blemishes
inseparable from their state, the three theological virtues of faith,
[Footnote 59] hope, and charity, infused into them in their baptism. I
do not think, my dear friend, in all that I have said or written in
the last fourteen years, that you can find a word implying so much as
a doubt of the workings of the Holy Spirit among all the baptized who
are separated from the Catholic Church.
[Footnote 58: Suarez, _De Div. Gratia_, lib. iv., c. xi. Ripalda,
_De Ente Supernaturali_, lib. i., disp. xx., sect. xii. _et seq. S.
Alphonsi Theol. Moral._, lib. i., tract, 1. 5, 6. ]
[Footnote 59: De Lugo, _De Virtute divinae Fidei_, disp. xvii.,
sect. iv, v. Viva, _Cursus Theol._, p. iv., disp. iv., quaest. iii. 7.]
I will go further still. The doctrine, "_Extra ecclesiam nulla salus_"
is to be interpreted both by dogmatic and by moral theology. As a
dogma, theologians teach that many belong to the Church who are out of
its visible unity; [Footnote 60] as a moral truth, that to be out of
the Church is no personal sin, except to those who sin in being out of
it. That is, they will be lost, not because they are _geographically_
out of it, but because they are _culpably_ out of it. And they who are
culpably out of it are those who know--or might, and therefore ought
to, know--that it is their duty to submit to it. The Church teaches
that men may be _inculpably_ out of its pale. Now they are inculpably
out of it who are and have always been either physically or morally
unable to see their obligation to submit to it. And they only are
culpably out of it who are both physically and morally able to know
that it is God's will they should submit to the Church; and either
knowing it will not obey that knowledge, or, not knowing it, are
culpable for that ignorance. I will say then at once, that we apply
this benign law of our Divine Master as far as possible to the English
people. First, it is applicable in the letter to the whole multitude
of those baptized persons who are under the age of reason. Secondly,
to all who are in good faith, of whatsoever age they be: such as a
great many of the poor and unlettered, to whom it is often physically,
and very often morally, impossible to judge which is the true
revelation or Church of God. I say physically, because in these three
hundred years the Catholic Church has been so swept off the face of
England that nine or ten generations of men have lived and died
without the faith being so much as proposed to them, or the Church
ever visible to them; and I say morally, because the great majority of
the poor, from lifelong prejudice, are often incapable of judging in a
question so far removed from the primary truths of conscience and
Christianity. Of such simple persons it may be said that, _infantibus
aequiparantur_, they are to be classed morally with infants. Again, to
these may be added the unlearned in all classes, among whom many have
no contact with the Catholic Church, or with Catholic books. Under
this head will come a great number of wives and daughters, whose
freedom of religious inquiry and religious thought is unjustly {294}
limited or suspended by the authority of parents and husbands. Add,
lastly, the large class who have been studiously brought up, with all
the dominant authority of the English tradition of three hundred
years, to believe sincerely, and without a doubt, that the Catholic
Church is corrupt, has changed the doctrines of the faith, and that
the author of the Reformation is the Spirit of holiness and truth. It
may seem incredible to some that such an illusion exists. But it is
credible to me, because for nearly forty years of my life I was fully
possessed by this erroneous belief. To all such persons it is morally
difficult in no small degree to discover the falsehood of this
illusion. All the better parts of their nature are engaged in its
support: dutifulness, self-mistrust, submission, respect for others
older, better, more learned than themselves, all combine to form a
false conscience of the duty to refuse to hear anything against "the
religion of their fathers," "the church of their baptism," or to read
anything which could unsettle them. Such people are told that it is
their duty to extinguish a doubt against the Church of England, as
they would extinguish a temptation against their virtue. A conscience
so subdued and held in subjection exercises true virtues upon a false
object, and renders to a human authority the submissive trust which is
due only to the divine voice of the Church of God.
[Footnote 60: See Perrone _Praelect. Theolog_., pars i., c. ii. 1, 2:
"Omnes et soli justi pertinent ad Ecclesiae animam."
"Ad Christi Ecclesiae corpus spectant fideles omnes tam justi quam
peccatores."
St. Augustine expresses these two propositions in six words,
"Multae oves foris, multi lupi intus." St. Aug., tom, iii., p. ii.
600.]
One last point I will add. I believe that the people of England were
not all guilty of the first acts of heresy and schism by which they
were separated from the Catholic unity and faith. They were robbed of
it. In many places they rose in arms for it. The children, the poor,
the unlearned at that time, were certainly innocent: much more the
next generation. They were born into a state of privation. They knew
no better. No choice was before them. They made no perverse act of the
will in remaining where they were born. Every successive generation
was still less culpable, in proportion as they were born into a
greater privation, and under the dominion of a tradition of error
already grown strong. For three centuries they have been born further
and further out of the truth, and their culpability is perpetually
diminishing; and as they were passively borne onward in the course of
the English separation, the moral responsibility for the past is
proportionately less.
The divine law is peremptory--"to him who knoweth to do good, and
doeth it not, to him it is sin." [Footnote 61] Every divine truth, as
it shines in upon us, lays its obligation on our conscience to believe
and to obey it. When the divine authority of the Church manifests
itself to our intellect, it lays its jurisdiction upon our conscience
to submit to it. To refuse is an act of infidelity, and the least act
of infidelity in its measure expels faith; one mortal act of it will
expel the habit of faith altogether. [Footnote 62] Every such act of
infidelity grieves the Holy Ghost by a direct opposition to his divine
voice speaking through the Church; the habit of such opposition is one
of the six sins against the Holy Ghost defined as "impugning the known
truth." All that I have said above in no way modifies the absolute and
vital necessity of submitting to the Catholic Church as the only way
of salvation to those who know it, by the revelation of God, to be
such. But I must not attempt now to treat of this point.
[Footnote 61: St. James iv. 17. ]
[Footnote 62: De Lugo, _De Virtute Fidel Divinae_, disp. xvii.,
sect. iv. 53 _et seq_. ]
Nevertheless for the reasons above given we make the largest allowance
for all who are in invincible ignorance; always supposing that there
is a preparation of heart to embrace the truth when they see it, at
any cost, a desire to know it, and a faithful use of the means of
knowing it, such as study, docility, prayer, and the like. But I do
not now enter into the case of the educated or the learned, or of
those who have liberty of mind and means of inquiry. I cannot class
them under {295} the above enumeration of those who are inculpably out
of the truth. I leave them, therefore, to the only Judge of all men.
Lastly, I will not here attempt to estimate how far all I have said is
being modified by the liberation and expansion of the Catholic Church
in England during the last thirty years. It is certain that the
restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, with the universal tumult which
published it to the whole world, still more by its steady,
wide-spread, and penetrating action throughout England, is taking away
every year the plea of invincible ignorance.
It is certain, however, that to those who, being in invincible
ignorance, faithfully co-operate with the grace they have received, an
augmentation of grace is given; and this at once places the English
people, so far as they come within the limits of these conditions, in
a state of supernatural grace, even though they be out of the visible
unity of the Church. I do not now enter into the question of the state
of those who fall from baptismal grace by mortal sin, or of the great
difficulty and uncertainty of their restoration. This would lead me
too far; and it lies beyond the limits of this letter.
It must not, however, be forgotten, for a moment, that this applies to
the whole English people, of all forms of Christianity, or, as it is
called, of all denominations. What I have said does not recognize the
grace _of_ the Church of England as such. The working of grace _in_ the
Church of England is a truth we joyfully hold and always teach. But we
as joyfully recognize the working of the Holy Spirit among Dissenters
of every kind. Indeed, I must say that I am far more able to assure
myself of the invincible ignorance of Dissenters as a mass than of
Anglicans as a mass. They are far more deprived of what survived of
Catholic truth; far more distant from the idea of a Church; far more
traditionally opposed to it by the prejudice of education; I must add,
for the most part, far more simple in their belief in the person and
passion of our Divine Lord. Their piety is more like the personal
service of disciples to a personal Master than the Anglican piety,
which has always been more dim and distant from this central light of
souls. Witness Jeremy Taylor's works, much as I have loved them,
compared with Baxter's, or even those of Andrews compared with
Leighton's, who was formed by the Kirk of Scotland.
I do not here forget all you have done to provide ascetical and
devotional books for the use of the Church of England, both by your
own writings, and, may I not say it, from your neighbor's vineyard?
With truth, then, I can say that I rejoice in all the operations of
the Holy Spirit out of the Catholic Church, whether in the Anglican or
other Protestant bodies; not that those communions are thereby
invested with any supernatural character, but because more souls, I
trust, are saved. If I have a greater joy over these workings of grace
in the Church of England, it is only because more that are dear to me
are in it, for whom every day I never fail to pray. These graces to
individuals were given before the Church was founded, and are given
still out of its unity. They are no more tokens of an ecclesiastical
character, or a sacramental power in the Church of England, than in
the Kirk of Scotland, or in the Wesleyan connexion; they prove only
the manifold grace of God, which, after all the sins of men, and in
the midst of all the ruins he has made, still works in the souls for
whom Christ died. Such, then, is our estimate of the Church of England
in regard to the grace that works not _by_ it, nor _through_ it, but _in_
it and among those who, without faults of their own, are detained by
it from the true Church of their baptism.
And here it is necessary to guard against a possible misuse of what I
have said. Let no one imagine that he may still continue in the Church
of England because God has hitherto mercifully bestowed his grace upon
{296} him. As I have shown, this is no evidence that salvation is to
be had _by_ the Church of England. It is an axiom that _to those who do
all they can God never refuses his grace_. He bestows it that he may
lead them on from grace to grace, and from truth to truth, until they
enter the full and perfect light of faith in his only true fold. The
grace they have received, therefore, was given, not to detain them in
the Church of England, but to call them out of it. The grace of their
past life lays on them the obligation of seeking and submitting to the
perfect truth. God would "have all men to be saved, and to come to the
knowledge of the truth." [Footnote 63] But his Church is an eminent
doctrine, and member of that truth; and all grace given out of the
Church is given in order to bring men into the Church, wheresoever the
Church is present to them. If they refuse to submit to the Church they
resist the divine intention of the graces they have hitherto received,
and are thereby in grave danger of losing them, as we see too often in
men who once were on the threshold of the Church, and now are in
rationalism, or in states of which I desire to say no more.
[Footnote 63: 1 Tim. ii. 4.]
2. Let me next speak of the truths which the Church of England still
retains. I have no pleasure in its present trials; and the anonymous
writer who describes me as being "positively merry" over its disasters
little knows me. If I am to speak plainly, he seems to me to be guilty
of one of the greatest offences--a rash accusation against one whom he
evidently does not know. I will further say that I lament with all my
heart whensoever what remains of truth in the Anglican system gives
way before unbelief.
I do not, indeed, regard the Church of England as a teacher of _truth_,
for that would imply that it teaches the truth in all its
circumference, and in all its divine certainty. Now this is precisely
what the Church of England does not, and, as I will show presently,
has destroyed in itself the power of doing. I am willing to call it a
teacher of _truths_, because many fragmentary truths, shattered,
disjointed from the perfect unity of the Christian revelation, still
survive the Reformation, and, with much variation and in the midst of
much contradiction, are still taught in it. I have been wont always to
say, and to say with joy, that the Reformation, which has done its
work with such a terrible completeness in Germany, was arrested in
England; that here much of the Christian belief and Christian order
has survived. Until lately I have been in the habit of saying that
there are three things which missionaries may take for granted in
England: first, the existence of a supernatural world; secondly, the
revelation of Christianity; and thirdly, the inspiration of Scripture.
The Church of England has also preserved other doctrines with more or
less of exactness, such as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the
incarnation, baptism, and the like. I will not now enter into the
question as to what other doctrines are retained by it, because a few
more or a few less would make little difference in the final estimate
a Catholic must make of it. A teacher of Christian truths I gladly
admit it to be. A teacher of Christian truth--no, because it rejects
much of that truth, and also the divine principle of its perpetuity in
the world. Nevertheless, I rejoice in every fragment of doctrine which
remains in it; and I should lament the enfeebling or diminution of any
particle of that truth. I have ever regarded with regret the so-called
Low-Church and Latitudinarian schools in the Anglican Church, because
I believe their action and effect is to diminish what remains of truth
in it. I have always regarded with joy, and I have never ceased to
regard with sympathy, notwithstanding much which I cannot either like
or respect, the labors of the High-Church or Anglo-Catholic party,
because I believe that their action and effect are "to strengthen the
things which remain, which were ready {297} to die." For myself, I am
conscious how little I have ever done in my life; but as it is now
drawing toward its end, I have at least this consolation, that I
cannot remember at any time, by word or act, to have undermined a
revealed truth; but that, according to my power, little enough as I
know, I have endeavored to build up what truth I knew, truth upon
truth, if only as one grain of sand upon another, and to bind it
together by the only bond and principle of cohesion which holds in
unity the perfect revelation of God. A very dear friend, whose
friendship has been to me one of the most instructive, and the loss of
which was to me one of the hardest sacrifices I had to make, has often
objected to me, with the subtlety which marks his mind, that my act in
leaving the Church of England has helped forward the unbelief which is
now invading it. No doubt he meant to say that the tendency of such an
act helped to shake the confidence of others in the Church of England
as a teacher of truth. This objection was, like his mind, ingenious
and refined. But a moment's thought unravelled it, and I answered it
much in these words:
I do not believe that by submitting to the Catholic Church any one
can weaken the witness of the Church of England for the truth which
it retains. So far as it holds the truth, it is in conformity to the
Catholic Church. In submitting to the Catholic Church, I all the
more strongly give testimony to the same truths which the Church of
England still retains. If I give testimony against the Church of
England, it is in those points in which, being at variance with the
truth, the Church of England is itself undermining the faith of
Christianity.
It was for this reason I always lamented the legalizing of the
sacramentarian errors of the Low-Church party by the Gorham Judgment;
and that I lament now the legalizing of the heresies of the "Essays
and Reviews," and the spreading unbelief of Dr. Colenso. I believe
that anything which undermines the Christianity of England is drawing
it further and further from us. In proportion as men believe more of
Christianity, they are nearer to the perfect truth. The mission of the
Church in the world is to fill up the truth. Our Divine Lord said, "I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil;" and St. Paul did not overthrow
the altar of the Unknown God, but gave to it an object of divine
worship and a true adoration. For this cause I regard the present
downward course of the Church of England and the Christianity of
England with great sorrow and fear. And I am all the more alarmed
because of those who are involved in it so many not only refuse to
acknowledge the fact, but treat us who give warning of the danger as
enemies and accusers.
One of my critics has imagined, that I propose to myself and others
the alternative of Catholicism or atheism. I have never attempted to
bring any one to the perfect truth by destroying or by threatening the
imperfect faith they might still possess. I do not believe that the
alternative before us is Catholicism or atheism. There are lights of
the natural order, divine witnesses of himself inscribed by the
Creator on his works, characters engraven upon the conscience, and
testimonies of mankind in all the ages of the world, which prove the
existence and perfections of God, the moral nature and responsibility
of man anterior to Catholicism, and independently of revelation. If a
man, through any intellectual or moral aberration, should reject
Christianity, that is Catholicism, the belief of God and of his
perfections stands immutably upon the foundations of nature.
Catholicism, or deism, is indeed the only ultimately logical and
consistent alternative, though, happily, few men in rejecting
Catholicism are logically consistent enough to reject Christianity.
Atheism is an aberration which implies not only an intellectual
blindness, but a moral insensibility. The theism {298} of the world
has its foundation on the face of the natural world, and on the
intellect and the heart of the human race. The old paganism and modern
pantheism are reverent, filial, and elevating compared with the
atheism of Comte and of our modern secularists. It would be both
intellectually and morally impossible to propose to any one the
alternative of Catholicism or atheism. Not only then do I lament to
see any truth in the Church of England give way before unbelief, but I
should regard with sorrow and impatience any attempt to promote the
belief of the whole revelation of Christianity by a mode of logic
which undermines even the truths of the natural order. The Holy See
has authoritatively declared that the existence of God may be proved
by reason and the light of nature, [Footnote 64] and Alexander VIII.
declared that men who do not know of the existence of God are without
excuse. [Footnote 65] Atheism is not the condition of man without
revelation. As Viva truly says in his comment on this declaration,
atheists are anomalies and exceptions in the intellectual tradition of
mankind.
[Footnote 64: "Ratiocinatio Dei existentiam, animae spiritualitatem,
hominis libertatem, cum certitudine probare potest." _Theses a SS.
D. N. Pio IX. approbatae_, 11 _Junii_ 1855. Denzinger's Enchiridion,
p. MS. Ed. 1856. ]
[Footnote 65: Viva, _Propos. damnatae,_ p. 372. Ripalda, De _Ente
Supernaturali_. disp. xx., s. 12, 59. ]
Nay, I will go further. I can conceive a person to reject Catholicism
without logically rejecting Christianity. He would indeed reject the
divine certainty which guarantees and proposes to us the whole
revelation of the day of Pentecost. But, as Catholic theologians
teach, the infallible authority of the Church does not of necessity
enter into the essence of an act of faith. [Footnote 66] It is,
indeed, the divine provision for the perfection and perpetuity of the
faith, and _in hac providentia_, the ordinary means whereby men are
illuminated in the revelation of God; but the known and historical
evidence of Christianity is enough to convince any prudent man that
Christianity is a divine revelation. It is quite true that by this
process he cannot attain an explicit faith in all the doctrines of
revelation, and that in rejecting Catholicism he reduces himself to
human and historical evidence as the maximum of extrinsic certainty
for his religion, and that this almost inevitably resolves itself in
the long run into rationalism. It is an inclined plane on which, if
individuals may stand, generations cannot. Nevertheless, though the
alternative in the last analysis of speculation be Catholicism or
deism, the practical alternative may be Catholicism and fragmentary
Christianity.
[Footnote 66: De Lugo,--De Virtute Fidei Divinae, disp. i., sect.
xii. 250-53. Viva, _Cursus Theol._, p. iv., disp. i., quaest. iv.,
art. iii. Ripalda, _De Ente Supern._, disp. xx., seet. xxii. 117.]
I have said this to show how far I am from sympathizing with those, if
any there be, and I can truly say I know none such, who regard the
giving way of any lingering truth in the Church of England under the
action of unbelief with any feeling but that of sorrow. The Psalmist
lamented over the dying out of truths. "Diminutae sunt veritates a
filiis hominum," and I believe that every one who loves God, and
souls, and truth must lament when a single truth, speculative or
moral, even of the natural order, is obscured; much more when any
revealed truth of the elder or of the Christian revelation is rejected
or even doubted. Allow me also to answer, not only for myself, which
is of no great moment, but for an eminent personage to whom you have
referred in your pamphlet. I can say, with a personal and perfect
knowledge, that no other feeling has ever arisen in His Eminence's
mind, in contemplating the troubles of the Anglican Church, than a
sincere desire that God may use these things to open the eyes of men
to see the untenableness of their positions; coupled with a very
sincere sorrow at the havoc which the advance of unbelief is making
among the truths which yet linger in the Church of England.
3. It is, however, but reason that I {299} should rejoice when
whatsoever remains in it of imperfect truth is unfolded into a more
perfect faith: and that therefore I desire to see not only the
conversion of England, but the conversion of every soul to whom the
more perfect truth can be made known. You would not respect me if I
did not. Your own zeal for truth and for souls here speaks in my
behalf. There are two kinds of proselytism. There are the Jews whom
our Lord condemned. There are also the Apostles whom he sent into all
the world. If by proselytizing be meant the employing of unlawful and
unworthy means, motives, or influences to change a person's religion,
I should consider the man who used such means to commit _lese-majeste_
against truth, and against our Lord who is the truth. But if by
proselytizing be meant the using all the means of conviction and
persuasion which our divine Master has committed to us to bring any
soul who will listen to us into the only faith and fold, then of this
I plead guilty with all my heart. I do heartily desire to see the
Church of England dissolve and pass away, as the glow of lingering
embers in the rise and steady light of a reviving flame. If the Church
of England were to perish to-morrow under the action of a higher and
more perfect truth, there would be no void left in England. All the
truths hitherto taught in fragments and piecemeal would be still more
vividly and firmly impressed upon the minds of the English people. All
of Christianity which survives in Anglicanism would be perfected by
the restoration of the truths which have been lost, and the whole
would be fixed and perpetuated by the evidence of divine certainty and
the voice of a divine Teacher. No Catholic desires to see the Church
of England swept away by an infidel revolution, such as that of 1789
in France. But every Catholic must wish to see it give way year by
year, and day by day, under the intellectual and spiritual action of
the Catholic Church: and must watch with satisfaction every change,
social and political, which weakens its hold on the country, and would
faithfully use all his power and influence for its complete removal as
speedily as possible.
4. But lastly, I am afraid we have reached a point of divergence.
Hitherto I hope we may have been able to agree together; but now I
fear every step of advance will carry us more wide of each other. I am
unable to consider the Church of England to be "in God's hands the
great bulwark against infidelity in this land." And my reasons are
these:
1.) First, I must regard the Anglican Reformation, and therefore the
Anglican Church, as the true and original source of the present
spiritual anarchy of England. Three centuries ago the English people
were in faith _unius labii:_ they were in perfect unity. Now they are
divided and subdivided by a numberless multiplication of errors. What
has generated them? From what source do they descend? Is it not
self-evident that the Reformation is responsible for the production of
every sect and every error which has sprung up in England in these
three hundred years, and of all which cover the face of the land at
this day? It is usual to hear Anglicans lament the multiplication of
religious error. But what is the productive cause of all? Is it not
Anglicanism itself which, by appealing from the voice of the Church
throughout the world, has set the example to its own people of
appealing from the voice of a local and provincial authority?
I am afraid, then, that the Church of England, so far from, a barrier
against infidelity, must be recognized as the mother of all the
intellectual and spiritual aberrations which now cover the face of
England.
2.) It is true, indeed, that the Church of England retains many truths
in it. But it has in two ways weakened the evidence of these very
truths which it retains. It has detached them from {300} other truths
which by contact gave solidity to all by rendering them coherent and
intelligible. It has detached them from the divine voice of the
Church, which guarantees to us the truth incorruptible and changeless.
The Anglican Reformation destroyed the principle of cohesion, by which
all truths are bound together into one. The whole idea of theology, as
the science of God and of his revelation, has been broken up.
Thirty-nine Articles, heterogeneous, disjointed, and mixed with error,
is all that remains instead of the unity and harmony of Catholic
truth. Surely this has been among the most prolific causes of error,
doubt, and unbelief. So far from the bulwark against it, Anglicanism
appears to me to be the cause and spring of its existence. As I have
already said, the Reformation placed the English people upon an
inclined plane, and they have steadily obeyed the law of their
position, by descending gradually from age to age, sometimes with a
more rapid, sometimes with a slower motion, but always tending
downward. Surely it would be unreasonable to say of a body always
descending, that it is the great barrier against reaching the bottom.
I do not, indeed, forget that the Church of England has produced
writers who have vindicated many Christian truths. I am not unmindful
of the service rendered by Anglican writers to Christianity in
general, nor, in particular, of the works of Bull and Waterland in
behalf of the Holy Trinity; of Hammond and Pearson in behalf of
Episcopacy; of Butler and Warburton in behalf of Revelation, and the
like. But whence came the errors and unbeliefs against which they
wrote? Were they not generated by the Reformation abroad and in
England? This is like the spear which healed the wounds it had made.
But it is not the divine office of the Church to make wounds in the
faith that it may use its skill in healing. They were quelling the
mutiny which Protestantism had raised, and arresting the progress of
the Reformation which, like Saturn, devours its own children.
Moreover, to be just I must say that if the Church of England be a
barrier against infidelity, the Dissenters must also be admitted to a
share in this office and commendation. And in truth I do not know
among the Dissenters any works like the Essays and Reviews, or any
Biblical criticism like that of Dr. Colenso. They may not be very
dogmatic in their teaching, but they bear their witness for
Christianity as a divine revelation, for the Scriptures as an inspired
book, and, I must add further, for the personal Christianity of
conversion and repentance, with an explicitness and consistency which
is not less effectual against infidelity than the testimony of the
Church of England. I do not think the Wesleyan Conference or the
authorities of the three denominations would accept readily this
assumed superiority of the Anglican Church as a witness against
unbelief. They would not unjustly point to the doctrinal confusions of
the Church of England as causes of scepticism, from which they are
comparatively free. And I am bound to say that I think they would have
an advantage. I well remember that while I was in the Church of
England I used to regard Dissenters from it with a certain, I will not
say aversion, but distance and recoil. I never remember to have borne
animosity against them, or to have attacked or pursued them with
unkindness. I always believed many of them to be very earnest and
devoted men. I did not like their theology, and I believed them to be
in disobedience to the Church of England; but I respected them, and
lived at peace with them. Indeed, I may say that some of the best
people I have ever known out of the Church were Dissenters or children
of Dissenters. Nevertheless, I had a dislike of their system, and of
their meeting-houses. They seemed to me to be rivals of the Church of
England, and my loyalty to it made me look somewhat impatiently upon
them. But I remember, from {301} the hour I submitted to the Catholic
Church, all this underwent a sensible change. I saw that the whole
revelation was perpetuated in the Church alone, and that all forms of
Christianity lying round about it were but fragments more or less
mutilated. But with this a sensible increase of kindly feeling grew
upon me. The Church of England and the dissenting communions all alike
appeared to me to be upon the same level. I rejoiced in all the truth
that remains in them, in all the good I could see or hope in them, and
all the workings of the Holy Spirit in them. I had no temptation to
animosity toward them; for neither they nor the Church of England
could be rivals of the imperishable and immutable Church of God. The
only sense, then, in which I could regard the Church of England as a
barrier against infidelity, I must extend also to the dissenting
bodies; and I cannot put this high, for reasons I will give.
3.) If the Church of England be a barrier to infidelity by the truths
which yet remain in it, I must submit that it is a source of unbelief
by all the denials of other truths which it has rejected. If it
sustains a belief in two sacraments, it formally propagates unbelief
in five; if it recognizes an undefined presence of Christ in the
sacrament, it formally imposes on its people a disbelief in
transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the altar; if it teaches that
there is a church upon earth, it formally denies its indissoluble
unity, its visible head, and its perpetual divine voice.
It is not easy to see how a system can be a barrier against unbelief
when by its Thirty-nine Articles it rejects, and binds its teachers to
propagate the rejection, of so many revealed truths.
4.) But this is not all. It is not only by the rejection of particular
doctrines that the Church of England propagates unbelief. It does so
by principle, and in the essence of its whole system. What is the
ultimate guarantee of the divine revelation but the divine authority
of the Church? Deny this, and we descend at once to human teachers.
But it is this that the Church of England formally and expressly
denies. The perpetual and ever-present assistance of the Holy Spirit,
whereby the Church in every age is not only preserved from error, but
enabled at all times to declare the truth, that is the infallibility
of the living Church at this hour--this it is that the Anglican Church
in terms denies. But this is the formal antagonist of infidelity,
because it is the evidence on which God wills that we should believe
that which his veracity reveals. Do not be displeased with me. It
appears to me that the Anglican system, by this one fact alone,
perpetually undoes what it strives to do in behalf of particular
doctrines. What are they, one by one, when the divine certainty of all
is destroyed? Now, for three hundred years the Anglican clergy have
been trained, ordained, and bound by subscriptions to deny not only
many Christian truths, but the divine authority of the [Greek text],
the living Church of every age. The barrier against infidelity is the
divine voice which generates faith. But this the Anglican clergy are
bound to deny. And this denial opens a flood-gate in the bulwark,
through which the whole stream of unbelief at once finds way.
Seventeen or eighteen thousand men, educated with all the advantages
of the English schools and universities, endowed with large corporate
revenues, and distributed all over England, maintain a perpetual
protest, not only against the Catholic Church, but against the belief
that there is any divine voice immutably and infallibly guiding the
Church at this hour in its declaration of the Christian revelation to
mankind. How can this be regarded as "the great bulwark in God's hand
against infidelity?"
It seems to me that the Church of England, so far from being a bulwark
against the flood, has floated before it. Every age has exhibited an
advance to a more indefinite and heterogeneous state of religious
opinion within its {302} pale. I will not go again over ground I have
already traversed. Even in our memory the onward progress of the
Church of England is manifest. That I may not seem to draw an
unfavorable picture from my own view, I will quote a very unsuspected
witness. Dr. Irons, in a recent pamphlet, says: "The religion of the
Church has sunk far deeper into conscience now than the surviving men
of 1833-1843 are aware of. _And all that Churchmen want_ of their
separated brethren is that they accept nothing, and profess nothing,
and submit to nothing which has 'no root' in their conscience."
[Footnote 67] If this means anything, it means that objective truth
has given place to subjective sincerity as the Anglican rule of faith.
You will know better than I whether this be the state of men's minds
among you. To me it is as strange as it is incoherent, and a sign how
far men have drifted. This certainly was not the faith or religion
that we held together in the years when I had the happiness of being
united in friendship with you. Latitudinarian sincerity was not our
basis, and if the men of 1833 and 1843 have arrived at this, it is
very unlike the definite, earnest, consistent belief which animated us
at that time. You say in your note (page 21) kindly, but a little
upbraidingly, that my comment on your letter to the _"Record"_ was not
like me in those days: forasmuch as I used then to join with those
with whom even then you could not. It was this that made me note your
doing so now. It was this which seemed to me to be a drifting backward
from old moorings. For myself, it is true, indeed, that I have moved
likewise. I have been carried onward to what you then were, and beyond
it. What I might have done then, I could not do now. What you do now
seems to me what you would not have done then. I did not note this
unkindly, but with regret, because, as I rejoice in every truth, and
in every true principle retained in the Church of England, it would
have given me great joy to see you maintaining with all firmness, not
only all the particular truths you held, but also the impossibility of
uniting with those who deny both those truths and the principles on
which you have rested through your laborious life of the last thirty
years.
[Footnote 67: "Apologia pro vita Ecclesias Anglicanae," p. 22.]
And now I will add only a few more words of a personal sort, and then
make an end. It was not my fate in the Church of England to be
regarded as a contentious or controversial spirit, nor as a man of
extreme opinions, or of a bitter temper. I remember indeed that I was
regarded, and even censured, as slow to advance, somewhat tame,
cautious to excess, morbidly moderate, as some one said. I remember
that the Catholics [Greek text] used to hold me somewhat cheap, and to
think me behindhand, uncatholic, over-English, and the like. But now,
is there anything in the extreme opposite of all this which I am not?
Ultramontane, violent, unreasoning, bitter, rejoicing in the miseries
of my neighbors, destructive, a very Apollyon, and the like. Some who
so describe me now are the same who were wont then to describe me as
the reverse of all this. They are yet catholicizing the Church of
England, without doubt more catholic still than I am. Well, what shall
I say? If I should say that I am not conscious of these changes, you
would only think me self-deceived. I will therefore only tell you
where I believe I am unchanged, and then where I am conscious of a
change, which, perhaps, will account for all you have to say of me.
I am unconscious, then, of any change in my love to England in all
that relates to the natural order. I am no politician, and I do not
set up for a patriot; but I believe, as St. Thomas teaches, that love
of country is a part of charity, and assuredly I have ever loved
England with a very filial love. My love for England {303} begins with
the England of St. Bede. Saxon England, with all its tumults, seems to
me saintly and beautiful. Norman England I have always loved less,
because, though more majestic, it became continually less Catholic,
until the evil spirit of the world broke off the light yoke of faith
at the so-called Reformation. Still, I loved the Christian England
which survived, and all the lingering outlines of dioceses and
parishes, cathedrals and churches, with the names of saints upon them.
It is this vision of the past which still hovers over England and
makes, it beautiful, and full of memories of the kingdom of God. Nay,
I loved the parish church of my childhood, and the college chapel of
my youth, and the little church under a green hillside, where the
morning and evening prayers, and the music of the English Bible, for
seventeen years, became a part of my soul. Nothing is more beautiful
in the natural order, and if there were no eternal world I could have
made it my home. But these things are not England, they are only its
features, and I may say that my love was and is to the England which
lives and breathes about me, to my countrymen whether in or out of the
Church of England. With all our faults as a race, I recognize in them
noble Christian virtues, exalted characters, beautiful examples of
domestic life, and of every personal excellence which can be found,
where the fulness of grace and truth is not, and much, too, which puts
to shame those who are where the fulness of grace and truth abounds.
So long as I believed the Church of England to be a part of the Church
of God I loved it, how well you know, and honored it with a filial
reverence, and labored to serve it, with what fidelity I can affirm,
with what, or if with any utility, it is not for me to say. And I love
still those who are in it, and I would rather suffer anything than
wrong them in word or deed, or pain them without a cause. To all this
I must add, lastly, and in a way above all, the love I bear to many
personal friends, so dear to me, whose letters I kept by me till two
years ago, though more than fifty of them are gone into the world
unseen, all these things are sweet to me still beyond all words that I
can find to express it.
You will ask me then, perhaps, why I have never manifested this
before? It is because when I left you, in the full, calm, deliberate,
and undoubting belief that the light of the only truth led me from a
fragmentary Christianity into the perfect revelation of the day of
Pentecost, I believed it to be my duty to walk alone in the path in
which it led me, leaving you all unmolested by any advance on my part.
If any old friend has ever written to me, or signified to me his wish
to renew our friendship, I believe he will bear witness to the
happiness with which I have accepted the kindness offered to me. But I
felt that it was my act which had changed our relations, and that I
had no warrant to assume that a friendship, founded upon agreement in
our old convictions, would be continued when that foundation had been
destroyed by myself, or restored upon a foundation altogether new. And
I felt, too, a jealousy for truth. It was no human pride which made me
feel that I ought not to expose the Catholic Church to be rejected in
my person. Therefore I held on my own course, seeking no one, but
welcoming every old friend--and they have been many--who came to me.
This has caused a suspension of nearly fourteen years in which I have
never so much as met or exchanged a line with many who till then were
among my nearest friends. This, too, has given room for many
misapprehensions. It would hardly surprise me if I heard that my old
friends believed me to have become a cannibal.
But perhaps you will say, This does not account for your hard words
against us and the Church of England. When I read your late pamphlet I
said to myself, Have I ever written such hard words as these? I will
not quote them, but truly I do not think {304} that, in anything I
have ever written, I have handled at least any person as you, my dear
friend, in your zeal, which I respect and honor, have treated certain
very exalted personages who are opposed to you. But let this pass. It
would not excuse me even if I were to find you in the same
condemnation.
One of my anonymous censors writes that "as in times past I had
written violently against the Church of Rome, so now I must do the
same against the Church of England." Now I wish he would find, in the
books I published when out of the Church, the hard sayings he speaks
of. It has been my happiness to know that such do not exist. I feel
sure that my accuser had nothing before his mind when he risked this
controversial trick. I argued, indeed, against the Catholic and Roman
Church, but I do not know of any railing accusations. How I was
preserved from it I cannot tell, except by the same divine goodness
which afterward led me into the perfect light of faith.
But I have written, some say, hard things of the Church of England.
Are they hard truths or hard epithets? If they are hard epithets, show
them to me, and I will erase them with a prompt and public expression
of regret; but if they be hard facts, I cannot change them. It is
true, indeed, that I have for the last fourteen years incessantly and
unchangingly, by word and by writing, borne my witness to the truths
by which God has delivered me from the bondage of a human authority in
matters of faith. I have borne my witness to the presence and voice of
a divine, and therefore infallible, teacher, guiding the Church with
his perpetual assistance, and speaking through it as his organ. I have
also borne witness that the Church through which he teaches is that
which St. Augustine describes by the two incommunicable notes--that it
is "spread throughout the word" and "united to the Chair of Peter."
[Footnote 68] I know that the corollaries of these truths are severe,
peremptory, and inevitable. If the Catholic faith be the perfect
revelation of Christianity, the Anglican Reformation is a cloud of
heresies; if the Catholic Church be the organ of the Holy Ghost, the
Anglican Church is not only no part of the Church, but no church of
divine foundation. It is a human institution, sustained as it was
founded by a human authority, without priesthood, without sacraments,
without absolution, without the real presence of Jesus upon its
altars. I know these truths are hard. It seems heartless, cruel,
unfilial, unbrotherly, ungrateful so to speak of all the beautiful
fragments of Christianity which mark the face of England, from its
thousand towns to its green villages, so dear even to us who believe
it to be both in heresy and in schism. You must feel it so. You must
turn from me and turn against me for saying it; but if I believe it,
must I not say it? And if I say it, can I find words more weighed,
measured, and deliberate than those I have used? If you can, show them
to me, and so that they are adequate, I will use them always
hereafter. God knows I have never written a syllable with the intent
to leave a wound. I have erased, I have refrained from writing and
speaking, many, lest I should give more pain than duty commanded me to
give. I cannot hope that you will allow of all I say. But it is the
truth. I have refrained from it, not only because it is a duty, but
because I wish to disarm those who divert men from the real point at
issue by accusations of bitterness and the like. It has been my lot,
more than of most, to be in these late years on the frontier which
divides us. And--why I know not--people have come to me with their
anxieties and their doubts. What would you have done in my place? That
which you have done in your own; which, _mutato nomine_, has been my
duty and my burden.
[Footnote 68: _S. Aug. Op._, tom, ii., pp. 119, 120; torn, x., p. 93]
And now I have done. I have a hope that the day is coming when all
{305} in England who believe in the supernatural order, in the
revelation of Christianity, in the inspiration of Holy Scripture, in
the divine certainty of dogmatic tradition, in the divine obligation
of holding no communion with heresy and with schism, will be driven in
upon the lines of the only stronghold which God has constituted as
"the pillar and ground of the truth." This may not be, perhaps, as
yet; but already it is time for those who love the faith of
Christianity, and look with sorrow and fear on the havoc which is
laying it waste among us, to draw together in mutual kindness and
mutual equity of judgment. That I have so ever treated you I can truly
say; that I may claim it at your hands I am calmly conscious; but
whether you and others accord it to me or not, I must leave it to the
Disposer of hearts alone to determine. Though we are parted now, it
may not be for ever; and morning by morning, in the holy Sacrifice, I
pray that the same light of faith which so profusely fell upon myself,
notwithstanding all I am, may in like manner abundantly descend upon
you who are in all things so far above me, save only in that one gift
which is not mine, but his alone who is the Sovereign Giver of all
grace.
Believe me, my dear friend,
Always affectionately yours,
HENRY EDWARD MANNING.
ST. MARY'S, BAYSWATER,
Sept. 27, 1864.
P.S.--My attention has just been called to the concluding pages of the
last number of the _Quarterly Review_, in which I am again described
by a writer who evidently has abilities to know better, to be in
"ecstasies." The writer represents, as the sum or chief argument of my
"Second Letter to an Anglican Friend," the passing reference I there
made to the Lord Chancellor's speech. I quoted this to prove that the
late judgment is a part of the law, both of the land and of the Church
of England. But the whole of the letter, excepting this single point,
is an argument to show that the vote of the Convocation carries with
it no divine certainty, and resolves itself into the private judgment
of the majority who passed it. For all this argument the writer has
not a word. I cannot be surprised that he fills out his periods with
my "ecstasies," "shouts of joy," "wild paeans," a quotation from
"Shylock," and other things less fitting. This is not to reason, but
to rail. Is it worthy? Is it love of truth? Is it good faith? Is it
not simply the fallacy of evasion? I can assure him that this kind of
controversy is work that will not stand. We are in days when
personalities and flimsy rhetoric will not last long. Neither will it
bear to be tried by "the fire," nor will it satisfy, I was about to
say, nor will it mislead, men who are in earnest for truth or for
salvation. I had hoped that this style of controversy had been cured
or suppressed by a greater sincerity and reality of religious thought
in these days of anxiety and unbelief. There either is, or is not, a
divine Person teaching perpetually through the Church in every age,
and therefore now as always, generating faith with divine certainty in
the minds of men. This question must be answered; and, as men answer
it, we know where to class them, and how to deal with them. All the
evasions and half-arguments of such writers are becoming daily more
and more intolerable to those of the English people--and they are a
multitude--who would give all that they count dear, and life itself, to
know and to die in the full and certain light of the revelation of God
in Jesus Christ.
H. E. M.
----
{306}
Translated from Le Correspondant.
A RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS.
BY PRINCE AUGUSTIN GALITZIN.
On the 6th of May, 1840, in a little hut upon the slope of that chain
of mountains which separates the northern from the southern states of
the American Union, died an old man who had spent his life in
spreading the faith through those distant regions. A crowd of persons
surrounded his bed in tears; for during half a century he had been the
depositary of public misfortunes, domestic troubles, and spiritual
distress. Though known by the humble name of Father Smith, this priest
was not a native of the land which received his last breath: he was a
Russian by birth, and his name was Galitzin.
On the 1st of September in the same year eight women landed at New
York, clad all in black, and wearing no ornament but a cross on the
breast. They came to educate new generations in the New World. The
eldest of them was not, like her sisters, a Frenchwoman; the same
blood ran in her veins as in those of the missionary just dead, and
her heart beat with the same love. She too was a Russian, and her name
was Madame Elizabeth Galitzin.
Born at St. Petersburg in 1795, the Princess Elizabeth was the
daughter of a woman of whom it is praise enough to say that she was
the worthiest and most intimate friend of Madame Swetchine, who called
her "her second conscience." [Footnote 69] On the day when Elizabeth
reached her fifteenth year, her mother confided to her the secret that
she had become a Catholic, and told the reasons which had induced her
not, as is still supposed in Russia, to abandon the faith of her
fathers, but to return to it in all its integrity. Elizabeth thus
describes the emotion which she felt in listening to this disclosure,
and the influence which it had upon her own future. [Footnote 70]
[Footnote 69: _Lettres de Mme. Swetchine_, I. 321. ]
[Footnote 70: This extract and the details that follow are taken
from or confirmed by the Rev. A. Guidee's _Vie du P. Rozaven_ and
the Rev. J. Gagarin's notice of Madame Galitzin in his _Etudes de
theologie, de philosophie et d'histoire_, vol. ii.]
"The secret which my mother confided to me filled me with despair; I
burst into tears, without uttering a word. For several days I wept
bitterly whenever I was alone, and during the night. I believed that
my mother had committed a great sin, because the government punished
so severely those who forsook the religion of the country. The reasons
which she gave made no impression on me; I did not even understand
them: the moment of the _fiat lux_ was not yet come. From that day I
felt an implacable hatred of the Catholic religion and its ministers,
especially of the Jesuits, who, as I supposed, had effected my
mother's conversion. One night, as I was lamenting my isolated
condition, separated from my mother by this division of sentiments, I
was struck by the sudden thought, 'If the Jesuits have gained over so
excellent a woman as mamma,--a woman so reasonable, so well-informed,
and of so much experience, what will they not do with an ignorant,
unsophisticated girl like me? I must protect myself against their
persecutions. I firmly believe that the Greek Church is the true
church; I am resolved to be faithful to it unto death. To withdraw
myself effectually from the seductions of the Jesuits, I will write
down a vow that I will never change my religion.' No sooner said than
{307} done. I rose at once, and despite the darkness wrote out my vow
in due form, invoking the wrath of God if I ever broke it. Then I went
back to bed, feeling much more composed, and believing that I had
gained a great victory over the devil. Alas! it was he that guided my
pen. For four years I repeated that vow every day when I said my
prayers; I never omitted it. I gloried in my obstinacy, and took every
opportunity to show my aversion to the Catholic religion, and above
all to the Jesuits. In this I was encouraged by my confessor. He asked
me one day if I had any leaning toward Catholicism.
"'I, father! I detest the Catholic religion and the Jesuits!'
"'Good, good!' said he; 'that is as it should be.'
"I let slip no occasion of defaming these holy men. I delighted in
repeating all the absurd stories that I heard against them, and
believed them as much as if they were articles of faith. But about the
middle of the fourth year an excellent Italian priest, who had given
me lessons, died. My mother sometimes requested me to go to the
Catholic church on days of great ceremony, and I durst not refuse,
though I used to go with rage in my heart. When she invited me,
however, to go with her to the funeral of the poor priest, I consented
willingly, out of gratitude, and respect for the memory of the
deceased. As soon as I entered the church a voice within me seemed to
say, 'You hate this church, but you will one day belong to it
yourself.' The words sank into my heart. I was deeply moved, and shed
abundance of tears all the while I remained in the church--I could not
tell why. A thought all at once occurred to me: 'You hate the
Jesuits,' said I to myself; 'is not hatred a sin? When did you learn
to consider this feeling a virtue? If it is a sin, I must not commit
it again: I will not hate the Jesuits then; I will pray for them.' And
so, in fact, I did, every day from that moment. I struggled against my
dislike for them.
"In the meanwhile we went to pass the summer away from home. In this
retirement our good Lord vouchsafed to speak to my heart and inspire
me with such a lively sorrow for my sins that I often passed part of
the night in weeping. I watered my couch with tears, and judging
myself unworthy to sleep on a bed, I cast myself on the ground, and
used to lie there until fatigue obliged me to return to my pillow. At
the end of three months we went back to St. Petersburg, and I there
learned that a cousin of mine [Footnote 71] had become a convert. I
was deeply pained. I accused the Jesuits of being the cause of the
step, and had hard work not to yield to my old hatred of them. I
avoided speaking with my cousin alone, because I did not want to
receive the confidence which I knew she was anxious to give me. But at
last, to my great regret, I had to listen to her. When she had told me
what I was so unwilling to know, I burst into tears, and replied:
[Footnote 71: The lady here mentioned was the mother of Monseigneur
de Segur. ]
"'If you believe that the Catholic religion is the true one, you were
right to embrace it; but I do not understand how you could believe
it.'
"'Oh,' said she, 'if you would only read something that my mother
[Footnote 72] has written on the Greek schism and the truth of the
Catholic Church, you would be persuaded as I was.'
[Footnote 72: The Countess Rostopchine, whom Madame de Stael
mentions with so much praise in her _Dix annees d'exil_. ]
"'You may send me whatever you wish,' I answered, 'but you may be
certain that it will not affect me. I am too firmly convinced that
truth lives in the Greek Church.'
"I went home in great distress of mind. For the first time in four
years I omitted to repeat my vow before going to bed; it seemed to me
rash. I retired, but God would not let me sleep; he filled my mind
with salutary thoughts. 'I must examine this matter,' said I, 'it is
certainly worth the {308} trouble; it is something of too much
consequence to be deceived about.' I thought over all that I knew
about the Catholic faith, and at that moment God opened my eyes. I saw
as clear as day that hitherto I had been in the wrong, and the truth
was to be found only in the Catholic Church. 'It is our pride,' I
exclaimed, 'which prevents our acknowledging the supremacy of the
Pope: to-morrow I will embrace the truth. Yet how can I? And my vow?
Ah, but the vow is null; it can be no obstacle to the fulfilment of my
resolution. If I had taken an oath to commit a murder, the oath would
have been a sin, and to fulfil it would be another. I will not commit
the second sin. I will not put off being a Catholic beyond to-morrow.'
"I waited impatiently for day that I might read my aunt's little
treatise,--not because I needed arguments to convince me, but I
wanted to have it to say that I had read something. At day-break I
wrote to my cousin these words: 'Send me the manuscript, pray for me,
and hope.' I read it quickly; it consisted of not more than thirty
pages. I found in it all that I had said to myself during the night. I
hesitated no longer, but hastened to my mother, declared myself a
Catholic, and begged her to send for Father Rozaven. He came the same
morning. He was not a little surprised at the unexpected intelligence,
and asked me if I was ready to suffer persecution, even death itself,
if need were, for the love of the religion which I was going to
embrace. My blood froze in my veins, but I answered: 'I hope
everything from the grace of God.' The good father doubted no longer
the sincerity of my conversion, and promised to hear my confession the
next day but one, that is, the 18th of October. It was during the
night of the 15th and 16th of October, 1815, that God spoke for me the
words _fiat lux._"
After she had been received into the Church, Father Rozaven said to
her: "I wish to establish in your heart a great love of God which
shall manifest itself not by fine sentiments but by practical results,
and shall lead you to fulfil with zeal and courage all your duties
without exception. I want you to strive ardently to acquire the solid
virtues of humility, love of your neighbor, patience and conformity to
the will of God. I want to see in you a grandeur, an elevation, and a
firmness of soul, and to teach you to seek and find your consolation
in God."
The princess became all that her wise director wished her to be; and
the constant practice of the fundamental Christian virtues soon led
her to aim at a still more perfect life. Even her mother for a long
time opposed her design. Her friends ridiculed her for wanting to lead
what they called a "useless" life. Sensitive to this reproach, so
constantly made by people who themselves do nothing at all, she begged
the learned Jesuit to furnish her with weapons to repel it. Her
request called forth the following excellent reply, which may be read
with especial profit just now, when so much is said about the
uselessness of nuns:
"Tell me, my child, have you read the catechism? One of the first
questions is, Why has God created us and placed us in this world? To
know him, love him, and serve him, and by this means to obtain
everlasting life. It does not say, to be 'useful.' Even when a nun is
of no use to others, she is useful to herself, and to be so is her
first duty; she labors to sanctify herself and to save her soul. Is
not this the motive which led St. Paul, St. Anthony, and so many
thousands of anchorets into the desert? These saints were certainly
not fools. Beside, is it true that nuns are useless? Was it not the
story of the virtues of St. Anthony which determined the conversion of
St. Augustine? and certainly this conversion was something far greater
than all that St. Anthony could have done by remaining in the world.
But to say nothing of the example of the saints, are not nuns useful
to each {309} other? Do you see no advantage in the union of twenty or
thirty persons, more or less, who incite each other to the acquisition
of virtue, and take each other by the hand in their journey to the
same goal, the salvation of their souls? And then again, many
religious communities devote themselves to the education of youth; and
surely there are few occupations more useful than bringing up in the
knowledge and practice of religion young girls who are destined to
become mothers of families, and to fulfil all the duties of society
that belong to their sex."
A devotion of this sort commended itself especially to our young
convert. She made choice of the new order of the Sacred Heart, and
after eleven years' delay finally entered it at Metz in 1826. She made
her vows in 1828 at Rome, and remained there until she was ordered to
France in 1834 and made general secretary of the congregation. In 1839
she was chosen assistant mother, and appointed to visit the houses of
the Sacred Heart in America, and to found some new ones. Her
correspondence during this period with her mother is now before me,
and will show, far better than any words of mine, not only her piety,
but the serenity of her soul and that love of country and kindred,
which religion, far from extinguishing, can alone purify by carrying
it beyond the narrow boundaries of this life. Like those austere
Christians whose lives Count de Montalembert has written, she kept a
large place in her heart for love and friendship, and clung ardently
to those natural ties which she did not feel called upon to break when
she gave herself to God.
I shall then leave Madame Elizabeth to speak in her own words; and in
so doing, it seems to me that I am fulfilling the wish of Madame
Swetchine, who wrote thus to Father Gagarin (ii. 360): "There are many
details respecting her life which might be found and authenticated,
and I am convinced that many interesting particulars might be obtained
from her correspondence during her two journeys in America."
NEW YORK, Sept. 1, 1840.
MY DEAREST MAMMA,--I arrived at New York a few hours ago, after a
voyage of forty-five days. Our voyage, thank God, was a good one,
despite thirty-two days of contrary winds. We had neither storms nor
rough weather; the trip was a long one, that is all. Having two
priests with us, we had mass often; you may imagine what a
consolation it was to us. I was sea-sick only one week; after that,
so well that I passed a great part of my time in drawing.
"I am here for only four days; at least I trust that the business
which I have to transact with the bishop will not keep me longer.
Then I shall go with my seven companions and a worthy priest who has
us in charge, to St. Louis in the state of Missouri, 2,000 versts
from New York. They say that we shall reach there in twelve days; by
this reckoning we shall arrive at our first house about the 20th of
September. I believe that I shall die of joy when I get there; for
here in the midst of the world, though surrounded by excellent
people, who show us a thousand attentions, I am like a fish out of
water. I will write to you as soon as I reach St. Louis. I cannot
remain with our family of the Sacred Heart there more than a
fortnight, for I must then visit two other establishments not far
distant. I shall return to St. Louis, and leave there about the
middle of November for our house at St. Michael, near New Orleans,
which is 1,500 versts from St. Louis. After a few days' rest I shall
then go to our house at Grand Coteau, also in Louisiana; and after
staying there three weeks I shall return to pass the winter at St.
Michael. I hope to do well there, for the climate is warmer than
that of Rome. In the spring I shall make another visitation of the
houses in Missouri, and then go back to New York to begin the
foundation {310} of a new establishment there. So you see I shall
not be very long in any one place.
"What a consolation it will be for me if I find a letter from you at
St. Louis! I am impatient for news of you and my brothers. How did
they take the news of my departure for America? With indifference
perhaps; but they are far from being indifferent to me. God knows
what wishes I form for them, and how sweet it is to me to be able to
offer up for them the fatigues and petty sufferings which divine
Providence sends us. When you write to my brothers do not fail to
remember me to them, for, they are dearer to me than ever in our
Lord.
"I was in hopes of finding our relative in America; but he is dead.
He died universally regretted. Everybody looked upon him as a saint.
I will make it a point to obtain his works and send them to you."
"St. Louis, Nov. 9, 1840.
"I have had the consolation of receiving your letter dated the 15th
of July. Write to me now at St. Louis, at the _Academy_ of the
Ladies of the Sacred Heart, for so they call here those religious
houses which receive pupils as boarders. For my part, I am
determined to send you this letter at once, because I am afraid that
Paris will be turned topsy-turvy by the remains of Bonaparte, which
are to be removed thither in the month of November.
"It is too true that our 'American uncle' is dead. You may suppose
how deeply I regret it. He was not a bishop; only a simple
missionary. He invariably refused all dignities, and devoted himself
for more than forty years to the missions, in which he displayed a
zeal worthy of an apostle. He died at the age of seventy-two, like a
saint as he had lived, having given himself to God since his
seventeenth year. The whole country in which he preached the gospel
weeps for him as for a father. His memory is revered in America
among Protestants as well as Catholics. I have been shown an article
about him in the _Gazette_: it gives his whole history, and it would
be impossible to write a more touching eulogy of him. I have some of
his works; they are excellent.
"I expected that my departure for America would have but little
effect upon my brothers. Our good Lord permits it to be so, and we
must wish whatever he wishes. A day will come, I trust, when their
hearts will be touched. Let us wait and pray, and suffer with more
fervor than ever. Remember me to them and to my aunts. Beg for me
the light of the Holy Ghost: I need it sorely, for my post is a very
difficult one."
"ST. MICHAEL, Dec. 6, 1840.,
"Here I am, near New Orleans; but I shall soon start on another
journey, and not be at rest again before the month of June. I am now
in the land of the sugar-cane; it is very nice to eat, or rather to
suck. As if I brought the cold with me in all my travels, I had
scarcely arrived here when bitter cold weather set in, and the ice
was as thick as a good fat finger. The weather has moderated since
then--to my great satisfaction, for I have not enough of the spirit
of mortification to bear cold very well. I begin to believe that
there is not a single warm country under the sun, and that the
reputation of those lands that are called so is not well-founded.
"I send you only these few words, that you may not be uneasy about
me; for I have no leisure. Remember me to my brothers. Bless me, and
believe, dear mamma, in my tender and respectful attachment."
"ST. MICHAEL, Feb. 28, 1841.
"I leave this place on the 15th of March, and shall be in St. Louis
for the feast of the Annunciation. I shall remain three weeks at
three of our houses in Missouri, and then go to Cincinnati and
Philadelphia; so I hope to be in New York by the beginning of May.
Do not fear on my {311} account the dangers of railroads and
steamboats. Those who are sent on a mission are under the special
protection of divine Providence. I have never met with the slightest
accident; and this constant journeying about has moreover rid me of
my fever. I am perfectly well. I rise every morning at twenty
minutes after four; I fast and abstain; and nothing hurts me. So
don't be uneasy about me. I think I shall stay in New York until
November, if God opposes no obstacle to my doing so; I shall then
make a last visit to our houses in Louisiana and Missouri, and sail
for Europe probably during the summer of 1842. In fifteen months I
shall be afloat again on the great ocean. I hope Alexander will not
be off again before that, so that I may have the consolation of
seeing him once more. He is the only one of my brothers whom I may
never see again, and he was my Benjamin. Tell them I do not forget
them in my prayers, and I wish they would also remember me before
God: that will come some day, I hope. Pray have some masses said for
me; I have great need of them. If you only knew what it was to hold
such an office as mine! The responsibility is enough to make one
tremble."
"LOUISIANA, March 29, 1841.
"Before starting on my journey I must send you a few lines. It is a
little before my accustomed time for writing; but I shall be nearly
two months on the route before reaching New York, and I am afraid I
shall have no opportunity of writing except on my arrival in that
city, and after my return here. So do not be anxious on account of
my future silence: it will not be a sign of anything bad. I am
better than ever. Make your mind at rest about my health. Our Lord
gives me astonishing strength. Fatigue has no effect upon me."
"NEW YORK, May 15, 1841.
"I arrived here without accident, and take comfort in thinking that
I shall be stationary now until October. Since I left Rome I have
not been six weeks at a time in any one place. I am about founding
an establishment here, and the task is no easy one, in any point of
view. The expenses to be incurred are enormous, and our resources,
to say the best of them, are very moderate. So I have begged our
mother-general to allow the 200 francs which you were so good as to
send us for postage, to be devoted to the first expenses of the
chapel.
"You have no idea how deeply our 'relative' is regretted here. He
was universally loved and respected. People look upon me with favor,
because I bear the same name."
"NEW YORK, June 20, 1841.
"The climate of New York is very disagreeable. It was so cold
yesterday that even with a woollen coverlid I had hard work to keep
warm through the night. It is not cold two days in succession. The
temperature varies even between morning and evening--that is, when it
is not continually raining. I believe after all that the climate of
St. Petersburg is the best. Oar summers at least are superb, and we
have long days; but here it is hardly light, this time of year, at
half after four in the morning, and by half after seven in the
evening we need lamps. In fact, you must go to a cold climate if you
want to keep warm and to see well!
"I have had an agreeable surprise here, and you would never guess
what it is. It is to have _klioukva_ [Footnote 73 ] to eat nearly
every day; it is the first time I have seen them since I left
Russia. This is absurd, I know, but I cannot tell you what pleasure
it gave me.
[Footnote 73: Cranberries. ]
"New York is an immense city; it has nearly 400,000 inhabitants, and
is as noisy as Paris. There are some 80,000 Catholics and only eight
churches, but religion is making progress. The next time I write to
you, it will be from our house of the Sacred {312} Heart. I am
burning with impatience to be in it; for though we are extremely
comfortable with the good Sisters of Charity, who are truly sisters
to us, we nevertheless long to be at home, where we can live in
conformity to our rule and customs.
"What news of my brothers? How happy I shall be when you can tell me
that all is well with them! I would give a thousand lives for that.
The day and hour of God will come; let us be patient and pray. Say a
thousand affectionate things to them for me."
"NEW YORK, Aug. 2, 1841.
"I dare say you will be pleased to learn, dear mamma, that I have
just opened a little mission among the Indian savages in Missouri,
300 miles beyond St. Louis. Four of our community have been
established there. The population consists of 900 Indians, all
converted by the Jesuits. Thanks be to God, his kingdom is extending
itself, and what it loses on one side through the wiles of the
enemy, it gains on another.
"I never let a month pass without writing to you, despite my many
occupations, because I know your anxiety; but do not distress
yourself. I am, if possible, but too well, in every respect. Our
houses here are like those in Europe; while within doors we never
could suspect that we had been transplanted into the new world (that
used to be). Don't be afraid about crocodiles. The country abounds
in them, as it does in snakes; but nobody thinks of them, and I have
never even seen one. Several, however, have been pointed out to me;
but as my eyes were cast down, I saw nothing."
"NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 1841.
"Our establishment is well under way; the house is finished, and we
have already twelve pupils. I have no doubt their number will
increase next month to twenty, and perhaps more, for there have been
already at least forty applications. Beside this, I have just
established a mission among the Potawatamie Indians in the Indian
Territory. There is a population of 3,000 Indians in the place where
our ladies are, 1,000 of whom are fervent Catholics; the others are
pagans, but to some extent civilized. We have there already a school
of fifty little girls, and a great many women come to learn from us
how to work.
"I shall leave New York and pass the winter in Louisiana. I am quite
well--better than in Europe; but I am over-burdened with work. You
may readily believe it when I tell you that beside governing this
house, and my province, which comprises seven houses, I have had to
paint three large pictures for the chapel, and to finish them in six
weeks. At last, thank God, they are done, and our chapel is really
charming. What a pity that you cannot come and hear mass in it!"
"_En route_, between St. Michael and Grand Coteau, Dec. 4, 1841.
"From a tavern on the banks of the Mississippi I write to wish you
and all the family a happy New Year! I pray devoutly that it may be
fertile in graces and divine blessings; everything else is
superfluous and valueless, and therefore unnecessary. I have
travelled a good deal since I wrote you from Harrisburg, Penn. I am
now going to our house at Grand Coteau, where I shall stay about
five weeks; then I shall spend an equal time at St. Michael. This
will bring me to the end of February; after which I shall start for
St. Louis, and visit our other establishments in Missouri, including
our new mission among the Potawatamie savages. Don't let the word
'savages' frighten you. They won't eat me; for they are more than
civilized. One thousand of them are Catholics, in the place to which
I have sent our sisters, who are only four in number, and have a
school which succeeds admirably. Our good savages are so fervent
that they come every day to church at half-past five in the morning.
They say their prayers, meditate for half an hour, and then hear
mass, {313} during which they sing canticles in their savage
fashion. After mass one of the Indians teaches the catechism to
about thirty little boys and a like number of girls; that over, they
go off to their respective employments, and about six in the evening
they come back to the church to say their prayers together. It was
the Jesuits who converted this tribe, and they are still doing a
vast amount of good out there. I shall probably go there in April;
it will be a three-weeks' journey. After that I mean to return to
New York, and probably about the 1st of June I shall sail for Havre.
So there you have my route; you see that I lead the life of a
regular courier more than ever. But fortunately, to one who has the
happiness of being a religious, all things are indifferent, provided
they are in accordance with holy obedience. I am very much afraid I
shall miss some of your letters, for they must follow me at a
gallopping pace or they will not overtake me.
"Assure yourself, my dear mamma, that Russia is not the coldest
country in the world. The so-called burning Louisiana is colder.
From the 25th to the 30th of November we had hard frosts which
chilled us through and through. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I have a
pleasant recollection that in November at St. Petersburg we have
more rain than frost. In a word, now that I have tried, so to speak,
all climates, I am firmly persuaded that there is not a warm country
on the face of the earth, and I have resigned myself to look for
pleasant and eternal warmth only in the next world.
"What news of my brothers and my sisters-in-law? Are they as great
vagabonds as I? Ah, if their hearts and minds could only be composed
and settled in God alone! It will come, some day or other; we must
hope, even against all hope. Our Lord is the master of hearts, and
he wills from all eternity that these hearts shall be wholly his. A
touch of his grace will soften those of my brothers; the day of
illusions will pass away, and we shall sing eternally with them that
God is good and his mercies are unspeakable. A thousand kisses, dear
mamma; bless your dutiful and grateful daughter
ELIZABETH."
In 1842 Madame Elizabeth went to Rome to give an account of her
fruitful mission to her superiors. I have before me a last letter of
hers, written to her mother, whom she had just lost at St. Petersburg
almost at the same hour in which her eldest brother died in Paris in
the bosom of the Catholic Church.
"I confess to you," she says, "that for several months past, I have
continually felt impelled to make a sacrifice of my life for my
brothers. Perhaps you will think this presumptuous on my part, so I
will explain myself. When I am making my preparation for death,
according to custom, the thought often comes into my mind to offer
the sacrifice of my life in advance, and to beseech our Lord to
accept it, as well as all the sufferings I may have to undergo,
especially at that terrible moment when the soul is separated from
the body, in order that I may obtain the conversion of my brothers.
I have asked permission to transfer to them all the merit which, by
God's grace, I may acquire through resignation or suffering--not only
in my last sickness, but even during the period of life which yet
remains to me--so that, accumulating no more merits by way of
satisfaction for my own sins, I may have, for my part, purgatory
without any alleviation; for in that place of propitiation and peace
I can no longer be of any use to them. I hope our Lord will grant my
request: all I know is that since that time my habitual gladness of
heart is increased a hundred-fold, and that I think of death with
unspeakable consolation."
This sacrifice, which reminds one of a similar incident in the life of
St. Vincent de Paul, [Footnote 74] seems to have been {314} accepted
by God. Returning to America in 1843, Madame Elizabeth had not time to
enjoy the fruits of her labors. She was attacked at St. Michael by the
yellow fever, and there fell asleep in the Lord on the feast of the
Immaculate Conception, saying: "I do not fear death; I long for it, if
it is God's will." [Footnote 75]
[Footnote 74: One day, moved with compassion at the state of an
unfortunate priest, a doctor of theology, who had lost his faith,
because he had ceased to study the science of divinity, St. Vincent
de Paul besought God to restore to this man the liveliness of his
faith, offering to take up himself, if necessary, the burden which
this poor brother was unable to bear. His prayer was heard at once,
and for four years this great saint remained as it were deprived of
that faith which was nevertheless his life. "Do you know how he
passed through this trial?" says an admirable master of the
spiritual life. "He passed through it by becoming St. Vincent de
Paul; that is to say, all that this name signifies."--GRATRY, _Les
Sources_, p. 82.]
[Footnote 75: Writing from Lyons to Bishop Hughes in September,
1842, Madame Galitzm said: "I avail myself of this opportunity to
write a few lines, although detained in my bed with the fever for
upward of three weeks. My health is in a poor state, and if I go on
as I did these two months, there is more prospect for me to go to
heaven next year than to return to America." The letter is in
English, which she wrote with apparent ease and considerable
approach to purity. ED. CATH. WORLD. ]
"What more glorious title of nobility," says Monseigneur the Duke
d'Aumale, "than to count saints and martyrs among one's ancestors?" My
object is not so much to lay claim to this distinction, as to show,
for the honor of my country, the part which some of her children have
taken in the genesis of civilization and Catholicism in America. And
this ambition will perhaps seem excusable to those who admit that
every gift of God ought to be an object of our most religious care.
----
From The Month.
THE STOLEN SKETCH.
I was sitting in the National Gallery, copying one of Murillo's
glorious little beggar-boys. A tube of color fell from my box and
rolled out upon the floor. A gentleman passing picked it up, and
restored it to me. I thanked him; and then he lingered some minutes by
my chair, watching my work and giving me some useful hints with the
air of a person who thoroughly understands the art. I was striving to
be an artist, struggling through difficult uphill labor. I was not
acquainted with any one of the profession. I had no one to give me
counsel. Those few friendly words of advice from a stranger fell on my
ear like so many pearls, and I gathered them gratefully and stored
them fast in memory's richest jewel-casket.
After that he seemed to take an interest in my progress, gave me
valuable lessons, and occasionally lent me colors or brushes. I
wondered at myself for conversing with him fearlessly, for I was
usually shy of strangers; but his manner was so quiet and easy, his
tone so deferential, and he spoke so well on the subjects which
interested me most, that I forgot to be nervous, and listened and
answered with delight. He was copying a picture quite near to me, and
I felt humbled when returning to my own effort after glancing at his
masterly work. But he cheered me with kind words of encouragement,
which had a different effect upon me from my mother's fond admiration
and Hessie's eloquent praises. It was so new to be told to expect
success by one whose words might be hailed as a prophecy. I grew to
look forward with increased interest to my long day's work in the
gallery, and to think the place lonely when the kind artist {315} was
not there. Before my picture was finished I felt that I had gained a
friend.
One afternoon on leaving the gallery I was dismayed to find that it
rained heavily. Quite unprepared for the wet, I yet shrank from the
expense of a cab. While standing irresolute upon the steps, I
presently saw my artist friend at my side. He shot open his umbrella,
and remarked on the unpleasant change in the weather. Perhaps he saw
my distress in my face, for he asked me how far I had to go. He also
was going to Kensington, he said, and begged permission to shelter me.
I was obliged to accept his offer, for it was getting late. It was one
of those evenings so dreaded by women who are forced to walk alone in
London, when the light fades quickly out, and darkness drops suddenly
upon the city.
Tying my thick veil over my face, and wondering at myself, I took his
arm and walked by his side through the twilight streets. I thought of
a time long ago when I used to get upon tiptoe to clasp my father's
arm, he laughing at my childish pride, while we sauntered up and down
the old garden at home, far away. Never, since that dear arm had been
draped in the shroud, had my hand rested on a man's sleeve. Memory
kept vexing me sorely; and I, who seldom cried, swallowed tears behind
my veil and went along in silence. Still I liked the walk. As we
passed on, sliding easily through those rough crowds which at other
times I dreaded so much, I felt keenly how good it is to be taken care
of. I seemed to be moving along in a dream. Even when it began to
thunder, and lightning flashed across our eyes, the storm could not
rouse me from my reverie. I felt no fear, stoutly protected as I was.
II.
When we reached my home, a violent gust of rain made my friend step
inside the open doorway. I asked him to come into the parlor till the
shower should lighten; and he did so. My mother sat by the fender in
her armchair, the fire burned blithely, the tea-things were on the
table. The room looked very cosy after the stormy streets.
My mother received the unexpected visitor cordially. She had heard of
his kindness to me before. Hessie came in with the bread and butter,
in her brown housefrock, with her bright curls a little tossed, and
her blue eyes wondering wide at sight of a stranger. My mother asked
him to stay for tea, and I went upstairs to take off my bonnet.
Never before had I felt so anxious to have my hair neat, and to find
an immaculate collar and cuffs. My hands trembled as I tied my apron
and drew on my slippers. This was always to me a pleasant hour, when
my return made Hessie and my mother glad, when I got refreshingly
purified from the stains and odor of paint, and when we all had tea
together. To-night a certain excitement mingled with my usual quiet
thankful satisfaction.
I hurried down to the parlor. Hessie was filling the cups, and Edward
Vance (our new friend) was talking pleasantly to my mother. He looked
up as I came in, and when I reached my seat a sensation of gladness
was tingling from my heart's core to my finger-ends. My mother took my
hand and fondled it in hers, and thanked him for his kindness to her
"good child." I felt that he could not but sympathize with my dear,
sick, uncomplaining mother, and I somehow felt it sweet that she
should give me that little word of praise while speaking to him. After
tea Hessie played us dreamy melodies from Mozart in the firelight, and
I sat by mother's side tracing pictures in the burning coals.
After that first evening Edward Vance often came to our house. At
these times our conversation was chiefly upon art-subjects. Hessie and
my mother were deeply interested in them for my sake; I, for their
own, and for {316} the hopes which were entwined about them.
I thought him an ambitious man, one whose whole soul was bent upon
success. I liked him for it. I thought, "The noblest man is he who
concentrates all his powers upon one worthy aim, and wins a
laurel-crown from his fellow-men as the reward of his stead-fastness."
Yet he seemed often troubled when we asked him about his own works.
A remark I overheard one day in the gallery puzzled me. Some one said,
"Vance? Oh, yes! he's a clever copyist--a determined plodder; but he
originates nothing." I don't know that I had any right to be
indignant; but I was. That very evening I asked him to show us some of
his designs. His face got a dark troubled look upon it, and he evaded
the promise.
Meantime he took a keen interest in my work. He taught me how to
finish my etchings more delicately, and his remarks on my compositions
were always most useful. His suggestions were peculiarly happy. The
drawing was ever enhanced in strength or beauty by his advice. His
ideas were just and true; his taste daintily critical. This convinced
me that the remark overheard in the gallery was made either in
ignorance or ill-nature; or perhaps that there were more artists
called Vance than one.
He came often now, very often. I ceased to feel angry at myself for
starting when his knock came. Many small things, too trivial to be
mentioned, filled my life with a delicious calm, and breathed a
rose-colored atmosphere around me. Everything in my inner and outer
world had undergone a change. I grew subject to idle fits at my work;
but then the suspended energy came back with such a rush of power,
almost like inspiration, that I accomplished far more than I ever had
done in the former quiet days when there was little sunshine to be
had, and I thought I had been born to live contentedly under a cloud
all my life. Art seemed glorified a thousandfold in my eyes. The
galleries had looked to me before like dim treasuries of phantom
beauty, shadowy regions of romance and perfection, through the gates
of which I might peer, though the key was not mine. Now they teemed
with a ripe meaning; the meaning which many glorious souls that once
breathed and wrought on this earth have woven into their creations;--a
meaning which unlocked for me the world of love, and gave me long
bright visions of its beautiful vistas.
My mother looked from Edward Vance to me, and from me to him; and I
knew her thought. It sweetened yet more that food of happiness on
which I lived. Something said to me, "You may meet his eye fearlessly,
place your hand frankly in his clasp, follow his feet gladly."
One evening after he had gone my mother stroked my head lying on her
knee.
"You are very happy, Grace?" she said.
"I am, mother," I whispered.
"Ah! your life is set to music, my love," she murmured; "the old
tune."
III.
Never was one sister so proud of another as I of Hessie. She was only
seventeen, three years younger than I, and I felt almost a motherly
love for her. She was slight and fair, and childish both in face and
disposition. I gloried in her beauty; her head reminded me of
Raffaelle's angels. I thought that one day I should paint a picture
with Hessie for my model--a picture which should win the love and
admiration of all who gazed. One leisure time, in the midst of my
happiness, I suddenly resolved to commence the work. I chose a scene
from our favorite poem of _Enid_--the part where the mother goes to
her daughter's chamber, bearing Geraint's message, and finds
{317}
'Half disarrayed, as to her rest, the girl,
Whom first she kissed on either cheek, and then
On either shining shoulder laid a hand,
And kept her off, and gazed into her face,
And told her all their converse in the hall,
Proving her heart. But never light and shade
Coursed one another more on open ground,
Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale
Across the face of Enid, hearing her;
While slowly falling, as a scale that falls
When weight is added only grain by grain,
Sank her sweet head upon her gentle breast.
Nor did she lift an eye, nor speak a word,
Rapt in the fear, and in the wonder of it."
I made a sketch. Never had I been so happy in any attempt. My own
mother, worn, sad, dignified--I gave her face and form to the poet's
conception of Enid's mother. And Hessie made a very lovely Enid, with
the white drapery clinging to her round shoulders, and her golden head
drooped. I wrought out all the accessories with scrupulous care--the
shadowy old tower-chamber; the open window, and the dim drifts of
cloud beyond; the stirring tapestry; the lamp upon the table, flinging
its yellow light on the rich faded dress of the mother and on Enid's
glistening hair.
I toiled at the sketch almost as if I had meant to make it a finished
picture. It was large. I lavished labor upon it with a passionate
energy. I never wearied of conjuring up ideas of beauty, to lay them
in luxurious profusion under my brush. I gloried in the work of my
hands; and yet I felt impatient when others praised it. I burned to
show them what the finished picture should prove to be. This sketch,
much as I prized it as an earnest of future success, I held only as
the shadow of that which must one day live in perfection on the
canvas. So I raved in my dreams.
I had resolved not to speak of it to Edward Vance till I had completed
the sketch. I had Hessie's promise not to show it, not to tell him. I
worked at it daily, not feeling that I worked, but only that I
lived--only that my soul was accomplishing its appointed task of
creation; that it breathed in its element, revelled in its God-given
power; that it was uttering that which should stir many other souls
with a myriad blessed inspirations, long after the worn body had
refused to shelter it longer, and eternity had summoned it from the
world of endeavor to that rest which, in the fever of its earnestness,
it knew not yet how to appreciate.
And Hessie stood for me, patient day after day.
"But never light and shade
Coursed one another more on open ground,
Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale
Across the face of Enid, hearing her."
I read aloud the passage again and again, that Hessie might feel it as
well as I. And truly, as I worked, the color on Hessie's cheek changed
and changed under my eyes, till I forgot my purpose in wondering at
her. One day, while I laid down my brush questioning her, she burst
into tears, and sobbed in childish impetuous distress. She would not
answer my anxious questions; she shunned my sympathy.
But that night, before I slept, I had my little sister's secret. She
worshipped Edward Vance as simple childish natures worship heroes whom
they exalt to the rank of gods.
IV.
I had no more joy, no more heart to work. I laid my sketch in my
portfolio, and said that it was finished, and that I should not
commence the picture at present. I could not work looking at Hessie's
changed face.
What should I do? How should I restore happiness to my little sister?
This was the question which haunted me. Night or day it would give me
no peace. I could not rest at home. I undertook a work once more at
the National Gallery, and stayed away all day. Often I sat for hours,
and did nothing, thinking with painful pertinacity of that one
question, "How should I restore happiness to my little sister?" Edward
Vance had never asked me to be his wife. Perhaps Hessie did not guess
that I had believed and hoped that he would. My mother--but then a
mother's eye will see where others are blind.
I sat in my deserted corner of the gallery, dropping tears into my
lap, {318} and pondering my question. If my mother were dead, if I
were married, how lonely would not Hessie be in her misery! But if
Hessie were a happy wife, why, I could support myself and live in
peace and independence, blessed with congenial occupation, solaced by
the love and joy of my art. "Edward Vance must never ask me to be his
wife." I repeated the words again and again, till the resolve burnt
itself into my heart.
"I believe that he has loved me, that he loves me now; but I can so
wrap myself up in my work, so seem to forget him in my art, that I
shall cease to be loveable; and then he must, he will, perceive
Hessie's affection, and take her to his heart. He cannot help it,
beautiful and fresh and simple as she is." So I looked at her face as
she lay dreaming, sullen and grieved like a vexed child, even in
sleep; and I vowed to carry out my strange resolve--to crush my love
for Edward, to destroy his for me, to link the two dear ones together,
and go on my life alone, with no comforter but God and my toil. It was
but a short time since I had contemplated such a prospect with calm
content; and why could I not forget all that had lately been, and
return to my serene quiet? I said it should be so.
But in this I assumed a power over my own destiny and the destinies of
others which none but God had a right to sway, and he had entered it
against me in the great book of good and evil. He had planted in my
heart a natural affection, and laid at my feet a treasure of
happiness. I had stretched forth my hand to uproot that beautiful
flower which should have borne me joy. I had turned aside from the
rich gift, and thought to sweep it from my path. I had vowed to do
evil, that good might come of it; and a mighty hand was already
extended to punish my presumption.
V.
In pursuance of my resolve, I absented myself from home as much as
possible, leaving Hessie to entertain Edward Vance when he came. I did
not intend to quarrel with him--I could not have done that; but I
wanted him to see more of Hessie and less of me. I had so much faith
in her superior beauty and loveableness, that in the morbid frame of
mind into which I had fretted myself, I believed my object would soon
be accomplished.
I had succeeded in obtaining some tuitions; and between the time which
they occupied and the hours spent in the galleries, I was very little
at home. My mother looked at me uneasily; but I smiled and deceived
her with pleasant words. On coming home late, I sometimes heard that
Mr. Vance had been there; my mother always told me--Hessie never. I
longed to lay my head on my mother's knee and say, "Did he ask for
me?" but the voice never would come.
Sometimes he came, as of old, to spend the whole evening. I would not
notice how he bore my altered ways. I sat all the time apart by the
window, seemingly absorbed, puzzling out some difficult design, or
working up some careful etching. I did not ask his advice; I did not
claim his sympathy with my occupation. I sat wrapped up within myself,
grave and ungenial, while he lingered by Hessie at the piano, and
asked her to play her soft airs again. And all the time I sat staring
from my paper into the little patch of garden under the window,
twining my sorrow about the old solitary tree, building my unhealthy
purpose into the dull wall of discolored brick, which shut us and our
troubles from our neighbors. I sat listening to the plaintive tunes
with which so many associations were inwoven, hearing Hessie's musical
prattle--she was always gay while he stayed--and Edward's rich voice
and pleasant laugh, contrasting with them as a deep wave breaks in
among the echoes of a rippling creek. I sat and listened in silence,
while all my life {319} rebelled in every vein and pulse at the false
part I acted.
But it was too late now to retract. Though every day proved to me that
the task I had undertaken was too difficult, the step had been made
and could not be retraced. I had lifted my burden, and I must bear it
even to the end. I had no doubt from Hessie's shy happy face that at
least my object must be attained, whatever it might cost myself.