At a time when his destined kingdom had not yet become historically

manifest, Jesus might still say, in the same acceptation of the term,

that it was already present, and palpable to all who sought to grasp

it. This actual presence of the kingdom is deduced by the Lord from

the efficacy of his miracles. In them the vital principle of

Catholicism was already at work. It had entered the world at the same

instant with the person of the Son of Man. But not until after Christ

was exalted did it assume a historical palpability. No less does the

declaration of Jesus, that from the days of John the Baptist the

kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, display Catholicism as a power

even before it came to figure in history. For this very forwardness

with which even then the violent took it by force, was a product of

the Christ-like power which had entered humanity simultaneously with

the person of the Messiah. And where the Jews are called sons of the

kingdom, it is likewise in reference to this elementary principle of

Catholicism. It had been planted in the first instance on the

historical soil of Judaism, thence, of course, to spread its benign

influence over the earth, and thus to make historically manifest the

vital substance of the Church in its only adequate expression. "Many

shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with

Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom." On the other hand, the

kingdom shall be taken from the Jews, because they have made it

unfruitful.

No Christian sermon should omit to give this inner view of

Catholicism, or of the advent of the kingdom. Therein lies its

peculiar force. The preacher of the gospel has no more effective word

of consolation for the pious souls who give him a ready hearing, than

the assurance that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto them. In this

word, also, the apostle of Christ has his most potent weapon against

the assailants of the Church. If they receive you not, says the Lord

unto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same

city, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us,

we do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of God is

at hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of

its principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so

at the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself

the kingdom of God.

But how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The

word of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. According to the

quality of the hearers of the word, the growing grain is fruitful or

empty, the members genuine or spurious. Again, the kingdom of heaven

is like to a net, cast into the sea, and gathering together all kind

of fishes. The kingdom of the Son of Man is not without scandals, and

them that work {671} iniquity. [Footnote 147] Hence the kingdom of

God on earth embraces the entire Church in her temporal existence. The

latter is shown to be a kingdom of long-suffering, in preserving her

connection even with ingredients estranged from her in spirit, leaving

the ultimate separation of the false members to the final judgment.

Even these erring ones carry on their souls the impress of the

kingdom, the signature of baptism. Nevertheless their adhesion to the

kingdom is external and objective merely. In the more accurate sense

of the word, the idea of the kingdom applies only to the marrow, the

soul of the Church. The good seed only are the real children of the

kingdom.

[Footnote 147: Matt. xiii. 41.]

This account of the formation of the kingdom of God explains how the

essence of the true Church becomes a historical reality in the actual

condition of Catholicism, notwithstanding its imperfections. The

position, therefore, that the spirit of the Church is inseparable from

her temporal existence by no means denies that this historical

exterior of Catholicism may be infected with elements having nothing

in common with, and even hostile to, the character of the true Church.

This results from the fact that the true Church, though always

preserving a unitary organization, realizes herself by degrees only.

The form of Catholicism is gradually purified and disclosed by the

sanctifying virtue of its inner life. Thus it is that parasites take

root in the soil of the Church.

It is therefore a shifting of the real issue when Mr. Hase defines the

Catholic antagonism to the ideal Church of Protestantism as consisting

in a notion of Catholicism that in all essential attributes there is a

perfect congruity between the idea of the Church and the concrete

Church of Rome; or in other words, that the latter Church is at all

tunes the perfect type of Christianity. Two distinct things are here

confounded. The position of Catholicism--that the essence of the true

Church, so far as realized at all, exists only within the Catholic

Church, where alone, therefore, a further development of this essence

can be accomplished or the ideal of the Church attained--is by no

means equivalent to the pretension, attributed to Catholicism by Hase,

that Catholicism has already attained the ideal, or that it is at all

times the most perfect representation of Christianity. After this

misrepresentation of the position of Catholicism, Hase has no

difficulty in distorting the well-known Catholic doctrine that sinners

also belong to the Church into an unconscious acknowledgment of the

ideal Church of Protestantism.

While the toleration of spurious members is a mandate of the

educational mission of the Church, it involves, moreover, a special

dispensation of Divine Providence. Like her divine principle, the

Church appears as a servant among men. The beauty of her inner life is

veiled beneath an exterior covered with manifold imperfections. This

serves as a constant admonition to the Church not to rely upon

externals. Yet even these shadows on the image of the Church are

evidences of her vitality. How superhuman must be an organization

which outlasts all enemies in spite of many deficiencies! It is error,

therefore, to infer from the undeniable, practical incongruity between

the essence of the Church and her outward form that there cannot be an

exclusive, concrete realization of the true Church in history.

To make the growth of Catholicism intelligible to his hearers, Jesus

compares the kingdom of heaven with a grain of mustard, which unfolds

the least of all seeds to a stately tree. Immediately thereafter it is

said that the kingdom of heaven penetrates the mass of humanity like

leaven. The law of development of Catholicism is further illustrated

by the following parable: The earth, says Jesus, bringeth forth fruit;

first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear; man

has but to cast the seed into the earth; then he may sleep, and the

seed shall {672} spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. Even so is

the kingdom of God. The Church therefore carries the germs of her

growth in her inmost nature. Catholicism is gradually developed out of

itself, from within. Thanks to the energy of her own principle, the

Church with her arms encircles nation after nation. The faculty of

being all things unto all men she owes to her being the kingdom of

God. Here is the root of Catholicism. As the kingdom of God, the

Church is fraught with a wealth adequate to the mental requirements of

all individuals and all nations. As the kingdom of God, the Church is

adapted to every age and clime.

The word "Church" is used by Jesus Christ far more rarely than that of

the "kingdom of heaven;" indeed but twice, and on each occasion in

direct reference to the external form of the Church.

That this historical exterior of Catholicism, designated the Church,

is the manifestation of the kingdom of God, We have already deduced

from Matt. xvi. 18, 19, and xiii. 41. The same truth is expressed in

the parable of the treasure hid in the field. He who would possess the

treasure, that is to say, the kingdom of heaven, or the vital

principle of Catholicism, must buy the field in which the gem is

concealed. The field, the Catholic exterior of the Church, is not the

inner life; but the latter is realized only in the historical form of

Catholicism.

It now behooves us to more precisely expound this relation between the

spirit and the outer form of the Church from the words of Jesus. The

way to do this is indicated by our Lord himself. It consists in an

extended analysis of the biblical idea of the kingdom of God. In it is

disclosed the inmost nature of the Church and thereby the ultimate

origin of her historical figure as instituted by Christ, or the

principle of Catholicism, which is the object of our search.

My kingdom, says the Lord, is not of this world; that is to say, its

origin is not here, and it is not established by the exercise of

worldly power. _Regnum meum non est hinc_. True, the kingdom of Christ

is established in the midst of the world, but it was not generated

there: from above, from heaven, it was planted in the world as a

supernatural _realm of grace_. Therefore its existence and its

extension is in no wise dependent on worldly power; its foundations

lie deeper, in the principle of truth which has entered the world with

Christ. For this cause came he into the world, that he should bear

witness unto the truth. All they that are of the truth, do him homage

as their king, and hear his kingly voice. The same principle works in

them as that of a new worship; they worship the Father in spirit and

in truth.

But this elevated sense of truth in individual souls is the fruit of a

higher form of being. He that is of God heareth the words of God; but

they hear them not who are not of God. The entrance into the kingdom

of God therefore necessarily presupposes a new beginning of man's

life, a new birth of water and of the Spirit. Wherever the kingdom of

God obtains a foothold, it assumes the form of an entirely new state

of things, of a new creation, of the principle of a new mental

activity, a new _nature_ of the spirit.

A transmutation of our souls, such as just described, necessarily

involves a rupture with the natural man, a discarding of the original

individuality. Without this alteration we are impervious to the new

light which is to enter our souls together with the kingdom of God.

This indispensable self-denial is accomplished by a two-fold

instrumentality--by the love of God, which is the first commandment,

and by the love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whoever is in this frame

of mind is pronounced by Jesus to be not far from the kingdom of God.

What has been said reveals another peculiarity of the kingdom of God

on earth. It is a _supernatural_ kingdom. At this point only do we

fully comprehend the title of the Church to {673} the designation of

the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God historically manifested in

the Church is intimately connected with the intro-divine relations or

the inmost life of the Deity. By admission into the Church God the

Father translates us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. This is not

merely an exercise of the creative love common to the three persons of

the Trinity. On the contrary, it is an evidence what manner of love

the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of

God. Precisely in this is the peculiar supernatural character of this

dispensation made manifest. It is this supernatural characteristic of

the Church which accounts for the bestowal upon the Church of the name

of the coming realm of glory. The germ of the latter is already

contained in the existing Church. While, for this reason, the Church

visible is called the kingdom of heaven, so the latter continues to

bear the name of the Church even in the splendor of its eternal glory.

This circumstance warrants the bold utterance of the apostle that our

conversation is in heaven. In the same sense it is laid down in the

catechism of the council of Trent that the Church militant and the

Church triumphant are but two parts of the one Church, not two

churches; and with entire consistency the same authority speaks of the

Church militant as synonymous with the kingdom of heaven.

It is but another expression for the supernatural character of the

Church if she is called the Jerusalem which is above, even in her

historical form and figure. And precisely because this epithet applies

to her, she is free and is our mother. The catholicity of the Church,

her faculty of enfolding all mankind, of being the spiritual mother of

us all, is owing to her supernatural character.

This doctrine of the supernaturalness of the Church is the connecting

link between the essence and the form of Catholicism. As the latter is

supernatural in its character, so must the form of its establishment

bear a supernatural impress. How can anything utterly supernatural

attain an adequate form of expression by mere natural development? It

assumes a historical reality in so far only as it assumes

simultaneously with its supernatural essence a corresponding

supernatural image. The form as well as the substance of the Church

must needs be the fruit of an immediate interposition of God, because

the substance must needs exercise its supernatural functions.

The idea just expressed may have been dimly present to the mind of

Moehler when he wrote: "But it is the conviction of Catholics that

this purpose of the divine revelation in Christ Jesus would not have

been attained at all, or at least would have been attained but very

imperfectly, if this embodiment of the truth had been but momentary,

and if the personal manifestation of the Word had not been

sufficiently powerful to give its tones the highest degree of

intensified animation, and the most perfect conceivable efficacy, that

is to say, to breathe into it the breath of life, and to create a

union once more setting forth the truth in its vitality, and remaining

emblematically the conclusive authority for all time, or, in other

words, representing Christ himself."

Viewed in this light, the historical manifestation of the Church,

instituted Matt. xvi. 18, 19, presents itself as a postulate of her

essence. Because the Church was essentially destined historically to

manifest the kingdom of God, the Lord built her upon Peter, the rock.

A temporal establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this

world required the divine installation of an individual keeper of the

keys. Thus the idea of the papacy flows from that of a kingdom of God

on earth.

If, then, this explanation presents Catholicism as a supernatural

kingdom, and if this very attribute constitutes the characteristic

feature of its being, its inmost life and fundamental {674} principle,

it is manifestly inadmissible to place the kingdom of God as

established in the Church on the same footing with the works of

creation. A juxtaposition like this would entirely ignore the vital

essence of the Church, that is to say, her superiority to nature.

The same distinction is overlooked by those who regard Church and

state as simply two manifestations of the same kingdom of God. Such is

the point of view of a system of moral theology, the influence of

which upon the opinions prevailing among a considerable fraction of

the present generation of theologians is not to be mistaken. In the

eye of that doctrine "Mosaism and Christianism--state and Church--both

externally represent the kingdom, and both represent one and the same

kingdom; the former [the state] rather in its negative, the latter

[the Church] rather in its positive aspect. And thus we have two great

formations in which the kingdom on earth is made manifest, Church and

state." Could Hirscher have reached any other conclusion? He regards

it as his task "to dispose of the question whether the germs of the

divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as

in a fruitful soil, and whether they can spring forth from it [_i.e._,

from the character or nature of man himself] and blossom as the

kingdom of God."

Although it is here said that "God abode in man with his Holy Spirit

and with its sanctifying grace," yet the Holy Spirit or his grace is

not made the foundation upon which the kingdom is erected; that

foundation is sought, on the contrary, in the "divine powers" infused

into man at his creation. God only assists at the upraising of the

kingdom through them by "dwelling in them for ever as the principle of

divine guidance."

The logical inference from these premises, which seek the germs of the

kingdom of God as established on earth in human nature itself, that is

to say, in the "heavenly faculties" inherent in man, is well disclosed

in the definition of the kingdom of God on earth given by Petersen, a

theologian reared in the school of Schleiermacher. "The kingdom of God

on earth," says he, "is at once Church, state, and civilization,

_i.e._, it is an organism of community in religion, morals, and

society, and by these three special organisms it essentially

approaches, develops, and perfects its organic unity, in organizing

its religious principle in the Church, its moral framework in the

state, and its natural base in civilization, thus in the unity of all

three rounding its proportions as a universal organism of genuine

humanity." If "the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are

implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil," it is

entirely consistent to regard the kingdom of God on earth as

"substantially identical with the idea of the human race," as "the

realization of that idea."

It gives us pleasure to state that the notion of the kingdom of God on

earth just alluded to has been declared unscriptural even in a

Protestant exegesis of greater thoroughness. [Footnote 148]

[Footnote 148: Hofman, _Schriftbeweis_, 1855. ]

III. THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Next to the idea of the kingdom of God, the most significant

expression for the inner essence of Catholicism is found in the

scriptural conception of the body of Christ. As his body, the Church

is intimately connected with him. Christ and the Church belong

together as the head and the body; both constitute a single whole.

This intimate relation between Christ and the Church is described by

the Scriptures in animated terms. The Church, it says, is for Christ

what our own body is for us; as members of the Church we are members

of the body of Christ, of his flesh, and of his bones. On one

occasion, indeed, the apostle uses the word Christ as synonymous with

the Church, so intimate is their relation.

{675}

And it is the Son of Man, or Christ in his human capacity, as whose

body the Church is regarded. For as the head thereof the apostle

designates him who was raised from the dead. The Church here enters

into a profoundly intimate relation to the sacred humanity of Christ.

We shall seek further profit from this idea in the sequel.

Immediately after having called the Church the body of Christ, he

calls her the [Greek text]. This epithet results from the foregoing.

It is because she is the body of Christ that the Church is the [Greek

text]. I translate these difficult words, the fulness of him who

filleth all in all. God who filleth all things with his essential

presence, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, hath his

fulness in the Church. The Church is entirely filled with God. But

how? Is not God, in his very nature, present everywhere? How then can

the Church be filled with God in a greater degree than the world

without? As the body of Christ, she has this capacity. For if the

Church, as Christ's body, assumes a special relation, peculiar to

herself, to his sacred humanity, then, by that very assumption, she

acquires a share in the [Greek text] of the Deity which dwells bodily

in that sacred humanity. She thereby becomes the spot where God is

especially revealed and glorified. For while God, in the fulness of

his nature, is present over all the world, nevertheless this presence

is more largely apparent in the Church than elsewhere. By the Church

alone the manifold wisdom of God is known unto the principalities and

powers in heavenly places. In him is glory in the Church by Christ

Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Thus she stands approved

as his pleroma, as entirely filled with God.

But how are we to understand this repletion of the Church with God? It

is well known that Moehler sees in the visible Church the "Son of God

continually appearing among men in human form, constantly re-creating,

eternally rejuvenating himself, his perpetual incarnation." In this

sense he apprehends the scriptural conception of the body of Christ,

the "interpretation of the divine and the human in the Church." This

proposition, which has become celebrated, was intended, in the first

instance, to afford a more profound insight into the visibility of the

Church, in addition to which it is inseparable from Moehler's views on

the subject of the means of grace. In this twofold light we must make

it the subject of examination.

Moehler goes on to argue that, if the Church is a continuance of the

incarnation, she must be, like the latter, a visible one. This can

mean no more than that even as the Son of God during his stay upon

earth wrought visibly for mankind in the flesh, so also the saving

efficacy of Christ, abiding after his departure from the earth,

requires a visible medium. Such a point, however, Protestantism is far

from disputing. In the separate congregations, in their visible means

of grace, and in the audible exposition of the word of God, even

Protestants admit that the efficacy of Christ is visibly perpetuated,

and the idea of Christianity and the Church gradually realized. Every

Protestant denomination aspires to be the palpable image, the living

presentment, of the Christian religion. Moehler's conception of the

Son of God continually appearing among men in human form has even

become a favorite theme of modern Protestant theology. This will

appear from the mere perusal of the disquisitions on this head of the

so-called Christological school. The advantage gained for the Catholic

interpretation amounts to nothing. For the point is not that the

efficacy of Christ is perpetually exercised among men in a visible

manner, but it is in question whether this continued exercise ensues

only in the fold of a particular institution, and by particular means

of grace.

Moehler arrived at his doctrine in {676} reference to the Church

through the medium of his views regarding the means of grace. In his

opinion "the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God" (and the same must

be inferred to apply to all the means of grace which it is the

function of the Church to administer [Footnote 149]) "is a part of

the totality of his merit, wherewith we are redeemed." The sacramental

offering of Christ is "the conclusion of his great sacrifice for us,"

and in it "all the other parts of the same sacrifice are to be

bestowed upon us; in this final portion of the objective offering, the

whole is to become subjective, a part of our individual being." But

the incarnation of God, or, in other words, the work of our salvation

accomplished by Christ during his walk upon earth, stands in need of

no continuation or completion by a posthumous labor of Christ,

constituting "a part of the totality of his merit, wherewith we are

redeemed." The perpetual condescension of Christ, administered by the

Church, to our helplessness, does not form a complement to the

objective work of salvation; it is not an integral part of it, but

only its continued application. "_Christus_" says Suarez, "_jam vero

nos non redimit, sed applicat nobis redemptionem suam_" [Footnote

150] If this work of redemption were even now in progress--that is to

say, if "the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God" were "a part of

the totality of his merits, wherewith we are redeemed," then Christ

would not have fully taken away the sin of the world once for all on

Golgotha. Who would maintain such a proposition? Moehler would be the

last man to do so. He would therefore undoubtedly have renounced the

opinion in question if these, its logical results, had presented

themselves to his mind. The sacramental offering of Christ, as indeed

the whole of his perennial saving efficacy in the sacraments of the

Church, wherewith we are saved, is only the _means_ by which it is

applied to our salvation. The _ground_ of salvation for all mankind

was perfected in the sufferings and death of Christ. The _realization_

of salvation for individuals is accomplished by their appropriating to

themselves the salvation purchased or achieved for all mankind by the

precious blood of Jesus Christ; a work in which, undoubtedly, Christ

himself co-operates as the head of the Church.

[Footnote 149: For, according to St. Thomas, "the Eucharist is the

_perfectio omnis sacramenti, habens quasi in capitulo et summo

omnia, quae alia sacramenta continent singillatim;_ the perfection

of the whole sacrament, having as it were in an epitome and a

summary all the virtues which, other sacraments contain

singly."--IV. Sent. a. 8. q. 1, a. 2, _solut_. 2 _ad_. 4.]

[Footnote 150: At present Christ does not redeem us, but applies

to us his redemption. _De Incarnat., Par. I., Disp_. 39, _Sec_. 3.]

In this sense the apostle says that he fills up those things that are

wanting of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh. By faithfully

following Christ, we partake more and more of the fruits of

redemption. Thus is Christ likewise gradually fulfilled in the

individual Christians--that is to say, he finds in them a more and

more ample expression. And in the same degree in which Christ stamps

himself upon the single members of the Church, the latter also is more

and more filled with him.

Scarce has the apostle declared of Christ, in Col. ii. 9, that in him

dwelleth all the [Greek text] of the Godhead corporally, when he turns

to the Colossians with the words, "And you are filled in"--God that is

to say, "in him," _i.e._ in Christ, in so far as ye stand in communion

with him, "which is the head of all principality and power." This

communion of individuals with Christ, and their attendant

participation in the fulness of the Godhead which dwelleth in him, is

accomplished by the instrumentality of the Church, particularly by the

sacrament of baptism, which incorporates the individual with the

Church. Verse 10-12: "_Et estis in illo repleti. In quo et circumcisi

estis, circumcisione non manu facta, sed in circumcisione Christi,

consepulti ei in baptismo._"

Thus the Church is seen to be the pleroma of the Godhead in a twofold

{677} point of view. First, in her members, which, being gradually

filled with God, become partakers of the divine nature. In the second

place, in the active cooperation of the Church herself in the

performance of this work.

In the first regard, the repletion of the Church with God is not a

state attained once for all. It is rather a process of measured growth

[Greek text]. The measure of the age of the fulness of Christ is the

goal and the objective point of the entire development of the Church.

It will be attained when every individual shall have become complete

in Christ, and therewith also in his own person a pleroma of Christ.

In the edifying of the body of Christ, or in the establishment of the

Church, therefore, we must work without repose till we all meet in the

unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. In this

sense only can it be said that there is a progress in the Church. This

continued development of Catholicism the apostle regards as a gradual

repletion of the single members of the Church with all the fulness of

God, [Greek text].

We have as yet, however, come to know but the one phase of this

relation of the Church to Christ, or to the pleroma of the Godhead.

The Church is not only destined to present herself at the close of her

historical development as the pleroma of him that filleth all in all;

she is even now entitled to this attribute, by virtue of her essential

character.

On this head we derive instruction from a nearer contemplation of the

process of development in which the erection of the Church is

completed. "The whole body," says the apostle, meaning the body of

Christ himself, "maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of

itself in charity." The Church therefore carries within herself, in

the inmost recesses of her being, the principle and the germinal power

of her whole development. This fundamental principle of Catholicism is

Christ himself, who pervades the Church as his body.

There is a subjective and an objective repletion of the Church with

Christ. The former progresses gradually, in so far as the single

members of the Church assimilate themselves more and more to Christ.

The latter is a given state of things from the first. In it consists

the most subtle essence of the Church. This objective presence of

Christ in her approves itself as the vital power of her growth. The

gradual ripening of the Church therefore grows up into Christ ([Greek

text], Eph. iv. 15) on the one hand, and proceeds from him ([Greek

text]) on the other. From him--that is to say, by means of the

vivifying influence of the Son of God, present in the Church, she

maketh increase of herself unto the edifying of herself in charity.

It is the same idea, when the apostle characterizes the growth of the

Church as an [Greek text], an _augmentum Dei, i.e._, a growth

emanating from God. God effects it, but by the instrumentality of the

Church, within her and as issuing from her. For this purpose God hath

installed her as his pleroma. Precisely because the Church is filled

with God, or is his pleroma, the members of the Church may gradually

become complete in him. Thus there is a development and a progress

only for the individual members of the Church. She herself, by virtue

of her essential character, is superior to development, and acts as

the impelling force of this development. Christianity _has_ a history,

but it _is_ not itself a history. The essence of Christianity, which

is that of the Church, is not a thing in process of formation, it is a

thing accomplished and perfect from the beginning.

The scriptural idea of the body of Christ presents the principle of

Catholicism in a new light. The Church alone has Christ for her head.

It is her exclusive privilege to be the body of Christ. This gives her

a fellowship of life with Christ, by which she is distinguished from

the world, the {678} latter sustaining to him no relation but that of

subjection and dependence. But upon what rests this privilege of the

Church? Why is she alone the body of Christ, the pleroma of the

God-head?

Christology must supply the fundamental reason. According to the

Catholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only

by virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth

only the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal

himself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ

than by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in

all! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters

through the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead

dwelleth bodily.

The idea of Catholicism, therefore, coincides with that of fulness. As

the pleroma of him who filleth all in all, the Church harbors in her

bosom a treasure, the richness of which is inexhaustible. Every

created thing, every single period, every particular phase of the

culture of the human mind, has some good attribute. Yet this attribute

is a mere special advantage, a peculiar quality, a feeble reflex of

the chief good, a single ray of the shining sea of goodness inclosed

in the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence, of the fulness of the

Godhead. The completeness of the revelation of God's goodness is found

only in the sacred humanity of Christ, and therefore in the Church.

Hence the Church is the highest good that is to be found on earth. Let

the productions of the human mind, at a given stage of its

development, be ever so glorious and sublime, they can never supplant

the pleroma of the Church. Her wealth is fraught with all the possible

results of the human intellect and imagination; and these, in the

fulness of the Church, are intensified, raised, as it were, to a

higher power of goodness. Every production of the human mind is more

or less in danger of falling short of the requirements of later ages.

The metal of all such fabrics needs to be recast from time to time, as

forms and fashions change. In default of this, it gradually

degenerates into mere antiquity, or, in the most fortunate event, it

preserves only the character of an honored relic. From this fate of

all that comes into existence the Church is exempt. She alone is ever

young, and always on a level with the times. This qualifies her to be

the teacher of the world from age to age. Hence, also, she is enabled

to minister an appropriate remedy for the disease of every generation.

How, then, can a movement which makes war on the Church claim to be an

advance of the human mind in the right direction? The interests of

true civilization will never interfere with those of the Church.

As well that the Church is the body of Christ as that in her is the

fulness of him who filleth all in all--both of these attributes adhere

to her in virtue of her divine foundation. Thus Catholicism, whose

fundamental principle we have contemplated in this twofold scriptural

aspect, is not the product of the combination of any external

circumstances. It is grounded in the very idea of the Church, in the

inmost depths of her being. Therefore she remains the Catholic Church

in every vicissitude of her external condition, whether in the

splendor of princely honors, or under the crushing weight of Neronic

persecution.

If, then, Catholicism is of the essence of the Church, the momentous

conclusion is irresistible, that the true Church is capable of

realization in such an image only as enables her to present herself in

her essential feature of catholicity. It follows that the papacy, as

necessary to the Catholic manifestation of the Church, is imperatively

demanded by the law of her being.

------

{679}

From Once a Week.

THE CATHEDRAL LIBRARY.

It is now between forty and fifty years ago that I obtained leave from

the dean and chapter of Winterbury Cathedral to read for some weeks in

their cathedral library. The editions of the fathers and of some

important middle-age writers which are preserved in that quiet library

boast of peculiar excellence, and I well remember the exultation with

which I, then a very young man, received news of the desired

information to ransack those treasures. Having secured a small lodging

in the close, or cathedral enclosure, I set out for Winterbury early

in the year 182-. Through the kindness of one of the canons, who

seldom had to consult the library on his own account, I was provided

with a key to the library buildings, and allowed to keep undisturbed

possession of it as long as my visit lasted. This key gave access not

only to the library, but to all parts of the cathedral likewise,

including even the cloisters, so that I was able to let myself in and

out of the noble edifice at all hours of the day or night, and to

ramble unchallenged through aisle, crypt, stalls, triforium, and

organ-loft.

I have never forgotten, and shall never forget, the day on which I

first took my seat in the room which was to be the special scene of my

labors. The library lay on the south side of the cathedral, being a

lower continuation of the south transept, and forming one side of the

cloister court. It was obviously, therefore, raised above the height

of the cloister vaulting, and it was reached by a flight of stairs

opening into the cathedral itself. Narrowness (it measured about

eighty feet by thirty), and a certain antique collegiate air (and

smell, too, to be perfectly accurate) about the bindings of the books

and the coverings of the chairs, were its chief characteristics. There

was a bust of Cicero at one end, and of Seneca at the other. Some

smaller busts of the principal Greek fathers adorned the side-shelves,

and a dingy portrait of the "judicious" Hooker abode in a musty frame

over the heavy stone mantelpiece. The fender itself was of stone, or

rather the fireplace was not protected by a fender at all, but by a

small stone wall, about three inches thick and six inches high, which

afforded blissful repose to the outstretched foot.

One April evening, shortly after sunset, when there was still daylight

enough to read the titles on the backs of books, I walked across the

close in order to fetch and bring away with me a couple of volumes of

which I stood in need. It was an hour when the grand old cathedral is

accustomed to put on its very best appearance. The heaven-kissing

spire and the far lower, but beautiful, western towers are tinted with

the faint rose color which suits old stonework so admirably; and the

deep gloom of the cloisters, tempered by the glow from the noble piles

of masonry overhead, makes it possible and easy to realize some of the

rapturous visions of the recluse. I passed as usual down the nave, and

having ascended the little staircase, let myself into the library, and

was on the point of attacking the necessary bookshelf, when instead of

placing the key in my pocket, as it was my habit to do, I tossed it

carelessly on to the sill of an adjoining window. The woodwork of the

library was by no means in a sound condition, and between the inner

edge of the sill and the wall there was a wide chink, opening down

into unseen depths of distance. Into this chink, impelled by my evil

genius, or by one of the ghostly beings that (as {680} I was assured

by the verger) haunt the library and cloisters, down tumbled my

unlucky key. I saw it disappear with a sharp twinge of vexation,

principally, however, at the thought of the time and trouble that

would be consumed in bringing it to light again. To-morrow, I said to

myself, I shall be forced to get a carpenter to remove this sill, and

rake up the key from heaven knows where; while smirking Mr. Screens,

the verger, will watch the whole proceeding, and insinuate with silent

suavity a doubt whether I am a fit person to be entrusted with Canon

Doolittle's key. It was not until I had come down from the short

ladder with the books under my arm, and, warned by the deepening

shades, was about to leave the library, that the full effect of the

key's disappearance presented itself to my mind. The outer gate and

inner door of the nave had been carefully shut by me, according to

custom, on entering the cathedral. All the gates and doors were fitted

with a spring-lock, so that without my key I was double-locked into

the building. My first thought was one of amusement, and I fairly

laughed aloud at my own perplexity. It seemed an impossible and

inconceivable thing that one might really have to pass the entire

night in this situation. Presently I left the library, the door of

which I had not shut on entering, and went down the staircase into the

transept, and then into the nave. I carefully tried the inner door,

but without effect. I had done my duty on entering, and it was

hopelessly and mercilessly fastened against me. Resolved on

maintaining unbroken self-possession, I returned to the library. It

was now quite dark, the only light being that reflected from the

shafts of the cloisters, on which the moonbeams were now beginning to

fall. I sat down in a large arm-chair which stood at one end of the

library table, and thought over all the possible means of extricating

myself from an unexpected durance. Should I go up to the belfry in the

north-western tower and toll one of the bells until the verger, roused

from his first sleep, should come to see what was the matter? but even

this I could not do without the key, which would be required to open

the door at the entrance of the tower. Or should I make my way into

the organ-loft, and filling the bellows quite full, strike a

succession of loud chords, until the music might attract the attention

of some passer-by? this might be done, but it would be a perilous

experiment. Half Winterbury would be seized with the belief that their

old cathedral was haunted. The organ-loft would be invaded by vergers,

beadles, and constables--there were no blue-coated police in those days--

and I should move about the ancient city ever after with the stigma of

a madcap on my head. People would nod knowingly to one another as I

passed, and significantly tap their foreheads, by way of hinting that

I was "a little touched." Canon Doolittle would recall his key, and

abstain from inviting me to his hospitable table. Gradually,

therefore, I gave up the scheme of saving myself by means of the

organ; and the belfry being already set aside, no other resource

remained but to stay where I was, and quietly to pass the hours as

best I could until Mr. Screens should open the doors at about

half-past six in the morning, ready for the seven o'clock prayers in

the Lady chapel.

I was luckily undisturbed by any fears arising from the possible

anxiety of my landlady. Winterbury is near the sea; and I had on more

than one occasion spent the greater part of the night on the cliffs,

watching the glorious moonlit effects upon the romantic coast scenery

of that district. These Mrs. Jollisole was accustomed to call my

"coast-guard nights;" and I made no doubt that, should I fail to

appear, the sensible old lady would go contentedly to bed, supposing

me to have mounted guard on the cliffs.

I therefore lost no time in composing myself, if not to sleep, at any

rate to an attempt at sleep. The library table was always surrounded

by an {681} array of solemn old oak chairs, padded with cushions of

yellowish leather, and looking as though--if their own opinion were

consulted--no mortal man of lower degree than a prebendary should ever

be allowed to seat himself upon them. At each end of the table there

was a chair of a superior order--a couple of deans, as it were,

keeping high state amidst the surrounding canons. These chairs were

made of precisely the same kind of oak, and covered with leather of

exactly the same yellowish tinge as the others, but their whole design

was larger and more imposing, and what was of the most consequence to

me in my present position--they were _arm_-chairs, affording opportunity

for all manner of easy and sleep-inviting postures. Throwing myself

into one of these dignified receptacles, I soon fell asleep, and soon

afterward took to dreaming.

Leaning in my dream on the sill of the library window, I fancied

myself to be gazing down into a peaceful church-yard. One by one, like

gleams of moonlight in the dark shade of the surrounding cloisters, I

saw a number of young girls assemble, and fall with easy exactitude

into rank, as if about to take part in a procession. Each slender

figure was draped in the purest white muslin, with a veil of the same

material arranged over the head, and partially concealing the face.

Just as one sees at the present day in Roman Catholic churches at the

more important _fetes_, the procession was arranged according to the

gradations of height. The very young children were in the front, and

as the other end of the line was approached, the pretty white figures

grew gradually taller, until girls of eighteen or nineteen brought up

the rear. They presently began to move, and it was clear that they

were about to take part in some solemn office for the dead. With two

priests at their head, they made the circuit of the cloisters, moving

along with graceful regularity of step. Between each pair of the

slender columns of the cloister building, I imagined that a small

stone basin (or "_benitier_") was set, standing on a low pedestal, and

filled with holy water. Each girl walking on the side next to these

basins was furnished with a small broom of feathers, like those which

may at any time be seen in the Continental churches. Dipping these

brooms from time to time into the basins of water, they waved them in

beautiful harmony with their own harmonious movements, sprinkling the

ancient monumental slabs over which they were stepping. They sang to a

strain of rare melody the familiar words of _Requiem AEternam_.

Presently they seemed to change time and tune, and to sing a hymn of

many verses, each verse ending with a refrain. A single voice would

give the verse, but all joined together in the plaintive music of the

refrain:

"Through life's long day and death's dark night,

O gentle Jesus! be our light!"

I have heard much music, secular and sacred, since then; but I know of

no musical effect which abides with me so constantly as that imagined

chanting of young voices heard long ago.

One girl in particular attracted my attention as I dreamt. She was one

of the pair who closed the procession, and was of a commanding height

and extremely elegant figure. She had, as it seemed to me, taken

excessive precaution in drawing her ample veil closely around her head

and face,

* * * *

On a sudden I awoke. There, in one of the decanal arm-chairs, I was

sitting--in an easy, familiar posture, as if I had been myself a dean--

and there beside me, close at hand, within reach of my outstretched

arm, was a tall figure in white, clearly a female form, and the

precaution had been taken of drawing an ample veil closely around the

head and face. Any one but an imbecile would have acted as I did,

though I remember taking some credit to myself at the time for my

coolness and presence of mind. I simply sat still and stared; and by

degrees I observed, I conned. Years before, in my boyhood, I had

walked a good {682} deal on the stretch; and I had known what it was

in North Devon to wake up "upon the middle of the night," to feel the

hard, unyielding turf underneath one's back, and see and gaze, gaze

wistfully upon the bright unanswering stars above one's head. Even

then one could divine the true value of a bed. But to wake on the

downs in the small hours is a trifle compared with waking in a

cathedral any time between dew and dawn. More especially when, as was

my case, you have a ghost at your elbow. Not that my ghost remained

long stationary. She did not. Starting from my arm-chair, she began a

survey of the shelves by moonlight in so active and business-like a

manner that I felt no doubt, given her _quondam_ or present mortality,

she was or had been a "blue." In five minutes, my powers of decision

were wide awake, and the question of her mortality was settled. She

was not a thing of the past, but alive as I myself was; and the only

scruple was, how or how soon to awaken her from her somnambulist's

dream. While I was debating with myself the best means to pursue, she

suddenly passed out of the library door on to the stone staircase. My

alarm was now fairly excited. She had two courses to pursue in her

sensational career--I employ the word in a more correct use than it is

commonly put to. She might either turn downward toward the floor of

the church itself, in which case she could do herself little or no

harm; or she could mount the ascending staircase, and reach an outward

parapet, with heaven knew what mad scheme in view, before I had time

to overtake her. She chose the second alternative, and--she leading, I

following--we mounted the lofty staircase that leads to the base of

the spire. I was aware that the door at the top of this particular

ascent was not furnished with a lock; it was fastened by a simple

bolt, and I had little doubt that my sleep-walking friend would shoot

that bolt back as readily as she had taken down and replaced the books

on the library shelves. My greatest fear was that she might begin

playing some mad prank upon the parapet before I was sufficiently near

to arrest her movements. I need hardly add that, influenced by the

dread of consequences commonly said to follow on a sudden awakening

from a fit of somnambulism, I inwardly resolved to try every means of

humoring and coaxing my companion down again to _terra firma_, and

only as a last resort to attempt arousing her. In a few moments we

stood side by side on the platform looking down on Winterbury, which

lay outstretched in the white moonlight. It was a tranquil and

beautiful scene. There was the church of St. Werburgh, a noble

monument of thirteenth century building, which would attract

instantaneous admiration anywhere but under the shadow of Winterbury

cathedral. There was the fine old market-place, with the carved stone

pump at which Cromwell drank as he passed through the city; and the

charmingly quaint guildhall, and the ruins of the abbey skirting the

river in the distance. I was not permitted, however, long to enjoy the

prospect. Before I could lift a finger to arrest her rapid movements,

my mysterious companion had stepped lightly on to the parapet, and

began a quick and perfectly unembarrassed walk around it. Dreading the

experiment of forcible rescue, it occurred to me to try the effect of

quietly accosting her, and endeavoring--by humoring her present mental

condition--to decoy her away from her perilous amusement. It was an

awful moment of suspense. Should she lose her balance and her life, it

would be next to impossible for me ever totally to clear up the

enigmatical circumstance of my having been actually present by her

side during that weird moonlit dance upon the parapet. If, on the

other hand, I were to seize and lift her from the top-stone, she might

rouse the whole close with frightful screams, she might faint--might

even die--in my arms, or from the shock of sudden awakening she might

lose her reason.

{683}

But there was no time to stand balancing chances. Accordingly, I

gently drew toward her side, and said, in as easy and collected a tone

as I could command,

"I think we left the library door unlocked; before you complete your

rounds, had we not better go down the stairs and secure it? Having

been allowed the entry of the cathedral, I think we are bound in honor

to shut doors after us."

"To be sure," she replied, and instantly, to my intense relief,

dropped cleverly down into the space between the parapet and the lower

courses of the spire. "To be sure, the door should be locked at once.

Let us go down. I cannot make out who you are. In none of my former

visits to the cathedral have I met you; but you seem to be no

intruder, and I will certainly go down and secure the door as you

suggest."

All this was uttered quickly and easily, but with an abstracted air,

and without the slightest motion of her steadfast eyes. While still

speaking, she stooped under the low door-way at the stair-head, and

began to descend. I followed, busily devising plans for preventing any

fresh ascent, and yet still avoiding the necessity of breaking the

curious spell which bound her. We reached the library door. To my

surprise, she produced a key of her own, and was about to turn the

lock, when I remembered that at this rate I should be deprived for the

rest of the night of my only comforts, the warm atmosphere of the

library and the decanal arm-chair. I therefore extemporized a bold

stroke.

"Excuse me," I said, "I have left my hat and a few papers inside, and

having a canon's key, I will save you the trouble of locking up. But

permit me to suggest that it is still very early in April and the

night is cold. Why not give up the rest of your walk for to-night, and

return again on one the glorious nights in May or June?"

Without uttering a syllable in reply, she turned on her heel, and

began slowly descending the staircase into the transept. My curiosity

was now fairly on the alert, and I resolved to unravel the mystery, at

least so far as to discover by what means she would leave the

cathedral, and in what direction she would go. Stepping for a moment

inside the library, I hastily but quietly slipped off my shoes on the

matting of the floor, and followed her barefoot and silent. She was

just stepping from the staircase into the transept, when I caught

sight of her again. With the same steady and self-possessed action

which she had displayed throughout, she crossed the transept, and made

straight for a small postern door which led, as I knew, into the

garden of the bishop's palace. This she unlocked, and I made sure

that, having passed through, she would lock it again behind her.

Whether, however, she was a little forgetful that night, or whether

the unexpected _rencontre_ with a stranger had ruffled the tranquil

serenity of her trance, it so happened that she omitted to turn the

lock, and I was able, after gently reopening the door, to trace her

progress still further. Under the noble cedars of the episcopal

gardens, past long flower-beds and fresh-mown lawns, I followed her

barefoot, until we arrived within a few yards of the hinder buildings

of the palace. Here I stopped under the dark shade of a cedar, and

watched my companion walk coolly up to a little oaken, iron-clamped

door, open it, and disappear within the house. Then of course I

retraced my steps toward the cathedral. But stopping again under one

of the magnificent cedars, I could not avoid a few moments' reflection

on the exceedingly odd position into which accident had brought me.

Here was I, alone and barefooted, standing, at two o'clock in the

morning, on the lawn of the palace, where I had no more business than

I had at the top of the spire; and the only place in which I could

find shelter for the night was the cathedral itself, a building {684}

that most people would rather avoid than enter during the small hours.

The queerness of my situation, however, did not prevent me from

enjoying to the full the extreme loveliness of the gardens, and the

glorious view of the splendid edifice, rising white and clear in the

moonlight above their shady alleys and recesses.

On regaining the library, I dozed away the remainder of the dark hours

in the same commodious arm-chair, and as soon as the bell began to

toll for the seven o'clock prayers, I passed unnoticed out of the

building and regained my lodgings.

"Been keeping a coast-guard night, sir?" said Mrs. Jollisole, as she

set the breakfast things in order.

"Why, yes, Mrs. Jollisole," I answered; "I did enjoy some rather

extensive prospects last night."

And that was all that passed. I had fixed it in my own mind that I

would keep my own counsel strictly until I should have called at the

palace, and communicated the whole of the circumstances in confidence

to the bishop, with whom I was slightly acquainted.

This plan I carried into effect in the course of the morning. His

lordship was at home, and listened with his customary kindness and

courtesy to the whole of my romantic recital. Just as I was finishing,

his study door opened, and a young lady entered, dressed in black,

tall, and strikingly beautiful, though looking pale and fagged.

Glancing at me she gave a slight start, and taking a book from one of

the shelves, instantly left the room, after a few muttered words of

apology for disturbing the bishop. It was my companion of the library

and the tower.

"I see," said his lordship, "that you have recognized the ghost. That

young lady is an orphan niece of mine, and has been brought up in my

house from her infancy. Never strong, she has reduced what vigor she

possesses by her ardent love of books, and her intellectual interest

is awake to all kinds of subjects. She is equally unwearied in

visiting amongst the poor, and often returns home from her rounds in a

state of exhaustion from which it is difficult to rouse her. About a

twelvemonth ago we first noticed the appearance of a tendency to

somnambulism. She was removed for several weeks to the sea-side, and

we began to hope that a permanent improvement had set in. A severe

loss, however, which she has lately sustained, has, I fear, done her

great injury, and here is proof of the old malady returning. We are

indebted to you, sir," added the kind old man, "for your judicious and

thoughtful way of proceeding under the circumstances of last night,

and for at once putting me in possession of the details, which will

enable me to take the necessary precautions."

Before leaving the bishop's company, I begged him to go with me into

the cathedral, and to be present while a carpenter removed the

woodwork of the library window in order to recover the key. This he

consented at once to do, and we crossed the gardens by the very route

which "the ghost" and I had traversed during the night. On removing

the panelling, we found that the depth of the chink was comparatively

trifling, and the key was soon seen shining among the dust.

I was further gratified by another discovery, which, together with the

extreme pleasure that it gave the bishop, quite indemnified me for my

night's imprisonment. We noticed, partially concealed by rubbish in a

niche of the wall below the panelling, the corner of a vellum

covering. On further examination, this proved to be a MS. copy of St.

Matthew's Gospel, not indeed of the most ancient date, but adorned

with very rare and curious illumination, and making an excellent

addition to the stores of the library. After a _tete-a-tete_ dinner

that evening with the friendly bishop, we spent a pleasant hour or two

in a thorough inspection of the newly-found treasure.

It was little more than a month afterward that I heard the great bell

in the western tower toll the tidings {685} of a death. One week more,

and a sorrowing procession of school-children and women of the

alms-houses filed from the transept into the quiet cloister-ground,

there to bury the last remains of one who would seem to have been to

them in life a loving and much-loved friend. It was so. The eager

brain and the yearning heart, worn out with unequal labors, were laid

to rest for ever. The bishop's frail nursling was dead.

----

From The Month.

CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

The errors of the present day are generally the consequences of some

false principle admitted long ago, and many may be traced clearly to

the calamities of the sixteenth century. One of these is, that the

mediaeval learning preserved (as was declared at the Council of Trent)

chiefly among the monks was in its nature useless and trifling, fitted

only to amuse ignorant and narrow-minded men in the darkness of the

middle ages, and consisted in certain metaphysical speculations and

logical quibbles, called scholastic teaching. Several French writers

have done much to disabuse men of this prejudice, by making known the

amount of knowledge and science attained by mediaeval scholars, whose

works are despised because they are too scarce to be read, and perhaps

too deep to be understood in a less studious age. One of these

champions of he truth is Ozanam, who has traced with a master-hand the

preservation of all that was valuable in antiquity, through the

downfall of the empire; and he has rendered a subject which otherwise

it would have been presumption to approach a plain matter of history,

which the reader has only to receive, like other facts; so that we see

how, under the safeguard of the Church, the same powers which were

formerly used in vain by the philosophers for the discovery of truth,

were successfully used for the attainment its deeper mysteries. But

all that is human is marked by imperfection; and the very instinct

which led philosophers to "feel after" their Creator, and seek that

supreme good for which we were created, was misled by errors which all

ultimately ended in infidelity. It is not necessary to dwell on these.

A few words will remind the classical scholar that the Ionian school,

which sought truth by experiment, through the perception of the

senses, leads to fatalism and pantheism; while Pythagoras, who sought

by reason and the sciences him who is above and beyond their sphere,

left the disappointed reason in a state of doubt and indifference, or

else despair. Plato alone pursued a course of safety. Taking the

existence of God as a truth derived perhaps from patriarchal teaching,

he used the Socratic method of induction only for the destruction of

falsehood, and received with fearless candor all that the poets taught

of superhuman goodness and beauty; for though the symbolism of the

poets degenerated into disgusting idolatry, they have been called the

truest of heathen teachers. It is well known how Aristotle

strengthened the reasoning power; but the mighty power had no object

on which to put forth its strength, and the more noble minds rejected

at once both reasoning and experiment, and sought for religion in the

mysticism of Alexandria. Such was the wreck and waste of all that man

could do without revelation, {686} and so sickening was the

disappointment, that St. Augustin would fain have closed the Christian

schools to Virgil and Cicero, which he loved once too well; but St.

Gregory, brought up as he was a Roman and a Christian, had nothing to

repent of or to destroy, and classic letters were preserved by

Christians.

Ozanam found pleasure in believing that Christianity, while as yet

concealed in the catacombs, was "in all senses undermining ancient

Rome," and that it had an ameliorating effect on the Stoic, which was

then the best sect of the philosophers; so that Seneca, instead of

following the lantern of Zeno, who confused the natures of God and

man, learnt from St. Paul not only to distinguish them, but also the

relation in which man regards his Creator and Father, whom he serves

with free-will and love, by subduing his body to the command of his

soul. But the pride of philosophy may be modified without being

subdued. The principle of heathenism is "the antagonist of

Christianity: one is from man, and for man; the other from God, and

for God." It was the object of St. Paul and the first fathers of the

Church to liberate the intellect as well as the affections from

perversion, and to teach how the treasures of antiquity might be used

by Christians for religion, as the spoils of Egypt and the luxurious

perfumes of the Magdalen. And after the fierce battle of Christianity

with paganism was over, the triumph of the Church was completed under

Constantine by the Christianization of literature; that is, by using

in the service of truth all those powers which had been wasted in the

ineffectual efforts for its discovery. "A mixed mass of ancient

learning was saved from the wreck of the Roman world; and as Pope

Boniface preserved the splendid temple of the Pantheon, and dedicated

it to the worship of God glorified in his saints, so the doctors of

the Church employed the logic and eloquence of the philosophers

without adopting their theories. This was not always easy, and some,

like Origen and Tertullian, fell into error; for the distinctive

character of Christian teaching is to be dogmatic, not argumentative,

submitting the conclusions of reason to the decisions of inspired

authority, and the province of reason has bounds which it cannot

pass."

Gradually a Christian literature arose. Not only in the still

classical Roman schools, but in those of Constantinople, Asia, and

Africa, pagan writings were used as subservient to the training of

Christian authors, and the fourth century was the golden age of

intellect as well as sanctity. The fathers employed their classical

training in the study of the Holy Scriptures; but, according to the

true principle of sacred study, they sought from Almighty God himself

the grace which alone can direct the use of the intellectual powers.

"From the three senses of Holy Scripture" (says St. Bonaventure, in a

passage quoted by Ozanam out of his _Redactio Artium ad Theologiam_)

"descended three schools of Scriptural teaching. The _allegorical_,

which declares matters of faith, in which St. Augustin was a doctor,

and in which he was followed by St. Anselm and others, who taught by

discussion. The _moral_, on which St. Gregory founded his preaching

and taught men the rule of life, in which he was followed by St.

Bernard who belongs also to the mystical school and by a host of

preachers. While from the third or _analogical_ sense, St. Dionysius

taught by contemplation the manner in which man may unite himself to

God." Ozanam names a chain of authors as belonging to this school of

"Boethius, who on the eve of martyrdom wrote the consolations of that

sorrow which is concealed under the illusions of the world; Isidore,

Bede, Rabanus, Anselm, Bernard, Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, who

rejoiced 'to cast his sentences like the widow's mite into the

treasury of the temple, Hugo, and Richard of St. Victor, Peter the

Spaniard, Albert, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas."

{687}

"Under the barbarian rule, all the intellectual, an well as the

devout, took sanctuary in the cloister; so that when the Arian

Lombards attacked the centre of Christendom, they were opposed only by

the teaching and discipline of the Church as perfected by St. Gregory;

and the power of these must have been supernatural, as the influence

of letters was nearly lost in Rome. Then, in defence of the faith, St.

Benedict marshalled a new band of devoted champions in the mountains

of Subiaco, and he made it a part of their duty to preserve the

treasures of learning, and to employ them in the service of religion;

and these monks," says Ozanam, "who spent six hours in choir,

transcribed in their cells the historians and even the poets of Greece

and Rome, and bequeathed to the middle ages the most valuable writings

of antiquity."

It is agreed by all that Charlemagne was the founder of the middle

ages; and he opened the schools in which theology was formed into a

science, and gained the title of scholastics. Alcuin was the

instrument by whom Charlemagne remodelled European literature, with

the authority of the Church and councils, tradition and the fathers.

Of these the Greek were little known west of Constantinople; and the

chief representative of the Latin fathers was St. Augustin. There were

a few later writers, as Boethius on the "Consolation of Philosophy,"

and Cassidorus, who wrote _De Septem Disciplinis_.

"Every one knows," says Ozanam, "that when Europe was robbed of

ancient literature by the invasion of barbarians, the remains of

science, saved by pious hands, were divided into seven arts, and

enclosed in the Trivium and Quadrivium." These arts were grammar,

rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, which last comprehended arithmetic

and geometry, music and astronomy. "The establishment of public

schools in cent, ix.," says Ozanam, "assisted the progress of

reasoning, till it became in itself an art capable of being employed

indifferently to prove either side of an argument. The science of

words was no longer that of grammar, but became dialectics; and words

were used lightly as a mere play of the intellect, or as a mechanical

process to analyze truth." But it can never be lawful for a Christian

to discuss what has been revealed, as though it were possible that

those who reject it may be right; nor to consider truth as an open

question, which is still to be decided, and may be sought by those

rules of reasoning which had been laid down by Aristotle for the

discovery of what was as yet unknown. It was for this reason that, as

Ozanam says, Tertullian called Aristotle the patriarch of heretics;

yet his rules of reasoning were right, and the error lay in using them

amiss. Thus the Manichaeans reasoned when they should have believed,

and the Paulicians subjected the Holy Scriptures to their own

interpretation, and rejected all that was above their comprehension;

and thus in after-times did the Albigenses, and then the Protestants

of the sixteenth, and the Liberals of the nineteenth, century.

It was in 891 that Paschasius wrote, for the instruction of his

convent, a treatise on the Holy Eucharist, in which he proved by

reasoning that doctrine which "the whole world believes and

confesses;" but he was contradicted by Ratram, who first put forth the

heresy that the real presence is only figurative, and then the Church

pronounced the dogma of transubstantiation. From that time theologians

were obliged to confute the intellectual heresies of philosophers by

fighting, as on common ground, with the weapons of argument which were

used by both, in order to defend the doctrines which had been hitherto

declared simply and by authority, as by our Lord himself. "Now," says

Ozanam, "mysteries were subjected to definitions, and revelation was

divided into syllogisms. And as the love of argument 'increased, the

disputants took up the question which {688} had been discussed among

heathen philosophers as to the abstract existences which are called

universal forms or ideas; types of created things eternally existing

in the mind of God, according to the teaching of St. Bonaventure. And

when these were discovered by metaphysics, logic was exercised upon

them; and a dispute arose as to whether truth exists independently of

the perceptions of man. The Platonists asserted that it does, and this

belief, which they called idealism, was held by the divines, and was

called realism, while those who denied that it exists independently of

man were said to be nominalists." In modern days the dispute of

realism and nominalism is laughed at as an idle war of words; but the

war is, in truth, on principles, and still divides the orthodox and

unbeliever, and the names of realism and nominalism are only changed

for objective and subjective truth.

A painful experience had long prevailed that the spirit of controversy

is destructive of devotion; and the more devout, weary of the wars of

philosophers, rejected logic, and found in the mystic school that

repose which had been sought even by heathens in a counterfeit

mysticism, in which the evil powers deluded men by imitating divine

inspirations. According to Ozanam, "Christian mysticism is idealism in

its most brilliant form, which seeks truth in the higher regions of

spontaneous inspiration;" and he goes on to explain, from the writings

of St. Dionysius, that its nature is contemplative, ascetic, and

symbolical. It is _contemplative_, as it brings man into the presence

of the immense indivisible God, from whom all power, life, and wisdom

descend upon man through the hierarchies of the angels and through the

Church, and whose divine influences act in nine successive spheres

through all the gradations between existence and nothing. It is

_ascetic_, as it acts on the will through the link which connects the

body with the mind, and regulates the passions through the inferior

part of the soul. This "medicine of souls" was taught by the fathers

of the desert, who were followed by all the mystic doctors; and it was

on this reciprocal action of physics and morals that St. Bonaventure

afterward wrote the Compendium. It is _symbolic_, because it takes the

creation as a symbol of spiritual things, and the external world as

the shadow of what is invisible. The union of man with God is the

object and fullness of the knowledge which regards both the divine and

human nature, and levels all intellects in the immediate presence of

God. This was imparted to Adam, and restored by Christ our Lord, who

left it in the keeping of the Church. The first uninspired teacher of

this mystic theology is thought to have been Dionysius the Areopagite,

and the martyred Bishop of Athens, or, as some say, of Paris. In the

festival of his martyrdom it is declared "that he wrote books, which

are admirable and heavenly, concerning the divine names, the heavenly

and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and on mystical theology." Ozanam quotes

a fragment from his writings, which teaches that the indivisibility of

God is intangible by mathematical abstractions of quantity, and

indefinable by logic, because definition is analysis; and it is

incomparable, because there are no terms of comparison.

The teaching of St. Dionysius was not forgotten when the knowledge of

Greek was lost in the west. He was succeeded in this religious and

Christian philosophy by St. Anselm in the eleventh century. In his

_Monologium, De Ratione Fidei_, he supposes an ignorant man to be

seeking the truth with the sole force of his reason, and disputing in

order to discover a truth hitherto unknown. "Every one, for the most

part," he says, "if he has moderate understanding, may persuade

himself, by reason alone, as to what we necessarily believe of God;

and this he may do in many ways, each according to that best suited to

himself;" {689} and he goes on to say that his own mode consists in

deducing all theological truths from one point--the being of God. All

the diversity of beautiful, great, and good things supposes an ideal

one or unity of beauty, and this unity is God. Hence St. Anselm

derives the attributes of God--the creation, the Holy Trinity, the

relation of man to God, in a word, all theology. The _Proslogium_, or

truth demonstrating itself, is a second work, in which St. Anselm

proposes to demonstrate truth which has been already attained. "As in

the first he had, at the request of some brothers, written _De Ratione

Fidei_ in the person who seeks by reasoning what he 'does not know, so

he now seeks for some one of these many arguments which should require

no proof but from itself. He was the first to use the famous argument,

that from the sole idea of God is derived the demonstration of his

existence. He thus begins the _Proslogium:_ 'The fool hath said in his

heart, there is no God. Wherefore the most foolish atheist has in his

mind the idea of the sovereign good, which good cannot exist in

thought only, because a yet greater good can still be conceived. This

sovereign good therefore exists independently of the thought, and is

God.'" It is not worth while to follow out the errors which arose in

the middle ages from nominalism. In the eleventh century Roscelin

carried it to the absurdity of saying that ideas are only words, and

that nothing real exists except in particulars. And Philip of

Champeaux asserted the opposite extreme, and denied the existence of

all but universals; as that humanity alone exists, of which men are

mere parts or fragments. It was in the twelfth century that Abelard,

who had been trained in both these systems, came forth in the pride of

his vast intellect to reconcile them by a new theory, but his search

after truth was by a mere intellectual machinery, to be employed by

science in order to construct general scheme of human knowledge; while

it led to the rejection of that simple faith which believes without

examination, and substituted the system of rationalism, so fruitful to

this day of error and unbelief.

It was while men were constructing this intellectual tower of Babel

that Almighty God raised up as the champion of the truth the meek and

holy St. Bernard. Like David he laid aside his weapons of reasoning,

and left his cloister to overthrow the gigantic foe. In the cowl of

St. Benedict, he declared that the truth, which men sought by human

efforts, was to be received in faith as the gift of God, from whom all

knowledge and light proceeds. And it was not the powers of his

well-trained faculties, nor his classical and poetical studies, but

his prayers, which gained the victory; so that, as by miracle,

Abelard, the most eloquent disputant of his age, stood mute before the

saint, who taught that faith is no opinion attained by reasoning, but

a conviction beyond all proof that truth is revealed by God. This had

been the teaching of St. Gregory, who said that faith which is founded

on reason has no merit; and of St. Augustin, who said that faith is no

opinion founded on reflection, but an interior conviction; and of the

apostle, who said that faith is the certainty of things unseen. It is

consoling to read that the holy influence of St. Bernard did not only

silence his adversary; the heart of Abelard was melted, he laid aside

the studies in which he had so nearly lost his soul, and he made his

submission to the Church, and sought the forgiveness of St. Bernard.

Soon afterward he died a penitent, sorrowing for his moral and

intellectual offences. But evil does not end with the guilty; and his

school has continued brilliant in intellect and taste, but

presumptuous in applying them to the examination of truth. On the

other hand, the two folio volumes of St. Bernard have been always a

treasury of devotion, where the saints and pious of all succeeding

ages have been trained. It is impossible for words to {690} contain

more thought; and he had the gift of penetrating thoughts contained in

the inspired writings; as when he wrote twenty-four sermons on the

three first verses of the Canticles. Ozanam says that St. Pierre

perceived a fresh world of insects each day that he examined a single

strawberry-leaf; and thus in the spiritual world the intellect of St.

Bernard contemplated and beheld wonders with a sort of microscopic

infinity, while his vast comprehension was analogous in its

discoveries to the telescope. Such were the gifts conferred by God on

the humble abbot of Clairvaux.

There were in the time of St. Bernard other great teachers: Peter the

Venerable, St. Norbert, Godfrey, Richard, and Hugo, all monks of St.

Victor. Ozanam says that he embraced the three great modes of

teaching--that is, the allegorical, moral, and analogical; and

preceded St. Bonaventure in a gigantic attempt to form an

encyclopaedia of human knowledge, based on the truth declared by St.

James, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of

light, who is above.

With a vast amount of literary treasures the crusaders had brought

from the east, in the twelfth century, the Greek authors, with their

Arab commentators. They brought the physics, metaphysics, and morals

of Aristotle; and they brought also the pantheism, which, says

Ratisbon, the Saracens, like the early Stoics, had learnt from the

Brahmins, who believe that men have two souls--one inferior and led by

instinct, the other united and identical with God. This fatal error

was received by a daring school, to which Frederic of Sicily was

suspected to belong. It was to confute this school that St. Bernard

had taught in his sermons on the Canticles that union with God is not

by confusion of natures, but conformity of will. The poison entered

Europe from the west as well as the east; the Arabs in Spain mixed the

delusions of Alexandria with the subtleties of Aristotle, and the

result was such men as Averroes and Avicenna. Gerbert, afterward

Silvester II., had himself studied in Spain, and brought back into the

European schools not only the philosophy of Aristotle, but the Jewish

translations of Averroes. The unlearned monks of the west were

naturally alarmed at the new works on physics, astronomy, and alchemy,

and especially at the logic of Aristotle, and the terrible eruption of

pantheism. It was then that the Church exercised her paternal

authority, and condemned the confusion of the limits between faith and

opinion, and the degradation of the sciences to mere worldly purposes.

Ozanam gives the bull issued in 1254 by Innocent IV., in which he

complains that the study of civil law was substituted for that of

philosophy, and that theology itself was banished from the education

of priests. "We desire to bring back men's minds to the teaching of

theology, which is the science of salvation; or at least to the study

of philosophy, which, though it does not possess the gentle pleasures

of piety, yet has the first glimpses of that eternal truth which frees

the mind from the hindrance of covetousness, which is idolatry."

The tendency of philosophical errors was now rendered apparent by

their development, so that what was at first a vague opinion was now a

broad and well-defined system. Those who were firm in the teaching of

the Church found it necessary to use every means for opposing such

multiplied evils, and they boldly ventured on a Christian eclecticism,

which should employ all the faculties and all the modes of using them

in the service of religion; but it was not like the eclecticism of

Alexandria, where the ideas of Plato were united with the forms of

Aristotle, and adorned by the delusions of magic. The strength of

Christian eclecticism lay in the pure unity of faith, defended by all

the powers of man. {691} "Both analysis and synthesis," says Ozanam,

"are harmonized in true science: they are the two poles of the

intellectual world, and have the same axis and horizon. The

intersecting point of the two systems was the union of what is true in

realism and nominalism with mystic teaching, and the eclectic admitted

the experience of the senses as well as the deductions of reason and

the intuition of mysticism with the testimony of learning. Thus were

united in the study of truth the four great powers of the soul,

reason, tradition, experience, and intuition." But it has been

remarked that some of the masters who taught by experiment and

tradition were persecuted as magicians, and some of those who used

reason and intuition were canonized. Both, however, observed the

ascetic life, of which the abstinence of Pythagoras and the endurance

of the Stoics were imitations, and all practised the virtues most

opposite to heathen morality, namely, humility and charity. The first

attempt at uniting the different opinions of the learned was made by

Peter Lombard, who collected the sentences of the fathers into a work,

which gained him the title of Master of the Sentences, and which was

afterward perfected in the _Summa_ of St. Thomas. Albert the Great

left the palace of his ancestors for the Dominican cloister. He

studied at Cologne, and was unequalled in learning and psychology.

While he reasoned on ideas, he made experiments on matter; nay, he

used alchemy, to discover unknown powers and supernatural agents. It

is said that his twenty-one folio volumes have never been sufficiently

studied by any one to pronounce on their merits. His work on the

universe was written against pantheism, and declares the presence of

God in every part of creation, without being confused with it. That

divine presence is the source of all power. "He was," says Ozanam (p.

33), "an Atlas, who carried on his shoulders the whole world of

science, and did not bend beneath its weight." He was familiar with

the languages of the ancients and of the east, and had imbibed

gigantic strength at these fountains of tradition. He believed in the

title of magician, which his disciples gave him; and he is remembered

by posterity rather as a mythological being than as a man.

The contemporary of Albert, says Ozanam, was Alexander Hales, who

wrote the "Summa of Universal Theology." William of Auvergne was a

Dominican and preceptor of St. Louis; he wrote _Specimen Doctrinale,

Naturale, Historiale;_ a division of the sciences and their end,

containing--1, theology, physics, and mathematics; 2, practice,

monastic, economic, and politic; 3, mechanics and arts; 4, logic and

words. Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, was more accurate in learning than

Albert himself; sound, though no discoverer in physics, and deep in

mathematics. He commented on Aristotle and Peter Lombard. From his

strength, sagacity, and precision, he was named the Doctor Subtilis.

He wrote on free will, and says that its perfection is conformity to

the will of God; and derives the moral law from the will of God,

according to St. Paul, "Sin is the transgression of the law." When St.

Thomas taught that the moral law is necessarily good because God is

good, and this question divided the learned into the schools of

Scotists and Thomists, Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan, was the

pupil of Scotus; but he was eclectic, and admitted both exterior and

interior experience, and the deductions of reason, into the

intercourse of the soul with God. Though he condemned magic as an

imposture, he wrote on alchemy, and with the simplicity of enthusiasm

he hoped to find the philosopher's stone, and to read the fall of

empires in the stars. He believed in the powers of human science, and

he hints at the possibility of a vessel moving without sails or oars;

and imagined a balloon, a diving-bell, a suspension bridge, and other

miracles of art, especially a telescope and a multiplying-glass.

Speaking of Greek {692} fire and unquenchable lamps, he says that art

as well as nature has its thunders, and describes the effect of

gun-powder, the attraction of the loadstone, and the sympathies

between minerals, plants, and animals; and says, "When I see the

prodigies of nature, nothing startles my faith either in the works of

man or in the miracles of God;" concluding, that Aristotle may not

have penetrated the deepest secrets of nature, and that the sages of

his own time will be surpassed by the novices of future days. He had

the same clear and sound views of supernatural things, and wrote on

the secret works of art and nature, and the falsehood of magic. "Man

cannot influence the spiritual world except by the lawful use of

prayer addressed to God and the angels, who govern not only the world

of spirits, but the destinies of man." Though called the Doctor

Mirabilis, he was suspected of magic, and died neglected in a prison,

where he had no light to finish his last works. His manuscripts were

burned at the Reformation, in a convent of his order, by men "who

professed," says Ozanam, "to restore the torch of reason, which had

been extinguished by the monks of the middle ages."

Raymond Lulli, the Doctor Illuminatus, was a Franciscan, the great

inventor of arts; but he was a philosophical adventurer, whose cast of

mind was Spanish, Arabian, African, and eastern. His youth was

licentious, his life turbulent, and his imagination restless; but he

died as a saint and a martyr on his return from liberating the

Christian slaves in Spain.

The glory of the Franciscan order is the Seraphical Doctor, St.

Bonaventure. He was educated under Hales, the Irrefragable Doctor. His

genius was keen and his judgment just, and he was a master of

scholastic theology and philosophy. But when he studied, it was at the

foot of a crucifix, with eyes drowned in tears from incessant

meditation on the passion of Christ. His life was dedicated to the

glory of God and his own sanctification; yet he spent much time in

actual prayer, because he knew from mystic theology that knowledge and

obedience are the gifts of God; and devoted himself to mortifications,

because they alone prepare the soul for the reception of divine grace

and intuition. Yet though he obtained the gift of ecstacy and the

grace of crucifying the human nature, he placed Christian perfection

not in heroic acts of virtue, but in performing ordinary actions well.

Ozanam quotes his words: "A constant fidelity in small things is a

great and heroic virtue; it is a continued crucifixion of self-love, a

complete sacrifice of self, an entice submission to grace." And his

own pale and worn countenance shone with a happiness and peace which

exemplified his maxim that spiritual joy is a sign that grace is

present in the soul. Though his desire for sacramental communion was

intense, yet we are told his great humility once kept him at a

distance from the altar, till an angel bore to him the consecrated

host; and the raptures with which he always received his God are

expressed, though doubtless imperfectly, in the burning words,

_Transfige Domine_, etc., which he was wont to utter after he had

himself offered the holy sacrifice. His devotional works, written for

St. Louis and others in his court, fill the heart with their unction,

and rank him as the great master of spiritual life. It was during the

intervals of ecstasies that he wrote; and while he was occupied on the

life of St. Francis, St. Thomas beheld him in his cell raised above

the earth, and the future saint exclaimed: "Leave a saint to write the

life of a saint."

It is with profound reverence that we must inquire what was the

intellectual teaching of so holy a man; and it is, indeed, so vast and

yet so deep that it exhausts all the human powers in contemplating the

nature of God and the end of man, which is his union to God. Ozanam

gives a passage from his work on the "Reduction of Arts to

Philosophy," in which he {693} says that philosophy is the medium by

which the theologian forms for himself a mirror (_speculum_) from

created things, which serve him as steps by which he may ascend to

heaven. He begins by the revealed truth, that every good and perfect

gift descends from the Father of light, and teaches of its descent by

these four ways--exterior, inferior, interior, and superior--through

successive irradiations, namely, Holy Scripture, experimental

mechanics, and philosophy, which succeed each other like the days of

creation, all converging in the light of Holy Scripture, and all

succeeded by that seventh day in which the soul will rest in the

perfect knowledge of heaven.

1. Exterior light, or tradition, relates to the exterior forms of

matter, and produces the mechanical arts, which were divided by Hugo

into seven--weaving, work in wood and in stone, agriculture, hunting,

navigation, theatricals, and medicine.

2. Inferior light, or that of the senses, awakens in the mind the

perceptions of the five senses, as St. Augustin says, by that fine

essence whose nature and whose seat baffles all our discoveries.

3. Interior light, or reason, teaches us by the processes of thought

those intellectual truths which are fixed in the human mind by

physics, logic, and ethics, through rational, natural, and moral

action on the will, the conduct, and the speech, which are the triple

functions of the understanding, and on the three faculties of the

reason--apprehension, judgment, and action; this interior light acts

on outward things by physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, and

perceives God in all things by logic, by physics, and by ethics. And

he goes on to consider truth as it is in the essence of words, things,

and actions.

4. The superior light proceeds from grace and from the Holy

Scriptures, and reveals the truths relating to salvation and

sanctification. It is named from its raising us to the knowledge of

things above us, and because it descends from God by way of

inspiration and not by reflection. This light also is threefold. Holy

Scripture contains, under the literal sense of the words, the

allegorical, which declares what must be believed concerning God and

man; the moral, which teaches us how to live; the analogical, which

gives the laws by which man may unite himself to God. And the teaching

of Holy Scripture contains three points--faith, virtue, and beatitude.

The course by which knowledge must be sought is by,

1, tradition; 2, experiment; 3, reason; and 4, a descent as it were by

the same road, so as to find the stamp of the divinity on all which is

conceived, or felt, or thought. All sciences are pervaded by

mysteries; and it is by laying hold of the clue of the mystery that

all the depths of each science are explored.

It was to Mount Alvernia, where his master, St. Francis, so lately

received the stigmata, that St. Bonaventure retired to write the

_Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum_, in which he treats on the divine nature,

and considers God as manifesting himself in three modes, and man as

receiving the knowledge of him by the three functions of memory,

understanding, and will.

Ozanam says: "To these triple functions of the mind God manifests

himself in three ways: 1, by the traces of his creation in the world;

2, by his image in human nature; 3, by the light which he sheds on the

superior region of the soul. Those who contemplate him in the first

are in the vestibule of the tabernacle; those who rise to the second

are in the holy place; those who reach the third are within the holy

of holies, where the two cherubim figured the unity of the divine

essence and the plurality of divine persons." He likens the invisible

existence of God to the light, which, though unseen, enables the eye

to perceive colors; and proves from his existence his unity, eternity,

and perfection; and from the eternal action of his goodness he deduces

the doctrine of the Trinity.

{694}

The _Breviloquium_ treats on the nature of man, who exists not of

himself, nor by emanation from God, but was called into life out of

nothing by the Creator, and lives by no mortal life borrowed from the

outer world, but by its own and immortal life, intelligent and free.

These attributes of God are communicated by him to his creatures

according to his own law, "that the superior shall be the medium of

grace to the inferior." The happiness of the soul must be immortal and

is in God, and she can exist separated from this body which she

inhabits and moves. Ozanam says: "The _Compendium Theologies

Veritatis_ treats of the connection between physics and morals, and

inquires how the body indicates the variations of the soul by that

mysterious link on which the scientific speculate, but which the saint

treats as a subject not for dogmatizing but for contemplation,

assisted by the mortification which alone brings the passions into

subserviency. But the Seraphic Doctor left his teaching unfinished.

Some of his spiritual works have been translated by the Abbe

Berthaumier; and the reader will find that what has been said gives an

imperfect idea of the writings of this doctor of the Church, which

fill six folio volumes, and have scarcely been mastered by a few,

though they have warmed the devotion of many; and one short treatise,

called the "Soliloquy," is of such a nature as to include the whole

science of devotion. It represents the soul contemplating God, not in

his creatures, but within itself, and asking what is her own position

in his presence: created by him, and sinning against him; redeemed by

him, and yet sinning; full of contrition, yet firm in the hope of

glory. The teaching of St. Paul is continued by St. Augustin, St.

Ambrose, and St. Bernard; and it seems as if no other book were

needful. One passage, and one only, may show the treasures it

contains. The soul is convinced of the vanity of created things, and

asks how men are so blinded as to love them. Because the soul is

created with so glorious and sensitive a nature, that it cannot live

without love; and while the elect find nothing in created things which

can satisfy their desire of happiness, and therefore rest in the

contemplation of God, the deluded multitude neglect themselves for

passing objects, and love their exile as if it were their home. But

Ozanam does not leave his history of intellectual progress to treat of

spiritual gifts.

St. Thomas was born nearly at the same time as St. Bonaventure, in the

same wild valleys of the Apennines. They studied together at Paris;

they lived and died and were canonized together.

It was said by Pallavicini that "when, in the twelfth century, the

Arabs made Cordova a second Athens, and Averroes used the philosophy

of Aristotle as a weapon against the faith, God raised up the

intellect of St. Thomas, who, by deep study of Aristotle, found in his

own principles a solution of the arguments used by infidels; and the

scholastics, following him, have so employed Aristotle to defend

Christianity, that whosoever rebels against the Vatican rebels also

against the Lycaeum." St. Thomas had, however, to confute the errors

of Aristotle, and of Abelard and others who had followed them, while

he set forth the great truths of reason which he taught. It was in

1248 that he published a comment on the "Ethics." He had himself, says

Ozanam, the learning and the weight of Aristotle; his power of

analysis and classification, and the same sobriety of language. He had

also studied the Timaeus of Plato, the doctrines of Albert, Alexander

Hales, and John of Salisbury. He followed the school of St. Augustin,

and drew from St. Gregory his rule of morals. His comments on the

Sentences contain a methodical course of philosophy, as his _Summa_

contains an abridgment of divinity. In an extract given by Ozanam, St.

Thomas says, faith considers beings in relation to God; philosophy, as

they {695} are in themselves. Philosophy studies second causes; faith,

the first cause alone. In philosophy the notion of God is sought from

the knowledge of creatures, so that the notion of God is second to

that of his creatures; faith teaches first the notion of God, and

reveals in him the universal order of which he is the centre, and so

ends by the knowledge of creatures; and this is the most perfect

method, because human understanding is thus assimilated to the divine;

which contemplating itself contemplates all things in itself.

Theology, therefore, only borrows from philosophy illustrations of the

dogmas she offers to our faith.

It was in 1265 that, at the request of St. Raymond de Pennafort, St.

Thomas wrote the _Summa Theologies_ against the infidels in Spain; a

book which has ever since been considered as a perfect body of

theology and the manual of the saints. "In the philosophy of St.

Bonaventure," says Ozanam, "the leading guide was perhaps rather the

divine love than the researches of intellect." St. Thomas combined all

the faculties under the rule of a lofty meditation and a solemn

reason, uniting the abstract perceptions beheld by the understanding

with the images of external things received by the senses. "It was a

vast encyclopaedia of moral sciences, in which was said all that can

be known of God, of man and his relations to God; in short, _Summa

totius theologies_. This monument, harmonious though diverse, colossal

in its dimensions, and magnificent in its plan, remained unfinished,

like all the great political, literary, and architectural creations of

the middle age, which seem only to be shown and not suffered to

exist." And the Doctor Angelicus left the vast outline incomplete.

That outline is to be appreciated only by the learned; the ignorant

may guess its greatness by a catalogue, however meagre, of its

contents. In the first part, or the natural, St. Thomas treats of the

nature of God and of creatures; his essence, his attributes, and the

mystery of the Holy Trinity; then, in relation to his creatures, as

their Creator and Preserver. In the second, or moral, part he treats

of general principles, of virtues and vices, of the movement of the

reasonable creature toward God, of his chief end, and on the qualities

of the actions by which he can attain it, of the theological and moral

virtues. In the third, or theological, part he examines the means of

attaining God, the incarnation and the sacraments. In the _Summa_,

says Ozanam, "the notions of things lead to the attributes of the

divinity, unity, goodness, and truth; thus, natural theology arrived

at the unity as well as the attributes of God, while from his action

is deduced his Personality and Trinity. Then follows the nature of

good and bad angels, of souls in a separate state; and then the

science of man considered as a compound being of soul and body,

endowed with intellect for receiving impressions from the divine light

above, and from its reflection on things below. He is also endowed

with desire, by which he is formed to seek goodness and happiness, but

is free in will to chose vice or virtue; and the rejection of sin, and

acquisition of virtue, in a life regulated by divine human law, is a

shadow of life in heaven. Enough has been said to show how lofty was

the teaching of the saint; to whose invocation large indulgences are

attached, and who had the task of composing the office used on the

festival of Corpus Domini. The great object of his adoration and

contemplation was the mystery of the real presence; and his _Adoro Te

devote_ may be used as an act of worship at the holiest moment of the

sacrifice of the altar. The ecstasy of his joy in communion is

expressed in the _Gratias Tibi ago_; and he declared his faith in the

mystery as he lay on the ashes where he died. And this pure faith is

recorded by Raphael, who represents him in his picture of the 'Dispute

on the Blessed Eucharist' among the doctors of all ages before the

miraculous host."

{696}

Like all other saints, he sought detachment by mortification, and the

love of God by prayer. His principle was, that prayer must precede

study, because more is learnt from the crucifix than from books; and

his last maxim was, that in order to avoid being separated from God by

sin, a man must walk as in the sight of God and prepared for judgment.

When he laid aside his religious studies to prepare for eternity, he

used the words of St. Augustin: "Then shall I truly live when I am

full of thee and thy love; now am I a burden to myself, because I am

not entirely full of thee."

Mystic theology was now carried to perfection by Gersen, abbot of the

Benedictine monastery of Verceuil from 1220 to 1240. Many attribute to

him the authorship of the "Imitation of Christ;" there are, however, a

number of others who do not agree with this opinion. The "Imitation"

is generally ranked as coming very close after the inspired writings.

What is said of the interior life is more or less intelligible to

those who are endeavoring after perfection, but must be unintelligible

to any who have not the faith: _"Una vox librorum"_ (iii. 43), says

the author; but the one voice does not teach all alike, for he who is

within is the teacher of truth. The four books are in the hands of

all. The contents of the first are on the conduct of men as to the

exterior world, and the qualities necessary for the following of

Christ--humility, detachment, charity, and obedience; then grace will

be found, not in external things, but within, in a mind calm,

obedient, and seeking not to adapt but to master circumstances. The

second teaches him who turns from creatures that the kingdom of God is

within, and that the government of this inner world is the science of

perfection: "Give room to Christ and refuse entrance to others; then

will man be free amid the chaos, and creatures will be to him only the

_speculum vitae_." Seek Christ in all, and you will find him in all;

seek self, and you will find it everywhere: one thing is above all,

that leaving all you leave self. In the third book the soul listens to

the internal voice of God, who makes known to her that he is her

salvation; and she therefore prays for the one gift of divine love. It

is impossible, perhaps not desirable, to repeat the devout aspirations

of this divine love. May those who read the holy words receive their

import through the light of grace! The fourth book relates to the

union of the soul with her Lord through sacramental communion; and

this can only be read in the hours of devotion.

It is presumptuous to say even thus much of the great saints who lived

in the thirteenth century, how is it possible to undervalue the

progress they made in all the highest powers of the soul? or who can

speak of the schools of the middle ages as deserving of contempt in

days which cannot comprehend them?

Ozanam desires to show that Dante was trained in this exalted

learning, and has embodied what he learnt in his _Divina Commedia_. He

speaks of the full development attained by scholastic teaching in

those great teachers, after whom no efforts were made to extend the

limits of human knowledge; and he speaks of the perplexities which

arose with the anti-papal schism. "It was to the calm and majestic

philosophy of the thirteenth century," says Ozanam, "that Dante turned

his eyes; and his great poem declared to an age, which understood him

not, the contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical teaching of the mystic

school, which he had studied in the _Compendium_ of St. Bonaventure

and the _Summa_ of St. Thomas;" and he proves by an analysis of that

wonderful poem that it contains not only the great truths of

revelation, but the spirit of the decaying mediaeval philosophy:

"O voi che avete gli intelletti sani,

Mirate la dottrina che ascende

Sotto 'l velame del versi strani."

------

{697}

Translated from the Revue du Monde Catholique.

WHAT CAME OF A PRAYER.

In the fifth story of an old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain,

lay a sick woman whose pale emaciated face bore traces of age and

sorrow. Beside her bed was a young man, whose tender care showed him

to be her son. The furniture of the apartment, though of the plainest

kind, was neatly and carefully arranged, while the crucifix at the

head of the bed and a statue of the Blessed Virgin marked the

Christian family. The youth had just given his mother a spoonful of

gruel, and she had fallen asleep smiling on her son--that quiet sleep

attendant on recovery from severe illness. He knelt to thank God for

having saved his mother's life, and while he prays, and she sleeps,

without disturbing the prayer of the one, or the sleep of the other, I

will tell you their story in a few words.

The father was a printer at Sceaux. Industrious, prudent, of

scrupulous integrity, loving justice and fearing God, he acquired by

his honest labor a competence for his old age and a fair prospect for

his son. Losses, failures, and unforeseen misfortunes ruined him, and

he found himself bankrupt. This blow sensibly affected him, but did

not overwhelm him. He was offered a situation as compositor in a

printing office in Paris, resumed the workman's dress, and

courageously began to work. His wife, as strong as he, never uttered a

complaint or regret. Their son was withdrawn from college to learn his

father's trade, and although so young, his heart was penetrated with

profound religious faith. Thus lived this humble household, resigned

and happy, because they loved each other, feared God, and accepted

trials. Several years elapsed, years of toil in their endeavors to

liquidate the debts of the past: fruitful, however, in domestic joys.

The child became a young man, and fulfilled the promises of his

childhood. God blessed these afflicted parents in their son.

Suddenly the father fell sick and died. Those of us who have wept at

the death-bed of a father, know the anguish of those hours when we

contemplate for the last time the beloved features which we are to see

no more on earth; the impressions of which grief time softens but can

never efface. For those who live entirely in the domestic circle, the

separation, in breaking the heart, breaks at the same time the tie to

life. Left thus alone, the mother and son were more closely united,

each gave to the other the love formerly bestowed upon him who was no

more. Jacques Durand was now twenty-five years old. His countenance

was frank and open, but serious and grave. He had the esteem of his

employer, the respect of his companions, and the sympathy of all who

knew him. He was not ashamed to be a mechanic, knowing the hidden

charm of labor when that labor is offered to God. During the month of

his mother's illness he did not leave her pillow. The physician

pronounced her, the day before our story opens, out of danger. You

understand now why the young man prayed with so much fervor while his

mother slept. His devotions were interrupted by a knock at the door.

It was Mme. Antoine, the porter's wife, a little loquacious, but

obliging to her tenants, in a word, such a portress as we find only in

books. Jacques, who was going out, had requested her to take his place

beside his mother. She entered quietly for fear of disturbing the

patient, received the directions which the young man gave her in a low

voice, and seating herself near the bedside, busied her skilful

fingers with her knitting. Old Antoine, the porter, stopped our friend

Jacques at the foot {698} of the staircase. He was polite, benevolent,

attached to his tenants, did not despise them if they were poor, and

rendered them a service if he could. He was an old soldier of 1814. He

delighted to speak of the French campaign, wore with pride the medal

of St. Helena, and showed a seal which he received at Champaubert. "In

remembrance of Napoleon," he says, raising his hat and straightening

his bent figure. I don't know of any fault that he had except relating

too often the battle of Champaubert.

"Well," said he, "how is Mme. Durand?" "Much better," replied the

youth, "she has just fallen into a quiet sleep, which the doctor

declares favorable to her recovery." "God be praised," resumes

Antoine. "Beg pardon, M. Jacques, I can tell you now Mme. Durand has

made us very uneasy." In saying this he gave the young man a cordial

shake of the hand, which the latter heartily returned.

In going out Jacques took the Rue du Vieux-Colembier, and entered the

office of the Mont-de-piete at the corner of La Croix-Rouge.

During his mother's illness he had spent many hard-earned savings, for

you already know he had imposed on himself the obligation of paying

the debts of the failure, and beside, detained at home with his

mother, he had been unable to earn anything during the month. Still

the doctor had to be paid, and medicines bought; the small sum

advanced by his employer was nearly exhausted, and he was now on his

way to pawn a silver fork and spoon. A young girl stood beside him in

the office, and as there were many to be served before himself, he

relieved the weariness of waiting by watching her. Her cap had no

ribbons, but was gracefully placed on her light hair; a woollen dress,

not new, nor of the latest fashion, but clean and well kept, a wedding

ring (doubtless her mother's legacy), and a plain shawl, completed her

poor toilette. Jacques was attracted by her modest air. Some

industrious seamstress, he said to himself. As his turn had now come,

he presented the fork and spoon--the value was ascertained--and the

sum paid. The girl, following him, drew from a napkin a half worn

cloak, which she offered with a timid air.

"Ten francs," says the clerk.

"Oh!" said she blushing, "if you could give me fifteen for it! See,

sir, the cloak is still good."

"Well, twelve francs; will you trade at that price?"

Having given her assent, she took the money and the receipt, and went

out. Jacques preceded her, and before passing out the door, he saw her

dry a tear. "She is weeping," he said to himself; "I suppose the rent

is unpaid. Poor girl! Stupid clerk!" With these reflections he arrived

at the druggist's; he bought the remedies prescribed by the doctor;

then certain that Mme. Antoine was taking good care of his charge, he

thought he should have time to say a prayer at the church of St.

Sulpice. Jacques had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It

is to her intercession he attributed his mother's cure: it is before

her altar that he knelt. His prayer was an act of thanksgiving and a

petition for a new favor. His mother wished him to marry; he had often

dreamed of cheering her old age by the affection of a daughter, and he

asked the Virgin to guide him in his choice.

Happiness disposes the soul to charity. He thought of the motherless,

the suffering, and the sorrowful, and prayed for them. He remembered

the young girl he had just seen weeping, and prayed for her. At this

moment, a woman kneeling in front of him rose, and as she passed him

to leave the church he recognized the young girl. Prayer has the

secret of drying our tears; her face had resumed its usual serenity.

He still prayed for her: "Holy Virgin, watch over that child, grant

that she may be ever pious and chaste, and all else shall be added to

her." As he prepared to leave, he saw a letter beside the chair where

{699} the girl had knelt. He made haste to rejoin her in order to

restore it; but she had already left the church. He put it in his

pocket, intending to burn it when he reached home.

That evening, as he sat by his mother's side while she slept,

here-viewed the events of the day, according to his custom,

preparatory to his examination of conscience. Thus he recalled the

incidents of the morning, and having drawn the letter from his pocket

prepared to burn it. He approached the fire and was about to throw it

in. What restrains his hand? In the letter he feels something--a piece

of gold, perhaps. It was not sealed; he opened it, and drew out a

medal of the Blessed Virgin. The open letter excited his curiosity; he

was tempted to read it. Do not blame him too severely, reader, if he

yields to the temptation. He has finished his perusal, and I see he is

affected. His emotion excites my curiosity, and I am tempted to read

it in my turn. Will you be angry with me, or will you be accomplices

in my fault? Here are the contents of the letter:

TO M. LUCIEN RIGAUT,

CORPORAL IN THE 110TH REGIMENT, METZ.

"MY DEAR BROTHER:--I cannot send you the hundred francs you ask me

for. Do not blame me, it is not my fault; work is not well paid, and

everything is very dear in Paris, and you must know last month I had

to pay something to the man who takes care of mamma's tomb. When you

return I am sure you will be much grieved if that is neglected. You

shall receive fifty francs. Here are thirty from me; the remainder

is from the good Abbe Garnier whom I went to see, and who wishes

also to assist his extravagant child. At the same time he gave me

for you a medal of the Blessed Virgin, which you will find in my

letter, and which you must wear on your neck. That, my naughty

brother, will preserve you from danger and keep you from sin.

Promise me never more to associate with bad companions, who lead you

to the cafes and who are not too pious, I am sure. You must say your

prayers morning and night, go to mass on Sunday, confess, and live

like a good Christian. I will not reproach you for having neglected

your duties, but I am grieved, and if you could have seen your poor

sister weep I am sure you would reform. Do you remember when mamma

was about to leave us, and we were beside her bed restraining our

tears that she might have as a last joy in this world the smile of

her children, how she made us promise to be always good and

religious? Never forget that promise, Lucien, for the good God

punishes perjured children. What will you think of my letter? Oh,

you will call me a little scold. You will be angry at first, then

you will pardon me; you will put the medal around your neck, and you

will write me a good letter to restore gaiety to my heart. You do

not know how well I have arranged my room. When you return you will

recognize our old furniture. Mamma's portrait hangs over the bureau,

and I have placed our first communion pictures on each side. When I

have money I buy flowers, and for four sous I give to my abode the

sweet odor of the country. Shall I tell you how I employ my time? I

am an early riser. First my housekeeping, then my breakfast;

afterward I hear mass, and from the church to my day's work. Thanks

to the recommendation of the Abbe Garnier and of the sister at the

Patronage, I do not want for work. In the evening, before returning,

I say a prayer in the church; then my supper, and a little reading

or mending till bed-time. On Sunday after mass I go to the cemetery

to pray at mamma's tomb, afterward to the Patronage, where we enjoy

ourselves much. I wish you could see how good the sister is, how she

spoils me, how gently she scolds me when I am not good, for in spite

of all my sermons it sometimes happens that I deserve to be scolded.

You see, brother, that I have no time to be sad. If in the evening I

feel {700} lonely, I think of God, who is always near us, of my good

friends, of you, whom I shall see next year, and these sweet

thoughts make me forget the isolation of my little room. How proud I

shall be to go out leaning on your arm, and to walk with you on

Sunday in the Luxembourg! With the corporal's ribbons and the

Italian medal, I am sure everybody will turn round to look at you.

Do you know I have made a novena that you may be made sergeant

before the beginning of next year? I will send you every month ten

francs to finish paying your debt. Have no scruples in accepting

them; it is superfluous money which would have served to buy

gew-gaws. You do me a favor in taking it, as I shall be prevented

from becoming a coquette. What shall I say more to you? Be good, be

a Christian; but I have already said that. Do not forget me, but

write often. We must love one another, since each of us is all the

family of the other. Farewell, Lucien.

"Your affectionate sister,

MADELEINE."

I do not regret having been curious. I understand the emotion of

Jacques. I am also moved. This letter from a sister to a brother, so

simple and naive, breathes in every word the perfume of sincere piety,

and in each line is found the candor of an innocent heart. When

Jacques had finished reading it, he still lingered before throwing it

into the fire. He wished to read it again. He read it several times;

then he shut it up in a drawer, and put the medal around his neck. He

was charmed. He loved this simple letter, and he loved, almost without

knowing it, this child whose thoughts had been accidentally made known

to him. He guessed what the sister did not tell her brother, the

pawning of the cloak to complete the fifty francs, the privations to

which she submits in order to send every month the promised ten

francs. "I understand now," said he, "the secret of her tears. Three

francs are wanting for the required sum."

He was still more moved by her tears now that he had the secret of

them. "A good Christian girl," thought he. In his evening prayer she

was not forgotten.

The following day, as his mother was tolerably restored, he returned

to the printing office. As he worked he thought of Madeleine, and was

sad that he should see her no more. It was a folly, but who has not

been foolish? A little folly is the poetry of youth.

Time passed, the impression grew fainter, but was not effaced. It was

like a dream we try to retain on awakening, but whose brilliant colors

fade by the light of day. Mme. Durand was fully restored, but although

occupied with the care of the household, she did not go out, and this

explains why on Easter Sunday Jacques was alone at high mass in the

church of St. Sulpice. This festival, when the faithful are united in

one common joy, disposes the heart to serene impressions. After having

thanked God for his mother's recovery, he dreamed of a new affection,

and begged the blessed Virgin to guide him in his choice. Mass being

ended, a young girl on her knees in front of him rose to leave the

church, and he recognized Madeleine. He left in his turn, and during

the day he thought of that sweet face, which had twice appeared to

him, as if in answer to his prayer. It is Madeleine whom he will

marry, her smile shall make the joy of his Christian fireside; still,

how is he to see her again? He knows not; the Blessed Virgin, when she

chooses, will bring him back to her.

In their evening chats, when his mother made plans of marriage for

him, he never uttered Madeleine's name.

Again, on one of those mild days which are the charm of the month of

April, he was walking in the Luxembourg. It was a beautiful Sunday,

the lilacs were in flower, and the old garden seemed rejuvenated in

its new dress. As he thought of Madeleine, {701} two verses from

Brizeux recurred to his memory:

"Vienne Avril, et jeunesse, amours, fleurs sont ecloses;

Dieu sous la meme loi mit les plus belles choses."

At the turn of a walk, in a fresh, simple dress, he saw her once more.

When she had passed he followed her. He knew not why himself, but an

indescribable charm attracted and retained him near her. He left the

Luxembourg, went down the Boulevard Mont Parnasse, and saw her enter a

house which he recognized as an asylum for young work-women.

One morning, as he stopped at Antoine's lodging, he saw on his face

traces of sorrow.

"You seem sad," he said to him; "has any misfortune happened to you?"

"No," replied Antoine, "but I am grieved. A young woman, beg pardon,

who has lived above for two months, has just fallen ill, of bad fever,

the doctor says. She is a good girl, M. Jacques--a good industrious

girl. She has worked hard and sat up late, which brought on fever, and

when I think of it I am troubled."

"Is she alone?" asked Jacques.

"Entirely alone; but so gay, of a disposition so sweet, that though

poorly fed and overworked she never complained. When she passed,

morning and night, she had always a pleasant word for old Antoine. You

will not believe it, but for three days she has not been down. I have

been as much afflicted as if she were my own child."

So saying, he wiped a tear which fell on his white mustache.

During the day Jacques recalled the words of the old man. He was sad

at the thought of the poor girl, sick without a friend near her, for

even Antoine was detained at the lodge during his wife's absence. He

did not know her (and that was not surprising, as in Paris two

neighbors often live strangers to each other) and had never seen her:

he was troubled that she suffered, and that no one was near her to

alleviate her suffering. He resolved to speak to his mother in the

evening of her case, that she might go and take care of her. He

thought how Madeleine might fall sick, and have no one near her. He

determined to confide to his mother the secret of his love, and to beg

her to see Madeleine and obtain her consent to their marriage.

In the evening he informed his mother of their neighbor's illness, and

the next day Mme. Durand took her place at her bedside. It was a

dangerous illness, but youth, good care, prayer, and a novena to the

Blessed Virgin triumphed, and at the end of fifteen days she began to

improve. During this time Mme. Durand devoted herself to this sweet,

patient child. When her care was no longer necessary she continued to

go every morning to her patient's room. They worked and talked

together. Mme. Durand spoke of her son and she of her mother whom she

had lost, and insensibly a mutual affection sprang up between them.

Jacques listened with interest to his mother's praise of the sick

child, and was for a moment distracted from his remembrance of

Madeleine. He had, moreover, that modesty of true love which shrank

from the avowal of its tenderness. His mother knew nothing of his

love, and touched by the sweetness and patience of the young girl whom

she had nursed, hoped she might yet become her son's wife.

One evening in the month of June he was walking with his mother in the

gardens of the Luxembourg. He remembered his last meeting with

Madeleine, which recalled these verses of Brizeux:

"Un jeune homme

Natlf du meme eudroit, travailleur, econome

En voyant sa belle ame, en voyant sou beau corps

L'airnee: les vieilles gens firent lea deux accords."

He was about to speak to his mother of Madeleine when she said to him,

"My son, you are entering your {702} twenty-sixth year, it is time for

you to marry, and if you wish, I should like to call our neighbor, the

young girl whom I have nursed, my daughter."

"Mother," said Jacques, "I cannot marry her, I love another." He then

related his simple story, and pronounced for the first time

Madeleine's name. Mme. Durand listened much moved. She understood and

shared the trusting faith of her son. "My child," said she, "it shall

be as you desire. I will go on Sunday to the Patronage."

The week passed. Mme. Durand continued to see her patient often, and

she, nearly restored, came sometimes to her apartment at the time

Jacques was at the printing office, for his mother wished to prevent a

meeting which might perhaps trouble an innocent heart. But on

Saturday, having returned sooner than usual, he found the young girl

in his mother's room. They conversed a moment, and she withdrew. In

the pallid face he recognized the sweet countenance of Madeleine. When

she had gone, he embraced his mother, weeping and smiling at the same

time. "It is she, it is my sweet Madeleine." His mother, returning his

embrace, exclaimed, "She shall be your wife and my daughter."

I must tell you how, on Jacques' return from work, Mme. Durand went

for Madeleine, how they passed many a pleasant evening in conversation

or in reading a good book, and under their mother's eye loved each

other with a pure and earnest love.