CHAPTER V.

"The difference of our creeds, my dear Oswald," continued Corinne, "is the cause of the unspoken displeasure you cannot prevent me from detecting. Your faith is serious and severe, ours lively and tender. It is generally believed that my church is the most rigorous; it may be so, in a country where struggles exist between the two; but here we have no doctrinal dissensions. England has experienced many. The result is, that Catholicism here has taken an indulgent character, such as it cannot have where Reformation is armed against it. Our religion, like that of the ancients, animates the arts, inspires the poets, and makes part of all the joys of life; while yours, established in a country where reason predominates over fancy, is stamped with a moral sternness that will never be effaced. Ours calls on us in the name of love; yours in that of duty. Your principles are liberal; our dogmas bigoted; yet our orthodox despotism has some fellowship with private circumstances; and your religious liberty exacts respect for its own laws, without any exception. It is true that our monastics undergo sad hardships, but they choose them freely; their state is a mysterious engagement between God and man. Among the secular Catholics here, love, hope, and faith are the chief virtues, all announcing, all bestowing, peace. Far from our priests forbidding us to rejoice, they tell us that we thus evince our gratitude for the gifts of Heaven. They enjoin us to practise charity and repentance, as proofs of our respect for our faith, and our desire to please its Founder; but they refuse us not the absolution we zealously implore; and the errors of the heart meet here a mercy elsewhere denied. Did not our Saviour tell the Magdalene that much should be pardoned to the greatness of her love? As fair a sky as ours echoed these words: shall we then despair of our Creator's pity?"--"Corinne," returned Nevil, "how can I combat arguments so sweet, so needful to me? and yet I must. It is not for a day I love Corinne; to her I look for a long futurity of content and virtue. The purest religion is that which sacrifices passion to duty, as a continual homage to the Supreme Being. A moral life is the best offering. We degrade the Creator by attributing to him a wish that tends not towards our intellectual perfection. Paternity, that godlike symbol of faultless sway, seeks but to render its children better and happier. How, then, suppose that God demands of man actions that have not the welfare of man for their object? what confused notions spring from the habit of attaching more importance to religious ceremonies than to active worth! You know that it is just after Passion week the greatest number of murders are committed in Rome. The long fast has, in more senses than one, put its votaries in possession of funds, and they spend the treasures of their penitence in assassinations. The most disgusting criminal here scruples to eat meat on Fridays; convinced that the greatest of crimes were that of disobeying the ordinances of the Church: all conscience is lavished on that point; as if the Divinity were like one of this world's rulers, who prefers flattering submission to faithful service. Is this courtier-like behavior to be substituted for the respect we owe the Eternal, as the source and the recompense of a forbearing and spotless life? The external demonstrations of Italian Catholicism excuse the soul from all interior piety. The spectacle over, the feeling ends--the duty is done; no one remains, as with us, long occupied by thoughts born of strict and sincere self-examination."

"You are severe, my dear Oswald," said Corinne; "this is not the first time I have remarked it. If religion consists but in morality, how is it superior to philosophy and reason? And what piety could we truly feel, if our principal end was that of stifling all the feelings of the heart? The Stoics knew almost as much as ourselves of austere self-denials; but something more due to Christianity is the enthusiasm which weds it with all the affections of the soul--the power of loving and sympathizing. It is the most indulgent worship, which best favors the flight of our spirits towards Heaven. What means the parable of the Prodigal Son, if not, that true love of God is preferred even above the most exact fulfilment of duty? He quitted the paternal roof; his brother remained beneath it. He had plunged into all the pleasures of the world; his brother had never, for an instant, broken the regularity of domestic life; but the wanderer returned, all tears and his beloved father received him with rejoicing! Ah! doubtless, among the mysteries of nature, _love_ is all that is left us of our heavenly heritage! Our very virtues are often too constitutional for us always to comprehend what is right, or what is the secret impulse that directs us. I ask my God to teach me to adore him. I feel the effect of my petition by the tears I shed. But, to sustain this disposition, religious exercises are more necessary than you may think; a constant intercourse with the Divinity; daily habits that have no connection with the interests of life, but belong solely to the invisible world. External objects are of great assistance to piety. The soul would fall back upon herself, if music and the arts reanimated not that poetic genius, which is also the genius of religion. The vulgarest man, while he prays, suffers, or trusts in Heaven, would express himself like Milton, Homer, or Tasso, if education had clothed his thoughts in words. There are but two distinct classes of men born--those who feel enthusiasm, and those who deride it; all the rest is the work of society. One class have no words for their sentiments; the other know what they ought to say to hide the void of their hearts; but the stream flowed from the rock at the command of Heaven; even so gush forth true talent, true religion, true love. The pomp of our worship; those pictures of kneeling saints, whose looks express continual prayer; those statues placed on tombs, as if to awaken one day with the dead; our churches, with their lofty aisles--all seem intimately connected with devout ideas. I love this splendid homage, made by man to that which promises him neither fortune nor power; which neither rewards nor punishes, save by the feelings it inspires; I grow proud of my kind, as I recognize something so disinterested. The magnificence of religion cannot be too much increased. I love this prodigality of terrestrial gifts to another world; offerings from time to eternity; sufficient for the morrow are the cares required by human economy. Oh! how I love what would be useless waste, were life nothing better than a career of toil for despicable gain! if this earth be but our road to heaven, what can we do better than so elevate our souls that they feel the Infinite, the Invisible, the Eternal, in the midst of the limits that surround them? Jesus permitted a weak, and, perhaps, repentant woman, to steep his head in precious balms, saying to those who bade her turn them to more profitable use; 'Why trouble ye the woman? the poor ye have always with ye, but me ye have not always.' Alas! whatever is good or sublime on this earth is ours but for awhile; we have it not always. Age, infirmities, and death soon sully the heavenly dewdrop that only rests on flowers. Dear Oswald, let us, then, blend love, religion, genius, sunshine, odors, music, and poetry. There is no Atheism but cold selfish baseness. Christ has said: 'When two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be amongst them;' and what, O God! _is_ assembling in thy name, if we do not so while enjoying the charms of nature, therein praising and thanking thee for our life; above all, when some other heart, created by thy hands, responds entirely to our own?"

So celestial an inspiration animated the countenance of Corinne, that Oswald could scarce refrain from falling at her feet in that august temple. He was long silent, delightedly musing over her words, and reading their meaning in her looks: he could not, however, abandon a cause so dear to him as that he had undertaken; therefore resumed: "Corinne, hear a few words more from your friend: his heart is not seared; no, no, believe me, if I require austerity of principle and action, it is because it gives our feelings depth and duration; if I look for reason in religion--that is, if I reject contradictory dogmas, and human means for affecting the soul--it is because I see the Divinity in reason as in enthusiasm; if I cannot allow man to be deprived of any of his faculties, it is because they are all scarce sufficient for his comprehension of the truths, revealed to him as much by mental reflection as by heartfelt instinct--the existence of a God, and the immortality of the soul. To these solemn thoughts, so entwined with virtue, what can be added, that, in fact, belongs to them? The poetic zeal to which you lend so many attractions, is not, I dare assert, the most salutary kind of devotion! Corinne, how can it prepare us for the innumerable sacrifices that duty exacts? It has no revelation, save in its own impulses; while its future destiny is seen but through clouds. Now we, to whom Christianity renders it clear and positive, may deem such a sensation our reward, but cannot make it our sole guide. You describe the existence of the blest, not that of mortals; a religious life is a combat, not a hymn. If we were not sent here to repress our own and others' evil inclinations, there would, as you say, be no distinctions save between apathetic and ardent minds. But man is more harsh and rugged than you think him; rational piety and imperious duty alone can check his proud excesses. Whatever you may think of exterior pomp, and numerous ceremonies, dearest! the contemplation of the universe and its Author, will ever be the only worship which so fills the heart that self-knowledge can find in it nothing either idle or absurd. The dogmas that wound my reason, also chill my enthusiasm. Doubtless, the world is in itself an incomprehensible mystery, and he were most unwise who refused to believe whatever he could not explain; but contradictions are always the work of man. The secrets of God are beyond our mental powers, but not opposed to them. A German philosopher has said: 'I know but two lovely things in the universe--the starry sky above our heads, and the sense of duty within our hearts.' In sooth, all the wonders of creation are included in these. Far from a simple religion withering the heart, I used to think, ere I knew you, Corinne, that such alone could concentrate and perpetuate its affections. I have witnessed the most austere purity of conduct from a man of inexhaustible tenderness. I have seen it preserve, in age, a virgin innocence which the storms of passion must else have blighted. Repentance is assuredly commendable, and I, more than most men, had need rely on its efficacy; but repeated penitence wearies the soul; it is a sentiment that can but once regenerate us. Redemption accomplished, cannot be renewed; accustomed to the attempt, we lose the strength of love; for it requires strength of mind to love God constantly. I object to the splendid forms which here act so powerfully on the fancy, because I would have imagination modest and retiring, like the heart: emotions extorted from it, are always less forcible than those that spring spontaneously. In the Cevennes, I heard a Protestant minister preach one eve among the mountains: he addressed the tombs of the Frenchmen, banished by their brothers, and promised their friends that they should meet them in a better world: a virtuous life, he said, would secure that blessing, adding, 'Do good to man, that God may heal the wounds within your breasts!' He wondered at the inflexibility with which the creature of a day dared treat his fellow-worm; and spoke of that terrible death, which all conceive, but none fully expound. In short, he said naught that was not touching, true, and perfectly in harmony with nature. The distant cataract, the sparkling starlight, seemed expressing the same thoughts in other ways. There was the magnificence of nature, the only one whose spectacles offend not the unfortunate; and this imposing simplicity affected the soul as it was never affected by the most brilliant of ceremonies."

On Easter Sunday, Oswald and Corinne went to the Place of St. Peter's, to see the Pope, from the highest balcony of the church, call down Heaven's blessing on the earth: as he pronounced _Urbi et orbi_--on the city and the world--the people knelt, and our lovers felt all creeds alike. Religion links men with each other, unless self-love and fanaticism render it a cause of jealousy and hate. To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that men can contract in this life.