CHAPTER IX.

I must now describe a portion of the garden which stretched out from the back of old Ned Cavana's premises. A large well-enclosed farmyard, almost immediately at the rear of the house, gave evidence of the comfort and plenty belonging not only to the old man himself, but to everything living and dead about the place; and as we shall be obliged to pass through this farm-yard to get into the garden, we may as well describe it first. Stacks of corn, wheat, oats, and barley, in great variety of size, pointed the pinnacles of their finishing touch to the sky. Sticking up from some of these were sham weather-cocks, made of straw, in the shape of fish, fowl, dogs, and cats, the handiwork of Jamesy Doyle, the servant boy,--the same black-headed urchin who lifted the tenpenny-bit out of the tub at old Murdock's party. They were fastened upon sticks, which did not turn round, and were therefore put up more to frighten away the sparrows than for the purpose of indicating which way the wind blew, or, more likely still, as mere specimens of Jamesy Doyle's ingenuity. The whole yard was covered a foot deep with loose straw, for the double purpose of giving comfort to two or three litters of young pigs, and that of being used up, by the constant tramping, into manure for the farm; for cows, heifers, and calves strayed about it without interruption. A grand flock of geese, as white as snow and as large nearly as swans, marched in from the fields, headed by their gander, every evening about the same hour, to spend their night gaggling and watching and sleeping by turns under the stacks of corn, which were raised upon stone pillars with mushroom metal-caps, to keep out the rats and mice. A big black cock, with a hanging red comb and white jowls, and innumerable hens belonging to him, something on the Brigham Young system, marched triumphantly about, calling his favorites {663} every now and then with a quick melancholy little chuckle as often as he found a tit-bit amongst the straw. Ducks, half as large as the geese, coming home without a feather raffled, in a mottled string of all colors, from the stream below the hill, diving, for variety, into the clean straw, emerging now and then, and smattering with their flat bills in any little puddle of water that lay between the pavement in the bare part of the yard. "Bullydhu," the watch-dog, as evening closed, taking possession of a small wooden house upon wheels,--Jamesy Doyle's handiwork too,--that it might be turned to the shelter, whichever way the wind blew. It was a miracle to see Bully getting into it, the door was so low; another piece of consideration of Jamesy's for the dog's comfort. You could only know when he was in it by seeing his large soft paws under the arch of the low door.

Beyond this farm-yard--farm in all its appearance and realities--was the garden. A thick, high, furze hedge, about sixty yards long, ran down one side of it, from the corner of the farmyard wall; and at the further end of this hedge, which was the square of the garden, and facing the sun, was certainly the most complete and beautiful summer-house in the parish of Rathcash, or Jamesy Doyle was very much mistaken. It also was his handiwork. In fact, there was nothing Jamesy could not turn his hands to, and his heart was as ready as his hands, so that he was always successful, but here he had outstripped all his former ingenuity. The bower was now of four years' standing, and every summer Jamesy was proud to see that nature had approved of his plan by endorsing it with a hundred different signatures. With the other portions of the garden or its several crops, we have nothing to do; we will therefore linger for a while about the furze hedge and in "Jamesy's bower" to see what may turn up. But I must describe another item in the locality.

Immediately outside the hedge there was a lane, common to a certain extent to both farms. It might be said to divide them. It lay quite close to the furze hedge, which ran in a straight line a long distance beyond where "Jamesy's bower" formed one of the angles of the garden. There was a gate across the lane precisely outside the corner where the bower had been made, and this was the extent of Murdock's right or title to the commonalty of the lane. Passing through this gate, Murdock branched off to the left with the produce of his farm. It is a long lane, they say, that has no turning, and although the portion of this one with which we are concerned was only sixty yards long, I have not, perhaps, brought the reader to the spot so quickly as I might. I certainly could have brought him through the yard without putting even the word "farm" before it, or without saying a word about the stacks of corn and the weather-cocks, the pigs, cows, heifers, and calves, the geese, ducks, cock, and hens, "Bullydhu" and his house, etc., and with a hop, step, and a leap I might have placed him in "Jamesy's bower" if he had been the person to occupy it--but he was not. With every twig, however, of the hedge and the bower it is necessary that my readers should be well acquainted; and I hope I have succeeded in making them so.

Winny Cavana was a thoughtful, thrifty girl, an experienced housekeeper, never allowing one job to overtake another where it could be avoided. Of course incidental difficulties would sometimes arise; but in general she managed everything so nicely and systematically that matters fell into their own time and place as regularly as possible.

When Winny got the invitation for Mick Murdock's party, which was only in the forenoon of the day before it came off, her first thought was, that she would be very tired and ill-fitted for business the day after it was over. She therefore called Jamesy Doyle to her assistance, and on that day and {664} the next, she got through whatever household jobs would bear performance in advance, and instructed Jamesy as to some little matters which she used to oversee herself, but which on this occasion she would entrust solely to his own intelligence and judgment for the day after the party. She could not have committed them to a more competent or conscientious lad. Anything Jamesy undertook to do, he did it well, as we have already seen both in the haggard, the garden, and the tub--for it was he who brought up the fippenny-bit at Murdock's, and he would lay down his life to serve or even to oblige Winny Cavana.

Having thus purchased an idle day after the party, Winny was determined to enjoy it, and after a very late breakfast, for her father, poor soul, was dead tired, she called Jamesy, and examined him as to what he had done or left undone. Finding that, notwithstanding he had been up as late as she had been herself the night before, he had been faithful to the trust reposed in him, and that everything was in trim order, she then complimented him upon his snapping and diving abilities.

"How much did you take up out of the tub, Jamesy?" she asked.

"Be gorra, Miss Winny, I took up two tenpenny-bits an' a fippenny."

"And what will you do with all that money, Jamesy? it is nearly a month's wages."

"Be gorra, my mother has it afore this, Miss Winny."

"That is a good boy, Jamesy, but you shouldn't curse."

"Be gorra, I won't, miss; but I didn't think that was cursing, at all, at all."

"Well, it is swearing, Jamesy, and that is just as bad."

"Well, Miss Winny, you'll never hear me say it agen."

"That's right, James. Is the garden open?

"It is, miss; I'm afther bringing out an armful of leaves to bile for the pigs."

Winny passed on through the yard into the garden. It was a fine, mild day for the time of year, and she was soon sitting in the bower with an unopened story-book in her lap. It was a piece of idle folly her bringing the book there at all. In the first place, she had it by heart--for books were scarce in that locality, and were often read--and in the next, she was more in a humor to think than to read. It was no strange thing, under the circumstances, if, like some heroines of a higher stamp, "she fell into a reverie." "How long she remained thus," to use the patent phrase in such a case, must be a mere matter of surmise; but a step at the gate outside the hedge, and her own name distinctly pronounced, caused her to start. Eaves-dropping has been universally condemned, and "listeners," they say, "never hear good of themselves." But where is the young girl, or indeed any person, hearing their own name pronounced, and being in a position to listen unobserved, who would not do so? Our heroine, at all events, was not "above that sort of thing," and instead of hemming, or coughing, or shuffling her feet in the gravel, she cocked her ears and held her breath. We would be a little indulgent to a person so sorely tempted, whatever our readers may think.

"If Winny Cavana," she heard, "was twice as proud, an' twice as great a lady, you may believe me, Tom, she wouldn't refuse you. She'll have six hundred pounds as round as the crown of your hat; an' that fine farm we're afther walkin' over; like her, or not like her, take my advice an' don't lose the fortune an' the farm."

"Not if I can help it, father. There's more reason than you know of why I should secure the ready money of her fortune at any rate; as to herself, if it wasn't for that, she might marry Tom Naddy _th' aumadhawn_ if she had a mind."

"Had you any chat with her last night, Tom? Oh then, wasn't she lookin' elegant!"

{665}

"As elegant as you please, father, but as proud as a peacock. No, I had no chat with her, except what the whole room could hear; she was determined on that, and I'm still of opinion that you did more harm than good."

"Not if you were worth a _thrawncen_, Tom. Arrah avic machree, you don't undherstand her; that was all put on, man alive. I'm afeerd she'll think you haven't the pluck in you; she's a sperited girl herself, and depend upon it she expects you to spake, an' its what she's vexed at, your dilly-dallyin'. Why did you let that fellow take her out for the first dance? I heerd Mrs. Moran remark it to Kitty Mulvey's mother."

"That was a mistake, father; he had her out before I got in from the kitchen."

"They don't like them mistakes, Tom, an' that's the very thing I blame you for; you should have stuck to her like a leech the whole night; they like a man that's in earnest. Take my advice, Tom avic, an put the question plump to her at wanst fore Shraftide. Tell her I'll lay down a pound for you for every pound her father gives her, and I'll make over this place to you out an out. Old Ned an I will live together while we last, an that can't be long, Tom avic. I know he'll settle Rathcash upon Winny, and he'll have the interest of her fortune beside--"

"Interest be d--d!" interrupted Tom; "won't he pay the money down?"

"He might do that same, but I think not; he's afeerd it might be dribbled away, but with Rathcash, an Rathcashmore joined, the devil's in it and she can't live like a lady; at all events, Tom, you can live like a gentleman; ould Ned's for you entirely, Tom, I can tell you that."

"That is all very well, father, and I wish that you could make me think that your words would come true, but I'm not come to four-and-twenty years of age without knowing something of the way girls get on; and if that one is not set on young Lennon, my name is not Tom Murdock; and I'll tell you what's more, that if it wasn't for her fortune and that farm, he might have her and welcome. There are many girls in the parish as handsome, and handsomer for that matter, than what she is, that would just jump at me."

"I know that, Tom agra, but maybe it's what you'll only fix her on that whelp, as you call him, the stronger, if you be houldin' back the way you do. They like pluck, Tom; they like pluck, I tell you, and in my opinion she's only makin' b'lief, to dhraw you out. Try her, Tom, try her."

"I will, father, and if I fail, and I find that that spalpeen Lennon is at the bottom of it, let them both look out, that's all. For his part, I have a way of dealing with him that he knows nothing about, and as for her--"

Here Jamesy Doyle came out into the lane from the farm-yard, and father and son immediately branched off in the direction of their own house, leaving Tom Murdock's second part of the threat unfinished.

But Winny had heard enough. Her heart, which had been beating with indignation the whole time, had nearly betrayed itself when she heard Emon-a-knock called a spalpeen.

One thing she was now certain of, and the certainty gave her whole soul relief,--that if ever Tom Murdock could have had any chance of success through her father's influence, and her love for him, it was now entirely at an end for ever. Should her father urge the match upon her, she had, as a last remedy, but to reveal this conversation, to gain him over indignantly to her side.

{666}

Winny was seldom very wrong in her likings or dislikings, although perhaps both were formed in some instances rather hastily, and she often knew not why. In Tom Murdock's case, she was glad, and now rather "proud out of herself," that she had never liked him.

"I knew the dirt was in him," she said to herself as she returned to the house. "I wish he did not live so near us, for I foresee nothing but trouble and vexation before me on his account. I'm sorry Jamesy Doyle came out so soon. I'd like to have heard what he was going to say of myself, but sure he said enough. Em-on-a-knock may despise himself and his threat." And she went into the house to prepare the dinner.

Tom Murdock, notwithstanding his shortcomings, and they were neither few nor far between, was a shrewd, clever fellow in most matters. It was owing to this shrewdness that he resolved to watch for some favorable opportunity, rather than seek a formal meeting with Winny Cavana "_at wanst_" as had been 'advised by his father.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

From Once a Week.

SAINT DOROTHEA.

The sun blazed fiercely out of cloudless blue, And the deep sea flung back the glare again, As though there were indeed another sun Within the mimic sky reflected there; Not steadily and straight, as from above, But all athwart the little rippling waves The broken daybeams sparkling leapt aloft In glittering ruin; scarce a breath of air To stir the waters or to wave the trees; The flowers hung drooping, and the leaves lay close Against their branches, as if sick and faint With the dull heat and needing strong support. The city walls, the stones of every street, The houses glow'd, you would have thought that none Would venture forth, till that the gracious night Should come with sable robe and wrap the earth In softest folds, and shade men from the day. But see, from every street the seething crowds Pour out, and all along the way they stand, And ribald jest and song resound aloud, And light accost and careless revelry: What means this, wherefore flock the people forth? Ceases the hum, a sudden silence falls On all around, the tramp of armed men Rings through the air; and hark, what further sound? A girl's fresh voice, a sad sweet song is heard Above the clank of arms, men hold their breath; Yet not all sadness is that wondrous chant, That hushes the wild crowd with sudden awe. As when the nightingale's mellifluous tones Rise in the woodland, ere the other birds {667} Have ceased their vesper hymn, that moment drops Each fluttering songster's wild thanksgiving lay, So for awhile did silence fall on all Within the seething crowd at that sweet voice. She comes, they bring her forth to die, for she This day must win the martyr's palm, this day Must witness for her faith, this day must reap The fruit of all her pains, long rest in heaven! Long had they spared her, for the governor Was loth that she should suffer, and her race Was noble, so they hoped to make her yield, And waited still and waited; but at length They grew enraged at her calm steadfastness, They knew not whence a resolution such As made a young maid baffle aged men, So she must die.

Now as she went along 'Midst all her guards, again burst forth the mob Into such bitter taunts, such foul wild words, As sent the hot blood mantling to her cheek For shame that she, a maid, must hear such things; And yet was no remorse within their hearts, No light of pity in their savage eyes, Like hungry wolves that scent the blood from far They howled with joy, expectant of their prey. There was one there, he in old days had loved Her fair young face, but he too now, with scorn Written in his dark eyes and on his brow, And in the curl of his short lip, stood by; It 'seemed not such a face, that bitter smile, For he was passing fair, in youth's heyday; But if contemptuous was his mien, his words Were worse for her to bear, for he cried out-- He, whom her heart yet own'd its only love! He, whom she held first of all living men! He, whom she honor'd yet, though left by him In her distress and danger!--this man cried, "Ho, Dorothea! doth the bridegroom wait? And goest thou to his arms? Joy go with thee! But yet when in his palace courts above, Whereof thou tellest, fair one, think on us Who toil in this sad world below; on me Think thou before all others, thine old love, And send me somewhat for a token, send Of that same heavenly fruit and of those flowers That fade not!"

Then she turn'd and answer'd him, "As thou hast said, so be it, thy request Is granted!" and she pass'd on to her death. She died: her soul was rapt into the skies. The vulgar horde who watch'd her torture, knew Nought of the great unfathomable bliss {668} Which waited her, and when her spirit fled None saw the angel bands receive her, none Heard the long jubilant sweet sound that burst Through heaven's high gates, swept from ten thousand harps By seraph choirs, for she had died on earth Only to enter on the life above. Night fell upon the earth, the city lay Slumb'ring in cool repose, the restless sea, Weary with dancing all day 'neath the sun, Was hushed to sleep by the faint whisp'ring breeze That, wanting force to sport, but rose and fell With soothing murmur, like to pine boughs stirr'd By the north wind: sleep held men's eyelids close. And he, that youth, slept, aye, slept peacefully, Nor reck'd of the vile insult he had pour'd Upon the head of one whom once he swore To love beyond all others. As he lay, Wrapt in the dreamless slumber of young health, Sudden a light unearthly clear hath fill'd The chamber, and he starts up from his couch, Gazing in troubled wonder: by his side What sees he?

A young boy he deems him first, But when had mortal such a calm pure smile Since our first father lost his purity? A radiant angel, rather, should he be, Who stands all glorious, bearing in his hands Such fruit and flowers as surely never grew On this dull earth; their fragrance fill'd the air, And smote the senses of Theophilus, That a sad yearning rose within his heart, Such as at times a strain of song will raise, Or some chance word will bring (we know not why), Flooding the inmost soul with that strange sense, Half pain, half pleasure, of some bygone time-- Some far off and forgotten happiness, We know not where nor what.

The stranger spoke, And thus he said, "Rise up, Theophilus! And take these gifts which I from heaven bring. Fair Dorothea, mindful of her words, Hath sent thee these, and bids thee that henceforth Thou scoff not, but believe!"

With those same words Vanish'd the cherub, and the room was dark, Save where the moonbeams made uncertain light, And where remain'd those blossoms and that fruit, For from each leaf and stem there stream'd a ray As of the morning.

Down upon his couch Theophilus sank prone, with awe oppress'd; {669} But for a moment. Starting wildly up, He cried, "My love, my Dorothea, list! If thou canst hear me in those starry halls Where now thou dwellest, I accept thy gift. Do thou take mine, for I do give myself Up to the service of thy Lord; thy faith Shall from this hour be mine, for I believe!"

Translated from Der Katholik.

THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.

[Second Article.]

I. THE PROBLEM.

"Neither," says Jesus Christ, "do they put new wine into old bottles; otherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out." The parable teaches that the new spirit of Christianity requires a new form, corresponding to its essence. The essence and the form of Christianity are, therefore, intimately connected.

What is thus generally enunciated in regard to the essential connection of the spirit of Christianity with the forms of its expression, is equally true of the mutual relations subsisting between the substance and the manifestation of the Church. Christianity and the Church are virtually identical. The former, considered as a source of union and brotherhood, constitutes the Church, In a former article we have recognized Catholicism as the type of the Church Founded by Christ. Hence the interdependence of the essence with the form of Christianity in general is not more thorough than that of the spirit of the Church with the historical development of Catholicism.

These remarks will be found to designate the object of the present essay. An inquiry into the fundamental principle of Catholicism must address itself to the elucidation of the cause of the necessary connection between the spirit and the outer shape of the Church just mentioned. The direction in which the light is to be sought appears by the parable cited above.

The new wine requires new bottles, because they only correspond with its nature. By the same induction it is affirmed that if the true Church is realized only in the form of Catholicism, the reason is to be found in the inmost nature of the Church, in the catholicity of her spirit.

This idea of the inherent catholicity of the Church, as well as the foregoing assertion of a necessary inter-dependence of the essence with the image of Catholicism, is to be established on scriptural authority by the following disquisition.

II. THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

The shape and form in which Catholicism appears in history has its root in the papacy. It is certainly deserving of attention, that precisely in the institution of the papacy the Church is designated by a name which affords an insight into her inmost nature.

On that occasion the Church--meaning the Church as apparent in history--is called the kingdom of heaven. [Footnote 146] The Lord says to Peter, "I will give {670} unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" a promise substantially the same with that given in the same breath to the same apostle, though under a different metaphor, when Jesus calls him the rock upon which he will build his Church. The primate is the subject of both predictions. The apostle Peter is to be the foundation of the Church, and he is to receive the keys of the same edifice, that is to say, he is to be the master of the house.

[Footnote 146: Matt. xvi. 18, 19. ]

That the epithet of "kingdom of heaven" expresses the essential character of the Church, is easily shown by a glance at the passages of Scripture in which the Church is mentioned. Such is always the case where the kingdom of God or of heaven is represented as in course of realization on earth. In this respect the parables of Jesus are especially significant. They address themselves principally to the spirit, the organization, and the most essential peculiarities of the new order of things which Jesus Christ had come into the world to establish. In these discourses the new foundation is constantly brought forward as the kingdom of God or of heaven. Thus we cannot but recognize in this expression a designation of the inner essence of the institution of Jesus.

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.

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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.

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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 _fêtes_, 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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.

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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 Abbé 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."

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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."

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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-piété 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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 écloses; Dieu sous la même 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 même eudroit, travailleur, économe En vòyant sa belle âme, en voyant sou beau corps L'airnée: 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.

At the end of a month Mme. Durand obtained the consent of Madeleine, but she said nothing to her of her son's secret, of their meeting, of the letter, of the feelings so long cherished, nor of the protection of Mary, who had brought together these two Christian souls. This she left for him to relate one day when he was alone with his betrothed. She listened much affected, and you may be surprised to learn that she forgot to ask for the lost letter and the medal of the Virgin.

Mme. Durand saw the good abbé and the sister at the Patronage, and they approved the marriage. The consent of the soldier brother was asked and obtained.

The marriage was to take place in a few days. "Beg pardon," says Antoine, "these two young people were made for each other--a fine match really. You will not believe me, but I love them as if they were my own children."

Lucien came to Paris for the wedding. From the first he made a conquest of Antoine. It turned out that Antoine too had served in the 110th. The two heroes talked of their campaigns. One related the battle of Champaubert, the other that of Solferino. The medal of St. Helena fraternized with the Italian medal; they drank to the laurels of the old 110th, to the triumphs of the new. The veteran and the conscript became the best friends in the world.

The great day arrived. The abbé blessed the union and Antoine gave away the bride. He straightened his bent figure; he put a new ribbon in his medal. He was prouder than on the evening of Champaubert, when Napoleon said, "Soldiers of the 110th, you are heroes?" Brother Lucien, with his corporal's badge and his Italian medal, added much to the brilliancy of the cortege. Mesdames Durand and Antoine put on their richest dresses. What shall we say of Madeleine in her bridal dress? of her veil, and the wreath upon her auburn tresses? of the sweet face reflecting the purity of an innocent heart and a chaste love? of the tears which flow when the heart is too full? of the sacred hour when this Christian couple unite in a common prayer?

Now they are married they do not seek pleasures abroad. Their happiness is found in their daily labor, their evening conversation, or reading; on Sunday, after mass, a walk to the Tuileries, while their mother at their side smiles on their love. Their hearts are drawn so near together that {703} they beat in unison, they think and feel at the same time. At last a child makes one more joy in this joyous house--one stronger bond between these united souls. Such is their pure affection: a love which age can never wither, a love born of a prayer, and blest by God.

Jacques has reaped the fruit of his labor; he has paid all the debts of the past, and ease and plenty have returned to the household. He hopes to be soon taken into partnership with his employer.

They do not wish to leave the old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, so filled with sweet memories, but they have taken a lower floor, they have a large apartment, and are almost rich. The poor have their share of their riches.

Lucien, the soldier, has entirely reformed, and has risen to the rank of sergeant. Perhaps he may yet wear an officer's epaulettes.

Old Antoine grows old, but his heart remains young; his figure is more bent, but he still straightens it when he speaks of Napoleon, and relates to our friends the battle of Champaubert. He was the godfather of the little boy. "A fine child," said he "Beg pardon, we will make a general of him." "I am willing, I am sure," said Madeleine, "but we must first make him a Christian."

From The London Review.

CATHOLIC PROGRESS IN LONDON.

There are few questions upon which there exists a greater variety of opinion, and with regard to which such contradictory statements are published, as upon the increase of Roman Catholicism in the metropolis. There are those on one hand who believe that it has made no progress at all, and that the rumors of "conversions," and even those Roman Catholic buildings which have of late years sprung up in such abundance around us, are not to be taken as proofs of such an increase in the numbers of Roman Catholics as the latter at least seem to indicate. Others believe without doubting that the Catholic Church is silently and energetically spreading its ramifications over the metropolis, and that there is hardly a household of any respectability in which its agents, in some form or other, have not contrived to get a footing; while there are persons who go so far as to assert that many of the Protestant clergy themselves are the direct emissaries of Rome, doing her work, and doing it consciously--nay, doing it under compact--while receiving the pay of the National Church. We believe that the truth will be found to lie between these extreme views. Not only has the Church of Rome gained ground in London, but it is steadily progressing, even at the present time, though by no means at such a rate, except in certain parishes, as to occasion the slightest danger to the Protestant cause, if only a moderate amount of energy and good will is shown by the Reformed denominations in securing their flocks within their own folds. We have already stated our belief that the fact of a clergyman holding High or Low Church views is not in any manner whatever necessarily connected with the increase of Catholicism among his congregation, but that such increase is owing either to the lack of a sufficient staff of the Protestant clergy to {704} repel its advances, or to the apathy or inefficiency of the incumbent, or, as may be especially shown in some wealthy districts, to that mysterious want of power in the clergy of the Church of England over the minds of the rich and influential of their parishioners. And that this view is not without some basis in fact, will be seen when we have described the present relative position of the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the wealthy, aristocratic, and populous parish of Kensington, comprising as it does the three wards of Notting-hill, Kensington, and Brompton.

Formerly, for the accommodation of the whole of the Roman Catholics of the parish of Kensington, there was but one small chapel near the High street, which appeared amply sufficient for the members of that creed. But ten or twelve years ago a Roman Catholic builder purchased, at an enormous price, a plot of ground about three acres in extent beside the church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton. For a time considerable mystery prevailed as to the uses it was to be applied to; but, shortly after the buildings were commenced, they were discovered to be for the future residence and church of the Oratorian fathers, then established in King William street, Strand. As soon as a portion of the building was finished, the fathers removed to it from their former dwelling; and the chapel, a small and commodious erection, was opened for divine service. At first the congregation was of the scantiest description; even on Sundays at high mass, small as the chapel was, it was frequently only half filled, while, on week days, at many of the services, it was no uncommon circumstance to find the attendances scarcely more numerous than the number of priests serving at the altar. By degrees the congregation increased, till the chapel was found too small for their accommodation, and extensive additions were made to it; but these, again, were soon filled to overflowing, and further alterations had to be made, till at last the building was capable of holding without difficulty from 2,000 to 2,500 persons. It is now frequently so crowded at high mass that it is difficult for an individual entering it after the commencement of the service to find even standing room. In the meantime the monastery itself, if that is the proper term, was completed--a splendid appearance it presents-- and we believe is now fully occupied.

The Roman Catholic population in the parish, or mission, under the spiritual direction of the fathers of the Oratory, now comprises between 7,000 and 8,000 souls. The average attendance at mass on Sundays is about 5,000, and the average number of communions for the last two years has been about 45,000 annually. But in addition to this church, Kensington has three others, St. Mary's, Upper Holland street, St. Simon Stock, belonging to the Carmelite Friars, and the church of St. Francis Assissi in Notting Hill. Of monasteries, or religious communities of men, it has the Oratorians before mentioned, and the Discalced Carmelites, in Vicarage place. Of convents of ladies, it has the Assumption in Kensington square, the Poor Clares Convent in Edmond terrace, the Franciscan Convent in Portobello road, the Sisters of Misericorde, 195 Brompton road, and the Sisters of Jesus, 4 Holland villas. Of schools, the Roman Catholics possess, in the parish of Kensingtion, the Orphanage in the Fulham road, the Industrial School of St. Vincent de Paul, as well as the large Industrial Schools for girls in the southern ward. All these schools are very numerously attended, the gross number of pupils amounting to 1,200, those of the Oratory alone being 1,000. The kindness and consideration shown by the Roman Catholic teachers to the children of the poor is above all praise, not only in Kensington, but in all localities where they are under their charge.

It might be imagined from this account of the Roman Catholic institutions in Kensington, that a general {705} rush had been made upon that parish, and that the surrounding districts were comparatively free from Roman Catholics. Such, however, is very far from being the case. In the union of Fulham and Hammersmith we have the Roman Catholic church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the church of the Holy Trinity, Brook-green, and the church of Our Lady of Grace, Turnham-green. Of monasteries there are the St. Mary's Training College and the Brothers of Mercy, and for ladies there is the order of the Good Shepherd. Of charities and schools they have the Holy Trinity alms-houses on Brook-green, a home for aged females, a refuge for female penitents, most admirably managed and producing a most beneficial effect, an excellent reformatory for criminal boys, the large industrial schools of St. Vincent de Paul, and a home, St. Joseph's, for destitute boys. In Bays-water there is the cathedral of St. Mary's of the Angels (of which the celebrated Dr. Manning is the superior) and the convent of Notre Dame de Sion. In Chelsea there is the church of St. Mary's, Cadogan terrace, a convent for the Sisters of Mercy, another for the Third Order of Servites, as well as two well conducted and numerously attended schools.

In the united parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's, Westminster, a few years since, the priests opened their campaign with considerable energy. In addition to their church in the Horsferry road, which was opened in 1813, they erected those of St. Peter's and St. Edmond's in Palace street, the superior priest of the latter being the celebrated Father Roberts, a man not only respected for the energy he shows in the cause of his religion, but beloved by all classes for his philanthropy. To these some schools and convents were added, the most celebrated of the latter being that of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street. At first the priests seemed to be sanguine of success in the parish; but their advance was met by men of as much ability, courage, and energy as themselves.

On the Surrey side of the water the Catholic Church has the magnificent cathedral dedicated to St. George, in St. George's Fields; the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Parker's road, Dockhead, Bermondsey; the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Trinity road, Rotherithe; that of Our Lady of La Salette and St. Joseph, Melior street, Southwark; and the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Windham street, Camberwell; beside several others in Peckham, Clapham, Lambeth, and the surrounding districts. Of communities of men there are the Capuchines at Peckham and at Clapham, the Redemptorists, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Of convents they have the Religious of the Faithful Virgin at Norwood, which also comprises an orphanage; the order of the Sisters of Mercy in Bermondsey; the order of the Sisters of the Christian Retreat, St. Joseph's, Kennington; the Little Sisters of the Poor, Fentiman road, Lambeth; beside one or two others of minor importance. It should also be remarked that all these establishments, with one or two exceptions, have sprung up within the last ten or twenty years. Of the numbers of the congregations of the different churches it would be difficult to form a just idea, but they are certainly very great; that properly attached to St. George's cathedral alone we have been assured, on most reliable Roman Catholic authority, amounting to 12,000 or 13,000. The number of children attending the schools is doubtless proportionably great.

In the north-eastern portion of the metropolis, we find the Roman Catholics, although they have lately built several new churches, are fully occupied in holding their own ground without exerting themselves to make converts. And here, opposed as we are to their creed on doctrinal points, it would be unjust to withhold our meed of praise to the exertions of the priests in relieving the temporal miseries of {706} their poor. It would be difficult to imagine charitable efforts carried on more indefatigably or nobly. Few who have not visited and personally inspected the different courts and alleys in the neighborhood of Spitalfields, Bethnal-green, St. George's-in-the-East, and Ratcliffe Highway, inhabited as they are by the poor Irish, can have an idea of the abject poverty which reigns in them, or the amount of patience, courage, and Christian feeling necessary to relieve it. Yet all this is cheerfully performed by the Roman Catholic priesthood, their energies appearing to increase in proportion as the difficulties and dangers before them become greater. It would perhaps be an injustice to their body in this district to select any for notice in preference to the rest; but we cannot refrain from making special mention of the labors of the Rev. Father Kelley, of Ratcliffe Highway, and the Rev. Father Chaurain, of Spitalfields, into the results of whose exertions we have made personal investigation.

In the northern districts of the metropolis, especially in Islington and its surrounding neighborhoods, the Roman Catholics appear to have made considerable progress. They have lately built several new churches as well as houses for religious communities, both for men and women. That their progress in the metropolis is not solely the result of the High-Church practices in the establishment may be presumed from the fact that, although the inhabitants of Islington and its vicinity are particularly noted for their attachment to Low-Church principles, Catholicism has gained more ground there than in localities where Puseyism is dominant. In the north-western districts it does not appear to have increased, though the churches are well attended, and the congregations apparently very numerous. That of one of the largest, Our Lady's church, in St. John's Wood, is 6,000, and the children in the schools 600. In the central districts of London Roman Catholic churches are very numerous and proportionately well attended; those in Moorfields, and those in the neighborhood of Covent Garden and Piccadilly, being particularly so.

One of the most effective means employed by the Roman Catholics to make the conversions is the opening of schools for the education of children of the poor; nor do they hesitate to admit that these schools are not only open to the children of their own persuasion, but to all who may choose to avail themselves of them. This is clear from the speech of the late Cardinal Wiseman at the Roman Catholic Congress held at Malines in the autumn of 1863. Speaking of the hundreds of ragged children, scarcely knowing their parents, he had been accustomed to meet in the different lanes and alleys of the poorer London localities, he says: "We are doing all we can to gather these poor little outcasts together, and to give them Christian training. The schools in which they are taught, and to which I am at present alluding, are themselves situated in a truly fearful spot, Charles street, Drury lane. We owe them in a great measure to the great zeal of the fathers of the Oratory. Their cost has been no less than £12,000. The Religious Sisters from Tournay, with a devotion truly heroic, have undertaken the care of the girls' school. For some time past we have had the consolation of seeing increased, by 1,000 a year, the number of children attending our schools for the poor; there still remain 17,000 poor children who attend no school."

The Catholic Church judges rightly that a few years hence the children under its care will not only augment the number of adult members of its faith, but will proportionately swell their ranks in the next generation. Nor is this danger to the Protestant cause to be despised. All their schools are admirably managed, and the children in them are treated with the greatest kindness and consideration. We have visited several, and in all we remarked a great affection and {707} respect existing in the minds of the pupils for their teachers, the latter not considering that their duties are over when the classes are dismissed, but afterward entering into their amusements and occupations with great patience and good humor. We lately visited unexpectedly the school alluded to by Cardinal Wiseman, and although lessons were over we found one of the masters in the large play-room busily employed in instructing a dozen of the most ragged urchins it would be possible to find in that squalid and impoverished locality in the mysteries of spinning peg-tops. Such acts of kindness to children are not forgotten when they grow up, and a better means of binding them to their faith when adults it would be impossible to imagine.

In Gate street, Lincoln's Inn-fields, is another school of the same description. We have watched its progress since its establishment, and marked the great increase in the number of its scholars. It commenced with very few, but must now number several hundreds. Those in Drury-lane have more than four hundred children, among whom, perhaps, not ten before the buildings were erected were receiving any instruction whatever. All the Roman Catholic charities appear to be admirably managed; their orphanages especially so. Those of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street, Westminster, and Norwood, considering the comparatively small means at the disposal of their priesthood, are perfect models of what institutions of the kind ought to be; at the same time, it must not be imagined that the Roman Catholic charities in London are solely of a description calculated to obtain converts to their creed. Their reformatories for fallen women and their exertions for the relief of the sick are worthy of the highest praise. An hospital, with a church attached, solely for chronic and incurable diseases, has for some time been established in Great Ormond street, at the expense of a gentleman of wealth. The hospital is under the care of the prioress and sisters of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and we never saw an infirmary of the kind better managed. A large staff of nuns nurse the sick; and not only are their numbers greater in proportion to those of the patients than in any of our metropolitan hospitals, but their attention and kindness to those under their charge might serve as a model to many of our Protestant institutions of a similar character.

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{708}

From Chambers's Journal.

A VANISHING RACE.

The residence of Captain C. F. Hall in the arctic regions, and his explorations among the solemn and majestic wastes surrounded by the "hyperborean seas," have invested the Esquimaux with a degree of interest which they had never previously excited. The savage inhabitants of the more beautiful and fertile regions of the earth have been observed by travellers with close and careful attention, which leads to hopeful efforts for their civilization. As the map of the world is opened up to our comprehension, new schemes and prospects for the advance of the human race are opened with it; savans, artists, missionaries, merchants, gird themselves to the contest with the material and moral conditions of the peoples yet, though the world's day has lasted so long, in their infancy, whose unknown future may contain histories as brilliant as those of the civilizations of the present and the past. But there is a race who have not excited such hopes, who have not given rise to such exertions--a race whose life of unimaginable hardship gives them a mysterious resemblance to the phantoms of mythological belief, and places them beyond the reach of the sympathies of civilization by its physical conditions, the amelioration of which is impossible. Beyond the stern barrier which nature has set in the northernmost part of her awful realm, behind the terrible rampart of snow and ice, and storm and darkness, these creatures of her wrath, rather than of her bounty, dwell. To reach their land, the traveller must leave behind him every familiar object, and abandon every habit or need of ordinary life. He must bid farewell to green trees, to fertile fields, to the crops which give food to man and beast, to the domestic animals, to every mode of conveyance, to every implement of common use, to food and clothing such as even the poorest and roughest sons of a less terrible clime may command; to the thousand voices of nature, even in its secluded nooks, It is a mockery to speak of the arctic regions as the land of the Esquimaux, for nowhere on the earth is man less sovereign. Here nature is indeed grand beyond conception, but also terrible, implacable, and impenetrable. She sets man aside in her awful scorn; he is a thing of no moment, a cumberer of the ice-fields, learning the simple lessons whereby he supports his squalid existence from the brutes, which are lordlier than he, inasmuch as the ice-slavery is no chain of servitude to them; and heedless of him, of his terrible hunger and destitution, of his hopeless isolation, she builds her ice-palaces upon the seas, and locks the land in her glittering ice-chains, and flings her terrific banners of flame wide against the northern sky; and sends her voice abroad, without a tone of pity in its vibrations, sounding through the troubled depths of the waters and the rent masses of the many-tinted icebergs. Nature is indeed beautiful in her northern strongholds, but her beauty shows only its terrible aspects, its dread grandeur. The face of the mighty mother does not soften into a smile for the feebleness of her youngest-born offspring, but is fixed in its awful sublimity. There is no point of contact between this ice-kingdon and European civilization, and men of our race and tongue shrink from it with an appalled sadness, for has it now been the tomb of many of our brave and beloved? Three centuries ago it earned that evil reputation, which, in the then elementary state of geographical knowledge, and the general prevalence of superstition, assumed a weird and baleful form. It has but increased {709} in degree, though differing in kind, in our days, and we think of the arctic regions as the sepulchre of the beloved dead, the land toward which the heart of England yearned, and which kept pitiless silence through long years of hope deferred. But of its people we do not think; we are satisfied to have but a vague notion of them; to wonder, amid the many marvels of that mighty problem--the distribution of the human race--how human beings ever found their way to those dreadful fastnesses, more cruel in their exaction of human suffering than the desert and the forest. This indifference gives way when we learn what manner of people these are whom we call Esquimaux, a word which signifies "eaters of raw food," but who call themselves _Innuit_, or "the people," and explain their own origin by a story which is a pleasing testimony to the common possession of self-conceit by all nations. They say that the Creator made white men first, but was dissatisfied with them, regarded them as worthless unfinished creatures, and straightway set about making the Innuit people, who proved perfectly satisfactory.

Captain Hall lived among this strange race for two years and a half, and he is about to return and prosecute his researches in Boothia and King William's Land. This time, his object is to trace the remnants of the Franklin expedition, which--as he finds the history of the few events which have ever marked the progress of time in that distant land handed down by oral tradition with extraordinary distinctness--he has no doubt of being able to do. His first journey was in search of relics of the Frobisher expedition, and was as successful as it was daring, patient, and persevering. His experiences were strange in all respects, and in many most revolting; but we owe much to this cheerful, courageous, simple-hearted American gentleman, who has revealed the Esquimaux to us as Captain Grant has revealed the African tribes, and oriental tourists the dwellers in the deserts. There is poetical harmony in the stern conditions of life among the Innuits; there is the impress of sadness and of sterility upon them all. Time itself changes its meaning in a land where

"The sun starts redly up To shine for half a year,"

and dim wintry twilight lasts throughout the other half, and hunger is the normal state of the people. The traveller's route is to be traced on the map, which is mere guess-work hitherto, up the western side of Davis's Strait; and once away from Holsteinborg, the journey assumes all its savage features. The terrible icebergs rear their menacing masses in the track of the ship; the sun pours its beams upon them, and bathes them in golden light; they appear in fantastic shapes of Gothic cathedral, of battlemented tower, of clear single-pierced spire, of strong fenced city, of jewel-mountain, of vast crystal hills; and so, as the voyager leaves art and civilization behind, their most supreme forms flash a mirage-like reminiscence upon him, intensifying the contrast of the prospect, and luring him to a frantic and futile regret.

A grand and terrible confusion reigns around; the voyager shrinks from the overwhelming scene, where ranges of mountains, islands, rocks, castles, huge formless masses, and gorgeous prismatic lights, surround that laboring speck upon the mystic sea, of whose littleness he is so small an atom; and a strange sense, which is not fear, but awe, comes to him with the knowledge that nothing of this sublime confusion is real, on the horizon or beyond it. For all the time of his stay in the arctic regions he is to be surrounded by contradictions, by the sublimest manifestations of nature, by the lowest conditions of humanity, by gorgeous and majestic optical delusions, and by the hardest and most grovelling facts of daily existence; he must share, to their fullest extent, the relentless physical needs of the {710} people, and live, if he would live at all, in close contact with them--and yet his solitude must be inwardly profound and unapproachable; his purposes unintelligible to his associates; and their language, elementary in itself, dimly and scantily comprehended by him even in its most sparing forms. All this without any of the alleviations of life among savages in southern countries--without the warmth, which, if sometimes oppressive, is ordinarily grateful--without the rich and genial beauties of nature--without the resources of sport without the natural fruits of the earth--without the intellectual occupation of speculating upon development, of ascertaining capabilities, or of investigating sources of wealth. The civilized dweller in arctic regions has none of these. He beholds, with admiration so solemn as to be painful, the unapproachable dignity and hard implacable stillness of nature; but he never dreams of treasure to be wrested from the cells of the ice-prison; he seeks the dead--the dead of centuries ago--the dead of a decade since, to be found, it may be, incorporated with their frozen resting place; for the fiat of nature arrests decay in these terrible regions, where death and life are always at close gripes with one another. While the mind is ceaselessly impressed with sadness and solemnity, the body asserts its claim to superiority; it will not be forgotten or neglected, for cold encompasses it with unrelaxing menace of death, and hunger preys upon the vitals, whose heat wanes rapidly in the pitiless climate, and which crave for the nutriment so hard to procure, so repulsive when procured.

Toil is the law of the ice-clad land--toil, not to wrest from the bosom of the earth her children's sustenance, but to tear from the amphibious creatures, from whom they have learned how to shelter themselves from the cold, and whose skins cover them, the unctuous flesh, which they devour raw in enormous quantities. The Innuit are, on the whole, a gentle people, driven by the relentless need and severity of their lives into close and peaceful companionship. They have no king, no government, no law, no defined religion, no property; they have, for all these, custom--the oldest law; they are animated by the same spirit that dictated the reply once made to one who sat by Jacob's well: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and we worship." As "the old Innuits" did, so do their successors. They have no bread, no medicine, no household furniture; they are poor human waifs upon the wide white bosom of the frozen seas; and they have, no help or resource but in the seal, the walrus, the white bear, the rein-deer, and the wonderful Esquimaux dogs, which are by far the noblest living creatures in all those sterile wastes. From the seal they have learned to make the _igloo_, which is the house of the Innuit. They eat the flesh of this animal, and drink its fresh warm blood; they kill its young, and eagerly swallow the milk of the mother, found in the stomach of the baby seal. When the sudden summer comes, and the snow melts, and leaves the surface of the ice bare, they are houseless; the igloo melts away; their home is but of frozen water, and suddenly it disappears. Then they have recourse to the _tupic_, which is a huge sheet of skins hung across a horizontal pole, supported at either end. Their bed is a snow platform, strewn with the moss which is the rein-deer's food, and covered with skins. Their choicest dainties are the fat of the _tuktoo_, or rein-deer, the marrow procured by mashing the bones of the legs, and the thick, white, unctuous lining of the whale-hide.

The interior of an igloo presents a picture more repulsive than that of any African hut or Indian wigwam, more distressing to human feelings and degrading to human pride. The igloo is a dome-shaped building, made of ice-blocks, with an aperture in the roof, and a rude doorway at one side, closed {711} with ice-blocks, when the inmates are assembled. The snow platform which forms the bed is occupied by the women and the stranger. Men and women are clad in skins, put together with neatness and ingenuity. The dress of the sexes differs only in two particulars; that of the women is furnished with a long tail, depending from the jacket, and has a sort of hood, in which loads and children are carried. The life of the infant is preserved by its naked body being kept in contact with that of the mother. One household implement they possess--it is a stone lamp; something like a trough, with a deep groove in it, in which the dried moss, used as a wick, floats in the seal oil, expressed by the teeth of the women from lumps of blubber, which they patiently "mill" until the precious unguent is all procured. But this lamp too often fails them, and darkness and hunger take up frequent abode with the Innuit. Days and nights are passed by the men, sitting singly, in death-like stillness and silence, by the hole which they have found, far under the snow, at which the seal will "blow." It is strange and terrible to think of those watches, in the midst of the desolation, under that arctic sky, with the cold dense fog now swooping, now lifting, in the enforced stillness, with famine gnawing the watcher, and famine at home in the igloo, and the chance of food depending on the sureness of one instantaneous stroke, down through the snow, through the narrow orifice in the ice, into the throat of the animal with the sleek skin, and the mournful human eyes, which vainly implore mercy from raging hunger.

When the Innuit brings the seal to the igloo, a crowd invades the narrow space, for the simplest hospitality prevails, and the long watch, the skilful stroke, do not constitute sole ownership of the prize. The skin is stripped off the huge unsightly carcass, and a horrible scene ensues. The flesh is torn or cut with the stone knives in large lumps, and having been first licked by the women, to remove any hairs or other adhesive matter, is distributed to the party, and devoured raw; the blood is drunk, the bones are mashed, the entrails are greedily eaten, the dogs sharing in all; and the blubber is made to yield its oil by the disgusting process already described. One turns silenced from the picture; from the sights, and sounds, and scents; from the vision of dark faces, eager with gluttonous longing, gathered round the red, flaring light; from the skin-clothed bodies, reeking with grease and filth, and the foul exhalations of the mutilated animal; from the lumps of flesh torn by savage hands, and crammed dripping into distended mouths; from the steaming blood, and the human creatures who rapturously quaff it in the presence of the white man, who sits among them and feeds with them, whose heart yearns with dumb compassion for them, who has wonderful scientific instruments in his pockets, and his Bible in his breast. As the seal teaches the Innuits the art of housing themselves, so the white bear teaches them how to kill the walrus, their most plentiful and frequent food, when the ice is drifting, and the unwieldy creatures lie upon the blocks close inshore; then the bear climbs the overhanging precipice, and taking a heavy block in his deft forepaws, he hurls it with rare skill and nicety of aim upon the basking monster below. So brutes train men in those dreadful regions, and not men brutes. The life of the Innuits is full of such contradictions. And their deaths? From the contemplation of these one turns away appalled, for they die in utter solitude.

When Captain Hall first heard of this horrible custom, he started off at once to see its truth; and having removed the blocks with which the doorway had been built up, entered an igloo, and found a woman who had yet many days to linger thus fastened up in her living tomb. Again, hearing that a woman had been abandoned to die, at a great distance, he set forth, {712} and having reached the spot with immense difficulty and danger, he managed to remove the snow and the block which closed the hole in the top of the igloo, lowered himself into it, and found the woman dead, and frozen as hard as her bier and her tomb, with a sweet serene smile upon the marble face. So this is the close of a life of toil and privation--the withdrawal of every kindred face, the fearful solitude of the ice-walls, the terrible arctic darkness and silence, and the frozen corpse lying unshrouded, naked, beneath the frozen skins, until the resurrection. Surely the angel of death is an angel of mercy there, and does his errand gently, bearing away the lonely, terrified spirit to the city of gold, the gates of pearl, the jasper sea, the land where there is no darkness, physical or mental, for evermore. The earth, always pitiless to them, which never feeds them from her bosom, does not suffer her dead children of the Innuit people to sleep their last sleep in her lap. Their graves are only blocks of ice piled around and above the corpses, which remain unharmed, unless when the blocks melt, as they sometimes do, and the wolves, dogs, or bears gain access to the frozen remains. The Innuits are dying out; disease is making havoc among them; consumption, formerly unknown, is thinning their numbers by its slow, furtive, murderous advance; their children are few, and fewer still are reared; and the long story of awful desolation draws to a close. Who can regret it? Who can do aught but desire that the giant wastes of the arctic regions should be left to the soulless creatures of God; that the great discord between them and human life has ceased to trouble the harmony of creation; that the mystery of such an existence is quietly laid at rest, among the things which "we know not now, but which we shall know hereafter?"

MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

_A New Kind of Mirror.--The Chemical News_ states that M. Dode, a French chemist, has introduced platinum mirrors, which are greatly admired, and which present this advantage, that the reflecting metal is deposited on the outer surface of the glass, and thus any defect in the latter is concealed. The process, which is patented in Paris, is described as follows: Chloride of platinum is dissolved in water, and a certain quantity of oil of lavender is added to the solution. The platinum immediately leaves the aqueous solution and passes to the oil, which holds it in suspension in a finely divided state. To the oil so charged the author adds litharge and borate of lead, and paints a thin coat of this mixture over the surface of the glass, which is then carried to a proper furnace. At a red heat the litharge and borate of lead are fused, and cause the adhesion of the platinum to the softened glass. The process is very expeditious. A single baking, M. Dode says, will furnish 200 metres of glass ready for commerce. It would take fifteen days, he says, to coat the same extent with mercury by the ordinary plan.

_African Silkworm_.--A silkworm before unknown in Europe has been introduced into France from Senegal, and without suffering from change of climate. It yields a richer silk than that of any other worm known to naturalists, and its cocoons are twice the ordinary weight. It is to be tried in Algiers, and if successful there, this new and rich silk may become in time an important article of commerce.

_Science in a Balloon_.--Mr. Glaisher has {713} given, in a lecture at the Royal Institution, a _resumé_ of his scientific experiments in balloons. Tables recording the decline of temperature with elevation, show that when the sky was clear a more rapid decline took place than when the sky was cloudy. Under a clear sky, a fall of 1° takes place within 100 feet of the earth, but at heights exceeding 25,000 feet it is necessary to pass through 1,000 feet of vertical height to obtain a fall of 1° in temperature. At extreme elevations, in both states of the sky, the air became very dry, but as far as his experiments went, was never quite free from water. From ascents made before and after sunset, Mr. Glaisher concludes that the laws which hold good by day do not hold good by night; indeed, it seemed probable that at night, for some little distance, the temperature may increase with elevation, instead of decreasing. From experiments made on solar radiation with a blackened bulb thermometer, and with Herschel's actinometer, it was inferred that the heat rays from the sun pass through space without loss, and become effective in proportion to the density or the amount of water present in the atmosphere through which they pass. If this be so, the proportion of heat received at Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn may be the same as that received at the earth, if the constituents of their atmospheres be the same as that of the earth, and greater if the amount of aqueous vapor be greater, so that the effective solar heat at Jupiter and Saturn may be greater than at either the inferior planets, Mercury or Venus, notwithstanding their far greater distances from the sun. This conclusion is most important as corroborating Professor Tyndall's experiments on aqueous vapor. Experiments on the wind showed that the velocity of the air at the earth's surface was very much less than at a high elevation. A comparison of the temperature of the dew point, as shown by different instruments, gave results proving that the temperatures of the dew point, as found by the use of the dry and wet bulb thermometers, and Daniell's hygrometer, are worthy of full confidence as far as the experiments went.

_The Eruption of Mount Etna_.--At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an important letter was read from M. Fouqué to M. Saint-Claire Deville on the eruption of Etna, which has presented several phenomena of great scientific interest.

The eruption commenced at half-past ten on the evening of January 31. On the previous day two successive shakings of the earth had been noticed. Just before the eruption began a violent earthquake was felt, the wave travelling to the north-east; after this, slight oscillations continued until about 4 A.M. Large flames now rose from a point on the north-east side of Etna 5,500 feet above the snow line, and lava began to flow rapidly. In two or three days the lava traversed a space of 19,000 feet, with a width of from 10,000 to 12,000, and a variable thickness, but often reaching to the depth of 30 or 60 feet. After destroying for some distance everything in its passage, the current of lava struck one of the old craters, and then bifurcated. The stream on the west side moved very slowly, and, becoming subdivided, it nearly ceased to move; the stream on the east side fell over a deep and precipitous valley, which it soon filled, being then able to continue its progress, until finally it was stopped by a lava mound of a previous eruption.

The number of the craters is seven; of these five form a vast elliptical enclosure, the major axis of which is directed toward the north-east. A deep fissure, 1,500 feet in length, opened from the base of a former crater, Frumento, to the nearest of the present cones. This chasm, M. Fouqué shows, was probably formed by the shock at the commencement of the eruption. This fissure, and also a depression of the crater Frumento, is in a right line with the major axis of the ellipse formed by the craters. The same general fact has been several times noticed in previous eruptions.

The vapors attending an eruption have been divided into the dry, containing chiefly chloride of sodium and no water, the acid, which contain a large amount of watery vapor, the alkaline, and the carbonic. The first indicates the maximum, and the last the minimum of volcanic action. Each of these varieties of vapor, succeeding in their order, were noticed at this eruption. M. Fouqué found the dry vapor upon the still incandescent lava; the acid vapor in those parts where the temperature was over {714} 400°; the alkaline, where the temperature was lower, but generally over 100°; and finally, carbonic acid has been detected in one of the adjacent old craters, which was at the ordinary temperature. The first three varieties of vapor were thus found upon the same transverse section of the lava, less than 150 feet distant from each other. In all these vapors the atmospheric air which accompanied them was deprived of part of its oxygen, generally containing only from 18 to 19 per cent., and in some alkaline vapors the proportion was still less.

In this eruption there was a remarkable absence of sulphur and its compounds; chemical tests as well as the sense of smell could detect no trace of them. The eruption indeed was characterized by the absence of the compounds of sulphur and the abundance of the compounds of chlorine. Hydro-chlorate of ammonia, which was found in abundance, has generally been regarded as exclusively belonging to the alkaline vapors; but here it has been discovered among the other varieties, whilst the alkaline vapors were distinguished by the carbonate rather than by the hydrochlorate of ammonia.

At the present time, M. Fouqué writes, the eruption is most active in the four lowest craters; these throw liquid lava into the air, and emit a nearly colorless smoke; the three superior craters eject solidified lava and black stones, at the same time pouring out a dense smoke charged with aqueous vapor and brown-colored ashes.

The three higher craters produce every two or three minutes a very loud report resembling the rolling of thunder; the four lower craters, on the contrary, send forth a rapid succession of ringing sounds, which it is impossible to count. These sounds follow each other without any cessation, and are only to be compared to the noise produced by a series of blows from a hammer falling on an anvil. If the ancients heard these noises in former eruptions, it is easily conceivable how they imagined a forge to exist in the centre of the volcano, with Cyclops for the master workman. The lava is black, rich in pyroxene, and strongly attracted by a magnet. Since the commencement of the eruption, the central crater of Etna has emitted white vapors, which continually cover its summit. Several good photographs of the eruption have been taken by M. Berthier, who accompanied M. Fouqué in his explorations, which were by no means unattended with danger.

M. Saint-Claire Deville then made some observations on this paper. He explained the almost entire absence of sulphur by the fact that M. Fouqué only examined the vapors from the lava. These nearly always contain chlorine for their electro-negative element, and scarcely show, and that not until later, sulphuretted and carbonic vapors. After the eruption of Vesuvius in 1861, very light deposits of sulphur were found covering the hydrochlorate of ammonia, which shows that the former body is not absent from the lava. The existence of hydrochlorate of ammonia in the emanations does not necessarily exclude that of the vapors of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids.

_Magnetism of Iron-clad Ships_.--Staff-Commander Evans, of the British navy, and Mr. Archibald Smith, who have devoted themselves for several years to investigations into the character of the magnetism of iron-built and armor-plated ships, have embodied the results of their studies in an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Royal Society. It is well known that iron ships have been very difficult to navigate because of the disturbing effect of the iron upon the compass, and serious accidents have happened in consequence. But underwriters, and the whole naval profession, will be glad to hear that the difficulty and risk are now greatly lessened, if not entirely removed. For the results established by the paper in question are--That it is no longer necessary to swing a ship in order to ascertain the compass deviation, or error, seeing that it is possible to determine the various forms of error by mathematics; that an iron ship should always be built with her head to the south; if built head north, there is such a confused amount of magnetism concentrated in the stern as to have a violent disturbing effect on the compass; that if, after building, a ship is to be armor-plated, the head, during the fixing of the plates, should be turned in the opposite direction-- that is, to the north; and that especial pains should be taken while building an iron ship to provide a {715} suitable place for the standard-compass. Beside these particulars, the shot and shell stowed in the vessel, the iron water-tanks, and, indeed, all the iron used in her interior fittings, are to be taken into account; and it is satisfactory to know that the influence exerted on the compass by any one or all of these conditions can be ascertained, and allowed for, as in the other cases above mentioned.

_"Gyges" Explained_.--The London _Reader_ gives the following explanation of a curious experiment in optics which has been performed at one of the London theatres under the name of "Eidos AEides," and reproduced in New York under the appellation of "Gyges." It consists in causing an actor or an inanimate object which is in full view of the audience at one moment to disappear instantly, and then to reappear with the same rapidity. The means by which this is accomplished are very simple, and are to some extent similar to those used in exhibiting "Pepper's Ghost." A sheet of plain unsilvered glass is placed upon the stage, either upright or inclined at a suitable angle, at the place where the actor or object is to disappear. This glass is not perceived by the audience, and it does not interfere with their view of the scenery, etc., behind the plate. A duplicate scene representing that part of the back of the stage covered by the glass is placed at the wing, out of sight of the spectators. With the ordinary lighting of the stage the reflection of this counterfeit scene in the glass is too faint to be observed; but when a strong light is thrown upon the scene, the stage lights being lowered at the same time, the image becomes visible. This duplicate scene being an exact _fac-simile_ of the background of the stage, the change is not noticed by the audience, the only difference being that they now see by reflection that which they saw a moment previously by direct vision. The actor, standing a sufficient distance behind the glass, is completely hidden from view, and he is again rendered visible by turning down the light on the false scene and allowing the stage lights to predominate. When "Eidos AEides" was being performed at Her Majesty's Theatre, it was, however, possible, with a good opera-glass, to distinguish the outline of the figure behind the plate. The effects produced may of course be modified. An actor may be made to appear walking or flying in the air, or dancing on a tight-rope, by eclipsing or obscuring a raised platform on which he may be placed.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Volumes I. and II. 8vo., pp. 447 and 501. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

In these two luxurious volumes we have the first instalment of an important work upon the most important period of English history. Six other volumes are to follow. Mr. Froude is a thorough good Protestant. His main purpose in this history seems to have been the glorification of the English reformers. For the worst sovereigns of the house of Tudor he displays an enthusiastic admiration which, one is tempted to believe, is half genuine sentiment, and half love of paradox. Catholics, of course, he could not have expected to satisfy; but he has gone too far to please even the members of his own Church. Of Henry VIII., whose apologist he has appropriately been called, he draws a flattering portrait:

"If Henry VIII.," he says, "had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black {716} Prince or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigor by a temperate habit and by constant exercise." His state papers and letters lose nothing by comparison with those of Wolsey and Cromwell. He was an accomplished musician; he wrote and spoke in four languages; he was one of the best physicians of his age, an engineer, and a theologian. "He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his religious duties,' being present at the services in the chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life." In private he was good-humored and good-natured. But "like all princes of the Plantageuet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend." "He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him he was perhaps the greatest of his contemporaries."

Mr. Froude does not believe that the king's scruples respecting the validity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon were inspired by his affection for Anne Boleyn. "They had arisen to their worst dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn." But Mr. Froude's narrative of the king's early intercourse with Anne is extremely unsatisfactory, not to say disingenuous. How long Henry may have cherished his scruples in secret, our author affords us no means of guessing; but the earliest intimation which he finds of an intended divorce was in June, 1527. It was in 1525, he says, that Anne came back from France and appeared at the English court. This is an error, and is inconsistent with other statements in the same chapter; the date was 1522; and almost immediately afterward the king began to pay Anne marked attention. Her celebrated love-passage with Lord Percy took place in 1523. Mr. Froude speaks of it as follows: "Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself." Now what will be thought of our author's honesty when we say that Cavendish repeats again and again that the match was broken off _by command of the king?_ Lord Northumberland did not appear in the matter at all until Wolsey, by his majesty's orders, had remonstrated with the young nobleman, and threatened him with dire consequences if he should persist in a pursuit which was displeasing to his sovereign. Mr. Froude carefully suppresses all allusion to intercourse between the king and his fair favorite, until the project of the divorce was well advanced,--not discussing or discrediting the statements of other historians respecting Henry's early passion for Anne Boleyn; but simply putting them behind his back, as matters of which it did not suit his purpose to take notice. This fashion of writing may do for romance, but not for history.

In demanding a divorce from his first queen, Henry has, as we might suppose, Mr. Froude's full approval:

"It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of the kingdom; if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he had shown her that respect which her {717} high character gave her a right to demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it impossible to him to refuse, his conduct would have been liable to no imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side. . . . . His kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and looking upon it as the sentence of heaven upon a connection the legality of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he had been living in incest and that his misfortunes were the consequence of it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a divorce."

With all its faults, Mr. Froude's book tells many wholesome truths in a very forcible manner. Here is an admission which from such an out-and-out Protestant we should hardly have looked for; he is speaking of religious persecution:

"We think bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is inevitable from the constitution of the world. . . . The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and there which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality, where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which, by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us, making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves, the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think, no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance, and even with exultation."

The following extract from an account of the feelings of the mass of the English people during the early stages of the divorce affair, must be rather unpalatable to the High-Church Episcopalians:

"They believed--and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only leading member of the privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not under the same delusion--that it was possible for a national church to separate itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental system could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those mysteries were dispensed should minister in golden chains. This was the English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry, and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine; that plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office of the priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of an earthly authority higher than their own. He was not to be blamed if he took the people at their word; if he believed that, in their doctrinal conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying; and the reaction which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system had been tried and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute union with Rome, or a forfeiture of Catholic orthodoxy, proves after all that he was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy had succeeded, and if, {718} strengthened by success, he had introduced into the Church those reforms which he had promised and desired, he would have satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation."

From an introductory chapter on the social condition of England in the early part of the sixteenth century, we extract the following graphic passage, as an example of Mr. Froude's fascinating style. Doubtless most of our readers will agree with us in wishing that so graceful a pen had been more worthily employed:

"The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two expressions, corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether the condition of things was or was not what it ought to be. We read of 'merry England';--when England was not merry, things were not going well with it. We hear of the 'glory of hospitality,' England's pre-eminent boast,--by the rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked: to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with a billet of wood for a pillow, but freely offered and freely taken, the guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better. There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at large, and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The 'glory of hospitality' lasted far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, 'came in great bravery of building, to the great beautifying of the realm, but to the decay' of what he valued more.

"In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest, carrying their hearts high, and having their hands full. The hour of rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the laborers went to work, and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examined,--if the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made 'unhonest' shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm, or to do what be pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but colored with a broad, rosy English health."

THE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA AND REGISTER OF IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1864. 8vo., pp. 838. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The Annual Cyclopedia grows more and more valuable and interesting every year. The present volume is a great improvement upon all that have gone before it. The course of events has been unusually varied and startling, and the topics suggested by it appear to have been for the most part selected with good judgment and treated by competent writers. We have under the head of "Army Operations" an admirable history of Sherman's great march and of Grant's campaign in the wilderness, both illustrated with maps. The article on the "Army of the United States" abounds in information respecting the number of troops, organization, supplies, department and corps commanders, etc., such as everybody wants to have, but nobody knows where to look for. Under the titles of "Confederate" and "United States Congress" we have a complete political history of our country during the last year, while the condition and progress of the several foreign states are treated in their proper places. A great deal of interesting matter is given in the articles on the "Anglican" and "Greek" Churches, "Commerce" and "Commercial Intercourse," "Diplomatic Correspondence and Foreign Relations," "Finances of the United States," "Freedmen," "Freedom of the Press," "Geographical Explorations and Discoveries," "Literature and Literary Progress," "Military Surgery and Medicine" (profusely illustrated), "Navy," "Ordnance," "Petroleum," etc., etc. {719} Under the head of "Public Documents" is the most correct translation of the Pope's Encyclical and syllabus of errors condemned that has yet appeared in this country. Biographical sketches are also given of the most distinguished men who died during the course of the year.

SONGS FOR ALL SEASONS. By Alfred Tennyson. With illustrations by D. Maclise, T. Creswick, S. Eytinge, C. A. Barry, H. Fenn, and G. Perkins. 16mo., pp. 84. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

HOUSEHOLD POEMS. By Henry W. Longfellow. With illustrations by John Gilbert, Birket Foster, and John Absolon. 16mo., pp. 96. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The series of "Companion Poets for the People," of which these two volumes are the first issues, deserves special commendation as an example of the way in which cheapness and elegance may be combined. For half a dollar Messrs. Ticknor & Fields offer us a neat little book, printed in the best style of typography, on rich tinted paper, with a clean broad margin, and some twelve or fifteen wood-cuts by reputable artists. The selections appear to have been made with good judgment, and include some late pieces of both Tennyson and Longfellow which are not to be found in previous editions of their works.

THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND, AND IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE, AND NORTHERN EUROPE. IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, REVIEWING D'AUBIGNÉ, MENZEL, HALLAM, BISHOP SHORT, PRESCOTT, RANKE, FRYXELL, AND OTHERS. By M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop Baltimore. Fourth revised edition, Two volumes in one. 8vo., pp. 494 and 509. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

We welcome this new and improved edition of the best antidote that has yet been prepared for English readers to the common misrepresentations of Protestant historians of the reformation. Archbishop Spalding's book has been so long before the public, and has been received with such general favor, that it would be superfluous at this late day to enter upon a general examination of its merits. It will prove a valuable guide to the student of English and continental history; he will find here the chief points made against the Church, by the long list of writers named in the title-page, taken up and answered by a prelate of high reputation for sound and thorough scholarship. Dr. Spalding of course does not deny that there were abuses in the 16th century which ought to have been abolished; but he contends that the gravity and extent of these disorders have been greatly exaggerated; that they generally originated in the world and its princes, not in the Church; most of them being due to the fact that bad men were thrust into high ecclesiastical places by worldly-minded and avaricious sovereigns; that there was a lawful and efficacious remedy for all such evils, which consisted in giving to the popes their due power and influence in the nomination of bishops and in the deliberations of general councils; in a word, that "reformation within the Church, and not revolution outside of it, was the only proper, lawful, and efficacious remedy for existing evils;" and finally, "that the fact of Christians having at length felt prepared to resort to the desperate and totally wrong remedy of revolution was owing to a train of circumstances which had caused faith to wane and grow cold, and which now appealed more to the passions than to reason, more to human considerations than to the principles of divine faith and the interests of eternity."

THE YEAR OF MARY; OR, THE TRUE SERVANT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. Translated from the French of Rev. M. d'Arville, Apostolic Prothonotary. Edited, and in part translated, by Mrs. J. Sadlier. 12mo. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.

This is a work intended for the use either of private persons or of confraternities, sodalities, and similar associations formed in honor of the Blessed Virgin. The matter is distributed into exercises, the number of which is fixed at seventy-two, because our Lady is supposed to have lived seventy-two years on earth. One exercise is appropriated to each of the Sundays and principal festivals of the year.

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The reverend author writes with simplicity and unction, and has given us a really devout book. The translation seems to be very well done.

CEREMONIAL, FOR THE USE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Published by order of the First Council of Baltimore, with the approbation of the Holy See. Third edition, carefully revised and considerably enlarged. With illustrations. 12mo., pp. 534. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This book is almost indispensable to clergymen, and very convenient for laymen who wish to understand the beautiful ceremonies which the Church has appointed for the various festivals and services of the ecclesiastical year. It was originally compiled by Bishop Rosati, of St. Louis, and formally adopted by the council of Baltimore in 1852. The extensive additions which are now published with it were made by direction of the late Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore. They consist of the ceremonies of low mass, low mass for the dead, and the manner of giving holy communion within the mass or at other times; instructions for the priest who is obliged to say two masses, from the decrees of the sacred congregation of rites, approved under the present pope; the manner of singing mass without deacon and sub-deacon, and the vespers without cope-bearers, in accordance with approved usages of the best-regulated churches in Italy; the mode of giving benediction with the blessed sacrament, in which the ceremonial of bishops and the various decrees of the sacred congregation of rites are strictly followed; Gregorian notes to guide the celebrant and sacred ministers in singing the prayers, gospel, epistle, confiteor, etc.

The illustrations, intended to show the proper form of various church utensils, church furniture, etc., constitute a valuable feature of the book.

MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN EACH MONTH. Compiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by a Religious. Published with the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore. 18mo., pp. viii., 154. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This little book is designed for the use not only of religious communities, but of persons in the world who may feel disposed to devote a day now and then exclusively to the affairs of their souls. The exercises consist of three meditations and a "consideration," for each month in the year, arranged after the manner of the exercises of St. Ignatius.

STREET BALLADS, POPULAR POETRY, AND HOUSEHOLD SONGS OF IRELAND. 16mo., pp. 312. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

The poems contained in this little volume are by a great number of authors, and of course of very different degrees of merit. Most of them are of a patriotic nature; a good many are amatory; and two or three seem to have no business in the collection at all. For example, Lieut-Colonel Halpine's "April 20, 1864," is a poem of the American rebellion. Mr. John Savage's "At Niagara" is certainly neither a street ballad nor a household song, nor is it part of the popular poetry of Ireland any more than of our own country. We dare say, however, that nobody will feel disposed to quarrel with the editor for including these spirited pieces, as well as others we might mention, which do not properly belong under the categories mentioned in the title-page.

Among the best known writers whose names appear in the table of contents are William Allinghain, Aubrey De Vere, Samuel Fergusson, Lady Wilde, Gerald Griffin, and Clarence Mangan.

THE MONTH OF MARY, FOR THE USE OF ECCLESIASTICS. Translated from the French. 32mo., pp. 207. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

This little manual is intended exclusively for ecclesiastics, especially students in theological seminaries. It sets forth, for each day of the month, some trait of the life of the Blessed Virgin, first as an object of veneration and love, secondly, as a model of some virtue of the clerical state, and finally, as a motive of confidence. It is brief, suggestive, and practical.

_The Man without a Country_ (Boston: Ticknor & Fields) is a reprint in pamphlet form of a remarkable narrative which appeared originally in _The Atlantic Monthly_.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. I., NO. 6. SEPTEMBER, 1865.

From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.--ORIGEN.

_Origenis Opera Omnia_. Ed. De la Rue, accurante J. P. MIGNE. Paris.

_Origenes_, Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, von Dr. REDEPENNING. (Origen: A History of his Life and Doctrine. By Dr. REDEPENNING). 1841. Bonn.

In a former article we have given some account of the labors and teaching of Pantaenus and Clement in the twenty years after the death of Marcus Aurelius (180-202), during which the Church enjoyed comparative peace. Commodus was not a persecutor, like his philosophic father. Personally, he was a signal instance of the total break-down of philosophy as a training for a prince imperial; for whatever advantages the most enlightened methods and the most complete establishment of philosophic tutors could afford were his, probably to his great disgust. But the Church has often found that an imperial philosopher is something even worse than an imperial debauchee. Pertinax and Didius Julianus, who succeeded Commodus, had little time either for philosophy or pleasure, for they followed their predecessor, after the violent fashion so popular with conspirators and Praetorians, in less than a twelvemonth. Septimius Severus, the first, and, with one exception, the only Roman emperor who was a native African, during the earlier years of his reign protected the Christians rather than otherwise. How and why he saw occasion to change we shall have to consider further on.

During these twenty years of tranquillity the great Church of Alexandria had been making no little progress. Her children had not been entirely undisturbed. The populace, and sometimes the magistrates, often did not wait for an imperial edict to set upon the Christians, and the commotions that followed the death of Commodus were the occasion of more than one martyr's crown. We learn from Clement of Alexandria, speaking of this very time of comparative quiet, that burnings, beheadings, and crucifixions took place "daily;" whereby he seems to point to some particular local persecutions. But the Alexandrian Church, on the whole, was left in peace, and was rapidly extending herself among the student population of the city, among the Greeks, but, above all, among the poorer classes of the native Egyptians. Christianity seems to have spread in Egypt with a {722} rapidity almost unexampled elsewhere, and historians have taken much pains to point out that this was the effect of the considerable agreement there is between the asceticism of the early Church and that of the native worship. Without discussing the point, we may note that rapidity of extension was the rule, not the exception, when an apostle was the missionary; and that the Alexandrian Church was founded by direct commission from St. Peter, and, therefore, shared with Rome and Antioch the distinction of being the mother-city of Christianity. Moreover, the Nile valley, which above the Delta is nowhere more than eleven miles in width, contained a teeming population, the whole of which was thoroughly accessible by means of the river itself. For nearly five hundred miles every city and town, every least village and hamlet, stood right on the banks of the great water-way; and it is probable that half the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and the Thebaid were often floating on its bosom at one and the same time. The high road that was so serviceable for traffic and pleasure could be made of equal service to religion. How unweariedly the successors of St. Mark must have traversed it from end to end may be read in the history of those lauras and hermitages that at one time were to be found wherever its rocky barriers were indented by a sandy valley, and wherever the old builders of Thebes and Memphis had left a quarried opening in the limestone. There was not a stronger contrast between these monastic dwellings and the bosom of the gay river than there was between Egyptians Christian and Egyptians pagan. If the Church's converts rushed into the deserts and the caves, it was not especially because they liked them, but because there was absolutely no other means of getting out of a society not to be matched for immorality except, perhaps, by pagan Rome at its very worst. Of the number of Christians in Alexandria itself at the commencement of the third century we can only form an approximate judgment. On the one hand, Eusebius tells us that the Church had spread over the whole Thebaid. As the Thebaid was the southern division of Egypt proper, and, therefore, the most distant from Alexandria, we may safely say as much, at least, for the Delta and Middle Egypt. On the other hand, we are told by Origen that the Christians in the city were not so numerous as the pagans, or even the Jews. This will not appear surprising if we recollect that the Alexandrian Jews were more numerous, as well as richer and more powerful, than any other Jewish community in the world. We know enough to be quite sure that the Alexandrian Church was working quietly but vigorously. From the heads of the Catechetical school down to the humblest little child that was marked out by baptism in the great city of sin, there was a great work going on. The impulse that Pantaenus and Clement were giving was felt downward and around, and when Origen begins to rise on the scene, we can mark what an advance there has been even in the short twenty years since the death of Marcus Aurelius.

Septimus Severus had reigned for ten years, as we said above, before he began to persecute. He was undoubtedly an able and vigorous emperor; he could meet his enemies and get rid of his friends, bribe the Praetorians and slaughter his prisoners of war, with equal coolness and generally with equal success. In the course of a reign of twenty years he seems to have visited with hostile intent the greater part of his extensive empire, from the Syrtes of Africa, where he was born, to the banks of the Euphrates, and thence to Britain, where he died, at York, A.D. 211. At the time we speak of (198) he had just concluded a brilliant campaign against those pests of the Roman soldiery, the Parthians; and having then engaged the Arabs, still in arms for a chief whose head he had had the pleasure {723} of sending to Rome twelve months before, had got rather the worst of it in two battles. It was between this and the year 202 that he visited Alexandria. There can be no doubt he must have been received at Alexandria with no little triumph by one class of its citizens. Some six years before, he had restored to the Greek inhabitants their senate and municipal privileges. The Greeks, who, as far as intellect went, were the indisputable rulers of Alexandria, must have been highly elated at being now restored to civil importance; for though their senate was little more than an ornament, and their municipal rights confined to holding certain assemblies for the discussion of grievances, still, to have a recognized machinery of wards and tribes, and to be called "men of Macedon," as of old, was not without advantage, and was, indeed, all that their fathers had presumed to seek for, even in the days of the lamented Ptolemies. We cannot doubt, therefore, that by the Greeks Severus was received with much enthusiasm, and he, on his part, seems to have been equally satisfied with his reception, for we find that he enriched Alexandria with a temple of Rhea, and with public baths which he named after himself. But more came of this visit than compliments or temples. It was an hour of favor for the Greeks; the chief among them were also the chiefs and ruling spirits of the university; we know they must have come across Christianity during the preceding twenty years in many ways, but chiefly as a teaching that was gaining ground yearly among their best men; as philosophers, we know they loathed it; as worshippers of the immortal myths, they were burning to put it down. Does it seem in any way connected with these facts that Severus at this very time changes his policy of mildness, and issues a decree forbidding, under severest penalties, all conversions to Christianity or Judaism? There is something suggestive in the juxtaposition of facts, and it is not at all impossible that the commencement of the fifth persecution was a compliment to Clement of Alexandria. Severus, indeed, must have frequently come into contact with Christianity himself during the three or four years he spent in Syria and the East; he could not have visited Antioch, Edessa, and Caesarea without being obliged to notice the development of the Church. The Jews, too, had given him a great deal of trouble, which may account for that part of the edict which affected them, and perhaps the Montanist fanatics had helped to irritate him against the name of Christian. However these things may be, the prohibition, though apparently moderate in its scope, was the signal for the outburst of a tremendous persecution. Laetus, the prefect of Alexandria, was so zealous in his work, that it is impossible not to suspect that he was acting under the very eye of his imperial master. He was not content with torturing and slaying in the city itself, but sent his emissaries up the Nile to the very extremity of the Thebaid to hunt up the Christians and send them by boatloads to the capital for judgment and punishment. Numbers of the Alexandrian Christians fled to Palestine and elsewhere on the first intimation of danger. Pantaenus, who had returned from his Indian mission, had perhaps already left Alexandria; but Clement was at the head of the Catechisms, and he was of the number of those who fled. The great school was for a time broken up. The functions of the Church were suspended for want of ministers, or prevented by the impossibility of meeting in safety. It was taught in the Alexandrian Church that if they were persecuted in one city, they should flee into another; and, just at this time, the Motanist error, that it was unlawful to flee from persecution, caused this teaching to be acted upon with less hesitation than usual; and so, in the year 202, Christians in Alexandria, from being a comparatively flourishing community, became a proscribed and secret sect.

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It would be very far from the truth, however, to suppose that the teachings of the Catechetical school had not been able to form martyrs. We know that multitudes stood up for their faith and shed their blood for it at Alexandria, during the first years of this persecution, and this amidst horrors so unusual even with persecutors, that it was thought they portended the coming of the last day. The name of Potamiana alone will serve to raise associations sufficient to picture both the heroism of the confessors and the enormities of the tyrants. But there is another name with which we are more nearly concerned at present. Leonides, the father of Origen, was one of those Christians who had not fled from the persecution. He was an inhabitant of Alexandria, a man of some position and substance, and when the troubles began he was living in Alexandria with his wife and family. It was not long before he was marked down by Laetus and dragged to prison. The martyr's crown was now within his grasp; but he left behind him in his desolate home another who was burning to share it by his side. His son, Origen, was not yet seventeen when his father was torn away by the Roman soldiers, and, in spite of the entreaties of his mother, he insisted upon following him to prison. His mother finally kept him beside her by a device which may raise a smile in this generation. She "hid all his clothes," says Eusebius, and so compelled him to stop at home. But his zeal was all aroused and on fire, and, indeed, in this, the earliest incident known to us of his life, we seem to read the zeal and fire of the man that was to be. He sent a message to his father in these words, "Be sure not to waver on _our_ account." The exact words seem to have been handed down to us, and Eusebius, who gives them, probably received them from Origen's own disciples in Caesarea of Palestine. The boy well knew what would be the martyr's chief and only anxiety in his prison. The thought of the wife and seven young children whom he was leaving desolate would be a far bitterer martyrdom than the Roman prisons. But Leonides gloriously persevered, confessed the faith, and was beheaded, while the whole of his property was confiscated to the emperor.

Origen, as we have said, was not quite seventeen years old at his father's martyrdom, having been born about the year 185. Both his father and mother were Christians, and apparently had dwelt a long time in Alexandria. He had therefore been brought up from his infancy in that careful Christian training which it is the pride and joy of a good and earnest Christian father to bestow upon his son. The traces of this training, as we find them in Eusebius, are touching in the extreme. Leonides, to whom the teachings of Clement had made the Holy Scriptures a very fountain of life and sweetness, made them the principal means of the education of his son. Every day the child repeated to his father a portion of the holy books, and was instructed according to his capacity. Knowing what, in after life, was to be Origen's connection with the Holy Scriptures, we are not surprised to find that his father soon began to experience some difficulty in answering his questions. The boy, with true Alexandrian instinct, was not content with the bare letter of the book; he would know its hidden meaning and prophetic sense. Leonides discouraged these questions and speculations, not, it would seem, because he disapproved of them, but because he sensibly thought them premature in so young a child. But in the secret of his heart he was full of joy to see the ardor, eagerness, and amazing quickness of his dear child, and often, when the boy was asleep, would he uncover his breast and reverently kiss it, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is of very great importance for the right comprehension of the great Origen to bear in view this picture of his tender youth, and to reflect that he was no convert from heathenism, no {725} Christianized philosopher, whose early notions might from time to time be expected to crop up in the field of his orthodoxy, but a Christian child, born and bred in the Church's bosom, brought up by a father of unquestioned ability, who died a martyr and is honored as a saint. Origen began to think rightly as soon as he could think at all; his early education left him nothing to forget. As he grew up and began to be familiar with Alexandria the beautiful, he received that subtle education of the eye and imagination that every Alexandrian, like every Athenian, succeeded to as an heirloom. But with the heathen philosophers he had nothing to do, and it may be questioned whether he ever entered the walls of the Museum. His father had not neglected to teach him the ordinary branches of Greek learning. He attended the lectures of Clement, those brilliant and winning discourses, half apology, half exhortation, that he himself was afterward to emulate so well. He heard Pantaenus, also, after the venerable teacher had returned from his Indian mission. We may be sure that he dreaded worse than poison the society of the pagan youth of the university; this his subsequent conduct proves. But he had his circle of friends, and among them was a young man, somewhat older than himself, who was hereafter to leave an undying name as St. Alexander of Jerusalem. Thus, by ear and eye, by master and by fellow-student, by his father's labor, and by the workings of his own wonderful intellect and indomitable will, he was formed into a man. His education came to a premature end; but his father's martyrdom, though to outward seeming it left him a destitute orphan, really hardened the boy of seventeen into the man and the hero.

"When his father was martyred," continues Eusebius, writing, in all probability, from the relation of those who had heard Origen's own account, "he was left an orphan, with his mother and six young brothers and sisters, being of the age of seventeen. All his father's property was confiscated to the emperor's treasury, and they were in the utmost destitution; but God's providence took care of Origen." A rich and illustrious lady of Alexandria received him into her house. Whether this lady was professedly a Christian, a pagan, or a heretic, history does not say. She can hardly have been a pagan, though it is not impossible that a philosophic and liberal pagan lady should have taken a fancy to help such a youth as Origen. It is not likely that she was a heretic, for in that case Origen would never have entered her door. Thanks to the Gnostics, heretics in those days were looked upon in Alexandria as more to be dreaded than pagans. She was probably, by outward profession at least, a Christian, "illustrious," says the historian, "for what she had done, and illustrious in every other way." What she had done we are not permitted even to guess; but one fact in her history we do know, and it is very significant. She had living in her house, on the footing of an adopted son, one Paul, a native of Antioch, and one of the chiefs of the Alexandrian heretics. It is certain that Origen's patroness must have had either very uncertain or very easy notions of Christianity, if she could lend her house, her money, and her influence to an arch-heretic, who had come from Syria to trouble the Church of Alexandria, as Basilides and Valentine had come before him. Gnosticism had probably lost ground in the city, under the eloquent attacks of St. Clement. This Paul was a man of great eloquence, and his reputation attracted great numbers to hear him, not only of heretics, but also of Christians. He came from Antioch, the headquarters of an unknown number of Gnostic sects, and, with the usual instinct of false teachers, he had "led captive" this Alexandrian lady. Mark, of infamous memory, had already done the same thing by others, and perhaps by her, and Paul had succeeded to his position and was now {726} the rival of the head of the Catechisms. Such a state of things makes it easier to understand why St. Clement, in his _Stromata_, calls those who lean to heresy "traitors to Christ," and compares perverts to the companions of Ulysses in the sty of Circe, and why he makes the very treating with heretics to be nothing less than desertion in the soldier of Christ. It does seem a little strange, at first sight, that the uncompromising Origen should have consented to receive assistance from one whose orthodoxy must have been in such bad odor. The difficulty grows less, however, if we consider the circumstances. It was in the very heat of a terrible persecution, when the canons of the Church must have been suspended. Origen had lost his father, and had nowhere to turn for bare subsistence. We can hardly wonder if, in such a strait as this, he asked few questions when the charitable lady wished to take him in. But when the grief and agitation of his orphaned state had somewhat subsided, and when the persecutors had begun to slacken their fury, we may suppose that he began to examine the harbor of his refuge, and that it pleased him not. He was under the same roof as Paul of Antioch, a heretic and a leader of heretics; but never, young as he was, could he be induced to associate with him in prayer, or in any way that could violate the canons of the Church, as far as it was possible to keep them in such times. "From his childhood," says his biographer, "he kept the canons, and execrated the teachings of heretics;" and he tells us that this last phrase is Origen's own. And it seems that he took the most energetic measures to get away from a companionship that he must have loathed. He had been well instructed, as we have said, by his father in the ordinary branches of education. After his father's death he again applied himself to study with greater ardor than before, for he had an object in view now. It was not long before he was offering himself as a public teacher of those sciences that are designated by the general term "_Grammatica_." It was the first public step in a life that was afterward to be little less than the entire history of the Eastern Church. He was not yet eighteen, but there was no help for it. He must have bread, and he could not eat of the loaf that was shared by Paul of Antioch. Early writers lay much stress on this first exhibition of orthodox zeal in him who was afterward to be the "hammer" of heretics, from Egypt to Greece. Certain it is that his conduct as a boy was the same as his sentiments when he was in his sixtieth year. "To err in morals," he wrote in his commentary on Matthew, at Caesarea, forty years after his first essay as a teacher of grammar,--"to err in morals is bad, but to err in dogma and to contradict Holy Writ is much worse." If in after life he was to be so singularly earnest and so unaffectedly devout, so enthusiastic for the Gospel, so eager in exploring the depths of sacred science, and so unwavering in his faith, all this was but the growth and development of what was already springing in his soul in those early years of his trials and zeal. The strong will was already trying its first flights, the sensitive heart was being schooled to throw all its motive power into duty, and the quick, clear apprehension and the wonderful memory for which he was to be so famous, were already beginning to show what they would one day be.

Origen was now a teacher of grammar and the sciences, but he had not kept school for many months when his teachings took a turn that he can hardly have anticipated. His text-books were the common pagan historians, poets, and philosophers that have been thumbed by the school-boy from that generation to this. It was no part of Origen's character to leave his hearers in error when plain speaking would prevent it; and so it happened that his exposition of his author often took in hand not merely the parts of speech, but the doctrine. Though he was only {727} school-master by profession, his scholars soon found out he was a Christian, and a Christian of uncommon power and clear-sightedness. The Catechetical school was closed; masters and scholars were scattered in flight or in concealment. It was not long, therefore, before the young teacher found himself applied to by first one heathen and then another, who, under other circumstances, would have applied to the school of the Catechisms. Among these were Plutarchus, who soon afterward showed how a young Alexandrian student could die a glorious martyr; and Heraclas, his brother, who, after his conversion, left everything to remain with his master, became his assistant and successor in his catechetical work, and finally died Patriarch of Alexandria. These were the first-fruits of his zeal for souls. Many others followed; and as the persecution was somewhat abating, Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, looking round for men to resume the work of the schools, saw no one better fitted to be intrusted with its direction than Origen himself. He was accordingly, though not yet eighteen, appointed the successor of Clement.

Laetus, prefect of Alexandria, who had exerted himself so strenuously to please Severus when the persecution commenced, had now been recalled; probably he had reaped the reward of his zeal, and was promoted. His successor, Aquila, signalized his entering upon office by an activity that outdid that of Laetus himself. The persecution that had calmed down a little toward the end of the first year and when Laetus was leaving, now raged with redoubled fury. We have already said that the authoritative tradition, and, in great measure, also the practice, of the Alexandrian Church was flight at a time like this. Origen, however, was very far from fleeing; never at any time of his life did he display such fearless baldness, such energetic contempt for the enemy, as during these years of blood, from 204 to 211. There was no prison so well-guarded, no dungeon so deep, that he could not hold communication with the confessors of Christ. He went up to the tribunals with them, and stood beside them at the interrogatory and at the torture. He went back with them in a sort of defiant triumph, after sentence of death had been pronounced. He walked undauntedly by their side up to the stake and the beheading block, and kissed them and bade them adieu when it was time for them to die. It is no wonder that Eusebius sets down his own safety to a miraculous interposition of the right hand of God. Once, as he stood by a dying martyr, embracing him as he expired, the Alexandrian mob set on him with stones and nearly killed him; how he escaped none could tell. Again and again the persecutors tried to seize him; as often ("it is impossible," says the historian, "to tell how often") was he delivered from their hands. He was nowhere safe: no sooner did the mob get a suspicion of where he was than they surrounded the house, and hounded in the soldiers to drag him out. He fled from house to house; perhaps he was assisted to escape by some of his numerous friends; perhaps he hid himself, as St. Athanasius in the next century did, in some of those underground wells and cisterns with which every house in Alexander's city was provided, and then sought other quarters when the mob had gone off. But it was not long before he was again discovered. The numbers that came to hear him soon let the infuriated pagans know where their victim was, and he was again besieged and hunted out. Once, St. Epiphanius relates, he was caught, apparently by a street-mob, and some of the low Egyptian priests as their leaders. It was near the Egyptian quarter of the city; perhaps, even, he was visiting some poor native convert in the dirty streets of the Rhacôtis itself. If so, the name of Origen would have been enough to empty the whole quarter of its pariah race, and bring them yelling and cursing into the {728} Heptastadion. They showed him no mercy; they abused him horribly; they beat him and bruised him; they dragged him along the ground. But before killing him outright, the idea seized them that they should make him deny his religion, and at the same time make a shameful exhibition of himself. There must have been Greeks in the crowd, for Egyptians would never have had patience to spare him so long. The Serapeion, however, was at hand, and thither they dragged him. As they hauled him along, "they shaved his head," says St. Epiphanius--that is, they tried to make him look like the Egyptian priests, who were distinguished by a womanish smoothness of face; and we may imagine that they did it with no gentle hands. When at length the rushing mob had surged up the steps of the great temple, their victim in the midst of them, they set him on his feet, and gave him some palm branches, telling him to act the priest and distribute them to the votaries of Serapis. The palm, we know, was a favorite tree with the Egyptian priests; it was sculptured and painted on the walls of their huge temples, and it was borne in the hands of worshippers on solemn festivals. On the present occasion there were, probably, priests of one rank or another standing before the vestibule of the Serapeion, ready to supply those who should enter. It was, therefore, the work of a moment to seize the stock of one of these ministers, and force Origen to take his place. If they anticipated the pleasure of seeing the hated Christian teacher humiliated to the position of an _ostiarius_ of an idolatrous temple, they were never more mistaken in their lives. Origen took the palms, and began without hesitation to distribute them; but, as he did so, he cried out in a voice as loud and steady as if neither suffering nor danger could affect him, "Take the palms, good people!--not the palms of idols, but the palms of Christ!" How he escaped after this piece of daring, we are only left to conjecture. Perhaps the Roman troops came suddenly on the scene to quell the riot; and as they hated the dwellers in the Rhacôtis almost as much as the latter hated Origen, the neighborhood of the Serapeion would have been speedily cleared of Egyptians. However it came about, Origen was saved.

Meanwhile, he saw his own scholars daily going to death. The young student Plutarchus fell among the first victims of Aquila's new vigor; Origen was by his side when he was led to execution, was recognized by the mob, and once more narrowly escaped with his life. Serenus, another of his disciples, was burnt; Heraclides, a catechumen, and Hero, who had just been baptized, were beheaded; a second Serenus, after enduring many torments, suffered in the same way. A woman named Heraeis, one of his converts, was burned before she could be baptized, receiving the baptism of fire, as her instructor said. Another who is numbered among his disciples is Basilides, the soldier who protected St. Potamiana from the insults of the mob, and whom she converted by appealing to him three nights afterward. We are told that the brethren, and we know who would be foremost among the brethren in such a case, visited him in prison as soon as they heard of his wonderful and unexpected confession. He told them his vision, was baptized, and the following day died a martyr. Probably it was Origen who addressed to him the few hurried words of instruction there was time to say. "All the martyrs," says Eusebius, "whether he knew them or knew them not, he ministered to with the most eager affection." His reputation, it may well be conceived, suffered no diminution as these things came to be known. The horrors of the persecution could not keep scholars away from him, nor prevent increasing numbers from coming to seek him. Many of the unbelieving pagans, full of admiration for a holiness of life and a heroism they could not comprehend, came to his {729} instructions; and even literary Greeks who had gone through the curriculum of the Museum, and were deeply versed in Platonic myths and Pythagorean theories of mortification, came to listen to this fearless young philosopher, in whom they found a learning that could not be gainsaid, combined with a practical contempt for the things of the body that was quite unknown in their own schools.

The persecution seems to have died down and gone out toward the year 211, nine years after its commencement. Origen's labors became the more extraordinary in proportion as he had freer scope for pursuing them. The feature in his life at this time, which is most characteristic of the time and the city, and which more than anything else attracted the cultivated heathens to listen to him, was his severe asceticism. Times of persecution may be considered to dispense with asceticism; but Origen did not think so. It was a saying of his master, St. Clement, and, indeed, appears to have been a common proverb in that reformed school of heathen philosophy which resulted in Neo-Platonism, "As your words, so be your life." A philosopher in Alexandria at that time, if he would not be thought to belong to an effete race of thinkers who had long been left behind, or who only survived in the well-paid and well-fed professorships of the university, was of necessity a man whose strict and sober living corresponded to the high and serious truths which he considered it his mission to utter. St. Clement did not forget this, either in principle or in practice, when he undertook to win the heathen men of science to Christ. Origen, born a Christian, made a teacher apparently by chance and in the confusion of a persecution, cared little, in the first instance, for what pagan philosophy would think of him. The fact that all who pretended to be philosophers pretended also to asceticism may, indeed, have caused him to embrace a life of denial more as a matter of course. But the holy gospels and the teachings of Clement were the reasons of his asceticism. It is amazing that Protestant writers, when they write of the asceticism of the early Church, can see in it nothing but the reflection of Buddhism, or Judaism, or of the tenets of Pythagoras, and that they always seem nervously glad to prove by the assistance of the Egyptian climate or the Platonic hatred of matter, that it was not the carrying out of the law of Christ, but merely a self-imposed burden. Climate, doubtless, has great influence on food, and English dinners would no more suit an Egyptian sun than would the two regulation _paximatia_ of the Abbot Moses in Cassian be enough for even the most willing of English Cistercians. But why go to climate, to Plato, to Pythagoras, and to Buddha, to account for what is one of the most striking recommendations of the gospels? We need not stop to inquire the reason, but we may be sure that a child who had been taught the Holy Scriptures by heart would not be unlikely to know something of their teaching. His biographer tells us expressly, with regard to several of his acts of mortification, that they were done in the endeavor to carry out literally our Lord's commands. And yet it is very remarkable, and a trait of the times, that Eusebius, in describing his mode of life, uses the word philosophy three times where we should use asceticism. Origen, soon after being appointed head of the Catechetic school, found he could not do his duty by his hearers as thoroughly as he could wish, on account of his other occupation of teacher of grammar. He therefore resolved to give it up. It was his only means of subsistence, but he might reasonably have expected "to live by the gospel" as long as he was in such a post as chief catechist. If he had expected this he would not have been disappointed, for there would have been no lack of charity. But he had an entirely different view of the matter. He would be a burden {730} to no one, and would live a life of the strictest poverty. Simple, straightforward, and great, here as ever, we may conceive how he would appreciate the fetters of a rich man's patronage. But, if we may trust the utterances of his whole life, his love for holy poverty was such that, while it makes some refer once more to Pythagoras, to a Catholic it rather suggests St. Francis of Assisi. "I tremble," he said thirty years afterward, "when I think how Jesus commands his children to leave all they have. For my own part, I plead guilty to my accusers and I pronounce my own sentence; I will not conceal my guiltiness lest I become doubly guilty. I will preach the precepts of the Lord, though I am conscious of not having followed them myself. Let us now at least lose no time in becoming true priests of the Lord, whose inheritance is not on earth but in heaven." Such language from one who can hardly be said to have possessed anything during his whole life can only be explained on one hypothesis. In order, therefore, at once to secure his independence in God's work, and to oblige himself to practise rigorous poverty, he made a sacrifice which none but a poor student can appreciate. He sold his manuscripts, and secured to himself, from the sale, a sum of four oboli a day, which was to be his whole income. This sum, which was about the ordinary pay of a common sailor, who had his food and lodging provided for him, was little enough to live upon; but miserable as it was, Origen must have paid a dear premium to obtain it. Those manuscripts of "ancient authors" were probably the fruits and the assistance of his early studies; he must have written many of them under the eye of his martyred father. He had "labored with care and love to write them out fairly," we are told, and doubtless he prized them at once as a scholar prizes his library and a laborious worker the work of his hands. For many years, probably until he went to Rome in 211, he continued to receive his twopence or threepence every day from the person who had bought his books. But we cease in great part to wonder how little he lived on when we know how he lived. In obedience to our Lord's command, and in opposition to the prevailing practice of all but the poorest classes, he wore the tunic single, and as for the pallium, he seems either to have dispensed with it altogether, or only to have worn it whilst teaching. For many years he went entirely barefoot. He fasted continually from all that was not absolutely necessary to keep him alive; he never touched wine; he worked hard all day in teaching and visiting the poor; and after studying what we should call theology the greater part of the night, he did not go to bed, but took a little rest on the floor. This "vehemently philosophic" life, as Eusebius calls it, reduced him in time, as might have been expected, to a mere wreck; insufficient food and scanty clothing brought on severe stomachic complaints, which nearly caused his death. It is not to be supposed that his disciples and the Church in general looked on with indifference whilst he practised these austerities. On the contrary, he was solicited over and over again to receive assistance and to take care of himself; and many were even somewhat offended because he refused their well-meant offers. But Origen had chosen to put his hand to the plough, and he would not have been Origen if he had turned back. It is probable, indeed, that he somewhat moderated his austerities when his health began to give way seriously; but hard work and hard living were his lot to the end, and the name of Adamantine, which he received at this time, and which all ages and countries have confirmed to him, shows what the popular impression was of what he actually went through. As might have been expected, a man of such singleness and determination had many imitators. We have seen that the very pagan philosophers came to listen to him. {731} The young scholars whom he instructed, and many of whom he converted, did more than listen to him; they joined him, and imitated as nearly as they could what Eusebius again calls the "philosophy" of his life. It was no barren aping of externals, such as might have been seen going on a little way off at the Museum; he, on his part, taught them deep and earnest lessons in the deepest and most earnest of all philosophies; they, on theirs, proved that his words were power by the severest of all tests--they stood firm in the horrors of a fearful persecution, and more than one of them witnessed to them by a cruel death.

As long as the persecution lasted, anything like regularity and completeness in a work like that of Origen was clearly impossible. But a persecution at Alexandria, though generally furious as long as it lasted, happily seldom lasted very long. Popular opinion was, no doubt, very bitter against Christianity. But popular opinion was one thing; the will of the prince-governor another. Moreover, the popular opinion of the Greek philosophers was generally diametrically opposed to that of their Roman masters, and the beliefs and traditions of the Rhacôtis tended to the instant extermination of the Jews; and though these four antagonistic elements could, upon occasion, so far forget their differences as to unite in an onslaught against the Christians, yet, before long, quarrels arose and riots ensued among the allied parties to such an extent that the legionaries had no choice but to clear the streets in the most impartial manner. Again, it is quite certain that the Christian party included in it not a few men of rank; and, what is more important, of power and authority. This we know from the trouble St. Dionysius, one of Origen's scholars, afterward had with many such persons who had "lapsed" in the Decian persecution. As everything, therefore, depended on the humor of the governor, and as the governor was, as other men, liable to be influenced by bribes suggestions, and caprice, a furious persecution might suddenly die out, and the Church begin to enjoy comparative peace at the very time when things looked worst. Until the year 211, "Adamantius" taught, studied, prayed, and fasted amidst disturbance, martyrdoms, and fleeings from house to house; but that year wrought a change, not only in Alexandria, but over the whole world. It was simply the year of the death of Septimus Severus at York, and of the accession of Caracalla and Geta; but this was an event which, if precedents were to be trusted, invited all the nations that recognized the Roman eagle to be ready for any change, however unreasonable, beginning with the senate, and ending with the Christians. It was, probably, in this same year, 211, that Origen took advantage of the restoration of tranquillity to visit the city and Church of Rome. It would seem that this episode of his journey to Rome has not been sufficiently considered in the greater part of the accounts of his life. Protestant writers, as may be expected, pass it over quietly, either barely mentioning it, or, if they do put a gloss upon it, confining themselves to generalities about the interchange of ideas or the antiquity and renown of the Roman Church. But there is evidently more in it than this. Origen was just twenty-six years of age: though so young, he was already famous as a teacher and a holy liver in the most learned of cities, and one of the most ascetical of churches. His work was immense, and daily increasing. On the cessation of the persecution, the great school was to be reorganized, and put once more into that thorough working order which had made it so effective under Pantaenus and Clement. Yet, just at this busy crisis, he hurries off to Rome, stays there a short time, and hurries back again. In the first place, why go at all? What could Rome or any other church give him that he had not already at Alexandria? Not scientific learning, certainly; not a systematic {732} organization of work; not reverence for Holy Scripture; not the method of confuting learned philosophy. Again: why go specially to Rome? Was there not a high road, easy and comparatively short, to Caesarea of Palestine, and would he not find there facilities enough for the "interchange of thought?" For there, about fifteen years before, had assembled one of the first councils ever held since the council of Jerusalem. Was there not Jerusalem, the cradle of the Church? It was then, indeed, shorn of its glory, both spiritual and historical; for it was subject, at least not superior, to Caesarea, and was known to the empire by the name of Aelia Capitolina; but its aged bishop was a worker of miracles. Was there not Antioch, the great central see of busy, intellectual Syria, the see of St. Theophilus, wherein saintly bishops on the one hand, and Marcionite heresy and Paschal schism on the other, kept the traditions of the faith bright and polished? Were there not the Seven Churches? Was there not many a "mother-city" between the Mediterranean and the mountain ranges where apostolic teachings were strong yet, and apostolic men yet ruled? Origen's motive in going to "see Rome" is given us by himself, or, rather, by his biographer in his words; but, unfortunately, in such an ambiguous way that it is almost useless as an argument; he wished, says Eusebius, "to see the very ancient Church of Rome." The word we have translated "very ancient" ([Greek text]) may also mean, as we need not say, "first in dignity." It is hardly worth while to argue upon it, but it will not fail to strike the reader that Jerusalem and Antioch, not to mention other sees, were both older than Rome, if age was the only recommendation. Origen's visit to Rome, then, is a very remarkable event in his life, for it shows undoubtedly that the chief of the greatest school of the Church found he required something which could only be obtained in Rome, and that something can only have been an approach to the chief and supreme depositary of tradition. He was at the very beginning of his career, and he could begin no better than by invoking the blessing of that rock of the Church of whom his master, Clement, had taught him to think so nobly and lovingly. We shall see that, many a year after this, in the midst of troubles and calumnies, when his great life was nearly closed, the same see of Peter received the professions and obedience of his failing voice, as it had witnessed and blessed the ardor of his youth. He was not, indeed, the first who, though already great in his own country, had been drawn toward a greatness which something told them was without a rival. Three-quarters of a century before Rome had attracted from far-off Jerusalem that great St. Hegesippus, the founder of church history, whose works are lost, but whose fame remains. A convert from Judaism, he left his native city, travelled to Rome, and sojourned there for twenty years, busily learning and committing to writing those practices and traditions of the Roman Church which he afterward appears to have disseminated all over the East, and which he conveyed, toward the end of his life, to his own Jerusalem, where he died. From Assyria and beyond the Tigris the "perfume of Rome" had enticed the great Tatian--happy if, on his return, he had still kept pure that faith which, at Rome, he defended so well against Crescens the cynic. A great mind and a widely cultivated genius found the sphere of its rest in Rome, when St. Justin finished his wanderings there and sealed the workings of his active intellect by shedding his blood at the bidding of the ruling clique of Stoics--_"philosophus et martyr"_ as the old martyrologies call him. A famous name, too, is that of Rhodon, of Asia, well known for his steady and able defence of the faith against Marcionites and other heretics. These, and such as these, had come from the world's ends to visit the great apostolic see before Origen's day dawned. But there were others, and as great, whom {733} he may actually have met in the city, either on a visit like himself, or because they were members of the Roman clergy. There was the great Carthaginian, Tertullian, who, for many years, lived, learned, and wrote in Rome; his works show how well he knew the Roman Church, and how often afterward he had occasion, in his polemical battles, to allude to the _"Ecclesia transmarina"_ as Africa called Rome. A meeting between Origen and Tertullian is a very suggestive idea; the only misfortune is, that we have no warrant whatever for supposing it beyond the bare possibility. But by naming Tertullian we suggest one view, at least, of the ecclesiastical society which Origen would meet when he visited Rome. Another celebrated man, whom there is more likelihood that Origen did meet, is the convert Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who employed his recognized talents and trained skill in vigorous apologetic writings, one of which we still possess. A third was the priest Caius, one of the Roman clergy, famed as the adversary of Proclus the Montanist, unless he had already started on his missionary career as regionary bishop. Finally, there was St. Hippolytus, who, like Caius, was from the school of St. Irenaeus, and had come from Lyons to Rome, where he seems to have been no unworthy representative of his teacher's zeal against heretics. Nearly every step of the life of St. Hippolytus is encumbered by the ruin of a learned theory or the useless rubbish of an abandoned position; but he as far as we can conjecture, the chief scientific adviser of the Roman pontiffs in the measures they took at this time regarding Easter and against the Noetians. Until scientific men have settled their disputes as to who was the author of the _Philosophumena_, or Treatise _against All Heresies_, little more can be said about St. Hippolytus. The Treatise itself, however, whose recovery some twenty years ago excited so much interest, must have had an author, and it is nearly certain the author must have been one of the Roman clergy at this very time. It is still more certain that the matters therein discussed must represent very completely one view of Church matters at Rome in the early part of the third century; and, therefore, even if Origen did not meet the author in person, he must have met many who thought as he did. Now it is rather interesting to read the _Philosophumena_ in this light, and to conjecture what Origen would think of some of its views. The leading idea of the work, which is not even yet extant complete, is to prove that all heresies have sprung from Greek philosophy. This it attempts to do by detailing, first, the systems of the philosophers, then those of the heretics, and showing their mutual connection. The scandalous attack on St. Callistus, in the ninth book, may or may not be an interpolation by a later hand; if not, the author must have been much more ingenious than reputable. There is no denying the historical and literary value of the Treatise; but where it professes to draw deductions and to give philosophical analyses of systems, it seems of comparatively moderate worth. For instance, the author's analysis and appreciation of the philosophy of Aristotle is little better than a libel on the great _"maestro di lor chi sanno;"_ and Basilides, though doubtless a clever personage in his way, can hardly have taken the trouble to go so far for the small amount of philosophy that seasons his fantastical speculations. But a general opinion resembling the opinion maintained in the Treatise seems to have been common in the West; and when Tertullian says of the philosophy of Plato that it was _"haereticorum omnium condimentarium,"_ he was doubtless expressing the idea of many beside himself. To Origen, fresh from the school of Clement and the atmosphere of Alexandria, such language must have sounded startling, to say the least, and we cannot help feeling he would be rather {734} sorry, if not indignant, to hear the great names he had been taught to think of with so much admiration and compassion unfeelingly caricatured into a relationship of paternity with such men as the founders of Gnosticism. He does not appear to have been very familiar yet with the Greek systems; they had not come specially in his way, though he had heard of them in the Christian schools, and there is little doubt that he had already seen the necessity of studying them more closely, as he actually did on his return to Alexandria. What effect the views of the Western Church had on his teaching, and how he treated the philosophers, we shall have to consider in the sequel. Meanwhile, his stay at Rome was over; he had studied the faith and heresy, discipline and schism, church organization and sectarian rebellion, in the most important centre of the whole Church, and his school at Alexandria was awaiting him, to reap the benefit of his journey.

On the return of Origen to Alexandria, it would almost appear as if he had wished to decline, for a time, the office of chief of the Catechisms. The historian tells us that he only resumed it at the strongly expressed desire of his bishop, Demetrius, who was anxious for the "profit and advantage of the brethren." Perhaps he wished for greater leisure than such a post would permit of, in order to carry into execution certain projects that were forming in his mind. But neither the patriarch nor his scholars would hear of his giving up, and so he had to settle to his work again; "which he did," says Eusebius, "with the greatest zeal," as he did everything. From this time, with one or two short interruptions, he lived and taught in Alexandria for twenty years. His life as an authoritative teacher and "master in Israel" may be said to commence from this point. It was an epoch resembling in some degree that other epoch, thirty years before, when Pantaenus had been called upon to take the charge of chief teacher in the Alexandrian Church. Now, as then, the winter of a persecution had passed, and the season was sunny and promising. Now, as then, men were high in hope, and set to work with valiant hearts to repair the breaches the straggle had left, and to restore to the rock-built fortress that glory and comeliness that became her so well; but with which, if need was, she could securely dispense. But there was no slight difference between 180 and 211. The tide of Christianity had risen perceptibly all over the Church; most of all on the shores of its greatest scientific centre. The possibility of appealing to those who had heard the apostles had long been past, but now even the disciples of Polycarp, Simeon, and Ignatius had disappeared; instead of Irenaeus there was Hippolytus, and Demetrius of Alexandria was the eleventh successor of St. Mark. Heretics had multiplied, questions had been asked, tradition was developing itself, dogma was being fixed. The form of teaching was, therefore, in process of change as other things changed. Greater precision, more "positive theology," a more constant look-out for what authority had said or might say--these necessities would make the teacher's office more difficult, even if more definite. The position of the Church toward its enemies, also, was sensibly changing. The "gain-sayers" were not of the same class as had been addressed by St. Theophilus or St. Justin. The state of things had grown more distinctly marked. Christianity was no longer an idea that might, in a burst of noble rhetoric, be made to set on fire, for a moment, even the camp of the enemy. It was now known to the Gentile world as a stern and unyielding praxis; susceptible, perhaps, of scientific and literary treatment, but quite distinct from both science and letters. Enthusiastic but timid _dilettanti_ had lost their enthusiasm, and gave full scope to their fears. Amiable philosophers took back the right hand of fellowship, and retreated behind those who, by a {735} special instinct, had always refused to be amiable, and now thought themselves more justified than ever. On the Christian side the war had lost much of the adventure which accompanies the first dashing inroads into an enemy's country. Surprises were not so easy, systematic opposition was frequent, and their writers were obliged to fight by tactics, and in the prosaic array of argument for argument. Documents, moral testimony, institutions, were the objects of attack from without. The apostles were vilified, faith was proved to be irrational, the Bible was ranked with Syrian impostures and Jewish charm-books. And here, in the matter of the Bible, was a mighty enterprise for the Christian teacher. The canon had not yet been officially promulgated. A generation that would despise an apocryphal book of Homer or a false Orphic hymn would not be easily satisfied with the credentials of a religion. Great, then, would be that Christian teacher who should at once teach the faithful, and yet not "take away from" the faith; win the philosophers, and yet fight them hand to hand; and give to the world a critical edition of the Bible, yet hold fast to ancient tradition. Such was the work of Origen.

He began by external organization; he divided the multitudes that flocked to the Catechisms into two grand classes; one of those who were commencing, another of those who were more advanced. The former class he gave to his first convert, Heraclas; the latter he kept to himself. Heraclas was "skilled in theology," and "in other respects a very eloquent man;" and, moreover, he was "fairly conversant with philosophy," three qualifications in an Alexandrian catechist none of which could be dispensed with. In any case, the division was a matter of absolute necessity, for these extraordinary Alexandrian scholars, models and patterns that deserve to be imitated more extensively than they have been, gave him no respite and kept no regular school-hours, but crowded in and out "from morning till night;" "not even a breathing-space did they afford him," says his biographer. In such circumstances theological study and scriptural labors were out of the question, even if he had been the man of adamant that his admirers, with the true Alexandrian passion for nicknames, had already begun to call him. He therefore looked about among "his familiars," those of his disciples who had attached themselves to him and lived with him a life of study and asceticism; and from them he chose out Heraclas, the brother of the martyred Plutarchus, to be the chief associate of his work.

It need not be again mentioned that Origen's work, as that of Pantaenus and of Clement before him, had three classes of persons to deal with--catechumens, heretics, and philosophers. His dealings with the heretics and philosophers will be treated of more appropriately when we come to consider his journeys, the most important of which occurred after the expiration of the twenty years with which we are now concerned. As the school of Alexandria was chiefly and primarily connected with the catechumens, the account of the twenty years of his presidency will naturally be concerned chiefly and primarily with the latter, that is to say, with those whom that great school undertook to instruct in faith and discipline. And here we approach and stand close beneath one side of that monumental fane that bears upon it for all generations the name of Origen. The neophytes of Alexandria were chiefly taught out of one book; it was the custom handed from teacher to teacher; each held up the book and explained it, according to the "unvarying tradition of the ancients." For two hundred and ten years the work had gone on; but time has destroyed nearly every trace of what was written and spoken. For the first time since St. Mark wrote the gospel, Alexandria speaks now in history with a voice that shall commence a new era in the history of {736} Holy Scripture. Pantaemus had written "Commentaries" on the whole of the Bible; Clement had left, in the _Hypotyposes_, a summary exposition of all the canonical Scripture, not forgetting a glance at the "Contradictions" of heretics. Both these writings have perished long ago. When Origen came, in his turn, to take the same work in hand, a pressing want soon forced itself upon his mind. There was no authentic version of the sacred Word. The New Testament canon was still uncertain, one Church upholding a greater number of books, another less. The Roman canon was, indeed, from the first identical with the Tridentine (see Perrone, _"De Locis Theologicis"_). But the Church of Antioch, _e.g._, ignored no less than five of the canonical books. Alexandria, well supplied with learned expositors, and not a little influenced by the native Alexandrian instinct for criticism and grammar, had got further in the development of the canon than the majority of its sisters. Yet, so far, there had hardly been any distinct interference on the part of authority, and though, as we shall see, Origen's New Testament canon was the same as that of the Council of Trent, yet there were not wanting private writers who expressed doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse. One thing, however, is very clear in all these somewhat troublesome disputes about the canon; whether we turn to Tertullian in Africa, to St. Jerome in Italy, to St. Irenaeus in the West, or to Clement and Origen in the East, we find one grand and large criterion put forth as the test of all authenticity, viz., the tradition of the ancients. "Go to the oldest churches," says St. Irenaeus. "The truest," says Tertullian, "is the oldest; the oldest is what always was; what always was is from the apostles; go therefore to the churches of the apostles, and find what is there held sacred." "We must not transgress the bounds set by our fathers," says Origen. It took several centuries to complete this process; but the principle was a strong and a living one, and its working out was only a matter of time. It was worked out something in this fashion. A provincial presbyter, we will say from Pelusium, or Syene, or Arsinoe, came up to Alexandria (he may easily have done so, thanks to the police arrangements and engineering enterprise of Ptolemy Philadelphus); having much ecclesiastical news to communicate, and perhaps important business to arrange on the part of his bishop, he would be thrown into close contact with the presbytery of the metropolitan Church. Let us suppose that, in order to support some point of practical morality, touching the "lapsed" or the converts, he quoted Hermas' "Shepherd" as canonical Scripture. The archdeacon with whom he was arguing would demur to such an authority; let him quote Paul, or Jude, or Peter, or John, but not Hernias; Hernias was not in the canon. The presbyter from the provinces would be a little amazed and even ruffled; how could he say it was not in the canon when he himself had heard it read on the Lord's day before the sacred mysteries in the patriarchal Church, in the presence of the very patriarch himself, seated on his throne, and surrounded by the clergy? A canonical book meant a book within the Church's general rule ([Greek text]), and the rule of the Church was that a book read at such a time was thereby declared true Scripture. The archdeacon would reply that the presbyter was right in the main, both as to facts and principles; but would point out that at Alexandria they had a set of books which were read at the solemn time he mentioned, beside regular Scripture; and if he had known their usages better, or if he had asked any of the clergy, or the patriarch, he would be aware that such writings were only _read to the people_ as pious exhortations, not _defined_ as the repository of the faith. The presbyter would consider this inconvenient, and would doubtless be right in thinking so. The practice was {737} condemned by various councils in the next century. But he would at once admit that if the tradition were so, then the Alexandrian Church certainly appeared to reject Hernias. But he would have another difficulty. Did not Clement, of blessed memory, consider Hernias as authentic, or, at any rate, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was quite a parallel case? And did not Origen (whom we suppose to be then teaching) call the "Shepherd" "divinely inspired?" It was true, the archdeacon would rejoin, that both Clement in former years and Origen then spoke very highly of several writings of this class; but he must refer him once more to the authoritative tradition of the Alexandrian Church, to be learned, in the last instance, from the lips of Demetrius himself: this would at once show that Clement and Origen could not mean to put Hernias on a level with Paul, and Origen himself would certainly admit so much, if he were asked. The presbyter would inquire, during his stay, of the heads of the Catechetical school, of the ancient priests, and of the patriarch; he would be satisfied that what the archdeacon said was true; and he would return to his city on the Red Sea, or at the extremity of the Thebaid, or on the north-western coast of the continent, with authentic intelligence that the Apostolic Church of Alexandria rejected Hermas from the Scripture canon, and that, therefore, it certainly ought to be rejected by his own Church. He would, perhaps, in addition to this, bring the information that the metropolitan Church, so he had found out in his researches, upheld the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, to be true and genuine Scripture; would it not, therefore, be well to consider whether these also should not be admitted by themselves? In this way, or in some way analogous, the Churches that lay within the "circumscription" of a patriarchal or apostolic see would by degrees be led to conform their canon to the canon of the principal Church. As time went on, the great metropolitan sees themselves became grouped round the three grand centres of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and, finally, in the process of the development of tradition, at least as early as A.D. 800, the whole Church had adopted the canon as approved by Rome in the decretal of Innocent I. It is, therefore, a remarkable fact that Origen quotes the canon of the New Testament precisely as it now stands in the Vulgate. It would hardly be true to say that he formally states as exclusively authentic the complete list of the Catholic canon; but that he does enumerate it is certain. Moreover, in addition to the remarkable correctness of his investigations on the canon, Origen did much, in other ways, for a book that was emphatically the textbook of his school. The exemplars in general use were in a most unsatisfactory state: there were hardly two alike. Writers had been careless, audacious innovators had inserted their interpolations, honest but mistaken bunglers had added and taken away whenever the sense seemed to require it. It is Origen himself who makes these complaints, and nobody had better occasion to know how true they were. The manuscript used in the great Church probably differed from that used by the chief catechist; his, again, differed from every one of those brought to class by the wealthier of his scholars. One would bring up a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, on investigation, would turn out to be full of Nazarite or Ebionite "improvements"--another would have an Acts of the Apostles, which had been bequeathed to him by some venerable Judaizant, and wherein St. James of Jerusalem would be found to have assumed more importance than St. Luke was generally supposed to have given him. A third would have a copy so full of monstrous corruptions in the way of mutilation and deliberate heretical glossing, that the orthodox ears of the {738} master would certainly have detected a quotation from it in two lines: it would be one of Valentine's editions. A fourth, newly arrived from some place where Tertullian had never been heard of, would appear with a bulky set of _volumina_, which Origen would find to his great disgust to be the New Testament "according to Marcion." That first and chief of reckless falsifiers had "circumcised" the New Testament, as St. Irenaeus calls it, to such an extent that he had to invent a quantity of new Acts and Apocalypses to keep up appearances, and what he retained he had freely cut and tortured into Marcionism; for he said openly that the apostles were moderately well-informed, but that his lights were far in advance of them. Such examples as these are, of course, extremes; but even in orthodox copies there must have been a bewildering number of _variantes_. Origen's position would bring him into contact with exemplars from many distant churches. The work of copying fresh ones for the "missions," or to supply the wants of the provinces, would necessitate some choice of manuscripts; and in a matter so important, we may be sure that his catechists, fellow-townsmen of Aristarchus, rather enjoyed than otherwise the vigorous critical disputes which the collation of MSS. has a special tendency to engender. It is nearly established--indeed, we may say, it is certain--that Origen wrote a copy of the New Testament with his own hand. It was not a new edition, apparently, but a corrected copy of the generally received version. He corrected the blunders of copyists; he struck out of the text everything that was evidently a mere gloss; he re-inserted what had clearly dropped out by mischance, and adopted a few readings that were unmistakable improvements. But he made no alteration of the text on mere conjecture. However faulty a reading might seem, he never changed it without authority; he had too much reverence for Holy Scripture, and probably, also, too bitter an experience of conjectural emendations, to sanction such dangerous proceedings by his own practice. This precious copy, the fruit of his labors and study, the depositary of his wide experience, and the record of his "adamantine" industry, was apparently the one from which he himself always quoted, and, therefore, we may conclude, which he always used. It lay, after his death, in the archives of Caesarea of Palestine, with his other Biblical MSS. Pamphilus the Martyr is related to have copied it; and in the time of Constantine, Eusebius sent many transcripts of it to the imperial city. Eusebius himself copied it with all the reverence he would necessarily feel for his hero, Origen; and by means of his copy, or of copies made by his direction, it became the basis of that recension of the New Testament known as the Alexandrine. St. Jerome was well acquainted with the library of Caesarea, and often mentions the _"Codices Adamantii"_ which he was privileged to consult there; and we need not remind the reader of the well-known agreement of the Latin versions with those of Palestine and Alexandria. Now Palestine meant--first, Jerusalem, where was the celebrated library formed by St. Alexander, Origen's own college friend and an Alexandria man, as we should say, and partly under Origen's influence; and, secondly, Caesarea, which inherited Origen's traditions and teaching, at least equally with Alexandria, as we shall see later on, and in which the originals of his works were preserved with religious veneration, until war and sack of Persian or Moslem destroyed them. Thus the work of Origen on the New Testament, begun and mainly carried out during those twenty years at Alexandria, is living and active at this very day. But if the New Testament needed setting to rights, it was correct and accurate in comparison with the Old. How he treated the Septuagint, and how the Hexapla and the Tetrapla grew under nimble hands and learned heads, we must for the present defer to tell.

{739}

From The Fortnightly Review.

MARTIN'S PUZZLE.

I.

There she goes up the street with her book in her hand, And her "Good morning, Martin!" "Ay, lass, how d'ye do?" "Very well, thank you, Martin!" I can't understand; I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe! I can't understand it. She talks like a song: Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass; She seems to give gladness while limping along; Yet sinner ne'er suffered like that little lass.

II.

Now, I'm a rough fellow--what's happen'd to me? Since last I left Falmouth I've not had a fight With a miner come down for a dip in the sea; I cobble contented from morning to night. The Lord gives me all that a man should require; Protects me, and "cuddles me up," as it were. But what have I done to be saved from the fire? And why does his punishment fall upon her?

III.

First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart. Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade-- Why the deuce does he tell us it hah broke his heart? His heart!--where's the leg of the poor little maid! Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs, To make her go crooked: but why count the list? If it's right to suppose that our human affairs Are all order'd by heaven--there, bang goes my fist!

IV.

For if angels can look on such sights--never mind! When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be mum. The parson declares that her woes weren't design'd; But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come. "Lose a leg, save a soul "--a convenient text; I call it "Tea doctrine," not savoring of God. When poor little Molly wants "chastening," why, next-- The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.

{740}

V.

But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles To read books to sick people!--and just of an age When girls learn the meaning of ribbons and smiles,-- Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage. The more I push thinking, the more I resolve: I never get further:--and as to her face, It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve, And says, "This crush'd body seems such a sad case."

VI.

Not that she's for complaining: she reads to earn pence; And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough. Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense? Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff. Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord; She sings little hymns at the close of the day, Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord, And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.

VII.

What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear, If there's law above all? Answer that if you can! Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere As a place where a man should just think like a man. It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise, Do bullets in battle the wicked select? Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes, She hold's a fixed something by which I am check'd.

VIII.

Yonder ribbon of sunshine aslope on the wall, If you eye it a minute, 'll have the same look: So kind! and so merciful! God of us all! It's the very same lesson we get from thy book. Then is life but a trial? Is that what is meant? Some must toil, and some perish, for others below: The injustice to each spreads a common content; Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.

IX.

She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark. On earth there are engines and numerous fools. Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark; He does, and in some sort of way they're his tools. It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add, If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught: But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad; In that case we'll bow down our heads, as we ought.

{741}

X.

But the worst of _me_ is, that when I bow my head, I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust, And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead Of humble acceptance: for, question I must! Here's a creature made carefully--carefully made Put together with craft, and then stampt on, and why? The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's play'd. The sky's a blue dish!--an implacable sky!

XI.

Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit. They tell us that discord, though discord, alone, Can be harmony when the notes properly fit: Am I judging all things from a single false tone? Is the universe one immense organ, that rolls From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight. It pours such a splendor on heaps of poor souls! Suppose I try kneeling with Molly to-night.

GEORGE MEREDITH.

Translated from Der Katholik.

THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.

[Third and concluding Article.]

IV. THE HEART OF THE CHURCH.

Christ approves himself as the head of the Church inasmuch as her individual members are subject to his guidance, and live and move in him. [Footnote 151] This protracted influence of Christ is exercised by means of an innate harmonizing and vivifying principle of the Church. We have arrived at the heart of the Church. Our ancient theology bestows this epithet on the Holy Ghost. [Footnote 152] The Church receives the Holy Ghost through Christ. Such is the doctrine of Scripture, clearly expressed. Jesus promises his disciples to send them after his departure the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, in whom they will find a compensation for the Master. For it is the function of the Spirit to testify of Christ, and to bring all things to the remembrance of the Church, whatsoever Jesus has said. Thus are all things taught unto the Church. This efficacy, which has the glory of Christ for its aim, the Holy Ghost derives from the fulness of Christ's Godhead, _de meo accipiet._ The Holy Ghost was not given until after Jesus was glorified. Christ being exalted, and having received the Holy Ghost promised of the Father, sheds forth the Spirit upon the Church. Even the prior inspiration of the apostles was the result of an act of Christ. Jesus breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

[Footnote 151: St. Thomas, iii. 93, a. 6.]

[Footnote 152: _Ibid, a. 1, ad. S: Caput habet manifestam eminentiam respectu caeterorum exteriorum membrorum; sed cor habet quandam influentiam occultam. Et ideo cordi comparatur Spiritus sanctus, qui invisibiliter ecclesiam viviflcat et unit._]

The Spirit acts as the heart of the Church under the control and influence of the head. The fundamental theological reason of this is not difficult of demonstration. The external relations {742} of the several divine persons, or their relations to the works of God, such as the one just described of the Holy Ghost to the Church, are intimately connected with the intro-divine relations of the members of the most Holy Trinity to each other. It is in this sense that Holy Writ makes mention of a _mission_ of the Son and of the Spirit. The expression implies that the person concerning whom it is used, occupies toward the remaining divine persons a position admitting of the giving of a mission by them or one of them, that is to say, of a particular work done by the one by the power and at the delegation of the other. For one person of the Trinity to act in a mission, therefore, it is requisite that the power and the will to act must emanate from the person conferring the mission. Thus Jesus says that his doctrine is not his own, but the doctrine of him by whom he was sent. But one person of the Trinity can be a recipient from another in so far only as the recipient issues from the giver for ever and ever, or only in respect of the eternal procession. It follows that a divine person can receive a mission only in emanating from another, that is to say, none but the _personae productae_, the Son and the Holy Ghost, can be sent; while, on the other hand, only the _personae producentes_, the Father and the Son, can confer a mission. Hence the fundamental reason why the sway of the Spirit in the Church is exercised under the influence of Christ, is to be found in the manner of the eternal procession, _i.e._, in the coming of the Spirit from the Father and the Son.

The essence of Christianity consists in spiritual intercourse and spiritual influence. As distinguished from the old covenant, the characteristic of the New Testament dispensation consists in this: that it is done by the agency of the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven. The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets; but the same Spirit manifests a new activity since the mission from heaven. When the apostle desires to make the true foundation of faith clear to the Galatians, he contents himself with asking them whence they had received the Spirit? By its descent the blessing of Abraham came on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, in fulfilment of the prophecies. The pouring out of the Holy Ghost is the crowning work of Christ's mediation.

But what is the badge of this more profuse dispensation of the Spirit, thus recognized in Scripture as the peculiar mark of Christianity? Under the ancient covenant, answers St. Gregory of Naziance, the Holy Ghost was present only by its efficacy ([Greek text]); now it abides among us [Greek text] _i.e._, in its essence, or _substantialiter_, as our theologians phrase it. The efficacy of the Spirit in the prophets is described by St. Cyril of Alexandria as a mere irradiation [[Greek text]]; they received only the effulgence of the light, as those who follow a torch-bearer [[Greek text]]; while the Spirit in proper person enters into the souls of those who believe in Christ, and dwells therein [Greek text]. It is only since the ascension of Christ that the inhabitation of the Spirit in the souls of men has reached its completion as [Greek text]. This is the reason assigned by St. Cyril for the declaration of the Lord that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist, than whom there hath not risen a greater among them that are born of women. He interprets the kingdom of heaven here referred to to be the impartment [Greek text] of the Holy Ghost. From this interpretation he deduces the reason wherefore the humblest citizen of the kingdom of heaven is above the Baptist. For the latter is born of woman, the former of God. In consequence of this regeneration we are partakers of the divine nature, which St. Cyril interprets to mean neither more nor less than the dwelling of the Holy Ghost in our souls. [Footnote 153 ]

[Footnote 153: _Comment, in Joann. Evangel._, lib. 5. _Oper Lutet_, 1638, A. IV., p. 474 et seq. ]

As the head of the Church, the Son {743} of man, being lifted up from the earth, draws all men unto him. The Scripture concludes the narration of the miraculous events of the first Christian Passover and of their immediate results with the remark that the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved. Therefore, immediately after the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, began the daily increase of the Church through the fructifying influence of the grace of its head. They were multiplied in proportion as they walked in the comfort, the [Greek text], of the Holy Ghost. By one Spirit the Church of Christ is baptized into one body, which Spirit overflows it and saturates it with its essence. In him we were sealed as the possession of Christ, and we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us. On being received into the Church the members are built into an edifice, the foundation of which has its cornerstone in Christ. By this incorporation they are united into a mansion of God in the Spirit. In so far as we are joined unto the Lord we are one spirit with him, and our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost.

On account of its intimate relations with Christ, the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. Even the Lord himself is directly called the Spirit. By him, the Spirit of the Lord, we are transformed into his image, the image the Lord. Thereby the Spirit evinces itself the principle of our liberty.

The main result of the action of the Spirit in the Church is, therefore, the union of the latter and of her individual members with Christ, the Christ who is within us. The union between Christ and the Church is effected by the Spirit, who acts as the connecting link, while Christ himself is the efficient cause of the union, in so far as he sends his Spirit to accomplish it. How, then, is the inhabitation of the Spirit, which is identical with that of Christ, in the Church brought about? The answer to this question involves results decisive of the present investigation.

If the Church were an unattained ideal, according to the Protestant acceptation, the promise of Christ to be with his followers even unto the end of the world would admit of no more profound interpretation than that, after his personal departure, the Lord would continue to occupy the minds of his disciples, thus giving their thoughts a right direction through all time. The presence of Christ in the visible Church would no longer be vouchsafed by a _substantial_ pledge, making the repletion of the Church with Christ, which is the ideal of that institution, a historical reality even at the present day, in so far as the pledge is actually present. If, on the other hand, the latter view is the only scriptural one, then the true Church is not to be handed over exclusively to the future and to the realm of ideas. She is herself within the sphere of reality, she belongs to the living present, if the inmost principle of her being is even now actually at work, as a gift coeval with her establishment, not the mere object of search and speculation.

The idea of Catholicism presupposes one thing more. Such a principle dwelling in the Church as a reality must necessarily exercise its functions in a single individual image only. Both of these positions are the necessary results of the teachings of Holy Writ.

The Scriptures describe the Holy Ghost, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, as something conferred upon us, _per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis_. In the capacity of abiding in our souls as something bestowed upon us, as _donum_, the fathers distinguish a personal attribute of the Holy Ghost, having its foundation in the peculiar manner of its eternal emanation from the Father and Son. This emanation is wrought as a common infusion of being from Father and Son, as an intro-divine overflowing of love. [Footnote 154] Together {744} with the Holy Ghost that is given unto us, that is to say, by means of the love shed abroad in our hearts through him, the two other persons of the Trinity likewise come and take up their abode within our souls. The unity of the three divine persons is not only the antetype of the unity of the Church, but is at the same time its fundamental principle. In his high sacerdotal invocation the Lord prays that all those who believe through the word may be one, even as the Father is in him and he in the Father; and that we may be one in the Father and the Son, _ut et ipsi eis nolis unum sint_. The unity of the Father and the Son, who take up their abode within us simultaneously with the Holy Ghost, is the foundation of our own ecclesiastical unity. There is the fundamental, the ultimate principle of Catholicism. In it, through the Holy Ghost, we have a fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

[Footnote 154: _St. Augustinus, de Trinit._, lib. v., cap. 14: _Exiit enim non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus; et ideo non dicitur filius._ Cap. 15: _Quia sic procedebat ut esset donabile, jam donum erat et antequam esset cui daretur_. Cap. 11: _Spiritus sanctus ineffabilis est quaedam Patris Filiique communio. . . . hoc ipse proprie dicitur, quod illi communiter: quia et Pater spiritus et Filius spiritus et Pater sanctus et Filius sanctus. Ut ergo ex nomine, quod utrique convenit, utriusque communio significetur, vocatur donum amborum Spiritus sanctus._]

The other functions ascribed to the Spirit by Holy Writ are also of such a nature as to constrain us to assume that the essence of the true Church is a reality even at this day. By the Holy Ghost we receive even now an earnest of the inheritance in store for us. Its testimony assures us that we are the children of God. We have become such even now, and through him. We are born of the Spirit. The renewal accomplished by him is a bath of regeneration, the putting on of a new man. In the hearts of believers he is a well of water springing up into everlasting life. In this sense our justification may be regarded as a glorification in the germ. Christ has anointed the Church with a chrism which abides and exerts itself in her as a permanent teacher.

It is an entire misapprehension of the creative power of Christianity to ascribe to the Spirit of Christ which governs the Church no more profitable efficacy than the barren, resultless chase of an ideal which constantly eludes realization. The very idea that a law of steady development is to be traced in Christianity itself, this very favorite view of all the advocates of an ideal Church, ought to have led to a more profound appreciation of the essence and history of the Church. If the Church is to undergo a development, the realization of her ideal should not be postponed to the end of time. What is its course in history? This point is decisive of our position respecting the ideal Church.

The doctrine relies upon Matt, xviii. 20. Here the Catholic acceptation of a realization of the essence of the Church, historically manifested, would appear to be directly excluded. The passage adduced makes Christ abide among us, and accordingly makes the true Church come into being simply in consequence of the casual assemblage of two or three, so that it takes place in his name--a condition the performance or breach of which is a matter by no means patent to the senses. But these words are to be read in connection with what precedes them. Verses 17 and 18 allude to the authority of' the Church as historically manifest. The resolutions of that authority are ratified in heaven, and are valid before God. For--such is the logical thread of the discourse of Jesus--what the Church, as historically manifested, ordains, is at the same time ordained by the Holy Ghost dwelling within her. That such is actually the case, the Lord then proceeds to show by the concluding illustration. The agreement of two is alone sufficient to secure a fulfilment of the prayer: for where two or three are assembled together in the name of Christ, there is he in the midst of them: how much more amply then is the presence and the countenance of Christ assured to the entire Church, and to the organ intrusted with the execution of her {745} power! [Footnote 55] True, Christ is present even where only two or three are assembled in his name; but the result of his presence corresponds to the extent of the assembly. There Christ simply effects the fulfilment of the common prayer. That the arbitrary concourse of a few individuals in the name of Christ is the realization of the essence of the Church, nowhere in the whole passage is there a word to confirm such an interpretation.

[Footnote 155: This is the interpretation of this passage by the council of Chalcedon, in its missive to Pope Leo the Great. Compare _Ballerini, op. S. Leonis_ t. i., p. 1087.]

The advocates of the ideal Church also cite Eph. v. 27. [Footnote 156] There the Church is called holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle; a description supposed to be applicable exclusively to the Church that is to be, and by no means to the Church as it is. The remark is an idle one, and does not touch the real question. In our view it is the work of the present to lay the foundation for the future glory of the Church. This position is fully borne out by the words of Scripture. For in verse 26 the apostle points out the sanctification of the Church as the immediate object of the sacrifice of Christ, and at the same time indicates the means by which the Church is to be sanctified. This is done by the washing of water, which owes its purifying efficacy to the simultaneous utterance of the word. The presentation of the Church in unblemished holiness and glory, the object of the sacrificial death of Christ, is therefore gradually effected in the present world in proportion as the purification by the sacrament, under the continued influence of Christ, exerts its efficacy in he Church.

[Footnote 156: Hase, _Handbuch der prot. Polemik_ (Manual of Protestant Polemics), p. 42. ]

If the apostle were here speaking simply of a remote future holiness of the Church, his whole course of reasoning would lose its point. The love of Christ is here presented to husbands and wives as a model for their own connubial relations. As the self-sacrifice of Christ for the Church has for its object the sanctification of the latter, so the mutual self-devotion of husbands and wives is to invest their lives with a higher grace. It is not the mere act of the self-sacrifice of Christ which is to be emulated in marriage. No admonition would be needed for such a purpose. Marriage is necessarily a type of this relation. The discourse of the apostle tends, on the contrary, to recommend the motive of the sacrifice of Christ, and its influence upon the sanctification of the Church, to husbands and wives for imitation. How feeble, how little calculated to fortify the admonition of the apostle, would be their reference to the relation of Christ to the Church, if the sanctification of the Church by Christ, thus held up to husbands and wives for emulation, were something totally unreal, a mere creature of reflection! If the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how could husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear those moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the relation of Christ to the Church?

The holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments. But that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential character. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of the sacraments. This proves, finally, that this evolution of the character of the true Church is only possible in a single, individual historical manifestation, that is to say, only within, or at least by the agency [Footnote 157] of, that visible body politic which is in possession of the sacraments.

[Footnote 157: The means of grace administered by the Church sometimes exert their influence beyond the pale, _i.e._, outside of, her historical image. This is seen in the validity of the baptism of heretics. ]

Protestantism is untrue to its own principle in representing the administration of the sacraments according to their institution as an index of the true Church. The whole force of this position lies in the presumption of a {746} distinct historical organization as the necessary exponent of the inward essence of the true Church. A contrary doctrine is in danger of bestowing the name of the true Church on a society which may possibly be composed exclusively of hypocrites. The inference is obvious. If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? The reformer's idea of the Church is here entangled in a contradiction in terms. On the principle of justification by faith alone, the character of the true Church must be wholly expressed in something incorporeal. And yet the true Church is to be recognized by the use of the sacraments according to their institution. Where is the connecting link between the external and the internal Church? The congruence of the Spirit and the body of the Church, if it occurs, is purely accidental. The visible Church, taken by itself, is a mere external thing, possibly void of all substantial essence. The doctrine of _sola fides_ is incapable of a profound appreciation of the visible Church. This, taken in connection with the old Protestant theory that the phase of the Church manifested in preaching and in the sacraments is of the essence of the Church, makes it clear that the attempt of the reformers to spiritualize Christianity leads on the contrary to a materialization of the idea of the Church.

The modern Protestant theology was far from being deterred by its reverence for the reformers from laying bare this unsound portion of their system. They attempted to make up for it by the well known theory of the ideal Church, which begins by renouncing, in entire consistency with the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone, every outward manifestation of the essence of the Church.

The manifold forms in which Christianity becomes palpable as a power in history are here treated as something purely accidental, easily capable of severance from the essence of the true Church. How does this explanation comport with the doctrine of Scripture just expounded?

The Church of Christ, says Holy Writ, receives her unseen bridal ornaments by means of the palpable sacraments. In consequence of their efficacy she conceals the germs of her future glory under the guise of her temporal image. The most profound and super-sensual characteristic of the Church is, therefore, closely though mysteriously allied with the palpable exterior. It is not our present task to show how this alliance is formed. We simply inquire into the foundation of this necessary combination of the spirit and the form of the Church. This foundation we claim to discover in the sublimity of the principle heretofore recognized by us as the marrow, the heart of the Church.

If that which constitutes the heart of the Church is supernatural, and beyond the reach of the natural powers of the human mind, its impartment and preservation necessarily presuppose a peculiar influence of God upon man, different from the creative power. Under these circumstances, the precise method of the divine influence pervading the Church is only to be learned with certainty from revelation. And here we find the most explicit teachings on this subject. According to the testimony of Scripture, the Lord promotes the growth of the Church by means palpable to the senses. This suggests inquiry into the laws under which these means of grace find their application. Those laws are derived from the object of their institution. It consists in the adhibition of instrumentalities in the production of a divine effect. Consequently the means employed, or the sacraments, can manifest their efficacy only under certain conditions divinely ordained.

The correct understanding of the {747} mutual relations subsisting between the spirit and the body of the Church is further assisted by reference to another idea also derived from the Church. The regular growth of the Church is made intelligible to us as a self-edification in love. The means required for the attainment of this purpose have been given into the hands of the Church herself. For this end Peter received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He is not only the thread of the historical development of the Church, but the interior organization also necessarily presupposes a union with Peter. The organs of this organization are the sacraments. But they manifest their saving efficacy on those only who have not knowingly interrupted the chain of union between themselves and Peter, and their use is totally void of effect if the party by whom they are administered is not actuated by the desire of doing that which is done in sacramental ceremonies by the Church, united with Peter (_intentio faciendi quod facit ecclesia._)

The inmost principle, the heart of the Church, is inseparably connected with these visible actions, which are efficaciously administered only according to the intention and in the name of the visible Church, and in virtue of their efficacy the latter approves herself as holy. Thus the present inquiry leads to the same result already reached by other investigations. The spirit and the body of Catholicism are not to be separated. The connecting link which binds them together is Peter, the bearer of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who still lives in his successors. But the fountain-head of this necessary relationship is in the vital principle of the Church, in her supernatural principle.

The idea of a supernatural principle, and that of the papacy, together constitute the principle of Catholicism. In the former we behold its fundamental essence, in the latter the cement of its historical unity, as well as the connecting link between the interior and the exterior catholicity of the Church.

From The Month.

SONNET.

UNSPIRITUAL CIVILIZATION.

We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing; Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea, Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree, While all the ways with melody were ringing: In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging, Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry; Science made wise the nations; laws made free; Art, like an angel ever onward winging, Brightened the world. But, O great Lord and Father! Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race, That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather His soul subjected? with a blind embrace Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse 'Twixt God and man can set God's universe.

AUBREY DE VERE.

{748}

From The Month

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.