ill. First of all, sleepless nights: how could she sleep with the

sound of those waters by the deer pond in her ears? How could she help gazing perpetually at the picture on the pond's still surface: Horace and Sir Geoffrey, and herself not able to turn aside the death-stroke, but standing, fettered by she knew not what, in powerless misery, only obliged to see the changing face of her husband till the dead seemed to be again before her, and Horace melted out of sight, and she woke, dreading fever and praying against delirium? She was overcome at last. Terrible hours came, and "Mother-Mary's" sweet face mingling with some strong, subduing, life-endangering dream, was the first thing that seemed to bring her back to better things, and to restore her to herself.

In fact, Claudia had had brain fever, and whether or not she was ever to know real health again was a problem to be worked out by time. Would she come back to her father's house? No! The very name of Beremouth was to be avoided. Would she go abroad? Oh, no; there was a dread of separation upon her. "Somewhere where you can easily hear of me, and I of you; where you can come and see me, for I shall never see Beremouth again." It was her own thought, and so, about five miles from Beremouth, in the house of a Doctor Rankin, who took ladies out of health into his family, Claudia determined to go. It was every way the best thing that could be done, for every day showed more strongly than the last that Claudia would never be what is emphatically called "herself" again. So people said.

Dr. Rankin was kind, learned, and wise; Mrs. Rankin warm-hearted and friendly. Other patients beside Lady Greystock were there. It was not a private asylum, and Claudia was not mad; it was really what it called itself, a home which the sick might share, with medical attendance, cheerful company, and out-door recreations in a well-kept garden and extensive grounds of considerable beauty. Claudia had known Dr. and Mrs. Rankin, and had called with her father at Blagden, where they lived. And there her father and "Mother-Mary" took her three months after her husband's death, looking really aged, feeble, and strangely sad.

After a time--it was a long time--Claudia was said to be well. "Perfectly recovered," said Dr. Rankin, "and in really satisfactory health." So she was when Minnie Lorimer stood in the room at the inn in Hull, talking to that very Horace Erskine, who was bringing her home from her aunt's in Scotland to her mother at Beremouth.

"Sweet seventeen!" Very sweet and beautiful, pleasing the eye, gratifying the mind, filling the heart with hope, and setting imagination at play--Minnie Lorimer was beautiful, and with all that peculiar beauty about her that belongs to "a spoilt child" who has not been spoilt after all.

Claudia--how old she looked! Claudia, with that one only shadow on her once bright face, was still living with Dr. and Mrs. Rankin. It was Lady Greystock's pleasure to live with them. She said she had grown out of the position of a patient, and into their hearts as a friend. "Was it not so?" she asked. It was impossible to deny that which really brought happiness to everybody. "Well, then, I shall build on a few rooms to the house, and I shall call them mine, and I shall add to the coach-house, and hire a cottage for my groom and his wife--I shall live here. Why not? You will take care of me, and feed me, and scold me, and find me a good guidable creature. You know I shall be ill if you refuse."

It all happened as she chose. Hers was the prettiest carriage in the county, the best horses, the most perfectly appointed little household--for she had her own servants. Among her most devoted friends were the good doctor and his wife. Lady Greystock was as positive and as much given to {28} govern as the clever little Claudia in school-girl days. But the arrangement was a success, and "Mother-Mary," who saw her constantly, was very glad. Only one trouble survived; Claudia would never go and stay at Beremouth. She would drive her ponies merrily to the door, and even spend an hour or two within the house, but never would she stay there--never! She used to say to herself that she dared not trust herself with the things that had witnessed her love, her sorrow, her marriage--with the things that told her of him who had ruined everything like a murderer--as he was.

And so, to save appearances, she used to say that she never stayed away from Blagden for a single night, and she never left off black. It was not that she wore a widow's dress, or covered up the glories of her beautiful hair. She was but twenty-nine at the moment recorded in the first page of this story. She was very thin and pale, but she was a strong woman, and one who required no more care than any other person; but she had determined never again to see Horace Erskine. What he had done had become known to her, as we have seen. She only bargained with life, as it were, in this way, that _that_ man should be out of it for ever. And for this it was that she made her resolution and kept it.

Horace Erskine had been abroad for some years; but though she had felt safe in that fact, she had looked into the future and kept her resolution. And so she lived on at Blagden, doing good, blessing the poor, comforting the afflicted, visiting the sick, and beautifying all things, and adorning all places that came within her reach. Certain things she was young enough to enjoy greatly; the chief of these was the contemplation of Frederick Brewer, her half-brother, a fine boy of nine years old, for nine years of widowhood had been passed, and through all that time this boy, her dear father's son, had been Lady Greystock's delight. She loved "Mother-Mary" all the better for having given him to her father, and she felt a strong, unutterable thanksgiving that, his birth having been expected, the test of whether or not Horace Erskine loved her for herself had been applied before she had become chained to so terrible a destiny as that of being wife to a thankless, disappointed man. Terrible as her great trial had been, she might have suffered that which, to one of her temper, would have been far worse. So Fred Brewer would ride over to see his sister. Day after day the boy's bright face would be laid beside her own, and to him, and only to him, would she talk of Sir Geoffrey. Then they would ride together down to Marston to see Mrs. Morier and Jenifer, who was a true friend, and lived on those terms with the lady who loved her well; then to the market-place where the old home stood, now turned into an almshouse of an eccentric sort, with all rules included under one head, that the dear old souls were to have just whatever they wanted. Did Martha Gannet keep three parrots, and did they eat as much as a young heifer? and scream, too? ah, that was their nature--never go against a dumb creature's nature, Mr. Brewer said there was always cruelty in that--and did they smell, and give trouble, and would they be mischievous, and tear Mrs. Betty's cap? Indeed. Mr. Brewer was delighted. An excellent excuse for giving new caps to all the inmates, and to look up all troubles, and mend everybody's griefs--such an excellent thing it was that the fact of three parrots should lead to the discovery of so many disgraceful neglects that Mr. Brewer begged leave to apologize very heartily and sincerely while he diligently repaired them. It was a very odd school to bring up young Freddy in. But we are obliged to say that he was not at all the worse for it.

And here we must say what we have not said before. Mr. Brewer was a Catholic. He and Jenifer were {29} Catholics; Mrs. Brewer had not been a Catholic; and Claudia had been left to her mother's teaching. When Freddy was born, Mr. Brewer considered his ways. And what he saw in his life we may see shortly. He had been born of a Catholic mother who had died, and made his Protestant father promise to send him to a Catholic school. He had stood alone in the world, he had always stood alone in the world. He seemed to see nothing else. Three miles from Marston was a little dirty sea-port, also a sort of fishing place. A place that bore a bad character in a good many ways. Some people would have finished that character by saying that there were Papists there. To that place every Sunday Mr. Brewer went to mass. Many and many a lift he had given to Jenifer on those days. How much Jenifer's talk assisted his choice of Mary for his wife, we may guess. When Freddy was born Jenifer said her first words on the subject of religion to Mr. Brewer: "You will have him properly baptized:" "Of course." "Order me the pony cart, and I'll go to Father Daniels." "I must tell Mrs. Brewer." "Leave that to me--just send for the cart." It _was_ left to Jenifer. By night the priest had come and gone. It had not been his first visit. He had been there many times, and had known that he was welcome. The Clayton mission had felt the blessing of Mr. Brewer's gold. He had seldom been at the house in the market-place in Marston, but at Beremouth Mary had plucked her finest flowers, and sent them back in the old gentleman's gig, and he had been always made welcome in her husband's house with a pretty grace and many pleasant attentions. Now, when Freddy was baptized, Mr. Brewer went to his wife and bent over her, and said solemnly, "Mary--my dear wife; Mary--I thank thee, darling. I thank thee, my love." And the single tear that fell on her cheek she never forgot.

Then Mr. Brewer met Jenifer at his wife's door. "It's like a new life, Jenifer." And the steady-mannered woman looked in his bright eyes and saw how true his words were.

"It's a steady life of doing good to everybody that you have ever led, sir. It was a lonely life once, no doubt. I was dazed when she married you. But, eh, master; I have _that_ to think about, and _that_ to pray for, that a'most makes me believe in anything happening to _you_ for good, when so much is asked for, day and night, in my own prayer."

"Put _us_ into it; let me and mine be in Jenifer's prayer," he said, and passed on.

TO BE CONTINUED.

----

From The Month.

PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR THE STEAM-ENGINE.

The present year has been remarkable for the large number of machines invented for the purpose of superseding steam, in at least some of its lighter tasks. Many of these are due to French engineers; being further proofs, if any were required, of the great activity now displayed in France in all matters of mechanical invention.

Two of these new engines are especially interesting as illustrating that all-important law in modern physics, the correlation or convertibility of forces. By this is meant that the forces of inanimate nature, such as light, heat, electricity--nay, even the muscular and nerve forces of living beings--have such a mutual dependence and connection that each one is only produced or called into action by another, and only ceases to be manifest when it has given birth to a fresh force in its turn. Thus motion (in the {30} shape of friction) produces heat, electricity, or light; heat produces light or electricity; electricity, magnetism; and so on in an endless chain, which links together all the phenomena of this visible universe.

As a metaphysical principle, this is as old as Aristotle, and may be found dimly foreshadowed in the forcible lines of Lucretius:

"--Pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether In gremium matris terrai praecipitavit; At nitidae surgunt fruges, ramique virescunt, Arboribus crescunt ipsae, fetuque gravautur, Hinc alitar porro nostrum genus atque ferarum.

* * * * * *

Haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur, Quando aliud ex alio reflcit natura, nec ullam Rem gigni patitur, nisi morte adjuta aliena." [Footnote 8]

[Footnote 8: Lucret. lib. i. 250-65.]

But the rediscovery of this law, as a result of experiment, is due to English physicists of our own day; and it is so invariably true, and the produced force is always so perfectly proportioned to the force producing it, that some [Footnote 9] have gone so far as to revive a very old hypothesis in philosophy, supposing that all the forces of nature are but differently expressed forms of the Divine Will.

[Footnote 9: Dr. Carpenter, Philos. Trans. 1840, vol. ii. ]

As a corollary to this law, it follows that many a force of nature, hitherto neglected because of its position or intractability, may be turned to practical account by using it to produce some new power, which may be either stored up or transmitted to a distance, and so can be employed wherever and whenever it is required. Thus, in the first machine we propose to notice, a M. Cazal has just hit upon a plan by which to use the power of falling water at a considerable distance. He employs a water-wheel to turn a magneto-electric machine (of the kind used for medical purposes, on a very large scale), and the electric force so obtained may be conveyed to any distance, and employed there as a motive power. In this way a mountain stream in the Alps or Pyrenees may turn a lathe, or set a loom in motion, in a workshop in Paris or Lyons; or even (as has been remarked), if a wire were laid across the Atlantic, the whole force of Niagara would be at our disposal.

The idea is at present quite in its infancy; but we are told that the few experiments hitherto made show that such an engine is not only very ingenious but perfectly feasible, and (most important of all) economical.

The second engine gave promise of considerable success when first brought out in Paris about eight months ago. It was invented by a M. Tellier, and proceeds on the principle of storing up force, to be used when wanted. It has long been well known to chemists that a certain number of gases (as chlorine, carbonic acid, ammonia, and sulphuretted hydrogen) can be condensed into liquids by cold or pressure, or both combined. Of all these gases, ammonia is the most easily liquefied, requiring for this purpose, at ordinary temperatures, a pressure only six and a half times greater than that of the atmosphere. A supply of liquid ammonia obtained in this manner is kept by M. Tellier in a closed vessel, and surrounded with a freezing mixture, so that it has but little tendency to return to the gaseous state. A small quantity is allowed to escape from this reservoir under the piston of the engine, and, the temperature there being higher than in the reservoir, the ammonia becomes at once converted into gas, increasing thereby to more than twelve hundred times its previous bulk, and so driving the piston with great force to the top of the cylinder. A little water is now admitted, which entirely dissolves the ammonia, a vacuum being thus created, and the piston driven down again by the pressure of the air without. M. Tellier employs three such cylinders, which work in succession; and the only apparent limit to the power to be obtained from this machine is the amount of liquid ammonia which would have to be used, about three gallons (or twenty-two pounds) being required for each horse-power per hour. There is no waste of material; for the water which has dissolved {31} the gas is saved, and the ammonia recovered from it by evaporation, and afterwards condensed into a liquid. M. Tellier proposed to use his engine for propelling omnibuses and other vehicles; but it would appear that it is too expensive and too cumbrous to be practically useful; there can, however, be very little doubt that the principle will be used with success in some new form. A patent has quite recently been taken out for such an engine in England. It will be perceived at once how the ammonia engine illustrates the law of storing up force. It originates no power of its own, but simply gives out by degrees the mechanical force which had been previously employed to change the ammonia from a gas to a liquid.

Lenoir's "gas-engine" has been more successful; for, although but a few months old, it has been already largely adopted in Parisian hotels, schools, and other large establishments, for raising lifts, making ices, and even--for what is not done now-a-days by machinery?--cleaning boots. In London, it was lately exhibited in Cranbourne Street, and is now used for turning lathes and for other light work.

This engine, like the ammonia-engine, is provided with an ordinary cylinder, into which coal-gas and air are admitted, under the piston, in the proportions of eleven parts of the latter to one of the former. The mixture is then exploded by the electric spark, and the remaining air, being greatly expanded, drives up the piston. When the top is reached the gas and air are again admitted, but this time above the piston, and the explosion is repeated, so that the piston is driven down again. The most ingenious part of the whole thing is the mechanism by which the electric spark is directed alternately to the upper and lower ends of the cylinder. This cannot be satisfactorily explained without a diagram, but is brought about (roughly speaking) by connecting either end of the cylinder with a semicircle of brass, which is touched by the "rotary crank" in the course of its revolution. The crank is already charged with electricity, and so communicates the electric spark to each of the semicircles in turn. The cylinder is kept plunged in water, so that there is no fear of its overheating by the constant explosions.

This engine has cheapness for its main recommendation. A half-horsepower gas-engine (the commonest power made) costs, when complete, £65, and consumes twopence worth of gas per hour; while the cost of keeping the battery active is about fourpence per week.

An engineer of Lyons, M. Millon, has since proposed to use, instead of coal-gas, the gases produced by passing steam over red-hot coke. These gases are found to explode rather more quickly than coal-gas, when mixed with common air, and fired by the electric spark. They will probably be found cheaper and more efficient when they can be obtained; but in many cases coal-gas will be the only material available.

A M. Jules Gros has recently invented an engine in which gun-cotton is exploded in a strong reservoir and air compressed in another, the compressed air being afterward employed to move the pistons of the machine. This sounds more dangerous than it perhaps really is, since gun-cotton is now known to be more tractable than gunpowder, when properly used; but we very much doubt whether the machine can be regular or economical enough to be more than a curiosity.

To close the list of French inventions of this kind, we may state that Count de Molin has lately patented an electro-magnetic machine, which, he states, will be more powerful than any previously made. It is too complicated for a mere verbal description to be of any use; but is apparently not free from the fault of all electro-magnetic engines, of costing too much to be of practical value.

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[ORIGINAL]

CHRISTINE.

A TROUBADOUR'S SONG,

IN FIVE CANTOS,

BY GEORGE H. MILES. [Footnote 10]

[Footnote 10: Copyright secured.]

PRELUDE.

The Queen hath built her a fairy Bower In the shadow of the Accursed Tower, For the Moslem hath left his blood-stained lair, And the banner of England waveth there. Thither she lureth the Lion King To hear a wandering Trovère sing; For well she knew the Joyous Art Was surest path to Richard's heart. But the Monarch's glance was on the sea-- Sooth, he was scarce in minstrel mood, For Philip's triremes homeward stood With all the Gallic chivalry. And as he watched the filmy sail Upon the furthest billow fail, He muttered, "Richard ill can spare Thee and thy Templars, false and fair; Yet God hath willed it--home to thee, Death or Jerusalem for me!" Then pressing with a knightly kiss The peerless hand that slept in his, "Ah, would our own Blondel were here To try a measure I wove last e'en. What songster hast thou caught, my Queen, Whose harp may soothe a Monarch's ear?" She beckoned, and the Trovère bowed To many a Lord and Ladye fair That gathered round the royal pair; But most his simple song was vowed To a sweet shape with dark brown hair, Half hidden in the gentle crowd; Pale as a spirit, sharply slender. In maiden beauty's crescent splendor. And never yet bent Minstrel knee To Mistress lovelier than she.

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THE FIRST SONG.

I.

Ye have heard of the Castle of Miolan And how it hath stood since time began, Midway to yon mountain's brow, Guarding the beautiful valley below: Its crest the clouds, its ancient feet Where the Arc and the Isère murmuring meet Earth hath few lovelier scenes to show Than Miolan with its hundred halls, Its massive towers and bannered walls, Looming out through the vines and walnut woods That gladden its stately solitudes. And there might ye hear but yestermorn The loud halloo and the hunter's horn, The laugh of mailèd men at play. The drinking bout and the roundelay. But now all is sternest silence there. Save the bell that calls to vesper prayer; Save the ceaseless surge of a father's wail, And, hark! ye may hear the Baron's Tale.

II.

"Come hither. Hermit!--Yestermorn I had an only son, A gallant fair as e'er was born, A knight whose spurs were won In the red tide by Godfrey's side At Ascalon.

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"But yestermorn he came to me For blessing on his lance, And death and danger seemed to flee The joyaunce of his glance, For he would ride to win his Bride, Christine of France.

"All sparkling in the sun he stood In mail of Milan dressed, A scarf, the gift of her he wooed, Lay lightly o'er his breast. As, with a clang, to horse he sprang With nodding crest

"Gaily he grasped the stirrup cup Afoam with spicy ale, But as he took the goblet up Methought his cheek grew pale. And a shudder ran through the iron man And through his mail.

"Oft had I seen him breast the shock Of squire or crownèd king, His front was firm as rooted rock When spears were shivering: I knew no blow could shake him so From living thing.

"'Twas something near akin to death That blanched and froze his cheek, Yet 'twas not death, for he had breath, And when I bade him speak, Unto his breast his hand he pressed With one wild shriek.

"The hand thus clasped upon his heart So sharply curbed the rein, Grey Caliph, rearing with a start, Went bounding o'er the plain Away, away with echoing neigh And streaming mane.

"After him sped the menial throng; I stirred not in my fear; Perchance I swooned, for it seemed not long Ere the race did reappear, And my son still led on his desert-bred. Grasping his spear.

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"Unchanged in look or limb, he came. He and his barb so fleet, His hand still on his heart, the same Stem bearing in his seat, And wheeling round with sudden bound Stopped at my feet.

"And soon as ceased that wildering tramp 'What ails thee, boy?' I cried-- Taking his hand all chill and damp-- 'What means this fearful ride? Alight, alight, for lips so white Would scare a Bride!'

"But sternly to his steed clove he, And answer made he none, I clasped him by his barbèd knee And there I made my moan; While icily he stared at me, At me alone.

"A strange, unmeaning stare was that, And a page beside me said, 'If ever corse in saddle sat, Our lord is certes sped!' But I smote the lad, for it drove me mad To think him dead.

"What! dead so young, what! lost so soon, My beautiful, my brave! Sooner the sun should find at noon In central heaven a grave! Sweet Jesu, no, it is not so When Thou canst save!

"For was he dead and was he sped, When he could ride so well, So bravely bear his plumèd head? Or, was't some spirit fell In causeless wrath had crossed his path With fiendish spell?

"Oh. Hermit, 'twas a cruel sight. And He, who loves to bless, Ne'er sent on son such bitter blight. On sire such sore distress, Such piteous pass, and I, alas, So powerless!

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"They would have ta'en him from his horse The while I wept and prayed, They would have lain him like a corse Upon a litter made Of traversed spear and martial gear. But I forbade.

"I gazed into his face again, I chafed his hand once more, I summoned him to speak, in vain-- He sat there as before, While the gallant Grey in dumb dismay His rider bore.

"Full well, full well Grey Caliph then The horror seemed to know. E'en deeper than my mailèd men Methought he felt our woe; For the barbed head of the desert-bred Was drooping low.

"Amazed, aghast, he gazed at me, That mourner true and good. Then backward at my boy looted he. As if a word he sued. And like sculptured pile in abbey aisle The train there stood.

"I took the rein: the frozen one Still fast in saddle sate. As tremblingly I led him on Toward the great castle gate. O walls mine own, why have ye grown So desolate?--

"I led them to the castle gate And paused before the shrine Where throned in state from earliest date, Protectress of our line. Madonna pressed close to her breast The Babe Divine.

"And kneeling lowly at her feet, I begged the Mother mild That she would sue her Jesu sweet To aid my stricken child; And the meek stone face flashed full of grace As if she smiled.

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"And methought the eyes of the Full of Grace Upon my darling shone, Till living seemed that marble face And the living man seemed stone, While a halo played round the Mother Maid And round her Son.

"And there was radiance everywhere Surpassing light of day, On man and horse, on shield and spear Burned the bright, blinding ray; But most it shone on my only one And his gallant Grey.

"A sudden clang of armor rang, My boy lay on the sward. Up high in air Grey Caliph sprang, An instant fiercely pawed. Then trembling stood aghast and viewed His fallen lord.

"Then with the flash of fire away Like sunbeam o'er the plain, Away, away with echoing neigh And wildly waving mane. Away he sped, loose from his head The flying rein.

"I watched the steed from pass to pass Unto the welkin's rim, I feared to turn my eyes, alas, To trust a look at him; And when I turned, my temples burned And all grew dim.

"Sweet if such swoon could endless be, Yet speedily I woke And missed my boy: they showed him me Full length on bed of oak. Clad as 'twas meet in mail complete And sable cloak.

"All of our race upon that bier Had rested one by one, I had seen my father lying there, And now there lay my son! Ah! my sick soul bled the while it said-- 'Thy will be done!'

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"Bright glanced the crest, bright gleamed the spur, That well had played their part, His lance still clasped, nor could they stir His left hand from his heart; There fast it clove, nor would it move With all their art

"I found no voice, I shed no tear. They thought me well resigned. All else who stood around the bier With weeping much were blind; And a mourning voice went through the house Like a low wind.

"And there was sob of aged man And woman's wailing cry, All cheeks were wan, all eyes o'erran, Yon fair-haired maidens sigh. And one apart with breaking heart Weeps bitterly.

"But sharper than spear-thrust, I trow, Their wailing through me went; Stem silence suited best my woe, And, howe'er well the intent. Their menial din seemed half akin To merriment

"For oh, such grief was mock to mine Whose days were all undone. The last of all this ancient line To share whose grief was none! Straight from the hall I barred them all And stood alone.

"'Receive me now, thou bed of oak!' I fell upon the bier. And, Hermit, when this morning broke It found me clinging there. O maddening morn! That day dare dawn On such a pair!

"I sent for thee, thou man of God, To watch with me to-night; My boy still liveth, by the rood, Nor shall be funeral rite!-- But, Hermit, come: this is the room: There lies the Knight!"

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III.

But she apart With breaking heart?-- That very yestermorn she stood In the deepest shade of the walnut wood, As a Knight rode by on his raven steed, Crying, "Daughter mine, hast thou done the deed? I gave thee the venom, I gave thee the spell, A jealous heart might use them well." But she waved her white arms and only said, "On oaken bier is Miolan laid!" "Dead!" laughed the Knight. "Then round Pilate's Peak Let the red light burn and the eagle shriek. When Miolan? heir lies on the bier, Low is the only lance I fear: I ride, I ride to win my Bride, Ho, Eblis, to thy servant's side. Thou hast sworn no foe Shall lay me low Till the dead in arms against me ride!"

THE SECOND SONG.

I.

They passed into an ancient hall With oaken arches spanned. Full many a shield hung on the wall, Full many a broken brand. And barbèd spear and scimetar From Holy Land.

And scarfs of dames of high degree With gold and jewels rich, And many a mouldered effigy In many a mouldering niche, Like grey sea shells whose crumbling cells Bestrew the beach.

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The sacred dead possessed the place, The silent cobweb wreathed The tombs where slept that warrior race, With swords for ever sheathed: You seemed to share the very air Which they had breathed.

Oh, darksome was that funeral room, Those oaken arches dim, The torchlight, struggling through the gloom, Fell faint on effige grim, On dragon dread and carvèd head Of Cherubim.

Of Cherubim fast by a shrine Whereon the last sad rite Was wont for all that ancient line, For dame and belted knight-- A shrine of Moan which death alone Did ever light.

But light not now that altar stone While hope of life remain, Though darksome be that altar lone, Unlit that funeral fane, Save by the rays cast by the blaze Of torches twain.

Of torches twain at head and heel Of him who seemeth dead, Who sleepeth so well in his coat of steel. His cloak around him spread-- The young Knight fair, who lieth there On oaken bed.

One hand still fastened to his heart. The other on his lance, While through his eyelids, half apart. Life seemeth half to glance. "Sweet youth awake, for Jesu's sake, From this strange trance!"

But heed or answer there is none. Then knelt that Hermit old; To Mother Mary and her Son Full many a prayer he told, Whose wondrous words the Church records In lettered gold:

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And many a precious litany And many a pious vow, Then rising said, "If fiend it be, That fiend shall leave thee now!" And traced the sign of the Cross divine On lips and brow.

As well expect yon cherub's wings To wave at matin bell! Not all the relics of the kings Could break that iron spell. "Pray for the dead, let mass be said, Toll forth the knell!"

"Not yet!" the Baron gasped and sank As if beneath a blow, With lips all writhing as they drank The dregs of deepest woe; With eyes aglare, and scattered hair Tossed to and fro.

So swings the leaf that lingers last When wintry tempests sweep, So reels when storms have stripped the mast The galley on the deep, So nods the snow on Eigher's brow Before the leap.

Uncertain 'mid his tangled hair His palsied fingers stray, He smileth in his dumb despair Like a sick child at play. Though wet, I trow, with tears eno' That beard so grey.

Oh, Hermit, lift him to your breast, There best his heart may bleed; Since none but heaven can give him rest, Heaven's priest must meet his need: Dry that white beard, now wet and weird As pale sea-weed.

Uprising slowly from the ground, With short and frequent breath. In aimless circles, round and round, The Baron tottereth With trailing feet, a mourner meet For house of death.

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Till, pausing by the shrine of Moan, He said, the while he wept, "Here, Hermit, here mine only one, When all the castle slept, As maiden knight, o'er armor bright, His first watch kept.

"This is the casque that first he wore, And this his virgin shield. This lance to his first tilt he bore, With this first took the field-- How light, how lâche to that huge ash He now doth wield!

"This blade hath levelled at a blow The she-wolf in her den. With this red falchion he laid low The slippery Saracen. God! will that hand, so near his brand, Ne'er strike again?

"Frown not on him, ye men of old. Whose glorious race is run; Frown not on him, my fathers bold. Though many the field ye won: His name and los may mate with yours Though but begun!

"Receive him, ye departed brave, Unlock the gates of light. And range yourselves about his grave To hail a brother knight. Who never erred in deed or word Against the right!

"But is he dead and is he sped Withouten scathe or scar? Why, Hermit, he hath often bled From sword and scimetar-- I've seen him ride, wounds gaping wide, From war to war.

"And hath a silent, viewless thing Laid danger's darling low, When youth and hope were on the wing And life in morning glow? Not yonder worm in winter's storm Perisheth so!

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"Oh, Hermit, thou hast heard, I ween, Of trances long and deep, But, Hermit, hast thou ever seen That grim and stony sleep. And canst thou tell how long a spell Such slumbers keep?

"Oh, be there naught to break the charm, To thaw this icy chain; Has Mother Church no word to warm These freezing lips again; Be holy prayer and balsams rare Alike in vain? . . . .

"A curse on thy ill-omened head; Man, bid me not despair; Churl, say not that a Knight is dead When he can couch his spear; When he can ride--Monk, thou hast lied. He lives, I swear!

"Up from that bier! Boy, to thy feet! Know'st not thy father's voice? Thou ne'er hast disobeyed . . . is't meet A sire should summon thrice? By these grey hairs, by these salt tears, Awake, arise!

"Ho, lover, to thy ladye flee, Dig deep the crimson spur; Sleep not 'twixt this lean monk and me When thou shouldst kneel to her! Oh 'tis a sin, Christine to win And thou not stir!

"Ho, laggard, hear yon trumpet's note Go sounding to the skies, The lists are set, the banners float. Yon loud-mouthed herald cries, 'Ride, gallant knights, Christine invites. Herself the prize!'

"Ho, craven, shun'st thou the melée, When she expects thy brand To prove to-day in fair tourney A title to her hand? Up, dullard base, or by the mass I'll make thee stand!" . . . .

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Thrice strove he then to wrench apart Those fingers from the spear. Thrice strove to sever from the heart The hand that rested there. Thrice strove in vain with frantic strain That shook the bier.

Thrice with the dead the living strove, Their armor rang a peal, The sleeping knight he would not move Although the sire did reel: That stately corse defied all force, Stubborn as steel.

"Ay, dead, dead, dead!" the Baron cried; "Dear Hermit, I did rave. O were we sleeping side by side! . . Good monk, I penance crave For all I said .... Ay, he is dead, Pray heaven to save!

"Betake thee to thy crucifix, And let me while I may Rain kisses on these frozen cheeks Before they know decay. Leave me to weep and watch and keep The worm at bay.

"Thou wilt not spare thy prayers, I trust; But name not now the grave-- I'll watch him to the very dust! .... So, Hermit, to thy cave. Whilst here I cling lest creeping thing Insult the brave!"

Why starts the Hermit to his feet, why springs he to the bier, Why calleth he on Jesu sweet, Staying the starting tear. What whispereth he half trustfully And half in fear?

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"Sir Knight, thy ring hath razed his flesh-- 'Twas in thy frenzy done; Lo, from his wrist how fast and fresh The blood-drops trickling run; Heaven yet may wake, for Mary's sake, Thy warrior son.

"Heap ashes on thy head, Sir Knight, In sackcloth gird thee well, The shrine of Moan must blaze in light, The morning mass must swell; Arouse from sleep the castle keep, Sound every bell!"

They come, pale maid and mailèd man They throng into the hall, The watcher from the barbican, The warder from the wall. And she apart, with breaking heart, The last of all.

"__Introibo! _Introibo!_" The morning mass begins; "_Mea culpa! mea culpa!_" Forgive us all our sins; And the rapt Hermit chaunts with streaming eyes, That seem to enter Paradise, "_Gloria! Gloria!_" The shrine of Moan had never known That gladdest of all hymns.

II.

The fair-haired maiden standeth apart In the chapel gloom, with breaking heart. But a smile broke over her face as she said, "The draught was well measured, I ween; He liveth, thank Allah, but not to wed His beautiful Christine. No lance hath Miolan couched to-day: Let the bride for the bridegroom watch, and pray. Till the lists shall hear the shriek Of the Dauphin's daughter borne away By the Knight of Pilate's Peak."

TO BE CONTINUED.

{46}

A LETTER TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D., ON HIS RECENT EIRENICON.

BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., OF THE ORATORY.

Veni, Domine, et noli tardare, relaxa facinora plebi tuae; et rovoca dispersos in terram suam.

No one who desires the union of Christendom, after its many and long-standing divisions, can have any other feeling than joy, my dear Pusey, at finding from your recent volume that you see your way to make definite proposals to us for effecting that great object, and are able to lay down the basis and conditions on which you could co-operate in advancing it. It is not necessary that we should concur in the details of your scheme, or in the principles which it involves, in order to welcome the important fact that, with your personal knowledge of the Anglican body, and your experience of its composition and tendencies, you consider the time to be come when you and your friends may, without imprudence, turn your minds to the contemplation of such an enterprise. Even were you an individual member of that church, a watchman upon a high tower in a metropolis of religious opinion, we should naturally listen with interest to what you had to report of the state of the sky and the progress of the night, what stars were mounting up or what clouds gathering; what were the prospects of the three great parties which Anglicanism contains within it, and what was just now the action upon them respectively of the politics and science of the time. You do not go into these matters; but the step you have taken is evidently the measure and the issue of the view which you have formed of them all.

However, you are not a mere individual; from early youth you have devoted yourself to the Established Church, and after between forty and fifty years of unremitting labor in its service, your roots and your branches stretch out through every portion of its large territory. You, more than any one else alive, have been the present and untiring agent by whom a great work has been effected in it; and, far more than is usual, you have received in your lifetime, as well as merited, the confidence of your brethren. You cannot speak merely for yourself; your antecedents, your existing influence, are a pledge to us that what you may determine will be the determination of a multitude. Numbers, too, for whom you cannot properly be said to speak, will be moved by your authority or your arguments; and numbers, again, who are of a school more recent than your own, and who are only not your followers because they have outstripped you in their free speeches and demonstrative acts in our behalf, will, for the occasion, accept you as their spokesman. There is no one anywhere--among ourselves, in your own body, or, I suppose, in the Greek Church--who can affect so vast a circle of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned, so zealous, as come, more or less, under your influence; and I cannot pay them all a greater compliment, than to tell them they ought all to be Catholics, nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray that they may one day become such. Nor can I address myself to an act more pleasing, as I trust, to the Divine Lord of the church, and more loyal and dutiful to his Vicar on earth, than to attempt, however, feebly, to promote so great a consummation.

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I know the joy it would give those conscientious men of whom I am speaking to be one with ourselves. I know how their hearts spring up with a spontaneous transport at the very thought of union; and what yearning is theirs after that great privilege, which they have not, communion with the See of Peter and its present, past, and future. I conjecture it by what I used to feel myself, while yet in the Anglican Church. I recollect well what an outcast I seemed to myself when I took down from the shelves of my library the volumes of St. Athanasius or St. Basil, and set myself to study them; and how, on the contrary, when at length I was brought into Catholicism, I kissed them with delight, with a feeling that in them I had more than all that I had lost, and, as though I were directly addressing the glorious saints who bequeathed them to the Church, I said to the inanimate pages, "You are now mine, and I am now yours, beyond any mistake." Such, I conceive, would be the joy of the persons I speak of, if they could wake up one morning and find themselves possessed by right of Catholic traditions and hopes, without violence to their own sense of duty; and, certainly, I am the last man to say that such violence is in any case lawful, that the claims of conscience are not paramount, or that any one may overleap what he deliberately holds to be God's command, in order to make his path easier for him or his heart lighter.

I am the last man to quarrel with this jealous deference to the voice of our conscience, whatever judgment others may form of us in consequence, for this reason--because their case, as it at present stands, has, as you know, been my own. You recollect well what hard things were said against us twenty-five years ago, which we knew in our hearts we did not deserve. Hence, I am now in the position of the fugitive queen in the well-known passage, who, "haud ignara mali" herself, had learned to sympathize with those who were inheritors of her past wanderings. There were priests, good men, whose zeal outstripped their knowledge, and who in consequence spoke confidently, when they would have been wiser had they suspended their adverse judgment of those whom they had soon to welcome as brethren in communion. We at that time were in worse plight than your friends are now, for our opponents put their very hardest thoughts of us into print. One of them wrote thus in a letter addressed to one of the Catholic bishops:

"That this Oxford crisis is a real progress to Catholicism, I have all along considered a perfect delusion. ... I look upon Mr. Newman, Dr. Pusey, and their associates as wily and crafty, though unskilful, guides. . . . The embrace of Mr. Newman is the kiss that would betray us. . . . But--what is the most striking feature in the rancorous malignity of these men--their calumnies are often lavished upon us, when we should be led to think that the subject-matter of their treatises closed every avenue against their vituperation. The three last volumes [of the Tracts] have opened my eyes to the craftiness and the cunning, as well as the malice, of the members of the Oxford convention. . . . If the Puseyites are to be the new apostles of Great Britain, my hopes for my country are lowering and gloomy. . . . I would never have consented to enter the lists against this strange confraternity ... if I did not feel that my own prelate was opposed to the guile and treachery of these men. . . . . I impeach Dr. Pusey and his friends of a deadly hatred of our religion. . . . . What, my lord, would the Holy See think of the works of these Puseyites? . . ."

Another priest, himself a convert, wrote:

"As we approach toward Catholicity our love and respect increases, and our violence dies away; but the bulk of these men become more rabid as they become like Rome, a plain proof of their designs. ... I do not believe that they are any nearer the portals of the Catholic Church than the most prejudiced Methodist and Evangelical preacher. . . . Such, rev. sir, is an outline of my views on the Oxford movement."

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I do not say that such a view of us was unnatural; and, for myself, I readily confess that I had used about the church such language that I had no claim on Catholics for any mercy. But, after all, and in fact, they were wrong in their anticipations--nor did their brethren agree with them at the time. Especially Dr. Wiseman (as he was then) took a larger and more generous view of us; nor did the Holy See interfere, though the writer of one of these passages invoked its judgment. The event showed that the more cautious line of conduct was the more prudent; and one of the bishops, who had taken part against us, with a supererogation of charity, sent me on his death-bed an expression of his sorrow for having in past years mistrusted me. A faulty conscience, faithfully obeyed, through God's mercy, had in the long run brought me right.

Fully, then, do I recognize the rights of conscience in this matter. I find no fault in your stating, as clearly and completely as you can, the difficulties which stand in the way of your joining us. I cannot wonder that you begin with stipulating conditions of union, though I do not concur in them myself, and think that in the event you yourself would be content to let them drop. Such representations as yours are necessary to open the subject in debate; they ascertain how the land lies, and serve to clear the ground. Thus I begin; but, after allowing as much as this, I am obliged in honesty to say what I fear, my dear Pusey, will pain you. Yet I am confident, my very dear friend, that at least you will not be angry with me if I say, what I must say, or say nothing at all, that there is much both in the matter and in the manner of your volume calculated to wound those who love you well, but love truth more. So it is; with the best motives and kindest intentions, "Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem." We give you a sharp cut, and you return it. You complain of our being "dry, hard, and unsympathizing;" and we answer that you are unfair and irritating. But we at least have not professed to be composing an Irenicon, when we treated you as foes. There was one of old time who wreathed his sword in myrtle; excuse me--you discharge your olive-branch as if from a catapult.

Do not think I am not serious; if I spoke seriously, I should seem to speak harshly. Who will venture to assert that the hundred pages which you have devoted to the Blessed Virgin give other than a one-sided view of our teaching about her, little suited to win us? It may be a salutary castigation, if any of us have fairly provoked it, but it is not making the best of matters; it is not smoothing the way for an understanding or a compromise. It leads a writer in the most moderate and liberal Anglican newspaper of the day, the "Guardian," to turn away from your representation of us with horror. "It is language," says your reviewer, "which, after having often heard it, we still can only hear with horror. We had rather not quote any of it, or of the comments upon it." What could an Exeter Hall orator, what could a Scotch commentator on the Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the controversy by the picture he drew of us? You may be sure that what creates horror on one side will be answered by indignation on the other, and these are not the most favorable dispositions for a peace conference. I had been accustomed to think that you, who in times past were ever less declamatory in controversy than myself, now that years had gone on, and circumstances changed, had come to look on our old warfare against Rome as cruel and inexpedient. Indeed, I know that it was a chief objection urged against me only last year by persons who agreed with you in deprecating an oratory at Oxford, which at that time was in prospect, that such an undertaking would be the signal for the rekindling of that fierce style of polemics which is now out of date. I had fancied you shared in that opinion; but now, as if {49} to show how imperative you deem its renewal, you actually bring to life one of my own strong sayings in 1841, which had long been in the grave--that "the Roman Church comes as near to idolatry as can be supposed in a church, of which it said, 'The idols he shall utterly abolish,'" p. 111.

I know, indeed, and feel deeply, that your frequent references in your volume to what I have lately or formerly written are caused by your strong desire to be still one with me as far as you can, and by that true affection which takes pleasure in dwelling on such sayings of mine as you can still accept with the full approbation of your judgment. I trust I am not ungrateful or irresponsive to you in this respect; but other considerations have an imperative claim to be taken into account. Pleasant as it is to agree with you, I am bound to explain myself in cases in which I have changed my mind, or have given a wrong impression of my meaning, or have been wrongly reported; and, while I trust that I have better than such personal motives for addressing you in print, yet it will serve to introduce my main subject, and give me an opportunity for remarks which bear upon it indirectly, if I dwell for a page or two on such matters contained in your volume as concern myself.

1. The mistake which I have principally in view is the belief, which is widely spread, that I have publicly spoken of the Anglican Church as "the great bulwark against infidelity in this land." In a pamphlet of yours, a year old, you spoke of "a very earnest body of Roman Catholics" who "rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England (whatever they think of her), and are saddened by what weakens her who is, in God's hands, the great bulwark against infidelity in this land." The concluding words you were thought to quote from my "Apologia." In consequence, Dr. Manning, now our archbishop, replied to you, asserting, as you say, "the contradictory of that statement." In that counter-assertion he was at the time generally considered (rightly or wrongly, as it may be), though writing to you, to be really correcting statements in my "Apologia," without introducing my name. Further, in the volume which you have now published, you recur to the saying, and you speak of its author in terms which, did I not know your partial kindness for me, would hinder me from identifying him with myself. You say, "The saying was not mine, but that of one of the deepest thinkers and observers in the Roman communion," p. 7. A friend has suggested to me that, perhaps, you mean De Maistre; and, from an anonymous letter which I have received from Dublin, I find it is certain that the very words in question were once used by Archbishop Murray; but you speak of the author of them as if now alive. At length a reviewer of your volume, in the "Weekly Register," distinctly attributes them to me by name, and gives me the first opportunity I have had of disowning them; and this I now do. What, at some time or other, I may have said in conversation or private letter, of course, I cannot tell; but I have never, I am sure, used the word "bulwark" of the Anglican Church deliberately. What I said in my "Apologia" was this: That that church was "a serviceable breakwater against errors more fundamental than its own." A bulwark is an integral part of the thing it defends; whereas the words "serviceable" and "breakwater" imply a kind of protection which is accidental and _de facto_. Again, in saying that the Anglican Church is a defence against "errors more fundamental than its own," I imply that it has errors, and those fundamental.

2. There is another passage in your volume, at p. 337, which it may be right to observe upon. You have made a collection of passages from the fathers, as witnesses in behalf of your doctrine that the whole Christian faith is contained in Scripture, as if, in your sense of the words. Catholics contradicted you here. {50} And you refer to my notes on St. Athanasius as contributing passages to your list; but, after all, neither do you, nor do I in my notes, affirm any doctrine which Rome denies. Those notes also make frequent reference to a traditional teaching, which (be the faith ever so certainly contained in Scripture) still is necessary as a Regula Fidei, for showing us that it is contained there--_vid_. pp. 283, 344--and this tradition, I know, you uphold as fully as I do in the notes in question. In consequence, you allow that there is a twofold rule. Scripture and tradition; and this is all that Catholics say. How, then, do Anglicans differ from Rome here? I believe the difference is merely one of words; and I shall be doing, so far, the work of an Irenicon, if I make clear what this verbal difference is. Catholics and Anglicans (I do not say Protestants) attach different meanings to the word "proof," in the controversy whether the whole faith is, or is not, contained in Scripture. We mean that not every article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be logically proved, _independently_ of the teaching and authority of the tradition; but Anglicans mean that every article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be proved, _provided_ there be added the illustrations and compensations of the tradition. And it is in this latter sense, I conceive, the fathers also speak in the passages which you quote from them. I am sure at least that St. Athanasius frequently adduces passages as proofs of points in controversy which no one would see to be proofs unless apostolical tradition were taken into account, first as suggesting, then as authoritatively ruling, their meaning. Thus, _you_ do not deny that the whole is not in Scripture in such sense that pure unaided logic can draw it from the sacred text; nor do _we_ deny that the faith is in Scripture, in an improper sense, in the sense that _tradition_ is able to recognize and determine it there. You do not profess to dispense with tradition; nor do we forbid the idea of probable, secondary, symbolical, connotative senses of Scripture, over and above those which properly belong to the wording and context. I hope you will agree with me in this.

3. Nor is it only in isolated passages that you give me a place in your volume. A considerable portion of it is written with reference to two publications of mine, one of which you name and defend, the other you tacitly protest against: "Tract 90," and the "Essay on Doctrinal Development," As to "Tract 90," you have from the first, as all the world knows, boldly stood up for it, in spite of the obloquy which it brought upon you, and have done me a great service. You are now republishing it with my cordial concurrence; but I take this opportunity of noticing, lest there should be any mistake on the part of the public, that you do so with a different object from that which I had when I wrote it. Its original purpose was simply that of justifying myself and others in subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles while professing many tenets which had popularly been considered distinctive of the Roman faith. I considered that my interpretation of the Articles, as I gave it in that Tract, would stand, provided the parties imposing them allowed it, otherwise I thought it could not stand; and, when in the event the bishops and public opinion did not allow it, I gave up my living, as having no right to retain it. My feeling about the interpretation is expressed in a passage in "Loss and Gain," which runs thus:

"'Is it,' asked Reding, 'a received view?' 'No view is received,' said the other; 'the Articles themselves are received, but there is no authoritative interpretation of them at all.' 'Well,' said Reding, 'is it a tolerated view?' 'It certainly has been strongly opposed,' answered Bateman; 'but it has never been condemned.' 'That is no answer,' said Charles. 'Does any one bishop hold it? Did any one bishop ever hold it? Has it ever been formally admitted as tenable by any one bishop? Is it a view got up to meet existing difficulties, or has it an historical existence?' Bateman could give only one answer to {51} these questions, as they were successively put to him. 'I thought so,' said Charles; 'the view is specious certainly. I don't we why it might not have done, had it been tolerably sanctioned; but you have no sanction to show me. As it stands, it is a mere theory struck out by individuals. Our church _might_ have adopted this mode of interpreting the Articles; but, from what you tell me, it certainly has not done so.'"--Ch. 15.

However, the Tract did not carry its object and conditions on its face, and necessarily lay open to interpretations very far from the true one. Dr. Wiseman (as he then was), in particular, with the keen apprehension which was his characteristic, at once saw in it a basis of accommodation between Anglicanism and Rome. He suggested broadly that the decrees of the Council of Trent should be made the rule of interpretation for the Thirty-nine Articles, a proceeding of which Sancta Clara, I think, had set the example; and, as you have observed, published a letter to Lord Shrewsbury on the subject, of which the following are extracts:

"We Catholics must necessarily deplore [England's] separation as a deep moral evil--as state of schism of which nothing can justify the continuance. Many members of the Anglican Church view it in the same light as to the first point--its sad evil; though they excuse their individual position in it as an unavoidable misfortune. . . . We may depend upon a willing, an able, and a most zealous co-operation with any effort which we may make toward bringing her into her rightful position, in Catholic unity with the Holy See and the churches of its obedience--in other words, with the church Catholic. Is this a visionary idea? Is it merely the expression of strong desire? I know that many will so judge it; and, perhaps, were I to consult my own quiet, I would not venture to express it. But I will, in simplicity of heart, cling to hopefulness, cheered, as I feel it, by so many promising appearances. . . .

"A natural question here presents itself--what facilities appear in the present state of things for bringing about so happy a consummation as the reunion of England to the Catholic Church, beyond what have before existed, and particularly under Archbishops Laud or Wake? It strikes me, many. First, etc. . . . A still more promising circumstance I think your lordship will with me consider the _plan_ which the eventful 'Tract No. 90' has pursued, and in which Mr. Ward, Mr. Oakeley, and even Dr. Pusey have agreed. I allude to the method of _bringing their doctrines into accordance with ours by explanation._ A foreign priest has pointed out to us a valuable document for our consideration--'Bossuet's Reply to the Pope,' when consulted on the best method of reconciling the followers of the Augsburg Confession with the Holy See. The learned bishop observes, that Providence had allowed so much Catholic truth to be preserved in that Confession that full advantage should be taken of the circumstance; that no retractations should be demanded, but an explanation of the Confession in accordance with Catholic doctrines. Now, for such a method as this, the way is in part prepared by the demonstration that such interpretation may be given of the most difficult Articles as will strip them of all contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod. The same method may be pursued on other points; and much pain may thus be spared to individuals, and much difficulty to the church."--Pp. 11, 35, 38.

This use of my Tract, so different from my own, but sanctioned by the great name of our cardinal, you are now reviving; and I gather from your doing so, that your bishops and the opinion of the public are likely now, or in prospect, to admit what twenty-five years ago they refused. On this point, much as it rejoices me to know your anticipation, of course I cannot have an opinion.

4. So much for "Tract 90." On the other hand, as to my "Essay on Doctrinal Development," I am sorry to find you do not look upon it with friendly eyes; though how, without its aid, you can maintain the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and incarnation, and others which you hold, I cannot understand. You consider my principle may be the means, in time to come, of introducing into our Creed, as portions of the necessary Catholic faith, the infallibility of the Pope, and various opinions, pious or profane, as it may be, about our Blessed Lady. I hope to remove your anxiety as to these consequences, before I bring my {52} observations to an end; at present I notice it as my apology for interfering in a controversy which at first sight is no business of mine.

5. I have another reason for writing; and that is, unless it is rude in me to say so, because you seem to think writing does not become me. I do not like silently to acquiesce in such a judgment You say at p. 98:

"Nothing can be more unpractical than for an individual to throw himself into the Roman Church because he could accept the _letter_ of the Council of Trent. Those who were born Roman Catholics have a liberty which, in the nature of things, a person could not have who left another system to embrace that of Rome. I cannot imagine how any faith could stand the shock of leaving one system, criticising _it_, and cast himself into another system, criticising _it_. For myself, I have always felt that had (which God of his mercy avert hereafter also) the English Church, by accepting heresy, driven me out of it, I could have gone in no other way than that of closing my eyes, and accepting whatever was put before me. But a liberty which individuals could not use, and explanations which, so long as they remain individual, must be unauthoritative, might be formally made by the Church of Rome to the Church of England as the basis of reunion."

And again, p. 210:

"It seems to me to be a psychological impossibility for one who has already exchanged one system for another to make those distinctions. One who, by his own act, places himself under authority, cannot make conditions about his submission. But definite explanations of our Articles have, before now, been at least tentatively offered to us, on the Roman and Greek side, as sufficient to restore communion; and the Roman explanations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not spoken."

Now passages such as these seem almost a challenge to me to speak, and to keep silence would be to assent to the justice of them. At the cost, then, of speaking about myself, of which I feel there has been too much of late, I observe upon them as follows: Of course, as you say, a convert comes to learn, and not to pick and choose. He comes in simplicity and confidence, and it does not occur to him to weigh and measure every proceeding, every practice which he meets with among those whom he has joined. He comes to Catholicism as to a living system, with a living teaching, and not to a mere collection of decrees and canons, which by themselves are of course but the framework, not the body and substance, of the church. And this is a truth which concerns, which binds, those also who never knew any other religion, not only the convert. By the Catholic system I mean that rule of life and those practices of devotion for which we shall look in vain in the Creed of Pope Pius. The convert comes, not only to believe the church, but also to trust and obey her priests, and to conform himself in charity to her people. It would never do for him to resolve that he never would say a Hail Mary, never avail himself of an indulgence, never kiss a crucifix, never accept the Lent dispensations, never mention a venial sin in confession. All this would not only be unreal, but dangerous, too, as arguing a wrong state of mind, which could not look to receive the divine blessing. Moreover, he comes to the ceremonial, and the moral theology, and the ecclesiastical regulations which he finds on the spot where his lot is cast. And again, as regards matters of politics, of education, of general expedience, of taste, he does not criticise or controvert. And thus surrendering himself to the influences of his new religion, and not losing what is revealed truth by attempting by his own private rule to discriminate every moment its substance from its accidents, he is gradually so indoctrinated in Catholicism as at length to have a right to speak as well as to hear. Also, in course of time, a new generation rises round him; and there is no reason why he should not know as much, and decide questions with as true an instinct, as those who perhaps number fewer years than he does Easter communions. {53} He has mastered the fact and the nature of the differences of theologian from theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era from era. He knows that there is much of what may be called fashion in opinions and practices, according to the circumstances of time and place, according to current politics, the character of the Pope of the day, or the chief prelates of a particular country, and that fashions change. His experience tells him, that sometimes what is denounced in one place as a great offence, or preached up as a first principle, has in another nation been immemorially regarded in just a contrary sense, or has made no sensation at all, one way or the other, when brought before public opinion; and that loud talkers, in the church as elsewhere, are apt to carry all before them, while quiet and conscientious persons commonly have to give way. He perceives that, in matters which happen to be in debate, ecclesiastical authority watches the state of opinion and the direction and course of controversy, and decides accordingly; so that in certain cases to keep back his own judgment on a point is to be disloyal to his superiors.

So far generally; now in particular as to myself. After twenty years of Catholic life, I feel no delicacy in giving my opinion on any point when there is a call for me, and the only reason why I have not done so sooner, or more often than I have, is that there has been no call. I have now reluctantly come to the conclusion that your volume _is_ a call. Certainly, in many instances in which theologian differs from theologian, and country from country, I have a definite judgment of my own; I can say so without offence to any one, for the very reason that from the nature of the case it is impossible to agree with all of them. I prefer English habits of belief and devotion to foreign, from the same causes, and by the same right, which justify foreigners in preferring their own. In following those of my people, I show less singularity and create less disturbance than if I made a flourish with what is novel and exotic. And in this line of conduct I am but availing myself of the teaching which I fell in with on becoming a Catholic; and it is a pleasure to me to think that what I hold now, and would transmit after me if I could, is only what I received then. The utmost delicacy was observed on all hands in giving me advice; only one warning remains on my mind, and it came from Dr. Griffiths, the late vicar-apostolic of the London district. He warned me against books of devotion of the Italian school, which were just at that time coming into England; and when I asked him what books he recommended as safe guides, he bade me get the works of Bishop Hay. By this I did not understand that he was jealous of all Italian books, or made himself responsible for all that Dr. Hay happens to have said; but I took him to caution me against a character and tone of religion, excellent in its place, not suited for England. When I went to Rome, though it may seem strange to you to say it, even there I learned nothing inconsistent with this judgment. Local influences do not supply an atmosphere for its institutions and colleges, which are Catholic in teaching as well as in name. I recollect one saying among others of my confessor, a Jesuit father, one of the holiest, most prudent men I ever knew. He said that we could not love the Blessed Virgin too much, if we loved our Lord a great deal more. When I returned to England, the first expression of theological opinion which came in my way was _apropos_ of the series of translated saints' lives which the late Dr. Faber originated. That expression proceeded from a wise prelate, who was properly anxious as to the line which might be taken by the Oxford converts, then for the first time coming into work. According as I recollect his opinion, he was apprehensive of the effect of Italian {54} compositions, as unsuited to this country, and suggested that the lives should be original works, drawn up by ourselves and our friends from Italian sources. If at that time I was betrayed into any acts which were of a more extreme character than I should approve now, the responsibility of course is mine; but the impulse came not from old Catholics or superiors, but from men whom I loved and trusted who were younger than myself. But to whatever extent I might be carried away, and I cannot recollect any tangible instances, my mind in no long time fell back to what seems to me a safer and more practical course.

Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right to speak out; and that the more because other converts have spoken for a long time, while I have not spoken; and with still more reason may I speak without offence in the case of your present criticisms of us, considering that, in the charges you bring, the only two English writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger in age than myself. I put aside the archbishop, of course, because of his office. These two authors are worthy of all consideration, at once from their character and from their ability. In their respective lines they are perhaps without equals at this particular time; and they deserve the influence they possess. One is still in the vigor of his powers; the other has departed amid the tears of hundreds. It is pleasant to praise them for their real qualifications; but why do you rest on them as authorities? Because the one was "a popular writer;" but is there not sufficient reason for this in the fact of his remarkable gifts, of his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his playful wit, his affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without supposing that the wide diffusion of his works arises out of his particular sentiments about the Blessed Virgin? And as to our other friend, do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading, displayed on the vantage ground of the historic "Dublin Review," fully account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that any great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the Pope's infallibility? Our silence as regards their writings is very intelligible: it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom we love and respect. But the plain fact is this--they came to the Church, and have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for English Catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those who have a real title to such an office. The chief authors of the passing generation, some of them still alive, others gone to their reward, are Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr. Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, and Mr. Flanagan; which of these ecclesiastics has said anything extreme about the prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin or the infallibility of the Pope?

I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, on the two subjects I have mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed of Catholics; or to assume, as you do, that, because they are thorough-going and relentless in their statements, therefore they are the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for antiquity will be thought little else than a mistake. For myself, hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority of the "Schola," as one of the _loci theologici;_ still I sympathize with Petavius in preferring to its "contentious and subtle theology" that {55} "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite antiquity." The fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you remark, a process of development in apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the fathers, but explains and completes them. And, in particular, as regards our teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin, with the fathers I am content; and to the subject of that teaching I mean to address myself at once. I do so because you say, as I myself have said in former years, that "that vast system as to the Blessed Virgin . . . . to all of us has been the special _crux_ of the Roman system," p. 101. Here, I say, as on other points, the fathers are enough for me. I do not wish to say more than they, and will not say less. You, I know, will profess the same; and thus we can join issue on a clear and broad principle, and may hope to come to some intelligible result. We are to have a treatise on the subject of our Lady soon from the pen of the most reverend prelate; but that cannot interfere with such a mere argument from the fathers as that to which I shall confine myself here. Nor indeed, as regards that argument itself, do I profess to be offering you any new matter, any facts which have not been used by others--by great divines, as Petavius, by living writers, nay, by myself on other occasions; I write afresh nevertheless, and that for three reasons: first, because I wish to contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of the argument in question; next, because I may gain a more patient hearing than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself; lastly, because there just now seems a call on me, under my circumstances, to avow plainly what I do and what I do not hold about the Blessed Virgin, that others may know, did they come to stand where I stand, what they would and what they would not be bound to hold concerning her.

I begin by making a distinction which will go far to remove good part of the difficulty of my undertaking, as it presents itself to ordinary inquirers--the distinction between faith and devotion. I fully grant that _devotion_ toward the Blessed Virgin has increased among Catholics with the progress of centuries; I do not allow that the _doctrine_ concerning her has undergone a growth, for I believe that it has been in substance one and the same from the beginning.

By "faith" I mean the Creed and the acceptance of the Creed; by "devotion" I mean such religious honors as belong to the objecis of our faith, and the payment of those honors. Faith and devotion are as distinct in fact as they are in idea. We cannot, indeed, be devout without faith, but we may believe without feeling devotion. Of this phenomenon every one has experience both in himself and in others; and we express it as often as we speak of realizing a truth or not realizing it. It may be illustrated, with more or less exactness, by matters which come before us in the world. For instance, a great author, or public man, may be acknowledged as such for a course of years; yet there may be an increase, an ebb and flow, and a fashion, in his popularity. And if he takes a lasting place in the minds of his countrymen, he may gradually grow into it, or suddenly be raised to it. The idea of Shakespeare as a great poet has existed from a very early date in public opinion; and there were at least individuals then who understood him as well, and honored him as much, as the English people can honor him now; yet, I think, there is a national devotion to him in this day such as never has been before. This has happened because, as education spreads in the country, there are more men able to enter into his {56} poetical genius, and, among these, more capacity again for deeply and critically understanding him; and yet, from the first, he has exerted a great insensible influence over the nation, as is seen in the circumstance that his phrases and sentences, more than can be numbered, have become almost proverbs among us. And so again in philosophy, and in the arts and sciences, great truths and principles have sometimes been known and acknowledged for a course of years; but, whether from feebleness of intellectual power in the recipients, or external circumstances of an accidental kind, they have not been turned to account. Thus, the Chinese are said to have known of the properties of the magnet from time immemorial, and to have used it for land expeditions, yet not on the sea. Again, the ancients knew of the principle that water finds its own level, but seem to have made little application of their knowledge. And Aristotle was familiar with the principle of induction; yet it was left for Bacon to develop it into an experimental philosophy. Illustrations such as these, though not altogether apposite, serve to convey that distinction between faith and devotion on which I am insisting. It is like the distinction between objective and subjective truth. The sun in the springtime will have to shine many days before he is able to melt the frost, open the soil, and bring out the leaves; yet he shines out from the first, notwithstanding, though he makes his power felt but gradually. It is one and the same sun, though his influence day by day becomes greater; and so in the Catholic Church, it is the one Virgin Mother, one and the same from first to last, and Catholics may acknowledge her; and yet, in spite of that acknowledgment, their devotion to her may be scanty in one time and place and overflowing in another.

This distinction is forcibly brought home to a convert, as a peculiarity of the Catholic religion, on his first introduction to its worship. The faith is everywhere one and the same; but a large liberty is accorded to private judgment and inclination in matters of devotion. Any large church, with its collections and groups of people, will illustrate this. The fabric itself is dedicated to Almighty God, and that under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, or some particular saint; or again, of some mystery belonging to the Divine name, or to the incarnation, or of some mystery associated with the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps there are seven altars or more in it, and these again have their several saints. Then there is the feast proper to the particular day; and, during the celebration of mass, of all the worshippers who crowd around the priest each has his own particular devotions, with which he follows the rite. No one interferes with his neighbor; agreeing, as it were, to differ, they pursue independently a common end, and by paths, distinct but converging, present themselves before God. Then there are confraternities attached to the church: of the sacred heart, or the precious blood; associations of prayer for a good death, or the repose of departed souls, or the conversion of the heathen: devotions connected with the brown, blue, or red scapular; not to speak of the great ordinary ritual through the four seasons, the constant presence of the blessed sacrament, its ever recurring rite of benediction, and its extraordinary forty hours' exposition. Or, again, look through some such manual of prayers as the _Raccolta_, and you at once will see both the number and the variety of devotions which are open to individual Catholics to choose from, according to their religious taste and prospect of personal edification.

Now these diversified modes of honoring God did not come to us in a day, or only from the apostles; they are the accumulations of centuries; and, as in the course of years some of them spring up, so others decline and die Some are local, in memory of some particular saint who happens to be the evangelist, or patron, or pride of the {57} nation, or who is entombed in the church, or in the city where it stands; and these, necessarily, cannot have an earlier date than the saint's day of death or interment there. The first of such sacred observances, long before these national memories, were the devotions paid to the apostles, then those which were paid to the martyrs; yet there were saints nearer to our Lord than either martyrs or apostles; but, as if these had been lost in the effulgence of his glory, and because they were not manifested in external works separate from him, it happened that for a long while they were less thought of. However, in process of time the apostles, and then the martyrs, exerted less influence than before over the popular mind, and the local saints, new creations of God's power, took their place, or again, the saints of some religious order here or there established. Then, as comparatively quiet times succeeded, the religious meditations of holy men and their secret intercourse with heaven gradually exerted an influence out of doors, and permeated the Christian populace, by the instrumentality of preaching and by the ceremonial of the church. Then those luminous stars rose in the ecclesiastical heavens which were of more august dignity than any which had preceded them, and were late in rising for the very reason that they were so specially glorious. Those names, I say, which at first sight might have been expected to enter soon into the devotions of the faithful, with better reason might have been looked for at a later date, and actually were late in their coming. St. Joseph furnishes the most striking instance of this remark; here is the clearest of instances of the distinction between doctrine and devotion. Who, from his prerogatives and the testimony on which they come to us, had a greater claim to receive an early recognition among the faithful? A saint of Scripture, the foster-father of our Lord, was an object of the universal and absolute faith of the Christian world from the first, yet the devotion to him is comparatively of late date. When once it began, men seemed surprised that it had not been thought of before; and now they hold him next to the Blessed Virgin in their religious affection and veneration.

As regards the Blessed Virgin, I shall postpone the question of devotion for a while, and inquire first into the doctrine of the undivided church (to use your controversial phrase) on the subject of her prerogatives.

What is the great rudimental teaching of antiquity from its earliest date concerning her? By "rudimental teaching" I mean the _primâ facie_ view of her person and office, the broad outline laid down of her, the aspect under which she comes to us in the writings of the fathers. She is the second Eve. [Footnote 11] Now let us consider what this implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the first covenant. The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all things, entitled her "the mother of all the living;" a name surely expressive not of a fact only but of a dignity; but further, as she thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she her own special place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. "The woman, being seduced, was in the transgression." She listened to the evil angel; she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She co-operated not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and personally in the sin; she brought it about. As the history stands, she was a _sine qua non_, a positive, active cause of it. {58} And she had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her, she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue, and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were three parties concerned--the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at the time of their sentence an event was announced for the future, in which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." The seed of the woman is the word incarnate, and the woman whose seed or son he is is his mother Mary. This interpretation and the parallelism it involves seem to me undeniable; but, at all events (and this is my point), the parallelism is the doctrine of the fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, we are able to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration.

[Footnote 11: _Vid_. "Essay on Development of Doctrine," 1845, p. 384, etc.]

I shall adduce passages from their writings, with their respective countries and dates; and the dates shall extend from their births or conversions to their deaths, since what they propound is at once the doctrine which they had received from the generation before them, and the doctrine which was accepted and recognized as true by the generation to whom they transmitted it.

First, then, St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165), St. Irenaeus (120-200), and Tertullian (160-240). Of these Tertullian represents Africa and Rome, St. Justin represents Palestine, and St. Irenaeus Asia Minor and Gaul--or rather he represents St. John the Evangelist, for he had been taught by the martyr St. Polycarp, who was the intimate associate, as of St. John, 60 of the other apostles.

1. St. Justin: [Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: I have attempted to translate literally without caring to write English. ]

"We know that he, before all creatures proceeded from the Father by his power and will, . . . and by means of the Virgin became man, that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its beginning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, when the angel told her the good tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the highest overshadow her, and therefore the holy one that was born of her was Son of God, answered. Be it to me according to thy word."--_Tryph_. 100.

2. Tertullian:

"God recovered his image and likeness, which the devil had seized, by a rival operation. For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death. Equally into a virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life; that, what by that sex had gone into perdition, by the same sex might be brought back to salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel; the fault which the one committed by believing, the other by believing has blotted out."--_De Carn. Christ_, 17.

3. St Irenaeus:

"With a fitness, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, 'Behold thy handmaid, O Lord; be it to me according to thy word.' But Eve was disobedient; for she obeyed not, while she was yet a virgin. As she, having indeed Adam for a husband, but as yet being a virgin, . . . becoming disobedient, became the cause of death both to herself and to the whole human race, so also Mary, having the predestined man, and being yet a virgin, being obedient, became both to herself and to the whole human race the cause of salvation. . . . And on account of this the Lord said, that the first would be last and the last first. And the prophet signifies the same, saying, 'Instead of fathers you have children.' For, whereas the Lord, when born, was the first begotten of the dead, and received into his bosom the primitive fathers, he regenerated them into the life of God, he himself becoming the beginning of the living, since Adam became the beginning of the dying. Therefore also Luke, commencing the lines of generations from the Lord, referred it back to Adam, signifying that he regenerated the old fathers, not they him, into the gospel of life. And so the knot {59} of Eve's disobedience received its unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith."-- _Adv. Haer_, iii. 22. 34.

And again:

"As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced, so as to flee God, transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by means of the angel's speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to his word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the virgin Mary might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being preserved, a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's obedience." --_Ibid_. v. 19.

Now, what is especially noticeable in these three writers is, that they do not speak of the Blessed Virgin as the physical instrument of our Lord's taking flesh, but as an intelligent, responsible cause of it; her faith and obedience being accessories to the incarnation, and gaining it as her reward. As Eve failed in these virtues, and thereby brought on the fall of the race in Adam, so Mary by means of them had a part in its restoration. You imply, pp. 255, 256, that the Blessed Virgin was only a physical instrument in our redemption; "what has been said of her by the fathers as the chosen _vessel_ of the incarnation, was applied _personally_ to her" (that is, by Catholics), p. 151; and again, "The fathers speak of the Blessed Virgin as the _instrument_ of our salvation, _in that_ she gave birth to the Redeemer," pp. 155, 156; whereas St. Augustine, in well-known passages, speaks of her as more exalted by her sanctity than by her relationship to our Lord. [Footnote 13] However, not to go beyond the doctrine of the three fathers, they unanimously declare that she was not a mere instrument in the incarnation, such as David, or Judah, may be considered; they declare she co-operated in our salvation, not merely by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon her body, but by specific holy acts, the effect of the Holy Ghost upon her soul; that, as Eve forfeited privileges by sin, so Mary earned privileges by the fruits of grace; that, as Eve was disobedient and unbelieving, so Mary was obedient and believing; that, as Eve was a cause of ruin to all, Mary was a cause of salvation to all; that, as Eve made room for Adam's fall, so Mary made room for our Lord's reparation of it; and thus, whereas the free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary co-operated in effecting a much greater good.

[Footnote 13: Opp., t. 8, p. 2, col. 369, t. 6, col. 342.]

And, beside the run of the argument, which reminds the reader of St. Paul's antithetical sentences in tracing the analogy between Adam's work and our Lord's work, it is well to observe the particular words under which the Blessed Virgin's office is described. Tertullian says that Mary "blotted out" Eve's fault, and "brought back the female sex," or "the human race, to salvation;" and St. Irenaeus says that "by obedience she was the cause or occasion" (whatever was the original Greek word) "of salvation to herself and the whole human race;" that by her the human race is saved; that by her Eve's complication is disentangled; and that she is Eve's advocate, or friend in need. It is supposed by critics, Protestant as well as Catholic, that the Greek word for advocate in the original was paraclete; it should be borne in mind, then, when we are accused of giving our Lady the titles and offices of her Son, that St. Irenaeus bestows on her the special name and office proper to the Holy Ghost.

So much as to the nature of this triple testimony; now as to the worth of it. For a moment put aside St. Irenaeus, and put together St. Justin in the East with Tertullian in the West. I think I may assume that the doctrine of these two fathers about the Blessed Virgin was the received doctrine of their own {60} respective times and places; for writers after all are but witnesses of facts and beliefs, and as such they are treated by all parties in controversial discussion. Moreover, the coincidence of doctrine which they exhibit, and, again, the antithetical completeness of it, show that they themselves did not originate it. The next question is, Who did? For from one definite organ or source, place or person, it must have come. Then we must inquire, what length of time would it take for such a doctrine to have extended, and to be received, in the second century over so wide an area; that is, to be received before the year 200 in Palestine, Africa, and Rome? Can we refer the common source of these local traditions to a date later than that of the apostles, St. John dying within thirty or forty years of St. Justin's conversion and Tertullian's birth? Make what allowance you will for whatever possible exceptions can be taken to this representation; and then, after doing so, add to the concordant testimony of these two fathers the evidence of St. Irenaeus, which is so close upon the school of St. John himself in Asia Minor. "A three-fold cord," as the wise man says, "is not quickly broken." Only suppose there were so early and so broad a testimony to the effect that our Lord was a mere man, the son of Joseph; should we be able to insist upon the faith of the Holy Trinity as necessary to salvation? Or supposing three such witnesses could be brought to the fact that a consistory of elders governed the local churches, or that each local congregation was an independent church, or that the Christian community was without priests, could Anglicans maintain their doctrine that the rule of episcopal succession is necessary to constitute a church? And recollect that the Anglican Church especially appeals to the ante-Nicene centuries, and taunts us with having superseded their testimony.

Having then adduced these three fathers of the second century, I have at least got so far as this, viz., no one, who acknowledges the force of early testimony in determining Christian truth, can wonder, no one can complain, can object, that we Catholics should hold a very high doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin, unless indeed stronger statements can be brought for a contrary conception of her, either of as early, or at least of a later date. But, as far as I know, no statements can be brought from the ante-Nicene literature to invalidate the testimony of the three fathers concerning her; and little can be brought against it from the fourth century, while in that fourth century the current of testimony in her behalf is as strong as in the second; and, as to the fifth, it is far stronger than in any former time, both in its fulness and its authority. This will to some extent be seen as I proceed.

4. St Cyril, of Jerusalem (315-386), speaks for Palestine:

"Since through Eve, a virgin, came death, it behoved that through a virgin, or rather from a virgin, should life appear; that, as the serpent had deceived the one, so to the other Gabriel might bring good tidings."--_Cat_. xii. 15.

5. St. Ephrem Syrus (lie died 378) is a witness for the Syrians proper and the neighboring Orientals, in contrast to the Graeco-Syrians. A native of Nisibis, on the farther side of the Euphrates, he knew no language but Syriac:

"Through Eve the beautiful and desirable glory of men was extinguished; but it has revived through Mary."--_Opp. Syr._, ii. p. 318.

Again:

"In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, death passed upon all men; to-day, through Mary, we are translated from death unto life. In the beginning, the serpent filled the ears of Eve, and the poison spread thence over the whole body; to-day, Mary from her ears received the {61} champion of eternal happiness; what, therefore, was an instrument of death, was an instrument of life also."--iii. p. 607.

I have already referred to St. Paul's contrast between Adam and our Lord in his Epistle to the Romans, as also in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. Some writers attempt to say that there is no doctrinal truth, but a mere rhetorical display, in those passages. It is quite as easy to say so as to attempt so to dispose of this received comparison, in the writings of the fathers, between Eve and Mary.

6. St. Epiphanius (320-400) speaks for Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus:

"She it is who is signified by Eve, enigmatically receiving the appellation of the mother of the living. . . . It was a wonder that after the fall she had this great epithet. And, according to what is material, from that Eve all the race of men on earth is generated. But thus in truth from Mary the Life itself was born in the world, that Mary might bear living things and become the mother of living things. Therefore, enigmatically, Mary is called the mother of living things. . . Also, there is another thing to consider as to these women, and wonderful--as to Eve and Mary. Eve became a cause of death to man . . . and Mary a cause of life; . . . that life might be instead of death, life excluding death which came from the woman, viz., he who through the woman has become our life." --_Haer_. 78. 18.

7. By the time of St. Jerome (331-420), the contrast between Eve and Mary had almost passed into a proverb. He says (Ep. xxii. 21, ad Eustoch.), "Death by Eve, life by Mary." Nor let it be supposed that he, any more than the preceding fathers, considered the Blessed Virgin a mere physical instrument of giving birth to our Lord, who is the life. So far from it, in the epistle from which I have quoted, he is only adding another virtue to that crown which gained for Mary her divine maternity. They have spoken of faith, joy, and obedience; St. Jerome adds, what they had only suggested, virginity. After the manner of the fathers in his own day, he is setting forth the Blessed Mary to the high-born Roman lady whom he is addressing as the model of the virginal life; and his argument in its behalf is, that it is higher than the marriage state, not in itself, viewed in any mere natural respect, but as being the free act of self-consecration to God, and from the personal religious purpose which it involves:

"Higher wage," he says, "is due to that which is not a compulsion, but an offering; for, were virginity commanded, marriage would seem to be put out of the question; and it would be most cruel to force men against nature, and to extort from them an angel's life."--20.

I do not know whose testimony is more important than St. Jerome's, the friend of Pope Damasus at Rome, the pupil of St. Gregory Nazianzen at Constantinople, and of Didymus in Alexandria, a native of Dalmatia, yet an inhabitant, at different times of his life, of Gaul, Syria, and Palestine.

8. St. Jerome speaks for the whole world, except Africa; and for Africa in the fourth century, if we must limit so world-wide an authority to place, witnesses St. Augustine (354-430). He repeats the words as if a proverb; "By a woman death, by a woman life" (Opp. t. v. Serm. 233); elsewhere he enlarges on the idea conveyed in it. In one place he quotes St. Irenaeus's words as cited above (adv. Julian i. 4). In another he speaks as follows:

"It is a great sacrament that, whereas through woman death became our portion, so life was born to us by woman; that, in the case of both sexes, male and female, the baffled devil should be tormented, when on the overthrow of both sexes he was rejoicing; whose punishment had been small, if both sexes had been liberated in us, without our being liberated through both."--_Opp. t. vi. De Agon, Christ_, c. 24.

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9. St. Peter Chrysologus (400-450), Bishop of Ravenna, and one of the chief authorities in the fourth General Council:

"Blessed art thou among women; for among women, on whose womb Eve, who was cursed, brought punishment, Mary, being blest, rejoices, is honored, and is looked up to. And woman now is truly made through grace the mother of the living, who had been by nature the mother of the dying. . . . Heaven feels awe of God, angels tremble at him, the creature sustains him not, nature sufficeth not, and yet one maiden so takes, receives, entertains him, as a guest within her breast, that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb, she asks, she obtains, peace for the earth, glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for the earthly, the union of God himself with human flesh."--_Serm._ 140.

It is difficult to express more explicitly, though in oratorical language, that the Blessed Virgin had a real, meritorious co-operation, a share which had a "hire" and a "price" in the reversal of the fall.

10. St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe in Africa (468-533). The homily which contains the following passage is placed by Ceillier (t. xvi. p. 127) among his genuine works:

"In the wife of the first man, the wickedness of the devil depraved her seduced mind; in the mother of the second Man, the grace of God preserved both her mind inviolate and her flesh. On her mind he conferred the most firm faith; from her flesh he took away lust altogether. Since then man was in a miserable way condemned for sin, therefore without sin was in a marvellous way born the God man."--_Serm_. 2, p. 124, _De Dupl. Nativ._

Accordingly, in the sermon which follows (if it is his), he continues, illustrating her office of universal mother, as ascribed to her by St. Epiphanius:

"Come ye virgins to a virgin, come ye who conceive to her who conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a mother, ye that suckle to one who suckled, young girls to the young girl. It is for this reason that the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Lord Jesus Christ all these divisions of nature, that to all women who have recourse to her she may be a succor, and so restore the whole race of women who come to her, being the new Eve, by keeping virginity, as the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of men."

Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, which the fathers have given us of Mary, as the second Eve, the mother of the living. I have cited ten authors. I could cite more were it necessary. Except the two last, they write gravely and without any rhetoric. I allow that the two last write in a different style, since the extracts I have made are from their sermons; but I do not see that the coloring conceals the outline. And, after all, men use oratory on great subjects, not on small; nor would they, and other fathers whom I might quote, have lavished their high language upon the Blessed Virgin, such as they gave to no one else, unless they knew well that no one else had such claims as she had on their love and veneration.

And now I proceed to dwell for a while upon two inferences, which it is obvious to draw from the rudimental doctrine itself; the first relates to the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, the second to her greatness.

1. Her _sanctity_. She holds, as the fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall. Now, in the first place, what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she had--a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that nature of hers, which she received from Adam, as Adam before her had also received the same gift, at the very time (as it is commonly held) of his original creation. This is Anglican doctrine as well as Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of the schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created {63} in grace--that is, received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation, or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says: "It is abundantly manifest, from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors of the church did, with a general consent, acknowledge that our first parents, in the state of integrity, had in them something more than nature--that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."

Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask, Was not Mary as fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a helpmate to her husband, did in the event but co-operate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had a greater grace? And this consideration gives significance to the angel's salutation of her as "full of grace"--an interpretation of the original word which is undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favor;" whereas it is, as the fathers teach, a real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference--well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the immaculate conception. I say the doctrine of the immaculate conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of the fathers, that Mary is the second Eve.

It is to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and devout men stumble at this doctrine, and I can only account for it by supposing that, in matter of fact, they do not know what we mean by the immaculate conception; and your volume (may I say it?) bears out my suspicion. It is a great consolation to have reason for thinking so--for believing that in some sort the persons in question are in the position of those great saints in former times who are said to have hesitated about it, when they would not have hesitated at all if the word "conception" had been clearly explained in that sense in which now it is universally received. I do not see how any one who holds with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents, has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the Blessed Virgin. It has no reference whatever to her parents, but simply to her own person; it does but affirm that, together with the nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature, she had a superadded fulness of grace, and that from the first moment of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and not lost her first grace, and suppose she had eventually had children, those children from the first moment of their existence would, through divine bounty, have received the same privilege that she had ever had; that is, as she was taken from Adam's side, in a garment, so to say, of grace, so they in turn would have received what may be called an immaculate conception. They would have been conceived in grace, as in fact they are conceived in sin. What is there difficult in this doctrine? What is there unnatural? Mary may be called a daughter of Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace given to him three months before his birth, at the time {64} that the Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her grace came not three months merely before her birth, but from the first moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.

But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was conceived without _original sin_? If Anglicans knew what we mean by original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original sin," with us, cannot be called sin in the ordinary sense of the word "sin;" it is a term denoting the _imputation_ of Adam's sin, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it is understood to be sin in the same sense as actual sin. We, with the fathers, think of it as something negative; Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a change of nature, a poison internally corrupting the soul, and propagated from father to son, after the manner of a bad constitution; and they fancy that we ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others; that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake of him who was to redeem her and us upon the cross, to her the debt was remitted by anticipation; on her the sentence was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time came, as others. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the _deprivation_ of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their creation--deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty from the very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege in order to fit her to become the mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her mentally, spiritually, for it; so that, by the aid of the first grace, she might so grow in grace that when the angel came, and her Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared, as far as a creature could be prepared, to receive him into her bosom.

I have drawn the doctrine of the immaculate conception, as an immediate inference, from the primitive doctrine that Mary is the second Eve. The argument seems to me conclusive; and, if it has not been universally taken as such, this has come to pass because there has not been a clear understanding among Catholics what exactly was meant by the immaculate conception. To many it seemed to imply that the Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not come under the penalty of the fall, that she was not redeemed; that she was conceived in some way inconsistent with the verse in the _Miserere_ psalm. If controversy had in earlier days so cleared the subject as to make it plain to all that the doctrine meant nothing else than that, in fact, in her case the general sentence on mankind was not carried out, and that by means of the indwelling in her of divine grace from the first moment of her being (and this is all the decree of 1854 has declared), I cannot believe that the doctrine would have ever been opposed; for an instinctive sentiment has led Christians jealously to put the Blessed Mary aside when sin comes into discussion. This is expressed in the well-known words of St. Augustine. All have sinned "except the holy Virgin Mary, {65} concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins" (de Nat. et Grat. 42); words which, whatever St. Augustine's actual occasion of using them (to which you refer, p. 176), certainly, in the spirit which they breathe, are well adapted to convey the notion that, apart from her relation to her parents, she had not personally any part in sin whatever. It is true that several great fathers of the fourth century do imply or assert that on one or two occasions she did sin venially or showed infirmity. This is the only real objection which I know of; and, as I do not wish to pass it over lightly, I propose to consider it at the end of this letter.

2. Now, secondly, her _greatness_. Here let us suppose that our first parents had overcome in their trial, and had gained for their descendants for ever the full possession, as if by right, of the privileges which were promised to their obedience--grace here and glory hereafter. Is it possible that those descendants, pious and happy from age to age in their temporal homes, would have forgotten their benefactors? Would they not have followed them in thought into the heavens, and gratefully commemorated them on earth? The history of the temptation, the craft of the serpent, their steadfastness in obedience--the loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of Eve--the great issue, salvation wrought out for all generations--would have been never from their minds, ever welcome to their ears. This would have taken place from the necessity of our nature. Every nation has its mythical hymns and epics about its first fathers and its heroes. The great deeds of Charlemagne, Alfred, Coeur de Lion, Wallace, Louis the Ninth, do not die; and though their persons are gone from us, we make much of their names. Milton's Adam, after his fall, understands the force of this law, and shrinks from the prospect of its operation:

"Who of all ages to succeed but, feeling The evil on him brought by me, will curse My head? Ill fare our ancestor impure; For this we may thank Adam."

If this anticipation has not been fulfilled in the event, it is owing to the needs of our penal life, our state of perpetual change, and the ignorance and unbelief incurred by the fall; also because, fallen as we are, from the hopefulness of our nature we feel more pride in our national great men than dejection at our national misfortunes. Much more then in the great kingdom and people of God--the saints are ever in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual ghosts, but as if present bodily in their past selves. It is said of them, "Their works do follow them;" what they were here, such are they in heaven and in the church. As we call them by their earthly names, so we contemplate them in their earthly characters and histories. Their acts, callings, and relations below are types and anticipations of their mission above. Even in the case of our Lord himself, whose native home is the eternal heavens, it is said of him in his state of glory, that he is a "priest for ever;" and when he comes again he will be recognized, by those who pierced him, as being the very same that he was on earth. The only question is, whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in the economy of grace, whether, when she was on earth, she secured by her deeds any claim on our memories; for, if she did, it is impossible we should put her away from us, merely because she is gone hence, and not look at her still, according to the measure of her earthly history, with gratitude and expectation. If, as St. Irenaeus says, she did the part of an advocate, a friend in need, even in her mortal life, if, as St. Jerome and St. Ambrose say, she was on earth the great pattern of virgins, if she had a meritorious share in bringing about our redemption, if her maternity was earned by her faith and obedience, if her divine Son was subject to her, and if she stood by the {66} cross with a mother's heart and drank in to the full those sufferings which it was her portion to gaze upon, it is impossible that we should not associate these characteristics of her life on earth with her present state of blessedness; and this surely she anticipated, when she said in her hymn that "all generations shall call her blessed."

I am aware that, in thus speaking, I am following a line of thought which is rather a meditation than an argument in controversy, and I shall not carry it further; but still, in turning to other topics, it is to the point to inquire whether the popular astonishment, excited by our belief in the Blessed Virgin's present dignity, does not arise from the circumstance that the bulk of men, engaged in matters of the world, have never calmly considered her historical position in the gospels so as rightly to realize (if I may use the word a second time) what that position imports. I do not claim for the generality of Catholics any greater powers of reflection upon the objects of their faith than Protestants commonly have, but there is a sufficient number of religious men among Catholics who, instead of expending their devotional energies (as so many serious Protestants do) on abstract doctrines, such as justification by faith only, or the sufficiency of holy Scripture, employ themselves in the contemplation of Scripture facts, and bring out in a tangible form the doctrines involved in them, and give such a substance and color to the sacred history as to influence their brethren, who, though superficial themselves, are drawn by their Catholic instinct to accept conclusions which they could not indeed themselves have elicited, but which, when elicited, they feel to be true. However, it would be out of place to pursue this course of reasoning here; and instead of doing so, I shall take what perhaps you may think a very bold step--I shall find the doctrine of our Lady's present exaltation in Scripture.

I mean to find it in the vision of the woman and child in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. [Footnote 14] Now here two objections will be made to me at once: first, that such an interpretation is but poorly supported by the fathers; and secondly, that in ascribing such a picture of the Madonna (as it may be called) to the apostolic age, I am committing an anachronism.

[Footnote 14: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Development," p. 384, and Bishop Ullathorne's work on the "Immaculate Conception," p. 77.]

As to the former of these objections, I answer as follows: Christians have never gone to Scripture for proofs of their doctrines till there was actual need from the pressure of controversy. If in those times the Blessed Virgin's dignity were unchallenged on all hands as a matter of doctrine, Scripture, as far as its argumentative matter was concerned, was likely to remain a sealed book to them. Thus, to take an instance in point, the Catholic party in the English Church (say the Non-jurors), unable by their theory of religion simply to take their stand on tradition, and distressed for proof of their doctrines, had their eyes sharpened to scrutinize and to understand the letter of holy Scripture, which to others brought no instruction. And the peculiarity of their interpretations is this--that they have in themselves great logical cogency, yet are but faintly supported by patristical commentators. Such is the use of the word [Greek text] or _facere_ in our Lord's institution of the holy eucharist, which, by a reference to the old Testament, is found to be a word of sacrifice. Such again is [Greek text] in the passage in the Acts, "As they _ministered_ to the Lord and fasted," which again is a sacerdotal term. And such the passage in Rom. xv. 16, in which several terms are used which have an allusion to the sacrificial eucharistic rite. Such, too, is St. Paul's repeated message to the _household_ of Onesiphorus, with no mention of Onesiphorus himself, but in one place, with the addition of a prayer that "he might find mercy of the Lord" in the day of {67} judgment, which, taking into account its wording and the known usage of the first centuries, we can hardly deny is a prayer for his soul. Other texts there are which ought to find a place in ancient controversies, and the omission of which by the fathers affords matter for more surprise; those, for instance, which, according to Middleton's rule, are real proofs of our Lord's divinity, and yet are passed over by Catholic disputants; for these bear upon a then existing controversy of the first moment and of the most urgent exigency.

As to the second objection which I have supposed, so far from allowing it, I consider that it is built upon a mere imaginary fact, and that the truth of the matter lies in the very contrary direction. The Virgin and Child is _not_ a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the doctrine of the high dignity of the mother, and, I will add, of her power over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be so dear to Christians, and so carefully preserved? The only question to be determined, is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans call the "undivided church" is certain; but lately investigations have been pursued which place some of them at an earlier date than any one anticipated as possible. I am not in a position to quote largely from the works of the Cavaliere de Rossi, who has thrown so much light upon the subject; but I have his "Imagini Scelte," published in 1863, and they are sufficient for my purpose. In this work he has given us from the Catacombs various representations of the Virgin and Child; the latest of these belong to the early part of the fourth century, but the earliest he believes to be referable to the very age of the apostles. He comes to this conclusion from the style and the skill of the composition, and from the history, locality, and existing inscriptions of the subterranean in which it is found. However, he does not go so far as to insist upon so early a date; yet the utmost liberty he grants is to refer the painting to the era of the first Antonines--that is, to a date within half a century of the death of St. John. I consider then that, as you fairly use, in controversy with Protestants, the traditional doctrine of the church in early times, as an explanation of the Scripture text, or at least as a suggestion, or as a defence, of the sense which you may wish to put on it, quite apart from the question whether your interpretation itself is traditional, so it is lawful for me, though I have not the positive words of the fathers on my side, to shelter my own interpretation of the apostle's vision under the fact of the extant pictures of Mother and Child in the Roman Catacombs. There is another principle of Scripture interpretation which we should hold with you--when we speak of a doctrine being contained in Scripture, we do not necessarily mean that it is contained there in direct categorical terms, but that there is no other satisfactory way of accounting for the language and expressions of the sacred writers, concerning the subject-matter in question, than to suppose that they held upon it the opinions which we hold; that they would not have spoken as they have spoken _unless_ they held it. For myself I have ever felt the truth of this principle, as regards the Scripture proof of the Holy Trinity; I should not have found out that doctrine in the sacred text without previous traditional teaching; but when once it is suggested from without, it commends itself as the one true interpretation, from its appositeness, because no other view of doctrine, which can be ascribed to the inspired writers, so happily {68} solves the obscurities and seeming inconsistencies of their teaching. And now to apply what I have said to the passage in the Apocalypse.

If there is an apostle on whom, _à priori_, our eyes would be fixed, as likely to teach us about the Blessed Virgin, it is St. John, to whom she was committed by our Lord on the cross--with whom, as tradition goes, she lived at Ephesus till she was taken away. This anticipation is confirmed _à posteriori_; for, as I have said above, one of the earliest and fullest of our informants concerning her dignity, as being the second Eve, is Irenaeus, who came to Lyons from Asia Minor, and had been taught by the immediate disciples of St. John. The apostle's vision is as follows:

"A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet; and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered. And there was seen another sign in heaven; and behold a great red dragon . . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod; and her son was taken up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness." Now I do not deny, of course, that, under the image of the woman, the church is signified; but what I would maintain is this, that the holy apostle would not have spoken of the church under this particular image _unless_ there had existed a Blessed Virgin Mary, who was exalted on high, and the object of veneration to all the faithful.

No one doubts that the "man-child" spoken of is an allusion to our Lord; why, then, is not "the woman" an allusion to his mother? This surely is the obvious sense of the words; of course it has a further sense also, which is the scope of the image; doubtless the child represents the children of the church, and doubtless the woman represents the church; this, I grant, is the real or direct sense, but what is the sense of the symbol? _who_ are the woman and the child? I answer, They are not personifications but persons. This is true of the child, therefore it is true of the woman.

But again: not only mother and child, but a serpent, is introduced into the vision. Such a meeting of man, woman, and serpent has not been found in Scripture, since the beginning of Scripture, and now it is found in its end. Moreover, in the passage in the Apocalypse, as if to supply, before Scripture came to an end, what was wanting in its beginning, we are told, and for the first time, that the serpent in Paradise was the evil spirit. If the dragon of St. John is the same as the serpent of Moses, and the man-child is "the seed of the woman," why is not the woman herself she whose seed the man-child is? And, if the first woman is not an allegory, why is the second? if the first woman is Eve, why is not the second Mary?

But this is not all. The image of the woman, according to Scripture usage, is too bold and prominent for a mere personification. Scripture is not fond of allegories. We have indeed frequent figures there, as when the sacred writers speak of the arm or sword of the Lord; and so too when they speak of Jerusalem or Samaria in the feminine; or of the mountains leaping for joy, or of the church as a bride or as a vine; but they are not much given to dressing up abstract ideas or generalizations in personal attributes. This is the classical rather than the Scripture style. Xenophon places Hercules between Virtue and Vice, represented as women; AEschylus introduces into his drama Force and Violence; Virgil gives personality to public rumor or Fame, and Plautus to Poverty. So on monuments done in the classical style, we {69} see virtues, vices, rivers, renown, death, and the like, turned into human figures of men and women. I do not say there are no instances at all of this method in Scripture, but I say that such poetical compositions are strikingly unlike its usual method. Thus we at once feel its difference from Scripture, when we betake ourselves to the Pastor of Hermes, and find the church a woman, to St. Methodius, and find Virtue a woman, and to St. Gregory's poem, and find Virginity again a woman. Scripture deals with types rather than personifications. Israel stands for the chosen people, David for Christ, Jerusalem for heaven. Consider the remarkable representations, dramatic I may call them, in Jeremiah, Ezechiel, and Hosea; predictions, threatenings, and promises are acted out by those prophets. Ezechiel is commanded to shave his head, and to divide and scatter his hair; and Ahias tears his garment, and gives ten out of twelve parts of it to Jeroboam. So, too, the structure of the imagery in the Apocalypse is not a mere allegorical creation, but is founded on the Jewish ritual. In like manner our Lord's bodily cures are visible types of the power of his grace upon the soul; and his prophecy of the last day is conveyed under that of the fall of Jerusalem. Even his parables are not simply ideal, but relations of occurrences which did or might take place, under which was conveyed a spiritual meaning. The description of Wisdom in the Proverbs, and other sacred books, has brought out the instinct of commentators in this respect. They felt that Wisdom could not be a mere personification, and they determined that it was our Lord; and the later of these books, by their own more definite language, warranted that interpretation. Then, when it was found that the Arians used it in derogation of our Lord's divinity, still, unable to tolerate the notion of a mere allegory, commentators applied the description to the Blessed Virgin. Coming back then to the Apocalyptic vision, I ask, If the woman must be some real person, who can it be whom the apostle saw, and intends, and delineates, but that same great mother to whom the chapters in the Proverbs are accommodated? And let it be observed, moreover, that in this passage, from the allusion in it to the history of the fall, she may be said still to be represented under the character of the second Eve. I make a further remark; it is sometimes asked, Why do not the sacred writers mention our Lady's greatness? I answer, she was, or may have been, alive when the apostles and evangelists wrote; there was just one book of Scripture certainly written after her death, and that book does (if I may so speak) canonize her.

But if all this be so, if it is really the Blessed Virgin whom Scripture represents as clothed with the sun, crowned with the stars of heaven, and with the moon as her footstool, what height of glory may we not attribute to her? and what are we to say of those who, through ignorance, run counter to the voice of Scripture, to the testimony of the fathers, to the traditions of East and West, and speak and act contemptuously toward her whom her Lord delighteth to honor?

Now I have said all I mean to say on what I have called the rudimental teaching of antiquity about the Blessed Virgin; but, after all, I have not insisted on the highest view of her prerogatives which the fathers have taught us. You, my dear friend, who know so well the ancient controversies and councils, may have been surprised why I should not have yet spoken of her as the Theotocos; but I wished to show on how broad a basis her greatness rests, independent of that wonderful title; and again, I have been loth to enlarge upon the force of a word, which is rather matter for devotional thought than for polemical dispute. However, I might as well not {70} write on my subject at all as altogether be silent upon it.

It is, then, an integral portion of the faith fixed by ecumenical council, a portion of it which you hold as well as I, that the Blessed Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, or Mother of God; and this word, when thus used, carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no taint of extravagant affection; it has nothing else but a well-weighed, grave, dogmatic sense, which corresponds and is adequate to its sound. It intends to express that God is her Son, as truly as any one of us is the son of his own mother. If this be so, what can be said of any creature whatever which may not be said of her? what can be said too much, so that it does not compromise the attributes of the Creator? He, indeed, might have created a being more perfect, more admirable, than she is; he might have endued that being, so created, with a richer grant of grace, of power, of blessedness; but in one respect she surpasses all even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of her Creator. It is this awful title, which both illustrates and connects together the two prerogatives of Mary, on which I have been lately enlarging, her sanctity and her greatness. It is the issue of her sanctity; it is the source of her greatness. What dignity can be too great to attribute to her who is as closely bound up, as intimately one, with the Eternal Word, as a mother is with a son? What outfit of sanctity, what fulness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of merits must have been hers, on the supposition, which the fathers justify, that her Maker regarded them at all, and took them into account, when he condescended "not to abhor the Virgin's womb?" Is it surprising, then, that on the one hand she should be immaculate in her conception? or on the other that she should be exalted as a queen, with a crown of twelve stars? Men sometimes wonder that we call her mother of life, of mercy, of salvation; what are all these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God?

I shall say no more about this title here. It is scarcely possible to write of it without diverging into a style of composition unsuited to a letter; so I proceed to the history of its use.

The title of _Theotocos_ [Footnote 15] begins with ecclesiastical writers of a date hardly later than that at which we read of her as the second Eve. It first occurs in the works of Origen (185-254); but he, witnessing for Egypt and Palestine, witnesses also that it was in use before his time; for, as Socrates informs us, he "interpreted how it was to be used, and discussed the question at length" (Hist. vii. 32). Within two centuries (431), in the general council held against Nestorius, it was made part of the formal dogmatic teaching of the church. At that time Theodoret, who from his party connections might have been supposed disinclined to its solemn recognition, owned that "the ancient and more than ancient heralds of the orthodox faith taught the use of the term according to the apostolic tradition." At the same date John of Antioch, who for a while sheltered Nestorius, whose heresy lay in the rejection of the term, said, "This title no ecclesiastical teacher has put aside. Those who have used it are many and eminent, and those who have not used it have not attacked those who did." Alexander again, one of the fiercest partisans of Nestorius, allows the use of the word, though he considers it dangerous. "That in festive solemnities," he says, "or in preaching or teaching, _theotocos_ should be unguardedly said by the orthodox without explanation is no blame, because such statements were not dogmatic, nor said with evil meaning." If we look for those, in the interval between Origen and the council, to whom Alexander refers, we find it used again and again by the fathers in such of their works as are extant: by {71} Archelans of Mesopotamia, Eusebius of Palestine, Alexander of Egypt, in the third century; in the fourth, by Athanasius many times with emphasis, by Cyril of Palestine, Gregory Nyssen of Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzen of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, and Ammonius of Thrace; not to speak of the Emperor Julian, who, having no local or ecclesiastical domicile, speaks for the whole of Christendom. Another and earlier emperor, Constantine, in his speech before the assembled bishops at Nicaea, uses the still more explicit title of "the Virgin Mother of God;" which is also used by Ambrose of Milan, and by Vincent and Cassian in the south of France, and then by St. Leo.

[Footnote 15: _Vid_. "translation of St. Athanasius," pp. 420, 440, 447.]

So much for the term; it would be tedious to produce the passages of authors who, using or not using the term, convey the idea. "Our God was carried in the womb of Mary," says Ignatius, who was martyred A.D. 106. "The word of God," says Hippolytus, "was carried in that virgin frame." "The Maker of all," says Amphilochius, "is born of a virgin." "She did compass without circumscribing the Sun of justice--the Everlasting is born," says Chrysostom. "God dwelt in the womb," says Proclus. "When thou hearest that God speaks from the bush," asks Theodotus, "in the bush seest thou not the Virgin?" Cassian says, "Mary bore her Author." "The one God only-begotten," says Hilary, "is introduced into the womb of a virgin." "The Everlasting," says Ambrose, "came into the Virgin him." "The closed gate," says Jerome, "by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary." "That man from heaven," says Capriolus, "is God conceived in the womb." "He is made in thee," says Augustine, "who made thee."

This being the faith of the fathers about the Blessed Virgin, we need not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion. No wonder if their language should be unmeasured, when so great a term as "Mother of God" had been formally set down as the safe limit of it. No wonder if it became stronger and stronger as time went on, since only in a long period could the fulness of its import be exhausted. And in matter of fact, and as might be anticipated (with the few exceptions which I have noted above, and which I am to treat of below), the current of thought in those early ages did uniformly tend to make much of the Blessed Virgin and to increase her honors, not to circumscribe them. Little jealousy was shown of her in those times; but, when any such niggardness of devotion occurred, then one father or other fell upon the offender, with zeal, not to say with fierceness. Thus St. Jerome inveighs against Helvidius; thus St. Epiphanius denounces Apollinaris, St. Cyril Nestorius, and St. Ambrose Bonosus; on the other hand, each successive insult offered to her by individual adversaries did but bring out more fully the intimate sacred affection with which Christendom regarded her. "She was alone, and wrought the world's salvation and conceived the redemption of all," says Ambrose; [Footnote 16] "she had so great grace, as not only to preserve virginity herself, but to confer it upon those whom she visited." "The rod out of the stem of Jesse," says Jerome, "and the eastern gate through which the high priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut" "The wise woman," says Nilus, who "hath clad believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from their spiritual nakedness." "The mother of life, of beauty, of majesty, the morning star," according to Antiochus. "The mystical new heavens," "the heavens carrying the Divinity," "the fruitful vine," "by whom we are translated from death to life," according to St. Ephrem. "The manna which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, {72} which, as though coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the churches a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.

[Footnote 16: "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 408]

Proclus calls her "the unsullied shell which contains the pearl of price," "the church's diadem," "the expression of orthodoxy." "Run through all creation in your thought," he says, "and see if there be one equal or superior to the Holy Virgin, Mother of God." "Hail, mother, clad in light, of the light which sets not," says Theodotus, or some one else at Ephesus--"hail, all-undefiled mother of holiness; hail, most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream." And St. Cyril too at Ephesus, "Hail, Mary, Mother of God, majestic common-treasure of the whole world, the lamp unquenchable, the crown of virginity, the staff of orthodoxy, the indissoluble temple, the dwelling of the illimitable, mother and virgin, through whom he in the holy gospels is called blessed who cometh in the name of the Lord, .... through whom the Holy Trinity is sanctified, through whom angels and archangels rejoice, devils are put to flight, .... and the fallen creature is received up into the heavens, etc, etc." [Footnote 17] Such is but a portion of the panegyrical language which St. Cyril used in the third ecumenical council.

[Footnote 17: Opp., t. 6, p. 355. ]

I must not close my review of the Catholic doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin without directly speaking of her intercessory power, though I have incidentally made mention of it already. It is the immediate result of two truths, neither of which you dispute: first, that "it is good and useful," as the Council of Trent says, "suppliantly to invoke the saints and to have recourse to their prayers;" and secondly, that the Blessed Mary is singularly dear to her Son and singularly exalted in sanctity and glory. However, at the risk of becoming didactic, I will state somewhat more fully the grounds on which it rests.

To a candid pagan it must have been one of the most remarkable points of Christianity, on its first appearance, that the observance of prayer formed so vital a part of its organization; and that, though its members were scattered all over the world, and its rulers and subjects had so little opportunity of correlative action, yet they, one and all, found the solace of a spiritual intercourse, and a real bond of union, in the practice of mutual intercession. Prayer, indeed, is the very essence of religion; but in the heathen religions it was either public or personal; it was a state ordinance, or a selfish expedient, for the attainment of certain tangible, temporal goods. Very different from this was its exercise among Christians, who were thereby knit together in one body, different as they were in races, ranks, and habits, distant from each other in country, and helpless amid hostile populations. Yet it proved sufficient for its purpose. Christians could not correspond; they could not combine; but they could pray one for another. Even their public prayers partook of this character of intercession; for to pray for the welfare of the whole church was really a prayer for all classes of men, and all the individuals of which it was composed. It was in prayer that the church was founded. For ten days all the apostles "persevered with one mind in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." Then again at Pentecost "they were all with one mind in one place;" and the converts then made are said to have "persevered in prayer." And when, after a while, St. Peter was seized and put in prison with a view to his being put to death, "prayer was made without ceasing" by the church of God for him; and, when the angel released him, he took refuge in a house "where many were gathered together in prayer."

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We are so accustomed to these passages as hardly to be able to do justice to their singular significance; and they are followed up by various passages of the apostolic epistles. St. Paul enjoins his brethren to '"pray with all prayer and supplication at all times in the Spirit, with all instance and supplication for all saints," to "pray in every place," "to make supplication, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks for all men." And in his own person he "ceases not to give thanks for them, commemorating them in his prayers," and "always in all his prayers making supplication for them all with joy."

Now, was this spiritual bond to cease with life? or had Christians similar duties to their brethren departed? From the witness of the early ages of the church, it appears that they had; and you, and those who agree with you, would be the last to deny that they were then in the practice of praying, as for the living, so for those also who had passed into the intermediate state between earth and heaven. Did the sacred communion extend further still, on to the inhabitants of heaven itself? Here too you agree with us, for you have adopted in your volume the words of the Council of Trent which I have quoted above. But now we are brought to a higher order of thoughts.

It would be preposterous to pray for those who are already in glory; but at least they can pray for us, and we can ask their prayers, and in the Apocalypse at least angels are introduced both sending us their blessing and presenting our prayers before the divine Presence. We read there of an angel who "came and stood before the altar, having a golden censer;" and "there was given to him much incense, that he should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne of God." On this occasion, surely, the angel Michael, as the prayer in mass considers him, performed the part of a great intercessor or mediator above for the children of the church militant below. Again, in the beginning of the same book, the sacred writer goes so far as to speak of "grace and peace" being sent us, not only from the Almighty, but "from the seven spirits that are before his throne," thus associating the Eternal with the ministers of his mercies; and this carries us on to the remarkable passage of St. Justin, one of the earliest fathers, who, in his "Apology," says, "To him (God), and his Son who came from him, and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and resemble them, and the prophetic Spirit, we pay veneration and homage." Further, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul introduces, not only angels, but "the spirits of the just" into the sacred communion: "Ye have come to Mount Sion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament." What can be meant by having "come to the spirits of the just," unless in some way or other they do us good, whether by blessing or by aiding us? that is, in a word, to speak correctly, by praying for us; for it is by prayer alone that the creature above can bless or aid the creature below.

Intercession thus being the first principle of the church's life, next it is certain again that the vital principle of that intercession, as an availing power, is, according to the will of God, sanctity. This seems to be suggested by a passage of St. Paul, in which the supreme intercessor is said to be "the Spirit:" "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us; he maketh intercession for the saints according to God." However, the truth thus implied is expressly brought out in other parts of Scripture, in the form both of doctrine and of example. The words of the man born blind speak the common sense of nature: "If any man be a worshipper of God, him he heareth." {74} And apostles confirm them: "The prayer of a just man availeth much," and "whatever we ask we receive, because we keep his commandments." Then, as for examples, we read of Abraham and Moses as having the divine purpose of judgment revealed to them beforehand, in order that they might deprecate its execution. To the friends of Job it was said, "My servant Job shall pray for you; his face I will accept." Elias by his prayer shut and opened the heavens. Elsewhere we read of "Jeremias, Moses, and Samuel," and of "Noe, Daniel, and Job," as being great mediators between God and his people. One instance is given us, which testifies the continuance of so high an office beyond this life. Lazarus, in the parable, is seen in Abraham's bosom. It is usual to pass over this striking passage with the remark that it is a Jewish expression; whereas, Jewish belief or not, it is recognized and sanctioned by our Lord himself. What do we teach about the Blessed Virgin more wonderful than this? Let us suppose that, at the hour of death, the faithful are committed to her arms; but if Abraham, not yet ascended on high, had charge of Lazarus, what offence is it to affirm the like of her, who was not merely "the friend," but the very "Mother of God?"

It may be added that, though it availed nothing for influence with our Lord to be one of his company if sanctity was wanting, still, as the gospel shows, he on various occasions allowed those who were near him to be the means by which supplicants were brought to him, or miracles gained from him, as in the instance of the miracle of the loaves; and if on one occasion he seems to repel his mother when she told him that wine was wanting for the guests at the marriage feast, it is obvious to remark on it that, by saying that she was then separated from him _because_ his hour was not yet come, he implied that, when that hour was come, such separation would be at an end. Moreover, in fact, he did, at her intercession, work the miracle which she desired.

I consider it impossible, then, for those who believe the church to be one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of God has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they recognize the sanctity and greatness of the Blessed Virgin, not to perceive immediately that her office above is one of perpetual intercession for the faithful militant, and that our very relation to her must be that of clients to a patron, and that, in the eternal enmity which exists between the woman and the serpent, while the serpent's strength is that of being the tempter, the weapon of the second Eve and Mother of God is prayer.

As then these ideas of her sanctity and greatness gradually penetrated the mind of Christendom, so did her intercessory power follow close upon and with them. From the earliest times that mediation is symbolized in those representations of her with uplifted hands, which, whether in plaster or in glass, are still extant in Rome--that church, as St. Irenaeus says, with which "every church, that is, the faithful from every side, must agree, because of its more powerful principality;" "into which," as Tertullian adds, "the apostles poured out, together with their blood, their whole doctrines." As far, indeed, as existing documents are concerned, I know of no instance to my purpose earlier than A.D. 234, but it is a very remarkable one; and, though it has been often quoted in the controversy, an argument is not the weaker for frequent use.

St. Gregory Nyssen, [Footnote 18] a native of Cappadocia in the fourth century, relates that his namesake, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the century preceding, shortly before he was called to the priesthood, received in a vision a creed, which is still extant, from the Blessed Mary at the hands of St. John.

[Footnote 18: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Dev." p. 386.]

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The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine, which the heretics of the day depraved. "In such thoughts," says his namesake of Nyssa, "he was passing the night, when one appeared, as if in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general mien. Amazed at the sight, he started from his bed, and asked who it was, and why he came; but, on the other calming the perturbation of his mind with his gentle voice, and saying he had appeared to him by divine command on account of his doubts, in order that the truth of the orthodox faith might be revealed to him, he took courage at the word, and regarded him with a mixture of joy and fright. Then, on his stretching his hand straight forward and pointing with his fingers at something on one side, he followed with his eyes the extended hand, and saw another appearance opposite to the former, in the shape of a woman, but more than human. . . . When his eyes could not, bear the apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery of godliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a formulary, well turned and complete, and so vanished. He, on the other hand, immediately committed to writing that divine teaching of his mystagogue, and henceforth preached in the church according to that form, and bequeathed to posterity, as an inheritance, that heavenly teaching, by means of which his people are instructed down to this day, being preserved from all heretical evil." He proceeds to rehearse the creed thus given, "There is one God, father of a living Word," etc. Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene faith, alludes to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it incredible that such a providence should befal a man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one voice."

Here she is represented as rescuing a holy soul from intellectual error. This leads me to a further reflection. You seem, in one place in your volume, to object to the antiphon, in which it is said of her, "All heresies thou hast destroyed alone." Surely the truth of it is verified in this age, as in former times, and especially by the doctrine concerning her on which I have been dwelling. She is the great exemplar of prayer in a generation which emphatically denies the power of prayer _in toto_, which determines that fatal laws govern the universe, that there cannot be any direct communication between earth and heaven, that God cannot visit his earth, and that man cannot influence his providence.

I cannot help hoping that your own reading of the fathers will on the whole bear me out in the above account of their teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin. Anglicans seem to me to overlook the strength of the argument adducible from their works in our favor, and they open the attack upon our mediaeval and modern writers, careless of leaving a host of primitive opponents in their rear. I do not include you among such Anglicans; you know what the fathers assert; but, if so, have you not, my dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent volume, and made far too much of the differences which exist between Anglicans and us on this particular point? It is the office of an Irenicon to smooth difficulties; I shall be pleased if I succeed in removing some of yours. Let the public judge between us here. Had you {76} happened in your volume to introduce your notice of our teaching about the Blessed Virgin with a notice of the teaching of the fathers concerning her, ordinary men would have considered that there was not much to choose between you and us. Though you appealed ever so much to the authority of the "undivided church," they certainly would have said that you, who had such high notions of the Blessed Mary, were one of the last men who had a right to accuse us of quasi-idolatry. When they found you calling her by the titles of Mother of God, Second Eve, and Mother of all Living, the Mother of life, the Morning Star, the Stay of Believers, the Expression of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled Mother of Holiness, and the like, they would have deemed it a poor compensation for such language that you protested against her being called a co-redemptress or a priestess. And, if they were violent Protestants, they would not have read you with that relish and gratitude with which, as it is, they have perhaps accepted your testimony against us. Not that they would have been altogether right in their view of you;--on the contrary, I think there is a real difference between what you protest against and what with the fathers you hold; but unread men and men of the world form a broad practical judgment of the things which come before them, and they would have felt in this case that they had the same right to be shocked at you as you have to be shocked at us;--and further, which is the point to which I am coming, they would have said that, granting some of our modern writers go beyond the fathers in this matter, still the line cannot be logically drawn between the teaching of the fathers concerning the Blessed Virgin and our own. This view of the matter seems to me true and important; I do not think the line _can_ be satisfactorily drawn, and to this point I shall now direct my attention. It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is ever the case in concrete matters, which have life. Life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonisms and remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself out of which they arise. Life has the same right to decay as it has to wax strong. This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much, wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused.

If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas generally, much more is it the case in matters of religion. Religion acts on the affections; who is to hinder these, when once roused, from gathering in their strength and running wild? They are not gifted with any connatural principle within them which renders them self-governing and self-adjusting. They hurry right on to their object, and often in their case it is, more haste and worse speed. Their object engrosses them, and they see nothing else. And of all passions love is the most unmanageable; nay, more, I would not give much for that love which is never extravagant, which always observes the proprieties, and can move about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. What mother, what husband or wife, what youth or maiden in love, {77} but says a thousand foolish things, in the way of endearment, which the speaker would be sorry for strangers to hear; yet they were not on that account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are addressed. Sometimes by bad luck they are written down, sometimes they get into the newspapers; and what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the countenance, presents but a melancholy exhibition when served up cold for the public eye. So it is with devotional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as open to criticism as they are beyond it. What is abstractedly extravagant, may in religions persons be becoming and beautiful, and only fall under blame when it is found in others who imitate them. When it is formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as repulsive as love-letters in a police report. Moreover, even holy minds readily adopt and become familiar with language which they would never have originated themselves, when it proceeds from a writer who has the same objects of devotion as they have; and, if they find a stranger ridicule or reprobate supplication or praise which has come to them so recommended, they feel as keenly as if a direct insult were offered to those to whom that homage is addressed. In the next place, what has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the multitude; and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church, you must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavorably from abroad:--a high grand faith and worship which compel their admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite their contempt.

Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a religious system that the religion is based upon reason, and develops into a theology. Theology both uses logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both as a protection and as the perversion of religion. Theology is occupied with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries which reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing its way, as it can, through thick darkness and ethereal mediums. The Arians went ahead with logic for their directing principle, and so lost the truth; on the other hand, St. Augustine, in his treatise on the Holy Trinity, seems to show that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting ourselves; that for instance it is difficult to find the logical reason for not speaking of three Gods as well as of one, and of one person in the Godhead as well as of three. I do not mean to say that logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or that in the hands of an able disputant the balance of truth may not be restored. This was done at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea, in the instances of Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous and elaborate; and is conducted by means of minute subtleties which will give it the appearance of a game of skill in the case of matters too grave and practical to deserve a mere scholastic treatment. Accordingly, St. Augustine simply lays it down that the statements in question are heretical, for the former is trltheism and the latter Sabellianism. That is, good sense and a large {78} view of truth are the correctives of his logic. And thus we have arrived at the final resolution of the whole matter; for good sense and a large view of truth are rare gifts; whereas all men are bound to be devout, and most men think they can argue and conclude.

Now let me apply what I have been saying to the teaching of the church on the subject of the Blessed Virgin. I have to recur to a subject of so sacred a nature, that, writing as I am for publication, I need the apology of my object for venturing to pursue it. I say then, when once we have mastered the idea that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves? What awe and surprise must attend upon the knowledge that a creature has been brought so close to the Divine Essence? It was the creation of a new idea and a new sympathy, a new faith and worship, when the holy apostles announced that God bad become incarnate; and a supreme love and devotion to him became possible which seemed hopeless before that revelation. But beside this, a second range of thoughts was opened on mankind, unknown before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was understood that that incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is perfectly distinct from the former, the one does not interfere with the other. He is God made low, she is a woman made high. I scarcely like to use a familiar illustration on such a subject, but it will serve to explain what I mean when I ask you to consider the difference of feeling with which we read the respective histories of Maria Theresa and the Maid of Orleans; or with which the middle and lower classes of a nation regard a first minister of the day who has come of an aristocratic house and one who has risen from the ranks. May God's mercy keep me from the shadow of a thought dimming the light or blunting the keenness of that love of him which is our sole happiness and our sole salvation! But surely, when he became man he brought home to us his incommunicable attributes with a distinctiveness which precludes the possibility of our lowering him by exalting a creature. He alone has an entrance into our soul, reads our secret thoughts, speaks to our heart, applies to us spiritual pardon and strength. On him we solely depend. He alone is our inward life; he not only regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) _semper gignit;_ he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this sense he may be called, as in nature, so in grace, our real father. Mary is only our adopted mother, given us from the cross; her presence is above, not on earth; her office is external, not within us. Her name is not heard in the administration of the sacraments. Her work is not one of ministration toward us; her power is indirect. It is her prayers that avail, and they are effectual by the _fiat_ of him who is our all in all. Nor does she hear us by any innate power, or any personal gift; but by his manifestation to her of the prayers which we make her. When Moses was on the Mount, the Almighty told him of the idolatry of his people at the foot of it, in order that he might intercede for them; and thus it is the Divine presence which is the intermediating power by which we reach her and she reaches us.

Woe is me, if even by a breath I sully these ineffable truths! but still, without prejudice to them, there is, I say, another range of thought quite distinct from them, incommensurate with them, of which the Blessed Virgin is the centre. If we placed our Lord in that centre, we should only be degrading him from his throne, and making him an Arian kind of a God; that is, no God at all. He who charges us with marking Mary a divinity, is thereby denying the divinity of Jesus. Such a man does not know what divinity is. Our Lord cannot {79} pray for us, as a creature, as Mary prays; he cannot inspire those feelings which a creature inspires. To her belongs, as being a creature, a natural claim on our sympathy and familiarity, in that she is nothing else than our fellow. She is our pride,--in the poet's words, "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." We look to her without any fear, any remorse, any consciousness that she is able to read us, judge us, punish us. Our heart yearns toward that pure virgin, that gentle mother, and our congratulations follow her, as she rises from Nazareth and Ephesus, through the choirs of angels, to her throne on high. So weak, yet so strong; so delicate, yet so glory-laden; so modest, yet so mighty. She has sketched for us her own portrait in the magnificat. "He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. He hath put down the mighty from their seat; and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away." I recollect the strange emotion which took by surprise men and women, young and old, when, at the coronation of our present queen, they gazed on the figure of one so like a child, so small, so tender, so shrinking, who had been exalted to so great an inheritance and so vast a rule, who was such a contrast in her own person to the solemn pageant which centred in her. Could it be otherwise with the spectators, if they had human affection? And did not the All-wise know the human heart when he took to himself a mother? did he not anticipate our emotion at the sight of such an exaltation? If he had not meant her to exert that wonderful influence in his church which she has in the event exerted, I will use a bold word, he it is who has perverted us. If she is not to attract our homage, why did he make her solitary in her greatness amid his vast creation? If it be idolatry in us to let our affections respond to our faith, he would not have made her what she is, or he would not have told us that he had so made her; but, far from this, he has sent his prophet to announce to us, "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel," and we have the same warrant for hailing her as God's Mother, as we have for adoring him as God.

Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it. This at least is its general character; and Butler recognizes it as such in his "Analogy" when speaking of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity: "The internal worship," he says, "to the Son and Holy Ghost is no further matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure revelation; for the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are _obligations of reason arising out of those relations themselves_." [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 50.]

It is in this way that the revealed doctrine of the incarnation exerted a stronger and a broader influence on Christians, as they more and more apprehended and mastered its meaning and its bearings. It is contained in the brief and simple declaration of St John, "The Word was made flesh;" but it required century after century to spread it out in its fulness and to imprint it energetically on the worship and practice of the Catholic people as well as on their faith. Athanasius was the first and the great teacher of it. He collected together the inspired notices scattered through David, Isaias, St. Paul, and St. John, and he engraved indelibly upon the imaginations of the faithful, as had never been before, that man is God, and God is man, that in Mary they meet, and that in this sense Mary {80} is the centre of all things. He added nothing to what was known before, nothing to the popular and zealous faith that her Son was God; he has left behind him in his works no such definite passages about her as those of St. Irenaeus or St. Epiphanius; but he brought the circumstances of the incarnation home to men's minds by the manifold evolutions of his analysis, and secured it for ever from perversion. Still, however, there was much to be done; we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin; but he laid the foundations on which that devotion was to rest, and thus noiselessly and without strife, as the first temple in the holy city, she grew up into her inheritance, and was "established in Sion and her power was in Jerusalem." Such was the origin of that august _cultus_ which has been paid to the Blessed Mary for so many centuries in the East and in the West. That in times and places it has fallen into abuse, that it has even become a superstition, I do not care to deny; for, as I have said above, the same process which brings to maturity carries on to decay, and things that do not admit of abuse have very little life in them. This of course does not excuse such excesses, or justify us in making light of them, when they occur. I have no intention of doing so as regards the particular instances which you bring against us, though but a few words will suffice for what I need say about them:--before doing so, however, I am obliged to make three or four introductory remarks.

1. I have almost anticipated my first remark already. It is this: that the height of our offending in our devotion to the Blessed Virgin would not look so great in your volume as it does, had you not placed yourself on lower ground than your own feelings toward her would have spontaneously prompted you to take. I have no doubt you had some good reason for adopting this course, but I do not know it. What I do know is that, for the fathers' sake, who so exalt her, you really do love and venerate her, though you do not evidence it in your book. I am glad, then, in this place, to insist on a fact which will lead those among us who know you not to love you from their love of her, in spite of what you refuse to give her; and Anglicans, on the other hand, who do know you, to think better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they reflect that you do not actually go against us, but merely come short of us in your devotion to her.

2. As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here again we have a witness on our behalf of which you must be aware as fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the benefit. In proportion as this remarkable fact is understood, it will take off the edge of the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our devotions to our Lady. It must weigh with them when they discover that we can enlist on our side in this controversy those seventy millions (I think they so consider them) of Orientals who are separated from our communion. Is it not a very pregnant fact that the Eastern churches, so independent of us, so long separated from the West, so jealous of antiquity, should even surpass us in their exaltation of the Blessed Virgin? That they go further than we do is sometimes denied, on the ground that the Western devotion toward her is brought out into system, and the Eastern is not; yet this only means really that the Latins have more mental activity, more strength of intellect, less of routine, less of mechanical worship among them, than the Greeks. We are able, better than they, to give an account of what we do; and we seem to be more extreme merely because we are more definite. But, after all, what have the Latins done so bold as that substitution of the name of Mary for the name of Jesus at the end of the collects and petitions in the breviary, nay, in the ritual and liturgy? Not {81} merely in local or popular, and in semi-authorized devotions, which are the kind of sources that supplies you with your matter of accusation against us, but in the formal prayers of the Greek eucharistic service, petitions are offered, not "in the name of Jesus Christ," but "of the Theotocos." Such a phenomenon, in such a quarter, I think, ought to make Anglicans merciful toward those writers among ourselves who have been excessive in singing the praises of the Deipara. To make a rule of substituting Mary with all saints for Jesus in the public service, has more "Mariolatry" in it than to alter the Te Deum to her honor in private devotion.

3. And thus I am brought to a third remark supplemental to your accusation of us. Two large views, as I have said above, are opened upon our devotional thoughts in Christianity; the one centring in the Son of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither need obscure the other; and in the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, neither does. I wish you had either frankly allowed this in your volume, or proved the contrary. I wish, when you report that "a certain proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do stop short in her," p. 107, that you had added your belief, that the case was far otherwise with the great bulk of Catholics. Might I not have expected it? May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained at the omission? From mere Protestants, indeed, I expect nothing better. They content themselves with saying that our devotions to our Lady _must necessarily_ throw our Lord into the shade, and thereby they relieve themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch at any stray fact which countenances or seems to countenance their prejudice. Now I say plainly I never will defend or screen any one from your just rebuke who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets Jesus. But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot hastily admit it. There is this broad fact the other way: that if we look through Europe we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have given up devotion to his Mother, and that those, on the other hand, who have been foremost in her honor, have retained their orthodoxy. Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with the north of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what would be the state of its Established Church if the Liturgy and Articles were not an integral part of its establishment; and when men bring so grave a charge against us as is implied in your volume, they cannot be surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglicanism. [Footnote 20] In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the minister of her Son. She has protected him, as in his infancy, so in the whole history of the religion. There is, then, a plain historical truth in Dr. Fisher's words which you quote to condemn: "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background."

[Footnote 20: I have spoken more more on this subject in my "Essay on Development," p. 438. "Nor does it avail to object, that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the divine, from the infirmity of out nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked, _whether the character of Protestant devotion toward our Lord has been that of worship at all:_ and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being? . . . Carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of the saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God. Moreover. . . . great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and _has far more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of Christianity,_ and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary_ in religion." Our late cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last sentence for the expression of his especial approbation.]

This truth, exemplified in history, might also be abundantly illustrated, did my space admit, from the lives and writings of holy men in modern times. Two of them, St. Alfonso Liguori and the Blessed Paul of the Cross, for all their notorious devotion {82} to the Mother, have shown their supreme love of her divine Son in the names which a have given to their respective congregations, viz, "of the Redeemer," and "of the Cross and Passion." However, I will do no more than refer to an apposite passage in the Italian translation of the work of a French Jesuit, Fr. Nepveu, "Christian Thoughts for every Day in the Year," which was recommended to the friend who went with me to Rome by the same Jesuit father there with whom, as I have already said, I stood myself in such intimate relations; I believe it is a fair specimen of the teaching of our spiritual books:

"The love of Jesus Christ is the most sure pledge of our future happiness, and the most infallible token of our predestination. Mercy toward the poor, devotion to the Holy Virgin, are very sensible tokens of predestination; nevertheless they are not absolutely infallible; but one cannot have a sincere and constant love of Jesus Christ without being predestinated. . . . The destroying angel which bereaved the houses of the Egyptians of their first-born, had respect to all the houses which were marked with the blood of the Lamb."

And it is also exemplified, as I verily believe, not only in formal and distinctive confessions, not only in books intended for the educated class, but also in the personal religion of the Catholic populations. When strangers are so unfavorably impressed with us, because they see images of our Lady in our churches, and crowds flocking about her, they forget that there is a Presence within the sacred walls, infinitely more awful, which claims and obtains from us a worship transcendently different from any devotion we pay to her. That devotion might indeed tend to idolatry if it were encouraged in Protestant churches, where there is nothing higher than it to attract the worshipper; but all the images that a Catholic church ever contained, all the crucifixes at its altars brought together, do not so affect its frequenters as the lamp which betokens the presence or absence there of the blessed sacrament. Is not this so certain, so notorious, that on some occasions it has been even brought as a charge against us, that we are irreverent in church, when what seemed to the objector to be irreverence was but the necessary change of feeling which came over those who were there on their knowing that their Lord was away?

The mass again conveys to us the same lesson of the sovereignty of the incarnate Son; it is a return to Calvary, and Mary is scarcely named in it. Hostile visitors enter our churches on Sunday at mid-day, the time of the Anglican service. They are surprised to see the high mass perhaps poorly attended, and a body of worshippers leaving the music and the mixed multitude who may be lazily fulfilling their obligation, for the silent or the informal devotions which are offered at an image of the Blessed Virgin. They may be tempted, with one of your informants, to call such a temple not a "Jesus Church," but a "Mary Church." But, if they understood our ways, they would know that we begin the day with our Lord and then go on to his mother. It is early in the morning that religious persons go to mass and communion. The high mass, on the other hand, is the festive celebration of the day, not the special devotional service; nor is there any reason why those who have been at a low mass already, should not at that hour proceed to ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for themselves and all that is dear to them.

Communion, again, which is given in the morning, is a solemn, unequivocal act of faith in the incarnate God, if any can be such; and the most gracious of admonitions, did we need one, of his sovereign and sole right to possess us. I knew a lady who on her death-bed was visited by an excellent Protestant friend. She, with great tenderness for her soul's welfare, asked her whether her prayers to the {83} Blessed Virgin did not, at that awful hour, lead to forgetfulness of her Saviour. "Forget him!" she replied with surprise; "why, he has just been here." She had been receiving him in communion. When, then, my dear Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our Lady, is it not charitable to ask, even while you condemn it in itself, did the author write nothing else? Did he write on the blessed sacrament? Had he given up "all for Jesus?" I recollect some lines, the happiest, I think, which that author wrote, which bring out strikingly the reciprocity, which I am dwelling on, of the respective devotions to Mother and Son:

"But scornful men have coldly said Thy love was leading me from God; And yet in this I did but tread The very path my Savior trod.

"They know but little of thy worth Who speak these heartless words to me; For what did Jesus love on earth One half so tenderly as thee?

"Get me the grace to love thee more; Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead; And, Mother, when life's cares are o'er, Oh, I shall love thee then indeed.

"Jesus, when his three hours were run, Bequeathed thee from the cross to me; And oh I how can I love thy Son, Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?"

4. Thus we are brought from the consideration of the sentiments themselves, of which you complain, to the persons who wrote, and the places where they wrote them. I wish you had been led, in this part of your work, to that sort of careful labor which you have employed in so masterly a way in your investigation of the circumstances of the definition of the immaculate conception. In the latter case you have catalogued the bishops who wrote to the Holy See, and analyzed their answers. Had you in like manner discriminated and located the Marian writers, as you call them, and observed the times, places, and circumstances of their works, I think they would not, when brought together, have had their present startling effect on the reader. As it is, they inflict a vague alarm upon the mind, as when one hears a noise, and does not know whence it comes and what it means. Some of your authors, I know, are saints; all, I suppose, are spiritual writers and holy men; but the majority are of no great celebrity, even if they have any kind of weight. Suarez has no business among them at all, for, when he says that no one is saved without the Blessed Virgin, he is speaking not of devotion to her, but of her intercession. The greatest name is St. Alfonso Liguori; but it never surprises me to read anything unusual in the devotions of a saint. Such men are on a level very different from our own, and we cannot understand them. I hold this to be an important canon in the lives of the saints, according to the words of the apostle, "The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no one." But we may refrain from judging, without proceeding to imitate. I hope it is not disrespectful to so great a servant of God to say, that I never read his "Glories of Mary;" but here I am speaking generally of all saints, whether I know them or not; and I say that they are beyond us, and that we must use them as patterns, not as copies. As to his practical directions, St. Alfonso wrote them for Neapolitans, whom he knew, and we do not know. Other writers whom you quote, as De Salazar, are too ruthlessly logical to be safe or pleasant guides in the delicate matters of devotion. As to De Montford and Oswald, I never even met with their names, till I saw them in your book; the bulk of our laity, not to say of our clergy, perhaps know them little better than I do. Nor did I know till I learnt it from your volume that there were two Bernardines. St. Bernardine, of Sienna, I knew of course, and knew too that he had a burning love for our Lord. But about the other, "Bernardine de Bustis," I was quite at fault. I find from the Protestant Cave that he, as well as his name-sake, made himself conspicuous also for his zeal for the holy name, {84} which is much to the point here. "With such devotion was he carried away," says Cave, "for the bare name of Jesus (which, by a new device of Bernardine, of Sienna, had lately began to receive divine honors), that he was urgent with Innocent VIII. to assign it a day and rite in the calendar."

One thing, however, is clear about all these writers; that not one of them is an Englishman. I have gone through your book, and do not find one English name among the various authors to whom you refer, except, of course, the name of that author whose lines I have been quoting, and who, great as are his merits, cannot, for the reasons I have given in the opening of my letter, be considered a representative of English Catholic devotion. Whatever these writers may have said or not said, whatever they may have said harshly, and whatever capable of fair explanation, still they are foreigners; we are not answerable for their particular devotions; and as to themselves, I am glad to be able to quote the beautiful words which you use about them in your letter to the "Weekly Register" of November 25th last. "I do not presume," you say, "to prescribe to Italians or Spaniards what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions; and least of all did I think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted that they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his Mother." In these last words, too, you have supplied one of the omissions in your volume which I noticed above.

5. Now, then, we come to England itself, which after all, in the matter of devotion, alone concerns you and me; for though doctrine is one and the same everywhere, devotions, as I have already said, are matters of the particular time and the particular country. I suppose we owe it to the national good sense that English Catholics have been protected from the extravagances which are elsewhere to be found. And we owe it, also, to the wisdom and moderation of the Holy See, which in giving us the pattern for our devotion, as well as the rule of our faith, has never indulged in those curiosities of thought which are both so attractive to undisciplined imaginations and so dangerous to grovelling hearts. In the case of our own common people I think such a forced style of devotion would be simply unintelligible; as to the educated, I doubt whether it can have more than an occasional or temporary influence. If the Catholic faith spreads in England, these peculiarities will not spread with it. There is a healthy devotion to the Blessed Mary, and there is an artificial; it is possible to love her as a Mother, to honor her as a Virgin, to seek her as a Patron, and to exalt her as a Queen, without any injury to solid piety and Christian good sense: I cannot help calling this the English style. I wonder whether you find anything to displease you in the "Garden of the Soul," the "Key of Heaven," the "Vade Mecum," the "Golden Manual," or the "Crown of Jesus?" These are the books to which Anglicans ought to appeal who would be fair to us in this matter. I do not observe anything in them which goes beyond the teaching of the fathers, except so far as devotion goes beyond doctrine.

There is one collection of devotions, beside, of the highest authority, which has been introduced from abroad of late years. It consists of prayers of various kinds which have been indulgenced by the popes; and it commonly goes by the name of the "Raccolta." As that word suggests, the language of many of the prayers is Italian, while others are in Latin. This circumstance is unfavorable to a translation, which, however skilful, must ever savor of the words and idioms of the original; but, passing over this necessary disadvantage, I consider there is hardly a clause in the good-sized volume in question which even the sensitiveness of English Catholicism would wish changed. Its anxious observance of doctrinal exactness is almost a fault. {85} It seems afraid of using the words "give me," "make me," in its addresses to the Blessed Virgin, which are as natural to adopt as in addressing a parent or friend. Surely we do not disparage divine Providence when we say that we are indebted to our parents for our life, or when we ask their blessing; we do not show any atheistical leanings because we say that a man's recovery must be left to nature, or that nature supplies brute animals with instincts. In like manner it seems to me a simple purism to insist upon minute accuracy of expression in devotional and popular writings. However, the "Raccolta," as coming from responsible authority, for the most part observes it. It commonly uses the phrases, "gain for us by thy prayers," "obtain for us," "pray to Jesus for me," "speak for me, Mary," "carry thou our prayers," "ask for us grace," "intercede for the people of God," and the like, marking thereby with great emphasis that she is nothing more than an advocate, and not a source of mercy. Nor do I recollect in this book more than one or two ideas to which you would be likely to raise an objection. The strongest of these is found in the novena before her nativity, in which, _apropos_ of her birth, we pray that she "would come down again and be re-born spiritually in our souls;" but it will occur to you that St. Paul speaks of his wish to impart to his converts, '"not only the gospel, but his own soul;" and writing to the Corinthians, he says he has "begotten them by the gospel," and to Philemon, that he had "begotten Onesimus in his bonds;" whereas St. James, with greater accuracy of expression, says "of his own will hath God begotten us with the word of truth." Again we find the petitioner saying to the Blessed Mary, "In thee I place all my hope;" but this is explained in another passage, "Thou art my best hope after Jesus." Again, we read elsewhere, "I would I had a greater love for thee, since to love thee is a great mark of predestination;" but the prayer goes on, "Thy Son deserves of us an immeasurable love; pray that I may have this grace --a great love for Jesus;" and further on, "I covet no good of the earth, but to love my God alone."

Then, again, as to the lessons which our Catholics receive, whether by catechizing or instruction, you would find nothing in our received manuals to which you would not assent, I am quite sure. Again, as to preaching, a standard book was drawn up three centuries ago, to supply matter for the purpose to the parochial clergy. You incidentally mention, p. 153, that the comment of Cornelius à Lapide on Scripture is "a repertorium for sermons;" but I never heard of this work being used, nor indeed can it, because of its size. The work provided for the purpose by the church is the "Catechism of the Council of Trent," and nothing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded there. On the whole, I am sanguine that you will come to the conclusion that Anglicans may safely trust themselves to us English Catholics as regards any devotions to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of them, over and above the rule of the Council of Trent.

6. And, now at length coming to the statements, not English, but foreign, which offend you in works written in her honor, I will frankly say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and almost anger; for they seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a power of "searching the reins and hearts" which is the attribute of God alone; and I said to myself, how can we any more prove our Lord's divinity from Scripture, if those cardinal passages which invest him with divine prerogatives after all invest him with nothing beyond what his Mother shares with him? And how, again, is there anything of incommunicable greatness in his death and passion, if he who was alone in the garden, alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after {86} all is not alone, but shared his solitary work with his Blessed Mother--with her to whom, when he entered on his ministry, he said for our instruction, not as grudging her her proper glory, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" And then again, if I hate those perverse sayings so much, how much more must she, in proportion to her love of him? And how do we show our love for her, by wounding her in the very apple of her eye? This I said and say; but then, on the other hand, I have to observe that these strange words after all are but few in number, out of the many passages you cite; that most of them exemplify what I said above about the difficulty of determining the exact point where truth passes into error, and that they are allowable in one sense or connection, and false in another. Thus to say that prayer (and the Blessed Virgin's prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression in everyday prose; but, if it is explained to mean that there is nothing which prayer may not obtain from God, it is nothing else than the very promise made us in Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the centre of all being, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the Creator and the creature met together, and became one in her womb; and as such, I have used the expression above. Again, it is at first sight a paradox to say that "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background;" yet there is a sense, as I have shown above, in which it is a simple truth.

And so again certain statements may be true, under circumstances and in a particular time and place, which are abstractedly false; and hence it may be very unfair in a controversialist to interpret by an English or a modern rule whatever may have been asserted by a foreign or mediaeval author. To say, for instance, dogmatically, that no one can be saved without personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin, would be an untenable proposition: yet it might be true of this man or that, or of this or that country at this or that date; and if the very statement has ever been made by any writer of consideration (and this has to be ascertained), then perhaps it was made precisely under these exceptional circumstances. If an Italian preacher made it, I should feel no disposition to doubt him, at least as regards Italian youths and Italian maidens.

Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that consideration and kindness which is your rule. At p. 106 you say, "It is commonly said, that if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that 'it is good and useful to pray to the saints,' he is not bound himself to do so. Were the above teaching true, it would be cruelty to say so; because, according to it, he would be forfeiting what is morally necessary to his salvation." But now, as to the fact, where is it said that to pray to our Lady and the saints is necessary to salvation? The proposition of St. Alfonso is, that "God gives no grace except through Mary;" that is, through her intercession. But intercession is one thing, devotion is another. And Suarez says, "It is the universal sentiment that the intercession of Mary is not only useful, but also in a certain manner necessary;" but still it is the question of her intercession, not of our invocation of her, not of devotion to her. If it were so, no Protestant could be saved; if it were so, there would be grave reasons for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius, or of the primitive martyrs; nay, I should like to know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once. Our Lord died for those heathens who did not know him; and his mother intercedes for those Christians who do not know her; and she intercedes according to his will, and, when he wills to save a particular soul, she at once prays for it. {87} I say, he wills indeed according to her prayer, but then she prays according, to his will. Though then it is natural and prudent for those to have recourse to her who, from the church's teaching, know her power, yet it cannot be said that devotion to her is a _sine quâ non_ of salvation. Some indeed of the authors whom you quote go further; they do speak of devotion; but even then they do not enunciate the general proposition which I have been disallowing. For instance, they say, "It is morally impossible for those to be saved who _neglect_ the devotion to the Blessed Virgin;" but a simple omission is one thing, and neglect another. "It is impossible for any to be saved who _turns away_ from her;" yes; but to "turn away" is to offer some positive disrespect or insult toward her, and that with sufficient knowledge; and I certainly think it would be a very grave act if, in a Catholic country (and of such the writers were speaking, for they knew of no other), with ave-marias sounding in the air, and images of the Madonna at every street and road, a Catholic broke off or gave up a practice that was universal, and in which he was brought up, and deliberately put her name out of his thoughts.

7. Though, then, common sense may determine for us that the line of prudence and propriety has been certainly passed in the instance of certain statements about the Blessed Virgin, it is often not easy to prove the point logically; and in such cases authority, if it attempt to act, would be in the position which so often happens in our courts of law, when the commission of an offence is morally certain, but the government prosecutor cannot find legal evidence sufficient to insure conviction. I am not denying the right of sacred congregations, at their will, to act peremptorily, and without assigning reasons for the judgment they pass upon writers; but, when they have found it inexpedient to take this severe course, perhaps it may happen from the circumstances of the case that there is no other that they can take, even if they would. It is wiser then for the most part to leave these excesses to the gradual operation of public opinion--that is, to the opinion of educated and sober Catholics; and this seems to me the healthiest way of putting them down. Yet in matter of fact I believe the Holy See has interfered from time to time, when devotion seemed running into superstition; and not so long ago. I recollect hearing in Gregory the XVI.'s time of books about the Blessed Virgin which had been suppressed by authority; and in particular of a representation of the immaculate conception which he had forbidden, and of measures taken against the shocking notion that the Blessed Mary is present in the holy eucharist in the sense in which our Lord is present; but I have no means of verifying the information I received.

Nor have I time, any more than you have had, to ascertain how far great theologians have made protests against those various extravagances of which you so rightly complain. Passages, however, from three well-known Jesuit fathers have opportunely come in my way, and in one of them is introduced, in confirmation, the name of the great Gerson. They are Canisius, Petavius, and Raynaudus; and as they speak very appositely, and you do not seem to know them, I will here make some extracts from them:

(1.) Canisius:

"We confess that in the _cultus_ of Mary it has been and is possible for corruptions to creep in; and we have a more than ordinary desire that the pastors of the Church should be carefully vigilant here, and give no place to Satan, whose characteristic office it has ever been, while men sleep, to sow the cockle amid the Lord's wheat. . . . For this purpose it is his wont gladly to avail himself of the aid of heretics, fanatics, and false Catholics, as may be seen in the instance of this _Marianus cultus_. This _cultus_, heretics, suborned by Satan, attack with hostility Thus, too, certain mad heads are so {88} demented by Satan, as to embrace superstitions and idolatries instead of the true _cultus_ and neglect altogether the due measures whether in respect to God or to Mary. Such indeed were the Collyridians of old. . . . Such that German herdsman a hundred years ago, who gave out publicly that he was a new prophet and had had a vision of the Deipara, and told the people in her name to pay no more tributes and taxes to princes. .... Moreover, how many Catholics does one see who, by great and shocking negligence, have neither care nor regard for her _cultus_, but, given to profane and secular objects, scarce once a year raise their earthly minds to sing her praises or to venerate her!"--_De Mariâ Deiparâ_, p. 518.

(2.) Father Petau says, when discussing the teaching of the fathers about the Blessed Virgin (de Incarn. xiv. 8):

"I will venture to give this advice to all who would be devout and panegyrical toward the Holy Virgin, viz., not to exceed in their piety and devotion to her, but to be content with true and solid praises, and to cast aside what is otherwise. The latter kind of idolatry, lurking, as St. Augustine says, nay implanted, in human hearts, is greatly abhorrent from theology, that is from the gravity of heavenly wisdom, which never thinks or asserts anything but what is measured by certain and accurate rules. What that rule should be, and what caution is to be used in our present subject, I will not determine of myself, but according to the mind of a most weighty and most learned theologian, John Gerson, who in one of his epistles proposes certain canons, which he calls truths, by means of which are to be measured the assertions of theologians concerning the incarnation. . . By these truly golden precepts Gerson brings within bounds the immoderate license of praising the Blessed Virgin, and restrains it within the measure of sober and healthy piety. And from these it is evident that that sort of reasoning is frivolous and nugatory in which so many indulge, in order to assign any sort of grace they please, however unusual, to the Blessed Virgin. For they argue thus: 'Whatever the Son of God could bestow for the glory of his mother, that it became him in fact to furnish;' or again, 'Whatever honors or ornaments he has poured out on other saints, those all together hath he heaped upon his mother;' whence they draw their chain of reasoning to their desired conclusion; a mode of argumentation which Gerson treats with contempt as captious and sophistical."

He adds, what of course we all should say, that, in thus speaking, he has no intention to curtail the liberty of pious persons in such meditations and conjectures, on the mysteries of faith, sacred histories, and the Scripture text, as are of the nature of comments, supplements, and the like.

(3.) Raynaud is an author full of devotion, if any one is so, to the Blessed Virgin; yet, in the work which he has composed in her honor ("Diptycha Mariana"), he says more than I can quote here to the same purpose as Petau. I abridge some portions of his text:

"Let this be taken for granted, that no praises of ours can come up to the praises due to the Virgin Mother. But we must not make up for our inability to reach her true praise by a supply of lying embellishment and false honors. For there are some whose affection for religious objects is so imprudent and lawless, that they transgress the due limits even toward the saints. This Origen has excellently observed upon in the case of the Baptist, for very many, instead of observing the measure of charity, consider whether he might not be the Christ"--p. 9. ". . . St. Anselm, the first, or one of the first, champions of the public celebration of the Blessed Virgin's immaculate conception, says (de Excell. Virg.) that the church considers it indecent, that anything that admits of doubt should be said in her praise, when the things which are certainly true of her supply such large materials for laudation. It is right so to interpret St. Epiphanius also, when he says that human tongues should not pronounce anything lightly of the Deipara; and who is more justly to be charged with speaking lightly of the most holy Mother of God, than he who, as if what is certain and evident did not suffice for her full investiture, is wiser than the aged, and obtrudes on us the toadstools of his own mind, and devotions unheard of by those holy fathers who loved her best? Plainly as St. Anselm says that she is the Mother of God, this by itself exceeds every elevation which can be named or imagined, short of God. About so sublime a majesty we should not speak hastily from prurience of wit, or flimsy pretext of promoting piety; but with great maturity of thought; and, whenever the maxims of the church and the oracles of {89} faith do not suffice, then not without the suffrages of the doctors. . . . Those who are subject to this prurience of innovation, do not perceive how broad is the difference between subjects of human science and heavenly things. All novelty concerning the objects of our faith is to be put far away; except so far as by diligent investigation of God's word, written and unwritten, and a well founded inference from what is thence to be elicited, something is brought to light which, though already indeed there, had not hitherto been recognized. The innovations which we condemn are those which rest neither on the written nor unwritten word, nor on conclusions from it, nor on the judgment of ancient sages, nor sufficient basis of reason, but on the sole color and pretext of doing more honor to the Deipara."--p. 10.

In another portion of the same work, he speaks in particular of one of those imaginations to which you especially refer, and for which, without strict necessity (as it seems to me), you allege the authority of à Lapide:

"Nor is that honor of the Deipara to be offered, viz., that the elements of the body of Christ, which the Blessed Virgin supplied to it, remain perpetually unaltered in Christ, and thereby are found also in the eucharist. . . . This solicitude for the Virgin's glory must, I consider, be discarded; since, if rightly considered, it involves an injury toward Christ, and such honors the Virgin loveth not. And first, dismissing philosophical bagatelles about the animation of blood, milk, etc., who can endure the proposition that a good portion of the substance of Christ in the eucharist should be worshipped with a _cultus_ less than _latria_? viz., by the inferior _cultus_ of _hyperdulia?_ The preferable class of theologians contend that not even the humanity of Christ is to be materially abstracted from the Word of God, and worshipped by itself; how then shall we introduce a _cultus_ of the Deipara in Christ, which is inferior to the _cultus_ proper to him? How is this other than casting down of the substance of Christ from his royal throne, and a degradation of it to some inferior sitting-place? Is is nothing to the purpose to refer to such fathers as say that the flesh of Christ is the flesh of Mary, for they speak of its origin. What will hinder, if this doctrine be admitted, our also admitting that there is something in Christ which is detestable? for, as the first elements of a body which were communicated by the Virgin to Christ have (as these authors say) remained perpetually in Christ, so the same _materia_, at least in part, which belonged originally to the ancestors of Christ, came down to the Virgin from her father, unchanged, and taken from her grandfather, and so on. And thus, since it is not unlikely that some of these ancestors were reprobate, there would now be something actually in Christ which had belonged to a reprobate and worthy of detestation."--p. 237.

8. After such explanations, and with such authorities, to clear my path, I put away from me, as you would wish, without any hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such sentences, and phrases, as these: that the mercy of Mary is infinite; that God has resigned into her hands his omnipotence; that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son; that the Blessed Virgin is superior to God; that he is (simply) subject to her command; that our Lord is now of the same disposition as his Father toward sinners, viz., a disposition to reject them, while Mary takes his place as an advocate with Father and Son; that the saints are more ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father; that Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can obtain a Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the salvation of men if our Lord had died not to obey his Father, but to defer to the decree of his mother; that she rivals our Lord in being God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the incarnate God bore the image of his Father, so he bore the image of his mother; that redemption derived from Christ indeed its sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and loveliness; that us we are clothed with the merits of Christ, so we are clothed with {90} the merits of Mary; that, as he is priest, in like manner is she priestess; that his body and blood in the eucharist are truly hers and appertain to her; that as he is present and received therein, so is she present and received therein; that priests are ministers, as of Christ, so of Mary; that elect souls are born of God and Mary; that the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness his action by her, producing in her and by her Jesus Christ in his members; that the kingdom of God in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the soul--and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul he flies there.

Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your book, nor, as I think, do the vast minority of English Catholics know them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived them to be said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to Scripture, or to the fathers, or to the decrees of councils, or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to the Holy See, or to reason. They defy all the _loci theologici_. There is nothing of them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in the Roman '"Raccolta," in the "Imitation of Christ," in Gother, Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, as far as I am aware. They do but scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being into the reception of them; I should but be guilty of fulsome, frigid flattery toward the most upright and noble of God's creatures if I professed them, and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the _scandalum parvulorum_ in my case, or the _scandalum Pharisaeorum_, I leave others to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all, than that Mary is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with statements which can only be explained by being explained away. I do not, however, speak of these statements as they are found in their authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in your pages. Were any of them the sayings of saints in ecstasy, I should know they had a good meaning; still, I should not repeat them myself; but I am looking at them not as spoken by the tongues of angels, but according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as spoken by man to man, in England, in the nineteenth century, I consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls.

9. And now, after having said so much as this, bear with me, my dear friend, if I end with an expostulation. Have you not been touching us on a very tender point in a very rude way? Is not the effect of what you have said to expose her to scorn and obloquy who is dearer to us than any other creature? Have you even hinted that our love for her is anything else than an abuse? Have you thrown her one kind word yourself all through your book? I trust so, but I have not lighted upon one. And yet I know you love her well. Can you wonder, then--can I complain much, much as I grieve--that men should utterly misconceive of you, and are blind to the fact that you have put the whole argument between you and us on a new footing; and that, whereas it was said twenty-five years ago in the "British Critic," "Till Rome ceases to be what practically she is, union is _impossible_ between her and England," you declare, on the contrary, "It is _possible_ as soon as Italy and England, {91} haying the same faith and the same centre of unity, are allowed to hold severally their own theological opinions?" They have not done you justice here because, in truth, the honor of our Lady is dearer to them than the conversion of England.

Take a parallel case, and consider how you would decide it yourself. Supposing an opponent of a doctrine for which you so earnestly contend, the eternity of punishment, instead of meeting you with direct arguments against it, heaped together a number of extravagant descriptions of the place, mode, and circumstances of its infliction, quoted Tertullian as a witness for the primitive fathers, and the Covenanters and Ranters for these last centuries; brought passages from the "Inferno" of Dante, and from the sermons of Whitfield; nay, supposing he confined himself to the chapters on the subject in Jeremy Taylor's work on "The State of Man," would you think this a fair and becoming method of reasoning? and if he avowed that he should ever consider the Anglican Church committed to all these accessories of the doctrine till its authorities formally denounced Taylor and Whitfield, and a hundred others, would you think this an equitable determination, or the procedure of a theologian?

So far concerning the Blessed Virgin, the chief but not the only subject of your volume. And now, when I could wish to proceed, she seems to stop me, for the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is upon us; and close upon its octave, which is kept with special solemnities in the churches of this town, come the great antiphons, the heralds of Christmas. That joyful season, joyful for all of us, while it centres in him who then came on earth, also brings before us in peculiar prominence that Virgin Mother who bore and nursed him. Here she is not in the background, as at Eastertide, but she brings him to us in her arms. Two great festivals, dedicated to her honor, to-morrow's and the Purification, mark out and keep the ground, and, like the towers of David, open the way to and fro for the high holiday season of the Prince of Peace. And all along it her image is upon it, such as we see it in the typical representation of the Catacombs. May the sacred influences of this time bring us all together in unity! May it destroy all bitterness on your side and ours! May it quench all jealous, sour, proud, fierce antagonism on our side; and dissipate all captious, carping, fastidious refinements of reasoning on yours! May that bright and gentle lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, overcome you with her sweetness, and revenge herself on her foes by interceding effectually for their conversion!

I am, yours, most affectionately, John H. Newman.

THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM, _In fest. S. Ambrosii_, 1865.

{92}

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

HAVEN'T TIME

A CHAPTER FOR PARENTS.

"That boy needs more attention," said Mr. Green, referring to his eldest son, a lad whose wayward temper and inclination to vice demanded a steady, consistent, wise, and ever-present exercise of parental watchfulness and authority.

"You may well say that," returned the mother of the boy, for to her the remark had been made. "He is getting entirely beyond me."

"If I only had the time to look after him?" Mr. Green sighed as he uttered these words.

"I think you ought to take more time for a purpose like this," said Mrs. Green.

"More time!" Mr. Green spoke with marked impatience. "What time have I to attend to him, Margaret? Am I not entirely absorbed in business? Even now I should be at the counting-house, and am only kept away by your late breakfast."

Just then the breakfast bell rang, and Mr. and Mrs. Green, accompanied by their children, repaired to the dining-room. John, the boy about whom the parents had been talking, was among the number. As they took their places at the table he exhibited certain disorderly movements, and a disposition to annoy his younger brothers and sisters. But these were checked, instantly, by his father, of whom John stood in some fear.

Before the children had finished eating, Mr. Green laid his knife and fork side by side on his plate, pushed his chair back, and was in the act of rising, when his wife said:

"Don't go yet. Just wait until John is through with his breakfast. He acts dreadfully the moment your back is turned."

Mr. Green turned a quick, lowering glance upon the boy, whose eyes shrank beneath his angry glance, saying as ho did so:

"I haven't time to stay a moment longer; I ought to have been at my business an hour ago, But see here, my lad," addressing himself to John, "there has been enough of this work. Not a day passes that I am not worried with complaints about you. Now, mark me! I shall inquire particularly as to your conduct when I come home at dinner-time; and, if you have given your mother any trouble, or acted in any way improperly, I will take you severely to account. It's outrageous that the whole family should be kept in constant trouble by you. Now, be on your guard!"

A moment or two Mr. Green stood frowning upon the boy, and then retired.

Scarcely had the sound of the closing street-door, which marked the fact of Mr. Green's departure, ceased to echo through the house, ere John began to act as was his custom when his father was out of the way. His mother's remonstrances were of no avail; and, when she finally compelled him to leave the table, he obeyed with a most provoking and insolent manner.

All this would have been prevented if Mr. Green had taken from business just ten minutes, and conscientiously devoted that time to {93} the government of his wayward boy and the protection of the family from his annoyances.

On arriving at his counting-house, Mr. Green found two or three persons waiting, and but a single clerk in attendance. He had felt some doubts as to the correctness of his conduct in leaving home so abruptly, under the circumstances; but the presence of the customers satisfied him that he had done right. Business, in his mind, was paramount to everything else; and his highest duty to his family he felt to be discharged when he was devoting himself most assiduously to the work of procuring for them the means of external comfort, ease, and luxury. Worldly well-doing was a cardinal virtue in his eyes.

Mr. Green was the gainer, perhaps, of two shillings in the way of profit on sales, by being at his counting-house ten minutes earlier than would have been the case had he remained with his family until the completion of their morning meal. What was lost to his boy by the opportunity thus afforded for an indulgence in a perverse and disobedient temper it is hard to say. Something was, undoubtedly, lost--something, the valuation of which, in money, it would be difficult to make.

Mrs. Green did not complain of John's conduct to his father at dinner-time. She was so often forced to complain that she avoided the task whenever she felt justified in doing so; and that was, perhaps, far too often. Mr. Green asked no questions; for he knew, by experience, to what results such questions would lead, and he was in no mood for unpleasant intelligence. So John escaped, as he had escaped hundreds of times before, and felt encouraged to indulge his bad propensities at will, to his own injury and the annoyance of all around him.

If Mr. Green had no time in the morning or through the day to attend to his children, the evening, one might think, would afford opportunity for conference with them, supervision of their studies, and an earnest inquiry into their conduct and moral and intellectual progress. But such was not the case. Mr. Green was too much wearied with the occupation of the day to bear the annoyance of the children; or his thoughts were too busy with business matters, or schemes of profit, to attend to the thousand and one questions they were ready to pour in upon him from all sides; or he had a political club to attend, an engagement with some merchant for the discussion of a matter connected with trade, or felt obliged to be present at the meeting of some society of which he was a member. So he either left home immediately after tea, or the children were sent to bed in order that he might have a quiet evening for rest, business reflection, or the enjoyment of a new book.

Mr. Green had so much to do and so much to think about that he had no time to attend to his children; and this neglect was daily leaving upon them ineffaceable impressions that would inevitably mar the happiness of their after lives. This was particularly the case with John. Better off in the world was Mr. Green becoming every day--better off as it regarded money; but poorer in another sense--poorer in respect to home affections and home treasures. His children were not growing up to love him intensely, to confide in him implicitly, and to respect him as their father and friend. He had no time to attend to them, and rather pushed them away than drew them toward him with the strong cords of affection. To his wife he left their government, and she was not equal to the task.

"I don't believe," said Mrs. Green, one day, "that John is learning much at the school where he goes. I think you ought to see after him a little. He never studies a lesson at home."

"Mr. Elden has the reputation of being one of our best teachers. His school stands high," replied Mr. Green. {94} "That may happen," said Mrs. Green. "Still, I really think you ought to know, for yourself, how John is getting along. Of one thing I am certain, he does not improve in good manners nor good temper in the least. And he is never in the house between school-hours, except to get his meals. I wish you would require him to be at your counting-house during the afternoons. School is dismissed at four o'clock, and he ranges the streets with other boys, and goes where he pleases from that time until night.

"That's very bad,"--Mr. Green spoke in a concerned voice,--"very bad. And it must be broken up. But as to having him with me, that is out of the question. He would be into everything, and keep me in hot water all the while. He'd like to come well enough, I do not doubt; but I can't have him there."

"Couldn't you set him to do something?"

"I might. But I haven't time to attend to him, Margaret. Business is business, and cannot be interrupted."

Mrs. Green sighed, and then remarked:

"I wish you would call on Mr. Elden and have a talk with him about John."

"I will, if you think it best."

"Do so, by all means. And beside, I would give more time to John in the evenings. If, for instance, you devoted an evening to him once a week, it would enable you to understand how he is progressing, and give you a control over him not now possessed."

"You are right in this, no doubt, Margaret."

But reform went not beyond this acknowledgment. Mr. Green could never find time to see John's teacher, nor feel himself sufficiently at leisure, or in the right mood of mind, to devote to the boy even a single evening.

And thus it went on from day to day, from month to month, and from year to year, until, finally, John was sent home from school by Mr. Elden with a note to his father, in which idleness, disorderly conduct, and vicious habits were charged upon him in the broadest terms.

The unhappy Mr. Green called immediately upon the teacher, who gave him a more particular account of his son's bad conduct, and concluded by saying that he was unwilling to receive him back into his school.

Strange as it may seem, it was four months before Mr. Green "found time" to see about another school, and to get John entered therein; during which long period the boy had full liberty to go pretty much where he pleased, and to associate with whom he liked. It is hardly to be supposed that he grew any better for this.

By the time John was seventeen years of age, Mr. Green's business had become greatly enlarged, and his mind more absorbed therein. With him gain was the primary thing; and, as a consequence, his family held a secondary place in his thoughts. If money were needed, he was ever ready to supply the demand; that done, he felt that his duty to them was, mainly, discharged. To the mother of his children he left the work of their wise direction in the paths of life--their government and education; but she was inadequate to the task imposed.

From the second school at which John was entered he was dismissed within three months, for bad conduct. He was then sent to school in a distant city, where, removed from all parental restraint and admonition, he made viler associates than any he had hitherto known, and took thus a lower step in vice. He was just seventeen, when a letter from the principal of this school conveyed to Mr. Green such unhappy intelligence of his son that he immediately resolved, as a last resort, to send him to sea, before the mast--and this was done, spite of all the mother's tearful remonstrances, and the boy's threats that he would {95} escape from the vessel on the very first opportunity.

And yet, for all this sad result of parental neglect, Mr. Green devoted no more time nor care to his children. Business absorbed the whole man. He was a merchant, both body and soul. His responsibilities were not felt as extending beyond his counting-house, further than to provide for the worldly well-being of his family. Is it any cause of wonder that, with his views and practice, it should not turn out well with his children; or, at least, with some of them?

At the end of a year John came home from sea, a rough, cigar-smoking, dram-drinking, overgrown boy of eighteen, with all his sensual desires and animal passions more active than when he went away, while his intellectual faculties and moral feelings were in a worse condition than at his separation from home. Grief at the change oppressed the hearts of his parents; but their grief was unavailing. Various efforts were made to get him into some business, but he remained only a short time in any of the places where his father had him introduced. Finally, he was sent to sea again. But he never returned to his friends. In a drunken street-brawl, that occurred while on shore at Valparaiso, he was stabbed by a Spaniard, and died shortly afterward.

On the very day this tragic event took place, Mr. Green was rejoicing over a successful speculation, from which he had come out the gainer by two thousand pounds. In the pleasure this circumstance occasioned, all thoughts of the absent one, ruined by his neglect, were swallowed up.

Several months elapsed. Mr. Green had returned home, well satisfied with his day's business. In his pocket was the afternoon paper, which, after the younger children were in bed, and the older ones out of his way, he sat down to read. His eyes turned to the foreign intelligence, and almost the first sentence he read was the intelligence of his son's death. The paper dropped from his hands, while he uttered an expression of surprise and grief that caused the cheeks of his wife, who was in the room, to turn deadly pale. She had not power to ask the cause of her husband's sudden exclamation; but her heart, that ever yearned toward her absent boy, instinctively divined the truth.

"John is dead!" said Mr. Green, at length, speaking in a tremulous tone of voice.

There was from the mother no wild burst of anguish. The boy had been dying to her daily for years, and she had suffered for him worse than the pangs of death. Burying her face in her hands, she wept silently, yet hopelessly.

"If we were only blameless of the poor child's death!" said Mrs. Green, lifting her tearful eyes, after the lapse of nearly ten minutes, and speaking in a sad, self-rebuking tone of voice.

When those with whom we are in close relationship die, how quickly is that page in memory's book turned on which lies the record of unkindness or neglect! Already had this page been turned for Mr. Green, and conscience was sweeping therefrom the dust that well-nigh obscured the handwriting. He inwardly trembled as he read the condemning sentences that charged him with his son's ruin.

"If we were only blameless of the poor child's death!"

How these words of the grieving mother smote upon his heart. He did not respond to them. How could he do so at that moment?

"Where is Edward?" he inquired, at length.

"I don't know," sobbed the mother. "He is out somewhere almost every evening. Oh! I wish you would look to him a little more closely. He is past my control."

"I must do so," returned Mr. Green, speaking from a strong conviction of the necessity of doing as his wife suggested; "if I only had a little more time----"

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He checked himself. It was the old excuse--the rock upon which all his best hopes for his first-born had been fearfully wrecked. His lips closed, his head was bowed, and, in the bitterness of unavailing sorrow, he mused on the past, while every moment the conviction of wrong toward his child, now irreparable, grew stronger and stronger.

After that, Mr. Green made an effort to exercise more control over his children; but he had left the reins loose so long that his tighter grasp produced restiveness and rebellion. He persevered, however; and, though Edward followed too closely the footsteps of John, yet the younger children were brought under salutary restraints. The old excuse--want of time--was frequently used by Mr. Green to justify neglect of parental duties; but a recurrence of his thoughts to the sad ruin of his eldest boy had, in most cases, the right effect; and in the end he ceased to give utterance to the words--"I haven't time." However, frequently he fell into neglect, from believing that business demanded his undivided attention.

[ORIGINAL.]

THE SONG OF THE SHELL.

WRITTEN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

There's a music aloft in the air As if devils were singing a song; There's a shriek like the shriek of despair. And a crash which the echoes prolong.

There's a voice like the voice of the gale, When it strikes a tall ship on the sea; There's a rift like the rent of her sail. As she helplessly drifts to the lee.

There's a rush like the rushing of fiends. Compelled by an horrible spell; There's a flame like the flaming of brands, Snatched in rage from the furnace of hell.

There's a wreath like the foam on the wave, There's a silence unbroke by a breath; There's a thud like the clod in a grave, There are writhings, and moanings, and death!

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From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.