CHAPTER VI.

IN BLUE-ANCHOR LANE.

Nine o'clock was striking, as I hurried along the footway of London Bridge, hustled and jostled by the many passengers who seem to be forever treading their weary road of business, care, or pleasure--for even pleasure brings its toil; nine o'clock resounding loud and clear in the night-air from the dome of St. Paul's, and echoed from the neighboring church-steeples. It sounds romantic enough to please the most enthusiastic devourers of pre-Radcliffe novels, or to capture the imagination of the most ardent votaries of fiction. But it was far otherwise to me on the night of that Thursday which had seen Hugh Atherton branded with the name of murderer. It was far otherwise to me--weighed down with the crushing knowledge that the companion of my youth, the friend of my later years, although an innocent man, was being gradually hurried on to a felon's death; and that I--_I_ who loved him so well--had helped to his destruction, though Heaven could witness how unwillingly and unconsciously. No; there was no romance for me that night as I dragged my weary steps over the bridge, with the sight of him before my eyes, and the sound of heart-bursting grief from the lips of that poor stricken girl, his betrothed bride, ringing in my ears; for I had been to tell her the results of this day's work. Oh! why had I not yielded to his wish the evening I met Hugh Atherton in that fatal street, and taken him home with me? Why had I not more earnestly followed up the impulse--nay, dare I not call it inspiration?--to return after him and bid him come back with me? Ah me! my selfishness, my blindness--could any remorse ever atone for them and the terrible evil they had brought about? My God, thou knowest how my heart cried out to thee then in bitterness and sorrow: "Smite me with thy righteous judgments; but spare him--spare her!"

And now what new scene in this drama of life was I going to see unfolded? I could not tell; I knew nothing; I could only pray that if Providence pointed out to me any track by which I might penetrate the awful mystery that hung round us, I might pursue it with all fidelity, with utter forgetfulness of self. I had gone with Merrivale after we left Wimpole street to the House of Detention where Atherton was lodged, and desired him to ask that I should see Hugh; but he had come out looking puzzled and perplexed, and said: "I can't make it out; Atherton refuses to see you, and gives no reason except that it is 'best not.'" No help was there, then, but to trust to time and unwearied exertion to remove the cloud between us.

I found Jones waiting for me at the other end of the bridge, and anxiously on the look-out.

"I am right glad to see you, sir; I was fearful you mightn't come, seeing that I gave you no reason for doing so."

"I trusted you sufficiently, Jones, to belive you wouldn't have brought me on a useless errand at such a time of awful anxiety."

"Bless you, sir, I wouldn't--not for a thousand pounds; and I've had that offered to me in my day by parties as wished to get rid of me or shut me up. No, indeed, sir; I'd not add to your trouble if so be I could not lighten it. But we have no time to lose, and we have a goodish bit before us. You asked me this morning whether I knew any thing of a Mr. de Vos. I did not then, but I do now; and a strange chance threw me across him. If, sir, you will trust yourself entirely to me to-night, I think I can be of use to you. But you must confide in me, and allow me to take the lead in everything. And first, will you let me ask you one or two questions?"

I told him he might ask anything he pleased; if I could not answer, I would tell him so; that I would trust him implicitly.

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"Then, sir, will you condescend to honor me by coming home first for a few minutes? My missus expects us. She's in a terrible way about Mr. Atherton: she never forgets past kindness."

We turned off the bridge, straight down Wellington street, High street Borough, and then into King street, where Jones stopped before a respectable-looking private house, and knocked. The door was opened by his wife--with whom, under other circumstances, I had been acquainted before--and we entered their neat little front-parlor. Evidently we were expected, for supper was laid--homely, but substantial, and temptingly clean.

"You must excuse us, sir," said Jones; "but I fancied it was likely you had taken little enough to-day, and I told Jane to have something ready for us. Please to eat, Mr. Kavanagh; we have a short journey before us, and I want you to have all your wits and energies about you."

I was faint and sick, true enough; for I had touched nothing save a biscuit and a glass of wine since the morning; but my stomach seemed to loathe food; and though I drew to the table, not wishing to offend the good people, I felt as if to swallow a morsel would choke me. Jones cut up the cold ham and chicken in approved style, whilst his wife busied herself with slicing off thin rounds of bread and butter; but I toyed with my knife and fork, and could not eat. Not so Jones; he took down incredible quantities of all that was before him with the zest of a man who knows he is going to achieve luck's victory. Presently he threw down his tools, and looked hard at me.

"This'll never do, sir; you _must_ eat."

I shook my head and smiled.

"Jane," said he to his wife, "bring out Black Peter; no one ever needed him more than Mr. Kavanagh."

Mrs. Jones opened a cupboard and brought forth a tapery-necked bottle, out of which her husband very carefully poured some liquid into a wineglass, and then as carefully corked it up again.

"Drink this, sir; I've never known it to fail yet."

I lifted the glass to my lips. "Why, it's the primest Curaçoa!" I cried.

"That it may be, sir, for all I know. A poor German, to whom I once rendered a service, sent me two bottles, and I've found it the best cordial I ever tasted. I call it Black Peter--his name was Peter, and he was uncommonly black, to be sure--but I never heard its right name before. Drink it off, sir, and you'll feel a world better presently."

I did, and the effects were as Jones prognosticated. The cold, sick shivering left me, and I was able in a little while to take some food.

"Now, Jane," said the good man to his wife, when he saw I was getting on all right, "shut up your ears; Mr. Kavanagh and I are going to talk business."

Mrs. Jones laughed, picked up some needle-work, and sat down to a small table by the fire.

"My wife's a true woman, sir, in every thing but her tongue; she _don't_ talk: I'll back her against Sir Richard himself for keeping dark on a secret case. Now, sir, will you please to tell me, if you can, why you are anxious to find out about this Mr. de Vos?"

I related to him about my meeting De Vos at my sister's, what I had heard and witnessed in Swain's Lane, the impressions made upon me then, and how I had caught sight of the man outside the police-court on the preceding day. Jones listened very attentively, and made notes of it all.

"Exactly," said he, when I ended by saying that Mr. Wilmot had denied all knowledge of De Vos and the rendezvous in Swain's Lane. "Just what I expected. Of course he would."

"What! Do you think he did know, and that it was Wilmot's voice I heard?"

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"I think nothing, sir" said be, with a curious smile; "but I guess a good deal. We have a terribly-tangled skein to unravel; but I think in following up this man we have got the right end of it. I must now tell you how I stumbled upon him to-day. I heard from inspector Keene that he was engaged by Mr. Merrivale to see into this murder of old Mr. Thorneley; and knowing how partial I was to Mr. Atherton--good reason too--he asked me if I'd like to help him, and if so, he'd speak about me to Sir Richard Mayne. I said I would, above all things, for I'd had a hand in taking him, though I believed he was innocent; and now I'd give much to help him back to his liberty again. To cut short with the story, it was settled I should hang about the house to-day during the inquest in disguise, to pick up any stray information that might be let drop; for there's a deal more known, sir, about rich folks and their households by such people as those who were crowded round the house today than ever you'd think for; and we gather much of our most valuable information by mixing in these crowds unknown, and listening to the casual gossip that goes on in them. So I made myself up into a decent old guy, and took my way to Wimpole street. Whilst waiting to cross Oxford street two men came up behind me, and I heard a few words drop which made me turn round to look at them. Sure enough, one answered most perfectly your description of this Mr. De Vos. I thought to myself, 'Here's game worth following;' and I did follow, and heard them make an appointment for to-night on this side the water. Now, sir, do you see why I asked you to meet me?'

"I do. We must be present at the meeting."

"Just so, sir; and we have no time to lose, for the hour mentioned was soon after ten o'clock. If you'll take nothing else we will go. We must go made up; and you'll trust entirely to me."

"You mean disguised?"

"I do, sir; if you'll come up-stairs, I'll give you what is necessary."

Up-stairs we went, and Jones produced from a chest of drawers a rough common seaman's jacket, a pair of duck trowsers, a woollen comforter, a tarpaulin hat, and a false black beard, in which he rigged me out; and then proceeded to make similar change in his own attire, with the exception of a wig of shaggy red hair and a pair of whiskers to match.

"Leave your watch, sir, and any little articles of jewelry you may have about you, in my wife's charge; keep your hat well slouched over your face and your hands in your pockets, give a swing and swagger to your walk, and you'll do."

"Why, where upon earth are we going, Jones?"

"To Blue-Anchor Lane, sir, if you know where that very fashionable quarter lies."

I did not know exactly where it was, saying from police-reports, which named it as one of the lowest parts of that low district lying between Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. I had been somewhere near it once, having occasion to call on one of the clergy belonging to the Catholic Church in Parker's Row; but that was quite an aristocratic part, for a wonder, compared with Blue-Anchor Lane. Yes, Parker's Row I had visited; and, thanks to my having grown and "gentlefolked" to the height of six feet odd, I had managed to pull the bell and get admitted to the convent behind the church, where dwell the good Sisters of Mercy, walled-in all tight and trim. But down Blue-Anchor Lane I had never penetrated; and I asked Jones if it were not considered a favorite haunt for characters of the worst description.

"It is so, sir; and we must be careful and cautious to-night in all we do." I noticed that he put his staff and alarum in his pocket, and furnished me with similar implements. "In case of necessity, sir," he said, {614} laughing, "you must act as special constable with me. I wouldn't take you into the smallest danger; but, you see, I don't know but what your presence is of absolute necessity, and that you may be able to gather a clue in this case quicker than I should. Not that I yield in quickness at twigging most things to any man," said Detective Jones, with a bit of professional pride quite pardonable; "but you must identify the man for certain yourself, sir, before I can act in the matter with anything like satisfaction."

It was just upon ten o'clock when we left King street, and proceeded to London Bridge; whence we took the train to Spa Road. It takes, as every one knows, but a few minutes in the transit; and leaving that dark, dismal, break-neck hole of a station, we turned to the left up Spa Road, down Jamaica Row, and so into Blue-Anchor Lane. It is needless to describe what that place is at night; it is needless to picture in words all the degrading vice that walks forth unmasked in some of the streets of this capital, which ranks so high amidst the great cities o the world. Is our exterior morality to be so far behind, so infinitely below, that of tribes and nations on whom we stoop to trample? Can such things be, and we not waken from our lethargic sleep, remembering what our account will one day be? Can our rulers so calmly eat and drink, take their pleasure, hunt their game, pursue their gentlemanlike sports, knowing, as assuredly they do too well, that thousands of their people are living lives more degraded, more brutal, more shamelessly inhuman, more full of sin, ignorance, and every kind of squalor and misery, than the wildest savages we have set our soldiers to hunt out of the lands in which God placed them?

"What can the man be doing in such a place as this?" I whispered to Jones, as he stopped before the door of a small low-looking house of entertainment, half coffee-shop and half public-house, that rejoiced in the name of "Noah's Ark."

"That's just what we've got to find out, sir. Somehow it strikes me he's better acquainted with such haunts as these than you and I are with Regent street or Piccadilly. If I haven't seen his face before, and that not ten yards from the Old Bailey, I'm blest if I was ever more mistaken in my life. But hush! here he is."

And swaggering along, with his hat stuck on one side, and murmuring a verse of "Rory O'Moore," came Mr. de Vos, my sister Elinor's "treasure-trove," evidently somewhat airy in the upper regions, and elated by good cheer. Jones had taken out a short clay pipe, and whilst seemingly intent on filling it I saw he was watching De Vos with a keen observant glance. The latter gentleman was far from being intoxicated; he was merely what is called "elevated," and quite wide awake enough to be wary of anything going on around him. I saw him start perceptibly as his eye fell upon me, though my slouched hat and high collar must have gone a good way toward concealing my features.

"Fine night, mate," said Jones in a bluff, loud voice, lighting and pulling vigorously at his pipe.

"Deed and it is so," answered De Vos, halting just opposite to us, and once more turning his scrutiny upon me. "Are you game for a dhrop of whiskey?" addressing himself especially to me.

I was about to answer in feigned tones, when Jones took the word out of my mouth, and replied: "No use asking him--he's too love-sick just now to care for drink; he's parted with his sweetheart, and is off for the West-Indies by five in the morning from the Docks."

Something now seemed to attract De Vos's attention to Jones, for he became suddenly very grave.

"I've not seen you here before," said he, peering into the detective's face.

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"May be you have, may be you haven't. I don't need to ask any man's leave to drink a pint at 'Noah's Ark,' and watch a game of skittles."

This, as Jones told me afterward, was quite a random shot; however, it took effect.

"I believe you," said De Vos with all the boastfulness of his nature. "You'll not see a betther bowler through the country entirely than meself. I'll back the odds against any man this side the Channel, and bedad to it. I dare say now it's here on Monday last you were to see me play?"

"Ay, ay, mate," sang out Jones; "right enough."

"Ah! thin it was small shiners I went in for then; but I'll lay a couple of fivers now against a brad, and play you fair to-morrow against any of them in there," with a back-handed wave to the house, whence unmistakable sounds of noisy mirth were proceeding. "Is it done?"

"I'll consider your offer--shiver my timbers but I will!" said Jones, with a burst of Jack-tar-ism--"and let you know in the morning."

"Just as you please; you pays your money and you takes your choice;" and nodding to Jones, who responded to the salute in approved style, De Vos passed into the tap-room of the "Ark."

"Is it he?" hurriedly whispered Jones when he was out of hearing.

"Yes, without doubt," answered I, in the same tones.

"Then follow me, sir; and keep silent unless I speak to you;" and we likewise entered through the swing-doors of the gayly-lighted bar.

A glance sufficed to show us that the man we sought was not there; but Jones was far from being disconcerted; indeed he seemed most thoroughly up to the mark in the task before him, and threw himself into the part he had assigned himself with all the genius and facility of a Billington or Toole. Three or four men with physiognomies that would not have disgraced the hangman's rope were drinking, smoking, and exchanging low _badinage_ with a flashy-looking young woman, who stood behind the bar-counter. Woman, did I say? Angels pity her! There was little of womanly nature left in the fierce glitter of her eyes, in the hard lines of premature age which dissipation and sin and woe had left carved upon her forehead and around her mouth. Little enough of this though, no doubt, thought Detective Jones, intent upon his own purposes, as he quickly made up to her, and asked with all the swaggering audacity of a "jolly tar," for two stiff glasses of the primest pine-apple rum-and-water.

Jones extracted a long clay pipe from the lot standing before us in a broken glass, and passed it to me, and handed his pouch of tobacco, with an expressive glance that told me I was to smoke. Whilst filling the pipe and lighting it, the woman returned with the rum-and-water, which she placed ungraciously before us with a bang and clatter that caused the liquid to spill out of the glasses.

"Look here, miss," said Jones in his most insinuating tones; "I'll forgive you for upsetting the grog, and give you five bob to buy a blue ribbon for your pretty hair, if you'll manage to get me and my mate a snug comer inside there," pointing to a door on the left, whence issued voices; "for we've a bit of money business to settle to-night, and he's off first thing in the morning for the Indies."

The woman seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then holding out her hand for the promised tip, she beckoned us to pass inside the bar, and led the way to the door. Before she opened it she said in a low voice:

"I am doing as much as my place is worth; but I want the money; take the table in the corner at the top here; keep yourselves quiet, and don't take no notice of nobody, least of all of him who'll be next you."

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She now opened the door, and I saw Jones slip some more money into her hand, which she received with a short grunt and a nod, and then closed the door upon us.

The room was divided like that of an ordinary coffee-shop into box compartments; the one in the right-hand corner by the door was empty, and we entered it, carrying our glasses and pipes with us. We seated ourselves at the end of the two benches opposite each other, and then glanced round. In the box _vis-à-vis_ were two rough-looking fellows, whom I took to be real followers of our pretended calling--the sea. They returned our gaze suspiciously enough, and we could hear one whisper to the other, "Who's them coves?" and the answer "Dunno; none of _us_." But the next moment my attention was diverted to the voices in the box next to ours.

"Did you see _her_?" It was De Vos who spoke, I felt sure.

"Not I, my God! not I," answered a deep hoarse voice. "It's ten years since she and I met, and I'd go to my grave sooner than we should meet again. Mind you, the day when her cold cruel eyes rest on me will be a fatal day for me. Faugh! I've passed through as much bloodshed as it's ever given one man to encounter in his life, and never flinched; but I tell you, Sullivan, the thought of meeting her face to face seems to freeze the life-blood of my heart."

"Do you think she had a hand in this, O'Brian?"

"Who can tell? She did not pause once; what should stop her again?"

"The fear of you."

"She sees no reason to fear. She believes I'm still over _there_, where she sent me."

"And the young fellow, _my_ man, does he know anything?"

"Again how can I tell? But I should say not. How could _she_ enlighten _him_?"

"Then he is--"

"Their son."

A pause succeeded. Meanwhile Jones had engaged in a sort of dumb-show with me to throw the men opposite off the scent, by passing papers and money backwards and forwards, and apparently making calculations with his pencil; in reality I saw he was taking notes. Presently De Vos spoke again.

"Well, let's drink to the heir, old boy; and so long as I can make him play the piper, why thin it's myself that will, and bedad to him."

His Irishisms, be it observed, were intermittent.

"Long life to the heir!" cried the two voices simultaneously; and there was a clash of glasses.

"What's the time of day by your ticker?" asked De Vos a few moments afterward.

"Just upon eleven. The lad was to be here by then, wasn't he?"

"Yes, by eleven. I'd like to know what he wants with me now."

Jones here took up his cap, buttoned his coat, quietly opened the door, and went out; I following him, of course. He threw a good-humored nod to the woman, who still stood behind the bar, and I did the same; but he never spoke until we were some yards from "Noah's ark."

"You may be thankful, sir," he then said in a low voice, "to have got out safely and unmolested. That's the worst haunt of some of the worst characters in London; and they're banded together so as to shut out every one as don't belong to them. There's been a Providence, sir, in it all," raising his cap, "depend upon it. Now we must see if we can stop this lad whom they are expecting. We'll talk the matter over afterward."

Just then a boy came up running at full speed.

"Halt!" cried Jones, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder. "What makes you so late?"

"What's the odds to you? Let me go," replied the boy, with a mixture of impudence and cunning in his face. "I'm not not bound for you."

"You're bound for 'Noah's Ark,' though."

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"Are you Mr. Sullivan?"

"Of course I am."

"Oh! then here's the letter, and you're to see if it's all right."

"All right," said Detective Jones, opening the note and glancing at its contents; "tell the gentleman I'll be there. Here's for you, young Codlings," dropping a half-crown into the boy's hand.

"Five shillings, and not a stiver less, is my fare."

"Here you are then, you small imp of iniquity;" and another coin of similar value found its way into the ragamuffin's pocket.

He cut a caper, turned head over heels, and was gone.

And now Jones tore on breathlessly till we were safe out of Blue-Anchor Lane and had reached Paradise Row, where a policeman was standing at the corner. Jones took him aside for a minute, and then rejoined me.

"We'll hail the first cab, sir, in Spa Road, and drive to your home, if you've no objection."

This we did; and as soon as we had started he took a small candle-lantern from his pocket, lit it, and then handed me the note to read which he had taken from the boy. It contained but few words; no names used, no address, no signature, and simply desired the person addressed to meet the writer the following day at the usual place and hour. What clue was there in that to the dark mystery we were bent on solving? Only this, and I put it into words:

"Great heavens! it is Lister Wilmot's handwriting!"

TO BE CONTINUED.

[ORIGINAL.]

THE MARTYR.

Serene above the world he stands, Uplift to heaven on wings of prayer: Across his breast his folded hands Recall the cross he loved to bear.

Upon his upturned brow the light Flows like the smile of God: he sees A flash of wings that daze his sight, He hears seraphic melodies.

In vain the cruel crowd may roar, In vain the cruel flames may hiss: Like seas that lash a distant shore, They faintly pierce his sphering bliss.

He hears them, and he does not hear-- His fleshly bonds are loosened all-- No earthly sound can claim the ear That listens for his Father's call.

It comes--and swift the spirit spurns, His quivering lips and soars away; The blind crowd roars, the blind fire burns, While God receives their fancied prey.

D. A. C.

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From The Month.

ECCE HOMO. [Footnote 131]

[Footnote 131: "Ecce homo." A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Macmillan. 1866.]

[The London _Reader_ says the following article is from the pen of the Very Rev. Dr. Newman.--Ed. C.W.]

The word "remarkable" has been so hacked of late in theological criticism--nearly as much so as "earnest" and "thoughtful"--that we do not like to make use of it on the present occasion without an apology. In truth, it presents itself as a very convenient epithet, whenever we do not like to commit ourselves to any definite judgment on a subject before us, and prefer to spread over it a broad neutral tint to painting it distinctly white, red, or black. A man, or his work, or his deed, is "remarkable" when he produces an effect; be he effective for good or for evil, for truth or for falsehood--a point which, as far as that expression goes, we leave it for others or for the future to determine. Accordingly it is just the word to use in the instance of a volume in which what is trite and what is novel, what is striking and what is startling, what is sound and what is untrustworthy, what is deep and what is shallow, are so mixed up together, or at least so vaguely suggested, or so perplexingly confessed, which has so much of occasional force, of circumambient glitter, of pretence and of seriousness, as to make it impossible either with a good conscience to praise it, or without harshness and unfairness to condemn. Such a book is at least likely to be effective, whatever else it is or is not; and if it is effective, it may be safely called remarkable, and therefore we apply the epithet "remarkable" to this "Ecce Homo."

It is remarkable, then, on account of the sensation which it has made in religious circles. In the course of a few months it has reached a third edition, though it is a fair-sized octavo and not an over-cheap one. And it has received the praise of critics and reviewers of very distinct shades of opinion. Such a reception must be owing either to the book itself or to the circumstances of the day in which it has appeared, or to both of these causes together. Or, as seems to be the case, the needs of the day have become a call for some such work; and the work, on its appearance, has been thankfully welcomed, on account of its professed object, by those whose needs called for it. The author includes himself in the number of these; and, while providing for his own wants, he has ministered to theirs. This is what we especially mean by calling his book "remarkable."

Disputants may maintain, if they please, that religious doubt is our natural, our normal state; that to cherish doubts is our duty that to complain of them is impatience; that to dread them is cowardice; that to overcome them is inveracity; that it is even a happy state, a state of calm philosophic enjoyment, to be conscious of them--but after all, necessary or not, such a state is not natural, and not happy, if the voice of mankind is to decide the question. English minds, in particular, have too much of a religious temper in them, as a natural gift, to acquiesce for any long time in positive, active doubt. For doubt and devotion are incompatible with each other; every doubt, be it greater or less, stronger or weaker, involuntary as well as voluntary, acts upon {619} devotion, so far forth, as water sprinkled, or dashed, or poured out upon a flame, Real and proper doubt kills faith, and devotion with it; and even involuntary or half-deliberate doubt, though it does not actually kill faith, goes far to kill devotion; and religion without devotion is little better than a burden, and soon becomes a superstition. Since, then, this is a day of objection and of doubt about the intellectual basis of revealed truth, it follows that there is a great deal of secret discomfort and distress in the religions portion of the community, the result of that general curiosity in speculation and inquiry which has been the growth among us of the last twenty or thirty years.

The people of this country, being Protestants, appeal to Scripture, when a religious question arises, as their ultimate informant and decisive authority in all such matters; but who is to decide for them the previous question, that Scripture is really such an authority? When, then, as at this time, its divine authority is the very point to be determined, that is, the character and extent of its inspiration and its component parts, then they find themselves at sea, without possessing any power over the direction of their course. Doubting about the authority of Scripture, they doubt about its substantial truth; doubting about its truth, they have doubts concerning the objects which it sets before their faith, about the historical accuracy and objective reality of the picture which it presents to us of our Lord. We are not speaking of wilful doubting but of those painful misgivings, greater or less, to which we have already alluded. Religious Protestants, when they think calmly on the subject, can hardly conceal from themselves that they have a house without logical foundations, which contrives indeed for the present to stand, but which may go any day--and where are they then?

Of course Catholics will tell them to receive the canon of Scripture on the authority of the church, in the spirit of St. Augustine's well-known words: "I should not believe the gospel, were I not moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." But who, they ask, is to be voucher in turn for the church and St. Augustine? is it not as difficult to prove the authority of the church and her doctors as the authority of the Scriptures? We Catholics answer, and with reason, in the negative; but, since they cannot be brought to agree with us here, what argumentative ground is open to them? Thus they seem drifting, slowly perhaps, but surely, in the direction of scepticism.

It is under these circumstances that they are invited, in the volume before us, to betake themselves to the contemplation of our Lord's character, as it is recorded by the evangelists, as carrying with it its own evidence, dispensing with extrinsic proof, and claiming authoritatively by itself the faith and devotion of all to whom it is presented. Such an argument, of course, is as old as Christianity itself; the young man in the Gospel calls our Lord "Good Master," and St. Peter introduces him to the first Gentile converts as one who "went about doing good;" and in these last times we can refer to the testimony even of unbelievers in behalf of an argument as simple as it is constraining. "Si la vie et la mort de Socrate sont d'un sage," says Rousseau, "la vie et la mort de Jésus sont d'un Dieu." And he clenches the argument by observing, that, were the picture a mere conception of the sacred writers, "l'inventeur en serait plus étonnant que le héros." Its especial force lies in its directness; it comes to the point at once, and concentrates in itself evidence, doctrine, and devotion. In theological language, it is the _motivum credibilitatis_, the _objectum materiale_ and the _formale_, all in one; it unites human reason and supernatural faith in one complex act; and it comes home to all men, educated and ignorant, young and old. And it is the point to which, after all {620} and in fact, all religious minds tend, and in which they ultimately rest, even if they do not start from it. Without an intimate apprehension of the personal character of our Saviour, what professes to be faith is little more than an act of ratiocination. If faith is to live, it must love; it must lovingly live in the author of faith as a true and living being, _in Deo vivo et vero_; according to the saying of the Samaritans to their towns-woman: "We now believe, not for thy saying, for we ourselves have heard him." Many doctrines may be held implicitly; but to see him as if intuitively is the very promise and gift of him who is the object of the intuition. We are constrained to believe when it is he that speaks to us about himself.

Such undeniably is the characteristic of divine faith viewed in itself; but here we are concerned, not simply with faith, but with its logical antecedents; and the question returns on which we have already touched, as a difficulty with Protestants--how can our Lord's life, as recorded in the Gospels, be a logical ground of faith, unless we set out with assuming the truth of those Gospels; that is, without assuming as proved the original matter of doubt? And Protestant apologists, it may be urged--Paley for instance--show their sense of this difficulty when they place the argument drawn from our Lord's character only among the auxiliary evidences of Christianity. Now the following answer may fairly be made to this objection; nor need we grudge Protestants the use of it, for, as will appear in the sequel, it proves too much for their purpose, as being an argument for the divinity not only of Christ's mission, but of that of his church also. However, we say this by the way.

It may be maintained then, that, making as large an allowance as the most sceptical mind, when pressed to state its demands in full, would desire, we are at least safe in asserting that the books of the New Testament, taken as a whole, existed about the middle of the second century, and were then received by Christians, or were in the way of being received, and nothing else but them was received, as the authoritative record of the origin and rise of their religion. In that first age they were the only account of the mode in which Christianity was introduced to the world. Internal as well as external evidence sanctions us in so speaking. Four Gospels, the book of the acts of the Apostles, various Apostolic writings, made up then, as now, our sacred books. Whether there was a book more or less, say even an important book, does not affect the general character of the religion as those books set it forth. Omit one or other of the Gospels, and three or four Epistles, and the outline and nature of its objects and its teaching remain what they were before the omission. The moral peculiarities, if particular, of its Founder are, on the whole, identical, whether we learn them from St. Matthew, St. John, St. Peter, or St. Paul. He is not in one book a Socrates, in another a Zeno, and in a third an Epicurus. Much less is the religion changed or obscured by the loss of particular chapters or verses, or even by inaccuracy in fact, or by error in opinion, (supposing _per impossible_ such a charge could be made good,) in particular portions of a book. For argument's sake, suppose that the three first Gospels are an accidental collection of traditions or legends, for which no one is responsible, and in which Christians put faith because there was nothing else to put faith in. This is the limit to which extreme scepticism can proceed, and we are willing to commence our argument by granting it. Still, starting at this disadvantage, we should be prepared to argue, that if, in spite of this, and after all, there be shadowed out in these anonymous and fortuitous documents a teacher _sui generis_, distinct, consistent, and original, then does that picture, thus accidentally resulting, for the very reason {621} of its accidental composition, only become more marvellous; then he is an historical fact and again a supernatural or divine fact--historical from the consistency of the representation, and because the time cannot be assigned when it was not received as a reality; and supernatural, in proportion as the qualities, with which he is invested in those writings, are incompatible with what it is reasonable or possible to ascribe to human nature viewed simply in itself. Let these writings be as open to criticism, whether as to their origin or their text, as sceptics can maintain; nevertheless the representation in question is there, and forces upon the mind a conviction that it records a fact, and a superhuman fact, just as the reflection of an object in a stream remains in its definite form, however rapid the current, and however many the ripples, and is a sure warrant to us of the presence of the object on the bank, though that object be out of sight.

Such, we conceive, though stated in our own words, is the argument drawn out in the pages before us, or rather such is the ground on which the argument is raised; and the interest which it has excited lies, not in its novelty, but in the particular mode in which it is brought before the reader, in the originality and preciseness of certain strokes by which is traced out for us the outline of the divine teacher. These strokes are not always correct; they are sometimes gratuitous, sometimes derogatory to their object; but they are always determinate; and, being such, they present an old argument before us with a certain freshness, which, because it is old, is necessary for its being effective.

We do not wonder at all, then, at the sensation which the volume is said to have caused at Oxford, and among the Anglicans of the Oxford school, after the wearisome doubt and disquiet of the last ten years; for it has opened the prospect of a successful issue of inquiries in an all-important province of thought, where there seemed to be no thoroughfare. Distinct as are the liberal and catholicising parties in the Anglican Church, both in their principles and their policy, it must not be supposed that they are as distinct in the members that compose them. No line of demarcation can be drawn between the one collection of men and the other, in fact; for no two minds are altogether alike, and, individually, Anglicans have each his own shade of opinion, and belong partly to this school, partly to that. Or, rather, there is a large body of men who are neither the one nor the other; they cannot be called an intermediate party, for they have no discriminating watch-words; they range from those who are almost Catholic to those who are almost liberals. They are not liberals, because they do not glory in a state of doubt; they cannot profess to be "Anglo-Catholics," because they are not prepared to give an eternal assent to all that is put forth by the church as truth of revelation. These are the men who, if they could, would unite old ideas with new; who cannot give up tradition, yet are loth to shut the door to progress; who look for a more exact adjustment of faith with reason than has hitherto been attained; who love the conclusions of Catholic theology better than the proofs, and the methods of modern thought better than its results; and who, in the present wide unsettlement of religious opinion, believe indeed, or wish to believe, scripture and orthodox doctrine, taken as a whole, and cannot get themselves to avow any deliberate dissent from any part of either, but still, not knowing how to defend their belief with logical exactness, or at least feeling that there are large unsatisfied objections lying against parts of it, or having misgivings lest there should be such, acquiesce in what is called a practical belief, that is, believe in revealed truths, only because belief in them is the safest course, because they are probable, and because belief in {622} consequence is a duty, not as if they felt absolutely certain, though they will not allow themselves to be actually in doubt. Such is about the description to be given of them as a class, though, as we have said, they so materially differ from each other, that no general account of them can be applied strictly to any individual in their body.

Now, it is to this large class which we have been describing that such a work as that before us, in spite of the serious errors which they will not be slow to recognize in it, comes as a friend in need. They do not stumble at the author's inconsistencies or shortcomings; they are arrested by his professed purpose, and are profoundly moved by his successful hits (as they may be called) toward fulfilling it. Remarks on the gospel history, such as Paley's they feel to be casual and superficial; such as Rousseau's, to be vague and declamatory: they wish to justify with their intellect all that they believe with their heart; they cannot separate their ideas of religion from its revealed object; but they have an aching dissatisfaction within them, that they apprehend him so dimly, when they would fain (as it were) see and touch him as well as hear. When, then, they have logical grounds presented to them for holding that the recorded picture of our Lord is its own evidence, that it carries with it its own reality and authority, that his "revelatio" is "revelata" in the very act of being a "revelatio," it is as if he himself said to them, as he once said to his disciples, "It is I, be not afraid;" and the clouds at once clear off, and the waters subside, and the land is gained for which they are looking out.

The author before us, then, has the merit of promising what, if he could fulfil it, would entitle him to the gratitude of thousands. We do not say, we are very far from thinking, that he has actually accomplished so high an enterprise, though he seems to be ambitious enough to hope that he has not come far short of it. He somewhere calls his book a treatise; he would have done better to call it an essay; nor need he have been ashamed of a word which Locke has used in his work on the Human Understanding. Before concluding, we shall take occasion to express our serious sense, how very much his execution falls below his purpose; but certainly it is a great purpose which he sets before him, and for that he is to be praised. And there is at least this singular merit in his performance, as he has given it to the public, that he is clear-sighted and fair enough to view our Lord's work in its true light, as including in it the establishment of a visible kingdom or church. In proportion, then, as we shall presently find it our duty to pass some severe remarks upon his volume, as it comes before us, so do we feel bound, before doing so, to give some specimens of it in that point of view in which we consider it really to subserve the cause of revealed truth. And in the sketch which we are now about to give of the first steps of his investigation, we must not be understood to make him responsible for the language in which we shall exhibit them to our readers, and which will unavoidably involve our own corrections of his ailment, and our own coloring.

Among a people, then, accustomed by the most sacred traditions of their religion to a belief in the appearance, from time to time, of divine messengers for their instruction and reformation, and to the expectation of one such messenger to come, the last and greatest of all, who should also be their king and deliverer as well as their teacher, suddenly is found, after a long break in the succession and a period of national degradation, a prophet of the old stamp, in one of the deserts of the country---John, the son of Zachary. He announces the promised kingdom as close at hand, calls his countrymen to repentance, and institutes a rite symbolical of it. The people seem disposed to take him for the destined Saviour; but he points out to them a {623} private person in the crowd which is flocking about him; and henceforth the interest which his own preaching has excited centres in that other. Thus our Lord is introduced to the notice of his countrymen.

Thus brought before the world, he opens his mission. What is the first impression it makes upon us? Admiration of its singular simplicity both as to object and work. Such of course ought to be its character, if it was to be the fulfilment of the ancient, long-expected promise; and such it was, as our Lord proclaimed it. Other men, who do a work, do not set about it as their object; they make several failures; they are led on to it by circumstances; they miscalculate their powers; or they are drifted from the first in a direction different from that which they had chosen; they do most where they are expected to do least. But our Lord said and did. "He formed one plan and executed it," (p. 18). Next, what was that plan? Let us consider the force of the words in which, as the Baptist before him, he introduced his ministry; "The kingdom of God is at hand." What was meant by the kingdom of God? "The conception was no new one, but familiar to every Jew," (p. 19.) At the first formation of the nation and state of the Israelites the Almighty had been their king; when a line of earthly kings was introduced, then God spoke by the prophets. The existence of the theocracy was the very constitution and boast of Israel, as limited monarchy, liberty, and equality are the boast respectively of certain modern nations. Moreover, the gospel proclamation ran, "Poenitentiam agite; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" here again was another and recognized token of a theophany; for the mission of a prophet, as we have said above, was commonly a call to reformation and expiation of sin. A divine mission, then, such as our Lord's, was a falling back upon the original covenant between God and his people; but next, while it was an event of old and familiar occurrence, it ever had carried with it in its past instances something new, in connection with the circumstances under which it took place. The prophets were accustomed to give interpretations, or to introduce modifications of the letter of the law, to add to its conditions and to enlarge its application. It was to be expected, then, that now, when the new prophet, to whom the Baptist pointed, opened his commission, he too, in like manner, would be found to be engaged in a restoration, but in a restoration which should also be a religious advance; and that the more if he really was the special, final prophet of the theocracy, to whom all former prophets had looked forward, and in whom their long and august line was to be summed up and perfected. In proportion as his work was to be more signal, so would his new revelations be wider and more wonderful.

Did our Lord fulfil these expectations? Yes, there was this peculiarity in his mission, that he came not only as one of the prophets in the kingdom of God, but as the king himself of that kingdom. Thus his mission involves the most exact return to the original polity of Israel, which the appointment of Saul had disarranged, while it recognizes also the line of prophets, and infuses a new spirit into the law. Throughout his ministry our Lord claimed and received the title of king, which no prophet ever had done before. On his birth, the wise men came to worship "the king of the Jews;" "thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel," cried Nathanael after his baptism; and on his cross the charge recorded against him was that he professed to be "king of the Jews." "During his whole public life," says the author, "he is distinguished from the other prominent characters of Jewish history by his unbounded personal pretensions. He calls himself habitually king and master. He claims expressly the character of that divine Messiah for which the ancient prophets had directed the nation to look," (page 25.)

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He is, then, a King, as well as a Prophet; but is he as one of the old heroic kings, David or Solomon? Had such been his pretension, he had not, in his own words, "discerned the signs of the times." It would have been a false step in him, into which other would-be champions of Israel, before and after him, actually fell, and in consequence failed. But here this young Prophet is from the first distinct, decided, and original. His contemporaries, indeed, the wisest, the most experienced, were wedded to the notion of a revival of the barbaric kingdom. "Their heads were full of the languid dreams of commentators, the impracticable pedantries of men who live in the past," (p. 27.) But he gave to the old prophetic promises an interpretation which they could undeniably bear, but which they did not immediately suggest; which we can maintain to be true, while we can deny them to be imperative. He had his own prompt, definite conception of the restored theocracy; it was his own, and not another's; it was suited to the new age; it was triumphantly carried out in the event.

In what, then, did he consider his royalty to consist? First, what was it not? It did not consist in the ordinary functions of royalty; it did not prevent his payment of tribute to Caesar; it did not make him a judge in questions of criminal or of civil law, in a question of adultery, or in the adjudication of an inheritance; nor did it give him the command of armies. Then perhaps, after all, it was but a figurative royalty, as when the Eridanus is called "fluviorum rex," or Aristotle "the prince of philosophers." No; it was not a figurative royalty either. To call one's self a king, without being one, is playing with edged tools--as in the story of the innkeeper's son, who was put to death for calling himself "heir to the crown." Christ certainly knew what he was saying. "He had provoked the accusation of rebellion against the Roman government: he must have known that the language he used would be interpreted so. Was there then nothing substantial in the royalty he claimed? Did he die for a metaphor?" (p. 28.) He meant what he said, and therefore his kingdom was literal and real; it was visible; but what were its visible prerogatives, if they were not those in which earthly royalty commonly consists? In truth he passed by the lesser powers of royalty, to claim the higher. He claimed certain divine and transcendent functions of the original theocracy, which had been in abeyance since that theocracy had been infringed, which even to David had not been delegated, which had never been exercised except by the Almighty. God had created, first the people, next the state, which he deigned to govern. "The origin of other nations is lost in antiquity," (p. 33;) but "this people," runs the sacred word, "have I formed for myself." And "He who first called the nation did for it the second work of a king: he gave it a law," (p. 34) Now it is very striking to observe that these two incommunicable attributes of divine royalty, as exemplified in the history of the Israelites, are the very two which our Lord assumed. He was the maker and the lawgiver of his subjects. He said in the commencement of his ministry, "_Follow_ me;" and he added, "and I will make you"--you in turn--"fishers of men." And the next we read of him is, that his disciples came to him on the Mount, and he opened his mouth and _taught_ them. And so again, at the end of it, "Go ye, make _disciples_ of all nations, _teaching_ them." "Thus the very words for which the [Jewish] nation chiefly hymned their Jehovah, he undertook in his name to do. He undertook to be the father of an everlasting state, and the legislator of a world-wide society," (p. 36;) that is, showing himself, according to the prophetic announcement, to be "_Admirabilis, consiliarius, pater futuri saeculi, princeps pacis_."

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To these two claims he adds a third: first, he chooses the subjects of his kingdom; next, he gives them a law; but thirdly, he judges them--judges them in a far truer and fuller sense than in the old kingdom even the Almighty judged his people. The God of Israel ordained national rewards and punishments for national obedience or transgression; he did not judge his subjects one by one; but our Lord takes upon himself the supreme and final judgment of every one of his subjects, not to speak of the whole human race (though, from the nature of the case, this function cannot belong to his visible kingdom.) "He considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his hand," (p, 40.)

We shall mention one further function of the new King and his new kingdom: its benefits are even bound up with the maintenance of this law of political unity. "To organize a society, and to bind the members of it together by the closest ties, were the business of his life. For this reason it was that he called men away from their home, imposed upon some a wandering life, upon others the sacrifice of their property, and endeavored by all means to divorce them from their former connections, in order that they might find a new home in the church. For this reason he instituted a solemn initiation, and for this reason he refused absolutely to any one a dispensation from it. For this reason, too . . . he established a common feast, which was through all ages to remind Christians of their indissoluble union," (p. 92.) But _cui bono_ is a visible kingdom, when the great end of our Lord's ministry is moral advancement and preparation for a future state? It is easy to understand, for instance, how a sermon may benefit, or personal example, or religious friends, or household piety. We can learn to imitate a saint or a martyr, we can cherish a lesson, we can study a treatise, we can obey a rule; but what is the definite advantage to a preacher or a moralist of an external organization, of a visible kingdom? Yet Christ says, "Seek ye _first_ the kingdom of God," as well as "his justice." Socrates wished to improve men, but he laid no stress on their acting in concert in order to secure that improvement; on the contrary, the Christian law is political, as certainly as it is moral. Why is this? It arises out of the intimate relation between him and his subjects, which, in bringing them all to him as their common Father, necessarily brings them to each other. Our Lord says, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am in the midst of them." Fellowship between his followers is made a distinct object and duty, because it is a means, according to the provisions of his system, by which in some special way they are brought near to him. This is declared, still more strikingly than in the text we have just quoted, in the parable of the vine and its branches, and in that (if it is to be called a parable) of the Bread of Life. The Almighty King of Israel was ever, indeed, invisibly present in the glory above the Ark, but he did not manifest himself there or anywhere else as a present cause of spiritual strength to his people; but the new king is not only ever present, but to every one of his subjects individually is he a first element and perennial source of life. He is not only the head of his kingdom, but also its animating principle and its centre of power. The author whom we are reviewing does not quite reach the great doctrine here suggested, but he goes near it in the following passage: "Some men have appeared who have been as 'levers to uplift the earth and roll it in another course." Homer by creating literature, Socrates by creating science, Caesar by carrying civilization inland from the shores of the Mediterranean, Newton by starting science upon a career of steady progress, may be said to have attained this eminence. {626} But these men gave a single impact like that which is conceived to have first set the planets in motion. Christ claims to be a perpetual attractive power, like the sun, which determines their orbit. They contributed to men some discovery, and passed away; Christ's discovery is himself. To humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny he says, cling to me--cling ever closer to me. If we believe St. John, he represented himself as the light of the world, as the shepherd of the souls of men, as the way to immortality, as the vine or life-tree of humanity,' (p. 177.) He ends this beautiful passage, of which we have already quoted as much as our limits allow, by saying that "He instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding on his body and blood."

_O si sic omnia!_ Is it not hard, that, after following with pleasure a train of thought so calculated to warm all Christian hearts, and to create in them both admiration and sympathy for the writer, we must end our notice of him in a different tone, and express as much dissent from him and as serious blame of him as we have hitherto been showing satisfaction with his object, his intention, and the general outline of his argument? But so it is. In what remains to be said we are obliged to speak of his work in terms so sharp that they may seem to be out of keeping with what has gone before. With whatever abruptness in our composition, we must suddenly shift the scene, and manifest our disapprobation of portions of his book as plainly as we have shown an interest in it. We have praised it in various points of view. It has stirred the hearts of many; it has recognized a need, and gone in the right direction for supplying it. It serves as a token and a hopeful token, of what is going on in the minds of numbers of men external to the church. It is substantially a good book, and, we trust, will work for good. Especially, as we have seen, is it interesting to the Catholic as acknowledging the visible church as our Lord's own creation, as the direct fruit of his teaching, and the destined instrument of his purposes. We do not know how to speak in an unfriendly tone of an author who has done so much as this; but at the same time, when we come to examine his argument in its details, and study his chapters one by one, we find, in spite of, and mixed up with what is true and original, and even putting aside his patent theological errors, so much bad logic, so much of rash and gratuitous assumption, so much of half-digested thought, that we are obliged to conclude that it would have been much wiser in him if, instead of publishing what he seems to confess, or rather to proclaim, to be the jottings of his first researches upon sacred territory, he had waited till he had carefully traversed and surveyed and mapped the whole of it. We now proceed to give a few instances of the faults of which we complain.

His opening remarks will serve in illustration. In p. 41 he says, "We have not rested upon _single_ passages, nor drawn from the _fourth gospel_." This, we suppose, must be his reason for ignoring the passage in Luke ii. 49, "Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?" for he directly contradicts it, by gratuitously imagining that our Lord came for St. John's baptism with the same intention as the penitents around him; and that, in spite of his own words, which we suppose are to be taken as another "single passage," "So it becometh us to fulfil all justice," (Matt. iii. 15.) It must be on this principle of ignoring single passages such as these, even though they admit of combination, that he goes on to say of our Lord, that "in the agitation of mind caused by his baptism, and by the Baptist's designation of him as the future prophet, he retired into the wilderness," and there "he matured the plan of action which we see him executing from the moment of his return into society," (p. 9;) and that not till then was he "conscious of miraculous power," {627} (p. 12.) This neglect of the sacred text, we repeat must be allowed him, we suppose, under color of his acting out his rule of abstaining from single passages and from the fourth gospel. Let us allow it; but at least he ought to adduce passages, single or many, for what he actually does assert. He must not be allowed arbitrarily to add to the history, as well as cautiously to take from it. Where, then, we ask, did he learn that our Lord's baptism caused him "agitation of mind," that he "matured his plan of action in the wilderness," and that he then first was "conscious of miraculous power"? But again: it seems he is not to refer to "single passages or the fourth gospel;" yet, wonderful to say, he actually does open his formal discussion of the sacred history by referring to a passage from that very gospel--nay, to a particular text, which is only not a "single" text, because it is half a text, and half a text, such that, had he taken the whole of it, he would have been obliged to admit that the part which he puts aside just runs counter to his interpretation of the part, which he insists on. The words are these, as they stand in the Protestant version: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Now, it is impossible to deny that "which taketh away," etc., fixes and limits the sense of "the Lamb of God;" but our author notices the latter half of the sentence, only in order to put aside the light it throws upon the former half; and instead of the Baptist's own interpretation of the title which he gives to our Lord, he substitutes another, radically different, which he selects for himself out of one of the psalms. He explains "the lamb" by the well-known image, which represents the Almighty as a shepherd and his earthly servants as sheep--innocent, safe, and happy under his protection. "The Baptist's opinion of Christ's character, then," he says, "is summed up for us in the title he gives him--the Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world. There _seems_ to be, in the last part of this description, an allusion to the usages of the Jewish sacrificial system; and, in order to explain it fully, it would be necessary to anticipate much which will come more conveniently later in this treatise. _But_ when we remember that the Baptist's mind was _doubtless_ full of imagery drawn from the Old Testament, and that the conception of a lamb of God makes the subject of one of the most striking of the psalms, _we shall perceive what he meant to convey, by this phrase,_" (pp. 5, 6.) This is like saying, "Isaiah declares, 'mine eyes have seen the king, the lord of hosts;' _but_, considering that doubtless the prophet was well acquainted with the first and second books of Samuel, and that Saul, David, and Solomon are the three great kings there represented, we shall easily perceive that by 'seeing the king,' he meant to say that he saw Uzziah, king of Judah, in the last year of whose reign he had the vision. As to the phrase 'the lord of hosts,' which seems to refer to the Almighty, we will consider its meaning by and by:"--but, in truth, it is difficult to invent a paralogism, in its gratuitous inconsecutiveness parallel to his own.

We must own, that, with every wish to be fair to this author, we never recovered from the perplexity of mind which this passage, in the very threshold of his book, inflicted on us. It needed not the various passages which follow it in the work, constructed on the same argumentative model, to prove to us that he was not only an _incognito_, but an enigma. "Ergo" is the symbol of the logician--what science does a writer profess, whose symbols, profusely scattered through his pages, are "probably," "it must be," "doubtless," "on the hypothesis," "we may suppose," and "it is natural to think," and that at the very time that he pointedly discards the comments of school theologians? Is it possible that he can mean us to set aside the glosses of all who went {628} before in his own favor, and to exchange our old lamps for his new ones? Men have been at fault, when trying to determine whether he was an orthodox believer on his road to liberalism, or a liberal on his road to orthodoxy: this doubtless may be to some a perplexity; but our own difficulty is, whether he comes to us as an investigator or a prophet, as one unequal or superior to the art of reasoning. Undoubtedly, he is an able man; but what can he possibly mean by startling us with such eccentricities of argumentation as are familiar with him? Addison somewhere bids his readers bear in mind, that if he is ever especially dull, he always has a special reason for being so; and it is difficult to reconcile one's imagination to the supposition that this anonymous writer, with so much deep thought as he certainly evidences, has not some recondite reason for seeming so inconsequent, and does not move by some deep subterraneous processes of argument, which, if once brought to light, would clear him of the imputation of castle-building.

There is always a danger of misconceiving an author who has no antecedents by which we may measure him. Taking his work as it lies, we can but wish that he had kept his imagination under control; and that he had more of the hard head of a lawyer and the patience of a philosopher. He writes like a man who cannot keep from telling the world his first thoughts, especially if they are clever or graceful; he has come for the first time upon a strange world, and his remarks upon it are too obvious to be called original, and too crude to deserve the name of freshness. What can be more paradoxical than to interpret our Lord's words to Nicodemus, "Unless a man be born again," and of the necessity of external religion, as a lesson to him to profess his faith openly and not to visit him in secret? (p. 86.) What can be more pretentious, not to say gaudy and even tawdry, than his paraphrase of St. John's passage about the woman taken in adultery? "In his burning embarrassment and confusion," he says, "he stooped down so as to hide his face. . . . They had a glimpse perhaps of the glowing blush upon his face, etc." (p. 104.)

We should be very sorry to use a severe word concerning an honest inquirer after truth, as we believe this anonymous writer to be; and we will confess that Catholics, kindly as they may wish to feel toward him, are scarcely even able, from their very position, to give his work the enthusiastic reception which it has received from some other critics. The reason is plain; those alone can speak of it from a full heart, who feel a need, and recognize in it a supply of that need. We are not in the number of such; for they who have found have no need to seek. Far be it from us to use language savoring of the leaven of the Pharisees. We are not assuming a high place, because we thus speak, or boasting of our security. Catholics are both deeper and shallower than Protestants; but in neither case have they any call for a treatise such as this "Ecce Homo." If they live to the world and the flesh, then the faith which they profess, though it is true and distinct, is dead; and their certainty about religious truth, however firm and unclouded, is but shallow in its character, and flippant in its manifestations. And in proportion, as they are worldly and sensual will they be flippant and shallow. But their faith is as indelible as the pigment which colors the skin, even though it is skin-deep. This class of Catholics is not likely to take interest in a pictorial "Ecce Homo." On the other hand, where the heart is alive with divine love, faith is as deep as it is vigorous and joyous; and, as far as Catholics are in this condition, they will feel no drawing toward a work which is after all but an arbitrary and unsatisfactory dissection of the object of their devotion. That individuals in their body maybe {629} harassed with doubts, particularly in a day like this, we are not denying; but, viewed as a body, Catholics from their religious condition, are either too deep or too shallow to suffer from those elementary difficulties, or that distress of mind, in which serious Protestants are so often involved.

We confess, then, as Catholics, to some unavoidable absence of cordial feeling in following the remarks of this author, though not to any want of real sympathy; and we seem to be justified in our indisposition by his manifest want of sympathy with us. If we feel distant toward him, his own language about Catholicity, and (what may be called) old Christianity, seems to show that that distance is one of fact, one of mental position, not any fault in ourselves. Is it not undeniable, that the very life of personal religion among Catholics lies in a knowledge of the Gospels? It is the character and conduct of our Lord, his words, his deeds, his sufferings, his work, which are the very food of our devotion and rule of our life. "Behold the Man," which this author feels to be an object novel enough to write a book about, has been the contemplation of Catholics from that first age when St. Paul said, "The life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself for me." As the Psalms have ever been the manual of our prayer, so have the Gospels been the subject-matter of our meditation. In these latter times especially, since St. Ignatius, they have been divided into portions, and arranged in a scientific order, not unlike that which the Psalms have received in the Breviary. To contemplate our Lord in his person and his history is with us the exercise of every retreat, and the devotion of every morning. All this is certainly simple matter of fact; but the writer we are reviewing lives and thinks at so great distance from us as not to be cognizant of what is so patent and so notorious a truth. He seems to imagine that the faith of a Catholic is the mere profession of a formula. He deems it important to disclaim in the outset of his work all reference to the theology of the church. He eschews with much preciseness, as something almost profane, the dogmatism of former ages. He wishes "to trace" our Lord's "biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions--not which church doctors or even Apostles have sealed with their authority--but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant." (Preface.) Now, what Catholics, what church doctors, as well as Apostles, have ever lived on, is not any number of theological canons or decrees, but we repeat, the Christ himself, as he is represented in concrete existence in the Gospels. Theological determinations about our Lord are far more of the nature of landmarks or buoys to guide a discursive mind in its reasonings, than to assist a devotional mind in its worship. Common-sense, for instance, tell us what is meant by the words, "My Lord and my God;" and a religious man, upon his knees, requires no commentator; but against irreligious speculators, Arius or Nestorius, a denunciation has been passed in ecumenical council, when "science falsely so-called" encroached upon devotion. Has not this been insisted on by all dogmatic Christians over and over again? Is it not a representation as absolutely true as it is trite? We had fancied that Protestants generally allowed the touching beauty of Catholic hymns and meditations; and after all is there not that in all Catholic churches which goes beyond any written devotion, whatever its force or its pathos? Do we not believe in a presence in the sacred tabernacle, not as a form of words, or as a notion, but as an object as real as we are real? And if in that presence we need neither profession of faith nor even manual of devotion, what appetite can we have for the teaching of a writer who not only exalts his first thoughts about our {630} Lord into professional lectures, but implies that the Catholic Church has never known how to point him out to her children?

It may be objected, that we are making too much of so chance a slight as his allusion in his preface to "church doctors" involves, especially as he mentions apostles in connection with them; but it would be affectation not to recognize in other places of his book an undercurrent of antagonism to us, of which the passage already quoted is but a first indication. Of course he has quite as much right as another to take up an anti-catholic position, if he will; but we understand him to be putting forth an investigation, not a polemical argument and if, instead of keeping his eyes directed to his own proper subject, he looks to the right or left to hit at those who view it differently from himself, he is damaging the ethical force of a composition which claims to be, and mainly is, a serious and manly search after religious truth. Why cannot he let us alone? Of course he cannot avoid seeing that the lines of his own investigation diverge from those drawn by others, but he will have enough to do in defending himself, without making others the object of his attack. He is virtually opposing Voltaire, Strauss, Renan, Calvin, Wesley, Chalmers, Erskine, and a host of other writers, but he does not denounce them; why then does he single out, misrepresent, and anathematize a main principle of orthodoxy? It is as if he could not keep his hand off us, when we crossed his path. We are alluding to the following magisterial passage:

"If he (our Lord) meant anything by his constant denunciation of hypocrites, there is nothing which he would have visited with sterner censure than that _short cut to belief_ which many persons take, when, overwhelmed with the difficulties which beset their minds, and afraid of damnation, they _suddenly_ resolve to strive no longer, but, giving their minds a holiday, to rest content with _saying_ that they believe, and acting as if they did. A melancholy end of Christianity indeed! Can there be such a disfranchised pauper class among the citizens of the New Jerusalem?" (p. 79.)

He adds shortly afterward:

"Assuredly, those who represent Christ as presenting to man an abstruse theology, and saying to them peremptorily, 'believe or be damned,' have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world," (p. 80.)

Thus he delivers himself; "Believe or be damned is so detestable a doctrine, that if any man denies it is detestable, I pronounce him to be a hypocrite; to be without any true knowledge of the Saviour of the world; to be the object of his sternest censure; and to have no part or place in the holy city, the New Jerusalem, the eternal heaven above." Pretty well for a virtuous hater of dogmatism! We hope we shall show less dictatorial arrogance than his, in the answer which we intend to make to him.

Whether there are persons such as he describes, Catholic or Protestants, converts to Catholicism or not--men who profess a faith which they do not believe, under the notion that they shall be eternally damned if they do not profess it without believing--we really do not know--we never met with such; but since facts do not concern us here so much as principles, let us, for argument's sake, grant that there are. Our author believes they are not only "many," but enough to form a "class;" and he considers that they act in this preposterous manner under the sanction, and in accordance with the teaching, of the religious bodies to which they belong. Especially there is a marked allusion in his words to the Athanasian creed and the Catholic Church. Now we answer him thus:

Part of his charge against the teachers of dogma is, that they impose on men as a duty, instead of believing, to "act as if they did" believe; now in fact this is the very {631} kind of profession which, if it is all that a candidate has to offer, absolutely shuts him out from admission into Catholic communion. We suppose, that by belief of a thing, this writer understands an inward conviction of its truth; this being supposed, we plainly say that no priest is at liberty to receive a man into the church, who has not a real internal belief, and cannot say from his heart, that the things taught by the church are true. On the other hand, as we have said above, it is the very characteristic of the profession of faith made by numbers of educated Protestants, and it is the utmost extent to which they are able to go in believing, to hold, not that Christian doctrine is certainly true, but that it has such a semblance of truth, it has such considerable marks of probability upon it, that it is their duty to accept and to act upon it as if it were true beyond all question or doubt: and they justify themselves, and with much reason, by the authority of Bishop Butler. Undoubtedly, a religious man will be led to go as far as this, if he cannot go further; but unless he can go farther, he is no catechumen of the Catholic Church. We wish all men to believe that her creed is true; but till they do so believe, we do not wish, we have no permission, to make them her members. Such a faith as this author speaks of to condemn--(our books call it "_practical_ certainty")-- does not rise to the level of the _sine quâ non_, which is the condition prescribed for becoming a Catholic. Unless a convert so believes that he can sincerely say, "after all, in spite of all difficulties, objections, obscurities, mysteries, the creed of the Church undoubtedly comes from God, and is true, because he is the truth," such a man, though he be outwardly received into her fold, will receive no grace from the sacraments, no sanctification in baptism, no pardon in penance, no life in communion. We are more consistently dogmatic than this author imagines; we do not enforce a principle by halves; if our doctrine is true, it must be received as such; if a man cannot so receive it, he must wait till he can. It would be better, indeed, if he now believed; but, since he does not as yet, to wait is the best he can do under the circumstances. If we said anything else than this, certainly we should be, as the author thinks we are, encouraging hypocrisy. Nor let him turn round on us and say that by thus proceeding we are laying a burden on souls, and blocking up the entrance into that fold which was intended for all men, by imposing hard conditions on candidates for admission; for we have already implied a great principle, which is an answer to this objection, which the gospels exhibit and sanction, but which he absolutely ignores.

Let us avail ourselves of his quotation. The Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God." Again he says, "This is the Son of God." "Two of his disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." They believed John to be "a man sent from God" to teach them, and therefore they believed his word to be true. We suppose it was not hypocrisy in them to believe in his word; rather they would have been guilty of gross inconsistency or hypocrisy, had they professed to believe that he was a divine messenger and yet had refused to take his word concerning the Stranger whom he pointed out to their veneration. It would have been "saying that they believed," and _not_ "acting as if they did;" which at least is not better than saying and acting. Now, was not the announcement which John made to them "a short cut to belief"? and what the harm of it? They believed that our Lord was the promised prophet, without making direct inquiry about him, without a new inquiry, on the ground of a previous inquiry into the claims of John himself to be accounted a messenger from God. They had already accepted it as truth that John was a prophet; but again, what a prophet said must be true; {632} else he would not be a prophet; now, John said that our Lord was the Lamb of God; this, then, certainly was a sacred truth.

Now it might happen, that they knew exactly and for certain what the Baptist meant in calling our Lord "a Iamb;" in that case they would believe him to be that which they knew the figurative word meant, as used by the Baptist. But, as our author reminds us, the word has different senses; and, though the Baptist explained his own sense of it on the first occasion of using it, by adding, "that taketh away the sin of the world," yet when he spoke to the two disciples he did not thus explain it. Now let us suppose that they went off, taking the word each in his own sense, the one understanding by it a sacrificial lamb, the other a lamb of the fold; and let us suppose that, as they were on the way to our Lord's home, they discovered this difference in their several interpretations, and disputed with each other which was the right interpretation. It is clear that they would agree so far as this, namely, that, in saying that the proposition was true, they meant that it was true in that sense in which the Baptist spoke it; moreover, if it be worth noticing, they did after all even agree, in some vague way, about the meaning of the word, understanding that it denoted some high character, or office, or ministry. Any how, it was absolutely true, they would say, that our Lord was a lamb, whatever it meant; the word conveyed a great and momentous fact, and if they did not know what that fact was, the Baptist did, and they would accept it in its one right sense, as soon as he or our Lord told them what it was.

Again, as to that other title which the Baptist gave our Lord, "the Son of God," it admitted of half a dozen senses. Wisdom was "the only begotten;" the angels were the sons of God; Adam was a son of God; the descendants of Seth were sons of God; Solomon was a son of God; and so is "the just man." In which of these senses, or in what sense, was our Lord the Son of God? St. Peter knew, but there were those who did not know--the centurion who attended the crucifixion did not know, and yet he confessed that our Lord was the Son of God. He knew that our Lord had been condemned by the Jews for calling himself the Son of God, and therefore he cried out, on seeing the miracles which attended his death, "indeed this _was_ the Son of God." His words evidently imply: "I do not know precisely what he meant by so calling himself; but what he said he was, that he is; whatever he meant, I believe him; I believe that his word about himself is true, though I cannot prove it to be so, though I do not even understand it; I believe his word, for I believe _him_."

Now to return to the passage which has led to these remarks. Our author says that certain persons are hypocrites, because they "take a short cut to belief, suddenly resolving to strive no longer, but to rest content with saying they believe." Does he mean by "a short cut," believing on the word of another? As far as our experience goes of religious changes in individuals, he can mean nothing else; yet how _can_ he mean this with the gospels before him? He cannot mean it, because the very staple of the sacred narrative is a call on all men to believe what is not proved to them, merely on the warrant of divine messengers; because the very form of our Lord's teaching is to substitute authority for inquiry; because the very principle of his grave earnestness, the very key to his regenerative mission, is the intimate connection of faith with salvation. Faith is not simply trust in his legislation, as this writer says; it is definitely trust in his word, whether that word be about heavenly things or earthly; whether it is spoken by his own mouth, or through his ministers. The angel who announced the Baptist's birth said, "Thou shalt be dumb because thou believest not my words." The {633} Baptist's mother said of Mary, "Blessed is she that believed." The Baptist himself said, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Our Lord, in turn, said to Nicodemus, "We speak that we do know, and ye receive not our witness; he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God." To the Jews, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, shall not come into condemnation." To the Capharnaites, "he that believeth on me hath everlasting life." To St Thomas, "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." And to the apostles, "Preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth not shall be damned." How is it possible to deny that our Lord, both in the text and in the context of these and other passages, made faith in a message, on the warrant of the messenger, to be a condition of salvation; and enforced it by the great grant of power which he emphatically conferred on his representatives? "Whosoever shall not receive you," he says, "nor hear your words, when ye depart, shake off the dust of your feet." "It is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father." "He that heareth you, heareth me; he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." "I pray for them that shall believe on me through their word." "Whose sins ye remit they are remitted unto them; and whose sins ye retain, they are retained." "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." These characteristic and critical announcements have no place in this author's gospel; and let it be understood, that we are not asking why he does not determine the exact doctrines contained in them--for that is a question which he has reserved (if we understand him) for a future volume--but why he does not recognize the principle they involve--for that is a matter which falls within his present subject.

It is not well to exhibit some sides of Christianity, and not others; this we think is the main fault of the author we have been reviewing. It does not pay to be ecclectic in so serious a matter of fact. He does not overlook, he boldly confesses that a visible organized church was a main part of our Lord's plan for the regeneration of mankind. "As with Socrates," he says, "argument is every thing, and personal authority nothing; so with Christ personal authority is all in all and argument altogether unemployed," (p. 94.) Our Lord rested his teaching, not on the concurrence and testimony of his hearers, but on his own authority. He imposed upon them the declarations of a divine voice. Why does this author stop short in the delineation of principles which he has so admirably begun? Why does he denounce "short cuts," as a mental disfranchisement, when no cut can be shorter than to "believe and be saved"? Why does he denounce religious fear as hypocritical, when it is written, "He that believeth not shall be damned"? Why does he call it dishonest in a man to sacrifice his own judgment to the word of God, when, unless he did so, he would be avowing that the Creator knew less than the creature? Let him recollect that no two thinkers, philosophers, writers, ever did, ever will, agree in all things with each other. No system of opinions, ever given to the world, approved itself in all its parts to the reason of any one individual by whom it was mastered. No revelation is conceivable, but involves, almost in its very idea, as being something new, a collision with the human intellect, and demands, accordingly, if it is to be accepted, a sacrifice of private judgment. {634} If a revelation be necessary, then also in consequence is that sacrifice necessary. One man will have to make a sacrifice in one respect, another in another, all men in some. We say, then, to men of the day, take Christianity, or leave it; do not practise upon it; to do so is as unphilosophical as it is dangerous. Do not attempt to halve a spiritual unit. You are apt to call it a dishonesty in us to refuse to follow out our reasonings, when faith stands in the way; is there no intellectual dishonesty in your own conduct? First, your very accusation of us is dishonest; for you keep in the back-ground the circumstance, of which you are well aware, that such a refusal on our part is the necessary consequence of our accepting an authoritative revelation; and next you profess to accept that revelation yourselves, while you dishonestly pick and choose, and take as much or as little of it as you please. You either accept Christianity or you do not: if you do, do not garble and patch it; if you do not, suffer others to submit to it as a whole.

[ORIGINAL.]

HOLY SATURDAY.

Through that Jewish Sabbath day, Through our Holy Saturday, Thus he lay: In his linen winding-sheet, Wrapped in myrrh and spices sweet, Angels at his head and feet; Angels, duteous alway, Watched the wondrous beauteous clay As he lay. Through that Jewish Sabbath day, Through our Holy Saturday.

Thus he lay And our mother Church this day Doth with solemn Office keep That strange day's mysterious sleep; Her "Exultet" breaks the sadness With triumphant strains of gladness; Paschal hope presaging morn, As in east just streaks the dawn; Darkest night ere brightest day; Such is Holy Saturday.

{635}

Translated from the Études Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires.

EAST-INDIAN WEDDINGS.

LETTER FROM FATHER GUCHEN OF THE MADURA MISSION.

A very days ago I blessed a marriage in which great pomp was displayed, and I will describe the festival to you, that you may have an idea of what takes place on such occasions, for the same ceremonial is always scrupulously observed. Indeed, every action of an Indian's life from the cradle to the grave is irrevocably ordered by custom.

The solemnity I am speaking of now is called here, "a grand marriage." My Christians are generally too poor to have to do with any but "little marriages," which are performed very quietly, though with some attendant circumstances that perhaps deserve a slight notice.

A remarkable peculiarity, and one that belongs to both kinds of marriage, is that the bride and bridegroom do not know each other, do not even see or speak to each other, until it is too late to draw back. This is the decision of custom, and has its good and bad side, like many other things in this world. "Why have you come here?" I asked the other day of a little girl hardly twelve years old, who was led into church. "My father said I was to be married, so I came," she replied. A few hours later arrived the young man, pale, exhausted, and writhing in the grasp of pangs unutterable. Begging me to serve him first in the quality of physician, he told me his story: "I had just done dinner and was going out to my palm-trees, when my father told me to go to the church, and be married; so I took my bath of oil immediately, which interfered with my digestion and caused my illness."

The bath of oil is a necessary preliminary on these occasions. That over, the bridegroom arrays himself in his finest garments. Two cloths, about one foot three inches wide, and four or five times as long, ornamented with a fringe, compose his costume; one covers his loins and the other is wrapped around him; a red kerchief is rolled about his head, and three pendants, nearly two inches long, and wide in proportion, adorn each ear. If he is too poor to own these jewels, he borrows them of his neighbors, and thus apparelled, goes to the church and presents himself before the sonami, (missionary.)

The maiden also lavishes oil or butter upon her toilette, but on the wedding day, she is so completely swathed in the ten or eleven yards of cloth that form her raiment, that neither her jewels nor her face can be distinguished. Not only is she invisible, but she is supposed to see nothing herself, and when she wishes to change her place, the person who accompanies her, often a poor old woman hardly able to stand leads her by clasping her round the waist. I have sometimes beheld the singular spectacle of a score of little girls from twelve to fifteen years of age, muffled in cloth and crouched against the wall of the church, repeating their prayers to satiety as they waited for me to come and hear them recite.

They pass their examination; both bride and bridegroom know faultlessly the pater, ave, credo, the commandments of God and the church, the act of contrition, the confiteor, etc.; they {636} recite the seven chapters, that is to say the little catechism, quite well; I hear their confessions, and the next morning at mass I bless their union, following in every respect the rubrics of the church, so that there is nothing especial to notice excepting that the married pair have no wedding-ring. In its place they have a golden jewel, rather clumsy in form, through which passes a cord intended to be fastened round the bride's neck. This jewel is called _tali_. It is the sign of matrimonial union, and every married woman wears one; when her husband dies, the relations assemble, and remove the _tali_ from the widow's neck by breaking the cord.

But pardon me for carrying you without transition from a wedding to a funeral--let us leave the graveyard and return to the church. Having blessed the _tali_, applying to it the prayer indicated in the ritual for the blessing of the ring, I return it to the young man who presents it to the maiden; she receives it on her out-stretched hands, and her companion, or if the latter is too old, any other woman present, fastens it about her neck. Mass is celebrated; the bride and bridegroom receive communion and the benediction, and then withdraw. The bride remains hooded through the whole of the festive day; on the next day after she shows her face, and the husband can for the first time behold her features: a young man of my acquaintance learned twenty-four hours after marriage, that his wife had but one eye.

I forgot to mention another custom, which is quite generally observed, and seems to me charming. The bridegroom buys a _nuptial cloth_, which is blessed by the priest at the same time with the _tali_, and in this the bride arrays herself, when the marriage ceremonial is ended. She wears this cloth during the days of festivity, but the husband gives her no other garments, and the parents continue to furnish their daughter's wardrobe until she brings her first child into the world.

But it is time I arrived at the ceremonies of the _grand marriage_ that I blessed on the eleventh of this month.

The young man belonged to Anacarei, and the maiden to Santancoulam, a little town where we have a Christian settlement. As she had been baptized only two years before, she still numbered many pagans among her circle, a fact which made me willingly accede to the desire of her parents that the marriage should be celebrated in the presence of her family.

Even before dawn, two bands of musicians, making their instruments resound in noble emulation of each other, announced to the whole town that on that day there was to be a grand festival in the Catholic Church. On their side, with one accord, the Christians devoted themselves to the preparation of the church and altar; the only outlay in decoration was upon flowers, but of those there were enough to load a coach. At last all was ready, and wearing the alb and stole, I went forward to receive the consent of the betrothed, who were accompanied by their relations and friends. They joined their right hands, and I pronounced over them the sacramental words, after which the _tali_ was blessed and given first to the bridegroom and by turn to the bride, but without being fastened about her neck, as that ceremony was to take place afterward at home. I began mass. In the lectern, two chanters were shaking the walls of the church with a clamor most delightful to Indian ears, for singing is valued here in proportion to the volume of voice brought to bear upon it. Indeed never before at Santancoulam had anything so admirable been heard.

After mass the husband and wife withdrew in different directions, and the whole day was spent in festive preparations. In the house of the young girl a great tent was built of the branches and leaves of trees, draped with cloth of various colors. In the middle of this tent, which is called the _Pandel_, upon a mound a {637} foot and a half in height, and about eight square feet in extent, arose an elegantly decorated pavilion supported on four little columns. It was truly an exhibition of painted cloth and parti-colored paper of every hue and every shade, surpassing the rainbow in brilliancy. There, upon this mound and under this pavillion, the bridegroom was to give the _tali_ to his bride.

In the mean time a palanquin had been constructed elsewhere, even more elegant and magnificent than the pavilion of the _Pandel_. At ten o'clock in the evening, by the light of thirty or forty blazing torches, the bridegroom entered the palanquin, and, borne upon the shoulders of four men, made the tour of the town, a band of music opening the way and summoning the curious who hastened at the call. After promenading the principal streets with slow steps for two or three hours, they turned toward the bride's home. The young man ascended the mound and seated himself, upon the ground, you understand, for among Indians there are neither chairs nor lounges. But do not be afraid that he soiled his fine clothes--a litter of straw covered the whole surface of the mound. In this country they know no better way of making an apartment presentable, and all Indian _parquets_ are polished after this fashion. The bride came in her turn, her father leading her by the hand. When he had seated her face to face with the young man who had been his son-in-law for twenty-four hours, he declared in a loud, clear voice that he had given his daughter in marriage to so and so, living in such and such a place, that he announced it to her relations and friends, begging them to give their consent. The assistants standing about the mound extended their hands in succession, and touched the _tali_ with the tips of the fingers in token of approval. The catechist intoned the litany of the Blessed Virgin, to which the Christians made the responses, then he gave the _tali_ to the husband, who held it near his wife's neck, and the bride's sister-in-law, standing behind her, took the cord and tied it. The ceremonies and festivities were ended for that night, and every one withdrew to take a little repose.

The next evening there was a grand wedding collation, after which the festival, properly speaking, the grand festival, began. The newly married pair seated themselves in the palanquin, facing each other, but separated by a little curtain. The bride, freed from her veil now, held the curtain with both hands, trying to conceal her face with it. By the light of torches even more numerous than the night before, and to the sound of music quite as vociferous, they went to the church, where all the candles were lighted. The chanters and myself intoned the litany of the Blessed Virgin and the _salve regina_; the catechist recited a few prayers. I gave the benediction to the assembly with a crucifix, having no statue of the Blessed Virgin, and the ceremony closed with a _tamoul_ chant. The husband and wife re-entered the palanquin, and then began in the streets a veritable triumphal march called here _patana-pravesam_ (entrance into the town,) which ended only when the day began.

What lends to this march a character of beauty and originality is the _calliel_, a dance accompanied by songs and the clashing of little staves, and performed before the palanquin for the whole length of the march. Do not imagine anything resembling a French ball; here dancing, so called, is a disgrace, and is only permitted to the Bayadères engaged in the service of the pagodas. The _calliel_ is quite another thing. Fancy a dozen well-formed, robust young people, with turbaned heads, and loins girt with a long strip of cloth draped like a scarf, some of them wearing rings of bells upon their arms and legs, and all carrying in each hand a little staff about a foot long, with which they strike the staves of the dancers, whom they meet face to face. On leaving the church, our young dancers begged me to {638} witness their gambols in the presence of the bride and bridegroom, who were looking down upon the assembly from their high palanquin. The clashing cadence of the staves, the monotonous but purely harmonious chant of the dancers, their free, elastic bounds and graceful twirls, the passing and repassing of this troop, who spring forward and draw back, falling and rising as they drop on their knees and rear themselves up again, this whirlwind where all is ordered, timed, and measured---all presents a spectacle that enchants Hindoos and may well delight a Frenchman.

Meanwhile the big drum, tambourine, tam-tam, clarionet, bagpipe, etc, etc., announced with joyous din that the crowd must turn their steps elsewhere, and show to others all this paraphernalia of rejoicing. The palanquin was borne toward the streets. From time to time the march was suspended, the music ceased, and the young dancers resumed and continued for nearly an hour their agile feats of strength.

So the night passed, and the first rays of the sun announced that it was time to end it all. The husband and wife descended from the palanquin to hear mass, and then entered upon real life; the wedding was over. In the evening a car drawn by two magnificent oxen, transported the bride, accompanied by several relatives, to the village of her husband, who escorted the family, mounted upon a pretty white horse.

AMACAREI, Sept 29th, 1865.

From the Dublin Review

ROME THE CIVILIZER OF NATIONS.

1. _Le Parfum de Rome_. Par Louis Veuillot. 3me edition. Paris: Gaume Frères. 1862.

2. _Rome et la Civilisation_. Par EUGENE MAHON DE MONAGHAN. Paris: Charles Douniol. 1863.

The useful little work which stands at the head of this article, by M. Mahon de Monaghan, (whose name would, perhaps, be more correctly printed M. MacMahon de Monaghan,) may be regarded as a supplement to the more important volume of the Abbé Balmez. "The study of church history in its relations with civilization," _he_ told us, "is still incomplete;" and the writer before us seems to have taken this as a hint, and to have conceived the laudable plan of pursuing further some of the Spanish divine's arguments, and strengthening them by new illustrations gathered from history. "Le Parfum de Rome" is a work of another description, but bearing on the same subject. It consists of many discursive reflections on Rome, as the residence of the Vicar of Christ, and is full of point, brilliancy, and humor.

When a Catholic, who has enjoyed the advantage of a good education, and is accustomed to habits of reflection, arrives for the first time in Rome, he is usually overwhelmed by the multitude of objects offered to his attention, and requires time to select, arrange, and analyze them. The light is too vivid, the colors are too varied, the perfume is too strong. Two thousand years, richly laden with historic events, crowd his memory; the united {639} glories of the past and the present kindle his imagination; the sublime mysteries of religion, marvellously localized, exercise his faith; long galleries thronged with the rarest productions of art court his gaze, and a presence peculiar to the spot, which he feeds, but cannot yet define, completes his pleading bewilderment in heart and brain. By degrees the tumult of thought subsides, and order begins to rise out of chaotic beauty. The traveller is resolved to render his sensations precise, and he asks himself emphatically, "Whence springs the resistless charm of Rome? Wherein does the true glory of Rome consist? What _is_ this nameless presence that mantles all things with divinity? Where does the Shekinah reside?"

Then more and more clearly, the voice of Rome herself is heard in reply: "This is the home of the vicar of Christ, the throne of the fisherman, the seat of that long line of pontiffs who, like a chain of gold, bind our erring globe to Emmanuel's footstool. This garden is fertilized by the blood of Peter and Paul, and of thirty Popes: hence all its amazing produce; hence its exquisite fragrance and perennial bloom. These are the head-quarters of the commander-in-chief of the church militant; and Christ himself is present here in the person of his viceroy, promulgating a law above all human laws, inflexible, uniform, merciful, and strict. _He_ diffuses this grateful perfume; _he_ colors every object with rainbow tints; _he_ sheds this dazzling light which causes Rome to shine like a gem with a myriad facets. The Lord loveth the gates of Rome more than of old he loved the gates of Zion; he lives in the solemn utterances of his high priest, and speaks by him as of old he spoke by the Urim and Thummim that sparkled on Aaron's breast. Here he so multiplies sacraments, that all you see becomes sacramental; and here you find, in the father of the faithful, the most perfect representation of your Incarnate God, and the most certain pledge of his resurrection."

If the peculiar presence of Christ thus hallows Christian Rome, it cannot be matter of surprise that she also should be an enigma to the world, and have a twofold character; that she should be one thing to the eye and another to the mind; one thing to Gibbon and Goethe, [Footnote 132] and another thing altogether to Chateaubriand and Schlegel; that she should have her seasons of gloom and jubilee, of persecution and triumph; should require in each to be interpreted by faith; and that every page of her history should share in this double aspect. Thus Rome resembles Christ; and in this resemblance lies her glory and her strength. Other glories she has which do not directly come from him. She had them of old before he came; the inroad of barbaric hordes, age after age, could not trample them out, and they endure abundantly to this day. These the world understands; these she extols with ceaseless praises, and sends her children from every clime in troops to do homage at their ancient shrines. The worldling, enamoured of these, exclaims:

"O Rome! my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires." [Footnote 133]

[Footnote 132: Parfum de Rome, p. 7]

[Footnote 133: Childe Harold, canto iv.]

But the orphan who turns to her as Byron did, remains an orphan. Rome is no mother to him, and he finds no father in the patriarch who rules there. To the devout Catholic she is the mother of arts and sciences as truly as the Pope is the father of the Christian family. She is, and has been for eighteen hundred years, the centre of true civilization, because she is the central depository of the faith. From her, as from a fountain, the streams of salvation have flowed through all lands, and, having the promise both of this life and that which is to come, they have indirectly produced a large amount of material well-being, and also an infinity of {640} artistic and scientific results. Rome civilizes as Christ civilized, by sowing the seeds of civilization. She does not aim directly at material well-being; she does not any more than he teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds no system of induction; she invents neither printing-press, steam-engines, nor telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute, curbs his passions, improves his understanding, instils into him principles of duty, and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his ambition and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the progress of humanity, that under her influence he acquires insensibly an aptitude even for the successful pursuit of physical science, such as no other teacher could impart. He looks abroad into the spacious field of nature, and finds in every star and in every drop of dew an unfathomable depth of creative design. His heart quickens the energies of his brain, and he says, smiling, "My Father made them all; he made them that I may, to the best of my feeble powers, investigate and classify them, and that he may be glorified in science as in religion." He rises to higher studies than those of physical science; he looks within, and analyzes his complex nature. He sees that human minds in the aggregate are capable of indefinite development as time goes on, and he concludes that, as the works of nature can be investigated to the glory of the Creator, so may the mind of man be developed to the glory of its Redeemer--be trained in philosophy, and exercised also in the application of science to the wants and usages of social life. Thus, to his apprehension, the links are clear which connect Rome--the centre of civilization--with matters which appear at first sight absolutely distinct from religion, with sewing-machines and electric cables, with Huyghens's undulatory theory of light, and Guthrie's researches into the relative sizes of drops and of bubbles.

But here, perhaps, we shall be met by an objection. "Science," it will be said, "surely not merely _appears_, but _is_ independent of religion, as the experience of ancient and modern times will show. Still more is independent of Papal Rome, which has always been on the alert to check its progress, condemned Bishop Virgil for teaching the existence of the antipodes, and Galileo for maintaining the heliocentric system. Egypt under the Ptolemies, Etruria and Mexico, Aristotle, Lord Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton, alike scatter your assertion to the winds; and if any doubt on the subject could linger in the mind of any one, the late encyclical would the sufficient to disabuse him of his fond delusion."

To this we reply: We will not allow that even in ancient times attainments in physical science were made irrespectively of religion. Without religion, man lives in a savage state akin to brutes. Natural religion, on which revealed religion is founded, exalts him in a degree, and qualifies him for intellectual pursuits. Yet, even with its assistance, so corrupt is his nature, that philosophy and science can obtain no permanent command over his passions, and his highest degrees of refinement are always succeeded by periods of degradation, and no steady advance is made. As natural religion placed the heathen in a condition somewhat favorable to the pursuit of science, so revealed religion, or, in other words, Roman Catholicism, did the like more completely, in consequence of its divine origin and perfect adaptation to the needs of mankind. It brought society step by step out of a state of semi-barbarism, and overcame the resistance offered to its social improvements by the Roman people and Emperors, by Huns and Vandals, by Islamism, Iconoclasts, and Feudalism. It covered Europe with seats of learning, and kindled the student's lamp in the monastic recesses of deep valleys and vast forests. It created a body of theological science, and of philosophical in connection with it, {641} which the more profound even of infidel thinkers admit to have been among the most marvellous products of the human mind; and this scientific system--over and above its higher purposes--was the very best intellectual training possible under the circumstances of the period. Then, as time went on, religion accepted gratefully and employed in its own service the art of printing, and prepared the human mind for those most energetic thoughts and often misdirected efforts which have been made, from the fifteenth century downward, for the discovery of physical truth. It is therefore manifest to all whose thoughts reach below the surface of things, that the services which Lord Bacon rendered to philosophy and Newton to Science, were indirectly due to the Catholic Church.

Rome, the central civilizer of society, exerts an influence far beyond her visible domain. The earth is hers, and the fulness thereof. Whatsoever things are true and holy in faith and morals among her truants, whatever portions of her divine creed they carry away with them to build up their sects, whatever books or texts of the mutilated scriptures they retain, whatever graces shine forth in them, and in part redeem their delinquency, are all to be ascribed to her as the primary channel of communication between earth and heaven, and all belong to her as their chartered proprietress, although they have been wrested from her hands. "There is nothing right, useful, pleasing (jucundum) in human society, which the Roman pontiffs have not brought into it, or have not refined and fostered (expoliverint et foverint) when introduced." [Footnote 134] Heresy is always blended with truth, and the truth is always Rome's, while the heresy is theirs who have corrupted it. Whatever is good and true in Protestantism is of Rome; and as Protestants would have no Bible but for the councils which settled its canon, and the despised monks who transcribed it age after age, so Protestant churches would never have been founded if the great old church had not overspread Europe. Nay, the _Novum Organon_ and _Principia_ would in all probability never have seen the light. Christianity, on the whole, keeps science alive; and but for the popes, Christianity would soon vanish from the face of the earth. As far as Bacon and Newton are indebted to Christianity for their philosophy, just in so far are they indebted to Rome as its fountain-head. Whatever stress is to be laid on the fact of their being Christians, glorifies Rome indirectly as the source of civilization. It is her very greatness and her perfect system of doctrine which brings her into collision with every form of spiritual rebellion; but those who fly off from her authority are still her children, _in so far_ as they continue members at all of the family of God. The prodigal son, amid all his degradation and wanderings, is yearned over by his father, and belongs to his father's house in a certain sense.

[Footnote 134: Pope Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]

As to Rome being the enemy of physical science, it is not difficult to see the causes which have led to so extreme a misconception. She has ever protested, and that most energetically, against the prevalent tendency to give physics a supremacy over theology, where the two seem to clash; and she has also steadfastly resisted the pretension so constantly made by physical science to thrust into a corner some higher branches of human philosophy. Her conduct in the latter case has been simply in accordance with what is now a growing conviction in the philosophical world; while in the former case she has done nothing more than uphold as infallibly certain the doctrinal deposit committed to her charge. But with these most reasonable qualifications, she has ever been active in stimulating the keenest physical researches. Well may the present pope say that "it is _impudently_ bruited abroad that the Catholic {642} religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which may thence be expected." [Footnote 135] To harp upon Virgil and Galileo, proves how few and slender are the arguments which our accusers can adduce in support of their charge. If we defer to facts, and regard the entire history of Christendom, we can certainly name ten persons distinguished for physical discoveries in our own communion, for every one whom Protestantism can boast. In no Catholic country is such science discouraged, but its professors are, on the contrary, everywhere rewarded and honored. Nowhere among us has any recent science, such as geology, been prohibited, or even combated, except by individuals. Its conclusions, when really established, have been admitted by all learned Catholics notwithstanding they appeared at first sight to run counter to the words of inspiration. Cardinal Wiseman's "Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion" abundantly illustrate what is here stated; and his whole life was a refutation of the calumny with which his creed is so often assailed. New arts, which are each the visible expression of a corresponding science, have been welcomed abroad as readily as in England; and Belgium could be traversed by steam long before the Great Western line between London and Bristol was completed. If it so happened that the greatest English astronomer, naturalist, or mathematician, were a Catholic, his co-religionists would be the most forward of all Englishmen to extol his genius. His scientific pursuits would never make him an object of suspicion with us, provided his loyalty to the church were complete; nor would his zeal be damped by any ecclesiastical authority, so, long as his conclusions involved nothing adverse to religion. The Catholic, it is true, can never make the claims of science paramount to those of faith, but the restraint thus imposed on him is of the most salutary kind, and will be no real check on his liberty of thought; for science and revelation, though it may for a while be difficult to harmonize some of their statements, must ever be found to agree strictly on closer examination.

[Footnote 135: Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]

It would be easy to mark the successive stages in European civilization by the pontificates of popes remarkable for their energy of character and the brightness of their abilities. The average length of the reigns of the first thirty-seven was rather less than ten years; and during this time they had to struggle for something infinitely more important than art and science. They were penetrated with a deep sense of their sublime mission, and neither old age, infirmities, nor persecution, paralyzed their labors. "They employed their revenues in maintaining the poor, the sick, the infirm, the widows, orphans, and prisoners, in burying the martyrs, in erecting and embellishing oratories, in comforting and redeeming confessors and captives, and in sending aid of every description to the suffering churches of other provinces." [Footnote 136] Thus, in the wise order of providence, papal civilization began in the moral world before it extended to the intellectual. Yet in the middle of the fourth century, the pope and his coadjutors in different quarters of the globe, presented a striking spectacle, when considered merely in their intellectual aspect. St. Damasus, the thirty-eighth pope, occupied the see of St. Peter. While he zealously promoted ecclesiastical discipline, he won for himself general admiration by his virtues and his writings. His taste for letters carried him beyond the sphere of theological labor; he composed verses, and wrote several heroic poems. [Footnote 137] He was the light of Rome, while St. Augustine, the brightest star that ever adorned the Catholic episcopate, shone at Hippo. St. Ambrose, at the same time, was the glory of Milan; St. Gregory taught at Nyssa; St. Gregory Nazianzen {643} wrote in Constantinople; St. Martin evangelized the Gauls; St. Basil composed his "Moralia" and his Treatise on the study of ancient Greek authors at Caesarea; St. Hilary and St. Paulinus bore witness to the truth in Poitiers and Trèves; St. Jerome unfolded the sacred stores of his learning in Thrace, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pontus; St. Cyril wrote beside his Saviour's tomb; and St. Patrick converted Ireland from the darkness of Druidic paganism.

[Footnote 136: J. Chantrel, "La Royauté Pontifieale," p. 74]

[Footnote 137: St. Jerome, "De Illustr. Eccles. Script."]

Every faithful prelate at that period--nay, every true Christian; however humble his condition--stood out more prominently from the mass of society than we can now imagine. Christianity has produced among us a certain general level of morality. But it was not so then. The masses were still heathen, and Christians were often in a very small minority. Their principles and conduct, therefore, were so distinct from those around them, that each attracted attention, and exerted more influence than he was aware of. Each Roman Catholic--for we joyfully accept a designation which is erroneously supposed to limit our claims--each Roman Catholic was then a light shining in a dark place, and, in his measure, an apostle of civilization. He promoted science, even though he had never heard its name, for he diminished that amount of moral depravity, on the ruins of which alone science can build her gorgeous fanes. He was member of a church, which, wherever it was established, protested by its institutions against the excessive indulgence of carnal affections. A celibate priesthood, societies of monks and nuns, hermits, and vows of chastity observed by persons living in the world, like St. Cecilia and St. Scholastica, and expiring in the arms of wife or husband without ever having done violence to the pure intentions which marked their bridal--these things formed a spectacle so extraordinary to the heathen, who had been accustomed to make sensual indulgence a feature in their religious solemnities, that it could not but excite inquiry, and issue in affixing a fresh stamp of divinity on the faith of Christ. What would have become of society by this time if the elements of decomposition which then existed had been allowed to work unchecked by the laws of Christian marriage, the prohibition of divorce, and lastly by monasticism--monasticism not forced on any one as a duty, but freely chosen as a privilege--a higher and purer state, best suited for communion with God and activity in his service!

In the fifth century, the efforts which had been made by Popes Innocent, Boniface, Celestine, and Sixtus III. for the conversion of the barbarians who overran the fairest portions of Europe, were continued with extraordinary perseverance by the great St. Leo. He formed the most conspicuous figure in his age. No element of greatness was wanting to his character, and the complicated miseries of the times only threw into stronger relief the energy of his mind and will. His reign, from first to last, is a chapter in the history of civilization. Attila, crossing the Jura mountains with his numerous hordes, fell upon Italy. Valentinian III. fled before him, and Leo alone had weight and courage equal to the task of interceding with the resistless devastator. On the 11th of June, 452, he set forth to meet him, and found him on the banks of the Mincio. Rome was saved, and with it religion and the hopes of society. Three years after, Genseric with his Vandals stood before its gates; and though Leo could not this time altogether stay the destroyer, he saved the lives of the citizens, and Rome itself from being burnt. If she had not been possessed of a hidden and supernatural life, far transcending that idea of a civilizing agent which it so abundantly includes, she would already have been razed to the ground, as she was afterward by the Ostrogoths under Totila, and from neither devastation would she ever have been {644} able to revive. At this moment she would be numbered with Nineveh and Sidon, the foxes would bark upon the Aventine as when Belisarius rode through the deserted Forum, and shepherds would fold their flocks upon the hills where St. Peter's and St. John Lateran now dazzle the eye with splendor. [Footnote 138]

[Footnote 138: Monsignor Manning, "The Eternity of Rome."--_Lamp_, Nov. 1863.]

Happily great popes never fail. All are great in their power and influence, and almost all have been good, while from time to time Providence raises up some one also who makes an impression on his age, and is acknowledged by friends and foes alike to be gifted with those qualities which entitle him to the epithet "great." Pelagus I. supplied the Romans with provisions during a long siege, and after the example of St. Leo, obtained from Totila some mitigation of his barbarous severities; John III. and Benedict I. ministered largely to the Italians who were dying of want, and driven from their homes by the remorseless Lombards; and writers the most adverse to the papacy--Gibbon, Daunou, [Footnote 139] Sismondi--testify to the disinterested benevolence of these and other pontiffs during the church's struggle with northern devastators. Just a century and a half had elapsed since Leo the Great's elevation, when St. Gregory ascended the papal throne amid the people's acclamation. He was at the same time doctor, legislator, and statesman; and the plain facts of his pontificate might be so related as to appear a panegyric rather than a sober history. In the midst of personal weakness and suffering, the strength of his soul and intellect were felt in every quarter of Christendom and while he composed his "Pastoral" and his "Dialogues," or negotiated with the Lombards in behalf of his afflicted country, news reached him frequently of the success of his missions amongst distant and barbarous people. [Footnote 140] To one of these we owe the conversion of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers; and the results it produced extort from Macaulay the admission that the spiritual supremacy assumed by the pope effected more good than harm, and that the Roman Church, by uniting all men in a bond of brotherhood, and teaching all their responsibility before God, deserves to be spoken of with respect by philosophers and philanthropists. [Footnote 141]

[Footnote 139: "Essai Historique," t. i.]

[Footnote 140: See Chantrel, "Hist. Populaire des Papes," t. v.]

[Footnote 141: "Hist. of England," chap. i.]

Sabinian, Boniface III. and IV., John IV. and VII., Theodore, Martin, Eugene, and Benedict II., trod firmly in the steps of St. Gregory, and encouraged the clergy everywhere in repairing the evils wrought by the barbarians, and in re-establishing law and order. [Footnote 142] The bishops became the natural chiefs of society, and the administration of justice was often placed in their hands by common consent. Their counsel was taken by untutored kings, and they gradually impressed them with a sense of the distinction between temporal and spiritual power, and of the right of the latter to control the undue exercise of the former. They raised by turns all the great questions that interest mankind, and established the independence of the intellectual world. [Footnote 143] Such is the impartial testimony of writers unhappily prejudiced against the institution they applaud.

[Footnote 142: Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," chap. ixv.]

[Footnote 143: Guizot, "Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe." "Hist. de la Civilisation en France." t. ii.]

In their protracted conflict with Islamism, the Roman pontiffs were the champions of social improvement. It needs only to survey the opposite coasts of the Mediterranean, in order to gain some idea of the paralyzing influence which the creed of Mohammed would have exerted over human progress, if it had not been vigorously resisted. Its prevailing dogma being fatalism, and its main precept sensuality, it has, after a lapse of twelve centuries, failed to ameliorate the condition of the tribes who profess it. If, in any respects, they enjoy advantages unknown to their forefathers, these are due, not to Mohammedanism, but to that {645} very anti-Saracenic movement which the popes headed, and which, under different conditions, they carry forward to this day. Permanent degradation was all that Islamism could promise. The Arabs alone kindled for a while the lamp of learning, but even their subtlety and genius did not suffice to keep its flame alive. Everywhere, and with all the forces at their command, the popes repelled its encroachments. More than once they girded on the sword, and led their warriors to the charge against the Moslem host. During a hundred and seventy years--from 1096 to 1270--they roused and united the nations again and again in the common cause. Other statesmen were unable to form extensive combinations, but _they_ were often successful where diplomacy failed. In eight successive crusades, the flower of Europe's chivalry was marshalled on the Syrian plains, and if Catholic arms failed in retaining possession of the city of Jerusalem and the sepulchre of Christ, they at all events saved the cause of European civilization, and ultimately drove back the intruder from the vineyards of Spain and the gates of Vienna, and sank their proud galleys in the waves of Lepanto. When the zeal of crusaders died away, the Roman pontiffs ever tried to rekindle it, constantly rebuked the princes who made terms with the false prophet, and exhorted them to expel the conquered Saracens from their soil. Such was the policy of Clement IV., under whom, in 1268, the last crusade was set on foot. [Footnote 144] Two centuries later, Calixtus III. was animated with the same sentiments. He was appalled, as his predecessor had been, at the progress the Turks made in Europe after the capture of Constantinople, and made a strenuous appeal to the Catholic kingdoms against the Mussulman invasions. At an advanced age he preserved in his soul the fire of youth, sent preachers in every direction to rouse the slumbering zeal of the faithful, and himself equipped an army of 60,000 men, which he sent under the command of Campestran, his legate, to the help of the noble Hunyad in Hungary. Pius II. succeeded him in 1458. He was at once theologian, orator, diplomatist, canonist, historian, geographer, and poet. He struggled hard to organize a crusade against the Ottomans, formed a league to this end with Mathias Corvin, king of Hungary, pressed the king of France, the duke of Burgundy, and the republic of Venice into the cause, and placed himself at the head of the expedition. He was on the point of embarking at Ancona, and in sight of the Venetian galleys, waiting to transport him to the foreign shore, when fever surprised him, and he died. "No doubt," he said, "war is unsuitable to the weakness of old men, and the character of pontiffs, but when religion is ready to succumb, what can detain us? We shall be followed by our cardinals and a large number of bishops. We shall march with our standard unfolded, and with the relics of saints, with Jesus Christ himself in the holy Eucharist." The spectacle would certainly have been grand, if Pius II. had thus appeared before the walls of Constantinople; but Providence had not willed it so.

[Footnote 144: See his letter to the King of Arragon. Fleury, "Hist, Eccles." An. 1266.]

These are but a few of the great names which lent weight to the appeal in behalf of the harassed pilgrims in Palestine, the outraged tomb of the Redeemer, and the Christian lands overran by Saracens and Turkish hordes. To whatever causes the worldly-wise historian may attribute the overthrow of the Ottoman power in Europe, the Catholic will ascribe it without hesitation to the untiring activity of the popes. Divided as the petty kingdoms and principalities of the west were by mutual jealousy and ceaseless warfare, they would never have been able to oppose a compact front to the advances of Islamism, if they had not been persuaded by popes and prelates, by Peter the hermit, St. Bernard, and {646} Foulque, to lay aside their miserable disputes, and unite against the common enemy. Thus, by the crusades, immediate benefit accrued to European society, and the character of the church as a ruler and leader was never borne in upon the minds of men with greater force than when Adhémar, the apostolic legate, put himself at the head of the Crusade under Urban II., "wore by turns the prelate's mitre and the knight's casque," and proved the model, the consoler, and the stay of the sacred expedition. [Footnote 145] The presence of bishops and priests among the soldiery impressed on the Crusades a religious stamp favorable to the enthusiasm and piety of the combatants, and corrective of the evils which never fail to follow the camp. [Footnote 146] Nations learned their Christian brotherhood, which former ages had taught them to forget; minds were enlarged by travel, and prejudices were dispelled; civilizing arts were acquired even from the infidel, and brought back to western towns and villages as the most precious spoil. As Rome had, at an earlier period, resisted the superstition and rapacity of Leo the Isaurian, [Footnote 147] and rescued Christian art from the hands of the image-breakers, so now she opened the way to commerce with the east and rewarded the zeal of Catholic populations with the costly bales and rich produce of Arabia and Syria.

[Footnote 145: Michaad et Poujouiat, "Hist. des Croisades."]

[Footnote 146: See Heeren, "Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades."]

[Footnote 147: "Parfum de Rome," t. i. p. 124.]

Having turned the feudal system to good account in its conflict with Mohammedanism, the Church, with Rome for its centre, rejoiced to find that system, at the close of the struggle, considerably weakened. It had grown to maturity in a barbarous age, and was but a milder form of that slavery which had so deeply disgraced the institutions of Pagan Rome. [Footnote 148] It perpetuated the distinctions of caste, and the privilege enjoyed by one family of oppressing others. It was selfishness exalted by pride--the right of the strong over the weak. It exacted forced tribute, and held in its own violent hands the moral, mental, and material well-being of its subjects. It required blind and absolute submission, and often refused to dispense justice even at this price. Immobility was its ruling principle, and there was nothing on which it frowned more darkly than amelioration and progress. In all these particulars it was at variance with the religion of Christ, and for this reason Rome never ceased to combat its manifold abuses.

[Footnote 148: See "Rome under Paganism," etc., vol. 1. pp. 50-53.]

At the close of the Crusades the nobles began to learn their proper place. Petty fiefs and small republics disappeared, and one strong and regal executive swallowed up a multitude of inferior and vexatious masteries. The barons became the support of the throne whose authority they had so long weakened, and ceased to oppress the people as they had done for ages. Cities multiplied, and rose to opulence; municipal governments flourished, acquired and conferred privileges, and afforded to the industrious abundant scope for wholesome emulation, and laudable ambition. All the arts of life were brought into exercise, and a new and middling class of society was called into being. The merchants, the tradesmen, and the gentry obtained their recognized footing in the community, and numberless corporations, guilds, and militia testified to the growing importance of the burgess as distinguished from the noble and the villain. [Footnote 149]

[Footnote 149: See Mably, "Observations sur l'Histoire de France," iii. 7.]

Well-ordered governments on a large scale involved of necessity the cultivation of the soil. Myriads of acres which, before the Crusades, had been barren or baneful, now smiled with waving corn, or bore rich harvests of luscious grapes. The want of bulky transports to convey large cargoes of men and munitions to the East had caused great alteration and improvement in the construction of ships. {647} Navigation and commerce gained fresh vigor; maritime laws and customs came to be recognized, and were reduced, about the middle of the thirteenth century, into a manual called _Consolato del mar_, [Footnote 150] Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Marseilles rose to wealth and splendor; sugar and silks were manufactured; stuffs were woven and dyed; metals were wrought; architecture was diversified and improved, medicine learned many a precious rule and remedy from Arab leeches; geography corrected long-standing blunders; and poetry found a new world in which to expatiate. None of these results were unforeseen by the prescience of Rome. She knew that it was her mission to renew the face of the earth; nor, in pursuing her unwavering policy in reference to Islamism, did she ever forget that it was given her from the first to suck the breasts of the Gentiles, and to assimilate to her own system all that is rich and rare in nature, wonderful in science, beauteous in art, wise in literature, and noble in man. The Roman Church had ever been the friend and patron of those slaves whom Cato and Cicero, with all their philosophy, so heartily despised. [Footnote 151] She did not indeed affirm that slavery was impossible under the Christian law, but she discouraged it. "At length," says Voltaire, whose testimony on such a point none will suspect, "Pope Alexander III., in 1167, declared in the name of the Council that all Christians should be (_devaient étre_) exempt from slavery. This law alone ought to render his memory dear to all people, as his efforts to maintain the liberty of Italy should make his name precious to the Italians." [Footnote 152] Lord Macaulay has spoken frankly of the advantage to which the Catholic Church shows in some countries as contrasted with our forms of Christianity, and says it is notorious that the antipathy between the European and African races is less strong at Rio Janeiro than at Washington. [Footnote 153] On the authority of Sir Thomas Smith, one of Elizabeth's most able counsellors, he assures us that the Catholic priests up to that time had used their most strenuous exertions to abolish serfdom. Confessors never failed to adjure the dying noble who owned serfs to free his brethren for whom Christ died. Thus the bondsman became loosened from the glebe which gave him birth; many during the Crusades left their plough in the furrow, and their cattle at the trough, and escaped from service they had long detested; and many knights and lords who returned from the Holy Land emancipated their serfs of their own accord. Free hirelings took the place of hereditary bondsmen; and the peasant's life assumed a pleasant and civilized aspect. In proportion as Rome's genuine influence prevails in any country over clergy and people, the traces of the fall diminish, and those of paradise are restored.

[Footnote 150: E. M. de Monaghan, p. 219. ]

[Footnote 151: Cic. Orat de Harusp, Resp. xii. ]

[Footnote 152: Sur les Moeurs, ch. 83. ]

[Footnote 153: Hist. of England, chap. i.]

The Roman pontiff have often been accused of interfering in the private affairs of princes. But the charge is unjust. It is part of their mission to repress all moral disorders, and especially to punish the licentiousness of sovereigns whose bad example promotes immorality among their subjects. Their jurisdiction is fully admitted; their right of granting or refusing a divorce no Catholic prince disputes any more than their right of inflicting penances in case of adultery or incest. To deny them, therefore, the opportunity of investigating the very cases on which they must ultimately decide, would be manifestly inconsistent and absurd. When Lothaire II. of Lorraine drove away from his court the virtuous Teustberghe, and accused her of disgraceful crimes, who can blame Nicholas I. for having espoused the cause of this persecuted queen, and excommunicated in council her unjust lord? Did the popes "interfere" in such matters otherwise than in the interests of humanity; and if they had {648} consulted their own ease and comfort, would they not have abstained from such interference altogether? Let the world call it papal aggression, usurpation, political scheming, or what other hard name it will, the true Christian will see in it nothing but disinterested devotion to the voice of conscience and the good of society. God himself seems to have declared in favor of Pope Nicholas in the affair alluded to; for when Louis le Germanique took up arms to avenge his brother, and marched on Rome, the pontiff met his armies with fasting and litanies, and with no other standard than the crucifix given by the Empress Helena containing a fragment of the true cross. The victorious king was overcome by these demonstrations, and, imploring the pope's pardon, submitted to all his conditions. [Footnote 154] We hesitate not to affirm that the "interference" of the popes in temporal affairs has more than once saved Europe from Islamism, even as at the present time they are saving her from total infidelity. Whether successful or unsuccessful, they struggled with equal constancy and valor against that formidable power. About the year 876 Mussulman hordes infested the country around Rome to such an extent that at last scarcely a hamlet or drove of oxen remained to suffer by the widespread disaster. Three hundred Saracen galleys menaced the mouth of the Tiber, and John VIII., deserted and betrayed by neighboring dukes, implored by letter the aid of Charles the Bald and the Emperor Charles of Germany. Yet he failed, and that not so much through the strength of the Mohammedans as through the base conduct of princes called Christian, who cast him into prison, and then drove him to find refuge in France. Often have the popes been obliged to follow the example of John VIII., and look forth from their retirement in foreign lands on the tempest they have braved and escaped. His 320 letters show how much temporal affairs occupied his attention, because God willed that his spiritual authority should show forth its civilizing tendency in temporal intervention. His conflict with Islamism, which seemed unproductive at the time, bore fruit in after ages.

[Footnote 154: Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity. ]

The differences which arose and lasted so long between the popes and the emperors of Germany are constantly misrepresented by writers adverse to the Church. Their origin lay in the attachment of the Roman pontiffs to principles which they can never abandon. The investiture quarrel was a long struggle of spiritual authority against imperial aggression, and the apparent compromise in which it issued left the divine prerogatives of the Holy See intact. Simony was one great plague of the middle ages, and but for the popes the princes of Europe would have filled the Lord's temple with impious traffic. But for the popes, too, many of them would have been unchecked in their proud dreams of universal empire, which, if realized, would have been as injurious to the liberties of mankind as to the free action of the church. Frederick II., who was born in Italy, and lived to spend long years in its delicious climate, without once visiting his German domains, desired to establish in her the throne of the Caesars. This was the secret of all his disputes with the pope, and this ambitious project every successor of St. Peter felt bound to resist. But amid all these struggles, from Gregory VII. to Calistus II., the life of the church was a continual child-bearing, and while the popes battled with crowned princes, they labored also for the souls of the poor. If you would find the inexhaustible mine of that salt which keeps the whole world from corruption, you must seek it in the hill where Paul was buried, and Peter expired on his inverted cross. Proceeding thus by regular stages in the work of improvement, the Roman Church had the satisfaction of seeing every formula of enfranchisement signed by prince or baron in the name of religion. It was {649} always with some Christian idea, some hope of future recompense, some recognition of the equality of all men in the sight of God, that the strong voluntarily loosened the bonds of the weak. Absurd and barbarous legislation was gradually reformed under the same influence; and trials by single combat, oaths without evidence, and passing through fire or cold water as a test of innocence, were supplanted by more rational processes. M. Gnizot has pointed out the great superiority of the laws of the Visigoths over those of other barbarous people around them; and he ascribes this difference to their having been drawn up under the direction of the Councils of Toledo. They laid great stress on the examination of written documents in all trials, accepted mere affirmation on oath only as a last resource, and distinguished between the different degrees of guilt in homicide, with or without premeditation, provoked or unprovoked, and the like. If M. Guizot's observation is well founded in the case of an Arian code, how much more weight would it have, if made in reference to laws framed under Catholic influence. Civilization and theology went hand in hand. Every question was considered in its theological bearing. The habits, the feelings, and the language of men continually bespoke religious ideas. Barbaric wisdom was guided by the Star of the East to Bethlehem, and matured in the school of Christ. The public penances imposed by the church became the form to which penal inflictions were moulded by the law; the repentance of the culprit, and the fear of offending inspired in bystanders, being the twofold object kept in view. The progress made by the nations under such tutelage has been allowed by many Protestant historians, and it would be easy to cite the testimony of Robertson, Sismondi, Leibnitz, Coquerel, Ancillon, [Footnote 155] and De Muller, [Footnote 156] to the truth of our statements. Duels in the middle ages, and even down to the time of Louis XIV., raged like an epidemic, produced deadly feuds between families, abolished all just decision of disputes, and gave the advantage to the more agile and skilful of the combatants. From 1589 to 1607 no less than 4000 French gentleman lost their lives in duels. [Footnote 157] The genius of Sully and Richelieu was unequal to the task of crushing this two-fold crime of suicide and murder. But the church had never ceased to denounce it, and, in the Council of Trent especially, launched all her thunders against it. [Footnote 158] At length temporal princes were guided by her voice in this matter. Charles V. forbade it in his vast dominions; in Portugal it was punished with confiscation and banishment to Africa; and in Sweden it was visited with death.

[Footnote 155: Tableau des Révolutions.]

[Footnote 156: Hist. Universelle.]

[Footnote 157: Bell on Feudalism.]

[Footnote 158: Sess. xxv. c. 19.]

The pitiless character of human legislation was exhibited for ages in the practice of refusing those who were condemned to death the privilege of confession; and it was not till the reign of Philip the Bold, in 1397, that this cruel restriction was removed. The church had always protested against it, and her remonstrances at last prevailed. Chivalry itself owed something to her inspiration. Mingled as it was with rudeness and violence, it had also many noble elements, which religion encouraged. It was a step toward higher civilization, because it vindicated the dignity of womankind; true gallantry sprang from honest purposes and virtuous conduct, and if Sir Galahad said--

"My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure,"

he added--

"My strength is as the strength of ten, _Because my heart is pure_."

Sir James Stephen, in a paper on St. Gregory VII., [Footnote 159] has avowed his conviction that the centralization of the ecclesiastical power did more than counterbalance the isolating tendency of feudal oligarchies. But for the {650} intervention of the papacy, he says, the vassal of the west, and the serf of eastern Europe would, perhaps to this day be in the same state of social debasement, and military autocrats would occupy the place of paternal and constitutional governments. Feudal despotism strove to debase men into wild beasts or beasts of burden, while "the despotism of Hildebrand," whether consistent or no, sought to guide the human race by moral impulses to sanctity more than human. If the popes had abandoned the work assigned them by Providence, they would have plunged the church and world into hopeless bondage. St. Gregory VII. found the papacy dependent on the empire, and he supported it by alliances with Italian princes. He found the chair of the apostles filled, when vacant, by the clergy and the people of Rome, and he provided for less stormy elections by making the pope eligible by a college of his own nomination. He found the Holy See in subjection to Henry, and he rescued it from his hands. He found the secular clergy subservient to lay influence, and he rendered them free and active auxiliaries of his own authority. He found the highest dignitaries of the church the slaves of temporal sovereigns, and he delivered them from this yoke, and bound them to the tiara. He found ecclesiastical functions and benefices the spoil and traffic of princes, and he brought them back to the control of the sovereign pontiff; He is justly celebrated as the reformer of the profane and licentious abuses of his time, and we owe him the praise also of having left the impress of his giant character on the history of the ages that followed. Such are the candid admissions of a professor in the University of Cambridge. The highest eulogies of Rome are often to be found in the writings of aliens.

[Footnote 159: Edinburgh Review, 1845.]

Up to the time of the Reformation the Roman church was manifestly in the forefront of civilization. After that terrible revolution she was still really so, but not always manifestly. Her position was the same, but that of society had changed. It no longer accepted her laws; it cavilled at her authority, ort openly spurned it. People forgot their debt of gratitude to the power which had always interfered in behalf of the oppressed, and princes jibed at the restraints which the papacy imposed on their absolute rule. The printing-press was wrested from the church's hands, and made the chief engine for propagating misbelief. A new and spurious civilization was set up, and was so blended with real and amazing progress in many of the sciences and the arts of life, that when the popes opposed what was corrupt in it and of evil tendency, they often appeared adverse to what was genuine. Of this their enemies took every advantage, and constantly represented them as the mortal foes of the liberty, enlightenment, and progress of mankind. Pontiff after pontiff protested against this wilful misrepresentation, which has lasted three hundred years, and continues in full force to this day. Seldom has it been put forward more speciously than in reference to the recent Encyclical of Pius IX. We shall endeavor to show its utter falsity in the remainder of this article.

Thrown back in her efforts to evangelize Europe, the church turned with more ardor than ever toward the other hemisphere. Already Alvarez di Cordova had planted the cross in Congo. Idolatry vanished before it almost entirely in the African territory recently discovered, and upon its ruins rose the city of San Salvador. The ills inflicted on the Americans by the first Spanish settlers were repaired by the Benedictine Bernard di Buil, and other missionaries who trod in his steps. The Dominicans set their faces sternly against reducing the Indians to the rank of slaves, and Father Monterino, in the church of St. Domingo, inveighed against it in the presence of the governor, with all {651} the fervor of popular eloquence. [Footnote 160] The life of Bartholomew de Las Casas was one long struggle against the cupidity and cruelty of Spanish masters and in favor of Indian freedom. The labors and successes of St. Francis Xavier are too well known to require recapitulation in this place; it is more to the purpose to remark that the missionaries of Rome, from Mexico and the Philippine islands, to Goa, Cochin-China, and Japan, everywhere exposed to adverse climate, hardship, and martyrdom, carried with them the two-fold elements of civilization--religion and the arts of life. The Jesuit who started for China was provided with telescope and compass. He appeared at the court of Pekin with the urbanity of one fresh from the presence of Louis XIV., and surrounded with the insignia of science. He unrolled his maps, turned his globes, chalked out his spheres, and taught the astonished mandarins the course of the stars and the name of him who guides them in their orbits. [Footnote 161] Buffon, [Footnote 162] Robertson, and Macaulay have alike extolled the missionary zeal of the Jesuit fathers, and have ascribed to them, not merely the regeneration of the inward man, but the cultivation of barren lands, the building of cities, new high roads of commerce, new products, new riches and comforts for the whole human race.

[Footnote 160: Robertson, Hist. of America.]

[Footnote 161: Génie du Christianisme.]

[Footnote 162: Hist. Naturelle de l'Homme.]

In teaching barbarous nations the arts of life and the elements of scientific knowledge, the missionaries acted in perfect accordance with the spirit of the papacy and the example of the religious orders. Each of these had its appointed sphere, and each civilized mankind in its own way. The templars, the knights of St. John, the Teutonic knights, and half a dozen other now forgotten military orders, defended civilization with the sword; the Chartreux, the Benedictines, the Bernardines, in quiet and shady retreats, preserved from decay the precious stores of heathen antiquity, compiled the history of their several epochs, and gave themselves, under many disadvantages, to the study of natural philosophy; the Redemptorists, the Trinitarians, and the Brothers of Mercy devoted themselves to the redemption of captives and the emancipation of slaves. Voltaire cannot pass them over without a burst of admiration, when touching on their benevolent career during six centuries. [Footnote 163] Some orders made preaching and private instruction their special work, and among these were the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustines. The pulpit is the lever that raises the moral world; and it civilizes city, village, and hamlet the more effectually because its work is constant and systematic. It explains, Sunday after Sunday, and festival after festival, the sublimest and deepest of all sciences, while it guides society, with persuasive might, in the path of moral improvement. With all that social science has devised for the comfort and welfare of mankind, nothing that it has ever invented is so essentially civilizing, so dignified and lovely, so unpretending and strong, as the self-denying labors of brothers and sisters of charity, sacrificing youth, beauty, prospects, tastes, and indulgence, on the altar of religion, and passing their days among the lepers and the plague-stricken, the ignorant, the degraded, the squalid and the infirm.

[Footnote 163: Sur les Moeurs, ch. cxx.]

And of these orders, none, be it observed, has railed against knowledge. By no rule, in any one of them, has ignorance been made a virtue and science a sin. All have admired the beauty of knowledge--the fire on her brow--her forward countenance--her boundless domain. All have wished well to her cause, and have maintained only that she should know her place; that she is the second, not the first; that she is not wisdom, but {652} wisdom's handmaid; that she is of earth, and wisdom is of heaven; she is of the world for the church, and wisdom is of the church for the world. Severed from religion, they regarded her as some wild Pallas from the brain of demons; but science guided by a higher hand, and moving side by side with revelation, like the younger child, they believed to be the most beautiful spectacle the mind could contemplate.

To repeat these things in the ears of well read Catholics, is to iterate a thrice-told tale. But there are others who need often to be reminded of facts of history which our adversaries are apt to ignore. Besides the vast body of priests and religious orders, whose office was to disseminate thought and piety through the world, the papacy constantly sought new vehicles by which to promote science. The greater part of the universities of Europe owe their existence to this agency. Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Naples, Padua, Vienna, Upsal, Lisbon, Salamanca, Toulouse, Montpellier, Orleans, Nantes, Poictiers, and a multitude beside, were made centres of human knowledge under the patronage of the popes, and Clement V., Gregory IX., Engenius IV., Nicholas V., and Pius II., were among the most illustrious of their founders.

The writings of Leonardo da Vinci were not published till a century after his death, and some of them at a still later period. They are more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the fabric of its reasoning on any established basis. He laid down the principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be our chief guides in the investigation of nature. Venturi has given a most interesting list of the truths in mechanism apprehended by the genius of this light of the fifteenth century. [Footnote 164] He was possessed in the highest degree of the spirit of physical inquiry, and in this department of learning was truly a seer.

[Footnote 164: Estai sur lea Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de Léonard de Vinci. Paris. 1797. Hallam's Literary History, vol. i. pp. 222-5.]

Let the reader transport himself in idea to the beautiful borders of the Henares, and there, in the opening of the sixteenth century, look down on the rising University of Alcalá. Let him admire and wonder at the varied energy of its founder--Ximenes, the prelate, the hermit, the warrior, and the statesman. There, in his sixty-fourth year, he laid the corner-stone of the principal college, and was often seen with the rule in hand, taking the measurement of the buildings, and encouraging the industry of the workmen. The diligence with which he framed the system of instruction to be pursued, the activity of mind he promoted among the students, the liberal foundations he made for indigent scholars and the regulation of professors' salaries, did not withdraw him from the affairs of state, or the publication of his famous Bible, the Complutensian Polyglot. When Francis I., visited Alcalá, twenty years after the university was opened, 7000 students came forth to receive him, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the revenue bequeathed by Ximenes had increased to 42,000 ducats, and the colleges had multiplied from ten to thirty-five. [Footnote 165] Most of the chairs were appropriated to secular studies, and Alcalá stands forward as a brilliant refutation of the calumnies against Catholic prelates as the patrons of ignorance.

[Footnote 165: Quintanilla: Archetype. Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. 826.]

The same country and epoch which produced Ximenes gave birth also to Columbus. It was neither accident nor religion, but nautical science and the intuitive vision of another hemisphere, that piloted him across the Atlantic to the West-India shores. Amerigo Vespucci followed in his wake, emulous of like discoveries. He published a journal of his earlier voyages at Vicenza in 1507, and gave his name {653} to the continent of the western world. Thus, while two great navigators, each of them Catholics, explored new lands on the surface of our globe, Copernicus at the same time, and Galileo not many years after, presaged the motion of the planets round the sun, and the twofold rotation of the earth. To Galileo, indeed, far more is due. To him we owe the larger part of experimental philosophy. He first propounded the laws of gravity, the invention of the pendulum, the hydrostatic scales, the sector, a thermometer, and the telescope. With the last he made numberless observations which changed the face of astronomy. Among these, that of the satellites of Jupiter was one of the most remarkable. He came, it is true, into a certain collision with the church, but it is remarkable, that all the provocation given by Galileo never reduced authority to the unjustifiable step of impeding the fullest scientific investigation of his theory. Nay, those astronomers who taught on the Copernican _hypothesis_ were more favored at Rome than their opponents. It was at Galileo's request that Urban appointed Castelli to be his own mathematician, and the letter in which the pontiff recommended Galileo to the notice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, after his condemnation, abounds with expressions of sincere friendship. As to the dungeon and the torture, they are simply fabulous. During the process Galileo was permitted to lodge at the Tuscan embassy instead of in the prison of the holy office--a favor not accorded even to princes. His sentence of imprisonment was no sooner passed, than the Pope commuted it into detention in the Villa Medici, and, after he had resided there some days, he was allowed to install himself in the palace of his friend, Ascanio Piccolomini, archbishop of Sienna. Subsequently he retired to his own house and the bosom of his family; for, as Nicolini's correspondence with him testifies, "his holiness treated Galileo with unexpected and, perhaps, excessive gentleness, granting all the petitions presented in his behalf." [Footnote 166] These facts are surely sufficient to prove that physical science received all due honor at this period in Rome. In due time--long after Galileo's death--his theory was scientifically established; and not very long afterward the Congregational decree was suspended by Benedict XIV. Galileo's famous dialogue was published entire at Padua in 1744 with the usual approbations; and in 1818 Pius VII. repealed the decrees in question in full consistory. What could the church do more? It was her duty to guard the Scriptures from irreverence and unbelief, and to prohibit the advocacy of theories absolutely unproved which seemed to oppose them. To her physical science is dear, but revealed truth is infinitely dearer. Already she had opposed astrology as a remnant of paganism, and had studied the motions of the moon and planets to fix Easter and reform the Julian calendar. Already Gregory XIII. had brought the calendar which bears his name into use; and the works of Aristotle, translated into Arabic and Latin, had become the model of theological methods of disputation and treatise. St. Thomas Aquinas had written commentaries on them, and on Plato; and thus, as well as by his essay on aqueducts and that on hydraulic machines, had proved how inseparable is the alliance between sound theology and true science. "The sceptre of science," says Joseph de Maistre, "belongs to Europe only because she is Christian. She has reached this high degree of civilization and knowledge because she began with theology, because the universities were at first schools of theology, and because all the sciences, grafted upon this divine subject, have shown forth the divine sap by immense vegetation." [Footnote 167]

[Footnote 166: British Review. 1861. Martyrdom of Galileo.]

[Footnote 167: Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, Xme entretien. ]

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Voltaire has observed that "the sovereign pontiffs have always been remarkable among princes attached to letters," and the remark is equally true as regards science and art. Silvester II. was so learned that the common people attributed his vast erudition to magic. He collected all the monuments of antiquity he could find in Germany and Italy, and delivered them into the hands of copyists in the monasteries. St. Gregory VII. conceived the design of rebuilding St. Peter's, and gathered around him all the first architects of his day. Gregory IX. interfered in behalf of the University of Paris, and, as Guillaume de Nangis says, "prevented science and learning, those treasures of salvation, from quitting the kingdom of France." Nicolas V. was a great restorer of letters, and Macaulay speaks of him as one whom every friend of science should name with respect. Sixtus IV. conferred the title of Count Palatine on the printer Jenson, to encourage the noble art, then in its infancy. Pius III. enriched Sienna with a magnificent library, and engaged Raphael and Pinturicchio to adorn it with frescoes. Paul V. endowed Rome with the most beautiful productions of sculpture and painting, with splendid fountains and enduring monuments. Urban VIII. loved all the arts, succeeded in Latin poetry, and filled his court with men of learning. Under his pontificate "the Romans," as Voltaire says, "enjoyed profound peace, and shared all the charms and glory which talent sheds on society." Benedict XIV. cultivated letters, composed poems, and patronized science. The infidel himself just mentioned paid him homage, and professed profound veneration for him, when sending him a copy of his "Mahomet." [Footnote 168] Every pope in his turn has been a Maecenas. Not one in the august line has lost sight of the interests of society and the prerogatives of mind. The useful and the beautiful were always present to their thoughts; and even in those few instances where they failed in good personally, they encouraged in their official capacity whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good fame.

[Footnote 168: Letter to Pope Benedict XIV.]

Many names dear to science and religion occur to us in illustration of these remarks--names of men who, in the two last and in the present century, have devoted their lives to secular learning without losing their allegiance to the Catholic faith, or confounding it with other sciences which lie within human control for their extension and modification. Of these honorable names we will mention a few only by way of example, feeling sure that our readers' memory will supply them with many others. Cassini, among the astronomers, enjoyed so high a reputation at Bologna that the Senate and the pope employed him in several scientific and political missions. Colbert invited him to Paris, where he became a member of the Academy of Sciences, and died at a good old age in 1712, crowned with the glory of several important discoveries, among which were those of the satellites of Saturn and the rotation of Mars and Venus. His son James followed in his footsteps, and bequeathed his name to fame. André Ampère, again, a sincere Catholic, was one of the most illustrious disciples of electro-magnetism. He developed the memorable discovery of Oersted, ranged over the entire field of knowledge, and acquired a lasting reputation by his "theory of electro-dynamic phenomena drawn from experience." When between thirteen and fourteen years of age, he read through the twenty folio volumes of D'Alembert and Diderot's Encyclopaedia, digested its contents wonderfully for a boy and could long afterwards repeat extracts from it. But his reading was not confined to such books. A biography of Descartes, indeed, by Thomas, inspired him with his earliest enthusiasm for mathematics and natural philosophy; but his first communion also left an indelible stamp on his memory and character. The love of religion then, once {655} and for ever, took possession of his soul, and fired him through life, like the electric currents into which he made such profound research. When his days, which were fall of trouble, came to a close at Marseilles in 1837, he told the chaplain of the college that he had discharged all his Christian duties before setting out on his journey; and when a friend began reading to him some sentences from "The Imitation of Christ," he said, "I know the book by heart." These were his last words.

By the lives and labors of such men the church's mission on earth is effectually seconded. They inspire the thinking portion of society with confidence in religion, and though, from their constant engagement in secular pursuits, they frequently err in some minor point, and cling to some crotchet which ecclesiastical authority cannot sanction, yet in consideration of their loyal intentions and exemplary practices, the clergy everywhere regard them as able and honorable coadjutors. True civilization, (observe the epithet,) far from being adverse, must ever be favorable to the salvation of souls. Many writers still living, or who have recently passed away, have united happily Catholicism with science. Santarem, in his long exile, gave his mind to the history of geography and the discoveries of his Portuguese fellow-countrymen on the western coast of Africa. Caesar Cantù, in his historical works, uniformly defended the cause of the popedom in Italy, and persisted in holding it forward as his country's hope. M. Capefigue, among his numerous works on French history, has included the life of St. Vincent of Paul; and Cardinal Mai has rendered incalculable service to the study of Greek MSS. But for his diligence and sagacity, the palimpsests of the Vatican would never have yielded up their all-but obliterated treasures. Saint-Hilaire, eminent alike as a zoologist and natural philosopher, who demonstrated so clearly the organic structure in the different species of animals was destined in his youth for holy orders; but although he preferred a scientific career, he retained his affection for the clergy, and saved several of them, at the risk of his own life, during the massacres of September, in 1792. Blainville, another great naturalist, and Cuvier's successor in the chair of comparative anatomy, was deeply religious. He felt the importance of rescuing physical science from the hands of infidelity, by which it is so often perverted into an argument against revelation. Epicurus is said to have maintained that our knowledge of Deity is exactly commensurate with our knowledge of the works of nature, and to have allowed no other measure of our theology out [sic] physics. Lucretius devoted the whole of his beautiful but atheistic poem, "De Rerum Naturâ" to the task of proving that the soul is mortal, that religion is a cheat, and that natural causes sufficiently account for all the phenomena of the universe. In our day the disciples of Epicurus and Lucretius are legion, but they are not always so plain spoken as their masters. Happily they are everywhere opposed by men who recall physics to their true place, and make them a corollary of revealed truth--the science of the Creator, as Catholicism may be termed the science of the Divine Redeemer and Ruler. But useful as such laborers in the field of secular learning are, the truth cannot be too often repeated, that the vivifying principle of civilization lies in the cross and the ministry of reconciliation, of which the Pope is the head. No man whose knees have never bent on Calvary is truly civilized. If his passions chance to be tamed, his reason is rampant, or his conscience is asleep. He has no clear perception of things divine, and his views of things earthly and human are erroneous and confused. Oh! that philosophers would learn that the glory of their intellect consists in its dutiful subordination to the church! Then would she shine forth more conspicuously in the sight of all men as the {656} civilizer of nations. Then, and then only, should we be able to encourage without reserve or misgiving the speculations of science and the enterprises of art, and should join with loud voices and full hearts in the ardent aspirations of the poet:

Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press; _Fly, happy with the mission of the Cross;_ Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of _the golden year_.

That which delays the golden year, and prevents the knitting of land to land in the bonds of religious brotherhood, is the want of unity among nations called Christian. The terrible disruptions effected under Photins, Luther, and Henry VIII., have rendered the conversion of the world for the present morally impossible. But if the East and West were again united under their lawful lord and pope; if Protestant sects were deprived of regal support, reäbsorbed into the Catholic body, or so reduced in numerical importance as to be all but inactive and voiceless; if the vaunted utility of association were duly exemplified; if European populations were emulous of spiritual conquests in distant countries; if under the guidance and control of a common idea each of them launched its missionary ships on the waters in quick succession; if each town and university sent its quota of zeal and learning to the glorious work; if missionaries in large numbers went forth cheered with the apostolic benediction, and on whatever shore they might converge found other laborers in fields already white for the harvest, speaking with many tongues of one Lord, one faith, one baptism--then would the heathen no longer be stupefied by the feeble front and incongruous claims of those who now call them to repentance, nor would infidels scoff and jeer at a religion which has been made the very symbol of disunion; unbelieving nations, astonished at the strict coincidence of testimony borne by preachers arriving from every quarter of the globe, would distrust their prophets, desert their idols, and seek admission into the one ubiquitous fold. Then, also, the moral and intellectual energies of European prelates would be no longer engrossed by resisting aggression and weeding out disaffection nearer home, but would have leisure to organize missions on a large scale, and to fortify them with every auxiliary modern art and science can supply. The honor and glory of civilization would then be given to her to whom it belongs of right; and the nations, at length disabused of popular fallacies, would perceive that Protestantism and spurious liberty really hinder the progress they are supposed to promote.

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[ORIGINAL.]

THE CURSE OF SACRILEGE.

[In the suburbs of the ancient and curious city of Angers in France is a beautiful chateau, situated in the midst of extensive and fertile grounds. The chapel contains some very remarkable pieces of statuary, now nearly eight hundred years old. The place was formerly a convent of monks, and wrested from them during the great revolution. The family into whose possession it came, has ever since been afflicted with the sudden death and insanity of its members. The death of the last male heir, a youth of great promise, which occurred but a few years ago, is described in the following verses.]

A youth of twenty summers Sat at his mother's knee; Ne'er saw you a youth more noble, Nor fairer dame than she.

Half-reclining he swept the lute-strings, Murmuring an olden rhyme; While the clock in the castle tower Rang out a morning chime:

"In the bright and happy spring-time Ring the bells merrily; When the dead leaves fall in autumn, Then toll the bell for me."

The face of the lady-mother, Writhed as with sudden pain: "Oh! sing not, my son, so sadly, Choose thou a happier strain."

Sang the youth, "When the summer sunshine Falls o'er the lake and lea, And the corn is springing upward, Then you'll remember me."

The matron smiled on the singer: "My dear and my only one When I shall not remember, The light will forget the sun."

Yet her eyes smiled not, but were standing, Brimful of glimmering tears, Tell-tales of secret anguish, Dead hopes and living fears.

For he was the heir, and the only Child of the house of La Barre; A name that was known for its sorrows, By all, both near and far.

Lay in a charming valley Its rich and fair domain; But a curse seemed to hang around it, Worse than the curse of Cain.

For this was a holy convent Of monks in olden time; From God men had dared to wrest it, Nor recked the awful crime.

The mild men of God were driven Houseless and homeless afar: And he who rifled their cloister, Became the Lord of La Barre.

But a curse came down on his household, That time did not abate: And ne'er did the mourning hatchment Pass from the castle gate

The Lord of La Barre fell suddenly Dead in his banquet-hall; And madness seized his first-born, Bearing the funeral pall.

Calamity sudden and fearful. Haunted the sacred place. Striking the lords and their children, And blighting their hapless race.

One is thrown from his saddle, Dashing his brains on the ground; One in his bridal chamber. Dead by his bride is found;

One is caught by the mill-wheel. And cruelly torn in twain; One is lost in the forest, Ne'er to return again.

Death-traps for wolves, the herdsmen Set in the woods with care; The wolves devour the master, Caught in the fatal snare.

Killed by the forkèd lightnings; Drowned in the flowing Loire; Crushed by some falling timbers; Conquered and slain in war.

Idiots and still-born children, Come as the first-born heirs. Those are seized with madness, Whom death a few years spares.

Thus did they all inherit A curse with the rich domain, Who dared on the holy convent To lay their hands profane.

The autumn winds are blowing Across the lake and lea, As the youth of twenty summers Sings at his mother's knee.

He ceased, and from him casting His lute upon the floor, Listened, as sounds from the court-yard Came through the open door.

Hearing the dogs' loud barking, As their keeper his bugle wound; "To-day I go a hunting," Said he, "with hawk and hound."

The rustling of dead leaves only Heard the Lady of La Barre, And thought of her lordly husband Drowned in the flowing Loire.

The autumn winds were moaning Among the yellow trees, "Stay, Ernest," said she sadly, "My soul is ill at ease.

"Shadows of dire mischances Fall on my widowed heart; I could not live if danger Thy life from mine should part."

"Fear not," said he, while laughing He kissed her sad fair face; "I hear the hounds' loud baying All eager for the chase.

"Over the hill by the river I'll bring the quarry down, And homeward pluck the roses To weave for thee a crown."

"The rose-crown, my child, will wither, 'Tis but a passing toy; But thou art the crown of thy mother-- Her only life and joy.

"Follow the hunt to-morrow-- With me, love, stay to-day; For dark and sad forebodings My anxious heart affray."

The autumn winds are blowing, The dead leaves downward fall, The lawn and flowers covering Like a funeral pall.

But he heedeth not the warning, And hies with haste away. The lady seeks the chapel, With heavy heart, to pray.

"May God and his blessed Mother Spare me my only one. Yet teach me and strengthen me ever To say, Thy will be done!"

Well may the lady tremble, Hearing the wind again; The dead leaves are falling in showers Like to a summer rain.

Hark! a sound from the court-yard Blanches the lady's cheek-- The huntsmen call not surely In such a fearful shriek!

Say, "Thy will be done," O lady! As thou e'en now hast said, For the last of thy race is lying Stark in the court-yard, dead.

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Translated from the Spanish

PERICO THE SAD; OR, THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.