Chapter V.

The sun had climbed well-nigh midway in the heavens, lighting up Clew Bay and its hundred isles until they glinted like emeralds in the blue setting of the sea, as an old, white-haired man and a young girl--the latter carrying a small bundle in one hand, while with the other she supported the failing strength of her companion, made their way, slowly and painfully, along the valley through which runs the bright "Eriff" river on its way to the ocean. Following the up course of the stream, they had passed, almost without knowing it, through some of the finest of the mountain scenery of the west, up hill and down hill, by pretty cascades, in which the river seemed to be playing with the obstacles which opposed it; round huge bare shoulders of rifted and out-jutting rock; through dark, deep purple gorges, which looked as if the mountains had been wrenched violently asunder in order to produce them; and now, at last, they found themselves in a quiet, dreary-looking glen, where cushions of soft moss and yielding heather seemed to woo them to repose. Nevertheless, footsore and worn out as they evidently were, they continued to press bravely forward until they had nearly arrived at the farther end of the valley; but by that time the old man's head had begun to droop wearily on his breast, and his steps had become so languid and uncertain that it was evident it would be perilous to proceed farther without giving him the rest he so absolutely required. Choosing, therefore, a little nook, where the turf grew soft and dry, and where clusters of tall fern and heather, rising nearly six feet from the root, seemed to promise at least partial shelter from the midday sun, the girl quietly disposed of her bundle as a pillow for his head, and invited him with a smile to a siesta. He obeyed as readily as if he had been a child, and she then sat down beside him, crooning an old nursery lullaby to hush him into slumber. But she sought no such salutary oblivion for herself; and no sooner had his eyes begun to close in sleep than she rose, and, as if anxiety had rendered her incapable of remaining quiet, wandered restlessly on until she reached the top of a hill which shut in the valley from the land beyond. There she paused, fear and foreboding, weariness and sorrow, all forgotten or swallowed up in the breathless admiration which took instant possession of her soul. Around her, crumbled and tumbled in all directions, were hills bare indeed of trees, but green to the very summit, and strangely picturesque in the fantastic variety of their forms. There were quiet glens and solemn, rock-strewn passes, with streamlets swelled into cataracts by the rains of spring, yet looking in the distance like mere threads of liquid silver spirting from their rugged sides. There were long brown tracts of peat land, brightened and relieved by patches of golden, flowering gorse, or of that thin herbage which, in its perfectly emerald green, is only to be seen in such like boggy places; and over and above all this, there were the shadowy outlines of more than one far-off range of mountains melting into the delicate blue background of the sky, and changing color, as rapidly as the young cheek of beauty, beneath the ever-shifting lights and shadows of that "cloud scenery" which is nowhere more beautiful or varied than in Ireland. {187} To the left, and looking, in the clear atmosphere, so close that she almost felt she could have touched it with her outstretched hand, rose "Croagh Patrick," sacred to the memory of Ireland's great apostle; and Clew Bay lay, or seemed to lie, bright and shining at her feet--Clew Bay, with its gracefully winding shore, and its archipelago of islets; some bold, beetling rocks, ready and able to do battle with the storm, others mere baskets of verdure floating on the tide; while the largest and most picturesque of them all, the sea, girt kingdom of Grana-Uaile, Clare Island, stood bravely up, cliff over cliff, at the very mouth of the harbor, guarding it against the winter encroachments of the Atlantic, which, green as liquid jasper, and calm, in that summer weather, as a giant sleeping in the sunshine, unrolled itself beyond. Long and wistfully Nellie fixed her gaze upon that fair prospect; and it was with a strange reluctance and foreboding of future sorrow, that she at last withdrew in order to examine attentively that portion of the country which lay more immediately around her, and with which she believed herself about to be more intimately connected. As she did so, a building, perched half-way up a hill, rather more inland than that upon which she herself was standing, attracted her eye, and she gasped, with a sudden mingling of hope and fear, like a person choking; for she felt a sudden conviction that in the wild, uncultivated lands beneath her she beheld the portion assigned to her grandfather by the commissioners at Loughrea, and in that edifice, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose of commanding and overawing the entire district, the house in which they had told her she was to establish her new home. _House_, indeed, it could scarcely be called in anything like the modern acceptation of the term, though it was probably perfectly well suited to the wants and wishes of the wild chieftains by whom it had been erected. The original building had consisted of a single tower, of which the rough, rude walls, formed of huge stones, put unhammered and uncemented together, betrayed its origin in times so far remote as to have no history even in the oldest annals of the land. Added on to this gray relic of the past, however, a new building was now evidently in process of erection. It was far from finished yet, as Nellie knew by the poles and scaffoldings around it; but even in its embryo state it bore a terribly suspicious resemblance to that square, simple fortalice type of building which seems to have been the one architectural idea of Cromwell's Irish drafted soldiers, and which still remains in many places, the silent but uncontrovertible witness--the seal which they themselves have set upon their forcible and unjust possession of the land. The very look of that half-finished building seemed an answer to Nellie's late foreboding, and with a sinking heart she turned her back upon it and retraced her steps to the place where she had left Lord Netterville. The old man had already shaken off his fitful slumbers, and was toiling feebly up the hill.

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Nellie ran back to fetch her bundle, which he had been unable to bring with him; but overtaking him in an instant, she gave him her arm, led him to the spot from whence she had just been taking her bird's-eye view of the country, and, pointing to the fortalice in process of erection, watched anxiously to discover what sort of impression it would make on his mind. But either he did not observe it, or did not take in the peculiar significance of its presence in those wilds; and finding that he remained silent and apparently unmoved, she collected all her remaining energy to say cheerfully:

"Look at that old gray tower to the right. If the man whom we met this morning among the hills spoke truth, we have reached the end of our weary journey, and yonder is our future home. It is not like our own dear Netterville, indeed, and yet it seems a goodly enough mansion. So goodly," she added, stealing a glance beneath her long lashes to see how he took the insinuation, "that I almost wonder they should have dealt thus kindly by us; for I know that many of the first of the 'transplanted' have had their lots assigned them in places where there was not even the hut of a peasant to shelter them from the weather."

"Tush, child! talk not to me of houses," the old man answered querulously, too much occupied with the actual disadvantages of his position to catch the hidden drift of Nellie's observation. "What boots a goodly mansion, if starvation be at its portal? And what, I pray you, but starvation are they condemned to, who have been sent to make themselves a home among these barren mountains?"

Nellie suffered her eyes to roam once more over the bright waters of the bay, and then, with a quick sense of beauty kindling up in her soul, she turned them hopefully upon Lord Netterville.

"Nay, dear grandfather, it is, after all, a country fair and pleasant to the eye, and once my dear mother rejoins us with the cows and 'garrans,' there can be no lack of plenty, even in these wilds."

"Cows and garrans! And where are we to feed them, girl? Do you expect to find the pleasant grazing-lands of Meath on the tops of these barren hills? or are we to fatten our flocks on the sea-drift, which, I have heard say, the natives of these wilds are in the habit of gathering on the shore and boiling down into food, not for their cattle, (they have none, poor wretches!) but themselves?"

"Some of these hills certainly look black and bare enough, but still I doubt not that among their glens and hollow places we shall find many a good acre of green grass for the grazing of our cattle," the girl answered patiently, and with an evident determination to look, for the present at least, only on the bright side of the question. "And now, dear sir," she added gently, "had we not best move onward? for if yonder tower is really to be our home, the sooner we are there the better."

She glanced toward the castle as she spoke, and the old man saw that she started violently as she did so. She said not another word, however; but he fancied that her cheek grew a shade paler--if that were possible--than it had been before, as she continued to gaze silently in that direction.

"What is it, Nellie?" he cried at last, frightened by her strange looks and silence. "What do you see, child, that you look so white and scared?"

"See!" she answered slowly and reluctantly, "there seems to be a party of many people gathering in the court-yard; the house, therefore, must be inhabited already!"

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"People in the court-yard!" cried the old man, now fairly aroused to that same fear which had been haunting Nellie for the last half-hour. "What people, Nellie? Tell me, child, if you can distinguish whether they seem to be natives or strangers to the place. Our fate, alas! may be dependent on that fact."

The girl walked forward, and shading her eyes with her hand from the blinding sunshine, looked again, and yet again, in the direction of the tower.

"Yes," she said at last; "I was not mistaken. There is a party in the court-yard, and some of them are even standing in the gate-way, as if they had but this instant stept forth from the mansion. Surely, grandfather, we cannot have misunderstood or mistaken our instructions? There is no other building to be seen--even in the distance--and this one answers in all respects to the description. The man, too, from whom we inquired our way this morning, assured us that it was called 'The Rath'--the very name set down in our certificate. We cannot have been mistaken, and yet--and yet--if there be persons already in possession, their claim must needs be superior to our own."

She spoke hesitatingly, and in broken sentences, as if she were following out a train of thought in her own mind, rather than addressing her companion. He listened anxiously, and a cloud gathered on his brow as he gradually took in her meaning.

"It may be only some of the natives," he said at last, in a low voice. "The original owners, perhaps, of the tower, who have waited our arrival before giving up possession."

"Owners!" said Nellie quickly. "They told us at Loughrea that the owner had perished in the war, and that therefore we should find it empty."

"They may have been mistaken, Nellie. They know little enough, I think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the land of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I doubt me, of its original possessors."

"And if they are mistaken, we shall take the place of the rightful owners, and so deal out to others the very measure which our enemies have dealt to us. Grandfather, if we are guilty of this thing, we shall have a twofold sin upon our souls--their iniquity and our own."

"What would you have, child?" he answered pettishly; for, truth to say, he had yet quite enough of the Englishman about him, not to be over-particular as to the rights of the native Irish. "What would you have? Did you not know already that, in the acceptation of these lands, we were taking that which it was neither in the Cromwellians' right to give or in ours to receive? And what if an old tumble-down tower be thrown into the bargain? Trust me, Nellie, the business is so black already that, like the face of his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or less of smutch will hardly make it blacker or uglier than it is."

"I never thought of this before," said Nellie sadly; "I thought only--fool that I was, so selfishly intent on my own misfortunes--I thought only of tracts of land left barren for want of inhabitants to till them, and of houses emptied by the fate of war. I never dreamed of men and women and little children turned out of their pleasant homes to make room for us--us who have as little right to their possessions as the English soldiers have to ours!"

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"Nevertheless it has been done in almost every other case of transplantation which I have heard of," the old man answered restlessly. "And the iniquity--for it _is_ an iniquity--is theirs who have driven us to such spoliation, not ours who have been compelled in our own despite to do it."

But Nellie was far too noble, and too clear-sighted in her nobleness, to shelter her actions behind such a subterfuge, and she answered vehemently:

"But it must not be in ours, sir--it must not be in ours! We will go down at once, and if the persons whom we see yonder be the rightful owners of that tower, we will merely crave rest and hospitality at their hands, until such a time as we have found a place, however humble, in which, without injury to honor or conscience, we can make ourselves a home."

"As you will, Nellie--as you will," he answered, too weary, perhaps, to be able longer to dispute the point. "But after all, we may be mistaken as to the ownership of these people. Look again, and tell me, if you can, whether they are clad like Englishmen, or in the native weeds?"

"Not in the native weeds, I think, my father. Rather I should say, if it were not impossible, that the men whom I see down yonder belonged to the army of the oppressor. Ha! Now a lady is coming forth, and now they are mounting her, and a tall, stately personage in--yes--certainly in military attire, is mounting also, and takes his place at her side. Now half a dozen servants, I suppose, or friends, are on their horses likewise, and now they are moving forward. Father, they must come this way, there is none other that I can see by which horses can pass with safety. Let us wait for them behind the bank, and then, when they are near enough, we will accost them, and if they be of the conquering army, show them our certificate. They will, of course, bow to its authority, and help us to take possession of that house which the document assigns us. I am glad a woman is among them; it will make it easier, I think, to speak."

As Nellie ran on thus, she drew her grandfather with her behind a bank which dipt down suddenly upon the path, narrowing it until it was all but impassable to riders. There, with pale face and tightened breath, she nervously awaited the advent of the party upon whose favorable or unfavorable disposition toward them she felt her own fate and Lord Netterville's to be so painfully dependent.

To Be Continued.

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The Roman Gathering. [Footnote 46]

By W. G. Dix.

[Footnote 46: We give place to the above article in our columns, though from a non-Catholic pen, thinking that it will be read with interest by our readers, while it indicates, at the same time, the religious tendencies which are becoming more and more prevalent among not a small class of minds in our country.--Editor C. W.]

A man of many years, without vast temporal resources, despoiled of a part of his possessions, having many and vigorous enemies about him, and regarded by many even of those who profess the Christian faith as about to fall from his high place in Christendom, such a man invites his brethren of the apostolical ministry throughout the world to honor by their personal presence at Rome the anniversary of the martyrdom, eighteen hundred years ago, of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and to join with him in the exaltation of martyrs who, like them, though in far distant lands, were "faithful unto death." They respond with eager joy and haste to the call, and those who cannot go send on the wings of the wind their words of loving veneration.

To say not a word of the spiritual claims of the man who sent forth the invitation, so eagerly and widely accepted, there is in the fact just stated a glowing evidence that, even in these days of triumphant and insolent materialism, moral power has not entirely lost ascendency. Though millions of knees are bent in honor of the Dagon of materialism, in some one or other of its myriad forms of degrading idolatry, yet millions of hearts also recognize the gift of God as present evermore in his holy church. Never before has the Catholic Church beheld so great a multitude, from so distant places, assembled at her call at the central city of the faith.

The enemies of catholicity have again and again referred to the great inventions of modern times as sure destroyers of the claims of the Catholic Church and of her hold upon her millions of members; but lo! these very inventions are brought into the service of the church. The printing-press, which was going to annihilate the Catholic Church, has proved one of her most effectual bulwarks; millions of printed pages inspire the devotion of her children, and make known her claims to reading men, until many who were even her enemies and revilers, from ignorance and prejudice, acknowledge their error, and make haste to go to "their father's house." Steam, in the view of many, was about so to change the structure of society that the old and decrepid Church of Rome, the great obstacle on the railroad of materialism, was about to be run over and cast to the roadside, a weak and useless wreck; but lo! the power of steam enables hundreds and thousands more to go up to the sacred city, as the tribes of Israel were wont to visit Jerusalem, than could otherwise attend the festivals of the faith in St. Peter's Church. Of the manifold uses of steam, a large proportion is in the service of catholic truth. And then the telegraph; that, surely, was to show an advanced state of civilization which could not tolerate the slow and ancient ways of catholicity; but lo! here, again, the event has contradicted the prophecy; for, by means of the telegraph, the assemblage of the vast host at Rome was known throughout the world on the very day of its occurrence; and almost literally, in all parts of Christendom, thousands of devout worshippers could turn their faces reverently toward the altar of God in Rome at the very instant when those in its immediate presence were bending before it, and could join in the same prayers and anthems, as though the world itself were one vast St. Peter's Church, and the strains of penitence and hymns of joy could reverberate across oceans and mountains, among distant nations and islands of the sea, as among the corridors and arches of one great temple sacred to the triune God.

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As in these instances, so in many others, the church has extended her sway and deepened her power by the very forces which many supposed would work her ruin. The history of the church has shown in the domain of natural science, so often applied in the service of infidelity and disorder, as in the field of human passion, that God will make the wrath of man to praise him, and turn weapons designed to attack his holy Church into her consecrated armor of defence. The grace of God so overrules the inventions of man and the powers of nature, that even the terrible lightning becomes the vivid messenger to convey to the ends of the earth the benediction of the Vicar of Christ.

What is the chief lesson of the recent gathering at Rome? It is this, that the church of God, so often, in the view of her enemies, destroyed, will not stay destroyed; that after every "destruction" she renews her invincible youth, and rises to pursue her career of conquest over sin, prejudice, and wrong; that, though she may bend awhile to the storm that beats upon her sacred head, she has never been wholly overcome; that, notwithstanding all that mortal enmity, defection, outrage, have done or can do, she yet lifts her forehead to the sky to be anew baptized with light from the sun of truth above; and, strong in the faith and promise of the Eternal God, she falters not in her endeavors, patient and persistent, to subdue the world to Christ.

The history of the Catholic Church abounds with instances like the Roman gathering in June, which prove that her hours of affliction are those very ones when her faithful children gather to her side, to assure her of their prayers and support, and to discern upon her saintly face those "smiles through tears," which, in times of trial, are the warmest and most touching acknowledgments of filial veneration.

The commemorative assemblage at the capital of Christendom, signifies that the church of God is indestructible by any forces that earth or hell, singly or united, can bring against her. She may be at times like the bird in the snare of the fowler; but she is sure of being released at length, and then she plumes her wings afresh, and soars heavenward, filling the air with the divine, exultant music of her voice. The powerful of the earth have sometimes loaded the church with fetters; but by the strength of Christ that dwells evermore in her, she has broken the bonds asunder, or, by his transforming grace, they have become the wreaths and garlands of new victory, even as the cross of humiliation has become, by the sacrifice of our Lord, the emblem of unfading glory.

The church of Christ, bearing on her brow his holy seal, and in her hands his gifts of power, knelt in sorrow at his grave; but she hailed his resurrection with joy, and was endowed anew with treasures of immortal life. {193} Afterward, the might of heathendom arose against her, and she descended from the wrath of man into the catacombs; but she reascended, to wear upon her brow the diadem of a spiritual empire that shall never fall until the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and even then, true to all her history in deriving new glory from every apparent defeat, she will rise again from the great grave of nature to enjoy for ever the vision of God. Kings of the earth have denied her right to invest the pastors of her children with their due prerogatives, and have even dared her to mortal combat; but though distressed and thwarted, she has never relinquished her inherent rights, and she never will. As many times as the head of the church on earth has been driven from Rome by armed, ungrateful violence, so many times exactly has he been welcomed back with tears of penitence and shouts of rapture.

Despoiled of treasures committed to her care by faithful stewards of God's bounty, she has labored with her own hands to feed her needy children. At one time, persecuted in the wilderness, she has found a refuge and a welcome in the courts of princes; at another, driven from the courts of princes, because she would not deny her Lord or her divine commission, she has found a humble sanctuary in the wilderness, and knelt upon the bare earth to adore the Lord of life and light, once the child in the manger, and to invoke all the saints in glory to plead her cause in the ear of infinite justice and goodness.

She has spurned the anointed king from the temple of God, until he repented of his crime; and on the head of the lowly monk who was spending his days in labor and prayer, she has placed the triple crown. With one hand she has bathed with "baptismal dew" the brow of the day-laborer's child, while the other she has raised in defiance of imperial might, which dared to assail her holy altar.

One of the most violent objections to the Catholic Church has been urged for the very reason that she has so faithfully held the balance between the contending forces of society. She has been accused of favoring the claims of absolutism or popular demands, as the triumph of either at the time would favor her own ends, irrespective of right. The charge is unjust, is urged by many who know better, yet it springs from an honest misapprehension in many minds. It would have been utterly impossible for an institution, designed to enlighten and guide mankind in its higher relations, not to touch human interests of every kind, and human institutions generally in many ways; yet the challenge may safely be given to any thoughtful student of history, to acknowledge with candor, whatever may be his ecclesiastical position, that the Catholic Church, having often been chosen to be, and having an inherent right to be, the umpire between the rights of authority and the rights of individuals, has faithfully labored to sustain lawful authority when assailed by the wild fury of misguided multitudes, and that she has interposed her powerful shield, often with the most triumphant success, to protect men whose rights as men were assailed by authority changed by ambition into arrogant and exacting tyranny. What inconsistency and insincerity have been charged against the Catholic Church for this remarkable and noble fact in her history! In this respect the Catholic Church has followed strictly in the steps of her Divine Author, who, when on earth, invariably upheld the rights of authority, while vehemently denouncing those who unjustly exercised it; and while going about doing good, the friend of the friendless and the helper of the helpless, pleading with divine eloquence, and laboring with divine power for the outcast and the poor, never and nowhere sanctioned the spirit of insurrection, but enjoined obedience as one of the main duties of life. {194} Hence, it has come about, by one of those sublime mysteries, which prove the divine origin of Christianity, that the greatest revolution which has ever taken place in religious belief and in civil society in all their bearings, has been effected by the teachings, by the life and death of one who by no word or deed ever assailed authority itself or incited resistance to it.

Beauty and order being the same thing, and religious truth being the beauty of holiness, Christ, who was truth in person, must have made his church the friend and upholder of all beauty and order; and so it has proved for eighteen hundred years. The church has been the celestial crucible in which whatever of human art or invention had within it the essential attributes of higher and spiritual goodness has been purified and adapted to the service of religion. Has poetry sought to please the imaginations of men? the church of Christ unfolded before her the annals of Christianity, with her grand central sacrifice of infinite love, and all her demonstrations of heroic suffering and courageous faith; and poetry drew holier inspiration from the view, and incited men by higher motives to a higher life. Have painting and sculpture sought to represent objects of refining grace and sublimity? the church of Christ persuaded them to look into the records of the Christian past, and there they found treasures of beauty and splendor, devotion and martyrdom, whose wealth of illustration as examples; incentives, and memorials, art has not exhausted for centuries, and will never exhaust. Christian history is the inexhaustible quarry of whatever is most noble and heroic in man, purified by the grace of God. Has architecture sought to invest stone with the attributes of spiritual and intellectual grace? the church of God has so portrayed before her the sublimities of the Christian faith, that she knelt at her feet in veneration, and thenceforth consecrated herself to build enduring structures, which, the more they show of human power and skill, the more they persuade men to the worship of God. Has eloquence sought to nerve men for the grand conflicts of life? the church of Christ has touched the lips of eloquence with living fire from her altar, until have sprung forth words that flamed with love to man and love to God. Has music sought to weave her entrancing spells around the ear and heart and soul? the church of Christ has breathed into music her own divine being, until the music of the church seems like beatific worship, and worship on earth like beatific music.

As in these respects, so in others, the church has made a holy conquest of whatever is noblest among the endowments of men. In speaking of Catholic history, even from the secular point of view, it may be justly said, that nowhere else has there been such wonderful discernment of the various capacities of the human mind, and of their various adaptations. Tenacious of the truth and of all its prerogatives, the Catholic Church has, nevertheless, allowed a wide liberty of thought. That the Catholic Church has narrowed the understandings of men, is a singular charge to make in the face of the schools of Catholic philosophy, in which men of varying mental structure, training, or habits of thought, have had full, free play of their faculties. {195} And where else have there been so many free and varying activities as in the Catholic Church? The false charge that the church fetters the minds and movements of men, may be traced to the fact that all Catholic diversities of thought have converged, like different rays of light, in the elucidation of truth, and that varying modes of Catholic action have had one object--the advancement of truth.

Here is the intended force of all these illustrations, for they have had a logical purpose. The world will never outgrow the church. All the boasted improvements in science, in art, in civilization, so far from impeding the church of Christ, and making her existence no longer needed, will, at the same time, advance her power, and make her more needed than ever. If in the middle ages, when society was in the process of transition from the old to the new, the church was pre-eminently needed to keep what was just and right and true in the older forms of civilization, and gradually to adapt to them what was just and right and true in the newer developments of society, most truly is the church needed now, when there exists a perfect chaos of opinions, and when a part of the civilized world is in another transition, from the aimless, rudderless vagaries of Protestantism to the solid rock of Catholicity. If ever the voice of authority was needed, like the voice of the angel of God, heard amid and above the howlings of the storm, it is needed now.

Much false reasoning has been uttered about the "unchangeable church," as though, because "unchangeable," it was not adapted to a changing and striving world, when, in truth, for the very reason that the church of Christ is unchangeably true, she is required and adapted for all the changes and emergencies of time. Who ever heard a sailor complain of the mariner's compass, because, on account of its unchangeable obstinacy, it would not conform to his private judgments and caprices about the right course? No one. It is for the very reason that the mariner's compass is unchangeably true to the eternal law of magnetic attraction, under all circumstances and in all places, that it is the unerring guide among the whirlwinds and heavings of the great deep. Catholicity is the mariner's compass upon a greater deep--even that of the wild and rolling, beating ocean of humanity, pointing, amid sunny calms, or gentle winds, or raging gales, unerringly to the cross of Jesus Christ, as the needle of the mariner's compass points to the north--guiding, age after age, the precious freights of immortal souls to the harbor of infinite and unending joy.

The force of this illustration is all the stronger that the mariner's compass is a human adaptation of an immutable law of nature to navigation, while the church of the living God is divine alike in origin and application, and has existed from the beginning, unchangeable, like God himself, yet adapting herself to the wants of every age. The church of God is like his own infinite providence, in which unchangeable truth meets in the harmony of mercy the innumerable changes of human need.

Much has been written and more said about "the church of the future," as though it were to be some millennial manifestation altogether different from the historic church; but the church of the future, which is not also the church of the past and of the present, can be no church; for a true church must reach to the ages back as well as to those before. {196} If the continuity is broken, truth is broken, and cannot be restored. As for eighteen centuries there have been no forms of civil society, no calms or tempests in the moral, political, social, or religious world, in which the Catholic Church has not been true to the organic principles of her divine life, even the enemy of catholicity should admit--that fact being granted--that the presumption is on her side that she will be equally true to those principles during the centuries that are to come. He may deny that the church has been true, and, consequently, that she will be true, but he will not admit one proposition and deny the other; he will admit both or deny both. In other words, he will admit, equally with the friend of catholicity, the identity of the church, past, present, and to come. Now, it will be impossible for a friend or enemy of the Catholic Church, from her beginning to this very day, to point to an hour when she was not a living church; it is, then, probable, that she will continue to be a living church. But where, since the promulgation of Christianity to this time, has existed a body of Christian believers, which, for the quality of continual existence, has so good a right to be called the church of Christ as the Catholic Church? Considering her numbers, extent, and duration, that church has been preeminently the church of the past; considering numbers, extent, and duration, that church is pre-eminently the church of the present; considering all analogies and probabilities, then the Catholic Church will be preeminently the church of the future. In truth, the vindictive anger of the enemies of the Catholic Church, in whatever form of opposition it may be shown, proceeds from the fact, not that she is the dead church of the past, as she is sometimes called, for there would be no reason to war with the dead, but because she is, as she has been and will be, the living church. The Catholic Church is hated not for being too dead, but for being too living. She has seen the birth and death of countless "improvements" of her principles, and she has received with gladness into her fold many an eager and conscientious inquirer for the "new church," who has at length reached an end of his wanderings and a solution of his doubts in finding, with tears of rapturous submission, that the new church, for which he was seeking, is the same church which has stood for ages, ever old, yet ever new, because representing Him who is alike the Living God and the Ancient of Days.

The Catholic Church, so frequently and unjustly denounced as ever behind the age, or even as facing the past, has been foremost in all parts of the world. She has sent her faithful soldiers of the cross where the spirit of commerce dared not go; she was the first in the east and the first in the West; it was her lamp of divine light which dispelled the gloomy terrors of the barbarous north of Europe; it was her sceptre of celestial beauty, which, under the guidance of Heaven, transformed the political and social wreck of southern Europe into order. In what part of the world which man could reach has she not planted the cross? Where on the face of the earth is the mountain whose craggy sides have not, at one time or another, sent back into the sounding air the echoes of Catholic worship?

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Daniel Webster gave a vivid picture of the extent of the power of England, in what I think to be the grandest sentence which America has contributed to the common treasure of English literature. He said: "The morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." That grand figure of speech may be applied to the extent of the Catholic Church. Yet it is not by martial airs, but by hymns of praise and penitential orisons and the continuous sacrifice that the Catholic Church daily celebrates, "from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same," the triumphant march of the Prince of Peace. How like "the sound of many waters" rolls hourly heavenward the anthems of catholic worship throughout the world! Not only is every moment of every day consecrated by catholic hymns sung somewhere on earth; but how majestically roll down through eighteen hundred years the unbroken anthems of catholic devotion! Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year, century after century, the holy strains go on unending. To the mind's ear seem blended in one almost overpowering flood of holy harmony the unnumbered voices which have sounded from the very hour when the shepherds of Bethlehem heard the angelic song to this very moment, when, somewhere, catholic voices are chanting praise to the Lord and Saviour of men.

And, in this view, how literally has been fulfilled that consoling prophecy, "Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." Wherever the Divine Son has been duly honored, there also she, who was remembered with filial love even amid his dying agonies for a world's salvation, has been remembered and called blessed; called blessed from that lowly home and from that mount of sorrow in the distant east, in millions of lowly homes, and under the shadow of mountains to the farthest west; called blessed by millions of loving and imploring voices through all the ages since; called blessed in all the languages that have been spoken since that time in all the world; called blessed in the rudest forms of human speech and in the most ecstatic music of voice and skill; called blessed by the lips of the little child that can hardly speak the name of mother, and by the lips that tremble with age and sorrow; called blessed by the sailor on the deep, by the ploughman on the land, by the scholar at his books, by the soldier drawing his sword for right upon the battle-field; called blessed by the voices of peasant-girls singing in sunny vineyards, and by the voices of those from whose brows have flashed the gems of royal diadems; called blessed in cottages and palaces, at wayside shrines, and under the golden roofs of grand cathedrals; called blessed in the hour of joy and in the hour of anguish--in the strength and beauty of life, and at the gates of death. How long, how ardently, how faithfully has all this loving honor been paid for so many generations, and will continue to be paid for all generations to come, to that sorrowing yet benignant one, who bore him who bore our woe!

The recent gathering at Rome indicates that there is no demand which civilization can rightfully make of the Christian Church which she will not eagerly, fully, and faithfully meet. The largest assemblage of professed ministers of Christ which this age has known--leaving here out of view the claims of the Catholic Church to an apostolical priesthood--has been held in Rome by the church, so extensively proclaimed and derided as being behind the age. If there is life, deep, full, pervading life anywhere on earth, it is in the Catholic Church and in all her movements. {198} She will continue to draw to herself all the qualities and capacities of life which are in harmony with her spirit; and this accumulated spiritual force will constantly weaken the barriers that divide her from the sympathies of a large part of Christendom, until at length she will be acknowledged by all as the only living and true church of Christ.

"The restoration of the unity of the church" has been the subject of many thoughts, of many words, of earnest and devout prayer, of much and noble effort, and, when understood as referring to the reconciliation of those who have left the Catholic Church, or who are now out of it because their fathers left it, the phrase may pass without objection; but the phrase is greatly objectionable, even to the extent of expressing an untruth, when it is used to convey the idea that the unity of the church has ever been broken. This has not been, and could not be. The church, intended to be one, and to endure until the end of time, could not, in its organic structure, be really broken at any period of its history, without destroying its title as the one church of Christ. Individuals, communities, even nations, as such, have been broken off from it; but the essential church herself has remained one and unbroken through all vicissitudes. The theory that the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the Church of England are equal and co-ordinate branches of the one church of Christ has no foundation as an historical fact, and is as destructive of all true ideas of the unity of the church as the wildest vagaries of Protestantism. Is there on earth an institution which schism, heresy, and political ambition have tried to destroy and have tried in vain? There is; it is the Catholic Church. Is there an institution on earth which, leaving out of regard all its claims, has had the quality of historical continuity for eighteen centuries? There is; it is the Catholic Church.

The charge, if not of bigotry, yet of most unreasonable arrogance, has been more or less directly made against the Catholic Church, because she has not received overtures of reconciliation from enthusiastic and earnest individuals claiming to represent national churches, as cordially as was expected. But how can she accept, or even consider, any such overtures, proceeding as they do from the assumption of equal position and authority, without disowning herself, without denying even those claims and prerogatives, the existence of which alone makes union with her desirable? If there is no institution on earth which has a valid title to be the continuous church of Christ, all efforts will be vain to supply the gap of centuries by an establishment now. A union of churches will not satisfy the design or promise of our Lord, when he founded the unity of his church. If the Christian church has really been broken into pieces, it will be in vain to gather up the fragments; for, on that supposition, the divine principle has long since departed, and the gates of hell have prevailed. Those men of strong Catholic predilections, who, nevertheless, have clung to the theory that the church of Christ has been really broken, and must be repaired by management, will yet thank God from their inmost souls for the immovable firmness with which that theory has been denied at Rome.

The Catholic Church has never condemned a heresy more false or destructive than the proposition that she is herself but one of the divisions of the Christian church, having no authority to speak or to rule in the name of her Lord. {199} To deny that the one church of Christ is now existing, and that she has existed for ages, is to deny not merely a fact in history, but it is to deny the word of our Lord; and to do that, is to deny alike his holiness and his divinity. How can the Catholic Church treat with those who wish to make terms before submitting to her authority, on the basis of a positive untruth? Catholicity is not an inheritance, to be decided among many claimants, no one of whom has any right to be or to be regarded as the sole heir of the homestead; but it is an estate left by the divine Lord of the manor, in charge of the Prince of the Apostles and his successors, on the express injunction that it is to be kept one and undivided, in trust for the benefit of the faithful for all time. The estate has been kept one and undivided, according to the title-deed; the injunction has never been broken; notwithstanding all defections from the household, the homestead of the Christian world remains in the hands of the same faithful succession to which it was committed by our Lord himself. May God grant that all the younger sons who have gone astray, may return with penitential alacrity to their Father's house!

The Catholic Church will not stop in her progress, until she has converted the world to Christ; but she has not denied, and will not deny, her sacred trust and prerogative of catholicity for the sake even of adding whole nations to her fold. Whoever enters her fold must admit by that act her claim to be the one, undivided, indivisible Church of Christ. There can be no "branches of the Catholic Church" which are not directly joined to the root and trunk of catholicity. A severed branch is no branch.

It is not the fault of the Catholic Church that multitudes "who profess and call themselves Christians" are not members of her communion. She affords the very largest liberty for individual or associated action that can be yielded without denying her faith or her commission. The highest poetry and the severest logic may kneel in brotherly harmony at her altar. Gifts and talents the most diverse have been consecrated to her service. The Catholic Church advancing, century after century, under the banner of the cross and dove, to the spiritual conquest of the world! how far more sublime a spectacle it is than that of some parts of Christendom, which are broken into little independent bands of sectarian skirmishers, keeping up a kind of guerrilla warfare against "the world, the flesh, and the devil," and each other.

There are inspiring tokens which show the depth and breadth of the conviction, that the great schism of three centuries ago has proved a terrible mistake. Multitudes outside of the Catholic Church are inquiring with earnest solicitude about the meaning of catholic unity. The main course of intellectual inquiry is, in both hemispheres, respecting the claims of the Catholic Church. There are evident signs that the chaos of Protestantism is about to be broken up, and the wild, and dreary waste to bloom and glow with Catholic beauty and order. God grant that it may be so, and that not only thousands of individuals may know how precious a prize it is to kneel devoutly and sincerely before, the altar of God; but that even, mighty nations may be convinced, what priceless gifts they have forfeited by three centuries of separation from the source of all they have that has been or is worth keeping.

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In view of the fact that the revival of catholic feeling enkindles also the enmity of those who scan it, the gathering at Rome is not only an assurance before the world that the Catholic Church will continue to be the guide of life and the empire of civilization, but it is also a sublime challenge against all the agencies of every kind that have been, or may be tried, to eliminate Catholicity from the age. The Catholic Church has a work to do, and she will do it. She can no more forego it, than she can die by her own will. She has never flinched yet; she never will. It is the very necessity as well as the reason of her being that she shall fulfil her charge without wavering or diminution; and this she will do. If the "gates of hell" cannot prevail against the church of God, she may safely defy all mortal might. The sun might more easily have refused to come forth at the bidding of the Creator, than the church can refuse to do his will in conquering the world for Christ. God speed the day when the divisions of Christendom shall end; when all who profess to be the disciples of Jesus Christ shall seek and find consolation in his one, true, enduring fold; and when the sceptre of God, manifest in the church, shall be extended in benignant power over an obedient and rejoicing world.

"The United Churches Of England And Ireland, In Ireland." [Footnote 47]

[Footnote 47: _Ireland and her Churches_. By James Godkin. London, Chapman & Hall. 1867. 1 vol. pp. 623.]

It is well to be accurate in the bestowal of titles, and we give, therefore, the institution whose latest history lies before us the exact definition by which, these sixty years past, it rejoices to be known. Under this designation of its own choice this institution is open to the reflection of being one of the most modern of all the churches pretending to be national; the junior of even our own American Episcopal Church, which is not itself very far stricken in years; the junior, indeed, of all the other churches we can at this moment recall to memory, unless we were to include "the Church of the Latter-Day Saints," whose Mecca stands upon Salt Lake.

On the first day of January, in the first year of this century, the ecclesiastical system, establishment, or organization which designates itself as "the United Church of England and Ireland, in Ireland," came, with sound of many trumpets, into the world. On that auspicious day, the legislative union of Ireland and Great Britain was proclaimed; a new national flag, "the Union Jack," was run up from the royal towers of London, Dublin, and Edinburgh; a new royal title was assumed for the coinage of the new realm, and in all great public transactions; a new "great seal" was struck for the sovereign of the newly modelled state; new peers and new commoners were added to the two houses of Parliament, and, to complete the revolution, by the 5th clause of the same act, the matters previously mentioned having been first disposed of, this new church was, on that same day and hour, by the same authority, called into existence. His majesty's proclamation, announced at Paul's Cross in London, at the Cross in Edinburgh, and where the Cross of _le Dame_ street ought to have been, in Dublin, that "the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England."

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The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion, as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty equally divided between the two great political parties. But the most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the Protestantism of Saint Patrick--his independence of Rome more especially--was the favorite argument of its defenders.

No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in order to make some show of historical connection with the first founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in "the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.

The history of the Irish member of this curious ecclesiastical firm may best be traced through the statutes at large. As its parentage was parliamentary, so its life has been legislative. There is one advantage in having this description of authority to refer to, that it cannot be disputed. The "Journals of Parliament" in England and Ireland, from the reformation to the civil emancipation of the Catholics in 1829, are good Protestant authority. The peers and commoners of the old religion were excluded from the English houses, from the 10th of Elizabeth (1567) to the 9th of George IV., (1829,) a period of 262 years; and in Ireland, the last parliament in which Catholics sat was that of 4th James II., (1689,) followed by a period of exclusion, before the union, of 111 years. {202} It was not found possible, so early as the time of the two first Stuarts and Elizabeth, to wholly exclude Catholics, or, as they were then called, "recusants," from membership in either house in Ireland; and accordingly we find them a formidable minority in those rarely occurring assemblies, such as the Irish parliaments held in the 11th and 25th of Elizabeth, the 11th James I., the 14th Charles I., and the 12th of Charles II, In the second James's short-lived parliament of one session, hastily adjourned to allow his lords and gentlemen to follow their master to the banks of the "ill-fated river," they were a majority; but with that evanescent exception, the statutes of Ireland are quite as exclusively Protestant authority on all church matters as those of England previous to the union of the legislatures and the churches, and subsequently down to 1829.

The history of Protestantism in Ireland, from first to last, is a political history. Its best record is to be found in the parliamentary journals as well in the reign of Henry VIII. as of George III. And though we do not propose to dwell, in the present paper, in anything like detail on the annals of that establishment previous to the present century, we must condense into a short space the main facts of its first appearance on the scene, and its early parliamentary nurture and education, to account for the facility with which it ceased to be, even in pretence, a national church at the time of the legislative union. Political in its origin, its organization, and its government, from the first hour of its existence, it had neither will, nor wish, nor ability, if it had either, to resist the designs of the state, which included its incorporation into the imperial system. As the lay representation of Ireland was recast, as the seal and the standard were changed, so the institution started by statute and royal orders in council in the sixteenth century came naturally to have its individuality extinguished by other statutes and orders in council in the nineteenth. If this so-called "Church of Ireland" had really believed itself to be what its champions had so often asserted, the true and ancient national church of the kingdom, it would at all events have made some show of patriotic resistance before making its surrender.

Not only, however, was it not really national in its origin, but it was then, and always, an eminently anti-popular institution. There was not, as in other countries during the reformation, even the pretext of what is called a popular "movement against Rome." No Luther had arisen among the Celtic or the Anglo-Irish Catholics in that age of perturbation. The ancient faith was received as implicitly by the burgesses of Dublin as by the clansmen of Connaught, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope seemed a doctrine as impossible of contradiction to the descendants of Strongbow as to the children of Milesius. No internal revolt against Roman discipline or Roman doctrine had shown itself within the western island. There was no spiritual insurrection attempted from within to justify the resort to external intervention. The annalists of Donegal, who are commonly called "The Four Masters," and who were old enough to remember the first mention of Protestantism in their own province, thus unconsciously express the amazement of the educated Irish mind of those days at the new doctors and doctrines:

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"A.D. 1537. A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so that the people of England went into opposition to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they followed a variety of opinions, and the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish people, and they gave the title of Head of the Church of God to the king. There were enacted by the king and council new laws and statutes after their own will."

But the laws and statutes enacted by the king and council in England, for changing the national religion, were not immediately either extended to, or proposed for imitation in, Ireland. The zeal of the crowned apostle was tempered by the exigencies of the politician. Before this king's time, the English power in Ireland had been essentially a colonial power; "a pale" or enclosure, or garrison. Whoever will not mark the point, will miss the very pivot of all the operations of the new religion in Ireland. Henry VIII. had inherited from his father, the first king of united England for a century, the ambition of making himself equally master of the neighboring nation. During the twenty years of the sway of his great cardinal-chancellor, this object never was for a moment lost sight of. When Wolsey went down to the grave in disgrace without seeing it fulfilled, his royal pupil continued to prosecute the plan to its entire accomplishment. This result, however, he only reached in the thirty-second year of his reign, (1541,) some six years before his miserable end. Ten years previously, (1531,) he may be said to have established the new religion in England by compelling the majority of the clergy to subscribe to his supremacy in spirituals; within two years followed his marriage with Anne Boleyn; and in 1535, his order appeared commanding the omission "of the name of the Bishop of Rome from every liturgical book," which may be said to have completed the severance of England from Rome.

Not only did not Henry, in obedience to his political design of adding another crown to his dominions, not press his reformed doctrines immediately upon the Irish of either race, but he expressly reprehended his deputies at Dublin for having prematurely attempted the national conversion. In the same year in which he struck the pope's name from every liturgical book, he sharply rebuked George Browne, an English ex-Augustinian whom he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, for destroying certain relics of saints in the churches of that city. Again in the same year. Secretary Cromwell writes officially to contradict "a common rumor," that he intended to pluck down the statue of "our Lady of Trim," which was as famous on the west, as our "Lady of Walsingham" on the east of the channel. Four years later, we find the Lord Deputy Grey, after a victory over O'Neill at Bellahoe, halting with the whole court and army at this celebrated place of pilgrimage, and visiting this same shrine of our Lady--"very devoutly kneeling before her, he heard three or four masses." At that moment, in the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., and the sixth of his open rupture with Rome, any Celtic-Irish or Anglo-Irish Catholic, in the ranks of Lord Grey, not particularly well informed as to the affairs of the neighboring kingdom, might have rested honestly in the belief that he was serving a Catholic prince in full communion with the rest of Christendom.

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But as soon as the election to the kingship, which it is not in our way here to dwell upon, was successfully over, and the new royal title proclaimed, confirmed, and acknowledged abroad, especially in Scotland and France, and by the emperor, then there came a change. The politician being satisfied, the apostle awoke. A commission of reformation, at the head of which sat Archbishop Browne, undertook the purgation of the Dublin and neighboring churches, producing as their warrant the royal authority, "dated years before." A sufficient guard of horse and foot accompanied these commissioners, and were much needed to protect them from the populace. The statues and relics in the cathedrals of Leighlin, Ferns, and Kildare; the Lady statue at Trim, and a famous crucifixion in Ballyhogan Abbey, were forthwith destroyed. So far and so soon as they could venture into the interior, this "work, of reformation," under the royal warrant, was pushed on vigorously, in order, as Henry's commission expressed it, "that no fooleries of this kind might henceforth for ever be in use in said land." This royal order (1539) sounded the key-note of spoliation, and little more than this was attempted during the remainder of this reign. The first serious effort at national conversion was made under the orders in council of the 4th of Edward VI., (1551,) when on Easter day the English liturgy was for the first time publicly recited in Christ Church Cathedral, the ex-Augustinian archbishop preaching from the text, "Open mine eyes, that I may see the wonders of the laws," (Ps. 119.) The liturgy was printed the same year at Dublin, in English, and the lord deputy was instructed to take measures to have it "translated into Irish in those places that need it." The following year the work of spoliation was resumed with new vigor at the famous seven churches of Clonmacnoise, and other points upon the Shannon. Within twelve months thereafter, young Edward died, and the five years' reign of Queen Mary gave a respite to the Irish church. It was a period too short for restoration, but long remembered with regretful affection for the temporary exemption from persecution it had afforded.

Anti-national and anti-popular in its conception, the reformation presented itself in Ireland as the enemy at once of the useful and all the fine arts; of all that amused and ennobled and entertained the people. Among both races, war was a business, and the layman's hand was always within reach of his weapon. The arts of peace--agriculture, architecture, botany, medicine, music, were all inmates of the convent and the monastery. The civil glories and treasures of the country were hoarded up where alone they could be secured, in the chancel and the cloister. It was, however, the first duty of the new reformers to strike down and demolish these venerated remains of the piety of former generations. Pictures brought from abroad, or the work of native artists, were defaced; stained windows were brutally broken; shrines smashed; beautiful missals thrown into the fire; croziers broken to bits; chalices and ciboriums melted into bullion; bells blessed to the offices of peace and forgiveness melted down to be cast into ordnance; and all the endearing, civilizing, and solemn associations interwoven from childhood with these consecrated objects of art, were rudely torn out of the bleeding hearts of the people. In the six remaining years of Henry, and the six of Edward VI., nearly six hundred religious houses were thus stripped, desecrated, and dismantled. {205} "They sold their roofs and bells," say the Four Masters, in the annal already quoted, "so there was not a monastery left from the Arran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea, which was not broken and shattered, except a few only" in the remoter corners of the kingdom. Of the regular religious orders then established in that small kingdom, the rule of St. Augustine was followed by 256 houses, male and female; that of St. Bernard by 44; of St. Francis by 114; of St. Dominick by 41; of St. Benedict by 14; of Mount Carmel by 29. Besides these, it is a pathetic and instructive circumstance to remember, that there were then, even in that far western island, not less than 22 houses of Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, vowed to the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre, and 14 of the Trinitarian Order for the redemption of Christian captives from African slavery. All these, with their interior furniture and external possessions, were with ruthless hand transferred to the new clergy, or converted to worldly purposes, in order to prepare the way of the new religion as set forth by the king's order.

It is but fair to point out, that the preachers of this religious revolution were only in part, though in a very considerable part, the receivers of the spoils. A new aristocracy arose on the ruins of the monasteries and churches. Some Irish houses may claim to have ancestors who came in with Strongbow; but many more founders of families came in penniless adventurers at the reformation. The Bagnals and Chichesters, in the north; the St. Legers, Boyles, and Kings in the south; and the Burkes and Croftons in the west, were formerly, and some of their descendants still are, the largest inheritors of ecclesiastical plunder. The chartered minorities of townsmen, whose consciences consented to take the oath of supremacy, were not without their recompense even in this world. The neighboring church and convent property was frequently assigned to these corporators, no matter how few in number, for the use indeed of the corporation; but as they generally contrived to become in their individual capacity tenants under themselves as a corporation, there was at least one description of occupants in the country, who held their lands on easy conditions. These corporate bodies, which continued exclusively Protestant down to the passage of the Irish Municipal Reform Bill in 1834, were often reduced to a ludicrously small number; but even in such Catholic cities as Limerick, Cashel, Clonmel, and Waterford and Drogheda, they continued to possess and dispose of, and often to alienate, the former endowments of pious chiefs and barons to the suppressed convents and colleges of the vicinity.

The new proprietory and clerical interests thus created at the expense of the confiscated church, were placed in a position to require the constant protection and superintendence of the creative power. And this again required, most unhappily both for church and state in that country, the continuous proscription and suppression of those who represented the important interests so dispossessed and disinherited. From thence arose the deadly feud between law and nature, which has disfigured and degraded humanity in Ireland; which has so effectually separated the very ideas of law and justice in the modern Irishman's mind that his first presumption in all conflicting cases is (to his own loss frequently) against the law, rather than in its favor. The body of legislation of which we speak had long ago swelled to the dimensions of a code, and since the early years of George III. has been known exclusively by the name of _The Penal Code_. {206} The principal collections of this code are by Sir Henry Parnell, (afterward Lord Congleton,) Mr. Bedford, an English barrister, Mr. Mathew O'Conor, of the Irish bar, and the late indefatigable Dr. R. R. Madden. The commentators on the code, from Edmund Burke to Bishop Doyle, or rather the advocates for its amelioration in the first place, and afterward for its total repeal, included almost every name distinguished for liberality in the British annals of the last hundred years.

The first of these proscriptive enactments dates from the 2d year of Elizabeth, when a parliament representing ten counties was held at Dublin. By this assembly the acts enforcing uniformity of worship, and the queen's supremacy in spirituals as well as temporals, are said to have been passed; though others say this parliament adjourned without regularly adopting those measures. In the 3d year of the same reign a further act is found on the Irish Statute-Book, obliging, under forfeiture of office and civil disfranchisement for life, "ecclesiastical persons and officers, judges, justices, mayors, temporal officers, and every other person who hath the queen's wages, to take the oath of supremacy." Commissioners of ecclesiastical causes were created by an act of the same session, "to adjudge heresy" according to the canonical scriptures, the first four general councils, and the laws of parliament. By this commission, five years later, (1564,) the English _Book of Articles_ was declared of full force in Ireland. These articles were twelve in number.

"1. The Trinity in Unity; 2. The Sufficiency of the Scriptures to Salvation; 3. The Orthodoxy of Particular Churches; 4. The Necessity of Holy Orders; 5. The Queen's Supremacy; 6. Denial of the Pope's authority 'to be more than other Bishops have;' 7. The Conformity of the Book of Common Prayer to the Scriptures; 8. The Ministration of Baptism does not depend on the Ceremonial; 9. Condemns 'Private Masses,' and denies that the Mass can be a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Dead; 10. Asserts the Propriety of Communion in Both Kinds; 11. Utterly disallows Images, Relics, and Pilgrimages; 12. Requires a General Subscription to the foregoing Articles."

The subsequent legislation of Elizabeth in Ireland was chiefly political, if we except (in the 11th and 12th of her reign) the act respecting vacant benefices, and the act establishing [Protestant] free schools.

Parliaments in those days assembled at long and uncertain intervals. The only one held during the first James's reign in Ireland--twenty-seven years after Elizabeth's last, and twenty-one before Charles I. convened another--was purely political. This parliament was opened and managed by the Lord Deputy, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose avowed and almost only object in using such an agency was to make his royal master "as absolute as any king in Christendom." Four years later, (1639) was held the second and last Irish parliament of this reign, and simultaneously, (at the instance, and under the advice of Laud), the able, iron-nerved, and most unscrupulous deputy summoned a convocation of the bishops and clergy of the established religion, which forms a very curious picture of the state of that establishment at the end of the first century of the reformation. Strafford himself shall be our authority at this point, and as abbreviated in Mr. Godkin's book, pp. 64 and 65.

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"He had ordered a convocation of the clergy to meet simultaneously with the parliament for the purpose of adopting the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, so that the Irish articles might become a dead letter. The convocation went to work conscientiously, digesting the canons, etc., to the best of their judgment; but Wentworth found that they were not doing what he wanted, and resolved to bring them to their senses. In a letter to Laud he chuckled over his victory, apparently quite unconscious that he had been playing the tyrant, _circa sacra_, in a style worthy of Henry VIII. Having learned what the committee of convocation had done, he instantly sent for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring him to bring the Book of Canons noted in the margin, together with the draught he was to present that afternoon to the house. This order he obeyed; 'but,' says the lord deputy, 'when I came to open the book, and run over the _deliberandums_ in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam, that I was ashamed and scandalized with it above measure.' He gave the dean imperative orders not to report anything until he heard from him again. He also issued orders to the primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe, and Derry, together with Dean Leslie, the prolucutor, and the whole committee, to wait upon him next morning. He then publicly rebuked them for acting so unlike churchmen; told them that a few petty clerks had presumed to make articles of faith, without the privity or consent of state or bishop, as if they purposed at once 'to take away all government and order forth of the church. But those heady and arrogant courses he would not endure, nor would he suffer them either to be mad in the convocation nor in their pulpits.' He next gave them strict injunctions as to what the convocation should do. They were to say content, or not content, to the Articles of England, for he would not endure that they should be disputed. He ordered the primate to frame a canon on the subject; but it did not meet his approval, and so the lord deputy framed one himself, whereupon his grace came to him instantly and said he feared the canon would never pass in such a form as his lordship had made, but he was hopeful it might pass as he had drawn it himself. He therefore besought the lord deputy to think a little better of it. The sequel is best told in Strafford's own vigorous language--'But I confess, having taken a little jealousy that his proceedings were not open and free to those ends I had my eye upon, it was too late now either to persuade or to affright me. I told his lordship I was resolved to put it to them in those very words, and was most confident there were not six in the house that would refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we should see whether his lordship or myself better understood their minds in that point, and by that I would be content to be judged, only for order's sake I desired his lordship would vote this canon first in the upper house of convocation, and so voted, then to pass the question beneath also.' He adds that he enclosed the canon [Footnote 48] to Dean Leslie, 'which, accordingly, that afternoon was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply did deliberate upon the receiving of the Articles of England.'"

[Footnote 48: The first Irish canon.]

We pause and draw a hard breath, after this dictatorial description of how to rule a church and have a church, to observe that the Irish Protestant prelates of those days were no mean men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry, and Bedell of Kilmore, and the primate so hectored and overawed by this Cavalier-Cromwell was no less a personage than James Usher. But being as they were, as they well knew they were, the creatures of the state, what could they do when brought into conflict with the author and finisher of their law?

Omitting the period of the civil wars and the Cromwellian Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving study apart, we pass to the first parliament of Charles II., (1662,) in which one of the first contributions to the statutes which we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of uniformity. In the same session was passed the acts of settlement and explanation, which have been called "the Magna Charta of Irish Protestantism." These acts confirmed to their Puritan possessors the properties of the Catholic gentry confiscated by Cromwell for their attachment to both Charleses, and extending into almost every county. Of 6000 proprietors, so confiscated, but 60--one per cent--were restored, in part or whole, to their hereditary estates.

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Thirty years later, after William's victory over James II., 4000 remaining Catholic proprietors were subjected to a similar proscription--so that in that half-century 10,000 owners of estates forfeited them for their fidelity to their ancient, and their hostility to what Mr. Froude correctly calls "the intrusive religion."

No parliament sat again in Ireland, till that short one of a single session before mentioned, (the 4th James II.,) summoned in 1689. This parliament repealed the acts of settlement and explanation, Poyning's law, and other coercive and intolerant statutes; but the issue of battle went against King James, and the two succeeding reigns became fruitful beyond precedent of penal legislation. Although the 9th of the "Articles of Limerick"--at the close of the war--had simply imposed one unobjectionable sentence as an oath of allegiance on the defeated party, the act (2d and 3d William and Mary) prescribed an elaborate form of abjuration of the doctrines of transubstantiation and of the invocation of saints, and declaring the holy sacrifice of the Mass "superstitious and idolatrous."' The oath of abjuration concluded by the denial to any foreign prince or prelate (namely, the pope) of "any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, _ecclesiastical_ or _spiritual_, within the realm." There never was a more shameful breach of public faith than this statute. The treaty of Limerick had simply prescribed this form of oath for the restoration to their former _status_ of all who chose to take it: "I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William and Queen Mary; so help me God."

And the 10th article of the same treaty had provided: "The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government, shall be the oath aforesaid and no other." Yet within the same twelvemonths in which William's generals and lord-justices signed this latter compact, the new penal law was passed, and the new oath of abjuration was imposed. In 1691, the tolerant treaty was signed; in 1692, when the few Catholic peers and commoners who ventured to present themselves appeared to be sworn in of the new Irish parliament, they were met by this infamous oath of abjuration, driven out and disqualified. Above a million of their broad acres were forfeited, as a further penalty on those who refused the oath, and we need not be surprised to find, at King William's death, (1702,) that but "one sixth part" of the property of the kingdom remained in Catholic hands.

The 7th and 8th William and Mary re-enacted, with additions, the Elizabethan penal laws. Of these additions the principal were:

1. Authorizing the Protestant chancellor to name guardians for Catholic minors. 2. Act to prevent recusants (Catholics) from becoming tutors in private families, unless by license of the Protestant ordinaries of their several dioceses. 3. An act to prevent Roman Catholics acting as guardians to minor children. 4. An act to disarm Roman Catholics. 5. An act for the banishment of popish priests and prelates.

During the reign of Queen Anne, however, the code received its last finishing contributions. In the 1st and 2d of this queen was passed "the act for discouraging the further growth of popery," of which the following were the principal provisions:

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"The third clause provides that if the son of an estated Papist shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will. The fourth clause prohibits a Papist from being the guardian of his own child; and orders that, if at any time the child, though ever so young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its own father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts that, if a Papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than one third of the amount of the rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between all his children. The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause vests in her majesty all advowsons possessed by Papists.

"A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides that the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit. The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform. The sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant to a Protestant master. The eighteenth gives a salary of £30 per annum to Popish priests who shall conform. The twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale: For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, £50; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman not registered, £20, and for discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, £10. The twenty-first clause empowers two justices to summon before them any Papist over eighteen years of age, and interrogate him when and where he last heard Mass said, and the names of the persons present, and likewise touching the residence of any Popish priest or schoolmaster; and if he refuses to give testimony, subjects him to a fine of £20, or imprisonment for twelve months.

"Several other penal laws were enacted by the same parliament, of which we can only notice one; it excludes Catholics from the office of sheriff, and from grand juries, and enacts that, in trials upon any statute for strengthening the Protestant interest, the plaintiff might challenge a juror for being a Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow."--_McGee's Ireland_, vol. ii. pp. 605, 608.

We may here turn from this repulsive record of tyrannous legislation to inquire into the consequences of it all at the end of the second, and once again at the end of the third century, from the reformation.

George II. came to the throne in 1727, and bequeathed it to his successor in 1760. This generation saw, therefore, the close of the second century of the great Protestant experiment; and if a centennial celebration had been proposed to them in 1751, the report of progress made must have included the following principal facts.

"We have dispossessed the Catholic proprietors of five sixths of their property during this last century; we have excluded them from the bench, the bar, and parliament; we have prohibited them being guardians or teachers of youth; we have disfranchised and disarmed their whole body, even their nobles and gentry; yet as far as the people are concerned, we labor in vain. There has been lately (1747) a census of the kingdom, and out of 4,300,000 inhabitants, 3,500,000 are returned as papists. Even in Ulster they are not supplanted; in Leinster they are three to one; in Munster, seven to one; in Connaught, twelve to one. Without property, with few priests, and scarce any bishops, still doth this perverse generation increase and multiply. What can we do with them more than we have done to convince and convert them?" To this searching question some observer more profound than the others seems to have replied, "Try education!"

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The third centennial celebration of the introduction of the English liturgy into Ireland--the 51st year of the union of the two national churches--would have afforded an excellent opportunity of taking stock, humanly speaking, of the progress made in a hundred years. But no one thought of suggesting an appropriate celebration of the great event, and so, unhappily, the precious opportunity has been lost. We shall endeavor, however, to supply the want of such a comprehensive retrospect; and here, for the first time, we find the facts and figures of Mr. Godkin's book of considerable service to the subject. From the House of Commons debates of the year 1834, Mr. Godkin gives the following sketch of the arguments and illustrations used in support of "the Church Temporalities Act:"

"Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy. Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church Establishment--that it should be founded upon utility, that it should communicate religious knowledge to the masses of the people, that it should not be debased into a state engine or an instrument of political power--they demanded whether the Church of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of an establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in Ireland? In the course of something more than a century it was stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now amounted to £800,000 a year. Had its efficiency increased in the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own small flock within the fold? On the contrary, they adduced statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers. For example. Lord John Russell said, 'By Tighe's _History of Kilkenny_, it appears that the number of Protestant families in 1731 was 1055, but in 1800 they had been reduced to 941. The total number of Protestants at the former period was 5238, while the population of the county, which in 1800 was 108,000, in 1731 was only 42,108 souls. From Stuart's _History of Armagh_, we find that sixty years ago the Protestants in that country were as two to one; now they are as one to three. In 1733, the Roman Catholics in Kerry were twelve to one Protestant, and now the former are much more numerous than even that proportion. In Tullamore, in 1731, there were 64 Protestants to 613 Roman Catholics; but according to Mason's parochial survey, in 1818 the Protestants had diminished to only five, while the Roman Catholics had augmented to 2455. On the whole, from the best computation he had seen--and he believed it was not exaggerated one way or the other--the entire number of Protestants belonging to the Established Church in Ireland can hardly be stated higher than 750,000; and of those 400,000 are resident in the ecclesiastical province of Armagh.'"--pp. 153.

Now, for the maintenance of this church of 700,000 out of a population of 7,000,000--this church of a tenth of the people--there were then and now are held in mortmain of the best lands of the kingdom, above 600,000 acres. We are told by the poet:

"A time there was ere England's woes began When every rood of ground sustained its man."

The Irish soil is not so nutritious; still, even there, every acre stands for a soul saved or to be saved, according to "the doctrine and discipline" of the united church. {211} In addition to the lands and their revenues, there are also certain supplementary parliamentary grants not to be despised even by light and worldly-minded persons. Mr. Godkin enumerates, in his introduction, several of these:

"It may be desirable to add some more precise information on that subject. There was a return made to Parliament, dated 24th July, 1803, and signed by the then Chief Secretary, Mr. Wickham, who certified that it was made up from the best materials in the chief secretary's office, and believed to be nearly accurate. From this return it appears that the number of parishes in Ireland then was 2436; of benefices, 1120; of churches, 1001; and of glebe-houses, 355. This represents the state of the establishment in the year 1791.

"From 1791 to 1803 the Board of First Fruits granted the sum of £500, in 88 cases, for the building of churches, making a total of £44,000. During the same period the Board granted £100 each for 116 glebe-houses, making a total of £11,600.

"From a parliamentary return, ordered in 1826, it appears that within the present century the following amounts have been voted by parliament up to that date: Gifts for building churches, £224,946; loans for building churches, £286,572; total, £511,538, for building churches in twenty-five years.

"During the same period gifts were made for glebes, £61,484; gifts for building glebe-houses, £144,734. Loans were granted for the same purpose amounting to £222,291, making a total for glebes and glebe-houses of £428,509. Thus, between the year 1791 and 1826 the Establishment obtained for churches and glebes the sum of £940,047. The number of glebe-houses in 1826 was increased to 771, and of benefices to 1396. The number of cures with non-residence was 286." [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: The following additional figures (from the _Union_ to the year 1844) are given on page 96: For building churches,-- £625,371 For building glebe houses,-- 336,889 For Protestant charity schools,-- 1,105,588 For the Society for Discountenancing Vice, etc.-- 101,991]

And, on the other hand, the celebrants of the third centenary, if they had thought of holding one, would have learned from Mr. Godkin (himself a resolute Protestant of the Unitarian school, and an ex-reverend) of the alarming increase of popery of late days even in the very capital of English authority.

"Indeed, the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this city is astonishing, and has no parallel perhaps in any country in Europe. In 1820, there were in Dublin only ten parochial chapels, most of them of an humble character and occupying obscure positions. There were at the same time seven convents or 'friaries,' as they were then called, and ten nunneries, which Mr. Wright described as 'religious asylums where the females of the Roman Catholic religion find shelter when deprived of the protection of their relatives by the hand of Providence.' [Footnote 50] Now the loveliest daughters of some of the most respectable and the best connected Roman Catholic families leave their happy homes and take the veil, sometimes bringing with them ample fortunes--devoting themselves to the work of education and the relief of the poor as 'Sisters of Mercy,' 'Sisters of Charity,' etc.

[Footnote 50: Wright's _Dublin_, p. 174.]

"There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy is 287, and of regulars 125; total priests, 412. The number of nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic University, with its ample staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools, without including those which are under the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have 7000 pupils under their instruction, while the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000. Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially--the Mater Misericordiae--has been not inappropriately called 'the Palace of the Sick Poor'--numerous orphanages, several widows' houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged and industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence within half a century."--p. 94.

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Such is the latest presentation of facts in relation to "Ireland and her churches." Of Mr. Godkin's book (we don't know whether or not he is still called _Reverend_) we can only say that it is very fairly intended, and shows great industry in the accumulation of materials. From some statements in the historical introduction we most decidedly demur; but the valuable collection of facts in the second part, under the head "Inspection of Bishoprics," and the manifest desire to do, and to inculcate the doing of, justice to men of all churches, throughout the whole book, must bring in every true friend of Ireland the author's debtor.

Love's Burden.

"My burden is light"

The Disciple.

"Dear Lord, how canst thou say 'Tis light, When I behold thee on the way To Calvary's height, Fainting and falling 'neath its heavy weight? Ah! no. For me thy burden is too great."

The Master.

"Good child, thou dost mistake The burden I would have thee take. The cruel load That crushed me down on Calvary's road Was thine, Not mine. What lighter burden can there be Than that which Love would lay on thee?"

The Disciple.

"Kind Lord, how foolish is my speech! I mark the truth which thou wouldst teach To my cold heart. Love all the burden bears of others' woes, Beyond its might; But of its own on them it would impose Only a part, And makes that light."

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Florence Athern's Trial.

The farm-house occupied by the Lees, Henry and Margaret, was an old-fashioned, plain brick building. It stood at right angles to a country road which formed a short cut from the turnpike (leading from the city of C---- to Hamilton, the county-town of Butler county, Ohio) to the mills down on the Miami, passing through Mr. Lee's property and by his garden-gate. The house was some fifteen or twenty feet back from the road, and built one room deep three sides, with an old-fashioned garret across the whole of the main building. A wide brick pavement ran from the gate opening into the road past the front of the house to another gate opening into a private lane, leading from the barn and stables, a hundred yards or so back of the house, to a creek some distance in front, which had been dammed up to afford a convenient watering-place for the farm cattle; another brick pavement, not quite so wide, encircled the rear and sides of the house. A broad gravel walk led from the back hall-door to a gate, which, with a hedge, separated the grassy yard from the vegetable-garden, up through that to the barn; another path led from the front-door down between broad grass-plats of grass, studded with evergreens and fruit-trees, over a rustic bridge that spanned a deep ravine, to some stone steps leading down to a spring, which, with the space around and the hill behind, was paved with stone, beneath which the water ran a few feet, then spread out into a creek fringed with willows. On the right of the path from the bridge to some distance behind the spring was a cherry orchard; on the left an open knoll bordered with flower-beds and shrubbery, and occupied in the centre by a rustic summer-house.

In front of the farm-house on the edge of the grass-plats was a row of locust-trees. The parlor was at the end of the house toward the road and to the right of the hall; to the left of that was the dining-room; and on the left of that again the kitchen, not fronting evenly with the rest, but leaving space for a porch running to the end of the house, into the end of which a door opened from the dining-room.

It was Christmas eve, 18--. A lovely, clear moonlight night, rendered brighter by six or eight inches of snow that had fallen the day before, and now lay glistening like diamond-dust in the rays of the full moon. No sound disturbed the silence save the occasional crackling of a branch or twig among the trees, and one or two passers-by on horse-back or in wagon, trudging merrily homeward; for though the railroad had long since made a much shorter route from the city to the mills and Hamilton, Mr. Lee had not retracted the permit to pass through his farm, and the road still remained open.

The parlor windows gave out a brilliant light from the candles burning on the mantle-piece and the Christmas tree, that blazed between them and the wood fire on the old-fashioned hearth. A group was seated round it. {214} Harry Lee, with just a shade of care on his joyous face and a few threads of silver through his thick brown hair, sat opposite the front windows at one side of the hearth; at his side, with her arm resting on his knee, seated on a low ottoman, was a young girl, his niece, Florence Athern; from the lamp on the table a little behind her the soft light fell on the masses of golden hair that covered her well-shaped head, and on the pages of a richly illustrated book, the leaves of which were held open by a hand perfect in its size, shape, and texture; and her face, as she raised it from time to time, in answer to a caressing nod or motion of her uncle, was very lovely, with a tinge of sadness in the light of the soft blue eyes and the curve of the sensitive lips. Opposite these two sat Margaret Lee. Younger than her brother, but old before her time, her sad face was still interesting, though it could not be called handsome. At her side was a younger sister, whose whole attention was given to the three children seated on the floor in the space before the fire, eagerly examining the gifts just taken from the Christmas-trees. Her husband sat on the other side of the table, on which was the lamp, looking over a book of engravings, and trying, from time to time, to restrain the uproar made by the juvenile group. Watching the children while her hands were full of gifts that had fallen to her share, stood an old colored woman, short and fat, and dressed in a neat black dress, while on her head she wore a false front of crinkled black hair and a black lace cap. Her kind old face beamed with enjoyment at the children's pleasure.

The room was furnished handsomely and with taste. One or two portraits and paintings of merit hung on the walls, and over the mantle-piece was a picture of the Nativity, wreathed with holly, and before which two wax candles were burning.

No one heard the step that approached the house; no one saw the wan but handsome face that was thrust close to the panes for a few moments. A tall, well-dressed man stood there looking in, then turned away with a sound like a sob and a sigh and covered his face with his hands. "It is she, my child, my darling; but I am not worthy, O God! I am not worthy!" He did not look in again, but turned and walked down the path leading to the spring, murmuring, "Fifteen years, and so little change in outward things. The same trees, the porch, the door-steps, only that snow-ball and these ailanthuses grown into large bushes, and here and there a flower-bed where there had been grass; but she--ah! how has my darling passed these years that have been so dreary to me?" Just then the kitchen-door opened, flooding the porch floor, the steps, and portion of the walk with light. One of the workmen came out, and the stranger drew himself closely behind a pear-shaped evergreen. "I hope," he thought, "the fellow will not bring a dog with him. He has a bucket in his hand, and may be going to the spring; in that case, I have no escape, for the snow will betray me if I move!" But the man said good-night in a German accent, and, whistling to the Newfoundland which had come out with him, and now stood snuffing the air toward where the stranger was hiding, turned and walked the length of the porch, down the steps at the end, past the pump and smoke-house, out through the gate into the back lane, and so up to the barn. "So," said the stranger, "he has gone to feed the horses for the night, and I am safe." {215} He walked slowly down across the bridge, and stood for a few moments on the topmost step leading to the spring; then went down there, and kneeling on the stones at the edge, scooped up some water in his hand and drank; then rising and brushing the snow off his clothes, he retraced his steps and once more gazed in at the parlor window. It happened that the old colored woman had just picked up the youngest child in her arms, and, followed by the others, was moving toward the door, her face turned full to the window, when she made an exclamation and nearly dropped the child she held. "Why, Tamar," exclaimed Miss Lee, "what's the matter?" "Oh! nothin'," replied the woman, "spec this colored pusson gettin' nervus, dat's all. Come long, chicks, to roost." And she left the room without affording a chance to the group round the fire to see her face, which bore a frightened look. But the children, busy with their happy prattle, did not notice it, neither did the nurse who was waiting for them. As soon as she had seen them snug in their beds, with stockings duly hung, and night prayers said, she started to return to the kitchen. Her mistress heard her, and came into the hall to speak to her, preceding her through the dining-room and across the space on the porch between the dining-room and kitchen doors, much to her satisfaction, to the latter department, to make some necessary arrangements for breakfast. On Miss Lee's return to the parlor, a game of whist was proposed, in which the four elders joined, leaving Florence to the quiet enjoyment of her book. After a rubber of three games, a motion to retire was made by the sisters; and Henry Lee, turning to Florence, said, "Well, Puss, is it not time to give up your book? Half-past eleven, my pet," (looking at his watch,) "and we must be up early, you know, to be ready for church, and dinner at Uncle Joe's to-morrow."

At last the brother and sister were left alone, and stood looking at one another for a few moments; then Mr. Lee spoke: "It must be done to-morrow. Who shall do it--you or I?"

"I think I had better, Harry dear. Women can deal better with women in such a time, although I know your tender, loving heart, and do not doubt it."

"I am glad, Mag, you will take it on yourself, for I feel a very coward in the matter."

"Oh! yes, it is better that I should; but I will not tell her till night--I will not mar the happiness of her Christmas till I cannot help it."

"As you will; and now good-night, I must go and see that matters are all right for the night. You say Anthony has gone up?"

"Oh! yes, some time ago."

"Well, good-night!" He left the parlor, and getting a lantern from the closet under the stairs, lit it, and started to the barn.

It had been the custom in this family, since Anna Lee married, that she and her husband should spend Christmas eve at the old homestead, and return to their own house in Hamilton, with her brother, sister, and niece, on Christmas morning. The early Mass was too early for them to hear it, so the clergyman was willing to give them the holy communion as soon as they had spent a sufficient time in preparation on their arrival. After making their thanksgiving, they adjourned to Mrs. Mohun's house for breakfast. Then, after High Mass and a Christmas dinner at Mrs. Mohun's, the two Lees and Florence returned to "The Solitude."

This programme was carried out as usual on this Christmas day, and the evening found the three sitting quietly in the parlor round the fire-place, with no noise of children's prattle to distract their attention. {216} On pretence of letters to write, Mr. Lee left the women alone with a glance at his sister. No face was flattened against the windows tonight, though old Tamar refrained from looking toward them.

Florence occupied a low seat between her aunt and uncle; and when the latter left the room, Margaret laid her head gently on the young girl's shoulder, and drew her toward her, saying:

"Florence, dearest, your uncle had a letter yesterday from Arthur Hinsdale. One to you came by the same mail; but on reading that directed to him, your uncle decided not to give you yours till he or I had told you something which you must know before you can answer it. Here are both the letters, dear; you can read them in your own room when I have finished. You have often asked," she continued, as Florence took the letters in silence, "to be told something about your mother and father. To-night I will tell you." A hardness came into her voice as she spoke that made the girl look up in surprise. "We lived, till your mother married, in the northern part of the State of New York, among the mountains, where people from the city came every summer to spend the hot months. My father was wealthy, but cared for no life but that of the country, so we saw nothing of the fashionable world, beyond the glimpse caught in the summer. My mother was an invalid, and cared for little beyond her own health; and Anna, who was then a child ten or twelve years old, your mother, and I did pretty much as we pleased. Harry was away at college at Fordham, and, when at home in the vacations, was our constant companion in our rides and walks.

"One summer a party of gentlemen from Philadelphia came up to the Adirondacks to fish. Our farm and house was not far from the spot where they encamped, and we met them several times in riding. Your father was among them." Here she paused, as if choking back some strong feeling, and Florence, slipping on her knees, wound her arms around her, resting her head against her. "Your mother was very beautiful," continued Margaret, threading her fingers through the young girl's golden hair lingeringly, as though she saw a resemblance that she loved to trace, "and it is not to be wondered at that she should have attracted attention. After several accidental meetings, he, your father, took advantage of some trivial accident, the dropping of Florence's whip, or something of the kind, to speak when, one day, we came upon them suddenly. From this it was easy to make an excuse to visit the farm-house with some of his friends. My father was a man of cultivation and education, though he chose to bury himself from the world, and liked the young men. After one or two visits, he invited them to the house freely, I need not tell you the old, old story, dear. Before the time came for the visitors to break up their camp, Paul Athern was engaged to my sister. Florence was but sixteen; Paul said he was nearly twenty-one; and my father insisted that they should wait two years, and there was to be no regular engagement for one year. This was at length agreed to with great reluctance by, by--your father. He also, being a Protestant, made all the necessary promises that your mother should be allowed the full enjoyment of her religion.

"Well, the winter passed quietly as usual, and toward spring a cousin of my mother's wrote, inviting us to pay her a visit in New York. We had once before visited her when I was fourteen and Florence twelve; so remembering the former pleasure, we were quite eager to go, Florence particularly seemed anxious. {217} Tamar's mother was our cook, and had been my grandfather's slave before slavery was done away with in New York. Tamar, a girl of my own age, was our waiting-maid and humble companion and _confidante_, and was to go with us. After a good deal of hesitation--for he seemed to feel a presentiment of evil--my father consented, and we went to New York. Our visit was nearly over, when, one day, on coming home from a walk with my cousin, I found Florence in the drawing-room with Paul Athern. She looked guilty, and blushed when she saw my look of surprise; but Paul greeted me with great apparent pleasure, and an easy grace that covered whatever confusion he may have felt. That night, when alone in our room, Florence said, 'Mag, was I very, very wrong to let Paul know I was here? I did want to see him so much, dear. Oh! you _don't_ know how I have craved a sight of his dear face!' I could not resist her gentle pleading, so did not blame her very much; but told her I must write to father, it was the right thing to do and I must do it. The answer to my letter was a peremptory order for our instant return home. We, or I, had no idea of disobedience, and so prepared to return at once. The day before we were to have left, Florence was particularly affectionate, and seemed not to wish to be left alone. I had some last errands to attend to, and leaving Tamar and Florence busy with their packing, went out for two or three hours. I returned to find the trunks packed, but neither Florence nor Tamar was in the house. My cousin said Florence kissed her when she went out, saying laughingly, 'May be you won't see me again.' Tamar went with her, carrying her satchel. As evening drew on and they did not return, a great fear came over me, and Cousin Mary had difficulty in keeping me from rushing into the street to seek for them. At last, a ring at the door was followed by Tamar's rushing into the drawing-room. She threw herself at my feet, buried her face in my lap, and cried as if her heart would break. At last, when she could speak, Cousin Mary had great trouble to understand her broken sentences. As for me, I sat stupefied, filled with the one idea that Tamar had come back without Florence.

II.

"At last the frightened girl's story was made out. Florence had taken her, on pretence of carrying her bag; but at Union Square, Paul Athern met them with a carriage, into which they got, and were taken to a hotel down Broadway, (the Astor House, we afterward found it was.) Here they were shown into a private parlor where there was a strange gentleman, who looked, Tamar said, like the minister at home who preached in the little country church near us. He bowed to Paul and Florence when they entered, and then walked over to the farthest window and stood looking out. Mr. Athern had to talk a long time to Miss Florence before she was willing to do something that he wanted her to do. At last he said something that seemed to frighten her, and then he made a sign to the strange gentleman who went to the door of another room opening into this, and opened it. Mr. Tremaine, one of the fishing-party of the previous summer, came in, and before Tamar knew what they were doing, she heard the strange gentleman say, 'I pronounce you man and wife!' Then Florence fainted, and they had great trouble to bring her to. {218} Then they all signed a paper, and the gentlemen shook hands with _Mr. and Mrs. Athern_, and left them. Paul, after a few words to Florence, followed them. As soon as they were alone, Florence threw herself on her knees and cried, 'Oh! what have I done? what have I done? Tamar, do you think my darling father will ever forgive me?' She sobbed and cried, but by the time Paul returned had become quiet. When he came, she asked for paper and pen, as she wished to write to her father. The letter was given to Tamar, with a note to me, exonerating the girl from all blame. Then Mr. Athern said it was time to start to the depot. Florence turned very pale, but didn't say a word, only got up and began to put on her things. Mr. Athern turned to Tamar and told her she was to go home and tell me and Cousin Mary that we would never see _Miss_ Florence again, but that Mr. and Mrs. Athern would be happy to see them on their return from their wedding tour. Then they went to the depot in a carriage, taking Tamar with them, trusting to her getting safe home after they had left, which, thanks to a kind Providence, she did.

"This news threw me into a brain-fever; and when I came to myself, eight weeks after, I was told how my mother had died of a heart disease at the shock of Florence's flight; how a letter had come from Germantown, saying how happy she was if only she knew her dear father had forgiven her; then another, full of grief at the death of her mother and my illness; how my father had sold the old house, and was waiting for my recovery to bury himself and his griefs in the far west. So the next fall saw us fixed out here; and Florence was told of the change, and that her father would never cross the mountains again. My father had not cast her off, as parents do in novels, but his displeasure and disappointment were very great, and he let her know it; his letters, few and seldom, were cold and formal, never again the fond, loving missives they had been during the short separation from him in her childhood. More than all, he grieved over the Protestant marriage; for it was a Presbyterian minister who had performed the ceremony, and Florence had never mentioned having had it performed by a priest. One day, the next summer, as I was sitting at the open door, I saw a carriage drive up to the gate, and a lady get out; in a moment I knew it was Florence, and calling Tamar, ran out to meet her, only to receive her fainting in my arms. Tamar helped to carry her in and lay her on the sofa. Father had gone to Hamilton; and before he returned, we had got her up-stairs, and all traces of her arrival done away with. I waited anxiously for him to come, and wondered how I should tell him; but my anxiety was useless, for he came in with a small glove in his hand, and his first question was, 'Where's Florence?' I had hardly time to tell him, when the door opened, and Florence herself was at his feet.

"I left them alone together, and when I returned, he had placed her on the sofa, and was sitting close to her, holding her hand.

"It was not till the next day that we asked about her journey, and then she told her story.

"Paul had never told his father of his marriage, knowing what different plans the old gentleman had formed, and weakly putting off the evil hour, dreading the scene that would follow. He often told Florence of the urgings his father used to induce him to marry a young lady of the fashionable world, and laughed as he compared his 'meadow daisy,' as he called Florence, to the 'hot-house plant,' that was his father's choice. {219} They managed to get along on the handsome allowance his father made him, and Florence's share of my mother's fortune. One day the little cottage at Germantown was overshadowed by a stately carriage, and out of the carriage came an aristocratic-looking gentleman, who inquired for Mrs. Paul Athern. When Florence presented herself, her gentle beauty had no effect in melting his stony heart, for he did his work well. It was Paul's father. He told her of his plans for Paul, and how he had discovered their secret at last; and, with a cruelty I cannot understand even now, informed her quietly that that marriage was null and void; they both being minors, by the statutes of New York could not contract legal marriage without consent of parents or guardians. Florence heard him out, and then rose and said she would wait till her husband came home to know the truth. 'Your husband, madam, has taken my advice and gone to New York for a few days, and you will not have the opportunity of telling him what he knows already, and knew when, to satisfy you, he went through the mockery of a marriage.'" The listener tightened her hold on Margaret and hid her face; her aunt put both arms around her, and continued: "Here Florence lost all consciousness, and when she came to herself, she was alone. The afternoon was nearly gone; but she called her servant, made her help to pack her trunk, then sent her for a carriage, leaving a note for Paul with the girl in charge of the house. She drove to Philadelphia, waited quietly at a hotel till the next morning, then started for the west.

"My father's anger was fearful, all the more so that he was powerless. Florence was ill for several weeks after her return, and even after she recovered she never looked like herself. She came to us in June; in July came a letter to my father in Paul's handwriting, which he threw into the fire unopened. In October you were born, and in six weeks more your poor mother--died." Here she paused again, and bent her head close to the golden-tressed one pressed to her breast. "My father lived till the next fall, but never the same man. Harry came home from Fordham that summer, and took entire charge of the farm, my father caring for nothing but to carry you about and watch you. For two years we heard nothing of your father; and then the eastern papers were full of a great forgery that had been committed, and the forger was a son of one of the first families in the city. Florence, darling, need I tell his name? The trial proved his guilt, but he managed to escape, and one day we were surprised by his sudden appearance here. He came without any announcement, and walked right into the parlor where I was sitting sewing and Uncle Harry reading, while you were asleep in your cradle. Before we could recognize him almost, he asked in a hoarse voice, 'Where is Florence--where, for God's sake, is my wife?' Then a glance at my black dress and Harry's stern face as he rose to repel his intrusion, seemed to reveal all, and he sank on the floor in a deep swoon.

"We kept his presence in the house a secret from the men on the farm, and only Tamar knew it; fortunately, the house-girl had gone to Hamilton for a few days. He was quite wild for a day or so; and when he came to himself, Harry demanded an explanation, and he gave it.

"He had not known of his father's visit to Germantown till he returned from New York, where he had gone that day at his father's request, having written a letter to that effect to Florence, which must have reached the house very soon after she left it. {220} He was kept in New York on some pretext or another for three or four weeks. His letters to Florence, of course, never reached her, and on his return home he was told by his father that he 'had seen his pretty plaything, and told her some home truths.' A fearful scene followed, when he left his father's house, swearing never to set foot in it again, and that he would be revenged. He did not know that the marriage was illegal, as he was under the impression that he was twenty-one, till his father showed him the record, and then he found his mistake; and, as of course he knew that no Catholic clergyman would perform the ceremony, the Rev. Mr. Bell was the only one who could be found to do it. He had searched for Florence, and written to her father; but, as I knew too well, had received no answer. His allowance being stopped, he suddenly found himself without a penny, and no business or business habits; so he could not come out here to us, and gradually sought forgetfulness in dissipation. At last, by the treachery of a friend, himself the guilty one, he was proved a forger so skilfully that there was no getting over it. He swore solemnly that he was innocent, and felt sure his innocence would one day be proved. He did not stay long, being anxious to get out of the country and the clutches of the law. You were a great comfort to him, dear, during his short stay, but he had to leave you. In fifteen years, Florence, we have heard or seen nothing of him, and his guilt is still believed by those who have not forgotten the circumstances. Now, my darling, you know why I told you this ere your uncle gave you Arthur Hinsdale's letter." The young girl made no answer save a shiver that ran through her frame as she clung closer to her aunt. For a full hour they sat thus in silence; then Harry Lee came into the room. Florence rose to her feet and would have fallen, had her uncle not caught her in his arms, and tenderly, as if she had been a baby, he lifted her, and carried her up to her bed-room. Margaret followed, and tenderly prepared the broken-hearted girl for bed. The letters lay unheeded on the parlor floor.

III.

All through the night Margaret Lee sat by her niece's bed-side, praying for strength for her darling, and watching the fitful slumbers and soothing the sad awakenings. And in the silent watches of the night arose the long-buried ghost of her own life's happiness, and kept guard beside her. There was an episode in the sad story she told her niece that was never mentioned--that she had not allowed herself to think of for many a long year; but to-night memory will not be silenced, and she brings up, once more, the pleasant days when young Tremaine whispered into her ear the same story which Paul told Florence, and the fearful crushing of all her hopes of happiness, when her father forbade her ever to see or speak to him again, his anger was so great against him for having assisted Paul. Margaret submitted quietly, as such natures do; but she never cared for anything afterward beyond doing her strict duty--cheerfully and heartily; but never joyously. Perhaps the old man repented when it was too late; for in two years after, they heard Tremaine was married, and he was very tender to her then. {221} On his death-bed he drew her to him, and, asking her forgiveness if he had made her suffer, blessed her for the fondest love and gentlest tending that ever parent had from child. In that hour Margaret felt repaid for all that had gone before. So, through the long watches of the night, came up the memories of the long ago, and Margaret lived over again the dead joys and sorrows. Toward morning Florence slept quietly, and her watcher threw herself on the bed beside her, and soon fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, the sun had risen, and on glancing at Florence, she found her lying quietly awake.

"Aunt Margaret," said the young girl, "that--that--letter. I know what he wrote, and it is not necessary to tell him, is it?"

"Only under certain circumstances, my darling; your own heart will tell you what."

"Oh! yes, auntie; but that can never be. I can tell him that, and nothing more."

"My poor, dear child, have you not faith enough? do you not think his love for you is strong enough to live through this trial?"

"Yes, oh! yes! But would it be right to inflict the trial on him? I think not; I think the burden is mine alone, and I alone must bear it!"

"God grant you strength to do so, my precious one! If I could have spared you the suffering, how gladly would I have done it!"

"I know that, auntie, dear. Do you think I do not feel and appreciate the years of care and tender love I have had from you and Uncle Harry? I was as happy as any one could be before--before--and I can and will be happy with you still."

"God bless you, dearest!" was Margaret's answer, as she pressed a kiss on her forehead and left the room.

As soon as she was alone, Florence turned the key in her door; then, throwing a dressing-gown around her, fell on her knees before a beautiful engraving of the Mater Dolorosa, which hung over a _prie-dieu_ at the side of her bed. Long she knelt there, her golden hair falling in dishevelled masses over her shoulders, and nearly touching the floor as she knelt. At first there was no sound, but presently her slight frame was convulsed with suppressed weeping that soon found voice in sobs. At last she rose, and began to dress, ever and anon pressing her hands to her head or heart to still their aching. When she was ready to go downstairs, she again knelt before the picture, and prayed for strength to bear her cross, so that not even the shadow of it should fall on those whose tenderness and love had been her shield in the years that had gone.

And then she went down and greeted her uncle with a brave attempt at her usual manner; she neglected nothing that she had been accustomed to do, none of the little services she had been in the habit of rendering; and, but for the sadness that no strength of will could drive from her face, and the silence of the bird-like voice that before made music through the house the whole day long, a casual observer would not have guessed at the sufferings of the previous night.

On going into the parlor, she saw the letters where she had dropped them the night before, and the sight of them sent a cold thrill of pain to her heart; but she picked them up and put them in her pocket. After going through the house as usual, she locked herself up in her room once more, to read the letters. Arthur Hinsdale's to herself was, as she anticipated, a declaration of affection; that to her uncle, written the day after, expressed a hope that he would support his cause if it needed it. {222} And how were they to be answered? Florence paused long in painful thought on the subject, but felt too utterly miserable to come to any conclusion. So the day passed sadly, and so the night and the next day. On the third day Florence felt that some answer must be given and written before another night went by, and set herself to her painful task. Having completed it, she brought the letter down with her into the parlor, and sat down to some pretence of employment that kept her hands busy, though her mind was far off. Presently she heard the galloping of a horse in the lane, and in a few moments a knock at the front-door. The blinds were down over the front windows, so she had not seen any one pass, and, rising, she tried to make her escape before the visitor was admitted. But she was too late. As she opened the parlor door, the front-door was opened from without by her uncle, and she stood face to face with Arthur Hinsdale. The hearty greeting he had met with from Mr. Lee had reassured the young man, and he was not prepared for the frightened look and deadly pallor that overspread Florence's face when she saw him. She stepped back into the parlor, and held out her hand with a desperate attempt to smile. Arthur took the hand and pressed it to his lips. Mr. Lee had closed the parlor door, and she was alone with him. With a desperate effort she commanded her voice enough to make some commonplace remark about his journey, signing him to a chair, while she seated herself.

"I ventured to come, although I had received no answer to my letter. Did you receive it?"

Florence inclined her head.

"Then you knew the reason of my coming?"

Again Florence bowed, but could not speak.

"Miss Athern, was not my letter plain enough--do you not believe me? I do not understand your silence."

"Your--your letter was fully understood, Mr. Hinsdale, and I thank--"

"You thank me, Florence!"

Then in earnest language he told her how he loved her, and how his fear that his letter had not reached her had brought him there, preferring the pain of a double refusal to the doubt in which he must have awaited her reply by post. To all this Florence listened with head bent down and hands clasped; and when he paused for a reply, she pointed to the letter lying on the table. He took it up and walked to the window; a painful silence followed, broken only by the rustling of the paper in his hands. When he had finished reading, he came to her side, and leaning over her said:

"Am I to receive this as your answer?"

"Yes!" said Florence in a whisper.

"A final and decisive answer?"

"Yes!"

"Then pardon me. Miss Athern, that I allowed my heart to read your conduct as I hoped it was meant, not as you really meant it. I gave you credit for a nobler heart than you possess. Let me tell you the truth, though what I say seems a reproach, that offer would never have been made had I not felt assured, by your treatment of me, that it would be accepted."

Florence started, and the eloquent blood rushed to her very temples.

"Mr. Hinsdale, you have no right to speak thus to me!"

She attempted to draw her hands from his grasp, but could not.

"No right!--well, perhaps I have not. Forgive me, Florence, and only remember that I love you."

{223}

He still held her hands and tried to look into her face, but she bent her head away from him.

"I love you, Florence, and I feel that I am entitled to a little more consideration than that letter shows, Florence, will you be my wife?"

A low but distinct "No," was the answer.

"Do you mean you do not love me?"

She made no answer, and he dropped or rather flung her hands from him and started to his feet.

"Strange, unfeeling! O fool, fool that I was! to build my happiness on such a crumbling base; to be caught in the net of a false woman's beauty, the smiles of a vain coquette!"

"Arthur, Arthur! you will break my heart!"

She had risen and was standing with one hand resting on the back of a chair, the other pressed to her head. He made a motion to approach her, but she put out her hand with a sign to stop him.

"Now listen to me. I am no false woman, no vain coquette. Until the night I received your letter, I knew no reason why I should not--not--" She hesitated a moment. "I knew no reason why I should not have answered it according to the dictates of my heart; but that night a story of a life was told me that--that changed my whole existence. It is a heavy burden to bear."

"But not, dearest, if I can help you bear it." He would have taken her hand, but she drew back from him, "You cannot, no one can--O God! help me, my heart is broken!" She threw her arms up over her head, and would have fallen had he not caught her. She had not fainted, though for a moment she thought death had come to her relief; and almost in a moment released herself from his arms, and said sadly: "I hoped to have spared us both this misery; but it was God's will that we should not escape it. For myself, a little more does not matter; but for you--O Arthur! forgive me the pain I have made you suffer, and remember my own cross is as heavy as I can bear. Good-by!" She held out her hand--"good-by! You cannot return home to-day, it is too late; but you must excuse me, I will send uncle."

"Florence! I am not going to remain if this is your answer. Do you think I could break bread or sleep under your roof after what has passed? Heavens! do you think I'm a stick or a stone?"

"As you will!" she said wearily, "I cannot help it!"

"Then I will take my leave." He was going; but as he laid his hand on the door-knob, he glanced at her, and the expression of heart-broken misery in the sweet face overcame his injured feelings, and he turned and took her hand. "Forgive me, Florence; I have been rude and unfeeling--selfish in my great disappointment. Forgive me, darling; remember my love is strong enough to bear the heaviest burden _you_ could lay upon it, if your own strength fails, Good-by and God bless you." He raised her hand to his lips, and in another moment was gone.

Every day Florence strove manfully with her trouble, and every night her prayers were said before the _Mater Dolorosa_, for strength to bear with silent patience the sorrow her loving friends could not cure. But her face grew pale and wan, her form more slight and delicate, till her aunt, in alarm, proposed a change of scene. It was in the early spring, and Margaret Lee proposed a tour through the eastern cities; but Florence begged so hard not to be taken to New York or Philadelphia that the idea was given up. {224} At last they determined to go direct to Boston, and sail thence for Liverpool. This plan was carried out in June, leaving the farm in charge of the overseer, and the house to Tamar.

To a mind like Florence's, imbued with a loving reverence for all connected with the church, filled with a love for the beautiful and grand, and a heart ready to receive their impressions; with an intellect of no common order, and a quick appreciation of the good and noble, a tour through Europe, particularly Spain, France, and Italy, had many charms, and could not but awake an interest that surprised herself. When they settled at Rome for the winter, they had the satisfaction of a decided change for the better in Florence's appearance.

But she had not forgotten; she was only glad that returning strength of body enabled her to hide more effectually the anguish and heart-sick yearning that sometimes seemed unbearable. Several letters came from Arthur Hinsdale during the first year; but Florence returned the same answer to all; and at last the young man desisted. Three years were passed in idling from one point of interest to another, when the tocsin of civil war in the United States waked up the nations, and called the country's loyal children from far and wide to her assistance.

Once more the scene is laid at "The Solitude;" but this time the earth is not clothed in winter's snowy mantle. Hid in the wealth of foliage the trees are wearing, the birds are singing their vesper hymns, the sun is just sinking behind the woods, and throws his last rays over a group seated on the grass near the slope into the ravine.

Henry Lee is there, and Margaret and Annie and her children; but Mr. Mohun is down in Tennessee with Rosecrans, and the wife's brow wears an expression of anxiety, as she watches her children, that was a stranger to it when we last saw her. Florence, too, is there, looking very well, people say; but there is an indefinable change that those nearest her feel, though they cannot say where or in what it lies. One or two young ladies are added to the group, and a young gentleman, whose shoulder-straps show his rank as second lieutenant, while the foot still bound up and the crutches lying near, show cause for his presence on the scene. He is William Mohun, a younger brother of Annie's husband, and was wounded in the siege of Vicksburg. What he is saying now must be listened to.

"I wish you knew our colonel, Mr. Lee; for a braver, nobler, kinder-hearted man never lived. He led a charge at Vicksburg, and exposed himself unsparingly; indeed, he seemed to court death; yet when he could help a wounded man, he was as gentle as a woman. O Miss Florence! a friend of yours is the regimental surgeon--Arthur Hinsdale, don't you remember him?"

"Oh! yes," replied Florence, with wonderful self-command.

"He, too," continued the young man, "deserves the thanks of the nation; for I never saw such devotion to the wounded and dying. Poor Warrington! hope he is not seriously wounded, for he will be a great loss to us; and I hope Hinsdale is with him, for then I know he will be well cared for."

"See, is there any mention of Joe's regiment. Will?" asked his sister-in-law; and the young man referred to the paper in whose columns he had seen the wounding of his colonel--Warrington. Florence rose quietly and went into the house; the old Newfoundland, who had been lying beside her, got up and walked at her side in stately satisfaction, ever and anon thrusting his cold nose into her hand in token of sympathy. {225} When Florence returned, there were traces of tears in her eyes; but her face wore an expression of loving gratification her aunt understood well.

A month and more has passed, and October began to touch, with her changing pencil, the trees and shrubs. The air was hazy and balmy, and the sun still warm; so the family at "The Solitude" spent many of their evenings in the open air. William Mohun was gone back to duty, and the young lady friends were again at home. Florence and her two aunts were busy over comforts for the soldiers, to help them through the weary winter with the thought that loving hearts at home had not forgotten them. One evening Florence had been down to the spring, and, lured by the lovely evening, seated herself in the summer-house on the knoll above it, with a book. She did not hear a carriage which approached the house from the direction of Hamilton, nor did she see the two gentlemen who alighted from it. Mr. Lee received Arthur Hinsdale and his companion with cordial welcome, though surprised at the sudden arrival, and wondering at Arthur's eager, excited manner. He greeted Henry and Margaret warmly, but asked instantly for Florence. They told him where she was, and the young man, instead of crossing the bridge, which would have apprised her of his coming, passed with a swift foot down the lane, and, springing over the fence among the cherry-trees, down the slope, across the path, was in the summer-house almost before Florence saw him.

"Florence, my darling, our trial is at an end. My precious one, I know your secret now. Cruel! that you doubted me. Could you not feel that nothing could change my love?"

He had taken her hands in his, and held them, looking down into her sweet face while he spoke, Florence looked at him in bewilderment; then, with a sobbing, convulsive movement of her lips, almost fainted.

Meanwhile the gentleman, whom Arthur had introduced as Colonel Warrington, followed Henry and Margaret into the parlor by the door that opened at the end of the house toward the gate. When they entered and Margaret turned to offer him a chair, she saw he was deadly pale, and was glancing round the room as if it recalled something painful. At the same moment a veil dropped from Margaret's eyes. She walked up to him, and, laying her hand on his arm, said, "Paul Athern, in heaven's name speak."

"Paul Athern?" said Henry Lee, with a start of surprise.

"Yes," replied the colonel sadly, "I am Paul Athern. God bless you for the care you have taken of my darling. I can see her now without fear. Henry Lee, I can offer you my hand, and you, an honest man, can take it without hesitation."

Henry Lee grasped the hand extended to him warmly, saying, "I never thought anything else, Athern, after the interview we had; but I rejoice that you are relieved from your painful situation and are living to enjoy the change. We began to fear you had died. Tell us all about it; for Florence and Arthur will not join us yet."

Then Paul Athern told how he had gone from "The Solitude" to New Orleans with a firm purpose to win fortune and a fame that would enable him to present himself before Florence in his true relationship. He worked hard and steadily, and gained the confidence of his employers to such an extent that they took him into partnership, and then he came to Ohio to see his child. {226} But the stain was not removed from his name, and he shrank from the meeting at the last, as much as at first he had longed for it. He rode out to "The Solitude" on Christmas eve, and took a peep at the family group through the window, and had gone again without the consolation of hearing Florence speak. He told them how, in looking in at the window the second time, he feared Tamar had seen him, and he had hurried out to his horse and ridden away quickly. So he went back with only the crumb of comfort that stolen look afforded to his starving heart. When the war broke out, he withdrew from business with a comfortable fortune, and returned to C----, raised a company for the ---- regiment, and rose to the rank of colonel. During his stay in C----, the family were still in Europe; but he came out to "The Solitude," and had a long talk with Tamar. Then came the wound that had prostrated him and put him into Arthur Hinsdale's hands; during the ravings of the fever he had mentioned names and revealed enough to arouse Arthur's interest and curiosity. As soon as he was well enough, the young man asked for an explanation, first telling why he asked it. Paul told him all, and his story only bound the young surgeon more closely to him. The colonel then paid a glowing tribute to the kindness and care he had received from Arthur, and to his general interest in and treatment of the wounded men. He watched till Paul was well enough to travel, and then obtaining a leave of absence for both from the commanding general, started home. At first Paul refused to accompany Arthur; but one day a wounded officer was brought in and laid on the bed next to the one occupied by him. Arthur made a sign to Paul to help him to remove the man's clothes; he stooped over him to unbutton his coat, when the man opened his eyes, and, after looking round with a startled gaze, fixed them on Paul with a frightened stare. Paul looked and recognized the man who had blighted his whole existence. A fierce struggle arose in his breast, and his fingers ceased their work, while he turned away with a look of disgust and dislike. Arthur looked up at him with surprise, and just then the man made a desperate effort and put out his hand, saying faintly:

"Athern, forgive--here--I have it--all here."

And his hand fluttered toward his heart, then fell, and his eyes sought Paul's with agonized entreaty. It was a hard struggle; but the better angel conquered, and Paul took the hand and said:

"I do forgive you, Brooks, as I hope to be forgiven."

A smile passed over the man's face; he moved his head slightly and was dead. In his breast-pocket were two packages, one addressed to Paul's father, the other to an influential gentleman in Philadelphia. The latter was mailed duly, and the former, Paul, his father being dead, opened. It contained a full acknowledgment of having committed the forgery for which Paul suffered, and an explanation of how it was managed. This determined him at once to return to his wife's family. Meantime the same story had been told in different words in the summer-house down by the spring, and it took so long in the telling that it was almost dark when Margaret, going to call her niece, saw them rise and approach the house, Florence, with a bright look of happiness her face had not worn for years, leaning on Arthur's arm. She hastened with trembling footsteps to the parlor, at the door of which Arthur left her, and in another moment she was clasped in her father's arms.

{227}

A gay wedding-party is assembled, when the spring once more puts on her robes of ferial green, in the parlor of "The Solitude." All brides look lovely, they say; but certainly May never smiled on a lovelier one than Florence Athern. Arthur Hinsdale certainly seemed to think so, for he looked at her with reverence mingled with his deep love, as though she were a spirit dropped from the skies. The venerable and dearly loved and honored archbishop is there, and has blessed the new ties; and the bride was given away by that tall, handsome man in brigadier-general's uniform, with one arm in a sling yet, at whose side is the noble form of Henry Lee, while Margaret moves about through the company with her usual quiet grace, and Tamar's face is filled with satisfaction at her young mistress' joy, as she looks in at the door.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

A brother asked Abbot Antony to pray for him. The old man responded: "Neither I can pity thee nor can God, unless thou shalt have been anxious about thyself, and prayed to God."

Abbot Antony again said: "God doth not allow wars to arise in this generation, because he knoweth they are weak and unable to bear them."

Abbot Agathi said: "If a man of wrathful spirit should raise the dead to life, he would not be pleasing to God because of his wrath."

Abbot Pastor said: "Teach thy heart, to observe what thy tongue teacheth others." Again, he said: "Men wish to appear adepts in speaking; but in carrying out those things of which they speak, they are found wanting."

Abbot Macarius said: "If we remember the evils done to us by men, we shall deprive our soul of the power to remember God; but if we call to mind those evils which the demons raise against us, we shall be invulnerable."

Abbot Pastor said of Abbot John the Small that, having prayed to God, all his passions had been taken away, and, thus made proof, he came to a certain old man and said: "Behold a man freed from passion, and compelled to battle with no temptations." And the old man replied: "Go, pray the Lord that he command thee to be tempted, for the soul grows perfect by temptation." And when temptations came back upon him, he no longer prayed to be freed from them, but said, "Lord, give me patience to bear with these temptations."

Abbot Daniel used to say: "The stronger the body the weaker the soul; and the weaker the body the stronger the soul."

{228}

Popular Education. [Footnote 51]

[Footnote 51: _Report of the Rev. James Fraser. Blackwood's Magazine_, Jan. 1868.]

At no period of the world's history have nations and their governments seemed to be in such a feverish state of uncertainty and apprehension. From all quarters of Christendom we hear the cry of change. The last vestiges of the ancient order are disappearing. The rule of caste is everywhere confronted by self-asserting populations, who are no longer willing to bear the patient yoke of servitude, even though consecrated by the traditions of centuries. Russia has abolished her serfdom, so long and so deeply rooted in her soil; and the more advanced nations of Europe, whilst yet retaining their accustomed forms of government, are heaving with the volcanic fires of revolution. We speak not of violent revolution, mainly; but of that other more radical and enduring change, which is the inevitable result of the wonderful mechanical inventions of this age. It is simply impossible in the dread presence of steam and the electric cable, for nations to continue to be what the Greek republics and the Roman empire were, or what mediaeval Europe was, centuries ago. The Christian world is now, for all great practical purposes, one nation. Even that "_despotism tempered by assassination_" is not now the thing that Talleyrand described in his witty aphorism; for the Czar himself bows to the censure of the world. Napoleon prosecutes the Parisian editors, and sends them to prison; but it avails nothing toward the suppression of the power of opinion. He, to-day, has greater fear of the sentiment of France, than ever his terrible uncle felt for the combined armies of Europe. In England, the House of Peers has become a gloomy pageant, and the Commons, under the new Reform Bill, will henceforth represent, not the gentry, nor even the moneyed lords of the loom, but the toiling millions of Great Britain. In a word, power is passing from the few to the many, from the hereditary rulers to the multitude. We have nothing to do, in this article, with the merits of this vast revolution, as to the manner of change, its good or evil, its probable success or failure. We accept it as a fact, and propose to deal with it as such. It is very possible that all this would have occurred if America had never been discovered; but it is absolutely certain that the achievements of Christopher Columbus and George Washington have been the chief, immediate causes of its rapid consummation. When a Bourbon king, to gratify the traditional policy and animosities of his house, sent his fleets and armies to help the glorious work of building up the independence of this people, little did either he or his enraged and maniac foe, King George, imagine what the end of it all would be! Little did they dream that this land would, in ninety years, contain thirty millions of men of European blood, and that the whole European population would learn new principles, catch new inspirations, and be filled with new longings, new hopes, and stern resolves by intercourse with this young republic. Those pampered kings could not foresee the advent of steam-ships and the telegraph! {229} They could not foretell the power of emigration--how it would people a continent, build up its commerce, fortify it with the materials for armies and navies, ready to be called into existence more magically than the palace of Aladdin, and, above and beyond all, how its sweeping currents of democratic ideas would rush back upon the father-lands everywhere, washing away the old dikes of royalty and caste, and floating the populations over the battlements of feudal castles, musket in hand, and with loud cries for "change;" that is, for the all-essential change which shall see that governments be henceforth established and conducted for the benefit for the governed, and not that the governed shall be held, as they have been for many thousand years heretofore, as the property of the ruler, existing solely for his glory and profit. Europe sends her millions hither, and they in turn send back by every ship to those they left behind, the wonderful record of what they see here; and these inspiring testimonies are read at the firesides of ten thousand hamlets by kindred men whose awakening intelligence and energies are stirring the foundations of European society and shaking all thrones to inevitable ruin, unless they speedily plant themselves on more solid ground than the _divine right of kings_. It is now very certain that no government anywhere can be said to rest on a sure basis, unless it stand upon the love and confidence of the people. Any other basis is the lawful prey of time and fortune, and will go with the opportunity that may arise for its destruction.

Now, if these be facts with which we have to deal, then a very grave question meets us right here, and it is this: Can any such solid foundation for government be found in a self-governing community? In other words, can the people govern themselves for their own weal, and maintain institutions _solely by the force of their own will_, which shall accomplish the purposes of good government, and for ever secure the approval of all wise and virtuous citizens? If nay, then, royalty and aristocracy being repudiated, whither shall we fly for refuge and hope? If yea, then how is this most precious end to be attained? We Americans, by birth and blood, and still more so by passionate love of country, say most emphatically that we have never doubted that the way to such a consummation is plain, if only the nation will pursue it. It is nothing new; simply the old and trite aphorism, that a free, self-governing nation can only be so upon the conditions precedent of a clear intelligence and a well-established virtue; the latter (if we may separate the two) must always take precedence, and be regarded as the indispensable prerequisite. It follows, therefore, that education without morality would be at least futile. It is very certain that it would be absolutely _fatal_; because the intelligent man of vice is armed with keen weapons, which are greatly blunted by ignorance, and are consequently then less dangerous to society. Catiline, the polished patrician, was a greater object of alarm to Cicero and the Roman senate than the rude assassins whom he had hired to do his treason. Before and during the first French revolution, France was ablaze with genius; but, like the high intelligence of the "Archangel ruined," it brought death in its fiery track. Education without morality is more terrible than the sword in the hands of men or a nation. It is not the part of patriotism to deny that we have seen some instances of this in our own favored country, and that the tendency to that perilous condition is very apparent even now. {230} This has resulted from the too prevalent idea, taught by the infidel or indifferent press, and accepted by the unreflecting or equally indifferent citizen, that morality can be maintained without formal or doctrinal religion; that one morality is as good as another; that Plato would answer as well as Christ; that what even the pagans taught--to deal honestly by your neighbor and perform the domestic and public duties of life with reasonable decency--is quite sufficient; and that all else is nothing more than priestly dogmatism and controversial jargon. So that, indeed, the prevailing opinion of the country would almost seem to be (if we judge it by the secular press and multitudes of very honest and intelligent citizens) that America, as a Christian democratic nation, may be satisfied to be as moral, and consequently as grand and powerful, as was pagan Rome in the days of her republican simplicity of manners. They forget or ignore the history of the _Decline and Fall_, and fail to see in that tremendous catastrophe of the most extraordinary people of the ancient world, the logical development of the certain causes of destruction which were inherent in the nation from the day that Romulus slew his brother upon the wall of the rising city. It cannot be that Christ came for a delusion and a snare, or even as a simple fatuity. If his coming was necessary, then it was to teach a new religion and a new morality; _the one inseparable from the other_. If this be indisputable, then all education which is not based expressly and clearly upon religion is heathenish, and will prove destructive in the end. It will destroy the very people whom it was expected to save. It will consume them as a fire. Pride and lust of power will burn out the public conscience. The nation will drip with the blood of unjustifiable conquest, as did pagan Rome, or be given up to the ferocious struggle for individual aggrandizement, as seen in later revolutionary times. The father of our country fully recognized these principles, and in the foregoing we have but echoed his words of warning in his Farewell Address to the American People:

"Of all dispositions and habits," he says, "which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. A volume could not trace all their connection with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for regulation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

To this it will be replied, by some well-meaning persons, "How can we place education in the United States upon the basis of doctrinal religion, when we have innumerable sects, none of which absolutely agree?" And now we approach the marrow of the subject.

First, let us clear away one difficulty. Let it be very distinctly comprehended that nowhere can the state find its commission as exclusive educator of the people. That is a duty and a privilege belonging, of original right, to the family; it is domestical and not political, though it may be always, and is most frequently, wise and politic that the state should lend efficient aid to _assist_, but not _arbitrarily to control_ the training of the free citizen's child. The parent is placed over the child by the Creator, and is the natural guardian, primarily responsible for the training which is to lead through this valley of probation to the eternal home. {231} Religious freedom, freedom of conscience, is not a right granted by constitutions, but is the result of the relation of man as a free, moral agent to the Creator who thought fit to make him the master of his own destiny here and hereafter. To coerce the conscience of the child by an educational system, actively or passively, (for there may be effective coercion by negative means,) is to violate the sacred rights of the parent, vested in him by the divine appointment. There is not a religious man, following any form of worship, professing to be a Christian and an American, who can seriously deny this proposition, or who would accept any other in a question involving his rights and duties in regard to his own off-spring. No such man, we are sure, would tolerate any assumption of the authority on the part of the state to step between him and his child in the matter of religious belief and instruction. No other form of tyranny would arouse so quickly the indignant resistance of an American citizen and father; and every upright man feels in his heart that what would be so grievous to him should not be imposed upon any other of his fellow-citizens, directly or indirectly. Actuated by such views in the main, the state provides a system of public schools from which, theoretical (and it may be practically in most cases,) all forms of doctrinal religion are excluded, and education is based upon a vague, undefined, generalized moral teaching which very many eminent men of different religious denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because the doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not taught in such schools according to any interpretation whatever, for the plain reason that it could not be done without such manifest injustice and wrong as we have already protested against. To read the Bible, _without note or comment_, to young children is, in reality, to lead them to the fountain of living waters and forbid them to drink; whereas, "to expound the word" is, at once, to violate the absolute neutrality which the state is bound to maintain in the presence of conflicting interpretations and dissenting consciences. Such is the precise difficulty. Hence it is, that the Catholic Church has set its face against the peril with which such a system of education threatens its youth; and the Catholic pastors and their flocks, though struggling with poverty, and harassed by ten thousand pressing claims upon their charity, have strained every nerve to establish parochial and other denominational schools where secular education could be imparted without sacrificing religious instruction.

There is no doubt but that there are many strong and marked doctrinal differences between the various Protestant denominations which have led some of their most eminent men to argue against the possibility of a perfect or desirable system of public schools upon the mixed or non-intervention basis. Nevertheless, it is also true that in the fundamental point, essentially characteristic of Protestantism, and in which it especially differs from the Catholic Church (private interpretation and the rejection of tradition) all Protestant churches agree; and herein we find the reason why they can conform to the necessities of such a public-school system as we have described, with some degree of amalgamation; whereas their Catholic fellow-citizens cannot avail themselves of the secular advantages of such schools without a total sacrifice of religious training. {232} We are told by the Rev. James Fraser, despatched on an official mission for the purpose of reporting on the whole subject to the commissioners appointed by her Majesty Queen Victoria, and who visited the United States in 1865, that one of the _influences_ adverse to the success of our American common-school system is, "_the growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required, and that even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to;_" and another "_influence_" is "_the very lukewarm support that it receives from the clergy of any denomination, and the languid way in which its claims on support and sympathy are rested on the higher motives of Christian duty;_" from which, and other causes, the Rev. Mr. Fraser reluctantly augurs misfortune to the system itself in the future. There can be no doubt but that such "lukewarmness" does exist, and that it is produced solely by the "growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required." No accord of the Protestant sects upon what they call "essentials," can permanently reconcile them to either a doctrinal teaching at the public schools, in which it would be impossible for them all to agree, or to the alternative necessity of excluding from the schools all manner of "distinct religious teaching," without which "even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to." Hence springs not only the lukewarmness, but the affirmative opposition of distinguished Protestant clergymen to the "godless system."

It is altogether erroneous, however, to suppose, and unjust to charge, that Catholics are hostile to the continuance of the present schools. FAR FROM IT. They rejoice to see their Protestant fellow-citizens availing themselves freely of those great opportunities to instruct the future self-governing citizens of the young republic. They appreciate, nay, they insist upon the absolute necessity of raising the standard of popular intelligence, so as to insure the wisest possible administration of public affairs through the agency of the elective franchise. That their church is profoundly solicitous for the secular education of her people is too manifest for dispute, since she has, by the instrumentality of her various religious orders, established universities, colleges, academies, and innumerable preparatory schools in every great city, and throughout the rural districts of the country, wherever it was possible to do so. A glance at the Catholic Register or Directory, for 1868, will satisfy the most sceptical upon that point. The Roman Catholic Church has covered Europe with such institutions, grand in design, and magnificent in endowment; and it is not her purpose to permit her children in America to fall behind the age for the want of similar advantages, if she can supply their necessities. She is ever appealing to their public spirit, their patriotism, their religious sentiment, to obtain the means to build and conduct her educational establishments; and most nobly have they ever responded; for it was by the steady contributions of the poor mainly, that nearly all of those great works were begun and perfected.

But we may well adopt the assertion of a writer in the last January number of _Blackwood's Magazine_, that "_the fact is palpable and every statesman, philosopher, and candid student of the educational question confesses, that voluntary agencies are wholly unable to undertake a task so gigantic,_" as that of reaching the great mass of helpless ignorance existing even in the most favored communities. {233} It is exactly here that government may legitimately step in with its organized resources, but without wearing the pedagogue's cap. The wisest governments of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, have done this. They have abandoned the Lacedemonian usurpation of domestic rights, reproduced by the first Napoleon, as he expressed the policy in his curt style, "_My principal end in the establishment of a teaching corps is to possess the means of directing political and moral opinions._" A candid confession for an autocrat. The nephew, who now reigns over France, has learned by the experience of misfortune to be wiser and more faithful to natural rights. In Catholic France education is entirely free and without favoritism. The public educational fund is equitably distributed to Catholic and Protestant, and each is permitted to rear, under the supervision of their respective clergy, as they may elect, the children of their own religious household. Conscience is respected; and yet the youth of the country are not deprived of instruction in the Christian faith at the public schools. Protestant Prussia is as liberal and as wise as France, and her system of public instruction is based upon the necessity of religious teaching, and the right of the parent to direct the child, and the just relation of the pastor to the parent, and therefore the equity of a proper distribution of the public-school fund. We have not the time, nor is it necessary to go into the details; but it is sufficient to say that the Prussian system concedes more to the Prussian Catholic than the American Catholic has yet asked from an enlightened and democratic American government; and yet, strange to say, the American Catholic has been violently and persistently charged with hostility to public education, and a conspiracy to destroy republican institutions! Even England, iron-clad in her prejudices, has adopted the principles of Prussia, niggardly as her policy toward the public schools has always been. And what shall we say of "benighted Austria," the land of popish concordats! Let Mr. Kay, a recognized authority upon matters of education, and a Protestant, answer this question.

"The most interesting and satisfactory feature of the Austrian system is the great liberality with which the government, though so staunch an adherent and supporter of the Romanist priesthood, has treated the religious parties who differ from themselves in their religious dogma. It has been entirely owing to this liberality that neither the great number of the sects in Austria, nor the great differences of their religious tenets, has hindered the work of the education of the poor throughout the empire. Here, as elsewhere, it has been demonstrated that such difficulties may be easily overcome, when a government understands how to raise a nation in civilization, and wishes earnestly to do so.

"In those parishes of the Austrian empire where there are any dissenters from the Roman Church, the education of their children is not directed by the priests, but is committed to the care of the dissenting ministers. These latter are empowered and required by government to provide for, to watch over, and to educate the children of their own sects in the same manner as the priests are required to do for the education of their children."

He also says:

"And yet in these countries--Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhine provinces, and the Catholic Swiss cantons--the difficulties arising from religious differences have been overcome, and all their children have been brought under the influence of religious education without any religious party having been offended." (_Kay_, vol. ii. p. 3.)

And bearing testimony to the earnest desire of the Catholic Church to advance the education of her children everywhere, he says:

{234}

"In Catholic Germany, in France, and even in Italy, the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is, at least, as generally diffused and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body as in Scotland. It is by their own advance, and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the popish priesthood of the present day seeks to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort upon our Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries, at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is, in reality, not only not suppressed, but is encouraged by the popish church and is a mighty instrument in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are at short distances public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes of the neighborhood. Rome, with a population of 158,000 souls, has 372 public primary schools, with 482 teachers, and 14,000 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many schools for the instruction of these classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university, with an average number of 600 students, and the papal states, with a population of 2,500,000, contains seven universities; Prussia, with a population of 14,000,000, has but seven."

If the church has been found in hostility to educational systems, it has been when, as in Ireland, the schools have been made _proselytizing agencies_ and _instruments of oppression_; and if she has disfavored without opposing other systems, as here, it was solely to preserve her _own people_ from the damaging effects of a purely secular education, and to secure for them the higher advantages of a religious training. If others find that the schools answer all their wants, she is well pleased to see them derive every benefit therefrom which the best administration of such a system can produce. But the Catholic people say: If we who are counted by millions, and who are daily adding to the wealth of the nation by our labor and enterprise, are required to pay taxes for the support of the public schools which we cannot use for the education of our children, ought we not, at least, to receive an equitable proportion of the public fund, to assist us in securing what every good citizen wishes to see accomplished, the education of our youth? We are now millions, and millions more are coming, by ship and steamer, every day, almost every hour. We are a part of the nation, children and citizens of the great republic. Shall we add to the virtue and intelligence of the community, or to its ignorance and vice? We are struggling with all our might, and devoting all our means to reach the lowest stratum of our society, and lift it up into the light and air of secular knowledge and spiritual grace. Why should not the State of New York help in the good work?

The regulations of France, Prussia, Austria, England, and other countries of Europe would assuredly afford to our legislators the practical details of a good working system, which it is not our province to suggest in form, uninvited. Let it be conceded, however, that millions of men throughout this country should not be taxed for establishments of which they cannot conscientiously avail themselves, unless, at the same time, they are permitted to participate, in a reasonable way, in the enormous funds derived from those tax-rates. Let the schools, though denominational when endowed by the state, be subject to state inspection so far as to insure the full compliance with the requirements of the general law as to the standard of education to be bestowed, but with no further control over management or discipline.

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In the European countries referred to, (it may be said here generally,) each religious denomination when sufficiently numerous in a district to justify it, is permitted to establish a denominational school; receiving its share of the public fund, and being subject to governmental inspection as to the proper application of the money, and the faithful discharge of the engagement to impart secular knowledge according to the fixed educational standard. The selection of the school-books and the religious training of the children are in such cases placed in the charge of the clergy, or made subject to their revision. Where the religious denomination has not sufficient numerical strength to enable it to establish a separate school, its children attend the other public school or schools, but are carefully guarded against all attempts at proselytizing, and their religious instruction is confided to their own ministers. In no instance is the proper proportion of the school fund ever refused to any denomination which has the number requisite under the law for the establishment of a separate school. By these means, perfect freedom of conscience is preserved, and public harmony and good-will promoted; whilst at the same time, the children of all churches are brought up in the wisdom of the world without losing the fear of God. In this way, too, religious freedom becomes a _practical thing_, and not a constitutional platitude or an empty national boast. In this serious matter, this great national concern, those European monarchies have expelled sham altogether. Have we? Do we in the United States, vaunting our hatred of "_church and state_," our devotion to entire freedom of conscience, our preeminent love of "_fair play_," our respect for the _inviolable rights of minorities_, do we imitate the liberal example of monarchical Europe, Catholic and Protestant, when we tax our six millions of Catholics for public schools, and then refuse them a participation in the fund? What just man will say that such a rule is right? What wise man will say that it is _politic_? At least, let it not be said that in our great cities, where there are tens of thousands of poor Catholic children, and in those rural districts where the numbers are notoriously sufficient to justify the establishment of one or more schools, they shall be driven to seek an education under a system which their parents cannot conscientiously sanction, or be left to the chances of procuring the rudiments of learning from the over-taxed and doubly-taxed resources of their co-religionists. Help the schools now actually existing, and which are filled to overflowing with eager scholars; and assist those who are willing to build up others; the cost is no greater; the educational policy of the state is equally satisfied, whilst the morals of the rising generation, purified by religious faith and strengthened by religious practices, will give the republic assurance of a glorious future.

We are satisfied that such a system would give us an enlightened Christian people, and not merely a nation of intelligent men of the world, as cold as they are polished, and as indifferent to divine things as they are eager for the pleasures of sense and the pride of life.

This would be a truly solid basis upon which to build and perpetuate the empire of a self-governing nation. Without this, our constitution is a rope of sand, our republicanism a delusion, and our freedom a miserable snare to the down-trodden nationalities all over the earth.

{236}

All Souls' Day--1867.

Dying? along the trembling mountain flies The fearful whisper fast from cot to cot; Strong fathers stand aghast and mothers' eyes Melt as their white lips stammer, "Not, oh! not Him of all others? Nay, Not him who from our hearths so oft drove death away?"

Well may those pale groups gather at each door. Well may those tears that dread the worst be shed. The hand that healed their ills will bless no more, The life that served to lengthen theirs has fled; And while they pray and weep, Unto his rest he passeth like a child asleep.

Ah! this is sudden! why, this very morn He rode amongst us: sick men woke to hear The step of his black pacer: the new-born Smiled at him from their cradles; many a tear On faces wan and dim. He dried to-day: to-night those cheeks are wet for him.

For there he lies, together gently laid The hands we were so proud of, his white hair Making the silver halo that it made In life around his brow; as if in prayer The gentle face composed. With nameless peace o'ershadowing the eyelids closed.

And as beside him through the night we hold Our solitary watch, I had not started To hear my name break from him, as of old, Or see the tranquil lips a moment parted. To speak the word unsaid, The last supreme adieu that instant death forbade.

I dread the day-dawn, for his silent rest Befits the night: I half believe him mine, While in the tapers' shadowy light, his breast Seems heaving, and, amid the pale moonshine That wanders o'er the lawn. Crouch the still hounds unknowing that their master's gone.

{237}

But when the morning at his window stands In glory beckoning, and he answers not; Not for the wringing of the widowed hands, Or orphans wrestling with their bitter lot, I feel, old friend, too well, That naught can wake thee but the final miracle.

Was it but yesterday, that at my gate, Beneath the over-arching oaks we met; Throned in his saddle, statue-like he sate, A horseman every inch: I see him yet, His morning mission done. His deep-mouthed pack behind him trailing, one by one.

Mute are the mountains now! No more that cry Of the full chase by all the breezes borne Down the defiles, while echo's swift reply Speeds the loud chorus! Nevermore the horn Of our lost chief will shake Those tempest-riven crags, or pierce the startled brake!

Those summits were his refuge when the touch Of gloom was on him, and the gathered care Of long life, that braved and suffered much, Drove him from beaten walks, to breathe the air That, haunts gray Carrick's crest, And spur from dawn to dusk till effort purchased rest.

But yet, in all these thirty years, how few The days we saw not the familiar form Amid the valleys passing, till it grew Part of the landscape: through the sun or storm With equal front he rode, Punctual as planets moving in the paths of God.

I've seen him, when the frozen tempest beat, Breast it as gayly as the birds that played Upon the drifts: and through the deadly heat That drove the fainting reapers to the shade. Smiling he passed along. Erect the good gray head, and on his lips a song.

I've known him too, by anguish chained abed, Forsake his midnight pillow with a moan, And meekly ride wherever pity led, To heal a sorrow slighter than his own; Or rich or poor the same-- It mattered not: let any sorrow call, he came.

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Thy life was sacrifice, my own old friend, Yet sacrifice that earned a sacred joy, For in thy breast kept beating to the end, The trust and honest gladness of a boy; The seventy years that span Thy course, leave thee as pure as when their date began.

Who could have dreamed the sharp, sad overthrow Of such a life, so tender, strong, and brave? My pulse seems answering thy finger now-- 'Twas one step from the stirrup to the grave! Oh! lift your load with care, And gently to its rest the precious burden bear.

All Souls' Day! as they place him in the aisle. The bells his youth obeyed for Mass are ringing; And, as beneath the churchyard gate we file, To latest rite his honored relics bringing. You'd think the dead had all Arrayed their little homes for some high festival.

As if for _him_ the flowering chaplets, strewn Throughout God's acre, breathe a second spring; To him the ivy on the sculptured stone A welcome from the tomb seems whispering: The buried wear their best. As, in their midst, their old companion takes his rest.

Yes, he is yours, not ours: set down the bier: To you we leave him with a ready trust: Beneath this sod there's scarce a spirit here That was not once his friend: Oh! guard his dust! And if your ashes may Thrill to old love, your graves are gladder than our hearths to-day.

{239}

Is it Honest? [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: Sermons in answer to the Tract, _Is it Honest?_ By Rev. L. W. Bacon. _The Brooklyn Times_, March 9th, 17th, 24th, 1868.]

A brief tract, issued a short time since by The Catholic Publication Society, seems to have produced an unusual commotion among our non-Catholic brethren, and has called forth reply after reply from the sectarian press and pulpit. The tract is very brief, and consists only of a few pointed questions; but it has kindled a great fire, and compelled Protestants to come forward and attempt to defend their honesty, in uttering their false charges and gross calumnies against Catholics and the church. It has put them on their defence, made them feel that they, not the church, are now on trial before the public. This is no little gain, and they do not have so easy a time of it, in defending their libels, as they had in forging and uttering them, when Catholics had no organ through which they could speak, and were so borne down by public clamor that their voice could not have been heard in denial, even if they had raised it. Times have changed since those sad days when it was only necessary to vent a false charge against the church, to have it accredited and insisted on by a fanatical multitude as undeniable truth, however ridiculous or absurd it might be.

Since our sectarian opponents have been put upon their defence, we trust Catholics will keep them to it. We have acted on the defensive long enough, and turn about is only fair play. They must now prove their libels, or suffer judgment to go against them. They feel that it is so, and they open their defence resolutely, with apparent confidence and pluck. They have no lack of words and show no misgiving. This is well; it is as we would have it, for we wish them to have a fair trial, and to make the strongest, boldest, and best defence the nature of the case admits.

In our remarks we shall confine ourselves principally to the justification attempted by Mr. Bacon, in his sermons, as we find them in the _Brooklyn Times_; and we must remind him in the outset that the assumption with which he commences--that the tract, in appealing to the good sense of the public, whether it is honest to insist on certain charges against the church as true, when the slightest inquiry would show them to be false--makes an important concession, or any concession at all to the Protestant rule, is altogether unwarranted. He says: "This submitting of the questions in dispute to the public, man by man, after the Protestant, the American fashion--concedes at the outset one great and most vital principle, to wit, that the ultimate appeal in questions of personal belief, is to each man's reason and conscience in the sight of God." Quite a mistake. There is no question of personal belief in the case. The question submitted to the public by the tract is not whether what the church teaches and Catholics believe is true or false, but whether it is honest to continue to accuse the church and Catholics of holding and doing what it is well known, or may easily be known, they do not do, and declare they do not hold? {240} This is the question, and the only question, submitted. Is it honest to continue repeating day after day, and year after year, foul calumnies against your neighbor, when the proofs that they are calumnies lie under your hand, and spread out before your eyes so plainly that he who runs may read? We think even the smallest measure of common sense is sufficient to answer that question, which is, on one side, simply a question of fact, and on the other, a question of very ordinary morals. The competency of reason to decide far more difficult questions than that, no Catholic ever disputes. We think even the reason of a pagan can go as far as that. "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?"

"But this tract," the preacher continues, "is a plain assertion that no man ought blindly to accept the religious opinions to which he is born, nor the instructions of his religious teachers; but that he is bound, in honesty and justice, to hear the other side, and decide between them by his own private judgment." If by opinions is meant faith, it does no such thing; if by opinions are meant only opinions, it may pass, though the tract neither argues nor touches the question. The Catholic always supposes man is endowed with reason and understanding, and that both are active in the act of faith as in an act of science. There is and can be no such thing as _blind_ faith, though blind prejudices are not uncommon. Men seek or inquire for what they have not, not for what they have. They who have the faith do not seek it, and can examine what is opposed to it only for the purpose of avoiding or refuting it. Catholics have the faith; they are in possession of the truth, and have no need to make for themselves the examination supposed. Non-Catholics have not the faith; they have only opinions, often very erroneous, very absurd, and very hurtful opinions, and they are therefore bound, not by the _opinions_ they have received from their religious teachers, or to which they were born, but to seek diligently, with open minds and open hearts, for the truth till they find it. When they find it, they will not be bound to seek it, but to adhere to it, and obey it. There is no Protestant teaching in this, and it is nothing "different from what the Church of Rome always teaches her followers."

The tract says: "Americans love fair play." The preacher says:

"I believe it is no more than the truth. If there is one thing rather than another that Americans do love, it is this very thing--absolute freedom and fairness of religious discussion. Curious, isn't it? How came Americans to 'love fair play'? Englishmen seem to have a similar taste. Catholic or Protestant in England can speak or write his thoughts, on either side, without hinderance or constraint. The same thing may be remarked, in a measure, in Northern Germany. How can you account for it? What is the reason, do you suppose, why they don't 'love fair play' in Spain? or in Austria? or in Mexico? or in Rome? This injured innocent stands in New York, at the corners of the streets, bemoaning himself that he is treated 'dishonestly, and unjustly,' because the public will not buy and read his books; and all the time, in the Holy City itself--under the direct fatherly government of the pope--a subject is not allowed to be (as this tract says) 'honest and just' toward Protestant Christians by examining both sides, except at the peril of being punished as for an infamous crime! 'Americans love fair play.' Why do all Roman Catholic nations suppress it? Why does the pope forbid it in his own dominions? And what reason have we to believe that, if these who are clamoring for 'fair play' should ever hold the power in this country, they would put it to any different use here, from that which prevails in Catholic countries generally?"

{241}

We are not aware that there is any less love of fair play in Spain, Mexico, or Rome, than in the United States, England, or North-Germany, in Catholic than in non-Catholic countries, only there is more faith and less need to seek it, or to examine both sides in order to find it. As a matter of fact, though we cannot regard it as any great merit, Catholics are generally far more ready to hear both sides, and to read Protestant books, than Protestants are to read Catholic books. We have never met with intelligent Catholics as ignorant of Protestantism as we have generally found intelligent Protestants of Catholicity. There is nothing among Catholics to correspond to the blind prejudice, deplorable ignorance, and narrow-minded bigotry of sectarians; but we are happy to believe that even these are mellowing with time, losing many of their old prejudices, and becoming more enlightened and less bigoted and intolerant; there is still room for improvement.

"Let us understand in the outset," says the preacher, "that the charges against Catholics and the Catholic Church that are complained of in this tract, are conceded by the writer to be of grave importance. The prohibiting of the Bible to the people--the belief that priestly absolution has efficacy of itself, and is not merely conditional on the sincerity of the sinner's repentance--the paying to images of such worship as the heathen do--all these are declared by this writer to be 'detestable and horrible.' So that if it should appear that any one of them is proved against Catholics or the Catholic Church, the case is closed against them. He is not at liberty to go back and apologize for the doctrine or palliate it. He has declared it to be 'false doctrine'--'detestable and horrible.'"

What the tract regards as important or unimportant, is nothing to the purpose; what the preacher must prove is, that it is honest to continue to repeat charges against Catholics and the Catholic Church which have been amply refuted, and the refutation of which is within the reach of every one who would know the truth; or at least he must show that the refutation is insufficient, and that the charges are not false, but true. He will not find us shrinking from the truth, apologizing for it, or seeking to get behind it or around it. We, however, beg him to understand that he is the party accused, and on trial, not we, and that we are probably better judges on doubtful points, of what is or is not Catholic doctrine and practice, than he or any of his brethren. He will do well, also, to bear in mind that the question raised by the tract is not whether the doctrine of the church is true or false, but whether it is honest to persist in saying that it is what the church and all Catholics affirm that it is not. What he must prove, in order to be acquitted, is that the church and Catholics do hold what the tract denies, and denies on authority, or that there are good and sufficient reasons for believing that they do so hold.

1. The tract asks, "Is it honest to say that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of the Bible, when anybody who chooses can buy as many as he likes at any Catholic bookstore, and can see on the page of any one of them the approbation of the bishops of the Catholic Church, with the pope at their head, encouraging Catholics to read the Bible, in these words, 'The faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures,' and that not only for the Catholics of the United States, but also for those of the whole world." Mr. Bacon does not meet directly the facts alleged by the tract, nor plead truth in justification of the libel; but undertakes to show that even if false, yet Protestants may be personally honest in uttering it; and he adduces various circumstances which he thinks may very innocently induce Protestants to suppose that the church does prohibit the use of the Bible. {242} We have not the patience to take up in detail all the circumstances alleged, and refute the inferences drawn from them; most of them are mere inventions, perversions of the truth, misapprehensions of the facts in the case, and none, nor all of them together, justify the inference, in face of what the tract alleges, that the church prohibits the use of the Bible; and it is easy for any one who honestly seeks the truth to know that they do not.

The facts alleged by the tract are accessible to all who wish to know them. He who makes a false charge through ignorance, when he can with ordinary prudence know that it is false, is not excusable; and it is not surely in those who claim to be the enlightened portion of mankind to attempt to defend their honesty at the expense of their intelligence. They are the last people in the world, if we take them at their estimate of themselves, to be permitted to plead invincible ignorance.

The _Newark Evening Journal_ is bolder and more direct than Mr. Bacon. It asserts that the Church actually forbids the reading of the Scriptures, and boldly challenges the fact alleged by the tract. It says: "On the very page from which are taken the words, 'The faithful should be excited to read the Holy Scriptures,' are quoted, it is also said, 'To guard against error it was judged necessary to forbid the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar languages, without the advice and permission of the pastors and spiritual guides whom God has appointed to govern his Church.' How then can it be false to say that the Church prohibits the use of the Holy Scriptures?" Simply because to forbid the _abuse_ of a thing is not to prohibit its _use_. The faithful, for the promotion of faith and piety, are excited to read the Scriptures; but to guard against error or the abuse of the sacred writings, those who would wrest them to their own destruction are forbidden to read them in the vulgar languages, except under the direction of their spiritual guides. A prudent and loving father forbids his child, who has a morbid appetite or a sickly constitution, to eat of a certain kind of food except under the direction of the family physician, lest the child should be injured by it; can you therefore say that he prohibits the _use_ of that kind of food? Certainly not. All you can say is, that while he concedes the use, he takes precautions against the abuse, which is in no sense inconsistent with anything asserted by the tract.

Mr. Bacon, referring to reported cases of the confiscation of Bibles, circulated by the Bible Society, found in the hands of the laity, says the French Bible confiscated was the Catholic version of De Sacy; that the Polish Bible circulated by the Bible Society was, word for word, the copy of the version published two centuries before, and approved by two popes; the Italian Bible, for reading which the godly family Madiai were persecuted and imprisoned, was the Catholic version [not so] of Martini, Archbishop of Florence, published with the approbation and sanction of Pope Pius VI. Suppose this correct, it does not prove that the Church prohibits the use of the Holy Scriptures, but is very good proof to the contrary. These versions were made and published for the people, and would have been neither made nor published if the use of the Scriptures was forbidden. And how can you say that popes prohibit what you show they approved and sanctioned? There was a German Bible before Luther, and our Douay Bible was published before the version of King James.

{243}

"But I am not willing," continues the preacher, "that this effrontery [what effrontery?] of this question should be let go even with this answer." We can easily believe it. "I am ready to call witnesses." Well, dear doctor, your witnesses; we are ready to hear their testimony. "Whoever heard of a Catholic Bible Society multiplying copies of the Bible?" Nobody that we know of. But how long is it since Protestants had a Bible Society? Prior to that, did they prohibit the use of the Holy Scriptures? "Popes have fulminated their bulls against Bible Societies, denouncing them as an invention of the devil." Not unlikely; but it is one thing to denounce Bible Societies, and another to prohibit the use or the reading of the Bible. Your witnesses. Rev. sir, do not testify to the point. Besides, all the facts, or pretended facts, you bring forward are too recent for your purpose. The accusation that the Church prohibits the use of the Scriptures was made by Protestants long before any of them are even said to have occurred, and therefore could not have originated in them. _Ex-post facto_ causes are not admitted in catholic philosophy. The charge brought against the Church betrays no little folly and ingratitude. If the Church had prohibited the use of the Scriptures, how could the Reformers have got a copy of them? They certainly purloined them from her, and could have got them from no other source.

The preacher concludes his first sermon by saying: "I am glad the time has come when it is understood on both sides that, if the Roman Church is to commend itself to the American people, it must begin by repudiating, as horrible and detestable, the teaching and practice for three hundred years of the church." What has for three hundred years been falsely alleged by her enemies to be her teaching and practice, agreed; but what has really been her teaching and practice, denied. "Let it but make good this new claim, and we thank God for the new reformation, and welcome it to the platform of Protestantism." There is no new claim in the case; what the tract asserts has always been the doctrine and practice of the church; she has always encouraged the use and opposed the abuse of the Holy Scriptures. That the preacher should desire a new reformation can be easily understood, for the old has well-nigh run out; that he will ever be able to welcome the church to the platform of Protestantism is, however, not likely; for she is not fond of standing on platforms, and prefers to remain seated on the rock. The reverend gentleman may be shocked to hear it; but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that the Bible and reason are not special Protestant possessions; they were ours ages before Protestantism was born, and will be ours ages after Protestantism is dead and forgotten.

2. In his second sermon--in a note to which he corrects his assertion that it was the Catholic version of Martini, and states that it was the Protestant version of Diodati, that was used by the godly family of the Madiai--the preacher confines his efforts to questions raised by the tract with regard to the worship of images and pictures, and of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:

"Is it honest _to accuse Catholics of paying divine worship to images or pictures as the heathen do_--when any Catholic indignantly repudiates any idea of the kind, and when the Council of Trent distinctly declares the doctrine of the Catholic Church in regard to them to be, 'that there is no divinity or virtue in them which should appear to claim the tribute of one's veneration;' but that all the honor which is paid to them shall be referred to the originals whom they are designed to represent?' (Sess. 25.)

{244}

"The answer to this question," the preacher says, "is to be found by asking two others: 1. What sort of honors do the heathen pay to images? 2. What sort of honors do Roman Catholics pay to them? When we have got answers to these two, we can compare them, and shall be able to say whether they are the same."

We respectfully submit that neither of these questions need be asked; for so far as pertinent, both are answered in the tract itself. The accusation against Catholics which the tract implies cannot be honestly made, is that we pay _divine_ worship to images and pictures, as the heathen do; what the tract then denies is that Catholics pay _divine_ worship to images and pictures; and what it asserts is, that the heathen do pay them divine worship; but this assertion is simply illustrative, and should it be found inexact, it would not affect the formal denial that the worship Catholics pay them is _divine_. As to what sort of worship Catholics do render to images and pictures, the answer in the tract is explicit, that it is a "certain tribute of veneration paid them in honor of their original. The worship is not divine worship, and the honor paid is not paid to them for any virtue in them, but is referred solely to their originals." The catechism puts this clearly enough. "_Q. And is it allowable to honor relics, crucifixes, and holy pictures? A._ Yes; with an inferior and relative honor, as they relate to Christ and his saints, and are the memorials of them. _Q. May we then pray to relics and images? A._ No; by no means, for they have no life or sense to hear or help us."

The preacher labors to show that this inferior and relative honor is precisely what the heathen pay to the images of their gods; but this, if true, would not prove that we do, but that the heathen do not, pay divine honors to images. He cites various authorities, Christian and heathen, to prove that it is not the brass and gold and silver, when fashioned into a statue, that the heathen worship, but that through the statue or image they worship the invisible gods; that is, they worship the image as the visible representation of the invisible divinity. This is, no doubt, in some respects, the actual fact; nobody pretends that they worship precisely the material statue, but the numen or god, the prayers, invocations, incantations, and the other ceremonies of the consecration of the statue by the priests compelled to enter the statue and take up his abode in it. But to this image, which for them contains the god, the heathen offer sacrifices and other acts of worship which are due to God alone, which makes all the difference in the world, though we have no doubt that the type copied, perverted, corrupted, and travestied in heathen worship is the Catholic type; as all heathenism is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the true religion, or as Protestantism is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the Catholic Church.

The heathen images and pictures represent no absent reality, and are not memorials of an absent truth, like our sacred images and pictures; and the heathen, then, can honor only the material substance or the supposed indwelling numen or daemon. The gods they are supposed to bring nigh, represent, or render visible, are either purely imaginary, or evil spirits; hence the Scripture tells us that "all the gods of the heathen are devils." And finally, to these idols, which are nothing but wood and stone, brass and silver, or gold, which represent, if anything, demons or devils, the heathen pay divine honors; while we simply honor and respect images and pictures of our Lord and his saints for the sake of the originals, or the worth to which they are related. {245} Here is a difference which we should suppose even our Protestant doctor capable of perceiving and recognizing.

The preacher forgets that what is denied by the tract is, that we pay divine honors to sacred images and pictures, and cites ample authority to prove that we do not pay divine honors to them or through them. We offer them no sacrifices, and we offer them no prayers or praises, even as symbols or as memorials of a worth they represent. They are never the media through which we honor that worth; but we honor them for the sake of the worth to which they are related, as the pious son honors the picture of his mother, the patriot the picture of the father of his country, or the lover the portrait of his mistress. The respect we pay them springs from one of the deepest and purest principles of human nature, and can be condemned only by those who hold that there is nothing good in nature, and condemn as evil and only evil whatever is natural.

The minister thinks that, even should enlightened and intelligent Catholics understand the question as explained by the catechism and defined by the Council of Trent, yet ignorant Catholics may not; and with them the honors paid to images and pictures actually degenerate into idolatry. He asks:

"But how in this respect do the people of modern Italy differ from those of ancient and heathen Italy? Do the practices of the people there correspond to the doctrines of the theologians, or have they, as of old time, 'bettered the instruction?' Do they pay no special veneration, as if there were some special virtue in the image itself, to those images that are reputed to bleed or sweat, or to the pictures that wink? If it was only as a guide of the thoughts toward the person represented that the image or picture served, then one image would serve as well as another, except that those in which the skill and genius of the artist had most excelled to represent in touching and vivid portraiture the object of the worship, might be preferred above ruder and coarser works. But as I have passed from church to church in those lands in which the Roman system has had unlimited opportunity to work itself out into practice, and have 'beheld the devotions' of the people, I have seen certain statues frequented by a multitude of worshippers, and visited by pilgrims from afar, who had come to bow down before them, and hung with myriads of votive offerings--waxen effigies of arms and legs and other members that had been healed in consequence of prayers to that particular image. And one fact, which I did not then appreciate the bearing of, was constantly observed by myself and my companion--that these objects of special worship and veneration were _never_ works of superior art, but commonly rude, and sometimes even grotesque. The inexpressibly beautiful and touching statue by Bernini, of the Virgin holding upon her knees the body of the dead Jesus, is in the crypt of St. Peter's, and admiring critics go down to study it by torchlight. But the image which is _adored_ is a grimy bronze idol above it in the nave of St. Peter's, which is so venerated as the statue of that apostle that the toes of the extended foot have been actually kissed away by the adorations of the faithful."

It is very evident that the preacher, whatever opportunities he may have had, knows very little of the Catholic people in general, or of the Italian people in particular, and his guesses would deserve more respect if made in relation to his own people. Protestants have no distinctive worship which can be offered to God alone, and are therefore very poor judges of what they may see going on before their eyes among a Catholic people. The Church is responsible only for the faith she teaches and the practices she enjoins, approves, or permits. If the people depart from this faith and abuse these practices in their practical devotion, the fault, since she takes away no one's freedom, is theirs, not hers. {246} The worship that Catholics render to God, the honor they pay to the saints, and the respect they entertain for sacred images, differs not, as all worship with Protestants must, simply as more or less, but in kind, and not even a Protestant community can be found so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish between an image or a picture and the saint or person intended to be represented by it. For the many years we lived as a Protestant we never met any one of our brethren who mistook his mother's portrait for his mother herself, or the statue of a distinguished statesman for the statesman himself. Who ever mistakes the equestrian statue of George Washington in Union Square for George Washington on horseback, or confounds Andrew Jackson himself with Mill's ugly equestrian statue of him in one of the squares of Washington? Who could mistake the bronze horse on which the image of the old General is placed, and which you fear every moment is going to tilt over backward, for a real horse? Well, my dear doctor, however ignorant these Italian people may be whom you see kneeling before an image or a picture of the Madonna, they know more of the doctrines of the Gospel, more of God, and of man's duties and relations to him, more of his proper worship, than the most enlightened non-Catholic community that exists or ever existed on the earth. They may not know as much of error against faith and piety, of false theories and crude speculations as non-Catholics; but they know more of Christianity, more of what Christianity really is, what it teaches, and what it exacts of the faithful, than the wisest and most learned of your sectarian ministers, not even excepting yourself.

With regard to bleeding, sweating, or winking pictures, if you find people believing in them, you will never find among Catholics any who believe that they bleed, sweat, or wink by any virtue that is in the picture itself; but that the phenomenon is a miracle, which God works by the saint pictured. You may doubt the miracle, but not reasonably, unless on the ground that the evidence in the case is insufficient. Whoever believes in God believes in the possibility of miracles, and there is nothing more miraculous in a picture of the Madonna winking, sweating, or bleeding, than there was in Balaam's ass speaking and rebuking his master. It is simply a question of fact. If the proofs are conclusive, the fact is to be believed; if insufficient, no one is bound to believe it.

If you find the people flocking to a particular image or picture and bringing to it their votive offerings, it certainly is not, as the preacher takes notice, on account of its merit as a work of art; for the Italian people, with all their love and exquisite taste for art, do not, like so many non-Catholics, confound artistic culture with religious culture; nor is it because they hold that there is any hidden virtue in that particular image or picture itself, but because the saint whose it is, has or is believed to have specially favored those who have invoked him before it. They may or may not be mistaken as to the fact, but the principle, on which the special devotion to our Lady or a saint before a particular shrine is a correct one; and there is in the practice no special honor to the image or picture for its own sake, and consequently nothing necessarily superstitious or idolatrous.

Even if, as there is no reason to believe, the statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's at Rome, and which the preacher calls a "grimy bronze idol," was originally, as he tells us some say it was, a statue of Jupiter, the honor paid to it by the faithful would not be paid to Jupiter, while intended to be paid to St. Peter. {247} But the toes of the image have been worn away by the kisses of the worshippers; and do not these kisses prove that Catholics adore the image? The heathen adore their gods by kissing the feet of their statues; and when Catholics kiss the feet of the images of their saints, how can it be said that they do not worship or adore images as the heathen do? The heathen use incense in the worship of idols; Moses prescribes incense, and the Jews use it in their worship of the true God; therefore the Jews are idolaters! The preacher forgets that what the tract declares to be dishonest is the accusation that Catholics pay _divine_ worship, that is, the worship due to God alone, to images and pictures, as the heathen do. To kiss the feet of the statue of St. Peter, from love and devotion to the saint himself, the prince of the apostles, on whom our Lord founded his church, is not to pay divine worship to the image, nor even to Peter himself. Were we so happy as to find ourselves at St. Peter's in Rome, we are quite sure that we should kneel before the statue of St. Peter, and kiss its feet, running the risk of its having been once a statue of Jupiter, and we should do it as a proper method of expressing our love and veneration for the great apostle, and as simply and innocently as the mother kisses the carefully preserved portrait of her beloved son slain in battle for his faith or his country. As to using the forms used by the heathen to express affection or devotion, if proper in themselves, we have as little scruple as we have in using the language which our ancestors used in the worship of Woden or Thor, in our prayers and praises to the One Ever-living and True God.

3. The sermon next takes up the false accusation that Catholics pay divine worship to the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:

"Is IT HONEST _to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the Saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ_--when the Council of Trent declares that it is simply useful to ask their intercession in order to obtain favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer--

"When 'asking their prayers and influence with God,' is exactly of the same nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of one another?"

The preacher says, "At the outset let me remark, that the question what Roman Catholics _do_ is not conclusively answered by quoting what the Council of Trent declares." This supposes that the same rule must be applied to Catholics, who have an authoritative church, that is applicable to non-Catholics, who have none, or to people among whom every one believes according to his own private judgment, and does what is right in his own eyes. But this is not permissible. Our faith is taught and defined by authority, and to know what we as Catholics believe or do, you must be certain what the church authoritatively teaches or prescribes. We cannot go contrary to that and be Catholics. No doubt Catholics may depart from the faith of the church, and disobey her precepts; but when they obstinately persist in doing so, they cease to be Catholics in faith and practice, and their belief or their practice is of no account in judging what is or is not Catholic doctrine or practice. They who believe or do anything contrary to what is declared by the Council of Trent, are _pro tanto_ non-Catholics. To know what is Catholic faith and Catholic practice, you have only to consult the standards, of the Catholic Church--not every individual Catholic, as you must every individual Protestant when you wish to ascertain what is Protestant opinion and practice. {248} Our standards speak for themselves; and in determining what Catholicity enjoins or allows, you must consult them, and them only.

Mr. Bacon and his brethren have as free access to our standards as we ourselves have, and they must remain under the charge of dishonestly misrepresenting us, or prove by our standards that the church offers or authorizes or does not forbid her children from offering divine worship to the Blessed Virgin. Their surmises, their conjectures, their inferences from what they see among Catholics, but do not understand, must be thrown out as inadmissible testimony. There are the standards: if they sustain you, well and good; if not, you are convicted, and judgment must go against you. This is the case presented by the tract, and which Mr. Bacon and his friends are to meet fairly and squarely.

Now, the tract shows from the standards, from the Council of Trent, which is plenary authority in the case, that the accusation against Catholics of "putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ," is an accusation so manifestly untrue that no one can honestly make it. Here also is the catechism, which the church teaches all her children. "_Q. Does this commandment [the first] forbid all honor and veneration of saints and angels?_ No; we are to honor them as God's special friends and servants, but not with the honor which belongs to God." The Council of Trent declares that "it is good and useful to ask the saints who reign together with Christ in heaven, to pray for us," "or to ask favors for us from our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour." We ask the saints in heaven, as we ask our friends on earth, to pray for us. Here is the whole principle of the case. The Council of Trent, Sess. 22, c. 3, defines that, "though the church is accustomed to celebrate masses in honor of the saints, yet she teaches they are never to be offered to them, but to God alone." _Non tamen illis sacrificium offerri docet, sed Deo soli, qui illos coronavit._ Now, with Catholics the distinctively divine worship, the supreme worship due to God alone, and which it would be idolatry to offer to any other, is sacrifice, the highest possible sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Mass, which our priests offer every day on the altar; the one unbloody sacrifice which was offered in a bloody manner on Calvary. This is offered to God alone; all else that is offered to God in worship, prayer, praise, love, veneration, may, in kind at least, be offered to men. We honor the chief magistrate, whether called king or emperor, president or governor; we honor the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us in the church; we pray to or petition rulers and men in authority; we chant the praises of the great and the heroic; we love our country, our family, and friends; we venerate the wise and the good, who, in services to the cause of truth, morals, and religion, prove themselves godlike. That Protestants, who have no sacrifice, no priest, no altar, no victim, should mistake the nature of our _cultus sanctorum_, is not surprising, for they have nothing in kind to offer God that we do not offer to the saints, especially to the queen of saints, the Blessed Mother of God. But this is their fault, not ours; for it is easy for them to know--for our standards tell them so--that we as Catholics place the supreme act of worship in the sacrifice of the Mass--holding that only God is an adequate offering to God, and that the sacrifice of the Mass is never offered to the saints or to any but God alone. {249} There is a marked difference between our _cultus sanctorum_ and that with which men like Mr. Bacon, of Brooklyn, seek to identify it. The heathen offered sacrifices, the highest form of worship they had, to their idols, their demigods and heroes; we offer the highest worship which we have--and we have it only through God's goodness--to the one, living, true God only. This proves that the accusation against Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin and the saints, as objects of worship, in the place of God, is a false accusation, so well known or so easily known to be false, that no one of ordinary intelligence can honestly make it.

But the preacher supposes that Catholics, in other respects, put them in the place of God. This is impossible. Catholics hold that the saints, with the Blessed Virgin at their head, are men and women--creatures whom God has made, has redeemed with his own blood, and has elevated, sanctified, and glorified by his grace, and therefore they cannot identify them with him or substitute them for him. We hold that Mary is the Mother of Christ, and that he is her Lord as well as ours, and that it is through his merits alone, applied beforehand, that she was conceived without original stain; and can anybody, so believing, mistake her for her Son, in any respect put her in his place, or assign to her his mediatorial work? The very fears expressed by our Protestant friends that we do or are liable to do so, prove that even they are able to discriminate between her and her Son; why not then we?

The reverend gentleman continues:

"We are invited to several inquiries. First: Is it true that the prayers that are offered by Roman Catholics to departed saints, and especially to that holy woman whom we with them in all generations unite to call the blessed, are only of such a nature as we might offer to a fellow-Christian here upon the earth in soliciting his prayers in our behalf? Secondly: Are these supplications only for favor and influence, or are they for the direct gift of blessing and salvation? Do they put Mary into the place of Christ, the one Mediator between God and man; making of the All-Merciful Saviour who inviteth all to come unto him, an inaccessible object of dread and terror, whom we dare not approach except through the mediation of Mary? Do they ascribe to her the glory due to Christ, the only name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved? Do they profess faith in her alone for salvation? Do they put the saints in the place of the Holy Ghost, by supplicating from them directly the divine gift of holiness and the renewal of the sinful heart?"

We have answered these questions by anticipation. It is probable that Catholics believe somewhat more distinctly and more firmly in "the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus," than do the sects, and are less likely to forget it, seeing that all their practical devotions, public and private, the great honors given to Mary and the saints are founded on it and tend directly to keep us from forgetting it. Catholics do not pray to Mary because they regard the All-merciful Saviour as inaccessible, or as an object of dread and terror; nor because she comes in between them and him, represents him, or enables them to approach him through her, as is evident from the fact that we not unfrequently directly beseech him to grant that she and other saints may pray for us. We honor her as the mother of God in his human nature. We pray to her to pray to him for us, not only because she is our mother as well as his, but because she is dear to her Son our Lord, and he delights to honor her by granting her requests. {250} For a like reason we invoke the saints, that is, ask them to pray for us. We must then be more ignorant and stupid than even our sectarian ministers believe us, if, in praying to them because as his friends they are dear to him, we substitute them for him from whom what we seek can alone come. If we believe they themselves give it, why do we ask them to pray him to grant it? Cannot our acute and ingenious doctor see that the invocation of saints renders the error he supposes Catholics fall into utterly impossible in the case of the most ignorant Catholic, and that it tends to fix the mind and the heart directly on the fact that every good and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights? Can he not see that the intercession we invoke is a clear confession of the truth he thinks it obscures or obliterates? If we think the good comes from them, why do we ask them to intercede with Christ to bestow it? Why not ask it of them? But is it true, as the tract affirms, that we ask nothing of Mary and the saints in heaven that it would be improper to ask of our fellow-Christian? This is not precisely what the tract asserts. It asserts that asking their prayers and influence is exactly of the same nature, that is, the same in principle, with what Christians do when they ask the pious prayers of one another. To this the preacher replies:

"I hold here a volume of 800 pages, almost every one of which contains an answer to these questions, so far as I honestly read it, in the affirmative. It is _The Glories of Mary_, by St. Alphonsus Liguori, approved by John, Archbishop of New-York. I scarcely know where to begin quoting, or to cease.

"'O Mary, sweet refuge of miserable sinners, assist me with thy mercy. Keep far from me my infernal enemies, and _come thyself_ to take my soul and present it to my eternal Judge.' 'All the mercies ever bestowed upon men have come through Mary.' 'Mary is called the gate of heaven, because no one can enter heaven if he does not pass through Mary, who is the door of it.' 'As we have access to the eternal Father only through Jesus Christ, so we have access to Jesus Christ only through Mary.'

"'Mary is the peacemaker between sinners and God.' 'My Mother Mary, to thy hands I commit the cause of my eternal salvation. To thee I consign my soul; it was lost, but thou must save it.' 'Thou art the advocate, the mediatrix of reconciliation, the only hope, and the most secure refuge of sinners.' 'I place in thee all my hopes of salvation.' 'She is the advocate of the world and the true mediatrix between God and man.' 'Blessed is he who clings with love and confidence to those two anchors of salvation, Jesus and Mary.' 'Deliver me from the burden of my sins; dispel the darkness of my mind; banish earthly affections from my heart.' 'O Lady, change us from sinners to saints.'"

Tastes differ, and not every Catholic would employ every expression used by St. Alphonsus in his _Glories of Mary_; but none of these expressions convey to the Catholic mind what they do to the Protestant mind; for Catholics have a key to their meaning in their faith in the incarnation. The strongest of them is justified by the relation of Mary to that great mystery in which centres and from which radiates the whole of Christianity. From her was taken that flesh, that human nature, in which God redeems and saves us; and being taken from her, she has a relation to God, our Saviour, and consequently to our redemption and salvation, which no other woman, no other creature, has or can have. This relation explains the passages in the Litany of our Lady of Loretto, and those passages of St. Alphonsus and other Catholic writers which assert that all mercies and graces come from God through her. They all come from God in his human nature; and as that nature was taken from her, they must in some sense come through her. {251} They come through her, because they come from God as born of her. They also come through her, because God, her divine Son, who gives them, loves her as his mother, and delights to honor with the highest honor a creature can receive; he therefore confers the favors mortals pray for only through her intercession. But as all the special honor done to her is done only in consequence of her relation as his mother, the higher we carry that honor the more clear, distinct, and energetic our conviction of the fact of the incarnation, and the more impossible it must be for us to put her in the place of the Incarnate Word, or to substitute her for her Son, who is the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. To do so would be not only to rob him of his glory, but to deny her title to that very honor given to her as the mother of God. Catholics are not capable of anything so illogical and absurd.

The key to the other expressions objected in St. Alphonsus is in this same relation to the incarnation and the confidence of the Saint in the power and efficacy of Mary's prayers or intercession for us with her divine Son. He confides to Mary, leaves in her hands the cause of his eternal salvation, as the client confides his cause to his advocate or counsel. "My soul," he says, "was lost, but thou must save it"--by thy intercession with thy Son, who will deny thee nothing thou dost ask, because thou canst never ask but what he inspires thee to ask, and what is agreeable to his will, and he delights to honor thee before heaven and earth by granting thy requests. In the same way understand the expressions, "the advocate," "the mediatrix of reconciliation," and all the rest. The term mediatrix is not the best possible, because it is liable to mislead not a Catholic, but a non-Catholic, who believes little in the incarnation, and refuses to interpret the language of Catholics by the official teaching of their church. The Catholic always knows in what sense it is said, and for him the explanations are never necessary; still less are they necessary for Him who sees and knows the thoughts and intents of the heart before they are even formed. It is the duty of non-Catholics to consult the standards of the church and to explain what seems to them difficult or inexact in the warm and energetic expressions of Catholic love and devotion by them; and it is not honest to found a charge against Catholics on such expressions without having done so. The preacher continues:

"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits of departed men and women."

Yes, you have the answer such as your minister gives; and we have shown that his answer misinterprets facts which he does not understand; that it refuses to interpret them by the key furnished in the official teaching of the church; that it contradicts itself, and proves, if anything, the falsity of the very charge it undertakes to establish, and therefore clears neither him nor you, if you accept it, from the charge of dishonestly bringing false accusations against the church of God.

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"Is IT HONEST _to assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin_--when an 'indulgence,' according to her universally received doctrine, was never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case whatever, any permission to commit the least sin; and when an indulgence has no application whatever to sin until after sin has been repented of and pardoned?"

The preacher has the air of conceding that this charge is unfounded, and says, "If it is made, it does not appear to be sustained yet he maintains that indulgences really remit the punishment due to sins committed after the indulgence has been bought and paid for; for they are alleged to preserve the recipient in grace till death, in spite of subsequent sins." And he cites the case of Tetzel, in the sixteenth century, in proof He adduces what purports to be a form of absolution published by Tetzel, and offered for sale in the market-places of Germany. The form of absolution alleged is manifestly a forgery, and a very stupid forgery; and besides, absolution and indulgences are very different things, and the indulgence affects only a certain temporary punishment that remains to be expiated after the absolution is given or the eternal guilt is pardoned, and is rather a commutation than a remission of even that temporary punishment, which, if not commuted or borne here, must be expiated hereafter in purgatory. There is no _form_ of indulgence; there are _conditions_ of gaining an indulgence; but there is no certificate given to the effect that we have obtained it. If we have sincerely complied with the conditions prescribed by the pope, we gain it; but whether we have gained it neither we nor the church can know in this life without a special revelation. Every Catholic knows that to offer money for it would argue a disposition on his part that would render it impossible, while he retained that disposition, to gain an indulgence. No one can gain an indulgence while in a state of sin, and hence indulgences are not at any price profitable things to purchase. That Tetzel exaggerated the virtue of indulgences was asserted by Luther and his friends; but that he offered them for sale in the market-places, was never, we believe, even pretended until after his death--was and never has been proved. Luther and his friends complained that he was causing a scandal, and procured his arrest and imprisonment in a convent of his order, where he died two years after, without the matter, owing to the troubles of the times, even undergoing a judicial investigation. As for Luther's own testimony, in a case touching his hatred against Rome, it is of no account.

"The only sense," continues the preacher, "in which the Roman Church has ever sold licenses for crime, has been in this, of announcing (not in America, in this century) a tariff of cash-prices at which (_with_ contrition) all evil consequences of certain sins, whether in this world or the world to come, would be cancelled. The price-current in Germany in the sixteenth century, ranged as follows: for polygamy, six ducats; for sacrilege and perjury, nine ducats; for murder, eight ducats. In Switzerland, at the same period, the price was for infanticide, four francs; for parricide or fratricide, one ducat."

This seems to us quite enough. The Catholic will perceive that our learned friend is not very well posted on Catholic matters. He evidently confounds sacramental absolution with indulgences, and indulgences with the dispensations which the church grants in particular cases, not from the law of God, nor the law of nature, but from her own ecclesiastical law; and supposes that the fees paid to the chancery for the necessary legal documents in the various causes that come before it, are the fees paid by the faithful for indulgences and the pardon of their sins. [Footnote 53] {253} A man who speaks of matters of which he knows nothing is liable to say some very absurd things. Nevertheless, the preacher says expressly, and we doubt not means to concede the point made by the tract, that indulgences are not licenses to commit sin, but he has labored to make his concession as little offensive to his Protestant brethren as possible. Still he concedes it. "I think, therefore," he says, "that the author of this tract is right in claiming that it is not just to assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin." No, she does no such thing, she only "intimates beforehand her willingness, if such and such crimes are committed, to make it all right with the malefactor both in this world and the world to come, for penitence--and CASH." He who should offer cash to pay for absolution would receive for answer, "Thy money perish with thee!"

[Footnote 53: For a full proof of the forgery of the above passage in the book called _Tax-Book of the Roman Chancery_, see Bishop England's Letters to Dr. Fuller, Works of Bishop England, vol. iii. p. 13.]

"Is IT HONEST _to repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priests to pardon their sins_--such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church--when any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every catechism and work on Catholic theology?"

The preacher thinks it is very honest, because, if the church prohibits and punishes it as simony, it is very evident that it sometimes happens. If the offence had never been committed, the church would never have had occasion to legislate on the matter. It was argued that for a long time the crime of parricide was unknown at Rome, because there was no law prohibiting and punishing it. This is his answer, and a proof, we suppose, of his candor of which he boasts, of his readiness to die rather than knowingly repeat a false charge against the church! The real accusation against the church, which the tract denies can be honestly made, is that Catholics are required to pay, or that the priest can lawfully exact pay, for the pardon or absolution he pronounces in the sacrament of penance. It does not necessarily deny that the thing may sometimes be done, but, if so, it is unlawfully, is a sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, etc. The sin of simony, in one form or another, has in the history of the church often been committed, and those who committed it are, in general, favorites with Protestant historians, who seldom fail to brand as haughty tyrants and spiritual despots the noble and virtuous popes who struggled energetically against it, and did their best to correct or guard against the evil. But honest men will not hold the church responsible for the misdeeds of unprincipled men, which she prohibits and exerts all the power of her discipline to prevent and punish. The case is too plain to need argument. Penance, the church teaches, is a sacrament, of which absolution is a part, and to sell any sacrament or part thereof is simony, a grievous sin; and though there is no sin that may not have been committed, yet the fact of a priest, however depraved, demanding pay for sacramental pardon or absolution is not known to have ever occurred. The church prohibits it, indeed, but only in prohibiting simony, and we are not aware that she has ever passed any special law against this particular species of simony, and therefore the argument of the preacher falls to the ground, and for aught he shows, it is true to the letter that the thing is unheard of.

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"Is IT HONEST _to persist in saying that Catholics believe that their sins are forgiven merely by the confession of them to the priest, without a true sorrow for them, or a true purpose to quit them_--when every child finds the contrary distinctly and clearly stated in the catechism, which he is obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments? Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any Catholic catechism."

"Nothing," says the preacher, "could be more conclusive than this logic, if we could constantly presume that the belief and practice of the people always coincide exactly with the teaching of the catechism." If the coincidence were perfect, there would be no sins to confess, no need of the sacrament of penance, and no question as to the condition of ghostly absolution or pardon could ever be raised. But as the preacher finds nothing to object to under this head in the teaching or official practice of the church, we must presume that he finds the logic of the tract, whatever may be the deceptions, if any, practised upon the priest, is quite conclusive, and he certainly concedes quite enough to show that the accusation against the church which the tract repels, cannot be honestly repeated. We would remind the preacher that no one is forced against his will to go to confession, and the very fact of one's going is presumptive proof of sincere sorrow for his sins, and a resolution, weaker or stronger, God helping him, to forsake them. Why should he seek to deceive the priest, when he knows that if he seeks to do so, he would not only receive no benefit from the absolution, but would commit the grievous sin of sacrilege by profaning the sacrament?

"Is IT HONEST _to say that Catholics believe that man, by his own power, can forgive sin_--when the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him, according to these words, 'Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?' St John xx. 23."

The preacher has offered no reply, or, if he has, we have overlooked it, to this grave accusation; perhaps he has none to make. The journals, however, attempt a reply, the purport of which is, that, though the tract states truly the official teaching of the church, yet Catholics practically believe, as every one knows who has had intercourse with them, that it is the priest, not God, who they believe pardons sin. This, too, is in substance the reply of Mr. Bacon throughout. The tract states the doctrine of the church correctly on all the points made, but then that, it is pretended, is not the doctrine of the Catholic people, the practical doctrine of Catholics, and gives no clue to the practical workings of the Roman system--a clear confession that they really have nothing to object to Catholic doctrine and practice, though they have much to object to in what is no doctrine or teaching or practice of the church. The reason of this, we suppose, is, that they have no conception of the church. Now, we think it is very likely that there are many Catholics who cannot define very scholastically the distinction between efficient cause and instrumental or medial cause; but put the question to the most ignorant Catholic you can find. "Do you believe the priest as a man in confession pardons your sins?" as soon as he gets hold of what you are driving at, he will answer: "No; he pardons or absolves them as a priest." This answer means that the priest does not absolve by a virtue in him as a man, but by virtue of his priestly office, to which he is appointed by the Holy Ghost; that is, as the minister, or as the tract says, the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ. All Catholics unhappily do not conform their life to their faith; but you will find that the faith of the people is that of the church, that which the church officially teaches; and there is no room for the distinction which non-Catholic ministers and journals, try, as their best resort in self-vindication, to make between Catholicity in the formularies of the church and the Catholicity that works practically in the faith and lives of the Catholic people, whether learned or unlearned. {255} All this talk about the practical workings of the system is moonshine, at least outside of the record, to which no Catholic is bound to reply. We are required to believe and defend only what the church teaches and requires of her children:

8. The tract concludes with the question,

"Is IT HONEST _to make these and many other similar charges against Catholics_--when they detest and abhor such false doctrines more than those do who make them, and make them too, without ever having read a Catholic book, or taken any honest means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church really teaches? AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY."

In spite of all that sectarian preachers and journals can say, the unprejudiced and fair-minded American will answer, to each question the tract puts, No! it is not honest, but gravely dishonest; for every one is bound to judge Catholics by the standards of the church, open to all the world. And these manifestly disprove the accusations.

We have attempted no defence in this article of our holy religion itself. We have only attempted to show our Protestant accusers that their efforts to prove themselves honest, in their false charges against the church and her faithful children, are unsuccessful. They have not successfully impeached the tract in a single instance, nor vindicated themselves from a single one of its charges; nor can they do it. Many things may be said against the immaculate spouse of Christ; the daughters of the uncircumcised may call her black, may rail against her, and call her all manner of hard names; but she stands ever in her loveliness, all pure, and dear to her Lord, who loves her, and gave his life for her, and dear to the heart of every one of her loving children, and all the dearer from the foul aspersions cast upon her by the ignorant, the foolish, and the malicious.

We have not taken much notice of the professions of candor and independence of the preacher; for we have never much esteemed professions which are contradicted by deeds; nor are we easily won by fine things said of individual Catholics by one who in the same breath calumniates the holy Catholic Church. Few sermons have we read that show a more decided hostility to our religion than these of the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Brooklyn, which are unredeemed from their low sectarian character by any depth of learning, extent of historical research, force of logic, richness of imagination, flow of eloquence, or sparkle of wit. We have found them very commonplace and dull; we have found it a dull affair to read and reply to them; and we fear that our readers will find our reply itself very dull, for dulness is contagious.

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Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.