Chapter VII.

After all, there was not much in the mysterious box. A square package, looking like a letter, folded in the old style, and just fitting in the box, lay uppermost; upon the outside of which, in a clear, round hand, was written the name _Richard Heremore_. Before breaking the seal of this, Dick took out two paper boxes, in each of which was a miniature, painted on ivory; he glanced at one, then with an expression of intense relief, not unmingled with something of awe, he, for the first time, turned to Rose.

"Look, Rose," he said, in a low voice.

"Do you think this is your mother?" she asked, in a voice even lower and more reverential than his, after a long, long look; for it was a young and beautiful face, with clear eyes that looked frankly at you, and that bore in every feature the unmistakable stamp of true womanliness. 'Do you think this is your mother?"

"I cannot tell yet," said Dick; "but as _this_ is here, it's all right; there's nothing more to dread now!"

But Rose did not answer. Her quick eyes had seen more than the character; they had placed the original of that portrait in her proper social sphere, and that--the highest.

The other miniature was of a man somewhat older, though not more than twenty-five or thirty, if so much; but it was a face of less character and less culture. Dick showed it to Rose, but neither made any comment upon it. Dick then broke the seal of the letter, and again Rose turned away her face. A few slips of paper fell out as he unfolded the package; these he gathered up without looking at them, and then, calling Rose's name once more, he read in a low voice, from the yellow paper, his mother's letter:

"My Dear Child: I have put aside a few little things that have been treasures to me, and as I may not live to see the day when I can give them to you, I write a few lines with them, which possibly may come to your eyes some day. A healthy, ruddy little fellow you are, creeping around my feet and trying to climb up my dress as I write, and I am so weak a woman that I may hardly stoop to raise my darling to my lap. It is hard for me, seeing you so, to write to you as a man; and what kind of a man I have no way to judge. I fear I shall not live long enough to leave any impression of your mother's face upon you; and what will become of you, my own dear child, in this terrible world after I am gone, I dare not think. You are so tender and good now that I cannot realize that you will change; but you will have no one to guide you. You put your arms up to me, your brown, hard little arms, as if to beg me not to speak of this, and I will try to believe that God will save you through everything; so that when you read this, you will be one whom I would be proud to own if I lived.

{791}

"You are my greatest comfort, and such a comfort! It seems as if you knew everything, and could console for everything; and often I think that for you I shall in some way find strength to struggle on for a few years more. Dear child, I know not how much or how little to tell you. I would like to write volumes for you, that you might know me in the future days when no father, mother, or brother will be near to help you in your troubles. But I can only write a little.

"I have been married five years, and you are my oldest but not my only child. You have a sweet little sister asleep on the bed. I say the words to you aloud, and you creep on tiptoe to look at her, turning and smiling at me as you go. Even if she should live after I am gone, which I cannot wish for, I cannot tell whether you will be kept together; if not, I know you will care for her if it is possible, if only because your dead mother asks it. I cannot believe the wonderful child-love you have for her and me will be permitted to die out, or that your heart can ever grow hard, your heart so tender now. There! kiss the dimpled hand ever so softly and come away, for you must not wake the darling now. Will you love her always, let what may be her fate? Remember always, she had no mother to guide her. Your father I have not seen for two years, since Mamie was a few months old. I have since heard that he is dead. I know none of his relatives; for he brought me an entire stranger to New York three years ago, and seemed unwilling that I should make many acquaintances. I have no relatives whom I have ever seen, in the world, except my father, who lives, or did live, at Wiltshire, in Maine. I do not know if he is living or not; I have written to him again and again, but I have heard nothing from him. He would have come to me if he were alive, for he was always devoted to me. I could write you a hundred letters about his love and devotion; and now, if I could only let him know where I am, he would come to me wherever he might be. I have named you for him. He saw you once when you were a month old; he came and took me home for the summer; he loved you dearly, as he loved me, and was proud enough of you. If only I could put you and Mamie in his hands now, how contentedly I could die! For this I toiled and struggled from the day I saw your father last, until this poverty and sickness have killed all hope. Not all hope; for I think every step I hear--and I hear thousands passing by--that my father has come to me to save me, to take my darlings under his care, and to let me die on my own white bed in my own dear room at home.

"There, darling, there's no more to tell. Why should I tell more? You come of good blood, my child, of a brave, upright race. My child, my darling, put your arms tight, tight around mamma's neck, and promise for the man that you will be worthy of your name and race. Be good, be true, be honest. How I should blush in my grave, it seems to me, if child of mine, if these dear children, so pure and innocent, who cling to me now, covering me with kisses, should soil their white souls with falsehood, deceit, or dishonesty. God knows what I would say. Fatherless, motherless, I must leave my little ones; no earthly help, no comfort, nothing, only the one hope that will not leave me to my latest breath, that my father lives, will find me out, save me, and take care of you.

{792}

"It has been hard for me to write this poor, childish letter; one poor apple-woman--poor, yet not so poor as I--has been my only friend; to her I have talked for hours of you, and she has listened earnestly, and will do her utmost for you two. God will aid her, I know. I will not put any 'good-byes' on paper so little likely ever to be seen by your eyes; but I will kiss you a thousand times, my darling, while I take one last look at these portraits of your father and me, you leaning against my knee looking at them too. You, pure, unsullied child, shall cling to me, and answer, though you cannot understand, the promises to be good I ask of you to fulfil through all your life. Your mother,

"Mary Heremore Brandon."

"_Brandon_!" repeated Rose and Dick together, when he read the signature. Then Dick read the slips of paper that had fallen out of the letter; they were all the same, notices of her marriage from different papers:

"MARRIED. At the residence of the bride's father, on Wednesday, May 5th, Charles Brandon, of New-York, to Mary, only daughter of Dr. Richard Heremore, of Wiltshire, Maine."

Rose looked at Dick almost with terror in her face. Dick knew not how to answer her.

"It may not be the same," she said at last.

"The letter does not seem sure of his death," suggested Dick.

"But you have met him--would he not have noticed your name?"

"I should think so. But it was long ago, and perhaps he has known others of the name. Besides, Miss Brandon--O Rose! if she should be that sister!--Miss Brandon told me her mother died long ago; she seemed so proudly to disclaim this Mrs. Brandon, whom I called her mother."

"How could he be with your father, if Mr. Brandon is that, and he not know any thing about you?"

"I cannot understand it. I will go to see him to-morrow."

"O Dick!"

"Yes, dear Rose, I must. I have only two days of vacation left, and I must know all before I go back."

"And then you will not be here for so long?"

"Yes, I will, Rose; I'll be here if I have to walk all night, see your windows, and go back before daylight! Yes, I will see you. I will not bear all the long separation as I did before, it is too much! Now, may I go to-morrow?"

"Yes, Dick, you must go. O Dick! what a mother she was! I can just see her, so weak she could not lift little you in her arms; and yet, I am sure, giving you a thousand caresses, and crying over you as she wrote that letter! If she could only see you now!"

"I know she does see me; but she does not see me as I ought to be, having had such a mother."

"She is proud of you if she sees you."

"See how patient she was, Rose! She says she is poorer than the poor apple-woman, and yet no complaint; and she was not used to trouble, I am sure, from her face."

"So sweet and grave as she is! Really, Richard, look! Upon my word, Miss Brandon has just such eyes! It _is_ so! See! the same blue-gray eyes, so clear, deep, and looking at you so frankly and graciously; not with the frankness of a question asked; but--I can't describe it--but that calm, straightforward way Miss Mary has when she listens to you; always as if she would encourage you, too, to go on. Indeed, you must go to-morrow!"

{793}

"It is so strange, Rose. I feel my head almost turning. Have we time to read it over once more?"

"I fear not, for it is already quite late; but you will tell mamma and Aunt Clara about it, and Uncle Carl?"

"Oh! at once; as soon as I can. I shall think of nothing else until to-morrow. Rose, he must have treated her badly, or she would have given me his name instead of her father's."

"I think, perhaps she meant _Brandon_ to be added."

"She does not say a word against him; but she does not praise him. I will make him tell me, himself, if he is the man. Do you think he is?"

"I am sure of it! And Miss Brandon is your sister; perhaps that is why she spoke to you that Christmas day, and why you have always been so attracted to her."

"How strange it is! Will she be sorry to have me for a brother, I wonder?"

"Sorry! She will be very proud of you."

"I wonder how I should speak to her. O Rose, Rose! do say something to steady me; I feel so strange, and as if I were talking so foolishly!"

"You are not talking foolishly, dear Dick; and if you were, there is only Rose to hear you, and shall you not talk as you please to her?"

"Thank God, my darling! this has not separated us."

"No, not yet."

"Not yet!"

"What will your new father and your grand sister think of me?"

"Well, Rose, wait till I ask them!"

"Perhaps a grandfather, too," said Rose.

"I love him already. If he should be living, that would be something grand, wouldn't it? You may be sure she loved him."

"And you may be sure she never let him know until perhaps the very last, that she was in trouble. Women and children never tell their sorrows to those who are entitled to help them."

"Why, Rose?"

"Oh! I cannot tell you that! I only know it's so. Here we are at home. Have patience; for though to-morrow you will have the news, to night is all _I_ have!"

"And no matter what happens, Rose," said Dick, as they lingered a moment outside the house, "you will trust me just the same?"

"Of course I will," Rose answered readily. A question and answer that have been given--and falsified--I wonder how many times since the world began; falsified, for even a woman's faith is not without limit; though Rose thought it was, as many had thought before her. "Of course I will; why should you ask, Dick?"

"I don't know; only that everything seems whirling around with me to-night, and the only thing that seems clear to me is that I must not lose you."

"It will be your own fault if you do," said Rose. "But you must not try me too much; for things might get whirling around with me, too, some day, and I should not know faith from want of pride; so be good."

"And if it is possible, I must come down at once and tell you how it all ends. If it could only be that I could have you close at hand to tell you all!"

"Indeed! I am glad," exclaimed Rose, who, much as she loved Dick, could not endure to think of the time when she should have to leave her home. {794} "Come in, now. What will Uncle Carl say to all this, I wonder?"

Uncle Carl did not say much, when, the children having been sent out to play, the elders drew their chairs closer around the still standing tea-table, and listened intently to Dick's story. The others received it with many exclamations and much wiping of eyes; but the stolid German smoked his big pipe and looked, or tried to, as if he had known it all before.

"I'll know before this time tomorrow if it's the same," said Dick, when the reading was finished, and many conjectures had been put forward and discussed.

"It is the strangest thing ever was heard of," exclaimed Mrs. Alaine, "that he should meet you so often and not know who you were!"

"With your mother's name, too," added Mrs. Staffs.

"Perhaps, after all, he is not so ignorant," suggested Dick. "It may be that it was on account of my name he made so much of me."

"I think he must be devoured with remorse," Mrs. Alaine said forcibly, "whenever he thinks of his beautiful wife."

"This Mrs. Brandon couldn't hold a candle to her," added Mrs. Stoffs.

"I never saw her," said Dick.

"She was very pretty," explained Carl, speaking unexpectedly.

"Pretty!" cried Mrs. Stoffs, in great surprise.

"Pretty!" repeated Mrs. Alaine, with great contempt.

"Pretty!" echoed Rose, with great incredulity. "Why, Uncle Carl, she was a little doll-baby!"

"She was very pretty," persisted Carl.

"Well, indeed, if you call such a baby pretty, I give up!" said Mrs. Stoffs. "Why, Mr. Dick, she did not look as if she could say boo to a goose, and yet she ruled the whole house; it was her extravagance that ruined the poor man."

"I think it was his own dishonesty," said Carl.

"O Uncle Carl!" remonstrated Rose, "right before Mr. Richard."

"We don't know yet that he has anything to do with 'Mr. Richard,' as you call him; but I'd say it, if need were, to the man's own face. His wife may have been a little, tyrannical, extravagant fool; but the more fool he for letting her take other men's money out of his purse."

"Indeed, Carl, that's a thing they'll never say of _you_," responded his wife, laughing. "But now come away, and let Mr. Dick get some rest, for I suppose he'll be off by daylight."

"I shall, indeed," said Dick.

"Well, good-night! Mr. Dick, you must not let these things keep you awake; if you find your family out, it may be the last time you will sleep under our roof."

"If I thought that, Mrs. Stoffs, I should seek them with a heavy heart; but nothing can make that so but death, can it?"

"Go to bed, good people," grumbled Carl; "all your noise makes my head ache."

He went up with Dick and had a long conversation with him, after the rest were asleep.

"Go find Dr. Heremore, of Wiltshire, unless there comes to be no doubt that he is gone away, or dead," were his parting words; "he is better worth seeking than any other. You will need money, and you shall owe me for this." And he gave him a few gold pieces which Mrs. Stoffs, in the sanctuary of her own room, had hurriedly and gladly brought out from countless rags, all tied up in an old stocking, at her liege lord's command, for this purpose.

{795}

"But, Mr. Stoffs, I have, I think, enough for this."

"Then do not spend mine, but take it with you for fear of accident. Good-night; do not be fooled by anything Mr. Brandon may say--he's an artful one--but find out all you can about your grandfather; remember that."

So Dick was left to pass a sleepless, fevered night, filled with the strangest fancies, and perplexed by a thousand fruitless conjectures. At the first glimmering of daylight he was up, and, after making a show of eating the substantial breakfast his kind friends had prepared for him, turned, without being able to say more than a word or two, to leave.

"Dood-by," said Trot, sliding down from her chair, with her bib on, and her face not over clean, to get his parting kiss, as well as to put in a reminder for his return. "What 'oo bing Trot from the 'tore?"

"What do you want, Trot?" asked Dick, lifting her up.

"Me wants putty tat," she answered with animation; "dear 'ittle titten!"

Dick promised to do his best, shook hands silently all around, tried to laugh at the old shoe Minnie had ready to throw after him, at last heard the gate close behind him, and was alone on his way to the little yellow station-house.

"He'd better be alone," Rose had said when something had been said privately about accompanying him. "He has a great deal to think about, and he can do that best while he is walking in this fresh morning air."

"O mamma!" she said, when Mrs. Alaine stood beside her, after Dick had passed out of sight, "O mamma! if Mr. Brandon should take it angrily!"

"You may be sure he will not," replied Mrs. Alaine, "he is so broken down, he will be very thankful to find a son like our Dick who will be worth so much to him. He is the most selfish man ever lived, Mr. Brandon is."

"Well, I wish it were over," sighed Rose, turning back to the house and the day's round of household duties.

To Be Concluded.

----------

{796}

Translated From The French.

The Approaching General Council.

By Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop Of Orleans.

The church and the world have been filled with expectation for more than a year. When the catholic bishops were gathered at Rome to celebrate the eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter, and for the solemn canonization of saints, the Sovereign Pontiff declared the necessity of a general council, and announced, at the same time, his intention to convoke it at an early date.

The bull of induction has already appeared. On the twenty-ninth day of last June, the feast of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the Holy Father, by letters addressed to all the bishops of the Christian world, fixed the date of the future council, and summoned the Episcopate of the Catholic Church to Rome. Since that time, by two truly paternal letters, the Holy Father has invited the Greek Bishops, and our separated brethren of all the protestant communions, to profit by the future council to undertake again the work of reunion, already several times attempted by the church, but which has always been frustrated by the misfortunes and the evils of our day.

So it is no longer merely a hope. The first act necessary for the holding of the council is accomplished. The apostolic letters, known already throughout the world and received everywhere with joy, even amid the infatuations and the bitter woes of the present time, have stirred the hearts of the people. All look again to Rome. Even her enemies are attentive as well as astonished, and they feel that a great event is going to happen. And truly that which is soon to come to pass at Rome, and in the church, is a rare and solemn fact, a fact of sovereign importance, perhaps even the greatest event of the century. Let no one feel surprised at this language. I am well aware that events of immense importance have marked the beginning and the course of the nineteenth century. Profound revolutions have passed over it, and even yesterday we have seen one of the oldest thrones of Europe toppling over. Enmities and wars have disturbed nations. The old and new world are forced to meet the same difficult problems. Yet in this century there is something superior to worldly ambition and the interests of political passions. It is the spiritual interests of the people, and those supremely important questions, whose solution brings peace to the soul, and tells us of the eternal destinies of humanity. It is for such purposes as these that the Catholic Church calls her bishops to Rome. True it is that the church appears to many men as being of little importance; she seems to occupy only a small place in modern society, so small, indeed, that modern politicians have recommended that she should no longer be taken into consideration. Yet the church is, and must remain, the most noble power of the world, because she is the spiritual power; and Rome, the centre of this power--Rome which will soon see within her walls these great sessions of catholicity--will be always, according to the words of the poet, "the most beautiful and the most holy of things beneath the sun."--_Rerum pulcherrima Roma_.

{797}

What then is the Catholic Church, and what is this council which is going, within a few months, to present so grand a spectacle to the world? I propose to follow the example of my venerable colleagues, who have, in France and in the different parts of Christendom, published pastoral instructions on this subject. I will recall to your minds what an ecumenical council is, to which, for a long time, we have not been accustomed. I will state the motives, inspired from on high, which have induced the Holy Father to take this step, which is the most considerable and extraordinary of the pontifical government. Then we shall see if there is any foundation for the alarm that the announcement of this act has caused among certain badly disposed or feebly enlightened minds: finally, I will make known what we, bishops, priests, and faithful, have the right to expect.

I.

The Council.

"God," says Bossuet, "has created a work in the midst of us, which, separated from every other cause and belonging to him alone, fills all time and all places, and bears everywhere in the world the impression of his hand, the stamp of his authority: it is Jesus Christ and his church."

There exists, then, in this world, above all human things, though at the same time most intimately connected with them, a spiritual society, an empire of souls. An empire of a different and divine order, more heavenly than worldly, and yet an empire really here below, a complete society, having, like every other society, its organization, its laws, its action, its life. A society not built up by the hand of man, but by God himself. It does not require the approval of any human being; for its mission is as sacred as its source, and it draws from it all its essential rights. A pilgrim in this world and a divine stranger, as Bossuet has somewhere said, and yet a sovereign, the sovereign of souls, where she has an inviolable sanctuary. She does not encroach upon the temporal powers, neither will she abdicate at their suggestion her divine rights. She is happy to meet with their approval, and she does not disdain their alliance; but she knows, when it is necessary, how to do without them. She does not impede their terrestrial mission, nor will she consent that they should interfere with her career. A universal society is God's church, which knows no limit of time or barrier of space; she is the treasure-house of celestial goods, charged to communicate evangelical truth to men until the end of time; and, for this reason, as well as by her origin and her growth, she holds in a world which she alone has civilized, a place which no other power will ever fill. Yes, this marvel exists upon the earth; among all human, temporal, limited, and constantly changing governments, there is this spiritual society, this government of souls, extending everywhere, immutable, without boundaries, and which is called the Catholic Church.

If we examine her construction more closely--and we must do this if we wish to understand the meaning of the most solemn of her acts, the Ecumenical Council--we shall see with what divine art Jesus Christ has proportioned the means to the end. {798} It is a part of our faith, that the Son of God has given to men, not for a time but for the whole duration of time, "for all days, even to the consummation of the world, "a collection of truths, of commandments, and of sacred ordinances. The Christian society that our Lord called his church, _ecclesiam meam_, has the guardianship of these divine revelations. A visible society, because religion should not be an occult thing; and perpetually visible, because perpetuity has been promised to it; in short, a universal society, because all men, without exception, are called and admitted within her fold.

But the divine revelations could not be transmitted unaltered for ages, if they had been subjected to changing and capricious interpretations of private judgment; therefore it was indispensable that the doctrinal authority should be sovereign, that is to say, it must be infallible. An authority cannot be sovereign in matters of faith, and demand an interior assent, without being infallible. This it was that the divine Founder of Christianity has wished to do, and really did, when, giving to the apostles their mission, he pronounced these words, the last which have fallen from his lips: "As the Father has sent me, I send you. Go then and teach all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and teach them to observe all the commandments that I have given to man: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." Such is, then, the essential character of the church; it is a doctrinal authority, providentially infallible by the divine assistance, in all things revealed by God.

It is easily seen how unity is born of this infallibility; not an accidental unity, but a necessary and permanent unity, because the principle of unity is permanent in the church. The principle of unity, and besides this, a centre of unity, was among the indispensable conditions of a church thus founded. It was necessary that a teaching church, spread throughout the world, should have a head, a centre, a chief, in order that it might be united in a single and distinctive body. Jesus Christ has not neglected this necessity; for among his disciples he chose one whom he invested with certain special privileges, to whom he entrusted, according to his divine expression, "the keys of the kingdom of heaven," whom he called the rock, the foundation-stone of the edifice, whom he commanded "to confirm his brethren in the faith," whom he called the pastor of the sheep as well as of the lambs, that is to say, the shepherd of the entire fold.

This is the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. In order to place a perpetual check upon time, which destroys all things, and in order to give the necessary support to the human mind, which is ever changing, it was, indeed, necessary that a religious society should be thus constructed. But a divine hand was required to constitute a society of this kind, which was composed of frail men; and these grand characters of unity and authority, in perpetuity and in catholicity, are in the church as the shining seal of the powerful hand which has established it. Thus it remains firm among men, and even in spite of universal change. In vain is the natural restlessness of the human mind shocked at the dogmas of our faith, and heresies succeed to heresies; [Footnote 283] this constant movement cannot affect her firm constitution; she will remain, as says the apostle, "the pillar and ground of truth"--_Columna et firmamentum Veritatis_.

[Footnote 283: "It is necessary that heresies should be." Corinth, xi. 19. Terrible necessity, says Bossuet.]

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Such is the Catholic Church. An ecumenical council is this Catholic Church assembled to do, with more solemnity, the same work which, dispersed, she does every day. This work is the transmission and authentic interpretation of the dogmatic and moral truths of divine revelation. This is what I desire to explain at this time, so that it may be clearly understood by our contemporaries, who have long been unaccustomed to these things. My design is not, indeed, as you know, an intention to write so exhaustively that no one else may treat upon the questions connected with the councils of the church. Volumes have and could again be written on this subject. But at least there are some necessary notions which require to be explained with precision, since these matters are not familiar at this day, and also because, as on every other topic, the simple and fundamental ideas are always the most useful.

A council is an assemblage of bishops convoked for the purpose of discussing questions concerning the faith, morals, and discipline. A council is particular or general; particular, if it represents only a part of the church; general or ecumenical, when it represents the universal church. A general council, simply because it represents the whole church, has the gift of doctrinal infallibility and supreme authority given by Jesus Christ to the church herself, to the body of pastors united to their chief. A particular council has no infallibility.

The supreme chief of the church, the Pope, and he only, has the right of convoking general councils. For the same reason, the Pope alone has the right of presiding over their deliberations. And as a question of fact, it is true that popes, either personally or by legates, have presided over every ecumenical council. Thus at Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, as well as at Trent, the popes presided by legates. At the councils of Lateran, Lyons, Vienna, and Florence, they presided personally. "Holy Father," wrote the fathers of Chalcedon to Pope St. Leo, "you will preside in the midst of the bishops, who are judges of the faith, as the chief over the members in the persons of those who hold your place." It is the sovereign pontiff's duty to close the council, to dissolve it in case of necessity, and to confirm its decrees. The accord of the bishops and the Pope is manifestly necessary for the ecumenical character of a council.

Gathered in council from all quarters of the world, and having the Pope at their head, as witnesses of the faith of their churches, as judges of the divine law, "_Episcopis judicibus_" said the fathers of Chalcedon. "_Defining I have subscribed_," "_I have subscribed pronouncing with the holy synod_;" [Footnote 284] thus it was that the bishops of Chalcedon and Ephesus, and also of Trent, affixed their signatures.

[Footnote 284: "_Definiens subscripsi_:" "_Subscripsi pronuntians cum sancta synodo_."]

Custom governs the exterior forms used in these assemblies. The solemn sessions, where the decrees are promulgated, are distinguished from the congregations where they are elaborated; with what care, what exactness, what profound research, the history of the Council of Trent has already shown, and the coming Council of Rome will give us a no less remarkable proof. The Holy Father, indeed, ever since he took the great resolution of convoking a council, has been occupied with activity proportioned to the importance of the future assembly. He has used such means as were proper for the head of the church in an ecumenical council. {800} Several commissions or congregations, composed of learned cardinals, and of theologians chosen from different nations, were at once appointed by him, and are now zealously working upon the questions which will be considered in the council. There is a special congregation upon Dogma, one upon Canon Law, one to consider the various questions concerning Religious Orders, one to discuss the relations of Church and State, and one upon the churches of the East.

It is the usage of the church, when the Pope intends to convene an ecumenical council, to notify in advance the bishops who bring there not only the authority of their sacred character, but also the counsels of their experience, because their dispersion in many different countries has given them great knowledge and a special competency to understand the times and the needs of their people. Thus Pius IX., in two allocutions, addressed to the bishops assembled at Rome, announced to them the future council. By his last Bull, he has called them all there and fixed the precise date, so that the prelates, notified and convoked in advance, may have the time to study the questions at their leisure, and arrive perfectly prepared at the date indicated by the Sovereign Pontiff.

I do not need to add that, although the Pope and bishops can add disciplinary laws, and modify, more or less, the canon law, because these are not by their nature immutable, that in matters of faith, it is not the business of councils to make dogmas. Dogmas are never made in councils, but they may be formulated there. All that concerns dogma is learned from the holy Scriptures and tradition, and from their authorized interpreters. It is only after these have been thoroughly investigated and discussed, and after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, that the council declares what has always been, what is now, the belief of the church.

History counts eighteen ecumenical councils. [Footnote 285]

[Footnote 285: The following is a list of these eighteen ecumenical councils: 1. Nice, in 325, against Arius, who denied the divinity of the Word. 2. Constantinople, in 381, against Macedonius, who attacked the divinity of the Holy Ghost. 3. Ephesus, in 431, against Nestorius, who erred concerning the Incarnation, and refused to give the Blessed Virgin the title Mother of God. 4. Chalcedon, in 451, against Eutyches, who originated an error, the opposite of that of Nestorius. 5. Constantinople, in 553, against the three celebrated chapters which fostered the error of Nestorius on the Incarnation. 6. Constantinople in 680, against the Monothelites, who continued the error of Eutyches, in denying that Jesus Christ had a human will. 7. Nice, in 787, against the Iconoclasts, or breakers of images. 8. Constantinople, in 869, against Photius, the author of the Greek schism. 9. Lateran, in 1123, or the promulgation of peace between the ecclesiastical power and the empire, after the long quarrels of the Investitures, and also for the Crusades. 10. Lateran, in 1139, for the reunion of the Greeks and against the errors of the Albigenses. 11. Lateran, in 1179, for different questions of discipline, and against the heresies of the day. 12. Lateran, in 1215, against the Vaudois. 13. Lyons, in 1245, for the Crusade and the troubles with the Emperor Frederic. 14. Lyons, in 1274, for the Crusade, and for reunion with the Greeks. 15. Vienne, in 1311, for the Crusade, and different questions of discipline, and for the affair of the Templars. 16. Florence, in 1439, for reunion with the Greeks. 17. Lateran, in 1511, against the conventicle of Pisa. 18. Trent, in 1545, against Protestantism. Several sessions of the Council of Constance have also been considered ecumenical.]

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It would be difficult to determine the almost infinite number of particular councils. Nothing can show more clearly than do these assemblies the wonderful vitality of the church, and the power she bears within herself to protect her own existence both against the errors which the human mind is ever producing, and also against corruption and abuses within the church, abuses which are unavoidable because of the infirmity of human nature. She is the only society upon the earth where revolutions are not necessary, and where reform is always possible. There is not one of these many councils but which has a regulation upon discipline at the same time that it has a definition of faith; and the great Council of Trent itself, without fearing that word, reform, which had revolutionized Europe, accepted it, because it belonged to the church, and accompanied its dogmatic decrees concerning the Catholic faith with decrees concerning reformation--_De Reformatione_. Assembled in ecumenical council the Pope and bishops thoroughly investigate the situation of affairs in the Christian republic, and use fearlessly the remedy for its wounds and its sufferings. Thus the immortal youth of the church is renewed, a more active and vigorous breath of life animates this immense body, and even society feels its happy influence. It is, then, one of these ecumenical assemblies which the Pope has just convoked. After long meditation upon the needs of the time, and earnest prayer for God's guidance, the head of the Catholic Church has spoken a single word. He has made a solemn sign, and it is sufficient. From the west and east, from the north and south, from every part of the habitable globe, from every race, from every tongue, from every nation, the chiefs of this great spiritual society, the dispersed members of this government of souls, leave their sees to meet at the place appointed by the Sovereign Pontiff. They meet, not as in human congresses, to debate concerning peace and war, conquests and frontiers, but to treat of souls and their sacred interests, of things spiritual and eternal. They obey the divine words of Him who founded the church, "_Go, therefore, and teach all nations_." They meet to accomplish the most august duty of their sovereign mission--to proclaim, in a general council of the church, and, as it were, in the very face of human errors, those truths whose guardianship has been confided to them by Him who is the Truth itself. Such is the work of an ecumenical council. Can there in this world be a greater one?

It is now three hundred years since the world has seen one of these assemblies; even at the beginning of this century they were considered impossible. "In modern times," wrote J. de Maistre, less than fifty years ago, "since the civilized world is, so to speak, cut up into some sovereignties, and the world has been so much enlarged by the boldness of our sailors, an ecumenical council has become a chimera."

The political difficulties which so provokingly impeded the Council of Trent were remembered, and it seemed that the present time was yet more unfavorable. It was thought that the modern powers were more defiant and more hostile, and consequently that the liberty of the church was in greater danger, her action more circumscribed than ever. But we wronged our century, and instead of coming before God with complaints, we shall do better to adore his powerful hand, which, as an ancient proverb goes, "can write straightly on crooked lines," and force events to bend themselves, in spite of man's efforts, to his eternal designs. A missionary and a traveller, the church longs to see the road diminish. A preacher and a liberator, she profits and rejoices over the destruction of fetters. Then our age has accomplished these two works, the suppression of distance, the breaking down of barriers. I understand the words distance and barriers in the social and political sense, as well as in a material point of view. It was thought that they would serve only the world's interests, but they are really allies of the faith; all this marvellous movement, which seemed to be contrary to catholic ideas and opposed to the Catholic Church, will turn to her advantage. {802} The spirit of the age obliges political governments, whether they be willing or not, to act more fairly toward the church, and it has destroyed the old prejudices which even recently have hindered her actions. The holding of an ecumenical council is easier to-day than it would have been in the times of Philip II., Louis XIV., or of Joseph II.

"For the convocations of the bishops alone," says again J. de. Maistre, "and to establish legally this convocation, five or six years would not be sufficient." To-day it has been enough for Pius IX. to post his bull upon the walls of the Lateran; modern publicity, in spite of many wishes to the contrary, carries it to the extremities of the earth. Soon, thanks to the marvellous progress of the sciences and mechanics, the bishops will hasten to obey the Pontiff's summons on the wings which steam has given to our vessels and our cars. These have, as it were, consumed space. The bishops will come from every free country, and, as we hope, even from those which are not free. And thus--for I like to repeat it--this double current of the ideas and of the industry of our time is going, in the future, not to serve the material life of man alone, but also to aid us in the government of souls, in the highest manifestation of the spiritual life of man, in the greatest work of God's Holy Spirit upon the earth. It is just, as divine Providence has so willed, that we should see in this the secret harmony hidden in the depths of things and in the unity of divine works. Matter is placed once more at the service of the spiritual, and the thoughts of man follow the order of God's counsels.

Three times already, as you are aware, the bishops have gathered about the vicar of Jesus Christ within a few years; but none of these three great reunions had the character of a council. The glory of resuming the ancient traditions of the church, so long interrupted, by the convention of a true ecumenical assembly, has been reserved to this magnanimous Pontiff, so powerful in his mildness, so calm amid his trials, and so confident in that God who has sustained him and who has manifestly inspired him to undertake the work of summoning the ecumenical council.

II.

The Programme Of The Council.

And why, with what thoughts, has the head of the church called to this great tribunal of catholicity those whom he names as being "his venerable brothers, the bishops of the catholic world, whose sacred character has called them to partake in his solicitudes? "_Omnes venerabiles fratres totius catholici orbis sacrorum antistites, qui in solicitudinis nostrae partem vocati sunt_." The apostolical letters inform us clearly. It is necessary to read them and to judge the church with equity by her own statement, not by rancorous or frivolous commentaries. The programme of the future council is thus traced in the bull of the Sovereign Pontiff:

"This ecumenical council will have to examine with the greatest care, and determine what is best to do in times so difficult and so perverse as these, for the greater glory of God, for the integrity of the faith, for the honor of divine worship, for the eternal salvation of men, for the discipline of the regular and secular clergy, for their useful and solid instruction, for the observance of ecclesiastical laws, for the reformation of customs, for the Christian education of youth, for general peace and universal concord."

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"It is necessary for us to use every exertion that, by God's help, we may separate every evil from the church and from society; to lead back into the straight way of truth, justice, and salvation, those unfortunate people who have wandered from it; to repress vice and refute error, so that our august religion and its salutary doctrine may acquire a new vigor throughout the world, that it may be extended further every day, that it regain its empire, and thus that piety, honesty, justice, charity, and all Christian virtues maybe strengthened and flourish for the greatest good of humanity."

The entire programme, all the work of the future council, is in these words. There are, then, two great objects, the good of the church and the good of human society. This is its object and its only object.

But especially does the church assemble her bishops that her interior life may be reanimated, and, as the apostle says, "To stir up the grace of God which is within us." The reason of this is because the church has the wonderful privilege that I have already mentioned--she is the only body which possesses the power of perpetually renewing her youth in the course of a perpetual life. It is in virtue of this divine constitution that none of the truths which she has preserved can change, can be lost, can be increased--that not even a syllable can be altered or an iota destroyed! "One jot or one tittle of the law shall not pass away until all be fulfilled," said Jesus Christ. The church is a living institution composed of men, borrowing its head and its members from every nation and from all ranks, always open to receive those who wish to come to her, and unceasingly increased by the addition of new races of men among her children. A river which has received many streams into its current reflects the objects along its banks and adapts its course to the climate, and to the country with its irregularities; so the Catholic Church has the gift of accommodating herself to the times, to the institutions, and to the requirements of the generations through which she passes and the centuries which she civilizes.

And more than this is true, because in the world she labors perpetually in order that she may ever become more worthy to speak of God to men, and in a way to be heard and understood by them. She is continually examining, with respect, and at the same time with sovereign authority, her disciplinary books, her laws, her institutions, her works, and especially her members, distributed in the different grades of the hierarchy. Indeed, we do not believe that we are without faults or blemishes. "Ah! should we be astonished," Fénélon used to say, "to find in man the relics of humanity!" But, eternal thanks be given to God, we find in the imperishable treasury of truth, and of the divine laws which we are called to guard, the means of recognizing our faults and reforming our manners.

Thus it is especially against ourselves, or rather for ourselves, that this council is going to assemble. There will not be one among us to take his seat in this august assembly, who has not in the early morning bent his knee upon the lowest step of the altar, bowed his head, struck his breast, and said, "If God is not better known, if he is not better served than by me, if the truth suffers violence, if the poor are not assisted, if justice is in peril, O God! it is my fault, it is my fault, it is my most grievous fault!" Monarchs of the earth, who settle the fate of nations with such a frightful boldness, an examination like this would be good even for you, if you could only endure it! {804} O human assemblies, parliaments, tribunals, popular conventions, do you think that this rigid self-examination, these confessions, these scruples, and these courageous habits of discipline and reform, will be useless in appeasing blind agitation and arrogant passion, or in rousing up sleepy routine?

When each of us has thus examined, questioned, and accused himself, we shall ask ourselves, What are the obstacles which to-day prevent the propagation of the faith among those who have not yet received it, and its reestablishment among those who have lost it? We shall revise regulations, we shall reform abuses, we shall reestablish forgotten laws, we shall modify whatever requires modification. Under the supreme authority of a common father, of the bishop of bishops, the experience of old men, the zeal of the young, the inspiration of the holy and the wisdom of the wise, will all concur in declaring the present condition of the church, its mission upon the earth, and its duties in the future. This examination will be made in the most unconstrained and fraternal discussion, which will soon be followed by solid resolutions, which will become, then, and for centuries, the rule of the church's life.

Such will be the first object of the assembly of bishops. An object at once sublime and humble, one which fills the children of the church with respectful admiration, and which strikes her enemies with an astonishment that they seek in vain to disguise. Yes, our ministry is so noble, our assemblies so elevated above other assemblies, that the language of man contains the involuntary admission of its superiority. If they desire to designate a noble office, a superior mission, they call it, often even with exaggeration, a _priesthood_. If they wish to speak of some unusually imposing and solemn gathering, which will have a place in history, they say it was a _council_ of kings or legislators. Human language has no more lofty words than these: not that we should pride ourselves upon them, for our hands have not done these things. They come from God, and the dignity of the words which express them recalls to our humility at once the majesty of our vocation and the formidable extent of our duties.

But what is the cause, in our day and at this hour, of the retreat of the entire catholic episcopate into the breast of a new cenacle? If I may presume to put it thus, what does this vigil of arms mean? [Footnote 286] Why these preparations, this work of a great council? Why has the Sovereign Pontiff, under the eye of God, and from his inspiration, judged it proper to call the church together in this second half of the nineteenth century?

[Footnote 286: The Bishop of Orleans is here referring to the pious custom of the days of chivalry, which compelled the knight who was to receive his armor for the first time on the following morning to pass the vigil watching in the chapel, where his future arms were placed upon the altar.]

It was said of our Master, the divine Saviour of the world, that "he was wounded because of our iniquities." Yes, it is for the iniquities of man, and for our own, that we are going to impose such a work upon ourselves. The more dangerous the times are, the more necessary is it for us to be pure enough to withstand the most formidable conflict, wise enough to enter into the most stirring discussions, prepared to engage in the rudest conflicts. And if men ask why we are striving to increase knowledge and charity among ourselves, we will answer that, not forgetting ourselves and our own needs, we are doing it also on their account, looking earnestly upon their condition, their aspirations, and their sufferings, and with a hearty desire to do them more good.

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III.

Causes Of The Council.

What is the condition, then, to-day, of the souls and the state of the races which are spread over the surface of the earth? There are few who have not been interested in this question. The Pope, looking upon the world and lending his ear to the sound of the struggles of contemporary society, could not help seeing, what every one knows, that now is a time of profound crisis; or, as it is expressed in the papal bull, there are torments which are afflicting at this time both church and society: "_Jam vero omnibus compertum exploratumque est qua horribili tempestate mine jactetur ecclesia, et quibus quantisque malis ipsa affligatur societas_." What is this crisis of the church and the world? If we collect in our mind the course of history and the vast ocean of ages on which we are borne for a moment, only to be swallowed up in our turn, you will first answer that this crisis is only an incident of a perpetual crisis, an interrupted scene of the drama which the destiny of the human race is composing. Untried travellers are ever thinking the voyage a long one, and that the sea has dashing waves and tempests only for them. Old sailors know that the ocean is always uncertain and that the storm of to-day has been preceded by many a severe gale.

But if we are just, as well as attentive, we shall recognize that the crisis of the present time is not a chance one, and that, like others which have gone before, it will not escape the guidance of God. I say even, when I remember the profound designs of providence, that this crisis is not without its grandeur, that it has both beauty, laws, and an end, just as do those natural phenomena which appear the most confused and disordered. Through continual struggles and obstacles, the evangelical ideal is followed by the church, who knows where she is going, and by men, often without their knowledge. The church, since her mission is to raise souls to that standard, is sorrowful here below, because that ideal is never realized perfectly enough for the glory and happiness of humanity. Undoubtedly the industry, the science, and the courage which men display to-day should be admitted. Within a few hundred years, vast treasures of science, wealth, and power have been developed. In two worlds, a most wonderful harvest of gifted men have appeared; artists and orators, _savants_ and generals, legislators and publicists, whose names will be recognized by posterity with well-merited gratitude. Yet after we have been just toward the good, let us be just to the evil, and acknowledge, with the august and truthful Pius IX., that human society is at this moment profoundly troubled.

But do not think that I intend to speak of political trouble and of war. I know that Europe has, within a few years, resounded more than once with the shock of battles, and that at the present moment many feel a dull restlessness. The people are arming and preparing, it is said, for gigantic struggles. Does the Sovereign Pontiff wish to speak of the mighty interests of political affairs, of questions of nationalities, of the frontiers of kingdoms, and of the balance of power? The church is not indeed indifferent to peace or war between nations, for every day her prayers ascend to heaven for concord between Christian peoples and Christian princes. {806} But yet, as I have already stated, she does not gather her council to solve these questions; the pacific assembly at Rome will meditate neither revolutions nor conquests, neither leagues of sovereigns nor treaties of nations, neither the establishment of dynasties nor their downfall.

While all Europe--and, if we look further, while the new world as well, as the old--is trembling at the threatening signs of war and revolution, at Rome, that august centre, that reserved place, gathered about the successor of St. Peter, around the chair of truth, the pastors of nations--their feet, it is true, upon the earth and on the immovable rock, but their eyes turned toward heaven--will be occupied with souls, the needs of souls the eternal salvation of souls; in one word, with the highest and permanent interests of humanity.

And surely they will do well; for, who can disguise it? are not souls in peril and the faith of whole nations menaced?

Do you ask, what new heresy has arisen? From the bosom of the church, none; the clergy have never been more closely united in the faith from one end of the world to the other. Without the pale of the church the same attacks, a hundred times repelled and a hundred times renewed, are levelled against all the points of Christian doctrine, but under new forms and a fresh vigor. Yet there is more than this. With an impiety which outstrips even the eighteenth century, the natural truths, those first principles on which every thing here reposes as its safeguard, even the natural truths, are denied or boldly discussed. Science is also to have its heresies. There is a schism among the philosophers. Reason has to take its turn in assaults which seemed reserved for the faith. Strange thing! Faith to-day is guarding the treasures of reason, and serves as their rampart! To-day it is you, O savants, O philosophers, who have need for us! You have often accused us of having neither science nor intelligence; but you, my poor brethren, who are so wise and so intelligent, have scarcely been able to defend a single well-known truth! And you, O Protestants! who expected to reform the church of God, it is you who to-day need reforming; it is you who feel most keenly how great an injury is the loss of the blessing of authority!

Look for a moment at the state of the intelligent minds of our day. Where have discordant philosophies led them? For three centuries, in Germany, impetuous minds have risen who, rejecting the guiding rein of faith, have shown to the astonished world the audacity, and at the same time the feebleness, of reason. This too has quickly been followed by like audacity and feebleness of morals. What has come from the prodigious efforts of talent and erudition? Nothing more admirable than the resurrection of every error of pagan times--pantheism, atheism, scepticism--and among those who yet cling to some form of religion, Christianity has in reality perished because of their many contradictory and ridiculous explanations of its doctrines. Thus have ended, under our own eyes, eighteen centuries after Jesus Christ, all these wonderful intellectual labors which are the greatest that the world has ever witnessed.

And what is the state, to-day, of France? Religious belief is vigorously attacked and even philosophical faith seems ready to disappear. The truths of reason are overthrown, and a pretended science, intoxicated with itself, denies human reason, and wishes, in the name of atheism and materialism, to snatch from man his belief in the immortality of the soul and his faith in God. {807} The most dangerous doctrines concerning morals, society, the soul, the family, a future life, and God, are warmly defended by means of journals, pamphlets, and even novels. Our contemporaries are either wrecked on this sea of errors, or float, without a helm or a compass, at the mercy of every wind of doubt. Dark storms are rising in human souls, and they penetrate the very depths of the masses of the people.

At the same time, there are many misunderstandings in regard to the church, and consequently there is an animated attack upon her doctrines. When the revolution, which is now making a tour through Europe and the rest of the world, appeared in France, the church was attached by bonds, which time had forged, to the old political order. She was carried with that political system into the struggle. Hence it comes that men have not been able to distinguish that which belongs to a legitimate state of society, without being at all necessary to the church, and that which constitutes the essential principles and immutable spirit of Christianity.

With certain men there is only one feeling toward the church--that of blind and implacable hatred. Forgetting eighteen centuries of benefits, they continue to wage an ungrateful war. The waves of revolution sweep in their course both truth and falsehood, virtue and crime, benefits and injuries, and the church, because she can make no compromise with error and vice, must persist in pointing out the illusion of deceitful words and the danger of false doctrines. Many stubbornly charge the church with thoughts and doctrines which are not hers. An infidel press and unscrupulous blasphemy against the church strive to separate the people from her fold. We hear, both in disorderly conventions and in the writings of those journalists who convene them, the most stupid and reckless assertions against the church mingling with threats of social war. And even in our legislative assemblies this unreasonable enmity appears, demanding a violent separation of the church and society.

And lately, when the voice of the Sovereign Pontiff was raised to describe the overflow of those impious and immoral theories which now inundate us, how many complaints, how many unmerited accusations were everywhere made! Without caring to understand his meaning, the Holy Father was calumniated. And with grief we saw statesmen, under the influence of violent passion and without asking or writing for any explanation, hasten to proclaim an antagonism which, thank God, does not exist.

These hostilities against the church, while separating from her the people who are deluded, render the peril in which these contemporary errors would drag us far more formidable. Doctrines are not inoffensive; M. De Bonald promulgated a law of history which is confirmed by constant experience, when he wrote these forcible words: "There are always great disorders where there are great errors, and great errors where there are great disorders." It is thought that brings forth facts; storms come from above.

And I say to men of good faith, you expected to establish the government of people and the conduct of life on reason alone. This experiment has been tried for three quarters of a century in France; what is the result? Are the morals of our people better? Is the civil authority respected? {808} Is liberty well established? Has war disappeared? Or misery? Or ignorance? And what can be said of those questions which reason asks with a rare fertility of invention, but which she cannot answer, and which concern the very organization of society--questions about labor, wages, and workmen? I do not exaggerate when I assert that since reason has pretended to reign alone, she reigns, like the night star, over shadows which she cannot dissipate. Even in the most civilized countries, the earth has become an abode of anxiety, distress, strife, and terror. The nineteenth century will soon close, agitated, weary, barren, and incontestably diseased. Rash indeed would be the one who would venture to predict that it would close in glory and not in perdition.

IV.

Review Of The Past

However, I beseech my friends and brethren in the faith not to exaggerate anything. It is permitted to be sad, I repeat, when we consider the present times; and I should feel bound to consider the soul which is not saddened by these things as possessing very little true nobility. The sons of the nineteenth century, the men of my day, have had many enchanting dreams; we have nourished many generous hopes; but now we are going to die, and to die deluded. But what! is our short life the whole of history? We did not live in the sixteenth century; we shall not see the twentieth; but the church lived yesterday, and she will live to-morrow. If I should say what she hopes, all my prophecies would not be forebodings; and if I should question her memory, the present times would appear all the brighter by being compared with the past. If we glance at ages which are no more, shall we find many centuries which did not have their troubles and their dangers? Ah! the discouragement of certain Catholics calls to mind the sentence of one of the sapiential books: "Say not: what thinkest thou is the cause that former times were better than they are now? for this manner of question is foolish." [Footnote 287] I was reading a few days since some of the bulls of convocation of the ancient councils of the middle ages. The lamentation of those popes of the misfortunes of their time far exceeds anything which is heard to-day. And, not to go further back than the Council of Trent, let the church tell us of those times, for she was present to them. What did she see then?

[Footnote 287: Eccles. vii. 11.]

That century was much like ours, because of its great discoveries, its appreciation of learning, and its revival of the arts; it was like the present century, also, in the bad use it made of these gifts. The sixteenth century peopled America, which had been only recently discovered; abandoned itself to cruel excesses of crime and avarice there, and introduced the disgrace of human slavery. It received treasures from that country, and it used them for the corruption of the morals of Europe. Whether we look upon the thrones, or among the masses of the people, or even in the church herself, we find many a sad spectacle. This century was the witness of the crimes of Henry VIII.; Elizabeth; Ivan the Terrible; Christian II.; the Medici; Charles IX.; and Henry III. This century saw the pillaging of Rome and the siege of Paris. {809} This century saw the pretended reformation rend the church, disturb the peace of all Europe, and divide Christians into two parts. If one desires to find out the evils which existed in the church and in society in those days, let him read the lives of great and holy people of that time; let him read of Bartholomew, of the Martyrs St. Charles Borromeo and St. Francis of Sales. I have already mentioned the papal bulls of the middle ages; but read those of the pontiffs who convoked the Council of Trent, and it will be soon seen that Adrian VI., Paul III., Pius IV., were then more alarmed at the dangers of the Christian republic than Pius IX. now is. There was tepidity, disorder, and scandal; the clergy poorly organized; the religious orders much relaxed; and then, too, princes were divided, the people oppressed, and war a daily occurrence in every country. And the council which had assembled amid such sad circumstances was compelled to meet in a little village hidden in the mountains of Tyrol, and or six years it was at the mercy of temporal princes to suspend or to allow it to proceed; and thus it was compelled to endure a perpetual conflict.

But vain are obstacles to God's church! Her virtue will triumph over everything. What great works and great men came forth from this council and from the regenerating breath that it breathed over Christian society! St. Charles Borromeo, St. Philip Neri, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Theresa, St. John of the Cross, St. Francis of Sales, St. Jane of Chautal, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Francis Borgia, and St. Francis Regis, heirs of the spirit of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. Then closely following these canonized saints were such apostolic men as the B. Peter Fourrier, Cardinal Berulle, M. Olier, M. Eucles, M. Bourdoise, the Abbé of Raucé, and many others. Then too came many congregations, which were fruitful in showing again the true standard of clerical and religious life, and in reanimating everywhere the love of study, regularity, and charity. Such was the universal improvement which the church displayed. This was followed by Fénélon and Bossuet and the majestic unity of the seventeenth century. And notwithstanding all the misfortunes that this immortal Mother of men has had to overcome, the church has now places of worship in Jerusalem, liberty in Pekin and Constantinople, the episcopal hierarchy in England and Holland, her councils in Baltimore, and her missionaries in Africa, Oceanica, and Japan. The church rejoices from the very depths of her soul to see that, although religion has got much to wish for and much to deplore, still in every part of the world the laws are now more equitable, the powerful are less oppressive, the weak are better protected, the poor more generously assisted, and slaves are declared free. But when the church turns to that pretended reform which so audaciously rose up against the spouse of Christ in the sixteenth century, she finds that its doctrines have almost vanished; it has run its course and exhausted its arms. How different is the present condition of the Holy Church! That church, whose abuses were so fearful that they could no longer be endured, to-day presents a Pope whose eminent virtue compels respect; her bishops are more numerous and zealous; her priests faithful, united, devoted; her religious orders, tempered by the fire of persecution and poverty, are learned and exemplary. {810} And when this church desires to assemble a council, it is to Rome she bids her children come, by the reliable roads, the rapid carriages and the facilities of every kind which she owes to the genius, the justice, and the resources of modern times.

It is well enough known that I am not among those who close their eyes and preserve silence in regard to the evils of the day and the many perils which lie in the way of souls. But neither do I wish to be ungrateful for the benefits of God, or to refuse to see the power which lends its strength to the church, and the help which he gives to the good cause, even in the worst times. Nor should it be forgotten that man's duty is to struggle for truth, and that each century has its task and its difficulty. I pity, I do not execrate, the present time. I do not despair of the people, and I do not anathematize their rulers. They are not omnipotent, and they have to contend with many difficulties. I pray for them, as the Catholic Church has always done; I caution them, both princes and people, as much as lies within my power, and I ask a loyal and sincere concurrence to the great work of the church, which is the sanctification and civilization of the world.

There are three things which should cause us all the keenest anxiety; these are, the destruction of faith, which has been hastened by the impious direction which scientific and philosophical studies have taken; the prevailing laxity of morals, which may fairly be attributed to the thousand new and seductive forms of vice; and lastly, the unjust statements which the enemies of religion delight in perpetuating between the church and the masses of the people. These are three diseases which, by God's grace, will be cured.

There are certain persons in whose eyes these three scourges are only the partial results of that which is now, and has always been, the greatest of all scourges, namely, revolution. I do not like to use this vague and indefinite word which, like a spectre, appears and grows formidable at one's will; but yet it is very true that these evils do foster in the bosom of society a division of mind, a scorn of God and of all authority, a pride and a hatred, which are continually threatening these societies with a return to revolutions.

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Catholicity And Pantheism.

Number Five.

Laws According To Which The Mystery Of The Trinity Should Be Understood.

We proceed, in this article, to lay down some general laws which govern, so to speak, the organism of the life of the infinite. The ignorance or the overlooking of these laws has ever caused those who plunged into the abyss of infinite life to search its genesis, to fall into one form or other of pantheism, as will be seen in the course of this article.

The first and principal law may be enunciated as follows: _No other distinction can be predicated of the infinite, but that arising from the relative opposition of origin between the terms._ [Footnote 288]

[Footnote 288: Realis distinctio inter relationes divinas non est nisi ratione oppositionis relativae. S. Th., S. T.; qu. 30, art. ad.]

We have already demonstrated that the life of the infinite is terminated by three distinct personalities, which establish a multiplicity in its bosom. A distinction, therefore, _must_ be predicated of the infinite. But of what sort?

This distinction, in the first place, could not fall upon the essence, without breaking its absolute simplicity. It must, consequently, be found among the terminations of the essence, or personalities. But, again, these three persons being possessed of the same identical essence, and thus participating in all its perfections, how can they be distinguished, one from the other? By a real opposition of origin. One person originates; the other is originated; as principle and term they are necessarily opposed to each other, and consequently distinct.

This law maintains both the unity and the multiplicity in the infinite. It maintains the unity; for the law does not require any real distinction between the persons and the essence, but only a distinction made by our reason to facilitate our apprehension; hence the three divine persons are truly and essentially the infinite. It maintains multiplicity, because the three divine persons are opposed on the ground of opposition of origin, and are consequently distinct. Here lies the whole difficulty, the reader will say; three things opposed one to another, and thus distinct from each other, how are they _one_ in essence?

We might reply, in the first place, that the possibility of this is grounded on a psychological fact, which every one accustomed to reflection may easily ascertain. Take the operation of the human spirit. Man knows himself; in this fact the _me_ enters twice; because the _me_ is the subject which knows, and at the same time the object known. The _me_ knowing is the being in the subjective form; the _me_ known is the being in the objective form. Again, man loves himself through the idea of himself: the _me_ here enters three times--the _me_ under the subjective form of knowing and of loving; the _me_ under the objective form of known; the _me_ under the objective form of being loved. {812} Nevertheless, all three are one and the same being: the _me_ under the subjective form knows and loves the _me_ under the objective form; a multiplicity and a unity which cannot be disputed; not only because of the testimony of consciousness, which avers to the fact, but because on this multiplicity and unity are founded two distinct sciences, psychology and ideology; psychology, which treats of the _me_ as subject, of its nature and properties; ideology, which treats of the product of the _me_, or ideas.

This operation of man is an image of the genesis of God's life. The infinite knows and loves himself. Into this fact of his eternal life he enters three times; the infinite, so to speak, as subject knowing and loving himself; the infinite as object known; the infinite as object loved. The infinite knowing himself is necessarily opposed to the infinite known, because it originates him by an intellectual operation; the infinite known is necessarily opposed to the infinite knowing, because originated by him. Again, the infinite loving himself and the infinite known (because the infinite cannot love himself except through the infinite known) are necessarily opposed to the infinite loved, because they originate him; the infinite loved is necessarily opposed to the infinite loving and known, because emanating from both. This relative opposition of origin causes a real distinction among the terms without breaking the unity of the essence.

But, the better to illustrate this law, and to show how well it maintains unity and multiplicity in the infinite, we shall here investigate the metaphysical law of the fact; that is, why and how things which are opposed to each other can harmonize and be brought into unity, in a third thing.

We have given an example of the fact in the operation of man; but let us give a few more instances to generalize it more and more. This fact is observed in both the ideological and ontological orders. First, as to the order of ideas. Two ideas, which in their own order are opposed to each other, harmonize and are brought together in a third idea. Take, for instance, the idea of substance and modification; substance conveys the idea of something subsisting by itself, that which requires no being to lean on in order to subsist. It means something standing permanent. The idea of modification is that of something which is not permanent in itself, but requires another being to lean on, to cling to, in order to subsist. The two ideas, as it appears, are directly opposed to each other, since their notions are contradictory; yet both ideas, contradictory one to the other in their own order, agree and are brought into companionship in the common idea of existence, one existing permanently, the other existing by leaning on another.

Moreover, take the transcendental idea of unity, truth, and goodness. Unity implies a negation of multiplicity, something undivided in itself and distinct from others. Truth implies a multiplicity, because it is essentially a relation of an object to an intelligence; _aequatio rei et intellectus_, as St. Thomas defines it. Goodness also implies a multiplicity, because it is essentially a relation of a being to a tendency or faculty.

These three ideas, contradictory or diverse, are brought into harmony in the common idea of being; for every metaphysician knows that unity, truth, goodness, are the transcendental qualities of being, and are identified with it.

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The fact is therefore indisputable in the ideological order, that is, of ideas contradictory one to another or diverse, agreeing in a common idea. It is no less true in the order of reality, because ideology is founded on ontology. Take, for instance, a body; it has length, breadth, height, and depth. These qualities of bodies are contrary to each other in their own order, yet they harmonize in the body. Take the forces of attraction and repulsion; both are contradictory laws, yet both agree in the same body. Man harmonizes and brings together in himself the laws of movement, of vegetation, of animality and of intelligence, which are different and contradictory to each other. And in his spirit, as we have said before, he opposes himself as an object to himself, as subject without breaking the unity of the soul. Now wherein lies the reason of this fact? In the ideological order it lies in the universality of ideas; in the order of reality, in the intensity of being, or in the amount of perfection. A universal idea comprehends and harmonizes in itself inferior and more particular ideas, opposed to or different from each other; a more perfect being, or a greater reality harmonizes and brings together inferior realities opposed to and diverse from each other, for the reason of its very intensity of perfection. A doctrine of St. Thomas beautifully illustrates this truth. He inquires into the distinction between intelligent and non-intelligent entities, and, after having remarked that intelligent beings are distinguished from those not intelligent by this--that the second are only capable of containing their own forms or actuality, whereas the first, besides their own actuality, are capable of receiving the forms or actuality of other things, because in intelligent beings is found the ideal similitude of the object known, he alleges, as a reason for this distinction, contraction or limitation. "From this it appears," he concludes, "that the nature of unintelligent beings is more contracted and limited, while the nature of intelligent beings is endowed with the greater extension; hence the philosopher said that the soul is as it were every thing." [Footnote 289]

[Footnote 289: S. Th., S. T.; part, 1, qu. 14, art. 1.]

This reason, however, which accounts for a more general idea or for a greater reality harmonizing in itself particular ideas or lesser realities opposed to each other in their own order, does not account for an opposition lying in the very bosom of a being. In other words, when the particular ideas and the lesser realities are taken as opposed to each other, they are considered distinct and apart from the general idea or greater reality. When they are harmonized in the general idea or greater reality, their limits and opposition are supposed to be eliminated; and this is the reason why the harmony becomes possible. But when the opposition is to be found in the same being, that is to say, when terms opposed to each other are not distinct from the general idea or greater reality, but lie in its very bosom, then what is it that maintains both the opposition of the terms and the unity and simplicity of the being?

In this case, a relation of origin causes the opposition without breaking the unity of the being.

The same being supposed subsistent, being capable of intelligencing itself, can beget an ideal conception of itself; in other words, the same being can exist as object understood in itself, as subject understanding, as object loved in itself, and as subject loving. In this origination, the relation between the terms originated is true and real; because the being as subject, as such, is really opposed to itself as object, and truly relative to itself. {814} The being could not be subject, without opposing itself as object to itself as subject. Yet this takes place without addition to or subtraction from the unity and the simplicity of the being; ontologically, the being is absolutely the same. What prevents us from perceiving this fully and clearly, is the action of the imagination and the essential condition of our intelligence, which cannot be exercised except by the help of a sensible phenomenon. Thus, when we strive to perceive a relation, it is pictured to our imagination as being something real, a kind of link or chain between the terms related. Now, when it is considered that this is only imaginary, and that ontologically a relation is nothing more than the attitude, to speak the language of schoolmen, of one object toward another, it is evident that a being, capable of intelligence and of love, can oppose itself, as object, to itself as subject, without addition to or diminution from or breaking up of the simplicity of the being.

We conclude--particular ideas or lesser realities, opposed to each other, can be harmonized in general idea, or greater realities.

The metaphysical reason of this is, that opposition proceeds often-times from limitation, and that general idea or greater reality, by elimination of the limits, can harmonize things opposed in their own order. This reason is satisfactory when the particular ideas or lesser realities are considered distinct and apart from the general idea or greater reality; that is, they are opposed when distinct--the opposition vanishes when identified. But the reason is not satisfactory to explain how there may be terms distinct and opposed to each other in the same being, without breaking the unity of the being. The law of opposition of origin, and the relation resulting therefrom, fully explains and maintains both the multiplicity and the unity in the same being.

Applying these ideas to the infinite, it is evident that, the distinction of the divine personalities taking place according to the law of opposition of origin, both the multiplicity of persons and the absolute simplicity of the divine essence are maintained. Because the distinction of the divine persons is caused by a relation of origin. Now, as we have seen, a relation of origin neither adds to nor subtracts from the essence; on the other hand, the relation between the terms is true and real. Consequently, the law of opposition of origin explains, as far as human intellect can fathom, how the distinction of the divine personalities can be maintained without at all detracting from the unity of the essence.

It will not do to say that theologians have imagined this law, to suit their systems. This law is given by the fact of human thought and by the ontological requirements of being. As we have already observed, being is essentially one, true, and good. Now these qualities at the same time are identified with being, because, when the mind tries to fathom them, it finds nothing added to being, and yet are they essentially a relation. Here we have identity and distinction, and nothing can explain it, as far as the mystery of being can be explained, except the law of opposition of origin. Our readers, from the above remarks, may see what becomes of that great objection, so often urged against the dogma of the trinity, and so many times disposed of by the doctors of the church, yet repeated again and again which the same assurance.

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It is said, _quae sunt idem tertio, sunt eadem inter se_; that is, things which are identical with a third thing are identical with each other. Now, the three divine persons, according to catholic doctrine, are identical with infinite essence; therefore they are identical with each other; that is, not distinct, and consequently cannot exist. Oftentimes, in thinking over this objection so triumphantly brought forward, we have thought of the well-known lines of Pope:

"A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; Those shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, But drinking largely sobers us again."

For the principle, when examined carefully, does not apply to those cases in which a distinction is predicated of a being caused by a relation to itself.

For instance, upon that principle we might reason thus: things which are identical with a third thing are identical with each other. But height, length, breadth, and depth are one and the same thing with bodies; therefore, are identical among themselves; and all distinction between height and depth, length and breadth, is a pure figment; and architects, calculating the proportions of a building, would do well to remember the principle, for it would save them considerable time and trouble.

Again: unity, truth, and goodness are identical with reality. But those things which are identical with a third are identical with each other; therefore, unity, truth, goodness are identical among themselves, and it is the same thing to be one, true, and good, as to be. And all the different sciences formed on these relations of being are useless wastes of thought and meditation.

Moreover, the thinking and loving subject in man, the thought and the love, are identical with the soul; therefore, according to the said principle, there is no distinction between the thinking subject and the thought, and all ideology and grammar is nothing but useless pastime, and we could correctly say, the soul is a thinking subject--the soul is a thought.

The truth is, that the principle applies only to particular cases, and is by no means general; because, as we have demonstrated, being, in general, requires three distinct relations to be conceived, and which, remaining distinct among themselves, are yet identical with being.

The infinite being could neither be conceived, nor be actual, without three distinct relations, which must be identical with the essence, without ceasing to be distinct one from another. If its truth were general and it applied to all cases, it would abolish all distinction in the infinite being, and consequently, abolish its actuality and intelligibility, and leave it only as an abstraction--the Hegelian being--nothing.

Moreover, that the principle does not apply to the infinite is evident from the very enunciation and meaning of the principle. Things which are identical with a third are identical with each other. In the enunciation and in the meaning, the principle supposes a plurality, and, consequently, a distinction; for the gist of the principle is to compare a multiplicity to a unity. Now, who does not see that, if there were not a supreme identity and a supreme multiplicity beyond the sphere and subordination of this principle, the principle itself would be destroyed?

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For if it be asked, what is the origin, the cause, and the supreme expression of plurality and distinction, which this principle supposes, we must rise to a supreme and typical distinction and identity, not subject to the principle; else we could never account for the existence of the principle.

The infinite is the supreme identity and the supreme multiplicity, the cause of all distinction and identity, and consequently, to it the principle cannot apply.

We conclude, therefore, that the first law governing the genesis of God's life is the law of opposition of origin, and that this law accounts both for the unity of essence and the trinity of persons in God.

We pass to the second law, which is as follows: _In the infinite, there must be a person who does not proceed from anything, and who is neither begotten nor made, but who subsists by himself_. The metaphysical reason of this law is, that there must be a first principle in everything, both in the ontological and in the ideological orders.

In the ontological order, because if every principle of reality, if every cause called for the existence of another to explain its existence, it is evident that there would be a process _ad infinitum_ without explaining anything. For an infinite number of causes, each requiring another cause to explain their existence, would multiply, _ad infinitum_, the necessity of first cause, existing by itself and containing in itself the reason of its existence.

In the ideological order, because every science must have a principle which is not derived from any other, and which must be taken for granted, otherwise science would become impossible. Ask a proof and a demonstration for every principle, say of mathematics, and you will never be able to learn it.

Thus, in the genesis of infinite life, there must be a first person who subsists by himself, otherwise the life of the infinite becomes impossible.

But, besides this general reason which requires a first person underived from anything, there is a particular reason, more closely allied to the subject, which demonstrates it. Because, if there were not a first person in the infinite, not proceeding from any other thing, it would originate either from the essence or from another person. Now, it could not originate from the essence; because between the principle and its product there is a real opposition of origin; therefore, in the supposition, there would be a real opposition between the essence of the infinite and the first person. Now, the essence in question is infinite, and only the finite can be opposed to it. The first person, therefore, proceeding from the essence, would be finite and not infinite; that is, he would be a creature. Moreover, it would be impossible that the first person should proceed from the essence, because the essence without subsistence is an abstraction, and an abstraction could not originate a reality.

It could not proceed from another person, because, as we have remarked, this other person, unless subsisting of himself, would require another as his principle, and so on _ad infinitum_.

As a corollary of this law, it follows that whatever other persons may be supposed to exist in the infinite, they must originate from the first; because--no other distinction being possible in the infinite, but that arising from opposition of origin--it follows that, if there were other persons in the infinite, and if they did not originate from the first, they could not be opposed to it, and therefore they could not be distinguished from it; in other words, they could not exist.

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A third law governs the life of the infinite; which, if possible, is yet more important than the former two. It is the law of immanence, which may be expressed in the following formula.

_The action, by which the persons in the infinite are originated, terminates inside of the infinite, and is permanent, eternal, and complete_.

Let it be observed that the action of an agent is always interior to it, because it is its own movement. But the product of the agent is not always so; sometimes it is laid inside the agent; sometimes it terminates outside the agent. In the first case, the action is called immanent or interior; in the second, transient or exterior; not because the action is not always interior to the subject, but because the effect or term of the action is exterior or foreign to the subject. The first sense, then, in which the law of immanence is to be applied to the infinite is, that the terms of the action of the first person terminate inside the infinite; because, if they were to terminate outside of God, they would be something different from him, and consequently not divine persons, but finite beings.

But the law has a higher and more important bearing: it implies that the action by which the divine persons are originated is not transitory, successive, and incomplete, but permanent, eternal, and complete; because God is infinite actuality, or actuality itself.

Forget for one single moment to apply this law to the genesis of God's life, and you fall at once into pantheism. For suppose the act, by which the divine persons are originated, to be transient, successive, temporary, incomplete, and it would follow at once that God is in continual development and explication. For He is either complete and perfect, or on the road to perfection. He is in _fieri_, or becoming.

And since, as we have often remarked, every development consists of different stages of explication, the last of which is always more perfect than those which precede it, it would follow that the genesis of God's life consists of a successive series of evolutions, the last of which is always more perfect than that which precedes it. Now, assuming the genesis of God's life at one determinate stage, and travelling backward to arrive at the first stage of explication from which He started, we should pass from a more perfect, defined, concrete stage of development, to one less perfect, less defined, less determinate, and thence to one still less so, until we should arrive at the most indeterminate, undefined, abstract stage of evolution; at the _least being_--the _being_ not _being_, the first principle of pantheism.

But, keeping in view the law of immanence, every one can see that God's action is supposed at once all perfect, complete, and adequate--in one word, eternal; and consequently every idea of development, progress, and succession is eliminated; and the consequence is, that the infinite is at once conceived as being infinite actuality; the first principle of Catholic theology--the precise contradictory of pantheism.

Hence, according to this law, the first person is always originating, and his origination is always perfect; the others are always originated, and their existence is always perfect, adequate, and complete. We say _always_ and _are originated_, not because the expressions convey the idea of eternal actuality and completeness, but because, our mind being measured by time, we can find no better words to exhibit the idea. Let this remark be made once for all.

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A corollary of this law is, that whatever persons are originated in the infinite, being within the essence of God and terminating in Him, they are--_the infinite_, because nothing can be added to the infinite.

Fourth law: _In the infinite there are no more than two processions_.

By processions we mean the origination of one person from another.

Now, that in God there are no more than two processions will appear evident, if we consider the proper operation of God. God is a spiritual nature; the proper operation of a spiritual nature is by intelligence and by will; therefore, the operation of God is by intelligence and by will, and consequently one origination is by the intelligence, the other by the will.

So far we have given those laws which govern, in general, the genesis of God's life. We must now proceed to those laws which govern the particular origination of each of the two divine persons.

Now, the law governing the origination of the second person is the law of intellectual generation. Generation implies the following elements:

1st, the production of a living being from a living principle;

2d, identity of nature between the two;

3d, this identity required by the very natural, essential, and direct tendency of the action by which the term is produced.

It is according to these elements of generative law that the second person in the infinite is produced; and consequently he is really and truly the _Son_ of God, as the producer is _Father_.

For the first person, whom we have said to be subsisting by himself, being intelligent activity, necessarily intelligences himself. He is the God-head intelligencing himself.

Now, an object understood, inasmuch as it is understood, exists in the understanding in an intelligible state; for to understand means just to apprehend, to grasp intelligibly that which is understood.

The Godhead, therefore, is in himself as the Godhead understood is in the Godhead understanding. Now, the object understood existing in the intelligence, is what is called mental word, intellectual conception, and by the Greeks, _logos_.

Hence in the Godhead exists the Godhead as mental word or logos. St. John, with a sublime expression, which electrified all the Platonic philosophers, began his Gospel thus: "In the beginning (the Father) was the Word."

This Word of the Godhead being conceived by an immanent act, an act which has neither beginning nor end, which is not power before it is act, is conceived therefore eternally, and consequently is coeternal with the conceiver. It is God or the infinite; because the first person, or intelligent activity, begets him by an operation which terminates inside himself, by the law of immanence; consequently the Word is identical with his essence, and is, therefore, the infinite.

Yet is he a distinct person from the first as Word.

For although the intelligent activity and the Word are both God, yet are they distinct from each other by the law of opposition of origin, which implies that a term proceeding from a principle is necessarily opposed to it, and consequently distinct from it. Thus the intelligent activity, as principle, is necessarily opposed to the Word as term; and, _vice versa_, the Word as term is necessarily opposed to the intelligent activity as principle. {819} In other words, the intelligent activity could not be what it is, unless it were the opposite of the Word, and this could not be the Word unless it were the very opposite of intelligent activity. Hence, to be intelligent, activity belongs so exclusively to the First, as to exclude any other from partaking in that distinctive constituent; and to be Word is claimed so exclusively by the Second, as to be attributed to no other. The result is a duality of terminations, possessed of the same infinite nature and its essential attributes, each having a constituent so exclusively its own as to be altogether incommunicable. Now, two terminations, possessed of the same infinite nature and its essential attributes, with a constituent so exclusively their own as to be attributed to no other, convey the idea of two persons. For what is a person? A spiritual being with a termination of his own, which makes him distinct from any other, gives him the ownership of himself and renders him solidary of his action.

Now, the intelligent activity is a spiritual being, since he is the Godhead; is possessed of a constituent of his own, intelligent activity; has the ownership of himself; for, as intelligent activity, he is himself and no other, and cannot communicate himself; and is solidary of his notional action, that is, the action which constitutes him what he is: he is, therefore, a person.

Likewise the Word is a spiritual nature; for he is the same Godhead as to substance; as a relation or Word, he is the owner of himself, incommunicable, and solidary of his notional action; hence, he is also a person.

In other words, the Godhead is an infinite spirit; all that constitutes him, both substance and terms of relation, is spirit. Consequently, each term of the divine relation, as such term, has an individuality of his own and, as infinite spirit, has knowledge and intelligence of himself; he beholds himself distinct from the other as term of relation, one with the other as substance. His distinction causes his relative individuality; consciousness and intelligence of this relative individuality make him a person.

Here an objection might be raised; to be a person implies, necessarily, to be intelligent, which is an essential attribute of spiritual being. Therefore the Word also must be intelligent, otherwise he would have neither knowledge nor consciousness of his individuality. But you have attributed intelligence to the first person as being his particular termination; therefore how can the Word be a person, if intelligence be the particular termination of the first? Either the Word is not intelligent, and then he cannot be a person, or intelligence is not the particular termination of the first, and in that case they cannot be persons, for they cannot be distinct.

The difficulty will vanish if it be observed that we have not attributed intelligence to the first person as his particular termination, but intelligent _activity_.

A slight attention to the manner according to which the Word is produced in the infinite, will illustrate this distinction. The intelligence of the Godhead is infinite in its activity and actuality, as well as infinite in its term; which means that the Godhead understands itself infinitely, and an infinite term is the product of this intellection. Hence, once God has understood himself and conceived the expression of his intelligence, the activity is complete and fully terminated; consequently, the Word, the term of this intelligencing, has the Godhead with all its essential attributes communicated to him; except the activity of intelligencing, because the activity is complete in the production of the Word.

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In other words, the act of the first person is eternal, complete, and perfect, by the laws of immanence. Its activity is fully and perfectly exercised in engendering the Word, hence it cannot be communicated. If it were communicated, it would argue imperfection and incompleteness in the act and in its term. In the act, for if any portion of activity remained to be communicated, the Godhead would not intelligence himself to the fullest extent of his infinity; in the term, because the Godhead not intelligencing himself to the full extent of his infinity, the intellectual utterance which would be produced would not fully and perfectly express the object.

Consequently both would be imperfect, incomplete, and potential. This happens in human conception. Our mind, being finite, that is, partial and imperfect, is forced to exert itself partially and conceive various mental words, which would not be the case if its activity were perfect and complete, as it is in the infinite.

This answers another objection which is brought forward by those who lose sight of the law of immanence in the divine operation. It is said, If the Word be intelligent, there is nothing to prevent his engendering another Word, and this second, a third, and so on _ad infinitum_.

The Word is intelligent, but not intelligent activity. When intelligence, so to speak, is communicated to him, it has been exercised in the engendering of himself; or better, the eternal immanent act of the intelligent activity communicating intelligence to the Word, is continually being exercised in the immanent engendering of the Word; therefore it cannot be communicated to him. [Footnote 290]

[Footnote 290: In Filio non habet _intellectus_ illam veluti _virtutem_ quia iam habuit actum sibi adequatum.--_Suarez_, De Trin., lib. 1. cap. 7. v. 11.]

Hence that magnificent expression of the Scripture, "_Semel loquitur Deus_." "God speaks but once." But because the activity of engendering another Word is not communicated to him, it does not follow that he is not endowed with the act of intelligencing the Father or himself; the Father as his principle, himself as the product of the Father. For it is one thing to be intelligent, another thing to be intelligent principle. To give some examples of this distinction. The architect of a building who has planned it, is the intelligent principle of the building; another, who understands the plan of the building, is the intelligent _beholder_ of the building.

God is the intelligent cause of the world, man is the intelligent perceiver of the world.

There being, therefore, a distinction between intelligence as principle or cause, and intelligence as perception, one may easily conceive how the Word in the infinite may be possessed of intelligence, without being the principle of intelligence.

The Word, who is one Godhead with the first person, a distinct person himself, is also the substantial image of the first person. Because, in force of the act by which he is uttered, which is essentially assimilative, he is produced as the likeness of him whose expression and utterance he is; and as he is one as to substance with the conceiver, he is, consequently, his substantial image and likeness. We conclude, therefore, that the production of the second person in the infinite--resulting in a person, the substantial image of the conceiver, in force of the act of intelligencing by which he is produced, which is essentially assimilative--is governed by the law of generation; and that, consequently, the first person in the infinite is _Father_, and the second, _Son_. "_Thou art my Son, to-day I have begotten thee_." [Footnote 291]

[Footnote 291: Ps. ii. 7.]

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The law by which the third person in the infinite is produced, is different from that which governs the production of the second.

The latter takes place according to the law of generation or assimilation; the former is subject to the law of aspiration, which must be understood as follows.

By his Word, the intelligent activity apprehends and conceives his infinite perfection and goodness. For the Word, as we have seen, is nothing but the infinite and most perfect expression or image of the intelligent activity, and as the intelligent activity is infinite perfection and excellence, so the Word is the utterance, the intellectual reproduction of that excellence and goodness. Hence the intelligent activity, by his Word, conceives and utters himself as infinite perception and excellence. But perfection or goodness _apprehended_ is necessarily loved. For goodness, once apprehended, awakens the will, and necessarily inclines it toward itself; it necessarily attracts and affects it. The intelligent activity, therefore by apprehending himself through his Word as infinite perfection and goodness, necessarily loves himself.

Love implies the insidence or indwelling of the object loved in the subject loving. The intelligent activity, therefore, who necessarily loves himself through his Word, must be as object loved in himself as subject loving.

This love as object must be co-eternal with the infinite, because by the law of immanence which governs the genesis of infinite life, every origination in the infinite must be co-eternal with the infinite.

By the same law also, it must be identical and one with the infinite; because love, being originated by an immanent act, terminates inside of the infinite, and is, therefore, identical with the infinite. The love as object, therefore, is coeternal and identical with the infinite; it _is_ the infinite.

It is distinct from love as subject and from the Word, by the law of opposition of origin, which implies that a term which originates from a principle is necessarily opposed to it, and consequently distinct. Now, love, as object in the infinite, originates from the intelligent activity and from the Word. The intelligent activity, by apprehending himself, as infinite goodness and excellence, through his Word, loves himself. Hence, this love proceeds from both--the intelligent activity, who conceives his infinite goodness--the Word, who represents it, and makes it intelligible. This love-object is a third person. For, from what we have said, it appears that love-object is identical with the infinite, with the divine essence, and consequently partakes of all the infinite attributes of the essence; hence he is a spiritual and intelligent being; as distinct from both the intelligent activity and the Word, he is possessed of a termination exclusively his own, which makes him the owner of himself incommunicable and solidary of his notional action. Hence he is a person.

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This third person, not being originated according to a likeness of nature, cannot, like the second person, be called son. He is the personal and subsisting love of the Father and of the Son; and as the object loved exists in the subject loving, as inclining, and in a certain manner as impelling, the subject toward it, as raising in the subject an attraction or aspiration toward it, hence the third person is called the living and subsisting Spirit of God.

The better to conceive this distinctive termination of the third term in the infinite, let us suppose an attraction between two persons. It is needless to remark that we use this term for want of a better and more spiritual one. Suppose, therefore, an attraction between two persons; do not make it an accident or modification, but substantial; carry it to its utmost perfection, actualize it _ad infinitum_; so that it may be able to return upon itself, to have consciousness of itself, to possess and own itself, and in this sense to feel itself distinct from and independent of all others--and you will have, as product, a subsisting or _personal_ attraction, a third person.

Such is the idea we can form of the Holy Spirit. The Father beholds himself totally in the Son as an offspring of himself, and loves himself in his offspring, his perfect and substantial expression.

The Son beholds himself totally in the Father as his author, and loves the Father as his principle and origin. This common love, this mutual attraction, this aspiration of the Father toward the Son, and of the Son toward, the Father, being infinite, is most actual, perfect, and complete--a living, subsisting attraction, with consciousness and the ownership of himself, a subsistence personifying their mutual love and binding both in one eternal tie of affection.

Hence, by this distinctive constituent of common love, the Spirit is the archetype of harmony and order; since in his personality he brings the opposition existing between the conceiver and the conceived into harmony and unity of love.

He is also the archetype of the _beautiful_, being the very beauty and loveliness of God.

Beauty, in its highest metaphysical expression, is variety reduced to unity, by order and proportion. Now, the Spirit harmonizes the reality and the intelligibility of God into a unity of love. Hence he is the beauty of the Father and the Son--their personal and eternal loveliness; and as such, the archetype of the beautiful in all orders.

He is the very bliss of the infinite, because bliss is the perfect possession of infinite life. Now, it is in the production of the Spirit that the genesis of infinite life terminates and is complete. He is, then, the expression of the perfect possession and enjoyment of the infinite life--the living Blessedness of the infinite. The last law which governs the mystery of God's life, and which is a consequence of all the laws we have explained, is the law of _insidence_.

This implies the indwelling of all the divine persons in each other. It is founded both on the community of essence and the very nature of personalities.

For the essence of the three divine persons, being one and most simple, it follows that they all meet in it, and consequently dwell in each other. On the other hand, what constitutes them persons is essentially a relation. Now, a relation necessarily asks for and includes the relative term. The intelligent activity is such, because in him dwells the Word, his infinite expression. The Word is such, because he is the expression of the intelligent activity, and dwells in him. The Spirit necessarily dwells in both, because he is the subsisting aspiration of the activity toward its conception, and of the conception toward its principle.

{823}

"_Believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father_." (St. John.)

With these laws, we conclude the first part of the problem of multiplicity raised by pantheism. It is true, as pantheism affirms, that there must be a certain multiplicity in the unity of infinite essence. For, without a certain multiplicity, no being can exist or be intelligible. Pantheism, in giving such prominent importance to the problem, has rendered great service to philosophy and to religion, and has cut off, in the very bud, all those objections raised by the superficial reason of Arians or anti-trinitarians of old, or Unitarians of modern times. But, as we have seen, however able in raising the problem, Pantheism utterly fails in resolving it; and, in its effort to explain the problem, destroys both the terms to be reconciled. Catholicity, fully conscious of the immense value of the problem, unflinchingly asserts that it alone has the secret of its solution. Without at all assuming to explain away its super-intelligibility, it lays down such an answer as fully satisfies the mind which can appreciate the importance and the sublimity of the problem, and follow it into the depths of its explanation. The infinite, says Catholicity, is not infinite as an abstraction or potentiality, a germ as Pantheism affirms, which ceases to be infinite when it passes into multiplicity; the infinite is actuality itself.

This actuality consists in a first personality unborn and unbegotten, with full consciousness of himself and his infinite perfection. This personality is active intelligence, and in intelligencing his infinite perfection, begets a conception, an intelligible expression of that perfection, a second person. The active intelligence loves his infinite personality conceived by him in his intelligence. This love is a third personality.

Three personalities or terminations of one infinite actuality: a multiplicity in unity; unity without being broken by multiplicity; multiplicity without being destroyed by unity.

Hence the infinite is not a dead, immovable, unintelligible unity, but a living, actual, intelligible unity; because it is unity of nature and a trinity of persons; because the unity falls in the essence, the multiplicity, in the terminations of the essence.

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{824}

A Legend for Husbands.--1699.

Which Wives, Too, May Read--possibly Not Without Profit.

My story is of people that have long since passed away, so that no one need take it as personal.

American travellers sometimes differ--though for my part, I do not see why they should--as to the relative attractions of Paris and London. But they seldom fail to concur in their estimate of Brussels as one of the most interesting and agreeable cities in Europe.

And really the Flemish metropolis presents a remarkable variety of attractions. Parks, boulevards, botanic gardens, museums, quaint old streets, quainter old houses, libraries, great pictures, treasures of Rubens, wealth of old MSS., and last, not least, grand specimens of middle-age architecture, such as the Hotel de Ville and the Cathedral of St. Gudule.

Indeed, in mediaeval monuments no country in Europe is richer than Belgium.

In presence of her grand old cathedrals you can well understand the enthusiasm of those artists who maintain that our age takes entirely too much credit to itself for its encouragement of the fine arts. Neither the past nor the present century, they maintain, will leave to posterity monuments of such grandeur, boldness, beauty, and originality as have been bequeathed to us by the period that immediately followed the crusades; and strangely enough, these bequests of the "dark ages" can bear any test of critical scrutiny, even in the full blaze of our nineteenth century enlightenment.

Will our architectural legacies appear as well in the eyes of future generations?

"Why, look around you," said to me a Flemish artist; "in those days the erection of a costly edifice was not handed over to mere mechanics. The body of it was intrusted to architects. Sculptors created its woodwork. Carvers executed what is now turned out by machinery; painters gave you pictures where you now get plaster, and the Benvenuto Cellinis of the day worked their miracles of art in metals which today the blacksmith hammers out at his forge. Ah! that was the golden age of artists, when the pulpits, the altars, the stalls, and the organ-lofts were monuments; when furniture, doors, chairs, and tables were poems in wood; when the family goblets, the mere handle of a poignard or a sword were chased and embellished; when exquisite miniatures, illuminated missals, and wood engravings made a picture-gallery of the dryest chronicle; when fresco and encaustic decorated the walls and floors; when ceilings and beams shone with arabesques, windows were bright with stained glass; when, in short, all the arts brought their tribute of beauty to a church or to a palace. It was in the fading twilight of these artistic glories that sculpture in wood still flourished among the artists of ancient Flanders."

Somewhat thus discoursed to me an enthusiastic young Belgian painter, as we stood together admiring that grand work of art, the carved oak pulpit in the cathedral of St. Gudule, at Brussels.

{825}

This pulpit is a work to which the term unique may be applied with scrupulous fidelity.

The admiration drawn from you by sculptures in wood elsewhere culminates in presence of this singular creation of genius. No description can adequately place it before you or render it justice. In its exquisite architecture and sculpture, a poem as grand as that of Milton is spread out before you.

An outline, only, the merest outline, can be attempted to supply description.

Adam and Eve apparently sustain the terrestrial globe. An angel chases them from Paradise, and Death pursues them. The life-size figure of Adam, in particular, is admirable. Carved in marble, it would have been something for Canova to have been proud of. The preacher stands in the concavity of the globe, which is overshadowed by the branches of the tree of good and evil, covered with birds and animals characteristically grouped. By the side of Adam is an eagle; on that of Eve, a peacock and a squirrel.

To the top of the tree is attached a canopy upheld by two angels and a female figure symbolical of truth. Above stands the Blessed Virgin with the infant Saviour, who, with a cross in his hand, crushes the head of the Serpent, whose hideous body, in huge folds, twines around the tree. "This pulpit was made," said, or rather sang, to me, the old gray-haired sexton or _bedeau_, to the tune in which he had shown the lions of the cathedral for more than thirty years--"This pulpit was made by Verbruggen, of Antwerp, in 1699, for the Jesuits of Louvain. Upon the suppression of their order, it was presented to this cathedral by the empress Maria Theresa. This pulpit--"

Here I interrupted him with questions as to Verbruggen--what was known of him? Had he left any other works? and so on, to the end of the chapter. All in vain; I could obtain nothing but a negative shake of the head, and a hint that it was time to close the cathedral doors.

My stay in Brussels was prolonged many weeks; and besides my attendance on Sundays, I frequently, in my rambles between the grand park and what Mrs. Major O'Dowd calls the _Marchy O'flures_, strayed into St. Gudule to admire the finest specimens of stained glass in the world; to read the inscriptions on the tombs of the Dukes of Brabant, and to feast my eyes and imagination on the grand old pulpit.

In the course of these visits I became better acquainted with the _bedeau_ in charge, and after some persuasion and a few well-timed attentions, the old man at last acknowledged to me that there was something more than mere names and dates connected with the history of the pulpit.

Finally, upon my solemn assurance that I was not an Englishman, and would not write a book and put him and the pulpit therein, he promised to tell me all he knew about it.

Accordingly, by arrangement with him, I loitered in the cathedral one evening after vespers until the faithful had finished their devotions and left the church.

Taking a couple of rush-bottom chairs from one of the huge pyramids of them piled up at the lower end of the building, we seated ourselves just outside the grand portal, and the old man began his recital. Years have since gone by, and I cannot repeat it in his quaint manner; but, substantially, he thus told me the

{826}

Story Of The Carved Oak Pulpit.

Henry Verbruggen was heart and soul an artist. Gay, careless, pleasure-loving, he appeared to live but for two things; his art, first, and then his amusements.

Verbruggen married Martha Van Meeren, the pretty, the timid, the good Martha Van Meeren. In the mirage of his artist's enthusiasm her sweetness, her grace, her beauty, made her at first appear to him a sylph, a muse, an angel.

Alas! though gentle and attractive, Martha was, after all, only a woman, of the earth, earthy. In a quiet, well-ordered household Martha would have been a treasure; but in the eccentric home of the artist she was out of her element.

A pattern of neatness and economy, an accomplished Flemish house-wife, a neat domicil and well-spread table possessed for Martha more attraction than the imaginary world of beauty in which her artist husband revelled, even when poverty threatened or want oppressed them. Poor Martha! In vain she remonstrated; in vain she implored. Henry would neglect his work; he would be idle and spend his days at the _cabaret_, in the society of those who were even more idle and more dissipated than himself.

Thus years went on. Martha was not happy. A tinge of moroseness shaded the clear sunshine of her usual mildness. Occasionally, too, she came out of her quiet sadness and found sharp words of reproof for Henry, and anger for the companions who kept him from home. And so it came about that soon, in Verbruggen's eyes, Martha appeared harsh and repulsive. Then swiftly followed dispute and recrimination. His early enchantment had disappeared; Martha was not the wife for him, thought Verbruggen. He should have had one as careless, as enthusiastic as himself. Would such a wife have suited him, think you--you who know the human heart?

Meantime things went from bad to worse. Verbruggen scarcely came home, totally neglected his art, fell into utter idleness and the slough of despond, and his family was soon reduced to want--almost to beggary.

In this crisis--it was in the year 1699--a Jesuit father who had heard of Verbruggen's talent, called upon him, supplied him with means, and ordered a pulpit, the most beautiful his art could produce, for the church at Louvain.

Surprise, gratitude, joy, enthusiasm, all contributed to arouse the dormant energies of the artist. He set himself energetically at the composition of a design for his work.

"I will make," said he, "of this pulpit my greatest production. It shall be," he exclaimed, growing radiant with artistic inspiration, "something that shall display at a glance the history of the Christian religion. I will place," thus he mused, "under the terrestrial globe, Adam and Eve the moment after the fatal act of disobedience. This globe shall be the pulpit. Around it shall watch the four Evangelists. Over it shall hang the canopy of heaven, supported on the right by angels, on the left by Truth herself. The date-tree shall lend its shade. The long scaly wings of the serpent shall encircle it, reaching from man on earth to the Blessed Virgin in heaven. By the side of man I will place the cherubim armed with his flaming sword, and near Eve, young and beautiful, a hideous figure of Death. Higher up shall be the divine infant, with one foot on the head of the serpent; he shall stand by the side of his august mother, resplendent in her crown of stars, surrounded by angels, cherubs, and seraphs. {827} Yes, all this and more will I do. The very wood shall grow into life under my hands, and ages yet unborn shall hear of Henry Verbruggen of Antwerp."

The artist went at his work with all the enthusiasm of genius, and had completed the body of the pulpit without placing the Evangelists according to his original design, when, in a moment of malicious spite, he imagined he would punish Martha by displaying near Eve various satirical emblems of her sex's qualities.

On the branches, then, that entwine the staircase leading up on the side of Eve, he placed a peacock, symbol of pride; a squirrel, symbol of destruction; a cock, symbol of noise; and an ape, image of malice; of all which defects, poor Martha, as the angels well knew, was as innocent as an infant.

Of the statue of Adam, Verbruggen made a _chef d'oeuvre_--a figure full of dignity and manly beauty. The figure of Eve is inferior, and has less grace and animation.

And now to complete his sculptured marital spite, on Adam's side he carved an eagle, symbol of genius.

Thus far had he progressed when poor Martha sickened and died. In his motherless household Verbruggen soon discovered the extent of his misfortune, and learned, as Shakespeare has so well told the world, that

"What we have we prize not to the worth; But being lacked and lost, We then do know its value."

And now came the reaction. Verbruggen deeply mourned Martha. He sincerely deplored her. Her admirable qualities came fresh upon his memory, and he bitterly reproached himself for his unkindness and neglect.

Soon he fell into fits of despondency. Discouragement took possession of him, and his pulpit, begun with so much energy, stood unfinished.

Accustomed to find his home in order, his table spread, he soon discovered their loss, as well as the want of a thousand little attentions and kindnesses which none could now give him; and in short, as he was in the high road for discoveries, we may safely conclude that he found out, with Ben Franklin, that a lone man is but the half of a pair of scissors.

Twelve months passed by. Verbruggen's friends counselled him to remarry. "You are but thirty-six," said they. "You have sincerely mourned Martha's loss, and have done full justice to her excellent qualities; but you can yet do as well, if not better. There is Cecily Van Eyck, talented, a painter, an artist, like yourself. Your dispositions accord, and if she consents to have you, she will be a mother to your little girl and make you an admirable wife."

Henry listened to his friends, thought over what they said, and followed their advice. He became Cecily's suitor, and was accepted.

Now Cecily Van Eyck was very smiling, very sweet, very charming; but Cecily had a will of her own.

Scarcely had the honeymoon gone by, when she enlightened Henry with some new ideas, and gave him several very distinct notions as to the proper distribution of domestic power in a household. In a more propitious age Cecily would have made her mark in a _Sorosis_, and been a leader of the most advanced radical wing of a woman's rights party.

{828}

Her mastery over Verbruggen was complete, and the poor artist even kissed his chains.

One day she said to him, "What are you doing? Your apathy is complained of, and I am taunted with it. Remember, if you please, that Van Eyck is a name not unknown. Let me not lose, I pray you, by changing it for that of Verbruggen. Where is the pulpit, that _chef d'oeuvre_ you so long since announced?"

In reply he led her to his studio. Cecily had an artist's eye, and more--a woman's.

"What mean," said she, "these emblems by the side of Eve?"

The sculptor blushed.

"When I made them," he answered, "I did not know Cecily Van Eyck."

"'Tis well. But after these emblems of defects, which perhaps women have not, what do you intend to bestow upon your own sex?"

"I had already commenced," stammered Verbruggen--"you see the eagle. 'Twas perhaps somewhat vain."

"Vain! Oh! no; not at all. The eagle--a bird of prey and rapine, the symbol of brutal tyranny--nothing could be fitter. Well, and what further do you intend?"

Verbruggen could find no reply.

"Well, then, listen," continued his wife, "to render full justice to your sex, near the eagle you will place a fox, emblem of deceit; a parrot, emblem of noisy chatter; a monkey eating grapes, symbol of intoxication; and a jackdaw, emblem of silly pride."

Verbruggen executed her orders with a docility most edifying. The pulpit was soon finished, and, fortunately for us, has been preserved intact through years of war and revolution. Higher teachings have been proclaimed from it, but to those who know its story even its dumb wood speaks a salutary lesson.

"Ah sir!" ejaculated the old sexton, when he had finished the story of the pulpit, "if I had known the history of that pulpit before I married a second time, I--"

Just then I came away.

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The Future Of Ritualism.

We propose to devote a few pages to the consideration of Ritualism and its probable future, because it is an interesting religious movement which is of great importance to many souls, and because it seems to us to have reached its crisis. A writer in the _Churchman_ (an Episcopalian journal of Hartford, Ct.) wonders that Catholics take such an interest in his communion and its members. "Our bishops being no bishops," he says, "our clergy only decently behaved laymen, our laity a perverse generation whose only chance of salvation lies in the charitable hope of their invincible ignorance, surely it is wasting powder and shot upon us to criticise our doings when we are thus only playing at being a church." It is certainly true that in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and also of every ecclesiastical body which has the apostolic succession, the bishops of the Episcopal Church are no bishops, and the clergy are mere laymen. {829} It is also true that the extreme High-Churchmen are "playing at being a church." But cannot the writer understand our zeal for the salvation of souls and our honest desire to help those whose religion is only a logical farce? We assure him that if he does not appreciate our sincerity, he does injustice to the feelings which should animate every Christian heart. We see that which every intelligent and unbiased mind can see, a party in the Episcopal Church holding opinions which are suicidal to every species of Protestantism, and which lead directly to the Catholic faith, and we know that those who belong to this party cannot long continue in their present position. They must come honestly forward to us, or go backward to lose what little faith they have. Is it wonderful that for the love of Christ we beg them to be truthful to their convictions, and manly in their profession? Is it strange that we attempt to show them that the doctrines they profess to hold have no home in Protestantism, and that the church they pretend to venerate is only a fiction of their imagination?

In this spirit we write now a few words which will, we hope, fall into the hands of Ritualists, and help at least some to the knowledge of the truth. Let us say at once, and in all candor, that our sympathy is with the movement which is called Ritualism, and that from its beginning we have earnestly prayed to God to bless it to the conversion of many souls. We hope it will go on and prosper, and be truthfully developed; for we can think of nothing so fearful as "playing church," when the question is one of salvation. There is, however, among some of the leaders of this movement, a want of honesty and a direct untruthfulness which surprise us greatly. If this dishonesty be not wilful, it is owing to an obliquity of mind which it is hard to comprehend. The object of this article is to show that Ritualism can have no standing in the Episcopal Church, and that they who would propagate it had better lay down the weapons of insinuation and falsehood and be brave enough to look the truth full in the face.

There is nothing gained by attempting to skulk away under the _general_ meaning of the name which the world has applied to a particular signification. "There can be no religion without external ceremonies, say the High-Churchmen, "therefore, Ritualism is proper and necessary." This argument is as fallacious as the following "There is no man without a body, therefore the negro is a necessity to the human race." The question, honest friends, is not whether the religion of Christ demands ceremonies, but whether it demands the particular ceremonies advocated at St. Alban's and other ritualistic churches. And Ritualism does not mean the adoption of any rites in the service of God, but the use of the peculiar ones which are recommended by the leaders of the movement in the Episcopal Church. Why, then, not say so at once with manliness? A man will make little progress in our day who is afraid to avow his creed.

Ritualism means a good deal more than mere rites and ceremonies. We do not take our good friends who put on Catholic vestments as automatons who are dressed up by the tailor to show off his art. They are not so senseless as to play for the benefit of the dress-maker alone. There is doctrine beneath all this external ritual which is intended to show forth the sacrifice of the mass, and the real presence of our Lord in the holy Eucharist. {830} It includes the whole sacramental system, and the power of the priesthood. There is little outward distinction between the tenets of the Ritualists and the creed of the Catholic Church. They may pretend to draw a line for the satisfaction of fearful disciples, but really there is little difference. As far as we can see, they are willing to accept our faith, so long as they can enjoy it without submitting to the Catholic Church. They go to confession, and invoke the saints, and pray for the dead, and believe in the seven sacraments, and kneel devoutly before the bread and wine which they elevate for the adoration of the people. "You can have," said a leading Ritualist of this city, "everything in the Episcopal Church which you can find in the Catholic communion, and why therefore should you go away from the fold in which you were born?" We ought, therefore, to define Ritualism as a movement toward the actual faith and worship of the one church of Christ, which were rejected by all Protestants at the Reformation. This is its true definition before every honest mind, and any attempts to hide under generalities, are attempts at deception. It will perhaps bring our remarks to more clear conclusions, if we show, first, that these doctrines which underlie the whole movement can have no status in the Episcopal Church; secondly, that any attempts at disguising the truth, only injure the leaders in their enterprise; and lastly, from the indications of the present, conclude the future of Ritualism.

Little time need be spent to persuade any honest mind that the sacramental system can have no home in the Anglican communion. First of all, the great body of the people reject it, and can never be made to accept it, while they say with sincerity that they see no distinction between it and the teachings of the Catholic Church. If it be deemed worth while to profess substantially all the doctrines of Trent, why not undo the Reformation and go back at once to the fold which their forefathers forsook? And, as Bishop Lee remarked at the opening of the late Episcopal Convention, what right had the church organized by Queen Elizabeth to set forth articles of faith, or in fact to be a church at all, if not on the Protestant principle of private judgment? The majority of Episcopalians have the greatest possible aversion to anything that can be called Romanism, and will, as a body, never allow themselves to be catholicised. In this country there is great liberty of speech, and great pretensions are easily tolerated; but when it is understood that such pretensions mean more than words, the spirit of Protestantism, which is the only living thing in the Episcopal Communion, shows itself in full armor. Individuals daily come to the one fold of Christ, but the body will never move from its hostile attitude. It will stand consistent to its own principle until the hour of dissolution. If any Ritualist doubts this, let him actually practise all he preaches, and openly avow all he believes. His eyes will soon be opened sufficiently to see that the antagonism between himself and his surroundings can never be removed.

Our friends, the High-Churchmen, are zealous upholders of church authority; but where is the authority to which they submit? Their own church ought to be an authority to them, yet we find that its decisions have no weight for their minds. The articles are against them, and every doctrinal judgment that has been made throughout the history of the controversy is distinctly adverse to their views; yet they insist on holding on, and appealing from the stern present to the impossible future. {831} The thirty-nine articles are really the doctrinal standards of the English Church and truly express the belief which formed and animates their communion. When these articles are given up, if such an event should ever take place, the Episcopal brotherhood will commit suicide and vote itself out of existence. These remarkable canons of doctrine condemn the whole sacramental system, deny any real presence of Christ in the blessed Eucharist, and cut away, root and branch, any encouragement which the Ritualists might find in the other portions of the Prayer-Book. Whatever authority therefore the Episcopal Church has, is most decidedly against the unnatural children who profess great fondness for their mother, call her by great names which she disowns, and still never obey her. We have before us a declaration of principles made in the year 1867, in which are contained the very doctrines which the articles condemn, and which the bishops, whenever they have spoken, have rebuked. One sentence particularly pleases us by its great frankness and amiable sincerity. "We heartily and loyally _obey_ the authority of our own particular church, receive _every one_ of her doctrines, and adopt, as our own, her every act of devotion." Article xxviii says, "The sacrament of the Lord's supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped." The declaration of these _loyal_ children declares that "Christ is _really present_ in the Holy Eucharist, and being present, is of course to be adored."

Now, if the bishops of the Anglican communion have any right to decide in litigated questions, they have spoken with sufficient plainness. The "Catholic school" in England has had a hard road to travel while one after another their favorite positions have been condemned. The last decision of the Privy Council is adverse to the ceremonies of Ritualism, and of course to the doctrines which underlie them. Twenty-eight bishops of the American Episcopal Church have published an open protest against the new movement, and the late Pastoral of the Convention reasserts the principles of the Reformation, denies the presence of our Lord in the Eucharist, and concludes the subject by saying: "We would most earnestly deprecate those extravagances in Ritualism, recently introduced, which tend to assimilate our worship to that of a church hostile to our own. And we must urge you to remember that the reverent obedience to their bishops and other chief ministers, promised by the clergy at their ordination, would, if faithfully rendered, prevent these evils." We are not aware that anything more explicit be required by our friends who "love their own particular church" so well; but if the above be not enough, we imagine they will not wait very long for something more.

The most painful feature, however, in this movement, is an apparent want of truthfulness and a disingenuousness which are inconsistent with the earnest desire to know the faith of Christ. It is very hard to comprehend the course of some of the leaders in this "Catholic revolution," unless their aim be to maintain a cause without any regard for truth or justice. They are sometimes very insincere in their condemnations of Romanism before the people, when in their hearts they must see that they are making dupes of the ignorant.

{832}

A very vapid book has been handed to us, entitled _Conversations on Ritualism_. The Rev. Mr. Wilson (Ritualist) instructs Mr. Brown, and opens his eyes to see that there is a pure Catholicity all unknown to Rome, and even to the (beloved) East, which is now about to revive and do wonders. Mr. Brown is informed that the American Church has not yet been put together. The elements of which it is composed are floating around; but so sure as the sun rises some bright day, the chaos will be one beautiful scene of order and unity, when all shall think alike, and the brilliant altars shall blaze with candles and smoke with incense. Now, Rev. Mr. Wilson "doubts if there are many of his bishops and priests who know more than the mere A, B, C, of the real question of the church worship." They will, however, be enlightened, because the world is to see the "gorgeous Ritual without the doctrinal errors and corruptions of Rome," and to take a "pill which is not to be gilded." Puritanism comes in for a terrible malediction. "If ever an evil spirit has appeared on the earth, of such a character as to put men out of patience with its inconsistencies and absurdities, that spirit is Puritanism." O Puritanism, Puritanism, thou that abhorrest pictures and flowers, stained glass and altar-cloths, thou that lovest whitewash and blank hard-finish, with what amazement shalt thou hereafter discern the glories of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem! "This Puritanism is a very subtle and persistent poison; I have known it to crop out where least expected; I have even known of mitred heads which seem in some way turned by it." But, bad as it is, it is not worse than Popery, which good Mr. Brown is taught to distinguish well from Ritualism. Then Rev. Mr. Wilson, speaking _ex cathedra_, defines what this Popery is. Its errors are "the cultus of the Blessed Virgin; adoration of the cross, images, and relics; the doctrine of purgatory, Transubstantiation, Papal pardons, indulgences and dispensations, supererogatory merits, and forbidding the clergy to marry." Pope Wilson, who rejects the authority of Pius IX., pronounces these doctrines and practices as grave errors. There can be no doubt, therefore, of the clearness of his vision, and discussion were useless and certainly inappropriate. But, behind the scenes, what is the practical difference between the Catholic doctrine condemned, and the belief symbolized by the Ritualists? Mr. Brown has gone home quite satisfied, and he will not hear our conversation, and we can afford to talk our honest convictions. The cultus of the Blessed Virgin and the saints is nothing more than the devotion which our friend, Mr. Mackonochie approves under another name. Catholics do not _adore_ the cross, nor images, nor relics. They treat them with veneration and religious respect, and so do the Ritualists. Rev. Mr. Wilson prays for his departed friends, though for the world he would not say out loud Purgatory. Transubstantiation he does not accept, though he believes that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, and to be adored with every outward symbol of devotion. Pardons are very good in themselves, if the Pope has nothing to do with them; and as for forbidding the clergy to marry, he would leave that an open question. Many of the Ritualists have evinced a preference for a single life, and a desire even to establish convents and monasteries. Mr. Brown is sleeping quietly on his Protestant pillow while Mr. Wilson prays before his crucifix, and is a Romanist at heart though not in name. {833} We fear there are many Mr. Browns, and Madame Browns, and Misses Brown, who are likewise deceived. In religion we would prefer more manliness and outspoken honesty. These _Conversations on Ritualism_ are only an example of what we have often seen and heard with much pain. We have great hopes of any man who is truthful; but when there is a desire to deceive, and an unwillingness to follow truth to its just conclusions, there is little chance for argument. But some of the Ritualists are as unfair toward their own church as they are toward us. It cannot condemn them; for whatever language it may use, they will interpret it to suit their own case. When Tract No. XC. appeared, the entire English communion scouted its attempt to reconcile the articles with Catholic doctrine. Now, there is no difficulty in explaining away every objectionable point and making those thirty-nine daggers inoffensive. The _Baptist Quarterly_ says: "The twenty-fifth article declares, 'The sacraments were not ordained to be gazed upon,' an unquestionable interdiction of eucharistic adoration. But this, we are told, must mean that they are not to be looked upon without reverence and devotion. So article twenty-eight says, 'The sacrament of the Lord's supper was not by Christ's ordinance lifted up or worshipped.' This, it is said, may mean that elevation may not be practised, on the ground of its being done by Christ's ordinance, but it may be done on some other ground. What may be the casuistry of men who can so defend their principles, it is difficult for minds accustomed to frank and straightforward actions to comprehend." If the Privy Council forbids the practices of the Ritualists, the _Church Record_ tells us that "they must indeed be short-sighted who suppose that the disuse under compulsion of the ritual expression of a doctrine will hinder it from being taught and believed." If the whole house of American bishops distinctly deny any presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and forbid any worship of the elements, on the ground that Christ is not there, then these loyal churchmen are "cheered," and take refuge under the incautious use of a term which in one sense might be objected to even by Catholics. Say the bishops, "Especially do we condemn any doctrine of the holy Eucharist which implies that, after consecration, the proper nature of the elements of bread and wine does not remain; which _localizes_ in them the bodily presence of our Lord." The prelates meant to say that our Lord is not really in the sacrament, and had no idea of the theological objection which Catholic doctors might find to the use of the word localize. The _Catechism_ of the Council of Trent tells us that our Lord is not in the sacrament "_ut in loco_" that is, he is not limited or circumscribed by the ordinary laws of quantity and extension. This is evident, because our Lord is present by miracle and according to the conditions of his glorified humanity. "When the Pastoral is examined," says the _Churchman_, "it turns out to be a denial of a physical or carnal presence, which the writer (in _The Catholic World_) not having the fear of the Council of Trent before his eyes, declares must be _local_." The Pastoral says nothing about a physical or carnal presence, the precise meaning of which in high-church casuistry we do not know; but it denies any "bodily presence." Now, if our Lord's body is there at all, there is a bodily presence, and that presence is localized, that is to say, he is within the species of bread and wine. {834} To use the words of St. Cyril, "That which appears to be bread is not bread, but the body of Christ; and that which appears to be wine is not wine, but the blood of Christ." It is hard for us to believe that the author of the above stricture on the Pastoral knows what he means himself. If by "physical" he means according to the ordinary laws of physics, he need not beat the air any more. If by "carnal" he intends to say that our Lord is not in the Eucharist, as when in the days of his sojourn on earth, he was subject to all the natural conditions of flesh and blood, he will find no adversary in the Catholic Church. The substance of the bread and wine is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, and he is in the Eucharist sacramentally, but as truly and really as he is at the right hand of the Father in heaven. Two substances cannot coexist at one time in one and the same space, and so, according to the plain definition of our creed, the Incarnate Word is miraculously present, whole and entire in either form, and under every consecrated host in the world. That the bishops meant to deny distinctly any true presence of Christ in the sacrament, is evident enough to any mind, and we cannot admire the candor of the writer who would try to escape from it by a quibble upon a word whose common acceptation is quite plain. The _Church Record_ would have us believe that anything can here be tolerated, provided you do not use the word "Transubstantiation."

But what shall we say of the following language taken from the _Churchman_? "The Romish Church does not, comparatively speaking, care one fig for transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy, the employment of her particular liturgy and ceremonial. She has sacrificed these for dominion in times past. She will do it again. She will explain away transubstantiation, she will admit the marriage of the clergy, she will make almost any other concession, if she can get her penny's worth in return. But one thing she does care about, and that is the Pope's supremacy." The author of this famous passage is unsafe in any community, and ought to be continually watched by detectives. It is easy to write falsehood, and not very hard to speak it; but it avails very little those who have the hardihood to use it. We have come to the conclusion, from a long experience, that high-churchmen will never be driven from their ground by any decisions of their own church, and that many of them are exceptions to the ordinary laws of humanity. They are inaccessible to reason. On this ground they will excuse us if we pray the more earnestly for them, or endeavor to point out to the world their wonderful inconsistency. They advocate a kind of infallibility which, to be sure, is not within the reach of any one, and yet when the Catholic Church is called infallible, they find the very idea inconsistent with their reason. "So long as Rome keeps to itself, it is grand, imposing, and may pass for powerful. But when it appeals to argument and ventures into the province of reason, it admits the possibility of an adverse conclusion. Infallible men must not reason, they can only pronounce." Perhaps it was a hoary head that indited these words in the _Churchman_, or it may have been a young and inexperienced warrior. Is there any objection to show the grounds of our faith to one who asks for them, and may not even the writer of the above enter upon an argument to prove the existence of God, "without admitting the possibility of an adverse conclusion"? {835} It is something new to us that we can only defend by argument the things that we doubt. We do not reason on the _intrinsic_ credibility of the doctrine proposed to our belief, but upon the extrinsic evidence that God, the only revealer, really proposes the doctrine. And we are quite ready to show to any honest mind the proofs that the Catholic Church is the one and only church of God. Nay, this has been done by our fathers and doctors from the beginning. Every Catholic is infallible so far as his faith goes, because he relies upon the church which is infallible; but this does not prevent him from defending by reason the creed which he holds. The same luminous author asks if "Rome will stand equally well the daylight which will be let into her secret places." So also the accusation has been made, that "the Romish Church has one set of doctrines for the public and another for the initiated; that to converts she always showed her best face, and did not reveal her true features until she had fairly caught them in her iron grasp." In reply to these nursery tales, meant for crying children only, we say briefly that Rome has no "secret places" whatever; that the daylight shines in her, and through her; and that all she holds and teaches is in her catechism, which is taught to young and old. Any one who wishes to know her creed can easily find it out, and it is as much in the possession of the unlettered peasant as it is of the learned philosopher. It is barely possible that they who write and speak such silliness as the above may be honest; but surely, if they are in their right minds, there is no excuse for their ignorance. Dear Ritualists, when you wish to keep your friends or parishioners from going Romeward, pray tell the truth; for when they find out that you have tried to deceive them, they will all the faster run from a system which cannot bear honesty and plain-dealing.

There is another point in which our good friends who like to call themselves Catholics are manifestly either ill-informed or disingenuous. They profess to see a great distinction between the schismatic Greek communion and the Catholic Church, and speak as if there were the slightest hope of any intercourse between themselves and the Eastern sects. The separated Greeks are certainly in a lifeless state, owing to their schism and their slavish subjection to the state; but their standards are as decisive against Protestantism and the English pretensions as even the canons of Trent. To speak otherwise, and to represent to an unlettered person that there is any approximation between Anglicanism and the East, is only an attempt to deceive. The position of the schismatic Christians of the East is quite simple upon our views of Catholic unity; but we venture to again urge our brethren of the Episcopal Church, to prosecute their investigations and do something more than pass resolutions such as are every year triumphantly carried at the sessions of the American and Foreign Christian Union. "Why not quietly wait," says the _Churchman_, "and let us be snubbed?" We are quite willing to wait; but in this day of telegraph and steam improvements, may we not beg the committee to move a little faster? In the mean time, we would place in their hands a little manual, by Dr. Overbeck, a Russian priest, who speaks only the sentiments of his whole communion. {836} We quote from the English edition of his work on Catholic orthodoxy. Speaking in the name of the Greek Church, he says in answer to Dr. Pusey's _Eirenicon_, (page 97,) "We do not want your power nor your riches; these are no baits for us. We are content with our poverty and our pure faith, which nobody shall sully; and are we to commune with a church _so replete with heresy_ as the English Church is! Are we to expose our only treasure, our pure faith! You have installed heresy in your pulpits; you do not cast it out; nay, you cannot cast it out, because your church is historically a Protestant Church, and Protestants framed your articles which you contrive in vain to unprotestantize. God forbid! _No communion with an heretical church! No communion with the English Church--it would be the grave of orthodoxy_." Again, (page 89,) "The Orthodox Church does not recognize the English Church to be _achurch_, in her own meaning of the word, any more than the Lutheran, Reformed, or any other Protestant Church. If we, nevertheless, use the term _church_ in the controversy, it is only a conventional mode of speaking, while disproving the fact, and denying the truth of the underlaid idea." "The English Church is not, and never was recognized by any Catholic Church."

From what we have seen, the prospects of Ritualism are not very bright. Whatever authority the Episcopal Church possesses will undoubtedly be used to prevent its growth and influence. It is quite certain that it can never be grafted upon the service or discipline of a communion whose very existence depends upon its Protestantism. The bishops are in a directly hostile attitude toward the movement; and if some of them let it alone, it is, perhaps, because they think that it will the sooner die out. Ritualists will go forward to a certain point, and High-Churchmen will stand ungenerously behind to take any advantage of their success, and to disavow all responsibility when the hour of trouble comes.

After a while, the whole revolution will cease, and while many will become Catholics, others will return to indifference, and to greater torpidity than at the beginning. Already there are signs of division among the movers in the drama. They are not agreed on the question of quantity, some proposing to go much further Romeward than others are willing to follow. English Ritualists are dissatisfied with their American friends, and accuse them of cowardice or want of frankness. The bishops snub them at every opportunity, the powers of the state fall down upon them, and they cannot come to any settled conclusion what to do. In this country they can act as they like, untouched by civil authority, and yet the whole land can boast of only one or two churches where ceremonies are carried out according to the code. It is doubtful how long these churches can be supported on the voluntary principle. Our own judgment is, that a few years will see the end of a movement which ought to result in many conversions to the Catholic faith. If there were strict honesty among the leaders, we should be more hopeful; but when false statements are constantly made, and the "No Popery" cry is held up as a blind by even the advance-guard who wear chasubles and hear confessions, what encouragement have we for the future? It is so easy to retrace one's steps and to look unconscious of all harm if the tide of battle turns. We know of more than one bishop, and many ministers in the Episcopal Church, who have recanted their errors with more or less manliness, and are now in the surgeon's tent, far away from all danger. {837} The lawn-sleeves and the fair heritage have proved too much for their faith in things eternal. They who once were ready to accept all the decrees of Trent and utterly reject the articles of their own church, have become doctors of divinity, with large families of children, and the pangs of conscience have ceased. Monasteries well organized have been broken up by the marriage of nearly all the reverend monks, and communities of sisters have been seriously embarrassed by the drafts the clergy have made upon their number. We mention these facts in sorrow; for it is a sad proof of the inconsistency of man in matters of religion. Why should we expect any more from the Ritualists than we have realized from their cotemporaries or progenitors? Especially, when we behold among them a self-sufficiency and untruthfulness which have no parallel in ecclesiastical history, what shall we dare hope?

The Anglican communion can never be unprotestantized. It may in the course of time fall to pieces, and every living moment within its bosom will help its dissolution. As a body, it never can take any Catholic position, nor wash off the birthmarks which prove its parentage.

Those who really wish for a divine church and the rites which speak the old unchangeable faith, will come one by one "to the pillar and ground of truth." Having tried shadows long enough, being wearied by "playing at church," and tired of holding up a religion by their own strength, they will come where God hath established his covenant in Zion and his mercy in Jerusalem. No honest man can long hold the doctrine of the Real Presence and remain away from the altars where alone the Holy of Holies can be found. No man can seek to confess his sins and often kneel to one who is afraid to hear him openly, who presents at best a doubtful code of morals, and plays, like a foolish child, with tools whose proper use he knows not. The end will soon come. The Catholic Church would have perished long ago, if her life had not been the life of God, and no counterfeit of her august creed can survive the changes of time. Ritualism will pass away, and something else will take its place. The Holy Spirit of truth speaks through this movement to honest hearts who will hear and obey. Many are like the young man in the gospel, who went away from Christ because the sacrifice was too great. He was "not far from the kingdom of God," neither are our Ritualistic brethren far distant from the portals of the true Zion. God grant that they may be not unfaithful to the truth they know, nor lastingly unwilling in the day of the divine power.

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{838}

Ireland's Martyrs. [Footnote 292]

[Footnote 292: _Memorials of those who suffered for the Catholic Faith in Ireland in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries_. Collected and edited from the original authorities. By Myles O'Reilly, B.A., LL.D. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1869. 12mo, pp. 462.]

The Catholic Church in Ireland, oppressed from the days of the Norman invasion, became, from the time of Henry VIII., a living martyr; her sufferings having no parallel in Europe from the time of the three centuries of persecution under the Roman emperors. It was not so much the persecution and martyrdom of individuals so much as of a race and nation. Hence, while the _Acts of the Early Roman Martyrs_, formally drawn up, have long since been collected by Ruinart; while a Challoner, for England, collected records of the martyrs of the faith in his _Missionary Priests_, that all-absorbing favorite of our earliest days; while even the memorials of the missionary martyrs in our own land had been collected, no one seemed to think of selecting the records of Ireland's martyred priests from the harrowing tale of the suffering and unconquerably faithful people amid whom they perished.

It has been well that this pious task has at last been undertaken, and so well accomplished. This work of Mr. O'Reilly is a plain, unvarnished collection of contemporary accounts, with no attempt to make, from the simple details given, a graphic and affecting picture. Brief, too brief, indeed, many of these records are; but further researches, unexplored archives, correspondence not hitherto consulted, will, we trust, ere long, give more extended and edifying memorials of these faithful clergymen, these bishops, priests, secular and regular, of the Isle of Saints.

During much of the period of the great Irish persecution, during that long interval between 1540 and 1701 it was scarcely possible to draw up and send out of Ireland, much less preserve in it, extended accounts of the martyrdom of those who died for the faith. Research or inquiry into their births or early lives was out of the question.

The chief sources where we can now seek information as to these heroic men are the historical writings of the religious orders who labored in Ireland. Among the Franciscans, the great annalist of the order is Father Luke Wadding, an Irishman, who has preserved many valuable accounts relating to his native country. Colgan, another Irish writer of the same order, in the preface to the _Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae_, gives an account of the death of two of his literary associates, Fathers Fleming and Ward.

De Burgo, of the order of Preachers, published a well-known work, _Hibernia Dominicana_, devoted to the history of his order in Ireland.

The Jesuit, Father Tanner, in his _Societas Jesu Militans_, records the lives of many of his order who died for the faith in Ireland, and, in another work, not cited by our author, his _Mortes Illustres_, while treating of distinguished Irish members, enters into the persecutions of the church in their native land.

{839}

Then there were special works on the various persecutions: the _Relatio Persecutionis Hiberniae_, by Father Dominic a Rosario, published at Lisbon in 1655; Bruodin's _Propugnaculum Catholiae Veritatis_, issued at Prague in 1669; Bishop Rothe's _Analecta Sacra Nova et Mira de Rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia pro Fide et Religione Gestis_, published at Cologne, in 1617, under the assumed name of Philadelphus; and the _Processu Martyrialis_ of the same author, which appeared two years later; the _Persecutio Hiberniae_, 1619; Morrison's _Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica, sive Planctus Universalis totius Cleri et Populi Regni Hiberniae_, published at Innspruck, in 1659; and Carve's _Lyra_, Sulzbach, 1666, with other works of more general scope.

Besides these printed works, Mr. O'Reilly cites several manuscripts preserved in the Burgundian Library at Brussels--_Magna Supplicia_, written about 1600; an account of the martyrdom of Bishop Dovany in 1612; Mooney's account of the Franciscan Province in Ireland; and unpublished letters of Irish Jesuits.

The first blows at the Catholic Church in Ireland were struck under Henry VIII. at the monasteries; then came the intrusion of men, as bishops, who acknowledged that monster as head of the church, and the expulsion of those who refused to admit this new power in the crown. In the reign of his daughter Elizabeth came the doctrine that the sovereign, provided always, nevertheless, that he be not a Catholic, is not only head of the church, but empowered to make creeds and a ritual for worship. In a few reigns more came the doctrine that the Calvinists in a nation are the head of the church and state, may behead kings, make and unmake worships and creeds, and put to death all who gainsay them.

The persecution under Henry was comparatively bloodless; the plunder was too plentiful for men to stop to slay. Only one instance is recorded--that of the beheading of the guardian of the Franciscan convent at Monaghan, and of several of his friars; but we can scarcely credit that under so sanguinary a tyrant so little blood was shed in Ireland, where no scruple ever held back the English sword from slaughter, only a few Irish families or bloods being recognized as men whom to kill was murder.

England had her illustrious martyr, Cardinal John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; Ireland in her hierarchy had an illustrious confessor in William Walsh, Bishop of Meath, a Cistercian, born at Dunboyne, and a monk in the Abbey of Bective, till its suppression.

"Whatever doubt there may be about the place of his birth and his early history, there is none whatever as to his eminent virtues, distinguished abilities, and the heroic fortitude with which he bore numerous and prolonged sufferings for the faith. His unbending orthodoxy and opposition to the innovations of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. marked him out for promotion after the accession of Mary, and accordingly we find him associated with the zealous primate, Dr. Dowdall, in the commission to drive from the sanctuary all such as were faithless to their trust.

"Dr. Walsh was consecrated about the close of 1554, and immediately applied himself with zeal and energy to reform abuses, and to heal the wounds which during the last two reigns had been inflicted on faith, morals, and discipline. The period of his usefulness was, however, destined to be brief, and he had time merely to stimulate his priests and to fortify his diocese when the gathering storm burst over the Irish church, and sacrificed the Bishop of Meath among its first and noblest victims. Queen Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who at once publicly embraced the reformed tenets, and proceeded to have them enforced on all. In 1560, an act was passed, under the deputyship of the Earl of Suffolk, which ordered all ecclesiastical persons, judges, officers, justices, mayors, and all the other queen's officers, to take the oath of supremacy under penalty of forfeiture, and also enacted that if any person should, by writing, printing, teaching, preaching, by express words, deed, or act, maintain any foreign spiritual jurisdiction, he should for the first offence forfeit all his goods and suffer one year's imprisonment, for the second offence should incur the penalty of praemunire, and for the third be deemed guilty of high treason."

{840}

He was first imprisoned in 1560, and after a brief respite, was, in 1565,

"reconducted to his former prison; this was 'a subterraneous dungeon, damp and noisome--not a ray of light penetrated thither; and for thirteen years this was his unvarying abode.' During all that time his food was of the coarsest kind, and, with the exception of rare intervals, when the intercession of some influential friends obtained a momentary relaxation, he was allowed no occupation that could cheer the tedium of his imprisonment. In all this lengthened martyrdom, prayer was his resource, and, as he himself subsequently avowed, he often-times passed whole days and nights overwhelmed with heavenly consolations, so that his dungeon seemed transformed into a paradise of delights. To preclude the possibility of idleness, he procured a bed made of twisted cords, and whensoever his mind was fatigued with prayer, he applied himself to untie those cords, and often was he well wearied with the exertion before he could reunite them to compose himself to sleep.

"His persecutors, overcome by his constancy, and finding his fervor in spiritual contemplation a continual reproach to their own wickedness, at length, about Christmas, 1572, connived at his escape."

Reaching the continent, he died at Alcala, in 1577, bearing to the grave the marks of his thirteen years' imprisonment.

Next in importance among the sufferers for the faith was a most remarkable man, David Wolf, a native of Limerick, a priest of the Society of Jesus, whose labors, perils, sufferings of every kind, while acting as nuncio to the Pope in Ireland from 1560 to 1578, form the matter for a most interesting volume--not only from the personal interest attaching to a man of his ability, learning, and courage, but from the influence exercised by him in perpetuating the episcopacy, and, consequently, the priesthood and the faith in Ireland. The first martyr of whom we have any details is the Franciscan, Daniel O'Duillian, of the convent of Youghal, put to death in 1569. Indictment, trial, judge, or jury seem to have had no part in his cause. Father Mooney thus describes his death as he obtained authentic information within fifty years after its occurrence:

"When one Captain Dudal (probably Dowdall) with his troop were torturing him, by order of Lord Arthur Grey, the viceroy, first they took him to the gate which is called Trinity Gate, and tied his hands behind his back, and, having fastened heavy stones to his feet, thrice pulled him up with ropes from the earth to the top of the tower, and left him hanging there for a space. At length, after many insults and tortures, he was hung with his head down and his feet in the air, at the mill near the monastery; and, hanging there a long time, while he lived he never uttered an impatient word, but, like a good Christian, incessantly repeated prayers, now aloud, now in a low voice. At length the soldiers were ordered to shoot at him, as though he were a target; but yet, that his sufferings might be the longer and more cruel, they might not aim at his head or heart, but as much as they pleased at any other part of his body. After he had received many balls, one, with a cruel mercy, loaded his gun with two balls and shot him through the heart. Thus did he receive the glorious crown of martyrdom the 22d of April, in the year aforesaid."

Similar disregard of all law and forms of justice appears in the terrible martyrdom of the Franciscan Father O'Dowd, who died like Sir John Nepomucen, a martyr of the seal of confession.

With some other prisoners, he fell, in 1577, into the hands of the soldiers of Felton, then president of Connaught.

{841}

"They pressed a certain secular, who was one of their captives, to tell them something of the plots which they said he had made with others against the queen of England; but he protested he could tell nothing but the truth, and that there were no plots; so they determined to hang him. When they said this, he begged he might be allowed to make his confession to Father O'Dowd; this they granted the more readily that they thought the priest, if he were tortured, would reveal what might be told him. As soon as the confession was over, the secular was hung; and then they asked the priest, who was also to be hung, if he had learned aught of the business in confession. He answered in the negative, and, refusing to reveal anything of a confession, they offered him life and freedom if he would reveal, and threatened torture if he refused. He answered he could not, and they immediately knotted a cord round his forehead, and, thrusting a piece of wood through it, slowly twisted it so tightly that at length, after enduring this torment for a long time, his skull was broken in, and, the brain being crushed, he died, June 9th, 1577."

Father Mooney recorded this horrid statement from the lips of some of the very soldiery who perpetrated it.

When Dr. Patrick O'Hely, Bishop of Mayo, and his companion, Father Cornelius O'Rorke, were arrested in the County Kerry, soon after landing, they were loaded with chains and imprisoned in Limerick till Sir William Drury arrived.

"The two prisoners were first placed on the rack, their arms and feet were beaten with hammers, so that their thigh-bones were broken, and sharp iron points and needles were cruelly thrust under their nails, which caused an extreme agony of suffering. For a considerable time they were subjected to these tortures, which the holy confessors bore patiently for the love of Christ, mutually exhorting each other to constancy and perseverance.

"At length they were taken from the rack, and hanged from the branches of a neighboring tree. Their bodies were left suspended there for fourteen days, and were used in the interim as a target by the brutal soldiery."

Here began, it will be seen, a sort of process, or at least arraignment, torture, and execution; although anything like a trial is wanting.

But in the fearful deaths of Rev. Daniel O'Nielan, (March 28th, 1580,) Rev. Maurice Kinrehan, Rev. Maurice Scanlan, and his companions, [Footnote 293] in the same year, no pretence of examination was made; the soldiery either killing them on the spot, or wreaking on them any and every cruelty that wanton malignity could devise or suggest.

[Footnote 293: These three in 1580, and the three Franciscans, of the same names, nearly and at the same places in 1582, must be identical.]

In the case of the heroic Cistercian, Abbot of Boyle, Father Gelasius O'Quillenan, and his companions, arrested while in Dublin, in 1580, there was not the wanton cruelty of lawless soldiers, or the mere bloodthirstiness of officers accustomed to every barbarity. Here the action proceeded from the very highest English authority in Ireland, in the days of Lord Coke, who tells us in those legal treatises which have come down to us as oracles, that he never knew of torture having been used in England.

The abbot and his companions underwent preliminary examinations.

"John O'Garvin, then Protestant Dean of Christ Church, was among those who assisted at his first interrogatory, and, having proposed many inducements to the abbot 'to abandon the popish creed,' Gelasius in reply, reproved him for preferring the deceitful vanities of this world to the lasting joys of eternity, and exhorted him 'to renounce the errors and iniquity of heresy by which he had hitherto warred against God, and to make amends for the past by joining with him in professing the name of Christ, that he might thus become worthy to receive a heavenly crown.' The holy abbot and his companion were then subjected to torture, and, among their other sufferings, we find it commemorated that their arms and legs were broken by repeated blows, and fire was applied to their feet. The only words of Gelasius during all this torture were, 'Though you should offer me the princedom of England, I will not forfeit my eternal reward.' Sentence of death being passed against them, they were led out with all possible ignominy to execution. They, however, were filled with consolation; the sight of the joyous sufferers excited the admiration of the assembled multitude, and many even of the heretics declared that they were more like angels than men. {842} It was on the 21st November, 1580, that they were happily crowned with martyrdom. The garments which they wore, and the implements of their torture, were eagerly purchased by the Catholics, and cherished by them with religious veneration."

Nor can it be said that in the use of torture thus used to wring from the Irish clergy admissions to justify their execution, the authorities in Dublin acted without the knowledge or consent of the queen. Any such pretext is at once scattered to the winds by English records in the case of one of the most illustrious martyrs in the whole honored list of Ireland's witnesses for the faith--Dermod O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel.

"The birthplace of this glorious martyr was a little village in the diocese of Limerick, less than three miles from that city, called Lycodoon, where his parents lived respectably by farming, both of tillage and cattle; they were held in good estimation by their neighbors, both rich and poor, especially James Geraldine, Earl of Desmond.

"Having then been raised to the episcopacy by Gregory XIII., and named Archbishop of Cashel, he took his route toward Ireland."

At Waterford he was detected by a Protestant named Baal, on whose information he was pursued to the Castle of Slane, where he had, indeed, taken refuge for a time, but had proceeded further. When Lord Slane found himself in danger, he joined in the pursuit of the archbishop, and, overtaking him at Carrick-on-Suir, induced him to proceed to Dublin, where his arrival is noted by Archbishop Loftus and Sir H. Wallop, in a letter to Robert Beale, temporary chief secretary to the queen, dated Oct. 8th, 1583, and still preserved in the Public Record Office in London. In a subsequent letter, on the 10th of December, addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham, they say: "Among other letters directed to us, and brought by this last passage, we received one from your honor declaring her Majesty's pleasure for the proceeding with Dr. Hurley by torture or any other severe manner of proceeding to gain his knowledge of all foreign practices against her majesty's state, wherein we _partly_ forebore to deal till now." Then they remark, "for that we want here either rack or other engine of torture to terrify him ... the Tower of London should be a better school than the Castle of Dublin ... we do wish that we had directions to send him thither."

The pretext here was shallow; there was wit enough in the dominant party in Ireland to invent any necessary racks. Walsingham evidently directed them to proceed in Dublin, and himself suggested the mode of torture. On the 7th of March, 1584, they again write, "We made commission to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture _such as your honor advised us_, which was, to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots." What these Walsingham boots were, we learn from contemporary statements taken down from eye-witnesses. "The executioners placed the archbishop's feet and calves in tin boots filled with oil; they then fastened his feet in wooden shackles or stocks, and placed fire under them. The boiling oil so penetrated the feet and legs that morsels of the skin and even flesh fell off and left the bone bare. The officer whose duty it was to preside over the torture, unused to such unheard-of suffering, and unable to look upon such an inhuman spectacle, or to hear the piteous cries of the innocent prelate, suddenly left his seat and quitted the place." (Pages 91-2.) All this failed to extort from him anything to justify his arraignment even, though the torture was continued till the executioners believed life extinct, and hastily endeavored to restore animation; for he "lost all voice and sense, and when taken out lay on the ground like dead." (Ib. 93.)

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The lords justices were in great perplexity. The judges, on being consulted, had positively declared that, as no act of treason had been committed by him in Ireland, he could not by law be arraigned. Their opinion, still preserved in the Public Record Office, is given by our author, (p. 109.) Again they apply to Walsingham, and the whole passage is so curious that we cite it at length:

"And herein we thought good to remember your honor by way of our opinion that, considering how _obstinate and wilful_ we find him every way, if he should be referred to a public trial, his _impudent and clamorous_ denial might do great harm to the ill-affected here, who in troth have no small admiration of him. And yet, having had conference with some of the best lawyers in the land, we find that they make a scruple to arraign him here, for that his treasons were committed in foreign parts, the statute in that behalf being not here as it is in England. And therefore we think it not amiss (if it be allowed of there) to have him executed by _martial law, against which he can have no just challenge_, for that he hath neither lands nor goods, and as by that way may be avoided many harms, which by his presence, standing at ordinary trial, and retaining still his former impudence and negative protestations, he may do to the people."

The idea of any man impudently objecting to submit to the honor of being executed by martial law, when a trial at law must result in his acquittal, is indeed extraordinary, and sufficient to disquiet Christian rulers.

Elizabeth relieved them. A letter of April 29th, 1584, announced her majesty's resolution for the course to beholden with Hurley, namely, "that they should proceed to his execution (if it might be) by ordinary trial by law, or otherwise, by martial law."

Loftus and Wallop, accordingly, on the 19th of June, 1584, gave warrant to the knight-marshal in her majesty's name to do execution upon him." (Letter July 9th, 1584.)

Accordingly, on Friday before Trinity-Sunday, Hurley--whose wounds had been so skilfully treated by a Jesuit who was enabled to reach him, as to enable the holy sufferer to regain sufficient strength to sit up and even rest on his feet--was ordered to prepare for execution. He was taken out at early dawn, amid the cries of his fellow Catholic prisoners, proclaiming his innocence, one bishop, who was expiating in fetters a guilty pusillanimity, exclaiming that he himself, for the scandal he had given, deserved to die, but that the archbishop was an innocent and holy man. He was drawn on a hurdle through the garden gate to a wood near the city, and "there he was hanged on a withey, calling on God, and forgiving his torturers with all his heart." At evening his body was buried in the half-ruined church of St. Kevin. So great was the veneration felt for this holy man, that the church was restored to satisfy the devotion of those who flocked to the spot to recommend themselves to his prayers, and many of whom averred that miracles were wrought there.

Elizabeth and the ministers of her godless tyranny, in thus trampling on law and justice, had gained nothing toward the advancement of the new doctrines in Ireland. The death of Dr. Hurley but confirmed the Irish Catholics more immovably in the faith.

{844}

In another case, Dr. Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, who escaped from the Tower of London in 1565, but, after two years' labors in Ireland, was seized in Connaught in 1567, the government ventured on a trial at law; but the jury acquitted him. Little did this avail: he was kept a prisoner, but at last effected his escape, and, for a short time, labored to console the afflicted Catholics. Falling again into the hands of the persecutors, he was sent to England, and died of poison in the Tower of London, (Oct. 14th, 1585,) leaving one of the most venerated names in the annals of the Irish church. Another prelate, Murlagh O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, died the same year in prison, at Dublin, after undergoing tortures.

The interesting biography of another martyr, Rev. Maurice Kinrechtin, gives a picture of a Catholic Easter during these dark ages in Ireland that is too touching to omit. It is in a letter from Father Robert Rochfort:

'I send you an account of the glorious martyrdom of a friend of mine, Maurice Kinrechtin, a pious priest, chaplain to the Earl of Desmond, whom you know. He was for this cause taken prisoner by the English, and taken to your native town of Clonmel, where he lay in prison for more than a year. On the eve of Easter, 1585, Victor White, one of the principal citizens of Clonmel and a pious Catholic, obtained from the head jailer permission for the priest to pass the night in his house; this the jailer agreed to, but secretly informed the President of Munster, an English heretic, who chanced to be in the town, that, if he wished, he might easily seize all the principal citizens while hearing mass in the house of Mr. White at daybreak; at the same time he bargained to be paid for his perfidy. At the hour agreed on, the soldiers rushed into the house and seized on Victor; but all the others, hearing the noise, tried to escape by the back-doors and windows; a certain matron, trying to escape, fell and broke her arm. The soldiers found the chalice and other things for mass; they sought everywhere for the priest, (who had not yet begun the mass,) and came at length to a heap of straw, under which he lay hid, and, thrusting their swords through it, wounded him in the thigh; but he preserved silence, and, through fear of worse, concealed his suffering, and soon after escaped from the town into the country. But the intrepid Victor (who, although he had for this reason suffered much, could never be induced to attend the conventicles of the heretics) was thrown into prison because he would not give up the priest, and would, no doubt, have been put to death, had not Maurice, hearing of the danger of his friend, voluntarily surrendered himself to the president, showing a friendship truly Christian. The president upbraided him much, and, having sentenced him to death, offered him his life if he would abjure our Catholic faith and profess the queen to be head of the church. There came to him also a preacher, and strove long, but in vain, to seduce the martyr; nor would he on any account betray any of those who had heard his mass, or to whom he had at any time administered the sacraments. At length he was dragged at the tail of a horse to the place of execution as a traitor. Being come there, he devoutly and learnedly exhorted the people to constancy in the faith. The executioner cut him down from the gallows when yet half alive, and cut off his sacred head, and the minister struck it in the face. Then the Catholics by prayers and bribes obtained of the executioners that they should not lacerate his body any further, and they buried it as honorably as they could. Farewell, and peace in the Lord, and be ye imitators--if occasion offers--of the courageous Maurice Kinrechtin, and till then prepare your souls for the trial. Your devoted servant, dated from the College of St. Anthony, 1586, 20th March, Robert Rochfort."

Thus it went on during the reign of Elizabeth. The year 1588 witnessed many hanged, drawn, and quartered--the Rev. Peter Miller, at Wexford; Peter Meyler, at Galway, and Maurice Eustace--both candidates for the priesthood, the Franciscan fathers, O'Molloy, Dogherty, and Ferrall, at Abbeyleix. The next year another of the same order at Clonmel.

Curry, in his _Civil Wars in Ireland_, thus sums up other examples:

{845}

"John Stephens, priest, for that he said mass to Teague McHugh, was hanged and quartered by the Lord Burroughs, in 1597; Thady O'Boyle, guardian of the monastery of Donegal, was slain by the English in his own monastery; six friars were slain in the monastery of Moynihigan; John O'Calyhor and Bryan O'Trevor, of the order of St. Bernard, were slain in their own monastery, De Sancta Maria, in Ulster; as also Felimy O'Hara, a lay-brother; so was AEneas Penny, parish priest of Killagh, slain at the altar in his parish church there; Cahill McGoran; Rory O'Donnellan; Peter McQuillan; Patrick O'Kenna; George Power, vicar-general of the diocese of Ossory; Andrew Stritch, of Limerick; Bryan O'Murihirtagh, vicar-general of the diocese of Clonfert; Doroghow O'Molowny, of Thomond; John Kelly, of Louth; Stephen Patrick, of Annaly; John Pillis, friar; Rory McHenlea; Tirilagh McInisky, a lay-brother. All those that come after AEneas Penny, together with Walter Fernan, priest, died in the Castle of Dublin, either through hard usage and restraint or the violence of torture."

To whom may be added the Rev. George Power; Rev. John Walsh; Bishop Brady, of Kilmore, and his companions, whose sufferings are here most touchingly given; the Rev. Donatus O'Mollony, so tortured by iron boots and thumbscrews, as well as the rack--of all which there was now, apparently, a full supply in Ireland--that he died a few hours after.

But single executions were not prompt enough. In 1602, the authorities intimated that such of the clergy as presented themselves to the magistrates would be allowed to take their departure from the kingdom. Forty-two, secular priests and fathers of the Dominican and Cistercian orders, believing that a Protestant government would keep faith with Catholics, accepted the offer, and assembling, as directed, at Inniscattery, were put on board a vessel of war to sail for France. But no sooner had they reached the broad Atlantic, than the whole of these priests were thrown overboard. On the return of the vessel to port, great indignation was pretended by the authorities, and the queen cashiered the officers; while they were, in fact, secretly rewarded.

This martyrdom, fearful for its treachery, and the number of the priestly victims, closed, so to say, the reign of bloody Elizabeth. The hatred of Catholicity was intense; but yet there was apparent from first to last, a sense of respect for the opinion of the Catholic powers, an attempt to justify the executions by color of law, or excuse them as unintended acts of severity in putting down revolts or conducting military operations.

When the son of Mary, herself a martyr and sufferer, ascended the throne, his accession was hailed by the Catholic Irish with a burst of joy. A prince of their own race, they could regard him with feelings never awakened by former sovereigns of England. The memory of his mother would have bound them to him. He might have rendered Ireland a happy country. Led away by this vision, the Irish Catholics openly celebrated the long proscribed worship; but they soon were rudely awakened from their delusion. The glorious army of martyrs under James I. begins with Redmond O'Gallagher, Bishop of Derry, hacked to pieces by a party of horse in 1604.

Among all the martyrs of this reign, however, the most illustrious was Cornelius O'Dovany, Bishop of Down and Connor, put to death at Dublin, February 1st, 1611. At an early age he embraced the rule of St. Francis, and became a model of piety and patience. Raised to the perilous dignity of the episcopate, he labored strenuously to fulfil its duties. At last, he was arrested and sent to Dublin Castle, where he nearly perished from want of food and of all comforts. As the persecutors admitted that they could not legally compass his death, he was at last released. But it was only for a time. Seizing as a pretext his presence in the district held by the Earl of Tyrone in his rising against the crown, they again, in June, 1611, committed him to his former prison. He was then brought to trial, and, although he pleaded the Act of Oblivion, which clearly covered his case, the government, grown wiser in its malice, packed a jury, and obtained a verdict.

{846}

Our author thus describes his martyrdom from contemporary narratives:

"The 1st of February, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he was called to mount the cart which, surrounded by guards, stood at the prison door. When the holy bishop came in sight of that triumphal chariot, he sighed and said, 'My Lord Jesus, for my sake, went on foot, bearing his cross, to the mountain where he suffered; and must I be borne in a cart, as though unwilling to die for him, when I would hasten with willing feet to that glory? Would that I might bear my cross and hasten on my feet to meet my Lord!' Turning to his fellow-sufferer, Patrick, he said, 'Come, my brave comrade and worthy soldier of Christ, let us imitate his death as best we may who was led to the slaughter as a sheep before the shearer. Then bending down and kissing the cart, he mounted up into it, and sat down with his back to the horses, and was thus drawn through the paved streets to the field where the gallows was erected.

"Cornelius, when he was come to the place of sacrifice, being solicitous for the constancy of his colleague, begged that Patrick might be put to death first; for he feared lest, by the sight of his death and the wiles of the Calvinists, Patrick might be induced to yield to human weakness. But as his wish would not be granted, Father Patrick assured the bishop he might lay aside all fear for him. 'Though,' said he, 'I would desire to die first, and be strengthened in my agony by your paternal charity, since we are given up to the will of others, go, happy father, and fear not for my constancy; aid me by your prayers with God, by whose help I am sure that neither death nor life, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor any other creature, shall separate me from the love of Christ, or from my companionship with you.' Rejoiced at these words, Cornelius threw himself on his knees, but had only breathed a hasty prayer (which yet reached God in heaven) when the councillors, the captain and guard called out to make an end quickly. The field, situated to the north of the city, which would easily hold 3000 persons, was crowded. The executioner was an Englishman and a Protestant, (for no Irishman could be found who would stain himself with the blood of the bishop,) who was condemned to death for robbery, and was promised his life for acting as executioner on this occasion. Yet, though he had thus purchased his life, he was touched with reverence and compassion for the gray hairs of the bishop, and prayed his pardon, and with trembling hands adjusted the noose. The moment the bishop mounted the first step of the ladder, and his head was seen above the crowd, a great shout and groans burst from all the spectators.

"Then the minister Challoner, furious at the cries of pity raised by the people, said to the bishop: 'Why delude ye the ignorant people? Why end ye your life with a lie, and a vain boast of martyrdom? Tell the multitude that ye are traitors, and that it is for treason and not for religion ye suffer.' To these unjust words the bishop answered: 'Far be it from us, who are about to appear before the tribunal of Christ, to impose upon the people. But also far be it from us to confess ourselves guilty of crimes of which our conscience tells us we are innocent. Nor yet do we vainly ambition the title of martyrs, though for us to die for Christ is gain. You know that you are yourself guilty of that prevarication of which you accuse us; for but a few hours ago, sent as you said by the viceroy, you offered us life and freedom if we would subscribe to your heresy. Leave us, then, son of darkness, and calumniate not our innocence.'

"Then the minister departed and left the martyrs in peace. As they mounted the middle of the ladder, again there rose the cry of the people; and a third time, when he was about to be thrown off, the groans of those who beat their breasts rose louder than before. Thrice he prayed, as he stood there: once for all the bystanders; secondly, for the city of Dublin, and all the Catholics of this kingdom, that they may serve God piously, faithfully, and perseveringly; a third time he prayed for all heretics, and for his persecutors, that they might be converted from the evil of their ways.

"The Bishop's head was hardly cut off when an Irishman seized it, and, rushing into the centre of the crowd, was never found, although the viceroy offered a reward of forty pounds of silver. The Catholics gathered up his blood, and contended for his garments, despite the resistance of the soldiery. {847} The priest Patrick followed the same road, singing, as he mounted the ladder, the canticle of Simeon, 'Now, O Lord! dismiss thy servant in peace,' and, after the example of the bishop, he prayed for the bystanders, blessed them, and forgave all his enemies. The rope being put round his neck, he hung for a short time, was then cut down half alive, mutilated, and cut in pieces. The soldiers, warned by the loss of the bishop's head, resisted the unarmed crowd, who strove to catch the martyr's blood and other relics, and wounded many. The day after, the bodies were buried at the gallows' foot, but in the stillness of the night were removed by the Catholics to a chapel."

We cannot enter on the other sufferers of this reign whose records are carefully collected in the _Memorials_.

The reign of Charles I. opens with the deeply interesting life of Francis Slingsby, showing how, even amid all the terrible persecutions of the church, God called his own elect to the light of his truth, and endowed them with firmness. He was a son of Sir Francis Slingsby, an English knight settled in Ireland, and was born in 1611. After being educated at Oxford, he travelled on the continent, and at Rome was converted to the faith; and, at the tomb of St. Aloysius, firmly resolved to enter the Society of Jesus. At the earnest entreaty of his father and mother, he returned to Ireland; but after an interview with Archbishop Usher and Lord Strafford, he was thrown into prison. Cardinal Barberini exerted his influence with the queen of England, and, in May, 1635, he was admitted to bail. His stay in Ireland was not fruitless; for he converted his mother, his younger brother, his sister, and several others. This increased his dangers, and, the General of the Society urging him to come at once to Rome, he proceeded thither in 1636; but learning that his friend Spreul, whom he had converted, and won to the order he himself had chosen, had been struck down by disease, he returned to Ireland, tended him in his illness, and then both reached Rome in 1639. Renouncing all his worldly prospects in favor of his brother, he began his studies, and, after his ordination, entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1641; but died at Naples before he could return to Ireland to labor in the field where his words, example, and fetters had preached so eloquently. The sketch of this heroic young man, and that of Maurice Eustace, son of Sir John Eustace, and a novice in the Society of Jesus, who, returning to his family by permission of his superiors, was seized, tried, hung, drawn, and quartered, on the 9th of June, 1588, form a most interesting addition to our biographies, and show us in Ireland, two young imitators of St. Aloysius and St. Stanislaus, whose virtues and example can be held up to the young with the power that flows from the fact that they lived among scenes and trials so familiar to us.

When the civil war began between the Puritans and Charles I., the persecution, bitter already under the king, became fiendish under the Parliament. Hitherto some form, some limit, had been observed; but the Puritans revelled in blood with all the ferocity of tigers, and with as little scruple.

"The Parliament of England resolved, on the 24th of October, 1644, 'that no quarter shall be given to any Irishman, or to _ayn papist born in Ireland;_' and their historian, Borlase, adds, 'The orders of Parliament were excellently well executed.' (_Hist, of Rebellion_, p. 62.) Leland and Warner refer to the letters of the lords-justices for the fact that the soldiers 'slew all persons promiscuously, not sparing even the women.' Cromwell declared on landing in Dublin that no mercy should be shown to the Irish, and that they should be dealt with as the Canaanites in Joshua's time. It is impossible to estimate the number of Catholics slain in the ten years from 1642 to 1652. Three bishops and more than 300 priests were put to death for the faith. {848} Thousands of men, women, and children were sold as slaves for the West Indies; Sir W. Petty mentions that six thousand boys and women were thus sold. (_Political Anatomy of Ireland_, p. 187.) A letter written in 1656, quoted by Lingard, puts the number at 60,000; as late as 1666 there were 12,000 Irish slaves scattered among the West Indian Islands. (Letter of Rev. J. Grace, written in 1669, ap. Moran, p. 147.) 40,000 Irish Catholics fled to the continent, and 20,000 took refuge in the Hebrides and other Scottish islands. (Moran, p. 99.) In a word, as Sir W. Petty writes, the population of Ireland in 1641 was 1,466,000, of whom Catholics were about 1,240,000; in 1659, the whole population was only 500,091, of whom Irish were only 420,000, so that very nearly or quite one million must have perished. (Sir W. Petty, _Polit. Anat._ p. 13, ap. Moran, and Hardinge's _Census of 1659_.)"

In this general and fearful slaughter of priest and people, records were impossible; and of many of the priests and religious who perished no trace remains. At the sight of such appalling massacres the mind shrinks back to seek refuge in doubt; but that doubt vanishes before the records of the butchers, who, reeking with slaughter, asked mankind to admire their work as a mercy of God, and even in our day, their descendants ask us to praise them as champions of religious freedom.

We can scarcely be accused of being too severe in our language when Merle d'Aubigné, a professed eulogist of Cromwell, admits that he used "a greater severity than had perhaps been exercised by the pagan leaders of antiquity."

Although, necessarily, for many of their victims there are no details whatever, nevertheless nearly one-fourth of this whole work of Mr. O'Reilly is devoted to memorials of those who perished by the hands of the Puritans in the brief period of twenty years; and he might well close it by the formula at the end of each day in the Roman martyrology, _Et alibi aliorum plurimorum Martyrum et Confessorum_, etc.--"And elsewhere of many other martyrs and confessors," whose names, though unrecorded on earth, are written in the Book of Life. Cromwell, Ireton, Inchiquin, and Coote marked their path in blood. Drogheda, Wexford, Cashel, Limerick, witnessed general massacres, where neither age nor sex could rouse a spark of human feeling in the insatiate butchers. The intense and cruel fanaticism seems to have been either a diabolical possession or a mental disease.

A grandson of Sir Charles Coote, become Earl of Bellomont, was, some years after, made Governor of New York and of New England, and was strongly suspected of complicity in the piracies of Captain Kidd. He certainly showed the fierce anti-Catholic spirit of his father and grandsire, having introduced and forced through, both in New York and Massachusetts, laws to punish with imprisonment for life, or, on recapture, with death, any Catholic priest entering those colonies.

Among the more illustrious martyrs we notice the Most Rev. Malachy O'Queely, Archbishop of Tuam, who was overtaken at Clare, near Sligo, in 1645, by some Puritan cavalry. They hacked off his right arm, and then cruelly mangled his body, cutting it into small pieces. In 1650, Boetius Egan, Bishop of Ross, a holy Franciscan friar, appointed to that see in 1647, on the recommendation of the Nuncio, Rinuccini, left the retreat in which he had been hidden for months, to visit some distant and abandoned parts of his diocese, although Ludlow's Puritan bands were laying waste the country. After performing the apostolic duties that had called him forth, he was returning to his lonely hiding-place, when he was overtaken by a troop of horse hastening to join Cromwell in besieging Clonmel. {849} The commander of this troop, Lord Broghill, whom our readers may not recognize as Robert Boyle, subsequently Earl of Orrery, offered him life,

"If he would deny his faith and join the Parliamentarians, but he rejected the temptation with disdain. He was then abandoned to the soldiers' fury, and, his arms being first severed from his body, he was dragged along the ground to a neighboring tree, and, being hanged from one of its branches by the reins of his own horse, happily consummated his earthly course in November, 1650."

The fall of Limerick enabled Ireton to revel in the blood of Catholic priests. The martyrs were led by Terence Albert O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, born in Limerick in 1600, and nurtured piously by a devoted mother. At an early age he entered the order of St. Dominic, and, after pursuing his studies in Spain, returned to labor in his native city. In 1643, he became provincial of his order, and attended a general chapter at Rome. Four years afterward, he was consecrated Bishop of Emly, and labored there earnestly till he joined the rest who took refuge in Limerick.

"Knowing the fate that was reserved for him, Dr. O'Brien retired to the pest-house, in order to devote the last hours of his life to the benefit of his suffering fellow-citizens, and to preparing himself for death. Here he was found by the officers sent to arrest him, and brought before Ireton, who told him he was to be tried by a court-martial, and imprisoned till the sentence was pronounced. The bishop heard this unmoved, and when asked did he want counsel, calmly replied that all he required was his confessor. This boon was granted, and Father Hanrahan, a member of his own order, was suffered to pass the whole day and night of the 30th of October in his prison. On the following evening he was led out to execution, and, as Father Hanrahan related, walked as joyfully to the place as to a feast. His contemporary, De Marinis, relates his execution thus: 'He went with joy to the place of execution, and then, with a serene countenance, turning to his Catholic friends, who stood in the crowd inconsolable and weeping, he said to them, "Hold firmly by your faith, and observe its precepts; murmur not against the arrangements of God's providence, and thus you will save your souls. Weep not at all for me, but rather pray that in this last trial of death I may, by firmness and constancy, attain my heavenly reward." The head of the martyr was struck off and placed on a spike on the tower,' ('which is on the middle of the bridge.'--_A Rosario_,) 'and long after seemed to drop fresh blood, and uncorrupted and unchanged in aspect, flesh, or hair--a tribute, as may be thought, to that virginal purity which it is universally believed he preserved to the end.' Thus he went to his reward, on the vigil of All Saints', 1651. De Marinis and A Rosario relate that the holy bishop summoned Ireton to the judgment-seat of God to answer for his crimes; and on the 18th day afterward that bloody persecutor was seized with the plague, and, after sixteen days, expired in great torments. Dr. Moran mentions that the spot where this holy bishop was martyred is yet pointed out and venerated by the Catholics of Limerick."

Another Dominican martyr of this scene, Father James Wolf,

"was an old man, and preacher-general, who had before been a long time in prison for the faith, and in this last persecution was as a wall against the enemies of the faith. He was taken in Limerick while offering the mass, and in a few hours afterward was sentenced to be hung, and brought out into the market square, where he made a public profession of his faith, and exhorted the Catholics to constancy in the religion of their ancestors, and that with so much ardor that it moved his very enemies. Standing on the top step of the ladder, and about to be swung off, he joyously exclaimed, '_We are made a spectacle to God and angels and men--of glory to God, of joy to angels, of contempt to men._' Having said this, he was hung, and so went to his crown."

It is a strange fact, and one that we must regret, that England should owe the final conquest of Canada to one who should have honored this martyr of his family, but who was really intensely English, and rivalled Ireton by his bloody march up the St. Lawrence, butchering priests at their own church doors with as little compunction as Ireton felt for Father James Wolf. {850} That martyr had a brother George, an officer in the Irish army. Although doomed, he managed to escape, and reaching England, finally settled in Yorkshire. His grandson Edward fought under Marlborough, and rose to the rank of general. His son, a namesake of the Limerick martyr, was General James Wolfe, who died in the arms of victory at Quebec, having struck the blow that seemed to crush for ever Catholicity in Canada.

Another bishop, Arthur Magennis, a Cistercian, Bishop of Down and Connor, was, in spite of his infirmities and years, dragged on shipboard, to be carried to some other land. Death was, however, the object of his tormentors, not exile: and, as he lingered too long to please their impatience, they dragged one of the ship's cannon beside his berth, and, firing it, caused such a shock to the invalid that he expired.

The clergy who suffered met death in every form. Some perished of starvation in the mountain, like the Rev. John Carolan; some were starved to death in prison, like the Dominican father, John O'Laighlin; some, tracked to their hiding-places, were shot in their caves, like the Franciscan father, Francis Sullivan; some were stoned to death, and flung into rivers, like the Dominican father, John Flaverty; many cut down by the roadside, or shot and hacked to pieces, like Stephen Pettit, the Dominican fathers, Peter Costello, Dominic Neagan, Lawrence O'Ferral; others more deliberately hanged on sea or land, like the Franciscan fathers, Fergal Ward, Denis Nelan, Rev. Peter Higgins, the Dominican Bonaventure de Burgo, and many more; or drowned at sea, like the Trinitarian fathers O'Conor and Daly; or tied to stakes and shot, like the Jesuit, Father Bathe, and his brother at Drogheda.

"Of the many thousands of Irish men, women, and children who were sold into slavery in the West Indies, the names of very few have been preserved. Among these was Father David Roche, Dominican. Full details of this infamous traffic are given by Prendergast, _Cromwellian Settlement_. Thus, a government order, published on March 4th, 1655, states that, in the four preceding years, 6400 Irish, men and women, boys and maidens, had been disposed of to the English slave-dealers. On the 14th September, 1653, two English merchants, named Selleck and Leader, signed a contract with the government commissioners, by which a supply was granted to them of 250 women and 300 men of the Irish nation, to be found within twenty miles of Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, Waterford, and Wexford. Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, (afterward Earl of Orrery,) deemed it unnecessary to take such trouble in visiting different parts of the kingdom, and undertook to supply the whole number from the county of Cork alone; hence he received an order empowering him to search for and seize upon that number, 'and no person, being once apprehended, was to be released but by special order in writing under the hand of Lord Broghill. In the month of November, 1655, all the Irish of the townland of Lackagh, county of Kildare, were seized on by the agents of the government. They were only forty-one in number, and of these four were hanged by sentence of court-martial; the remaining thirty-seven, including two priests, were handed over to Mr. Norton, a Bristol merchant, to be sold as bond-slaves to the sugar-planters at the Barbadoes.' Again, on the 8th December, 1655, we find a letter from the commissioners to the Governor of Barbadoes, 'advising him of the approach of a ship with a cargo of proprietors, deprived of their lands, and seized for not transplanting.' They add that among them were three priests, and the commissioners particularly desire that these may be so employed that they may not return again where that sort of people are able to do so much mischief, having so great an influence over the popish Irish."

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Of their sufferings at sea our author gives no record; but Anderson, in his _History of the Colonial Church_, (ii. p. 52-3,) describes, from a petition to Parliament, the sufferings of English prisoners "crowded into close holds amid horses," "sold, on arriving, to the most inhuman persons," and treated worse than beasts; "sleeping in styes, worse than hogs in England, and many other ways made most miserable beyond expression of Christian imagination." And nothing in the annals of history will justify the supposition that the Irish fared better.

During long examinations of early records and manuscript matter relating to the colonies which formed the American Union, no allusion has met our eye relating to any of these priests sold as slaves in America by the Puritans. It is doubtful, therefore, whether any ever reached our shores. But it seems to us that researches will yet lead to some clue or trace in the West India Islands, that favorite mart for the Puritan slave-dealers, who sold alike there the Irish Catholic, or the Christian or Pagan Indian of New England. It is, however, a curious fact that the first victim of the witchcraft excitement in New England was one of the Irish slaves, a poor woman, who though able to repeat the Lord's Prayer in Latin and Irish, failed to pray in the to her unknown English tongue, was adjudged a witch, and put to death.

Of the Irish transported to St. Christopher's we find some account in the Jesuit Father Peter Pelleprat's _Relation des Missions des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus dans les Isles et dans la Terre Ferine de l'Amérique Méridionale_, (Paris, 1655.) Part of the island belonged to the French, and Father John Destriche (Stritch?) an Irish member of the Society, was sent in 1650, to the boundary. His long-forsaken countrymen flocked around, braving all dangers from their cruel task-masters; and he spent three months hearing confessions, baptizing, instructing, consoling and fortifying with the sacraments these poor exiles. He then, in the disguise of a merchant, visited Montserrat, which was, for a time, an independent Irish isle, and so laid down on maps, and where even the negroes spoke Irish. But, at this time of Puritan rule, the English had reduced them to slavery. Here he raised a little chapel in the depth of a forest, and the Irish every day, under pretext of cutting wood, made their way to the spot, and, after giving the day to religion, cut some wood to carry back.

Returning to St. Christopher's, he found the English renewing the persecution. One hundred and twenty-five of the most fervent Catholics were carried off and set ashore on the barren island of Crabs or Boriquen. Here some undoubtedly perished of starvation; a few reached St. Domingo, but, on the refusal of the Spaniards to receive them, managed to find transport to Tortugas, then in the hands of the French.

Father Destriche then collected all the Irish he could, and conveyed them to Gaudeloupe, making excursions from time to time to bring in others to swell this settlement; and visiting in disguise the various English islands.

No allusion is made to any priest among these exiles; but this father was not probably alone. Research in this field may yet enlarge the touching memorials which Mr. O'Reilly deserves so great credit for presenting to us.

The persecution may be said to close with the Puritan rule; Archbishop Plunkett, whose life is well and concisely given, having been a victim to the infamous fiction of plots in the reign of Charles II., and brought to the scaffold by the false testimony of men of his own country and faith.

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The last of the martyred clergy was the Dominican Father Gerald Gibbon, sub-prior of Kilmallock, killed by some of William III.'s roving cavalry at Listuahill, in the County of Kerry, in 1691.

Mr. O'Reilly has done an excellent work. The records of the lives and deaths of these illustrious men should be familiar to all their countrymen, not to excite feelings of hostility and vengeance against the descendants of the wrong-doers; for, as in the case of Wolfe, the later generations fall away at times, and the priest we revere may trace his descent from a persecutor. But the lives of these martyrs remind us in these days of insidious prosperity, that we should struggle as manfully against the persecution of religious indifference as they did against the persecution of rack, and sword, and halter, and show that we deem the religion they died for worthy of a life of love and sacrifice.

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De Profundis.

O weary, weary heart, O fainting soul! Thy struggle is in vain; The fiery waves of woe that o'er thee roll O'erwhelm with fiercest pain. There is for thee no rest, for thee no peace Till thought and mem'ry, life itself shall cease.

"Rest for the weary"--words that flatteringly Promise thy heart relief; The words of peace are meaningless to thee, They mock thy endless grief. Think not thy soul from further woe to save, Seek not for rest, or seek it in the grave!

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Sweet rest, sweet peace. O Jesu! thou canst give E'en in my mortal woe; Thou bidst my struggling, dying soul to live, And lead'st me gently through The waves that dash against my tired feet, To fields of living green and verdure sweet.

Jesu! sweet Jesu! in my darkest hour On thee alone I call; Though waves may dash and dark'ning skies may lower, And raging storms appall, I heed them not--I look beyond, above, And find my refuge in thy Heart of Love!

K. A.

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From La Semaine Liturgique De Poitiers.

The Legend Of St. Michael And The Hermit.

"Consummatus in brevi, explevit tempera multa." --_Book of Wisdom_.

A poor but venerable hermit, wearing the habit, sandals, and cord of St. Francis of Assisi, travelled, from dawn till the going down of the sun, over the flowery highways of verdant Normandy, passing through boroughs and villages, castles and towers. Was he a palmer from the Holy Land, come to rekindle the ardor of noble and valiant men of arms with tales of the woes of the Christians in Palestine? No, the times of Philip Augustus and Louis IX. had passed away. Yet our hermit kept steadily on, allowing himself not a day of rest but the Lord's day, seeking some one or something.

"What art thou seeking, pious traveller? Thy ardor is greater than that of a knight-errant longing to break a lance in honor of the fair lady whose color he wears."

"I am seeking a soul," replies the hermit, "because St. Michael the Archangel has made known to me that a throne in the eternal mansions awaits some soul from earth, a throne of dazzling beauty, resplendent with sapphires and diamonds, and the golden palms of the heavenly Jerusalem. But the soul thus summoned to a throne on high must not be _too young_."

"Keep on thy way. Old men are to be found in every country on the earth."

And the hermit kept on his way from the earliest dawn till eventide. At last he finds an aged abbot beneath the Gothic arches of an old Benedictine abbey. His reputation for sanctity and his great age, which was fourscore years, made our pilgrim hope that he had found the object of his search. So, on Sunday, after the hour of lauds, the hermit joyfully offered St. Michael, on bended knee, the name of the venerable abbot, with an account of his exemplary life; but, in the evening, after the hour of compline, the archangel said unto him, "Continue thy search. The abbot Fulgentius, worthy as he is, merits not this high reward. That servant of the Lord is still _too young_."

"He is fourscore years of age, of which sixty-four have been spent in the monastic state and in the same monastery."

"He has not yet lived twenty years as years are reckoned by the guardian angels. Pursue thy way, good hermit, and continue thy search."

After three months the pilgrim worn by fatigue and prolonged vigils joyfully brought four names to St. Michael. It will be understood that these names were chosen from among thousands by the zealous pilgrim. The first bright name on the list was that of a Lord of Falaise, illustrious through his ancestors, and still more so for his own charity. His castle with its square towers, surrounded by crags, deep moats, and high walls, was always hospitably open to all pilgrims and strangers as well as to the unfortunate. There he himself waited upon them at table, after having washed their feet with his own hands, count and baron as he was, and he never suffered them to depart till he had given them alms and chanted the divine office with them in the nave of his chapel of St. Prix. {854} A numerous progeny reverenced him, and all his vassals proclaimed his fatherly kindness. What more could be asked that he might exchange his feudal power for a throne in heaven?

The second on the list was the mother of fifteen children, seven of whom served their king as brave soldiers, seven others served the altar as priests or monks, and the remaining one, a daughter, had many children, who were reared under the careful and vigilant eye of their grandmother of pious renown. What more could be asked that she might pass from family honors to a throne in heaven?

The third was a noble warrior of the Knights of Malta, covered with wounds and scars gained in the service of God. Having been made, at the age of thirteen years, knight of his order and page of the grand master, he was appointed, at the age of twenty-two, to the command of three war-vessels which he armed at his own expense. He made himself formidable to all the Turks on the seas of the Levant. Being appointed captain of one of the galleys of Malta, our knight took twenty-two vessels from the paynim and delivered many thousand Christian slaves. The Emir Fraycardin, who held sway over the Druses of Mount Lebanon, and boasted of his descent from Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, conceived so high an esteem for him that he came forth from the town of Sayeda to visit him on board of one of his vessels, and on that occasion gave him a scimitar from Damascus, with a scabbard of wrought silver, inlaid with diamonds and rare pearls, which our hero presented to the king of France, in presence of the same emir of illustrious memory.

The escutcheon of our knight bore a chevron gules, on a field or, charged at the bend with a flower-de-luce or, and surmounted by the silver cross of the Order of Malta. [sic]

He seemed truly endowed with valor and sanctity, which made up for want of age, for he was only twenty-nine. What more could be asked that he might pass from the midst of combats to the bosom of everlasting peace, and from the triumphs of victory to a glorious throne in heaven?

Finally, the fourth name was that of a widow, like the prophetess Anna, who departed not from the temple of Jerusalem, by fasting and prayers serving God day and night. Like her, she was devoted to good works, to the care of the sick, the help of the infirm, and the charge of orphans. She was called "the eye of the blind," and "the consolation of the afflicted," and throughout old Neustria with its green orchards the echoes of the manor-houses and the huts alike knew of the wondrous deeds of good Dame Lois.

Proud of all these names, the hermit at the early hour of lauds presented the list to St. Michael; when evening had brought the hour of compline, the holy chant being ended, St. Michael gave back to the hermit the precious paper, all perfumed with the incense of paradise, and said to him: "Faithful servant, continue thy search: all these names are dear and precious in the eyes of God; but they who bear them are still too young."

"But the sire of Falaise has seen almost a hundred years pass over his now bald head, and his beard is whiter than the snows of Mount Saint Bernard!"

"That noble lord of a hundred years is only reckoned fifteen by the calendar of the guardian angels," replied the archangel.

{855}

"But this mother of fifteen children and twelve grandchildren who are her crown and her glory? ... And the pious widow?"....

"The mother will only be eight years old come the festival of the Assumption of Our Lady, her holy Patroness; and the pious and chaste widow is hardly older than the sire of Falaise."

"And the Knight of Malta? Illustrious and brave above his fellow-knights, he is only twenty-nine years old according to the record of his baptism; but these few years have been well employed in defending Christendom against the infidel Turks who tremble before his Damascus blade."

"The knight has made progress, it is true, in the way of real life. He is almost old enough to reign; but his guardian angel demands yet a space of time before imprinting on his soul the seal of the eternal and heavenly life. Go thy way, and continue thy search."

The hermit, in the silence of his cell, was terrified to see how hard it was to attain length of years according to the reckoning of the angels; but he redoubled his zeal to discover the rare treasure demanded by St. Michael. Seven Sundays having passed away weeping and praying in the undercroft of the church of St. Gerbold, shepherd of Bayeux, of learned memory, he saw the archangel with his sword of gold coming toward him resplendent with light. Troubled in the depths of his heart, the hermit said to him humbly: "I have only one name to present thee, and this name offers but little that is worthy of relating; yet I lay it before thee." And he held forth the paper wet with his tears to St. Michael, who took it, smiling meanwhile on the trembling hermit.

The paper had hardly been placed in the angel's hands when the sombre crypt was filled with a soft light; an unknown perfume embalmed the air, and the hermit, almost ravished with ecstasy, at once understood that the chosen one so long sought after was at length found. ...

The elect soul rose like a blue vapor above the tower of the church, above the lofty mountains, beyond the stars: it rose luminous and full of majesty, till it came to the courts of the New Jerusalem to take its place upon the dazzling throne awaiting it among the angels.

"How old, then, is this soul according to the calendar of eternal life?" were the first words addressed St. Michael by the hermit, still on his knees.

And St. Michael graciously replied: "This saint was only twenty-one years old according to the reckoning on earth, but he was a hundred by that of the guardian angels who watch over souls. Not one hour of his short life was lost for eternity. It was not only not lost, but--which is necessary to attain length of years that are meritorious and venerable in our eyes--not one hour failed to be reckoned twice or thrice, and sometimes a hundredfold, by the merit of his deeds of faith, hope, charity, and mortification. Nothing is lost which is pleasing in the eyes of the Lord. A glass of water given with love in his name becomes a majestic river flowing on for ever and ever; while a treasure given without love or from human motives is counted as nothing in the great Book of Life! To really live, thou must love God while exiled here below, as we love him in the home of the blessed. Thou must also love thy neighbor, whose soul reflects the image of its Maker."

With these words the angel disappeared, leaving behind him a long train of light in the dim vaults of the crypt of St. Gerbold.

{856}

"O Lord!" cried the hermit "grant me a true knowledge of the Christian life--the only life really worth the name--that at my last hour I may not hear resounding above my head the terrible words, _Too young!_ Teach me, O my God! the value of time, which is only given us that we may lay up treasures for heaven. Time is the money of eternity! time is the price of the Saviour's blood! time, so fleeting, which we seek to kill, and which will surely kill us; time, the inflexible tyrant who spares no one! Oh! that I might in turn triumph over time by making it serve to the sanctification of my soul and the winning of an eternal crown."

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New Publications.

Dissertations, Chiefly On Irish Church History. By the late Rev. Matthew Kelly, D.D. Dublin: James Duffy. 1869.

Rev. Matthew Kelly, a canon of his native diocese of Ossory, Ireland, and a Professor in Maynooth College, was one of the most accomplished of the contemporaries of Dr. John O'Donovan, Professor Eugene O' Curry, George Petrie, Rev. Dr. Todd, Very Rev. Dr. Renehan, and the few other truly great Irish scholars of the past and passing generations. He was a native of Kilkenny City, and was barely in the forty-fourth year of his age when called to his reward, Saturday, October 30th, 1858. He was a very able writer on and investigator of Irish history, in all its branches, particularly in the ecclesiastical and ethnological lines, of which his editorial labors for the Celtic and Archaeological Societies of Dublin, his editions of White's and O'Sullivan's writings relative to Ireland, as well as of the Martyrology of Tallacht, and his contributions to the Dublin _Review_, Duffy's _Catholic Magazine_, the London _Rambler_, etc., etc., have given abundant proof. He is more widely known by general readers through his remarkable translation of Gosselin's great work, _On the Power of the Pope during the Middle Ages_. His friend and fellow-laborer, Rev. Dr. McCarthy, has collected from the periodicals named, chiefly from the _Dublin Review_, into this volume--for a copy of which we are indebted to the Catholic Publication Society-- several dissertations by the lamented Dr. Kelly, chiefly on Irish church history--an examination of which makes us deeply regret that he was not spared to complete the labors in which he was engaged, and which he had in contemplation at the time of his death--which included nothing less desirable than a new and thorough edition of the _Acta Sanctorum_ of Colgan; a new edition and a continuation of Rev. Dr. John Lanigan's _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_; and the completion of the publication, under such care as he was capable of bestowing, of the Very Rev. Dr. Renehan's _Collections on Irish Church History_. The volume before us should find a place in every private as well as public collection that aims to have represented in it the genuine scholarship of Ireland.

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A Few Friends, And How They Amused Themselves. A Tale in nine chapters; containing descriptions of twenty Pastimes and Games and a fancy-dress party. By M. E. Dodge, author of Hans Brinker and the Irvington Stories. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

{857}

The author in this little book makes a happy effort to revive amongst us again those pleasant, home-like games that give such a charm to the fireside. Many of these pastimes are new, and all of them interesting and amusing, requiring enough thought and wit to keep one's faculties in pleasant activity. Society, it is true, will scarcely condescend to be amused in so simple and cheerful a way; but as it is a question whether it is ever heartily amused, we can very well afford to set aside its ruling, and enjoy ourselves with the pleasant pastimes of our "Few Friends." A picture-gallery, such as is described in its pages, although it might not provoke such artistic and wonderful criticisms as the Academy of Design, would not yet fail to be very amusing. The great charm of these games, as the author remarks in her preface, is the bringing together the old and young, in the common pursuit of pleasure.

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A Short Grammar Of Plain Chant, for the use of schools, seminaries, and religious communities. Troy, New York: P. J. Dooley. 1868.

It is with the sincerest pleasure we meet with any evidences of a desire to return to the use of the Gregorian chant in the offices of the church. Perfectly rendered, we know of no modern compositions in figured music which can equal it in fitness or grandeur. The best that can be said of timed music is, that it is pleasing; that its varied harmonies delight the ear; and that in the most worthy of such compositions there are pathetic, joyous, and at times sublime expressions. But of the Gregorian chant only can it be said that it edifies, compels to prayer and praise, and never hints at the world, the flesh, or the devil. Like the sacred vestments of the priest and the solemn ceremonies of Catholic worship, it is a part of the outward expression of the church's homage to God. It is the befitting song of the sanctuary, and we are thankful the church has never sanctioned any other.

To sing Gregorian chant as it should be sung is a science of its own; a fact not a few of our musicians appear to be ignorant of; and although the present little handbook does not pretend to be a treatise on the subject, yet it may perhaps be found, in the present state of our knowledge, a work better adapted to our wants than a more extended and philosophical treatise would be.

It is a first book on chant for beginners, and gives in a concise form all the preliminary notions upon which a further study may be based. The author has divided it into three parts: the first treating of the notation of plain chant; the second, of the structure and peculiarities of the modes or tones; and the third, or psalmody.

A convenient appendix has been added containing the different intonations for High Mass and the Divine Office. The whole will be found in strict conformity with the Roman Missal and Office Books, a matter which we deem of no slight consequence. The author, we observe, has followed the ordinary method (a faulty one, we think) in the matter of the division of the Psalm tones and the corresponding adaptation of the words. According to the system commonly adopted in our choir-books and in works on plain chant hitherto published in this country, the different mediations and cadences would require at least four different divisions or pointings of the Psalms. In fact, the rules laid down by all masters in Gregorian chant for accentuation and the adaptation of dactylic and monosyllabic words require only one pointing of the Psalms for all the tones and their various conclusions. We think this important point can be demonstrated, although it would be out of place here.

As a book of first principles of the chant, we most heartily commend this little volume to those for whose use it has been prepared, and have no doubt that it will find its way into all our seminaries and religious communities, and, we venture to hope as well, into our schools. To our Catholic youth the song of the church ought not to be an unintelligible jargon of sound. Let us add, that the effort of the publisher in putting out a work of this kind is deserving of the highest praise, and we trust will be fully appreciated. The work bears the imprimatur of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Albany.

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{858}

The Law Of Love And Love As A Law; or, Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical. By Mark Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., President of Williams College. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

This volume, albeit of moderate size and pretensions, would require an elaborate review to do it justice. The brief notice we bestow on it must not therefore be taken as a criterion of our estimate of its ability, or as a full and matured judgment upon its doctrines and arguments in detail or in reference to special points. Its general scope and tenor of thought and reasoning, we can say without hesitation, are in accordance with Catholic doctrine in respect to those matters which are clearly defined, and in accordance with that system of moral philosophy which we regard as the soundest and most rational on matters which are open to discussion. The tone and spirit of the work are elevated, its thought is strong, its style limpid and tranquil, its sentiments generally moderate and conservative. The author demolishes the wretched system of utilitarianism and several other sophisms, by a few blows as quietly yet as effectually given as those of a polar bear. He establishes also the freedom of the will as the necessary condition of obligation, and thus cuts up Calvinism root and branch. We should be glad to see a more distinct statement of the absolute right of God over his creatures as the author and preserver and sovereign Lord of the creation, as the basis of the obligation to obey his laws and those of his delegates even in things indifferent in themselves. This would in no wise conflict with the doctrine of the author that the reason of the eternal law is situated not merely in the free determination of the divine will, but chiefly and radically in the divine intelligence. The argument proving that all morality is determined by the final cause, or the relation of human acts to the ultimate end of man and creation, is admirable. So also is the resolution of all the ends and motives of creation into the _amor entis_, which is really the dominant idea in the author's philosophy and forms the character of his book. It is chiefly on account of this noble and elevated view that we take occasion to commend it, and expect a very great good to be done by it within the circle of the distinguished author's influence.

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Mental Science. A Compendium of Psychology and the History of Philosophy. Designed as a text-book for high-schools and colleges. By Alexander Bain, M.A., Professor in the University of Aberdeen, etc. New York: Appletons. 1868.

We are willing to believe that this book may contain much valuable information in regard to the history of philosophy, physiology, and psychological phenomena. But as a text-book of "Mental Science," it is an utter absurdity, since its fundamental principle destroys all metaphysical certainty. It is the quintessence of the worst and most absurd opinions of the empirical school of Herbert Spencer and Mill, and therefore simply a dose of intellectual strychnine. For the refutation of this miscalled "Mental Science," we refer to all the philosophical articles of this magazine.

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Light On The Last Things. By William B. Hayden. Publishing House of the New Jerusalem. 20 Cooper Union. 1869.

We are rather surprised not to see on the title-page of this book, "published by order of the archangel Gabriel." It gravely informs us that the "Last Judgment foretold by Daniel, and in the book of Revelation, took place as described in that book, in the World of Spirits, in the year 1757, upon those who had accumulated there since the Lord's first appearing thus finishing the dispensation in _hades_. The last judgment once inaugurated, continues to 'sit,' as expressed in Daniel; it constantly proceeds hereafter, as explained in chapter vii.; the vast accumulation of the evil communities there will no more be allowed; it takes effect upon the multitudes who arise, at longest, in a very few years." (P. 188.) {859} We are glad to have authentic intelligence of such a gratifying nature. But this is not the best of it. "This removed evil influences, for the most part, from the intermediate world, replacing them with good influences. The heavens by the increase of numbers, and by an increased endowment of love and wisdom from the Lord, became more powerful, and began immediately, as a consequence, to shed down their influences more powerfully upon mankind, the church and the world. And they were moved nearer to men by the Lord that they might effect this purpose." We shrewdly suspect that our author has taken a moonlight ride on Mohammed's _Alborac_. Whoever has the curiosity to seek for a brief and easily readable summary of that fantastic system called Swedenborgianism will find it in this little volume. In point of credibility and reasonableness the doctrine of the New Jerusalem Church is about on a level with that of the Koran and the Book of Mormon, though more elevated and pure in its morality. There was never anything more ridiculous than the pretension of its adepts to be the true gnostics or spiritual men, and to look down on Catholics as the psychical or half carnal. Their doctrine of the incorporation of the Godhead is a crude and gross notion incompatible alike with the principles of reason and revelation, and rendering the formation of either a sound theology or a sound philosophy impossible. The rest of their system is a tissue of dreams and fancies resting on nothing more solid than the imagination of Swedenborg, and without the slightest claim on the attention of any reasonable man.

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Life Of The Blessed Charles Spinola, S.J., with a sketch of the other Japanese Martyrs beatified on the 9th of July, 1867. By Joseph Brockaert, S.J. New York. John G. Shea. 1869.

The subject of this memoir was a Jesuit missionary in Japan in the seventeenth century, illustrious by birth but still more so by his virtue. Interwoven with the sketch of his life and martyrdom are many incidents of the history of Christianity and its glorious confessors in Japan, and an interesting account of the recent discovery of many thousands of Christians who have preserved the faith handed down by their ancestors from the days of persecution until the present time. The history of Japanese Christianity will compare with that of the first ages of the church, and is by itself a sufficient and overwhelming proof of the divine truth of the Catholic religion. Such books as this might be read with profit by every Catholic and by all who profess the name of Christ.

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The Conscript: A Story of the French War of 1813. By MM. Erckmann-Chatrian. Translated from the twentieth Paris edition. With eight full-page illustrations. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

Those of our readers who have already perused this story in our pages, will doubtless be pleased to learn that it is at length issued in a permanent and separate form. The volume needs no commendation from us; and we believe that many American readers will find in its pages new ideas of war and its horrors, even although our own battle-fields are yet scarcely green.

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Outlines Of Composition. Designed to simplify and develop the principles of the Art by means of Exercises in the preparation of Essays, Debates, Lectures, and Orations. For the use of schools, colleges, and private students. By H. J. Zandee, and T. E. Howard, A.M. Boston: Published by Robert S. Davis & Co. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, and Oakley & Mason. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. St. Louis: Hendricks and Chittenden. 1869.

We take pleasure in noticing this Manual as an effort in the right direction. In all the experience of school-children there is nothing more difficult or perplexing than the art of composition; and few, even of the most diligent, attain to any degree of ease in its exercise until maturer years have taught them the lesson which these outlines are intended to convey, namely, that knowledge precedes speech, and thought goes before expression. {860} The years which elapse while the young writer is learning "what to say, and how to say it," will, in our view, be materially diminished by the use of such works as this, and we are glad to see, by its imprint, that publishers appreciate its value.

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Gray's School And Field Book Of Botany. Consisting of "First Lessons in Botany," and "Field, Forest, and Garden Botany," bound in one volume. By Asa Gray, Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard University. New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. 1869.

The works of Professor Gray have been too long before the public and enjoy already too wide a reputation to make necessary any extended notice of this new and collected edition. The volume now before us is a fine octavo of more than 600 pages, and contains both the principles of the science, and the classification and description of various plants, to the number of nearly three thousand species. The illustrations are very numerous and of superior character; and the care which is displayed in the revision of the work, and its adaptation to the latest advancements of science, as well as the mechanical execution of the book itself, recommend it to all lovers of "the Field, the Forest, and the Garden."

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Charlie Bell, The Waif Of Elm Island. By Rev. Elijah Kellogg, author of _Spartacus to the Gladiators_, _Good Old Times_, etc. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1868. pp. 325.

This book will assuredly suit those for whose special pleasure it was written. It abounds in stirring incident and thrilling adventure on sea and shore, which, though sometimes some what exaggerated, will not render it less acceptable to its juvenile readers. A good moral lesson, although not made obtrusively prominent, is taught in the gratitude of the orphan Charlie to his kind protectors. How true, too, and how boylike his remark to his "mother," on her expressing doubt as to his ability to accomplish a certain project, "O mother! when a boy gets anything in his head, he is bound to do it, by hook or by crook."

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The "Catholic Publication Society" will soon publish a new volume for youth, entitled, _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, by the authoress of the _Life of Mother McAuley_, etc. It will be beautifully illustrated and got out in the best style of the art.

The same Society will also soon publish

_Why People do not Believe; or, the Cause of Infidelity_, translated from the French of Mgr. Lapot, of Louvain University;

_Not Yet: A Story of To-Day_, by Miss Oxenham;

_Impressions of Spain_, by Lady Herbert, illustrated;

_Tales for the Many; The Life of Father Ravignan_;

Aubrey de Vere's _Irish Odes_;

and the third series of _Illustrated Sunday-School Library_, will be ready in a few days.

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Books Received.

The Triumph Of Faith. A Lecture delivered in the hall of the Cooper Institute, by the Rev. Thomas S. Preston, on the First Anniversary of the Church of the Epiphany, Sunday evening, January 10, 1869. New York: Robert Coddington, Publisher, 366 Bowery. 1869.

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Report Of The Secretary Of The Treasury On The State Of The Finances For The Year 1868. Washington: Government Printing Office.

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Tales of a Grandfather. By Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Second Series. A.D. 1603 to 1707. W. W. Swayne, New York and Brooklyn.