CHAPTER V.

AN OUTSIDE GLIMPSE.

As Frank Blair had expected, his father was very much offended at the share he had taken in the performances at H----, and the assault upon the boys, of which he was informed the next morning by a man from H----, who told him all about the fright, and the tricks that had been played at that place: also, that the maiden lady, Miss Merton, whose bedroom happened to be in a part of the house adjoining the shed where the donkey was imprisoned, had been frightened almost to death by the braying of the animal in the night. Under the firm impression that the lion had escaped and was attacking her house, she rushed out in her night-dress, and, espying a light in a small shop near by, broke in upon three little French shoemakers, who were sitting up to finish some job-work that must be ready for morning. Now, one of these had been whiling away the time by stories of a ghost in a Canadian village, that had visited several families, and could assume the guise of different persons, living and dead. He was just reciting one of the most harrowing of these incidents when the sudden apparition of the lady in a long white dress, with a face of ghastly pallor, and eyes distended with affright, burst upon their astounded vision! Not for a moment doubting its unearthly nature, one of them jumped through an open window, another sprung up a ladder and out upon the roof, while the third took refuge under a dry-goods box in the cellar.

The unfortunate lady, thinking that the lion was in close pursuit, and that a glimpse of it through the open door had caused the sudden stampede of the shoemakers, dared not turn back; but betook herself to screaming at the top of her voice, in which she was joined by the affrighted sons of Crispin in so vigorous a chorus that the whole village was soon aroused.

When the cause of all the disturbance was revealed, and the harmless animal released from captivity, it was almost impossible to persuade the lady that her life was not in danger; and there was such serious question of sending to M---- and arresting the juvenile offenders, that Mr. Blair was advised to go immediately to H---- and settle the matter.

As for the shoemakers, we may be permitted to add--somewhat in advance of our story--the fact that their terrified imaginations had so far misled their reason that they could never again be persuaded to work in the shop after night-fall, or be led to believe fully in the identity of Miss Merton with their ghastly midnight visitant.

The man who communicated these details gave Mr. Blair the names of all the boys of the party whom he knew, among them those of Michael, Dennis, and Johnny.

"Those pestilent Irish boys!" Mr. Blair exclaimed indignantly. "They are always drawing our Yankee boys into fights and mischief! Some measures ought to be taken to make examples of them, and prevent these outbreaks."

He intimated the same to Frank that day while lecturing him severely for "following such ringleaders" into disgraceful riots. Frank had too much honor to permit his father to remain in this error, and protested stoutly that it was himself who persuaded them into it; but it was evident enough that he failed to convince his father of that fact. Mr. Blair was not an ill-natured man, and did not intend to be unjust; but he unfortunately indulged the prejudices against foreigners into which too many Americans fall without pausing to examine whether they are just. They take a few bad specimens upon which to found a sweeping sentence against the whole class, not reflecting that the vices of the wicked serve to render them conspicuous, while the modest virtues of the good only withdraw them from public notice.

After he had given Frank a very stern admonition, Mr. Blair proceeded to inform him that a certain fowling-piece which had long been the object of his most ardent desire, and of which he had hoped to gain possession before the Fourth of July, would not now be purchased for him, on account of his misconduct; and that immediate steps would be taken to secure a place for him in the naval school at A----, in the fall.

These were severe blows to Frank. The disappointment of his cherished hopes in connection with the much-coveted fowling-piece, and his dread of the naval school, where he knew the discipline was so strict as to prevent the possibility of mischief, combined to make him take a very desponding view of life in general, and of what he regarded as the bondage to "old fogyism," in particular. He resolved, however, to behave in so exemplary a manner from that time as to induce his father to relent, if possible; for he knew present remonstrance or pleading would be in vain.

He became so very quiet and regular in his deportment that he soon won "golden opinions" on all hands, much to the delight of his aunt, with whom he was a special pet, and who hoped her brother might yet allow him to remain at home.

It was an unusually warm summer, and a Mrs. Plimpton, a friend of the Blairs from the city where they had formerly resided, came to pass the warm season with them, bringing her family--a son about the age of Frank, and two daughters younger.

Soon after she came, Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Howe called to see her, and brought George and Henry to call upon the young strangers and Frank.

When they left, Mrs. Plimpton remarked, "What very agreeable people! And those young lads--so sociable, modest, and gentlemanly! I do not wonder that Frank's manners are so genial and quiet, since he has such associates."

"Frank does not associate much with them; and though Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Howe are very agreeable, as you say, yet we have but little intercourse with them," Mrs. Blair replied, dryly and frigidly.

"And why not, let me beg to know?" inquired Mrs. Plimpton with evident surprise. "In so small a place I should think you would want to cultivate sociability with all people of intelligence and refinement!"

"We would be glad to, and they would be a valuable acquisition to any society, if they were not Romanists. But when enlightened Americans, who should and do know better, see fit to plunge themselves into that abyss of superstition and exploded absurdities, they ought to be avoided by all sensible people."

"And is that all?" said Mrs. Plimpton, laughing. "Why, my dear friend, I had hoped better things of you! I supposed by your solemn manner that there was some serious moral delinquency on their part. Really, I must be permitted to dissent entirely from your theory and practice in this matter. I am sure you cannot be aware of all that is going on in our cities. Many of my dearest friends are Catholics; some Americans and some foreigners; and the dear Sisters--now, don't look so shocked! I entreat of you--are my special favorites, and best counsellors. I have quite taken them into my entire confidence on some most important affairs. 'Romanists,' indeed! Why, if we were to proscribe all the Catholics, we should lose a charming portion of our society. We 'liberal Christians' do not feel disposed to carry religious prejudices into the social circle, or to avoid pleasant people on account of their preferences or peculiarities in this respect. I shall only seek the acquaintance of these ladies the more earnestly for this reason. Do you know how their change of faith was brought about?"

"I never troubled myself to ask," Mrs. Blair said languidly.

"I can tell you!" said Miss Blair. "I heard the whole story from one of their particular friends, who has followed their example. It seems Mr. Wingate, who is a gentleman of wealth and leisure, had amused himself by devoting much time and attention to studying the principles of architecture--especially the ecclesiastical branch, for which he had a great taste. When it was proposed to build a Catholic church in the place, he begged permission to furnish a plan, which was accorded. This was so entirely satisfactory--combining exquisite artistic proportions with the close attention to economy in all the details, which is indispensable where the resources are limited--that he was urged to superintend the progress of the building, which he consented to do. Soon after operations were commenced, one Patrick Hennessy, an excellent mechanic, came to the place, having recently emigrated from Ireland, and was employed to aid in the work. Mr. Wingate had frequent conversations--controversies, if you will--with him on religious subjects, and was surprised to find, not only that Hennessy was perfectly acquainted with all the points at issue between Catholics and Protestants, but that his own preconceived opinions in relation to these questions were many of them false. He borrowed and read Hennessy's books, and the result you know. His wife, a highly cultivated and thoughtful woman, went with him heart and hand. Their children were then quite young.

"Mrs. Howe was a very different person from her sister, Mrs. Wingate. She was a fashionable lady, and, though not as wealthy as her sister, aspired to lead the _ton_ in our little village. She assumed many airs, established intimacies and exchanged visits with stylish city ladies, which were more gratifying to her vanity than creditable to her good sense. When Mrs. Wingate became a Catholic, she entirely discontinued all intercourse with her, and uttered many sharp remarks upon the subject. She had never been as much beloved as her sister, and her course had provoked many envious and ill-natured comments, to which was now added the remark that she had not so much religion herself that she need be disturbed by the religious preferences of others. To tell the story in few words, she was finally taken suddenly very ill. The first person she called for was her discarded sister, who came and watched over her early and late with devoted tenderness--never leaving her bedside. When the physician pronounced her case all but utterly hopeless, she begged that the priest might be sent for; this had been the object of her sister's most fervent and constant prayers, but she had not dared even to mention it. Mr. Howe, after great hesitation, at length yielded to the wish of his idolized and dying wife. The priest came, baptized and received her into the Catholic Church. She lingered a long time, as it were, between life and death; but a strong natural constitution prevailed, and she recovered. After her recovery, the change in her character was so marked and entire as to be apparent to all, and she came to be regarded as even more lovely than her sister. Mr. Howe soon followed her example, and their circle has since been increased by the addition of converts from time to time. I entirely agree with you as to the folly of abstaining from intercourse with them, and have become quite familiar with that coterie--a delightful one it is, too!"

"And is that all?" Mrs. Blair pointedly asked.

"All for the present," Miss Blair replied, smiling.

"How long will it be before you follow such interesting examples? It strikes me, I have seen a lady reading books lately that I should not once have thought could claim a moment's attention from her; but wonders will never cease, I believe!"

"I am not so tied to any set of opinions as to refuse to read the other side."

"Well," said Mrs. Plimpton, "I have never thought it worth while to trouble myself much about these matters; but I always read whatever I choose on any subject, and I think every one has a right to do so."

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[129] The skins of young calves are so named by New-England dairy-men.

A MAY CAROL.

"He looked on her humility." Ah! humbler thrice that breast was made When Jesus watched his mother's eye, When God each God-born wish obeyed!

In her with seraph seraph strove, And each the other's purpose crossed: And now 'twas reverence, now 'twas love The peaceful strife that won or lost.

Now to that Infant she extends Those hands that mutely say, "Mine own!" Now shrinks abashed, or swerves and bends, As bends a willow backward blown.

And ofttimes, like a rose leaf caught By eddying airs from fairyland, The kiss a sleeping brow that sought Descends upon the unsceptred hand!

O tenderest awe! whose sweet excess Had ended in a fond despair, Had not the all-pitying helplessness Constrained the boldness of her care!

O holiest strife! the angelic hosts That watched it hid their dazzled eyes, And lingered from the heavenly coasts To bless that heavenlier paradise.

AUBREY DE VERE.

CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.

NUMBER NINE.

UNION BETWEEN THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE--CONTINUED.

In the preceding article we unfolded the nature of the hypostatic moment, the solution which the Catholic Church gives to the problem of the highest sublimation of the cosmos. In the present article we shall point out the consequences which flow from that moment, in order to put in bolder relief the nature of the exaltation which has thereby accrued to the cosmos.

For the sake of perspicuity, we shall bring those consequences under the following heads:

1. Consequences of the hypostatic moment, viewed in reference to the external action, as the effective typical and final cause of the cosmos.

2. Consequences of the hypostatic moment, considered respectively to the nature, properties, and action of the cosmos, as abridged in the human nature of the Theanthropos.

3. Those which relate to the other moments and persons of the cosmos.

4. Those which affect the Theanthropos himself, in relation to the other moments and persons of the cosmos.

With respect to the consequences of the first class, it is evident that the efficient typical and final cause of the external works is absolutely and simply infinite. No real distinction can be made between God's essence and his action, between his interior and exterior action. Any distinction between these things would imply potentiality and imperfection, and would throw us back into pantheism.

God's essence therefore, his interior and external action, are, ontologically speaking, one and the same. Now, God is absolutely infinite; the effective typical and final cause of the cosmos is thereby absolutely infinite. In other words, the cause which calls the cosmos to being is endowed with infinite energy; the cause which serves as its exemplar and pattern, and which the cosmos must delineate and express, is the infinite perfections of God; the cause which inclines God to effect it is the infinite and transcendental excellence of his being, as capable of being communicated. Now, a cause infinite in every respect would naturally claim a term corresponding to the intensity of the action. It is upon this principle that pantheism has been framed. An infinite cause claims a term also infinite. Now, an effect infinite in its nature is a contradiction in terms; therefore the work is and can be nothing more but a phenomenon of the infinite.

If pantheists had paid attention to the Catholic theory, that the action of God, because infinite, is distinct in two moments, the one immanent and interior, the other transient and exterior; that the same action in the first moment is absolute and necessary, and gives rise to the eternal originations which constitute infinite life; that the same action in the second moment is absolutely free, and consequently master of the intensity of its energy, free to apply as much of that energy as it chooses; they would have seen that the above principle applies to the first but not to the second moment, and that therefore their theory rests on a false assumption.

However, though pantheism rests on a false assumption, it cannot be denied that there is a certain fitness between an infinite cause and an effect, as much as possible corresponding to the infinite energy of the cause; and that consequently the external action of God, because infinite, is for that very reason inclined to effect the best possible cosmos, a cosmos almost infinite in its perfection; an infinite energy has a tendency to effect an infinite term; an infinite typical perfection, to realize an infinite expression; an infinite yearning of communication, to impart itself in a manner the most exhaustive possible.

This fitness of proportion between cause and effect is so evident as to baffle all doubt; yet the necessary distinction implied by the very nature of cause and effect, a distinction of infinite superiority on the part of the one and infinite dependence and inferiority on the part of the other, in the present case is that which gives rise to the problem which may be formulated as follows: given the infinite superiority of the cause of the cosmos, and admitting the essential inferiority of the effect, how to exalt the effect to a perfection almost absolute, and draw it as near the perfection of the cause as possible, without destroying the absolute and necessary finiteness of the effect.

The hypostatic moment is the sublime and transcendental answer which God has given to the problem. For in that mystery the cosmos, as abridged and recapitulated in human nature, without ceasing to be what it is, without losing its essence and nature, is exalted to the highest possible perfection, by a union of subsistence with the Infinite himself. Nay, the infinite subsistence and personality of the Word is the subsistence and personality of the human nature assumed; so that the human nature, though real and finite, is at the same time the nature of the person of the Word, and consequently partaking of all the dignity, perfection, and excellence of the Word. In other terms, the cosmos, as abridged in the human nature of Christ, is _deified_, not indeed by a change of its ontological being, but by the highest, strictest, and closest communication and union with the Godhead. For, next to the identity of nature, we can conceive of no closer union or communication than that which exists between two distinct natures completed and actualized by the same identical subsistence. Now, this identity of subsistence communicates to the inferior nature all the worth and dignity of the superior; and consequently the human nature of Christ, and hence the cosmos which it abridges, are, as it were, deified in such a manner as to exchange the denomination of attributes, and we can call man God, and God man.[130]

Thus the tendency of the infinite cause of the external works is fully satisfied. The infinite energy of the efficient cause has for its term an object perfectly corresponding to the intensity of its energy; since it terminates in an object absolutely infinite--the _Word_ completing the two natures, the divine and the human; an individual who is very God as well as very man.

The typical cause is even better satisfied, so to speak. It tends to express itself exteriorly, as perfectly as it exists interiorly. By the hypostatic moment, the same identical type of the cosmos, its intelligible and objective life enters to form part of the cosmos, the interior _logos_ or _schema_ is wedded to its exterior expression in the bond of one subsistence, and is at the same time type and expression, objective and subjective life. Unlike other artists, who must necessarily regret the impossibility of their impressing on the external work, be it marble or canvas, the interior conceptions of the mind, as fully and as perfectly as they conceive them interiorly, the divine artist of the cosmos found a means whereby to unite, to bring together type and expression, the intelligible and the subjective, the original and the copy, in one identical person; so that in the person of the Theanthropos, as you admire the art so exquisitely divine in the copy, you are dazzled by the effulgence of the type which dwells and shines forth in it; as you wonder at the exactness of the created expression, you can see the original conception also, blended together in one common subsistence. The end also of the external work is fully attained. For in the hypostatic moment the infinite and transcendental excellence of God is communicated in a manner beyond which you could not go; God in this moment yielding himself so far as to make his own subsistence common to human nature, and thus making it share in his infinite dignity, attributes, and the very name of God.

We shall allude to one consequence only of the second class; those having reference to the sublimation of the cosmos; and that is the life of the cosmos.

Life is action and movement. Those beings which act not exist but do not live. If, therefore, the action of the cosmos has been elevated to the highest possible perfection by the hypostatic moment, it follows that its life also has been exalted.

Now, though action originates in the nature, which is the first principle of action in a being, yet its ontological worth and dignity it receives from the subsistence or person, because the nature would be an abstraction, a possibility, without the subsistence.

In the case, therefore, of an individual in whom the nature is inferior, and the subsistence, which actualizes and completes the nature, is superior, in the scale of being, the actions primarily originating from nature as their first root have all the ontological worth of the subsistence, and not of the nature.

Consequently, all the human actions of Christ, primarily originating in his human nature, partake of the ontological dignity and value of his person, and not of his human nature; just because his human nature is completed by and subsists in the personality of the Word.

Now, this personality is infinite; infinite, therefore, is the ontological worth of the human actions of Christ.

And if we consider, as we have already remarked, that human nature is a recapitulation of all the elements of the cosmos, since it shares spirit, intelligence, and will with the angelic nature, sensible apprehension with animal nature, life with the vegetable nature, and locomotion with inorganic nature, it follows that all the actions of the cosmos are recapitulated in human nature, and that consequently they are exalted to an infinite worth and dignity in the human nature of Christ, which is completed by his infinite personality.

The consequences of the third class will better explain and develop this exaltation of the life of the cosmos. The object of the external action consists in manifesting the infinite excellence and perfections of God. This creation does in two different ways: 1st, ontologically, the very nature of the cosmos being an expression, a likeness of the infinite. This function is discharged indistinctly both by intelligent and unintelligent beings.

2d. But this function, by which unintelligent creatures unconsciously manifest in their nature and properties the excellence of God, in intelligent creatures is necessarily a moral act, and gives rise to the virtue of religion; because intelligent creatures cannot possibly fail to perceive the relation which binds them to their creator, and to feel the duty of acknowledging it.

Hence, religion is an absolute duty for intelligent beings; so necessary and absolute that the opposite assertion would be a contradiction in terms.

To say a creature, is to affirm a being created by God with the express purpose of manifesting his perfections; to say intelligent, is to affirm a creature able to perceive this relation, and able to fulfil the purpose which it perceives was intended by the creator. To absolve, therefore, intelligent creatures from the duty of religion, is to affirm and deny in the same breath that they _are_ intelligent creatures.

Hence, they must necessarily perceive and will the relation in which they stand to their creator, and consequently be religious by force of their very nature and existence.

The whole cosmos must pay to God, its creator, the homage of religion; unintelligent creatures by unconsciously portraying his perfections; intelligent creatures, by acknowledging the same with their intelligence and will.

Now, this first function of the cosmos, this primary act of its life, is elevated to the highest possible perfection through the hypostatic moment. For through this moment the external religion of the cosmos is elevated to the dignity and grandeur of the internal religion.

Philosophers and theologians do not treat of the existence of the eternal and objective religion, as often as they do of that religion which expresses the relations between the creator and his creatures, and might be styled external and temporal religion. But every thing temporal is the counterpart of something eternal; every subjective existence has an intelligible objective existence in eternity, a type without which its subjective existence were inconceivable.

Religion, then, must have its type in God; in his infinite essence must be found those eternal laws which render temporal religion possible.

What is there in the essence of the infinite which constitutes religion, and establishes its laws?

The eternal religion is the life of God, its laws the laws of the genesis of his life.

God is a living, personal being. He is unborn, unbegotten, intelligent activity; first termination of the Godhead. By one eternal, immanent glance of his intelligence he searches, so to speak, and scrutinizes the innermost depths of his essence, and thus comprehends himself, that is, conceives and utters himself interiorly.

This infinite, most perfect utterance and intelligible expression of himself is a second termination of the Godhead; the Word, who portrays and manifests the Godhead intelligibly; as the first person is the actuation of the Godhead under the termination of intelligent, primary, independent activity and principle.

This duality of terminations is brought into harmony by a third person, the result of the action of both. For between the intelligent principle, uttering himself intelligibly, and the utterance, the term of that intellectual conception, there passes necessarily an infinite attraction, a blissful sympathy, an unutterable complacency.

The Father beholds as in a bright, clear stream of infinite light the unspeakable beauty and loveliness of his infinite perfections, and utters them to himself, and delights in that utterance. The Son beholds himself as the most perfect, the consubstantial representation of the sublime excellence of the Father, and takes complacency in him as the principle of his personality.

This common complacency, sympathy, attraction, love, bliss, is the third termination of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, the breath of the love of both, the personal subsisting attraction of the Father and of the Son, the person who closes the cycle of God's infinite life.

This is the eternal, immanent, objective religion. For what is religion in its highest metaphysical acceptation? It is the intelligible and loving acknowledgment of the infinite nature and attributes of God. Now, the Word is the infinite, substantial, and intelligible acknowledgment of the Father; the Holy Ghost is the infinite, substantial, loving acknowledgment of both. Therefore, the eternal mystery of the life of the infinite, the Trinity, is also the eternal objective religion by which God acknowledges, appreciates and honors himself.

It might be objected to the soundness of this doctrine, that one of the relations, which is the principal and fundamental in religion, the relation of dependence, is wanting in the life of the infinite, and that consequently that life cannot be taken as the eternal type of religion.

In the metaphysical idea of religion, dependence is necessary as the fundamental relation upon which all others rest. Because religion is essentially an acknowledgment of one person from another. Therefore, the person who acknowledges himself as indebted to another for something must, by that very fact, be dependent upon him. The intelligible acknowledgment means that one intelligent being perceives with his mind that he stands indebted to another for something, and consequently depends upon him for that thing. The practical or loving acknowledgment conveys the idea that the person who has perceived his standing indebted to another for something, acts in such a manner as to express by his action his sense of the dependence. Religion is therefore an intelligible and practical dependence of one person upon another.

But this relation of dependence does not necessarily imply the idea of inferiority in the hierarchy of being upon the part of the person who is dependent, and a like superiority on the part of the person who is acknowledged. A dependence of origin or procession, without including any inferiority on the part of him who is dependent, is fully and absolutely sufficient in the metaphysical idea of transcendental religion.

The reason of this lies in the very nature of transcendental religion or acknowledgment. By this we seek the highest possible, the most perfect idea of acknowledgment, which necessarily implies an equality between the person who acknowledges and the person who is acknowledged. Otherwise, without the equality the acknowledgment would fall short of the perfection of the object acknowledged. Now, an inferiority of nature and attributes in the person who acknowledges would destroy the equality and imply an inferiority of acknowledgment, and consequently would not represent the idea of the highest, most perfect acknowledgment and religion.

The Son, therefore, depending upon the Father as to his origin, though absolutely equal to him in nature and attributes, and being the intelligible, infinite expression of the perfections of the Father, is, by force of his very personality, the subsisting, living, speaking acknowledgment of the Father.

The Holy Ghost, depending upon the Father and the Son as to origin, though perfectly equal to them as to nature, and being the loving expression of the infinite goodness of both, is, by force of his very personality, the living, practical recognition of the Father and of the Son.

The eternal life of God, therefore, is the eternal typical religion. It is the only true religion in the transcendental meaning of the term. Because the more perfect is the recognition, the more adequate it is to the object, and the more it approaches to metaphysical truth, which lies in the equation of the type with its expression. It is the only religion worthy of God. For religion, as we have said, is the intelligible and practical recognition of God. Now, every one can see that such recognition, to be worthy of God, must be absolutely perfect. The intelligible recognition must imply such an idea of God as to be absolute utterance of his nature and perfections; the loving recognition must love God in the most perfect and absolute sense of the word. Now, God being infinite, an infinite, intelligible recognition, an infinite, practical, loving acknowledgment only can be worthy of him. He alone can know and love himself as he deserves. Now, to draw nearer to our subject, we inquire, Is temporal religion worthy of God? And we observe, before answering the question, that by temporal religion we do not mean that recognition of God which results from the ontological essence of all the beings of the cosmos, but that voluntary and reflex acknowledgment which created spirits, whether men or angels, are bound to pay to their maker. We ask, therefore, is the acknowledgment which created spirits pay to God worthy of him, worthy of his infinite and transcendental nature and perfections? Evidently not. Because the intelligence of the cherubim, however high and lofty, and soaring as far above the intelligence of inferior created spirits as the eagle's flight over all the feathered tribes; the love of the seraphim, however intense, however deep, however tender, however ardent, are merely and simply finite. On the other hand, what is the intelligence and love of men compared with those of the heavenly spirits, who are so near the supreme intelligence and love, when compared to us, and yet so far from it, when compared with God?

The religion, therefore, of all created spirits is not proportionate to its object; it falls infinitely short of the merits of God. Hence the cosmos, of which created spirits form the best part, with the exclusion of the Incarnate Word, cannot properly discharge the first and paramount duty of the creature, the homage of acknowledgment and adoration to its creator.

But let the Word, the eternal mediator between God and the cosmos, let the intelligible and objective life, the type of the cosmos, enter into it, and the worth of the nature and the acts of the cosmos shall be exalted, elevated, changed, transformed; and it can then pay to God a tribute of recognition fully, perfectly, and absolutely worthy of him.

For the Theanthropos--the God-Man, who is possessed of infinite intelligence, and can comprehend God as far as God is intelligible, who is possessed of infinite will, and can love God as far as God is amiable, can recognize him, acknowledge him, theoretically and practically, as perfectly as he deserves, with absolute equation. And the human nature of the Theanthropos, though in itself finite in its essence and in its acts, can likewise render to God a homage fully and perfectly worthy of him. First, because the acts of the Word of God, honoring the infinite majesty theoretically and practically in an infinite manner, are acts also belonging to human nature, are its own acts, so to speak; because they are acts of its own personality, and human nature can say to God, I honor thee with the acts of my own person, and they are infinite. Secondly, because even the acts springing immediately from human nature, and consequently in themselves finite, in force of the union of these same acts with the divine personality in whom they subsist, acquire an infinite worth and dignity because of the person in whom they subsist; and human nature can say to God, I honor you with my own acts of worship and acknowledgment. In both cases, therefore, whether we look at the acts of the Theanthropos springing from his divine nature, or at those proceeding from his human nature, they are of infinite value, by force of the unity of his divine person; and consequently the Theanthropos can recognize God in an infinite manner, a manner absolutely worthy of God.

The cosmos, then, recapitulated in the human nature of Christ, is enabled to worship God as he deserves; the temporal religion of the cosmos is wedded to the eternal; and the Godhead is worshipped in his cosmos with the same perfect homage of recognition as he receives from eternity in the bosom of his interior life. The Word, as infinite recognition of the Father, is the eternal mediator of religion between the Father and the Holy Ghost. The Word incarnate is the mediator of religion between God and his cosmos.

All angels and men, and to a certain degree all creatures, all persons, all individualities, from the highest pinnacle of creation down to the farthest extremities thereof, united in a particular manner, which shall be hereafter explained, with the Theanthropos, and partakers of his mind, of his will, of his affections, of his heart, of his life, can raise to God a canticle of acknowledgment fully worthy of him, perfectly equal to that which rose up silently in the bosom of the infinite, when, in the day of his eternity, he uttered his infinite word, and breathed his spirit and recognized himself very God.

Who will not admit a dogma which elevates the cosmos to such a height of dignity? And what can pantheism offer in its stead? It can destroy both temporal and eternal religion, by identifying both terms, the cosmos and the infinite, and thus rendering a true acknowledgment of God impossible. But it can never impart that true exaltation, that high dignity to the cosmos, which the Catholic doctrine of the hypostatic moment affords. God acknowledges himself infinitely from all eternity, by uttering a perfect intellectual expression of himself, and by both aspiring a loving recognition of themselves. We creatures are enabled to acknowledge him as he acknowledges himself; the only recognition worthy of him. The Word, by becoming incarnate, enters into the choir of creation, and takes its leadership; brings into it the harmonies of the bosom of God, and on a sudden the music and the songs of the cosmos rise up to the height of its leader, and mingle with the harmonies of eternal life.

Before we pass to other consequences of the incarnation, we shall point out a corollary, among all others, which follows from the doctrine above stated, and which, though of the highest importance, is lost sight of both by apologists and rationalists.

This corollary is, that the Christian religion, as Christ founded it, is _cosmological law_, and can no more be lost sight of by the philosopher than by a Christian himself.

For according to the actual plan of the cosmos, the plan which God selected, God was not satisfied with that finite, imperfect, natural acknowledgment which created spirits might render to him. But, as he was pleased not to leave the cosmos in its natural conditions, but raised it to the highest possible dignity by a union with the divine personality of the Word, so he was not satisfied that the acknowledgment which is due to him as the creator should be that natural, imperfect, finite acknowledgment which created spirits could, with their natural force, render to him, but willed that their acknowledgment should, by a union with the Theanthropos, be exalted to the dignity of the infinite acknowledgment which he renders to himself from all eternity.

This is a law of the actual cosmos which God selected, and it is as much a law, an integral part of its constituents, as any natural law which we may discover. God selected such a cosmos that we might pay to him a recognition true and worthy of him.

Now, Christianity, as Christ founded it, is the religion of all created persons in time and space, who, united to the Theanthropos by a particular mode of union, worship God with and through the Theanthropos; that is, worship God as he deserves. Consequently Christianity is a law of the cosmos, an integral constituent of that cosmos which God selected, and hence true, elevating, and imperative.

True, because it is a religion the acts of which are fully adequate to the object, since in it God is worshipped as perfectly as he deserves.

True, because, religion implying a knowledge of God, in Christianity knowledge is imparted to the minds of its followers fully adequate to the object known, in its origin, in its mode of communication, and its end. In its origin, being derived from the Theanthropos; in its mode, being imparted by a peculiar operation of the Theanthropos; and in its end, as tending to gradual development, until it has reached the fulness of knowledge, which may be imparted to a pure creature in palingenesia.

True, because, religion implying operation and action, action is imparted in the same manner as knowledge.

Elevating, because it is evident that that aim of Christianity is to raise human persons from their natural state, from their natural operation, to a superior state and operation through the Theanthropos.

Imperative, because, God having made Christianity a law of the cosmos, which he selected, it is not free to a moral agent to accept or reject it, but all must accept it as a law of the cosmos which no one may contravene.

Hence rationalists, and infidels, and indifferentists, in rejecting Christianity or in being indifferent to it, reject a law of the cosmos, a law which is as essential to the entirety of the cosmos, which God chose, as the law of gravitation or locomotion; and in reasoning upon the cosmos, after rejecting Christianity, rationalists and indifferentists should say, "I do not reason on the actual cosmos that God has selected; I reason on a cosmos of my own creation; I limit it, I contract it, I debase it, as it pleases my fancy; and yet, after that, I insist on retaining the name of philosopher."

We pass to the other consequence. The tendency of the exterior act is to form the cosmos, and especially created intelligences, into a universal society. We could prove this by the consideration of the efficient, typical, and final cause of the external act; but prefer to show it only from the typical cause, or objective life of creation.

The objective life of the cosmos is the life of the infinite intelligibly expressed in the Word. Now, God's life is essentially one, absolute, most perfect, universal society. One is the nature of the infinite terminated and concreted by three distinct subsistences--the Beginning, the Word, the Spirit. One and identical is their intelligence and will; because intelligence and will, being an attribute of nature, as the three divine personalities partake of the same nature, they are at the same time endowed with the same identical intelligence and will.

One and identical is likewise their life and bliss; because the life and bliss of the infinite consists in knowing and loving himself, in which operation the three divine personalities share, in force of the identical absolute intelligence and will with which they are equally endowed. They are finally one by their common and reciprocal indwelling in each other; because the beginning is Father, inasmuch as his eternal Son dwells in his bosom. The Son is such, inasmuch as he is related to the Father, and dwells in him. The Spirit is such, inasmuch as he is related to both, and dwells in both.

The Trinity, therefore, is the type of one universal perfect society, because the three divine persons are associated by the unity and identity of nature, of attributes, of life, of happiness, and by a common indwelling in each other.

Now, the Trinity, as intelligibly mirrored in the Word, is the objective life of the cosmos, or its typical cause. On the other hand, we have shown that the plan which God has chosen in his works _ad extra_ is that which draws the subjective cosmos as near in perfection to its intelligible and objective life as possible.

The cosmos, therefore, in force of its typical cause, is called to represent the one most perfect universal society of the three divine persons as perfectly as possible.

This were impossible except by the admission of the existence of the Theanthropos into creation. For, once admitting the existence of the Theanthropos, we see that the eternal society of the three divine persons, as mirrored intelligibly in the Word, the very typical cause of the cosmos, has come in contact with the cosmos itself, by the closest, most intimate society--the same identical subsistence: the eternal and interior society is externated, and the cosmos and the infinite society of God form one single society in the identity of the person of the Word. Man and God are one single society in Christ. Unite now all created spirits and persons to this externation of the typical cause, by a principle of which we shall speak in the next article; unite their nature to his nature, their intelligence to his intelligence, their will to his will, their life to his life, their bliss to his bliss; and we shall have one universal society, partaking of the nature, the intelligence, the will, the life, the bliss, of the Theanthropos; and thus not only united with each other, and meeting each other in one common medium and centre, but also presenting a divine society whose bond of union is the intelligence, will, life, bliss, of the Theanthropos communicated to them all; and through him and by him ushered into the eternal society of the Trinity.

This is the idea expressed in the sublime prayer of our Lord, when he said, Father, keep them in thy name whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as WE also are. And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.[131]

This consequence of the hypostatic moment affords the cosmological reason of the truth, the divinity, the imperative necessity of the Catholic Church.

For the Catholic Church is nothing else but the society of all the persons of the cosmos elevated in Christ and through Christ to the eternal typical society of the Trinity, by a community of supernatural intelligence, will, life, bliss, imparted to them by the Theanthropos, to whom they are united, travelling centuries and generations to add new members to this universal society of all ages, until the number of members being complete, it shall cease its temporal action, and rest in eternity. This is the only true view of the Catholic Church. Men imagine it to be an after-thought, a thing begun nineteen centuries ago. The Catholic Church is a cosmological law; and hence _necessary_, _universal_, _imperative_. God in acting outside himself might have chosen to effect only substantial creation; but having once determined to effect the hypostatic moment, to cause the Theanthropos to form the exalting principle, the centre, the mediator of the cosmos, he could not but carry out to their fullest expression those relations which result from that moment. Now, the Catholic Church is the necessary consequence of the hypostatic moment. The Word, the type of the universe, is united to its expression in the unity of his divine personality, and is thus placed at the very centre of the universe, as that in which all things are consolidated. It follows, therefore, that all created persons must hover round about their centre, must be put in communication with him, united to him as their centre and mediator by a communion of intelligence, of will, of life, of bliss, and thus be associated with each other, and united with the eternal archetypical society--the Trinity.

This gives as a result a society of all created persons united by the bond of the same theanthropic intelligence, will, life, and bliss.

Now, such is the Catholic Church. Therefore it is a cosmological law in the present plan of the exterior action of God; and as a cosmological law is _universal_, extending to all times and places, _divine_ in its origin and action, and _imperative_, so the Catholic Church is essentially _universal_ in time and space; _divine_ in its origin and action; _imperative_, enforcing its acceptance and adhesion on every intellect which can contemplate the plan of the exterior works of God.

Hence Protestantism is not only a theological error, but a philosophical blunder.

God effects the hypostatic moment, and makes the Theanthropos the centre of the cosmos, and of the best part of the cosmos--men. He could not be their centre unless they were united to him by intelligence, will, and life. And they could not be united to him unless they were united to each other by a common theanthropic intelligence, will, and life, etc.[132] And the question being of incarnate spirits, this union of intelligence, will, and life could not be possible, except it were visible and external.

Hence, it is a necessary consequence of the hypostatic moment that men should be united in one universal, visible, and external society. Protestantism, admitting the hypostatic moment, denies the consequence which so evidently flows from it, and denies by its fundamental principle a society of intelligence, and of will, and of life, and also the visibility, the externation of such society, and takes refuge in an individual union between himself and Christ, and says, by the same principle, "I have a right to form an intelligence of my own, in no way connected with the intelligence of other created persons. I have a right to follow laws which I shall individually find out and proclaim. I have a right to have a life exclusively my own, and no interchange shall pass between me and others."

Hence the absolute falsehood of Protestantism, which ignores the existence and qualities of this supreme cosmological law.

The cosmological law is _one_. Protestantism is _multiform_. The cosmological law is _universal_. Protestantism is _individual_. The cosmological law is _communicative_ and _expansive_. Protestantism is _egotistical_.

What is more remarkable still is the astounding pretension of Protestantism to having enlightened and elevated mankind. Enlightened mankind by ignoring the plan of the universe in its beauty, in its harmony, in its whole! Elevated mankind by proclaiming individualism and egotism in the face of the one great life-giving law of a common universal society!

We would beg our Protestant readers to ask themselves the following questions:

Is it true that God made Christ, the Word incarnate, the centre of the cosmos, and hence the centre of all created persons?

Is it true that, in consequence of this, created persons should be united to him by partaking of his intelligence, will, and life?

Is it true that, in force of this union, all created persons become united to each other in force of the principle that two things united to a third are united to each other?

Is it true that God has effected all this in order to elevate human society to the society of his eternal life?

Is it not true that the Catholic Church is nothing but that?

Then the Catholic Church is _cosmological law, one, divine, universal, imperative_.

We pass to the fourth class of consequences, those which regard the Theanthropos in relation to all the moments and persons of the cosmos.

I. The Theanthropos was intended by God before and above all other works.

Every one is aware that an intellectual agent, in effecting his works, follows a different order from that which he pursues in planning them; in other words, the order of execution which an intellectual agent follows is in the inverse ratio of the order which he follows in idealizing them. In an architect's mind the end and use of a building is first in order, and he idealizes and shapes his building according to the object intended. In the execution of the work the order is inverted, the building is effected first, the object and use are attained afterward.

The order followed in idealizing a work is called by schoolmen the order of _intention;_ that which is pursued in executing the work, the order of _execution_. When we say, therefore, that the hypostatic moment and the Theanthropos are the first of God's external works, we mean, of course, in the order of intention; we mean that they were intended by God first and before every other work when he resolved to act outside himself;[133] so that the incarnation was determined upon, not only independently of the sin of man, but would have taken place even if man had never fallen.[134]

The metaphysical reason of this consequence is found in the relation which means bear to the end. It is absolutely necessary that an intellectual agent should intend primarily and chiefly that object which is best calculated to attain the end he has in view in his action; which best fulfils his intention and is the most appropriate and nearest mean.

Now, the hypostatic moment, and consequently Christ, attains better than any other moment or individual the object of the external action of God, as we have shown. Therefore Christ was intended by God first and above every other work.

This consequence is poetically described by the inspired author of the Proverbs, in those beautiful lines so well known:

"The Lord possessed me from the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning.

"I was set up from all eternity, and of old before the earth was made.

"The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the foundations of water as yet sprung out.

"The mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established; before the hills I was brought forth.

"He had not made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world.

"When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when with a certain law and compass he inclosed the depths," etc.[135]

2. Consequence. The Theanthropos is the secondary end of God's external works.

For, in a series of means necessary to the end, that which is first and chief is also end in respect to the other means. Christ, therefore, being the first and chief means to attain the end of the external act, is also end in reference to the other moments, and consequently the secondary end of the cosmos. "All things," said St. Paul to the Corinthians, "are yours; and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

3. Christ is the secondary type of the cosmos. Ontologically speaking, the end determines and shapes the nature and perfections of the means, and bears to the means the relation of type and exemplar. Now, Christ is the secondary end of the cosmos; he is, therefore, the secondary model and type of the exterior works; in other words, he is the best and supremest expression of God's infinite excellence, the archetype of the cosmos; therefore he is also the secondary type of the cosmos.

4. Christ is the universal mediator between God and his works.

As in the bosom of God the Word is the medium in the genesis of his eternal life, the link which connects the Father and the Spirit; so, outside of God, the incarnate Word is the mediator, the medium universal and absolute, between God and his works, the link connecting the infinite and the finite.

For, in the first place, the very nature of the hypostatic moment makes him such. He is the _Word_, that is, the very Godhead, with his infinite nature and perfections, under the termination of intelligibility.

He is man, comprehending in his human nature all the various elements of substantial creation. Both the Godhead and the human nature subsist of that one termination of intelligibility. It is evident, therefore, that the incarnate Word is essentially, by the very nature of the hypostatic union, the medium between the infinite and the finite.

Moreover, every intellectual agent is linked to his work by the type of it existing in the intelligence, without which knowledge the agent could never communicate with his work. The divine Artist of the cosmos, therefore, is in communication with it by the eternal cosmic type residing in his essence--the Word. Now, Christ is the Word incarnate, and, as such, is the type of the cosmos hypostatically united to its expression, the intelligible and objective life personally linked to the subjective. He is, therefore, the medium between the objective and subjective cosmos, and consequently between the cosmos and God.

Hence Christ is essentially the mediator of creation, both in the natural and supernatural moment; inasmuch as by him and through him all things were made in both orders.

He is essentially the mediator of the continuation of existence in both orders; since the same action, by which all things were made, through him continues to hold them in existence.

He is essentially the mediator of the action of creatures in both orders; since the same action by which all things are made to exist, and to continue in existence through him, incites them to action and aids them to develop their faculties. He is essentially the mediator of perfection and beatitude; because the same action, which incites and aids all existences, both in the natural and supernatural order, to develop their faculties, must also perfect them, and bring them to their final completion. And in the very act of beatitude, when the dawn of the vision of God shall flash before the mind of created spirits, the Theanthropos shall be the mediator between them and the superabundant and dazzling effulgence of the infinite, by aiding and invigorating their intellect with the light of glory.

"In him (Christ) were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. He is before all, and by him all things consist."[136]

5. Christ is the supreme universal objective science; the supreme universal objective dialectic.

In the ontological order intelligibility and reality are one and the same thing; every thing real being by the very fact intelligible, and _vice versa_.

Now, Christ is the infinite and finite reality, hypostatically united together. He is, therefore, the infinite finite intelligibility, and consequently the universal objective science.

He is also the supreme universal objective dialectic; for he is essentially the type and the form of all reasoning. The form of all reasoning consists in the comparison of two terms with a third, with a view of deducing their agreement or disagreement. Christ is at once the infinite universal term, and the finite and particular term; both terms agreeing together in the oneness of his divine personality. He is, therefore, the type and form of all reasoning, and the objective dialectic.

6. He is the light of all finite intelligences. Because, in the first place, he is the space of essences, so to speak; being the subsisting intelligibility of the Godhead.

Secondly. Because in his individuality there is the ontological agreement of all the problems of the human mind, and the solution of all the questions relative to the infinite and the finite, to time and eternity, to the absolute and the relative, to immutability and movement, to cause and effect, etc.

Thirdly. Because he is the incarnate Word, creating, supporting, elevating and perfecting all created intelligences, in force of his essential office of universal mediator of the cosmos.

7. Christ is the supreme universal and objective morality.

The moral perfection of the cosmos consists in the voluntary realization of the final perfection to which it is destined by its archetype.

Now, Christ is the archetype of the cosmos. Therefore, he is the supreme objective morality. He is also supreme morality in the sense of his inciting and aiding the cosmos in the voluntary reproduction and realization of the type, in force of his office of mediator. Therefore, etc.

8. Christ is the supreme objective realization of the beautiful.

The beautiful lies in variety reduced to unity by order and proportion. Christ is the infinite and finite, the two beings most distant, brought together into the unity of his divine personality by order and proportion, as it is evident to every mind that has grasped the nature of the hypostatic moment.

He is, therefore, the supreme, universal realization of the beautiful.

9. Christ is the supreme and universal king and ruler of the universe.

For he is the medium of the creation, preservation, and action of the cosmos; he is its secondary end and exemplar; he is the type and light of intelligence, the law of morality and of the beautiful.

The cosmos, therefore, is subject and dependent upon him for so many reasons, and consequently he is the supreme ruler of it.

10. He is the centre of all the other moments and persons of the cosmos; all things gathering around him as their chief, their exemplar, their mediator.

"I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End." (Apoc. i. 8.)

FOOTNOTES:

[130] We could not say the human nature is divine, nor could we say the human nature is God, or _vice versa_; but we can only predicate the concrete terms of the concrete. The metaphysical reason is, that the foundation of this interchange of names and properties of both natures lies in their being both concrete in the subsistence of the Word. If we consider them abstractly, they are separate, and consequently cannot interchange attributes.

[131] St. John, ch. xvii., _passim_.

[132] The idea comprehends other conditions which it is not necessary to unfold now.

[133] "Dico Deum primaria intentione, qua voluit se creaturis communicare, voluisse mysterium Incarnationis et Christum Dominum ut esset caput et finis divinorum operum sub ipso Deo." (Suarez, _De Incarnatione_, Disp. v. sect. ii.)

[134] Suarez, Ubicum.

[135] Prov. ch. viii.

[136] St. Paul Colos. ch. v. 16.

BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.

SECOND ARTICLE.

More than a year has elapsed since we expressed a hope to present our readers with some further specimens of the ancient poetry of Brittany. We then gave, translated from their rendering into French by M. de Villemarqué, a portion of bardic poems, for example, _The Prophecy of Gwench'lan_; _The Submersion of the City of Is_; _The Changeling_, and _The March of Arthur_. These, as well as the dialogue between a Druid and a child, (which is perhaps too long for insertion here,) _The Plague of Elliant_, and portions of _Lord Nann and the Fay_, retain much of their scientific and often alliterative form, a part of which is their arrangement in tercets, or strophes of three lines rhyming together.

We now proceed to fulfil our promise with regard to the ballad of _Lord Nann_, which, however, it may be well to preface with some remarks upon that portion of Breton mythology which it illustrates.

The principal supernatural agents in the popular poetry of Brittany are the dwarfs and the fairies.

The common appellation of these elfish beings is _Korrigan_, whether masculine or feminine, from korr, little, (diminutive, korrik,) and gan or gwen, genius.

The Goddess Koridgwen is said by the Welsh bards to have had nine attendant virgins, called the nine Korrigan. This also was the name of the nine priestesses of the Isle of Sein.

The Breton fairies not only bear the same name as the Keltic goddesses and consecrated virgins, but are accredited with the same powers of foretelling future events, of curing by magical charms diseases otherwise incurable, of transporting themselves from one end of the world to the other in a moment of time, and of taking whatever forms they please.

Every year, at the return of spring, they hold, on the green turf near some fountain, a grand nocturnal feast. In the midst of the most delicate viands there sparkles a cup of crystal, of which the splendor is so great that there is no need of torches, and like the magic vase of the British Keridgwen, containing a marvellous liquid, one single drop of which conveys the knowledge of all sciences, and of all events, past, present, and to come.

The favorite haunts of the Korrigan are always by springs of water, especially those which are in lonely places in the neighborhood of Druidic remains called dolmens, and from which the Holy Virgin, who is said to be their especial enemy, has not yet chased them. Their traditional aspect is much the same as that of the other fairy races of European nations; their delicate and aerial frames being about two feet in height, perfect in symmetry, and clad in the very thinnest of ethereal textures. But all their beauty is nocturnal only. By the light of day, which they hate above all things, they are hideous, red-eyed, wrinkled, and old; their whole appearance betokening fallen intelligences. The Breton peasants assure us that they are great princesses who were struck by the curse of heaven for refusing to embrace the Christian faith when the first missionaries preached it in Armorica. The peasants of Wales declare them to be the souls of Druidesses, condemned to do penance.

Their breath is deadly. Should any wayfarer trouble the waters of their fountain, or, near their dolmen, come upon them suddenly, he is almost sure to perish; particularly if it be on a Saturday, the day consecrated to the Blessed Virgin, against whom they bear an especial hatred. They also have a great aversion to any token of religion, fleeing at the sound of a consecrated bell or at the sight of a soutane.

Like certain of their European cousins, the Korrigan have a decided _penchant_ for stealing the infant offspring of the human race, with the object of regenerating their own. Therefore does the peasant mother of Brittany place round the neck of her babe a scapular or a rosary, that he may be secured against every elfish device, under the protection of Our Blessed Lady.

The changelings whom the Korrigan are accused of leaving in the place of the children whom they carry away are of the race of dwarfs, and also bear the name of korr, korrik, and korrigan; as well as kornandon, gwanzigan, or duz. This last name is that of the father of Merlin, and of an ancient divinity worshipped in that part of Britain which is now the county of York.

These dwarfs, we are told, are little, black, and hairy monsters, with the claws of a cat, the hind legs of a goat, and a voice harsh and broken with age. They it was who, ages ago, raised the huge stones of the menhir and dolmen, and hid beneath them untold hoards of treasure. Around these, when the stars are out, they are fond of dancing, to the primitive song which consists in an incessant repetition of the names of all the days of the week except Saturday and Sunday, of which they studiously avoid all mention. Wednesday, the day of Mercury, is always observed by them with especial festivities. It was they, say the peasants, who engraved the mystic characters on the Keltic stones of the Morbihan, and especially those at Gawr-iniz, or the Isle of the Giant. He who, like Taliessin, could read them, would learn all the places of their hidden treasure, and to him all the secrets of science would be revealed.

The dwarfs are less dreaded by the country people than the fays, as being rather comically mischievous than wholly malicious. The peasant who has taken the precaution to sprinkle himself with holy-water passes fearlessly by the lonely dolmen in the solitudes which they haunt.

We were taught in our early youth that it is to her white cliffs that Albion owes her name; but M. de Villemarqué suggests that she is more probably indebted for it to the god Mercury, the Keltic Hermes, who was the chief divinity worshipped by the insular Britons, under the name of _Gwion_. Their island was especially placed under his protection, and called for that reason the _Isle of Gwion_, or of _Alwion_. The same learned author remarks upon the apparent identity of the Gwion of Britain and the Gigon of the Tyrians and Phoenicians, the divinity being in each case revered as the god of commerce, the inventor of letters, and the patron of all the arts, and represented in each case by the figure of a dwarf carrying a purse.

The dwarfs of Brittany possess all the attributes of Gwion, the heavy purse included, and are evidently a part of the Keltic mythology. It is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to determine the date of poems of which they form the subject. The burden of the ballad of _Lord Nann_ comes down from the cradle of the Indo-European nations, and, in numerous localities, finds expression in various forms. The one of which we here give a translation probably dates from the fifth or the sixth century.

The name _Nann_ is the diminutive of the Breton Reunan.

LORD NANN AND THE FAY.

Lord Nann and his bride, both plighted In youthful days, soon blighted, Were early disunited.

Of snow-white twins a pair, Yestreen the lady bare; A son and daughter fair.

"What cheer shall I get for thee, Who givest a son to me? Say, sweet, what shall it be?

"From the forest green a roe, Or a woodcock from where, I trow, The pond in the vale lies low?"

"For venison am I fain, But would not give thee pain For me the wood to gain."

But while the lady spoke, Lord Nann took his lance of oak, And mounting his jet-black steed, Rode forth to the wood with speed.

When he gained the greenwood shade, A white hind from the glade Fled, of his lance afraid.

Swift after the hind he flew; The ground shook 'neath the two, So swiftly on they flew, And late the evening grew.

The heat streamed from his face, From the horse's flanks apace, Till twilight closed the race.

A little stream was welling, 'Mid softest moss up-swelling, Hard by a haunted dwelling, The grot of a Korrigan. By the streamlet's brink He stooped to drink, For sore athirst was Nann.

The Korrigan sat there, By the edge of her fountain fair, Combing her golden hair. Combing her hair with a golden comb, For all is of price in the Korrigan's home.

"And who, so rash, art thou, Troubling my water's flow? Thou shalt marry me now," the Korrigan said, "Or for seven long years shalt wither and fade, Or in three days hence in the grave be laid!"

"I've been married a year," quoth he; "So think not I marry thee. Nor through seven long years shall I wither and fade, Nor in three days hence in the grave be laid. Dead in three days I shall not be: I will die when it pleases God, not thee. Yet die this moment would Seigneur Nann, Far rather than marry a Korrigan."

"Dear mother mine, I am sorely sick; Let my bed be made, if you love me, quick. Let not a word to my wife be told: I am under the ban Of a Korrigan; Three days, and you'll lay me in the mould."

In three days' time the young wife said, "My mother, tell me why the bells are ringing, And why, so low, the black-stoled priests are singing?" "A poor man, whom we lodged last night, is dead."

"My mother, say to me, My Lord Nann, where is he?"

"My daughter, to the town he's gone; To see thee he'll come anon."

"And tell me, mother dear, My red robe shall I wear, Or shall I my robe of blue put on, When I must to the church be gone?"

"My child, the mode is come to appear At church in naught but sable gear."

As up the church-yard steps she went, On a new-made grave her eyes were bent.

"Who of our kin is lately dead, That I see in our ground a grave new-made?"

"Alas! my child, in that grave hard by, That new-made grave which thou dost espy-- I cannot hide it--thy lord doth lie!"

Upon her knees she sank down then, Nor ever rose she up again. Within the self-same tomb, at close of day, The gentle lady and her husband lay.

Behold a marvel! When the morning shone Two spreading oaks from out that grave had grown, And 'mid their branches, closely intertwining, Two happy doves of dazzling whiteness shining. Sweetly they cooed at breaking of the day, Then forth together swiftly sped their way. With gladsome notes they circling upward flew, Together vanishing in heaven's deep blue.

The foregoing ballad is reproduced under no fewer than fifteen different variations in Sweden and Denmark, where it is entitled, _Sire Olaf and the Dance of the Elves_. In its Servian form of _Prince Marko and the Wila_, the latter, instead of taking the life of the hero, exacts both his eyes and the four feet of his horse.

* * * * *

Numerous as are the _traditions_ relating to the dwarfs, the _songs_ of which they are the subject are very rare. The one we are about to give is apparently intended as a satire upon the tailors, that ill-used class which in all warlike nations has been condemned to ridicule. In Basse-Bretagne, no one pronounces their name without raising the hat, and adding, "Saving your presence."

It will be remarked that the name of Duz (diminutive, duzik) is, among others, given to the dwarfs, which, M. de Villemarqué observes, was that borne by the genii of Gaul in the days of St. Augustine, who speaks of them as "Dæmones quos _Duscios_ Galli nuncupant."[137]

It is said that a traveller being upon one occasion drawn into their circling dance, and finding the refrain of "_dilun, dimeurs, dimerc'her_," etc., somewhat monotonous, ventured to add the words _Saturday and Sunday_, when the sudden explosion of outcries, threatenings, and rage among the assembly was so great that the rash adventurer was half-dead with fear. We are told that if only he had added, "And so the week is done," the long penitence to which the dwarfs are condemned would have ended.

AR C'HORRED.

(THE DWARFS.)

Paskou le Long, the tailor brave, turned thief on Friday night. No more _culottes_ had he to make, since all men went to fight-- To fight against the Frankish king, and for their own king's right.

He took a spade; he sallied forth, and to the grotto went, The grotto of the dwarfs: to find their treasure his intent; And digging deep for hidden hoards, beneath the dolmen bent.

Ha! here's the treasure. He has found it! Home in haste he hies. To bed he goes. "Quick! shut the door, and shut it fast," he cries, "Against the little _Duz_ of night:" and trembles as he lies.

"Eh! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday."... Ah poor soul! They climb and swarm upon his roof, and there they make a hole. My hapless friend, they have thee! haste! throw out the treasure, whole!

Poor Paskou! Holy-water take, and well besprinkle thee, And cast the sheet about thy head; still as a dead man be, Nor stir in any wise. "Ah! how I hear them laugh at me, And cry, 'If Paskou can escape, a cunning man is he!'

"O heavens! here is one; and see, his head the hole is hiding; His eyes like embers glow, as down the bed-post he comes sliding; And after him, one, two, three, four; ah! multitudes, are gliding.

"They bound, they dance, they race, they tumble wildly o'er the floor."... "Eh, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.... "Two, three, four. "Eh, little tailor, dear!--five, six, seven, eight, and something more.

"Dear little tailor, surely thou art strangled with the clothes! Dear little tailor, only show a bit of thy dear nose! Come: let us teach thee how to dance--dance, dance, for late it grows.

"Come: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ... little tailor, thou'rt a knave! Come, rob the dwarfs again, and see what treasure thou shalt have. Dance, wicked little tailor, dance; and dance into thy grave!"

The money of the dwarfs is worth nothing.

* * * * *

_The Plague of Elliant_ commemorates a frightful pestilence which, in the sixth century, desolated not only Armorica, but the whole of Europe. Those who were attacked by it lost their hair, their teeth, and their sight; became yellow and languid, and speedily died. The parish of Elliant, in Cornouaille, was one of several from which the whole population perished. The neighboring country, especially that around Tourc'h, was preserved from the scourge by the prayers of a hermit named Rasian.

We are told by M. de Villemarqué that the ballad of The _Plague of Elliant_ is never sung without the addition of the following legend:

"It was the day of the _Pardon_ (the feast of the patron saint) at Elliant; a young miller, arriving at the ford with his horses, saw a fair lady in a white robe seated on the bank of the river, a little staff in her hand, and who requested him to convey her over the water. 'Oh! yes; assuredly, madame,' replied he, and already she was on his horse's crupper, and soon deposited on the other side. Then the fair lady said to him, 'Young man, you know not whom you have brought over: I am the Plague. I have just made the tour of Brittany, and I go to the church of the town, where they are ringing for mass; all whom I strike with my staff will quickly die; as for yourself, fear nothing; no harm shall happen to you, nor yet to your mother."

"And the Plague kept her word," adds the Breton peasant; for does not the song itself say that none but

"A widow poor of sixty, and her only son, are left?"

The following is most probably only a fragment of the original:

THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT.

Thus spake the holy bard who dwells not far from Langolen. 'Twixt Langolen and Le Faouet, the father Rasian: Let every month a mass be said, ye men of Le Faouet, A holy mass for all the souls the plague has rent away.

From Elliant, bearing heavy spoils, at last the plague has gone: Seven thousand and a hundred slain, and left but two alone. Death has come down upon the land, and Elliant has bereft: A widow poor of sixty, and her only son, are left.

"The plague is at my cottage door, and when God wills," she said, "She will come in, and we go out, among the other dead." Go look in Elliant market-place, and mow the waving grass; Save in the narrow rut whereby the dead-cart used to pass.

Oh! hard must be the heart of him, whoever he may be, Who would not weep, such utter desolation could he see. See, eighteen carts all piled with dead stand at the graveyard gate; And eighteen carts all piled with dead, behind their turn await.

Nine children of one house there were, who on one tumbrel lay, Which their poor mother dragged alone along the burial-way. Their father followed, whistling, for his reason all had fled; The mother wailed, and called on God, and pointed to her dead.

"Oh! bury my nine sons," she cried. "Oh! lay them in the ground; A rope of wax I promise that shall thrice your walls surround, Your church and sanctuary both therein shall be enwound.

"Nine sons I brought into the world: Death has not spared me one; On my own hearth he struck them down, and left me all alone. None have I now who might to me a drop of water give: Ah! why am I not stricken too; for wherefore should I live?"

The cemetery full is piled, high as its walls, with dead; The church heaped to the steps: the fields must now be hallowed.

In the church-yard I see an oak, and from its topmost bough A white sheet hangs, the truce of death; for all are buried now.

There is no surer remedy, in the estimation of the Breton peasantry, against an epidemic than to make a song about it. "The Plague, finding herself discovered, fled away." Thus, as one among many examples of the practical utility of the popular poetry, we find that when, some years ago, Brittany was severely visited by the cholera, no attention was paid to the printed circulars which were issued by medical and magisterial authority; all the preparation made by the people to meet it was _to dig an extra number of graves_, until a popular poet put into verse the good advice concerning preventives and remedies which, when placarded in official prose, had been passed by with no more notice than a grave and incredulous shake of the head. But a week after the composition of the "Song upon the Cholera" it was heard in every remote hamlet or farm throughout Brittany. The verses in themselves were detestable, in the way of poetry; no matter, the cholera, finding itself the subject of a song, would take flight. From the power attributed by the people to poesy arises the Breton proverb, "Poesy is stronger than the three strongest things: stronger than evil, than tempest, or than fire." And again, "Song is the calmer of all sorrow." All the Keltic poems, which, like _The Plague of Elliant_, are written in strophes, are sung throughout to some national air, however lengthy they may be. "I remember," writes M. Émile Souvestre, "that one day, arriving at the _Pardon_ of St. Jean du Doigt, near Morlaix, I heard a blind man who was singing Breton verses on the Nativity: in passing by again in the evening, I found him still in the same place, continuing his subject, which was by no means concluded, and which, he informed me, it required an entire day to get through, though he did not yet know the whole."

It is impossible to compute the number of the popular poems of Brittany. The author just quoted considers that eight or ten thousand would not reach the reality; and he proceeds to describe the manner in which they mingle with the very _air_ of the country, as follows:

"No words can do justice to the intoxicating sensation which he who understands our old language experiences, when, on a fine summer evening, he traverses the mountains of Cornouaille, listening to the songs of the shepherds. At every step the voice, perhaps of a child, perhaps of an aged woman, sends forth to him from the distance a fragment of some antique ballad, sung to melodies such as are never now composed, and narrating the miracle of a former time, or a crime committed in the valley, or an attachment which has broken the heart. The couplets answer one another from rock to rock; the verses sport in the air like the insects of the evening; the wind carries them by gusts into your face, with the perfume of the black-wheat and the rye; and, immersed in this poetic atmosphere, enchanted and meditative, you advance into the midst of the rural solitudes. You perceive great Druidic stones, clothed with moss, leaning toward the border of the wood; feudal ruins, half-hidden in the thickets or breaking the slope of the hills, while at times, on the heights of the mountain, figures of men, with long hair flying in the wind, and strangely clad, pass like shadows between you and the horizon, marked out against the sky, which is just beginning to be illumined by the rising moon. It is like a vision of bygone times; like a waking dream that one might have after reading a page of Ossian."

* * * * *

We will close our present article with a translation of the Sône of Per Cöatmor, as promised in our last; hoping in a future one to conclude our notice of the more ancient and "learned" poetry of Brittany, that is, that which was composed according to the bardic rules, with some curious fragments relating to Merlin the Magician and Merlin the Bard; to be followed by specimens of the historical poems of Brittany.

BRETON SONE.

"Not to Rouen, not to Paris, go I, friend, with thee. What among the folk of the High Country should I see? Treacherous ice, whereon one slips and falls, they say to me.

"Only to the mortuary I my steps will bend; To the village mortuary with thee will I wend, And behold the bones; for one day we must die, my friend.

"Bare of fleshly garb, the bones lie there, by day and night. Where is now their skin so soft, and where their hands so white? Where their souls? oh! where, my friend? In darkness or in light?

"Ah friend! when the preachers preach, you laugh at what they say. 'In _this_ life you will dance? Ah! well, so in the next you may. There's a hall prepared below for dancers mad and gay.

'Carpeted with points of steel, where barefoot dancers fly, Lit with fiery prongs which demons brandish, as they cry, Dance, young man! to dances and to pardons who would'st hie.'"

"Silence, maiden! mock me not, but give me love for love; Take me for thy spouse; our life shall sweet and joyful prove. Henceforth pardons nor the dance my spirit e'er shall move."

"Not fifteen was I, my friend, when to the church I went. 'Leave the world,' my angel whispered, 'leave its discontent. To the veil and cloistered life henceforth thy will be bent.'

"Girl, forget thy convent dream; believe and marry me. Safer, stronger than the convent walls my care shall be. With a sheltering love, sweet maid, will I encompass thee."

"Youth, not so; but let thy heart toward another lean; Let some fairer maid from me thy fond affection wean; Twere an easy task; good looks are thine, and portly mien."[138]

'Fairer maid than thou, nor any _like_ to thee, will I. _Thee_ must I have, nor worse, nor better: if not thee, I die. Stay, and let this silver ring around thy finger lie."

"No bright ring of earthly troth my finger shall ensnare. Heaven's espousal ring alone my hand shall ever bear: That high bond of love nor chance nor changes can outwear?"

"Maiden, if thou speakest truly, profitless and vain All the time which I have spent thy favor sweet to gain. For the pleasures that are past I nothing reap but pain!"

"Youth, what days for me thou mayst have lost, will I repay Praying for thy soul's good speed and health by night and day; So to blessed Paradise thou mayst not miss the way."

FOOTNOTES:

[137] _De Civit. Dei_, lib. xv. cxxiii.

[138] M. Souvestre's note to this passage is, "En Bretagne, aux yeux des paysans, la corpulence est une grande beauté; c'est un signe de distinction, de richesse, de loisir," etc.

LINES.

FROM THE LATIN OF THEODULPHUS, BISHOP OF ORLEANS, A.D. 820.

Adspice ne vitiet tumidus præcordia fastus, Dum loca sublimis editiora tenes, Dumque favent populi vallaris pluribus unus, Undique te septum prosperitate putes; Neve quod es demant oblivia segnia menti, Ultima sit semper conspicienda dies. Ut valeas omni vitiorum sorde carere, Hoc quod es aspicito, non tamen id quod habes. Ipse licet sedeas gemmis ornatus et ostro, Post carnis putridus tempora pulvis eris. Corpus enim fulvo quod nunc accingitur auro Squalenti intectum veste premetur humo. Quod mare, quod terræ, quod et aer gestat edendum, Eheu! sordidulus post cinis illud erit. Quemque tegunt celsis laqueata palatia tectis, Parvaque conquereris culmina magna satis, Clausus in angustâ modicâque tenebris urnâ Vixque domus tibimet corpore major erit. Plura quid enumerem? Visu quod cernitur aptum, Visibus humanis quod favet atque placet, Post vitam vermis, post vermem pulvis habebit, Voce Tonantis erit, quum redit, unde venit.

TRANSLATION.

O thou who, seated in the place of power, Dost hear the praise and see the prostrate crowd, When all things smile upon thy prosperous hour, Let not thy heart be proud!

Be not with dull oblivion overcast; Keep ever in thy sight life's certain goal; Consider what thou art, not what thou hast. And so be pure of soul.

Thou sittest to-day in purple and in gold; Thy vesture is with jewels clasped to-day; How soon the squalid earth-robe will enfold The little mouldering clay!

Of all earth nourishes--the flocks of air, The life that ocean in its deep maintains-- Of all the plenty spread for banquets rare-- What nothingness remains!

Now lofty painted ceilings shield thee well; Now thy broad halls too narrow seem to be; Scarce larger than thy mortal frame, the cell Will soon suffice for thee.

What further say? O all that doth rejoice Our human eyes! O all with beauty rife! The worm! the dust! and then--the thunder-voice That calls the dead to life!

C. E. B.

GERALD GRIFFIN.

In October, 1823, there arrived in the city of London a young man from the south of Ireland, unknown and without a friend in that vast metropolis. A stranger in a strange land, he brought with him nothing but a cultivated mind, a fresh, vigorous constitution, a pleasing address, a spirit of self-reliance amounting almost to a morbid dislike for every thing savoring of patronage, a slender purse, and a few manuscript plays, the labor of boyhood's leisure hours. His experience of life had been confined to his own peaceful household on the banks of the Shannon, and the society of a few intimate friends of his family. His contributions to literature amounted simply to some sketches published in the newspapers of his native city, Limerick, and the, to him, precious burden he bore with him in this his first adventure into the unknown world. Thus provided, he aspired with all the glorious confidence of youthful ambition to no less a mission than the reformation of the modern drama, and the infusion of moral sentiment into works of fiction, even then fast acquiring those deleterious qualities which so thoroughly permeate them in our day.

This young literary knight-errant was Gerald Griffin, who, born on the 12th day of December, 1803, had not yet completed his twentieth year. The story of his early life, as told by the pen of an affectionate brother, is remarkable principally for the calm, holy atmosphere of parental love by which it was surrounded, and the judicious mental training to which he was subjected even from his earliest infancy. His father, Patrick Griffin, a descendant of an ancient Irish family, seems to have occupied a social position equally removed from penury and affluence; such a one, at least, as enabled him to support his large family with comfort, and provide each of his children with an education not only suitable to their condition, but more extensive and varied than at that time was considered necessary for the sons and daughters of the middle class. He was a man of robust constitution, facile temper, an ardent nationalist, and well read in the history and antiquities of his country. His mother, a woman of more than ordinary cultivation and great religious fervor, was entirely devoted to her household duties and the moral training of her children, and we cannot better convey an idea of the character of this admirable woman than by transcribing the following extract from one of her letters to her son:

"I have, my dear Gerald, travelled with you through your mortifying difficulties, and am proud of my son--proud of his integrity, talents, prudence, and, above all, his appearing superior to that passion of common minds, revenge; I must own, fully provoked to it by ----'s conduct. I hope, however, they may soon have to seek you, not you them. Perhaps, after all, it may have been as well that we did not know at the time what you were to endure on your first outset. We should in that case have been advising you to come out here, which perhaps would have been turning your back on that fame and fortune which I hope will one day reward your laudable perseverance and industry. When the very intention you mention of paying us a visit delights me so much, what should I feel if Providence should have in reserve for me the blessing of once again embracing my Gerald?"

Gerald united in himself the leading characteristics of both parents in a remarkable degree. His love of home forms the constant theme of his letters, while his attachment to country and delicate moral sense may properly be said to have tinged every page of his prose, and inspired every line of his poetry. His brothers and sisters, eight in number, were equally worthy of such progenitors, and of the author of _The Collegians_; the former becoming distinguished members of the liberal professions, and the latter, in most instances, adopting the habits and worthily fulfilling the duties of a religious life.

When the young Gerald was about seven years old, his father, abandoning business in Limerick, removed some miles from that city, and settled on a farm pleasantly situated near the confluence of the little river Oavaan and the Shannon. Here the future novelist and poet spent ten of the happiest years of his life. Surrounded on all sides by scenery the most picturesque, wood, mountain, lake, and river, his youthful imagination, so susceptible of impressions of physical as well as moral beauty, found ample scope. Reserved in manner even with his playmates, he was wont to shun their society, and wander alone for hours through the fields or by the riverside, his gun or fishing-rod unused, and his whole being drinking in the beauties of the ever-varying landscape, or gazing wonderingly on the distant "lovely hills of Clare," the boundary of his world. His love for the supernatural and his fondness for fairy lore were early developed in this sylvan retreat, where every ruin had its tragic history, every graveyard its especial ghost, and every rath and cairn its appropriate legend. How far such constant communings with nature had a tendency to disqualify him for the stern battle of life which he was destined afterward to wage with such varying fortune, we cannot undertake to say; but doubtless often, when in poverty and exile, the recollection of those years so tranquilly and innocently spent must have brightened many a solitary hour, and it is certain that to this early development of a taste for moral beauty we are indebted for some of the most vivid and truthful of his word-paintings.

But his mind was not altogether occupied in contemplation. His education, begun in Limerick, was assiduously continued in the country under the direction of a visiting tutor and the older members of his family, until at an early age he had mastered not only the rudiments of the French language, but had acquired a comparatively extensive and accurate knowledge of the English classics. He was especially fond of poetry, and was accustomed, even when a child, to copy out passages from Goldsmith and Moore; and his application to his studies of all kinds was so intense that he is described by his relatives as being invariably in the habit of sitting at his meals with a book open before him, and two or three in reserve ready to his hand. Goldsmith's _Animated Nature_ was one of his favorite books, and he endeavored to turn it to practical account by copying its illustrations, and rearing with his own hand numbers of the little song-birds to be so plentifully found in the neighborhood. In the year 1814, we find him for a short time at the school of a Mr. O'Brien, in Limerick, deep in the fascinating pages of Horace, Ovid, and Virgil, the latter of whom, as might be expected, was his favorite poet, and so earnestly did he explore this, to him, new mine of poesy that he is said to have attained a remarkable proficiency in the Latin tongue at an age when other children are but imperfectly acquainted with their vernacular. Though soon deprived of the valuable supervision of Mr. O'Brien, he continued his readings of the classics for several years at a neighboring school, and in maturer years evinced in conversation and composition a decided preference for this branch of his early studies.

In 1820, the delightful family circle at Fairy Lawn was broken up. Mr. Griffin, senior, his wife and several of their older children, emigrated to this country, and settled near Binghamton, in the State of New York. Gerald, with one older brother and two younger sisters, was left under the protection of the oldest remaining brother, Dr. William Griffin, then a practising physician in Adare, a pretty village a few miles from Limerick. The separation from the two beings he loved best on earth was a sad calamity for the affectionate lad; but hope, that star which always shone brightly for him no matter how cloudy the horizon, consoled him for what he believed to be only a temporary bereavement. "Gerald," says one of his sisters in a letter to America, "has a biscuit from your sea store, which he says he will produce at the first meal we eat together in Susquehanna." The change of residence had one advantage, however; for while it did not interfere with his home studies, or even with his rambles in search of fresh scenery and old traditions, it gave him an opportunity of often visiting the city, and forming the acquaintance of young men of congenial tastes, principal among whom was John Banim, one of the authors of the celebrated _Tales of the O'Hara Family_. He became also a frequent attendant at such theatrical performances as the place at that time afforded, and even contributed reports, sketches, verses, and leading articles to the local journals, which, if they were not very profitable or widely known, "obliged him," he tells us, "to write with quickness, and without much study." But the young man had already drunk too deeply of the unpolluted waters of English and Latin lore to be satisfied with the superficial nothings of provincial journalism, or to relish the crudities of the dramatic pieces with which the wandering players were then accustomed to regale the unsophisticated people of second-class cities. The modern drama seemed to him flimsy in its construction, and, if not positively immoral, certainly in tendency falling far short of its legitimate object, which, as the great dramatist tells us, "is and was to hold the mirror up to nature," etc. He reflected seriously on the possibility of its reformation, and, like a true reformer, zealously set to work to accomplish this desirable purpose, encouraged no doubt by the applause which greeted the appearance of his young countryman's _Damon and Pythias_. He wrote about this time three or four plays, none of which were ever presented to the public; and of the names and plots of all but one we are ignorant. That was called _Aquire_, and being a production of considerable merit, judging from the favorable opinion of it expressed by Banim and other theatrical critics to whose inspection it was confidentially submitted, would very probably have met with success on the stage had not the author's over-sensitiveness induced him to withdraw it altogether, after endeavoring two or three times to procure its representation. His next step was to leave Ireland for a wider sphere of action; but it was only after repeated and urgent solicitation, and upon reading over this drama, which seemed to contain many excellences, that his brother and guardian, Dr. Griffin, consented to gratify his longing to visit London, where he felt he would have unlimited scope to develop his idea of reform. The consent gained, Gerald left home for the first time, radiant with hope and confident of success.

A youthful aspirant for literary honors could not have made his _début_ at a more unpropitious time. London was then, as now, the great maelstrom which drew into its vortex most of the enterprise and genius of the three kingdoms, and, alas! proved the grave of too many overwrought and unappreciated minds. The fame of Byron, Moore, and a host of contemporary poets was then in its zenith, and the refulgence of their genius eclipsed the light of all lesser stars which might have shone brightly in any other atmosphere. The stage was so completely neglected or debased that the legitimate drama had given place to spectacular frivolities, and hundreds of plays of merit were offered every year to the London managers only to be rejected. The wonderful success of Sir Walter Scott as a novelist had produced a crowd of plagiarists, as inferior in ability as they were formidable in prolixity, who had filled the shelves of the booksellers with the veriest trash, and satiated _ad nauseam_ the public taste for romance. Even the field of Irish fiction was apparently fully occupied. Maria Edgeworth's justly admired tales were in every household, and the stronger and brighter imagination of Banim had already plumed its pinions, and tried its first flight with marked success. The era of patronage, when the great and wealthy of the land esteemed it a privilege to throw the ægis of their protection over the artist and man of letters, had passed away, perhaps happily, for ever, and that of Bulwer and Dickens, Thackeray and Lever had not arrived; men whose magic pens seem to have realized the alchemist's dream, and turned every thing they touched into gold. It was well for the young adventurer that these difficulties did not at once present themselves, or, if discerned at all, it was through that enchanting halo with which youth surrounds the future.

On Gerald's arrival in London, his first step was to procure respectable lodgings; his next to place in the hands of some person connected with the stage, but whose name has not transpired, a copy of one of his plays for criticism and acceptance. This person, though the only one to whom the friendless lad was able to procure an introduction, took the piece with warm professions of friendship, and promised it his early consideration; but, after retaining it for some three months, sent it back, "wrapped up in an old newspaper," without a word of comment, explanation, or apology. The interval was one of painful suspense for the aspiring writer, somewhat relieved by the genial and unselfish kindness of Banim, whose residence in London he soon discovered. Although having had but a slight acquaintance with Gerald, and being himself very few years his senior, and still on the threshold of fame, John Banim, to his immortal credit be it said, extended to his junior countryman the hospitality of his house, and, what was much more grateful, the sunshine of his genial conversation and the refuge of his cheerful fireside. He went even further: with a total absence of professional jealousy, he took _Aquire_, read it over carefully, commended its best passages, pointed out the errors to be erased, the superabundant metaphor and mere poetic imagery to be pruned, and used all his efforts to procure its representation. Gerald was deeply grateful. "What would I have done," he writes to his brother, "if I had not found Banim? I should never be tired of talking about and thinking of Banim." It was at the suggestion of this invaluable friend that, in the early part of the following year, he wrote _Gisippus_, and many of its most striking scenes owe something to the matured judgment of the author of _Damon and Pythias_. This play, written, as he tells us, on little slips of paper in coffee-houses, though one of great merit, for originality of conception, dignity of language, and startling incidents, was not acted till two years after the author's death; and when Macready at length introduced it to the public, it was received with great favor, and still, to use a theatrical phrase, "keeps the boards."

But months passed wearily away in the strange city, and Gerald's hopes were as far as ever from fruition--months spent in fruitless efforts to obtain some sort of employment that would enable him to support himself, while he waited the pleasure of managers and danced attendance on theatrical committees. Again and again he applied for the position of reporter on the press, but was answered that the places were all filled. He might have become a police-news reporter, but he was told that it was "hardly reputable." He wrote for the literary weeklies, but was cheated by every one of them; he contributed to the larger magazines, and his articles were inserted; but when payment was requested, "there was so much shuffling and shabby work" that he left them in disgust; he commenced the study of Spanish, with a view to coöperate with Valentine Llanos in the translation of Spanish dramas; but Colburn and the other publishers told him that it was "entirely out of their line." At last he undertook with avidity to translate from the French a volume and a half of one of Prevot's works for two guineas--about ten and a half dollars. It is no wonder, then, that in the bitterness of his extremity he wrote to his sister, "If I could make a fortune by splitting matches, I think I would never put a word in print." Though practising the most rigid economy, the occasional remittances he received from his brother, many of them unsolicited, did not suffice for his ordinary wants; he was compelled to give up his first lodgings and seek others in a more obscure part of the city, and was even obliged to refuse the pressing invitations of his friend Banim to meet Doctor Maginn and other celebrities, at the house of the former, for want of proper apparel. "The fact is," he writes home at this time, "I am at present almost a complete prisoner. I wait until dusk every evening to creep from my mouse-hole, and snatch a little fresh air on the bridge close by."

Staggering under the weight of disappointment and poverty, he was yet to encounter the additional torture of ill health. Stooping constantly over his desk, he contracted an affection of the lungs, the unaccustomed dampness of a London fog had given him rheumatism, and he was occasionally attacked with violent palpitations of the heart, which endangered life itself. The joyous spirit which had soared like a bird beneath its native skies on the banks of the Shannon, drooped its wings in the heavy miasma of the Thames; fagging, unrequited labor made his days a burden and his nights sleepless; his wardrobe was so threadbare that for months at a time he would not stir abroad in the daylight, and consequently did not meet the face of an acquaintance, and his supply of food so meagre that he was often obliged to dispense with the commonest necessaries of life. Indeed, so reduced had he become in circumstances at this time that a friend of his relates that, having lost sight of him for several days, and apprehending the true cause of his absence, after long searching he discovered him in a veritable garret, and, though it was past midnight, still endeavoring to work on his manuscripts. But what must have been his astonishment when he wrung from Gerald the unwilling but unostentatious confession that he had been without food for three consecutive days? It is unnecessary to say that his immediate wants were supplied by the kind friend who had thus timely visited him, though not without some hesitation on the part of the recipient of the favor. Still, nothing could daunt his indomitable will, no misfortune could lessen the self-consciousness of his ability to achieve ultimate success, or break down his proud, too proud, spirit of personal independence. He might easily have obtained money from his relatives in Ireland; but he forebore to accept from them what his susceptibilities led him to suppose they could ill afford, and even his true friend Banim, upon incidentally discovering his situation and tendering him in the most delicate manner some pecuniary assistance, was met with a decided and not over courteous refusal. His enforced poverty likewise had a very injurious effect on his prospects as a dramatic author; for, unable to mingle on an equality with men connected with the stage, he lost all chance of personal intercourse with managers and critics, and finally conceived such a distaste for or indifference to his first affection, the drama, that he relinquished for ever the design of reforming the stage, the hope that had lain nearest to his heart and had prompted his self-imposed exile from his native country. Though few men loved literature more for its own sake, or are, fortunately generally called upon to offer more sacrifices at its shrine, the vital question with him had now become narrowed down to the very one of existence itself; for, to use his own expression, "he preferred death to failure."

Thus nearly two years passed away in London, and, sick at heart and enfeebled in body, he felt thousands and thousands of times, as he writes to his parents, that he could have lain down quietly and died at once, and been forgotten for ever. But in this his darkest hour a ray of hope unexpectedly crossed his gloomy path, and with all the hopefulness of a rejuvenated spirit he hailed it as the harbinger of a new and more prosperous epoch. A Mr. Foster, having accidentally become acquainted with his almost hopeless condition, procured him employment at fifty pounds a year as reader and corrector for a publisher, and his gifted countryman Maginn, immediately upon hearing of his reduced circumstances, obtained for him a situation on _The Literary Gazette_, which soon led to a profitable connection with other journals of a like character. To all these he contributed articles in prose and poetry on every imaginable topic, and displayed such an adaptability and versatility of talent that his services were not only well rewarded by their respective publishers, but very generally appreciated by the reading community. Many of the tales and sketches which at this time came from his pen were sent in and published anonymously, or simply signed "Joseph," his name in confirmation, so strictly did he endeavor to preserve his incognito, and trust to the intrinsic merits of his contributions for their acceptance. Though he wrote to his mother that by reason of his new employment he was enabled to pay off all the debts he owed at the close of the year 1825, his varied productions could not have been very remunerative, certainly not in proportion to the labor expended on them; for we find him during the next session of Parliament engaged as a reporter in the House of Commons.

The vehemence with which he seized hold of this opportunity, and the ardor with which he pursued his new calling as reporter and journalist, show that he felt he had at last discovered a clue that would lead him out of the labyrinth of his difficulties, and his success fully justified the confidence in his own powers which had never forsaken him. Opportunity, so much desired by all young men of ability, which comes to some unsought, and as persistently flies the approach of others, had at length presented itself to Gerald Griffin, and he lost no time in profiting by the occasion. Association with authors whose works he was obliged to examine, criticise, and sometimes revise, naturally led him to compare his own capacity for production with theirs, and to arrive at the conclusion that he also was able to produce works of prose fiction equally meritorious, and as worthy the commendation of moralists as epic poetry or the drama. Satisfied on this point, he at once relinquished his dramatic aspirations, and prepared himself with all the enthusiasm of his nature to enter the lists as a novelist. In his "small room in some obscure court, near St. Paul's," he called up the recollections of past days, of the lovely Shannon, the mountain ranges of Clare, the wakes, fairs, and festivals of the Munster peasantry, the humor, shrewdness, pathos, and frolic he as a child had witnessed, and perhaps to some extent shared, and he resolved to essay an Irish novel illustrative of these familiar scenes. Having first tried short stories for the literary weeklies, and found them eagerly read and highly appreciated, he commenced a series of tales to be published in book form, which he designed to call _Anecdotes of Munster_, but which were afterward known under the general title of _Holland-Tide_.

Pending the appearance of this his first continued effort, his labors were as varied and as unremitting as ever--correcting for the press the lucubrations of unskilled writers, reviewing in the weekly papers the various books that the metropolitan publishers were constantly inflicting on the public, writing theatrical criticisms, sketches, poetry, and political articles--doing any thing and every thing, in fact, no matter how foreign to his tastes, as long as they honorably secured him present competency and a reasonable prospect of finally accomplishing his grand purpose. At one time he describes himself as busy revising a ponderous dictionary; at another, collecting materials for a pamphlet on Catholic emancipation. Now he is promised £50 for a piece for the English opera, and again he acknowledges the receipt of several pounds for reports furnished a Catholic newspaper recently started. His leisure moments, if he can be said to have had any, were devoted to versification, while his parliamentary duties kept him out of bed till three, and sometimes five o'clock in the morning. His brother William, who visited him in London in 1826, thus describes his altered appearance and his methodical manner of life:

"I had not seen him since he left Adare, and was struck with the change in his appearance. All color had left his cheek, he had grown very thin, and there was a sedate expression of countenance unusual in one so young, and which in after years became habitual to him. It was far from being so, however, at the time I speak of, and readily gave place to that light and lively glance of his dark eye, that cheerfulness of manner and observant humor, which from his very infancy had enlivened our fireside circle at home. Although so pale and thin as I have described him, his tall figure, expressive features, and his profusion of dark hair, thrown back from a fine forehead, gave an impression of a person remarkably handsome and interesting.... He was indefatigable at his work; rose and breakfasted early, set to his desk at once, and continued writing till two or three o'clock in the afternoon; took a turn round the park, which was close to his residence; returned and dined; usually took another walk after dinner, and returning to tea, wrote for the remainder of the evening, after remaining up to a very late hour."

The series of tales, published by Simpkin and Marshall late in this year brought Griffin £70 sterling, and at once established his reputation as a powerful and original writer, and an accurate delineator of Irish peasant character. Its reception by the public and the gentlemen of the critical profession was so generally favorable that, feeling assured he had at length entered on the right road to distinction, and that his future was no longer doubtful, Griffin gave up his various engagements with the press, and not unwillingly, it is to be presumed, laid down for ever the load of literary drudgery which had so long bowed his spirit to the earth. His fortitude had been severely tested, not by one great calamity, but by a series of trials, harder to be borne, and had remained unshaken; his constancy of purpose had been proof against all allurements to swerve from the honorable pursuit of letters; and it is not too much to affirm, on the authority of many who knew him intimately, that his moral character remained unsullied amid all the temptations which usually beset a young man of his isolated condition in every large city. His first success was naturally followed by a desire to revisit his home, a wish in which he had long secretly indulged, but which was now strengthened by intelligence of the dangerous illness of a favorite sister. He arrived at Pallas Kenry, his brother's residence, in February, 1827, but unfortunately a few hours after the death of this young lady, an event which, coupled with his feeble health, destroyed for a time the pleasure which he had anticipated from a trip to Ireland, and the renewal of his acquaintance with those peaceful scenes the remembrance of which had so cheered his absence.

"I started for Limerick at a very early hour to meet him," says his brother, "and I cannot forget how much I was struck by the change his London life had made in his appearance. His features looked so thin and pale, and his cheeks so flattened, and, as it were, bloodless, that the contrast with what I remembered was horrid; while his voice was feeble, and slightly raised in its pitch, like that of one recovering from a lingering illness. It was affecting, in these circumstances, to observe the sudden and brilliant light that kindled in his eyes on first seeing me, and the smile of welcome that played over his features and showed the spirit within unchanged."

The unremitting attention of his relatives, however, at length assuaged his mental grief and bodily sufferings, and his mind, naturally resigned, gradually resumed its wonted tranquillity. He spent the summer months at Pallas Kenry in the undisturbed enjoyment of home, but still industriously occupied with his pen.

"When engaged in composition, (says his biographer,) he made use of a manifold writer, with a style and carbonic paper, which gave him two and sometimes three copies of his work. One of these he sent to the publisher, the others he kept by him, in case the first should be lost. He had his sheets so cut out and arranged that they were not greater in size than the leaf of a moderate-sized octavo, and he wrote so minute a hand that each page of the manuscript contained enough matter for a page of print. This enabled him very easily to tell how much manuscript was necessary to fill three volumes. His usual quantity of writing was about ten pages of these in the day. It was seldom less than this, and I have known it repeatedly as high as fifteen or twenty, without interfering with those hours which he chose to devote to recreation. He never rewrote his manuscript, and one of the most remarkable things I noticed in the progress of his work was the extremely small number of erasures or interlineations in it, several pages being completed without the occurrence of a single one."

The result of this diligent application was the first series of _Tales of the Munster Festivals_, embracing _The Half-Sir_, _The Card Drawers_, and _The Shuil Dhuv_, with which he proceeded to London, and which he disposed of to his publishers for £250, a price that would now be considered totally inadequate, but which forty years ago was looked upon as ample remuneration for that species of labor. The work, though decidedly superior to _Holland-Tide_, was much less favorably received by the critics, and Griffin had now to pay the penalty of success by having the children of his brain held up to public censure, as not being formed true to nature, or as acting in a manner contrary to the canons of London society. Though such strictures generally emanated from persons who either would not or could not understand the peculiarities of the people of Ireland, he felt keenly alive to their praise or censure, particularly the latter; nor does he seem to have exhibited that callousness which his long acquaintance with the press, and the class of men who are sometimes permitted to sit in judgment on their superiors, might have taught him.

Having remained long enough in London to superintend the publication of the tales, he gladly returned to Pallas Kenry, where he spent nearly a year in the undisturbed society of his relatives and a few friends living in his neighborhood. These latter must have been few indeed, for he is described as still of a very shy and reserved disposition, except when among intimate friends; and though shown every mark of esteem and hospitality by his countrymen, he had so great an abhorrence of being lionized that he seldom accepted invitations, save such as could not in ordinary politeness be rejected. Not that his temper was soured or that his conversational powers were deficient, but home was to him the centre and only object of attraction. "Would you wish to view at a distance our domestic circle?" asks his sister in one of her letters to America. "William and I are generally first at the breakfast table, when, after a little time, walks in Miss H----; next Mr. Gerald, and, last of all, Monsieur D----. After breakfast our two doctors go to their patients; Gerald takes his desk by the fire-place and writes away, except when he chooses to throw a pinch or a pull at the ringlets, cape, or frill of the first lady next to him, or gives us a stave of some old ballad."

Under such sweet influences, so different from his wretched life in London, the greater part of his best work, _The Collegians_, was written. Two or three subjects for a successor to _Shuil Dhuv_ had been selected and partly developed; but having the fear of the critics before his eyes, he laid them aside unfinished. The spring and summer of 1828 thus passed away fruitlessly; but at length a theme presented itself that satisfied his judgment, and he set about writing on it with all possible expedition. _The Collegians_ was originally published in three volumes, one and a half of which Griffin brought with him to London in November. The remaining portion was written in that city in such hot haste that he was obliged frequently to deliver his sheets of manuscript without having time to reread or revise them. This work, on its first appearance, was received with the greatest favor; it placed the author at once at the head of the novelists of his own country, and gave him a high rank among the writers of the English language--a verdict which the experience of posterity has fully confirmed.

Of the writers of that day Griffin's favorite, as might be expected, was Sir Walter Scott. He had a profound respect for the historical romances of that great man, and, with an ambition honorable to his patriotism, he resolved to abandon for a time the portraiture of local and modern life, and attempt to do for his native country what the author of _Ivanhoe_ had so admirably done for Great Britain. Accordingly, in the spring of 1829, he removed to Dublin, where he spent several months in the study of ancient history and in visiting on foot several parts of Ireland, the topography of which he designed to introduce into his new work. The fruit of his antiquarian labors was _The Invasion_, which appeared during the winter of the same year, a short time after the publication of a second series of _Munster Festivals_. But though it had an extensive sale and was highly praised by the more learned, it did not, from the very nature of the subject and the remote epoch treated, establish itself in the affections of the public so generally as his previous and subsequent writings. While in the Irish capital, he was introduced to Sir Philip Crampton and other distinguished scholars, from all of whom he experienced the most flattering attention. His fame, indeed, had preceded him among all classes of his countrymen, and their warm and discriminating encomiums, diffident as he was to a fault, must have fallen pleasantly on his ear, and not the less so when they were expressed in the mellifluous accents he was accustomed to hear from his infancy. A closer intimacy with the congenial spirits of his own country appears to have worn off a great deal of his natural reserve; for we now find him mentioning that he had met Miss Edgeworth, and was anticipating the pleasure of an introduction to Lady Morgan and other contemporary celebrities. In the latter part of this year he also formed the acquaintance of a lady residing in the south of Ireland, which soon ripened into a lasting friendship, founded upon similarity of tastes and mutual esteem. The name of the lady is not given in his life, and we know her only as the recipient of several pleasant gossiping letters, addressed to her by the initial "L.," and by the many beautiful poems dedicated in her honor. A married lady, the mother of a numerous family, and Griffin's senior by several years, she exercised a wholesome and judicious influence over a mind naturally sympathetic but peculiarly sensitive, such as none of his own sex could or would have attempted. In company with her husband and relatives he made a prolonged visit to Killarney, the romantic beauty of whose lakes filled him with the most intense delight.

In the winter of 1829, he was again in London, which city he was obliged to visit each succeeding year till 1835, to attend to his subsequent works; _The Christian Physiologist_, _The Rivals_, _The Duke of Monmouth_, and _Tales of My Neighborhood_, appearing in nearly regular annual succession. The intervening time was generally spent in acquiring material for these works, or at the watering-places enjoying his well-earned repose. It was on the occasion of one of those flying trips across the channel, in 1832, that, being requested by the electors of Limerick to present, on their behalf, a request to Moore that he would consent to represent them in Parliament, Griffin deviated from his route and called on that celebrated poet at Sloperton Cottage. In a playful account of this ever-memorable interview, addressed to his friend "L.," he says: "O dear L----! I saw the poet, and I spoke to him, and he spoke to me, and it was not to bid me to 'get out of his way,' as the king of France did to the man who boasted that his majesty had spoken to him; but it was to shake hands with me, and to ask me, 'How I did, Mr. Griffin,' and to speak of 'my fame.' _My_ fame! Tom Moore talk of my fame! Ah the rogue! He was humbugging, L----, I'm afraid. He knew the soft side of an author's heart, and perhaps had pity on my long, melancholy-looking figure, and said to himself, 'I will make this poor fellow feel pleasant, if I can;' for which, with all his roguery, who could help liking him and being grateful to him?"

In 1838, he projected a tour on the continent; but was induced to change his purpose for a shorter one in Scotland, from which he derived not only great pleasure, but restored health. His diary of the trip, originally taken in short-hand notes, has been published, and abounds in good-natured criticisms on the manners and customs of the people he met on his journey, and some very fine descriptions of the scenery of the Highlands, which fell under his observation.

Gerald Griffin's last novel, as we have intimated, appeared in 1835, when only in the thirty-second year of his age. He had succeeded in the fullest sense as a novelist, in giving to the world in half a score of years some of the healthiest and most fascinating books in our language; had won the applause of the gifted and good alike, and, in a pecuniary point of view, had secured himself against all probability of dependence. Still, in a certain sense, he was not content. The pursuit of fame, as he had on more than one occasion predicted, had alone given him pleasure--its acquisition brought him no permanent satisfaction. Whether in abandoning the drama he had departed from his true path, or that his early insight into the mysteries of authorship had led him to underrate the labors of those whom the world is allowed to know only at a distance, or that his mind, naturally of a serious and religious turn, now fully developed, instinctively arrived at the conviction that only in the performance of those duties and sacrifices imposed on the ministers of the Gospel could be found his real sphere of action, or whether all these causes acted upon him with more or less force, certain it is that he now began to contemplate a radical change in his life. We know that he relinquished writing for the stage with reluctance, and that as early as 1828 he commenced the study of law at the London University; but it was not for two or three years afterward that his friends noticed his growing inclination for the life of a religious. From that time his poems, those beautiful scintillations of his soul, began to exhibit a higher fancy and a purer moral power than could be drawn even from patriotism, or the contemplation of mere natural objects. His conversation assumed a graver tone, and his letters to his friends, formerly so pleasantly filled with gossip and scraps of comment on the persons and literature of the day, were mainly taken up with graver topics.

This change, we are satisfied, was the effect of grave and due deliberation, and not the result of caprice or disappointed ambition. It had been remarked that his letters to the different members of his family during his residence in London, while filled with minute details of his literary labors, fears, and aspirations, seldom touched on religious matters, and hence it has been inferred that during his sojourn there he had neglected the practical duties of the faith of his boyhood; but this supposition is altogether gratuitous. In familiar intercourse with men of his own age and pursuits, he may have given expression to crude or speculative opinions without that proper degree of reverence which older minds exercise in dealing with such important questions; but we have the assurance of his nearest relatives and of those few who enjoyed his friendship that this weakness was seldom indulged in. However, Griffin in a spirit of self-condemnation, which we cannot help thinking disproportionate to the supposed offence, inaugurated his new mode of life by endeavoring to remove from the minds of his former associates any wrong impressions such conversations might have produced. In an admirable letter written to a literary friend in London, under date January 13th, 1830, he says:

"Since our acquaintance has recommenced this winter, I have observed, with frequent pain, that not much (if the slightest) change has taken place in your opinions on the only important subject on earth. Within the last few weeks, I have been thinking a great deal upon this subject, and my conscience reproaches me that you may have found in the worldliness of my own conduct and conversation reason to suppose that my religious convictions had not taken that deep hold of my heart and mind which they really have. I will tell you what has convinced me of this. I have compared our interviews this winter with the conversations we used to hold together, when my opinions were unsettled and my principles (if they deserved the name) detestable, and though these may be somewhat more decent at present, I am uneasy at the thought that the whole tenor of my conduct, such as it has appeared to you, was far from that of one who lived purely and truly for heaven and for religion."

With a short visit to Paris and his tour in Scotland, Griffin practically bade adieu to the outside world, and, retiring to Pallas Kenry, prepared himself for admission into the order of the Christian Brothers. We learn from one of his letters to friends in America that he had at first designed to offer himself as a candidate for the holy ministry, and had even commenced a preparatory course of theological study; but distrust of his vocation for a calling requiring so many qualifications led him to select the more quiet but highly meritorious sphere of a humble teacher of little children.

"I had long since relinquished the idea," he writes, "which I ought never to have entertained, of assuming the duties of the priesthood; and I assure you that it is one of the attractions of the order into which I have entered, that its subjects are prohibited (by the brief issued from Rome in approval and confirmation of the institute) from ever aspiring to the priesthood."

Having destroyed all his unpublished manuscripts, including _Matt Hyland_, a ballad of considerable merit of which only a fragment remains, and taken affectionate leave of his friends, the author of _Gisippus_ and _The Collegians_, in the prime of his manhood and the fulness of his fame, left his home for ever, entered as a postulant the institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Dublin, September 8th, 1838, and on the 15th of the following month, the feast of St. Teresa, was admitted to the religious habit.

"I have," he writes, "entered this house, at the gracious call of God, to die to the world and to live to him; all is to be changed; all my own pursuits henceforward to be laid aside, and those only embraced which he points out to me."

Gerald Griffin, or, as we must henceforth know him, Brother Joseph, entered on the performance of his new duties with his characteristic ardor and in a spirit of unostentatious obedience, which elicited the admiration of the community to a greater extent than the display of mere intellectual accomplishments could have done. "Nothing," said the superior general of the order, "could exceed the earnestness with which he discharged every duty; nothing was done by halves; nothing imperfectly; he seemed as if he had nothing else to do but that which he was doing." The following extract from a letter written soon after his removal to the North Cork monastery, the succeeding year, while it shows a touch of his old playful style, illustrates also that cheerfulness of spirit which so preëminently marks the character of the members of all the religious orders of the church, the result of the consciousness of useful labor well done:

"I was ordered off here from Dublin last June, and have been since enlightening the craniums of the wondering Paddies in this quarter, who learn from me with profound amazement and profit that o x spells ox; that the top of the map is the north, and the bottom is the south, with various other branches; as also that they ought to be good boys, and do as they are bid, and say their prayers every morning and evening, etc.; and yet it seems curious, even to myself, that I feel a great deal happier in the practice of this daily routine than I did while I was roving about your great city, absorbed in the modest project of rivalling Shakespeare and throwing Scott into the shade."

From this time till his death, which took place a year after his removal from Dublin, Brother Joseph remained in the North Cork monastery, his time divided between teaching the children of the poor and in that inner preparation for the end so unexpectedly near at hand, and to which he no longer looked forward, as he once had done, with apprehension. Until a very short time before his demise, he was in excellent health, and his conduct was marked by that serenity of manner and cheerfulness of speech which showed that the tempest-tossed spirit had at length found a haven of refuge. He visited his home but once, and then for a brief period, returning without pain or regret to his prayers and studies, among the latter of which was the compilation of a series of pious tales, intended for the use of the Brothers' schools, but which were never completed. His death, the result of typhus fever which set in on the 31st of May, and terminated fatally twelve days after, is thus simply but tenderly described by the director of novices, who was one of the witnesses of the edifying scene:

"On the morning of the day when his last illness took an unfavorable turn, he called the person in attendance on him to his bedside, and quietly told him 'he thought he should die of this sickness, and that he wished to receive extreme unction.' His confessor, by a merciful dispensation of providence, was then in the house, and expressed his opinion that, as a matter of precaution, it was best to administer it. He repaired to his bedside, presented him the holy viaticum, and administered extreme unction. He received them with the most lively sentiments of love and resignation, as well as the utmost fervor and devotion. During his illness, not a murmur or sigh of impatience escaped him; not a sentiment but breathed love, confidence, and resignation; not a desire but for the perfect accomplishment of the will of Him to whom his habits of prayer had so long and closely united him."

Thus lived and died one whom it would be faint praise to call one of the brightest and purest ornaments which this century has given to English literature. The various creations of his fancy will long hold a high place in the hearts of all who admire the beautiful and revere the good; but the moral of his own life is the noblest heritage he has left us. True to the instincts of his Catholic birth and training, he passed through the temptations of sorrow, poverty, and vanities of a great city for years, preserving his faith unshaken and his morals unsullied; with courage and tenacity of purpose, the attributes of true heroism, he surmounted obstacle after obstacle, which might easily have daunted older and stronger men, till he reached a proud position in the literature of his country; and when surrounded by all that is supposed to make life valuable--personal independence, devoted friends, and worldly applause--he gently and after mature self-examination took off his laurels, laid them modestly on the altar of religion, and, clothed in the humble garb of a Christian Brother, prepared to devote his life to unostentatious charity. Even his very name, that he once fondly hoped to write on the enduring tablets of history, he no longer desired to be remembered; for on the plain stone that marks his last resting-place in the little graveyard of the monastery is engraved simply the words,

BROTHER JOSEPH. DIED JUNE 12, 1840.

THE UNFINISHED PRAYER.

"Now I lay me"--say it, darling; "Lay me," lisped the tiny lips Of my daughter, kneeling, bending, O'er her folded finger-tips.

"Down to sleep"--"to sleep," she murmured, And the curly head dropped low; "I pray the Lord," I gently added, "You can say it all, I know."

"Pray the Lord"--the words came faintly. Fainter still, "my soul to keep;" Then the tired head fairly nodded, And the child was fast asleep.

But the dewy eyes half-opened When I clasped her to my breast; And the dear voice softly whispered, "Mamma, God knows all the rest."

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.

NUMBER FIVE.

For another month the Vatican Council has pursued the path originally marked out for its labors with a calmness and steady perseverance which no outside influences can disturb. In the beginning of its sessions sensational correspondents described what they saw and what they did not see--praised, mocked, or maligned as their humors led them or as their patrons desired, and poured forth abundant streams of amusing anecdotes, acute guesses, and positive assurances. The correspondence of one week was found to contradict that of the preceding week, and was itself contradicted the week following. Now, though wit, and drollery, and sarcasm may please for a time, human nature, after all, desires truth. And as men saw these contradictions, they came to understand how thoroughly untrustworthy were these correspondents; and the writers, ever on the alert to catch the first symptoms of popular feeling, have, in great part, dropped the subject. The only influence which such writings as these have had on the prelates of the council was to supply them with abundant topics for amusement in their hours of relaxation.

Another class of writers have all along treated, and still continue to treat, of the council and its action with earnestness of purpose, and are making strenuous efforts to guide and control or to check its course on subjects which they believe to have come or which may come up before it. We speak of those who are moved by religious or political feelings. Day after day and week after week, Italian, French, German, and English newspapers are taking one side or the other on these subjects, and write on them, if they do not always discuss them. At times you may find an article learned, well written, replete with thought, and suggestive, perhaps instructive. But generally the articles are only such as may be looked for in a newspaper--superficial and with an affectation of smartness. However their brilliancy, ofttimes only tinsel, may please their world of readers, among the bishops in the council they have, and can have, no weight whatever. It would, indeed, be surprising if they had.

Beyond the papers, there come pamphlets, many of them ably and learnedly written. It is to be lamented that too often the writers have allowed themselves to be carried away by excitement, and to use language which calls for censure. Still, they profess to discuss the questions gravely, and to present the strongest arguments in favor of their respective sides. We will not say that such writings are not privately read and maturely weighed by the fathers, and in fact carefully studied, so far as they may throw light on subjects of doctrine or discipline to be examined. But they certainly have not had the power to accelerate or retard, by a single day, the regular course of business before the council.

Some weeks ago, the papers of Europe were filled with articles announcing the approaching action of several governments, and the measures they would take to influence the pope and the bishops, so as to control their action by the apprehension of possible political results. What precise amount of truth and what amount of exaggeration there was in the vast mass of excited utterances on this subject, we are not yet able to say. Perhaps it may hereafter be discovered in sundry green books, red books, and yellow books. This much is certain: the council was not even flurried by it. We are assured that in all the debates not the slightest reference was ever made to the matter. As we write the whole subject seems to be passing into oblivion. Even those who spoke most positively only a few weeks ago, seem to have forgotten their assertions about the intended interference of this, that, or the other government.

There is a majesty in this calm attitude of the sovereign pontiff, and of the council, which does not fail to command the respect even of worldlings and unbelievers. They can with difficulty, if at all, comprehend the great truth on which it is based and which produces it. The Catholic would scarcely look for any other attitude from our prelates. The bishops of the Catholic Church, assembled in council, are not politicians or servants of the world, seeking popularity or fearing the loss of it. They fear not those who can slay only the body, but Him who can slay both body and soul. They are assembled, in the name of Christ our Lord, to do the work to which he appointed them. They must proclaim his doctrines and his precepts; they must promote the extension of his kingdom, and must zealously and unceasingly seek the welfare and salvation of souls for whom he shed his blood on Calvary. They are men, and, as subjects or citizens, they are bound to give, and each in his own home does give, unto Cæsar all that is Cæsar's. But they are Christian bishops, and they must not fail to give, and to instruct and call on all men to give, unto God the things that are God's. Assembled in the Holy Ghost, they do not seek to discover what is popular--what may be pleasing or what contrary to the opinions, or prejudices, or passions of to-day, whether in the fulsome self-adulation, because of our vaunted progress, or in the intrigues and plans of worldly politics and national ambitions. They stand far above all this folly, and are not plunged into this chaos. They have to set forth clearly the one divine truth of revelation, which has been handed down from the beginning, and which they see now so frequently impugned and controverted, or set aside and forgotten. It is precisely because the world is setting it aside, that this council has met and will speak.

Our divine Saviour himself declared that the world would oppose the teachers of his truth as it had opposed him. The history of the eighteen hundred years of her existence is, for the church, but a continuous verification of that prophecy. The fathers of the Vatican Council cannot lose sight of the lesson thus given. It should purify their hearts and strengthen their souls. For they, of all men, must believe most truly and earnestly in the truth and the reality of Christianity and the greatness of the work in which they are engaged. Hence, when the murmurs or the clamors of the opposition of the world come to their ears, they are not filled with fear or with surprise. Of all miracles, they would look on this as the greatest, that, as the Vatican Council speaks, the passions and earthly interests and prejudices of men should at once die out or grow mute, and that no voice should be heard in opposition, no arm be raised to arrest or thwart, if it could, the work of God. This they do not look for. Opposition must come, and they must not fear it, nor shrink from encountering it while at their post of duty. As they become conscious of its approach, they can but gird themselves the more energetically to their work, and seek the guidance and strength of which they have need from on high.

When we closed our last article, the prelates of the council were busily engaged, in accordance with the new by-laws, in writing out their observations and criticisms on several draughts that had been put into their hands. This work, so far as then required, was finished on March 25th. But on the 18th, the meetings of the general congregations, or committees of the whole, were resumed, and have been held since then on the 22d, 23d, 24th, 26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, and 31st of March, and April 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 12th, and 19th.

The business of the council has entered on a new stage. Our readers will remember that early in December last the first draught or schema on matters of faith was placed in the hands of the bishops; and that after some weeks of private study it was taken up for discussion in the general congregation held on the 28th of December. In our second article we gave some account of the character of this discussion, in which no less than thirty-five of the prelates took part. At its conclusion the draught was referred for emendations to the special committee or deputation on matters of faith, to which were also sent full reports of all the discourses in the discussion. This committee held many meetings, and went over the whole matter two or three times with the utmost care, hearing the authors of the draught and weighing the arguments and observations made in the general congregations. They divided the schema or draught into two parts, and now reported back the first part amended, containing an introduction and four chapters, with canons annexed.

This new and revised draught or schema, so presented to the bishops--in print, of course, as are all the conciliar documents--was again to be submitted to a renewed discussion and examination, first in general on its plan as a whole, and then by parts, first on the introduction, and then successively on each of the four chapters which composed it. A member of the deputation or committee on faith opened the discussion by speaking as the organ of the committee, and explaining and upholding what they had done. Many other fathers took part in the lively discussions which followed. The speeches were very brief and to the point, only one of them exceeding half an hour, and several not lasting more than five minutes. Those who wished to speak sent in their names beforehand to the presiding cardinals, as on former occasions, and were called to the pulpit in their regular order. The spokesman of the committee, or, in fact, any other member, might, during the course of the debate, take the pulpit to give some desired explanation or to reply to a speaker. All who wished to propose further amendments or changes were required to hand them in in writing. This the speakers generally did at the conclusion of their discourses. When at length the discussion on any special part--for example, on the introduction--was terminated, that portion of the schema and all the proposed amendments were referred again to the committee. The amendments were printed, and a few days after, in a general congregation, the whole matter would come up for a vote. The committee announced which of the amendments they accepted. They stated briefly the reasons for which they were unwilling to accept the others. The fathers then voted on each amendment singly, unless, indeed, as sometimes happened, the author, satisfied with the explanation or replies given, asked leave to withdraw it.

This chapter or portion of schema, or draught, was then again printed, introducing into it the amendments that had been thus adopted; and it was again submitted as a whole to the vote of the fathers.

All these votes were taken without unnecessary expenditure of time. When a question was proposed, all in the affirmative were called on to rise, and to remain standing until their number was ascertained. They then sat down, and all in the negative were in their turn summoned to rise, and to remain standing until they were counted.

As there are usually over seven hundred prelates present and voting, it is clear that if the numbers on each side are nearly even, there might be some difficulty in settling the vote. But the evil did not occur. It so happened that on every vote the majority was so preponderating in numbers that an actual count was not necessary. It is said that only on one occasion they were nearly evenly divided. The important question happened to be whether the insertion of a certain comma between two words in the text before them would make the sense more distinct or not. The division of sentiment on so small a matter caused some amusement; but it was evidence of the painstaking care with which even the minutest points are scrutinized and cared for.

When the introduction and each one of the chapters with its accompanying canons had been thus separately passed on, the entire schema as a whole was submitted to the fathers for a more solemn and decisive vote. This was done in the general congregations held on April 12th and April 19th. The vote was taken, not, as in deciding on the details, by the act of rising, but by ayes and noes.

This was first done in the congregation of the 12th, in the following manner: The secretary from the lofty pulpit called the prelates one after the other, according to their ranks and their seniority in their several ranks, naming each one by his ecclesiastical title. The cardinals presiding were called first, the other cardinals next, then the patriarchs, the primates, the archbishops, the bishops, the mitred abbots, and the superiors of the various religious orders and congregations having solemn vows. As each prelate was called, he rose in his place, bowed to the assembly, and voted. The form was _Placet_, if he approved entirely; _Placet juxta modum_, if there were any minor point which he was unwilling to approve; or _Non placet_, if he disapproved. In the second case, he handed in a written statement of his opinion and vote on that point, and assigned the reasons which moved him to this special view. The assessors of the council immediately received these manuscripts, and delivered them to the presiding legates. As the name of each one was called, if not present, he was marked _absent_; if present and voting, two or three of the officials, stationed here and there in the hall, repeated with clear bell-like voices the form of words used by the prelate in voting, so that all might hear them, and that no mistake could be committed as to any one's vote. The whole procedure occupied about two hours. When it was over, the votes were counted before all, and the result declared. This was in reality the most solemn and formal voting of the bishops on the matter so far before them. Each one's judgment is asked, and he must give it. It was evident the bishops voted after mature study, and with an evident singleness and simplicity of heart before God.

The special matters urged in the written and conditional votes were again, and for the last time, examined by the committee or deputation on matters of faith, they reported the result of their discussion in the congregation of April 19th, and the precise form of words was settled, to be decreed and published in the third public session, which will be held on Low-Sunday.

It thus appears that nothing will be put forth by the council without the fullest study and examination.

1. The _schemata_, or draughts, as presented to the council, are the result of the studies and conferences of able theologians of Rome, and of every Catholic country.

2. The _schema_ is subjected to a thorough debate before the general congregation or, committee of the whole, or under the by-laws, it is placed in the hands of each one of the bishops, and every one who thinks it proper gives in writing his remarks on it, and proposes his emendations.

3. The _schema_, and these remarks and proposed amendments, are carefully considered by the deputation or committee to whom they are referred, whose office it is to prepare for the council a revised and amended draught. The twenty-four members of the _deputation_ are picked men, and the examination and discussion of the subjects by them has proved to be all that the fathers looked for--most thorough and searching.

4. Again, on their revised report, the matter is a second time brought before the general committee, and is again discussed by the fathers, who are at liberty still to propose further changes and amendments. As a matter of fact, these turn mostly on minute details and on forms of expression.

5. Again, in the light of those proposed amendments, it is examined and discussed by the committee, who make their final report, accepting or not accepting the several amendments, and assigning to the congregation the reasons for their decision on each point. They thus enjoy the privilege of closing the debate.

6. Then follows the voting. One portion of the _schema_ is taken up. The amendments touching it, so reported on by the committee, are one by one either adopted or rejected, and then the whole portion is passed on. One after the other the remaining portions are taken up, and acted on in the same manner. The amendments are first disposed of one by one, and then each portion is separately voted on. Finally, all the parts as separately adopted are put together, and on the whole _schema_ so composed a more solemn vote is taken by ayes and noes.

This concludes the, so to speak, consultative action of the council on that _schema_. It is now ready for a solemn enactment and promulgation in the next public session of the council. (This session was held on Low-Sunday.--ED. C. W.)

The time is approaching when the first portion of the decisions and decrees of the Vatican Council will be given to the world in the third public session, to be held on Low-Sunday. Already enough has come to light, in the better informed presses of Europe, to let us know the general tenor of what we shall soon hear. As it has become a matter of notoriety, we may speak of the subjects so said to be treated of.

The state of the world, and the errors and evils to be met and condemned in this nineteenth century by the Vatican Council, are very different from those which all previous councils were assembled to resist. The heresies then to be encountered denied this or that doctrine in particular, and erred on one or another point. But they all admitted the existence of God, the reality and truth, at least in a general way, of a revelation from heaven through Christ our Lord, and the obligation of man to receive it, and to be guided by it in belief and practice. Now, the world sees but too many who go far beyond that. Then, so to speak, the outposts were assailed. Now the very citadel of revelation is attacked. Schools of a falsely called philosophy have arisen which, with a pretended show of reasoning, deny the existence of God, of spiritual beings, of the soul of man, and recognize only the existence of physical matter. Or if they speak of God, it is by an abuse of terms, and in a pantheistic sense, holding him to be only the totality of all existing things, a personification of universal nature; or else, if they wish to be more abstruse or more unintelligible, God is, according to them, the primal being, a vague and indefinite first substance, by the changes, evolutions, emanations, and modifications of which all existing things have come to be as they are. Many are the phases of materialism, pantheism, and theopantism in which German metaphysicians revel, and call it high intellectual culture. The pith of all of them is atheism, the denial of the real existence of God.

The English mind is, or believes itself to be, more practical and matter-of-fact. It does not wander through the dreamy mazes of German metaphysics. It has no taste for such excursions. But there is a school in England which, under the pretence of respecting facts, reaches practically the same sad results. It tells its disciples of what has been termed the philosophy of the unknowable and unintelligible, and declares that man, possessed only of such limited powers of knowledge as experience proves us to have, cannot conceive, cannot really know, cannot be made to know, any thing of God, the self-existent and absolute, eternal, infinitely wise and infinitely perfect, and that these words are merely conventional sounds, in reality meaningless, and conveying no real thought to the mind. Hence, he is to be held at once the wisest philosopher and most sensible man who discards them altogether, who throws aside all these useless, cloudy, unintelligible subjects, and occupies himself with the immediate and actual world around him, of which alone, through his senses, his experiments, and his experiences, he can obtain some certain and positive knowledge. This they call independence and freedom of science. In many minds it would be pure atheism, if pure atheism were possible; in many others, it has produced and is producing a haziness of doubt, and an uncertainty on all these points touching the existence and the attributes of God, as in practice leads to almost the same result.

The French mind is active, acute, sketchy, imaginative, logical, and practical. On a minimum quantity of facts or principles it will construct a vast theory. If facts are too few to support the theory, imagination can readily supply all that are lacking. The theory, if logically consistent, must be reduced to practice; opponents must stand aside or be crushed down. The theory must rule. From the days of Voltaire, if not before, France has seen men deny religion under the guise of teaching philosophy. The sarcasms, and at times the brilliancy of their writings, have made French authors the store-house from which infidels in other nations draw their weapons. It was in France that a national decree enacted that there is no God, and it is in France and in Belgium that the societies of so-called _Solidaires_ exist, the members of which solemnly bind themselves to each other to live and die, and be buried, without any act of religion. Too full of confidence in their powers of mind to accept the English system, and to acknowledge there is any subject they cannot master; too impressionable and practical to live in the cloud of German metaphysical pantheism, the French _philosophers_ are prone to deify man, instead of universal nature. Whether they follow Comte in his earlier theories, or Comte in the very different theories of his old age, or whether they devise some other theory, it is generally man they place on the throne of the Deity. This worship of man, this spirit of humanitarianism, and this belief in the progressive and indefinite perfectibility of mankind, which they hold apart from and in antagonism to the belief which worships God as the Creator and Sovereign Lord, and places man the creature subject to him, runs practically through many a phase of their character in modern times.

These three systems--of course more or less commingled in their sources--have been extended to every portion of the civilized world. The German system has passed into Denmark, Holland, and Sweden; the French into Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and in some measure through them into Southern America. In the United States, we have been comparatively free from them. We owe it, probably, to the fact that with us all men are so busy trying to amass fortunes that they have little time and less taste for such abstruse speculations. True, through the vast German immigration, we have received some portion of the German system. But so far it has scarcely spread among our citizens of other nationalities. The English system, strange to say, scarcely exists except in its vaguer influences. The French system, introduced years ago, has struck deeper roots, and has a wider influence. But, on the whole, the mass of our people has a firm unshaken belief in the real truth of Christianity as a revealed religion. Although very often men are exceedingly puzzled to know what are the specific doctrines, still they have not lost the traditions of their fathers, and have not fallen into positive unbelief. How long these words will remain true, who can tell? Luxury and the general demoralization becoming so familiar, and the systematic godless education of our youth, will soon perhaps place us in the van of those nations who seem to have been given up to the foolishness of their hearts.

Meanwhile the church knows that she is debtor to all--that her mission is to preach the Gospel of Christ to all nations. Seeing in what manner so many are going astray, so far as even to deny the God that made them and redeemed them, and knowing that he has sent her as a messenger from him to them, she raises her voice, and, in clear, steady, clarion tones that will ring through the world, she proclaims again that he is the one true God, eternal and almighty, the Creator whom all men must know and must serve, and unto whom they will all have to render a strict account. This assembled council is itself evidence, clear as the noon-day light, of her existence, and her office in the world. Men may not shut their eyes to the fact. Her words are clear: "He whom ye deny exists, and speaks to you through me. He whom ye scoff at is your Creator and Lord, from whom ye have received all that ye have. He whom ye deride is long-suffering, and wills not your death, but that ye repent and come to him. Through me he admonishes, he invites, he warns you." Will these men hearken to her voice, or rather, the voice of God through her? Does not the God they would deny give, as it were, sensible testimony of his existence, his power, and his authority, evidence which they cannot ignore or overlook save by a wilful and deliberate effort on their part? They cannot fail to see the church claiming to be his. Her unbroken existence through eighteen centuries and her continued growth and advance despite opposition, and, still more, despite the quiet natural force of all human agency, external and internal, which under the ordinary laws of human things would have sufficed to disrupt and to destroy her a hundred times, an existence and a growth which could have proceeded only from a supernatural power, and which constitute a standing miracle in the history of the world, demand their attention and their respect. Her claim to be divinely founded and divinely supported, they must not scout with flippancy. They must at least receive it with respect, and examine its grounds. The most solemn assembly of that church, the most imposing assembly the world has looked on, an assembly authorized by the organization which he gave to that church, and therefore authorized by him, speaks to them in his name and by his authority. Will they receive the message, or will they turn away? Some there are who would not believe, if one rose from the dead. But we may hope and pray that others will hearken to the words of the Lord, and learn that to know and fear the Lord is the beginning of true wisdom. Above all, we may hope that many who have not yet advanced too far on the dangerous road may become aware of their danger and their folly, and return to the paths of true and salutary doctrine.

Next to those who, following the systems we have indicated, or on any other grounds pretend to do away with the existence of God, come those who admit his existence, but do not admit that he has given a revealed religion to mankind. It is unnecessary to go over the various groups into which they may be divided. There always have been and will be men who will try by one huge effort to throw off the yoke of religion. And what is there for doing which men will not try to assign some reason? In the last century, and the early portion of the present one, men sought such reasons in the alleged contradictions of the Scriptures, in the mysteriousness of Christian doctrine and the inability of the human intellect to comprehend them, in the procrustean systems of ancient history which they invented, or in alleged defects of the evidences of Christianity, or, finally, in their pet theories of metaphysics. At present the tendency is to base the rejection of revealed religion on its alleged incompatibility with the discoveries of natural sciences in these modern days. Geology, anthropology, in fact, the natural sciences with scarcely an exception, have been in turn laid under contribution or forced to do service against the cause of revelation. We have men appealing to this or that principle or fact as an irrefragable evidence by modern science of the false pretensions of Christianity.

To all such the church, the pillar and ground of truth, the organ of Christ our Lord on earth, will speak. It is not her office to enter into the detailed discussion of scientific studies, and to make manifest the errors of fact into which these men have fallen, or the fallacy of their deductions. This she leaves to scholars who, in their pursuit of earthly knowledge, do not cast away the knowledge they have received of divine truth. Such Christian scholars have replied to the sneers, and gibes, and sarcasms of the last century, and have shown the utter worthlessness and absurdity of the arguments then brought forward against Christianity by men who claimed to speak on the part of science; and there are now others answering with equal fulness the more modern objections. The church might, indeed, have left it to time and the progress of learning and science to vindicate her course and to refute the objections raised against her teaching. For, as a matter of fact, the grand difficulties brought forward half a century ago excite but a smile now, as we see on what an unsubstantial foundation they rested. And a very few years to come will, we may be sure, suffice to overturn many a pet theory of to-day, with their vaunted arguments against revelation. New discoveries will lead to new theories, that may or may not give rise to a new crop, a new set of difficulties, for man's mind is limited and cannot reach the truth on all sides, but they will consign the present difficulties to the tomb of the Capulets. To that tomb generation after generation of these so-called scientific objections are passing. The church does not undertake to teach astronomy, geology, chemistry, or physics. Natural sciences are to be studied by man, in the use of his own reason and the exercise of his natural faculties. These things God has left to the disputations of men. The church does not despise these discussions and researches. She does not repress them nor oppose them. Quite the contrary. She has ever protected and fostered science. One of the most beautiful and instructive chapters in her earthly history would be that which tells how, from the school of Alexandria, in the days of persecution, down the entire course of ages, she has ever sought to promote and foster science. She may with pride point to her canons and laws enacted for this purpose in every century. She may recount the long catalogue of schools, colleges, and universities established by her in every civilized land of Europe, and wherever she planted her foot; and to the religious houses of her clergy, throughout the stormy middle ages the chief, almost the only safe homes of learning. Many of the universities which she founded have in the course of ages been destroyed by kings and nobles, who filled their own purses, or repaired their wasted fortunes, by the seizure of endowments given for the free education of all that might come to drink of these fountains of learning; even as this very month the progressive, liberal government of the kingdom of Italy is discussing the propriety of suppressing one half of the older universities they found existing in the portion of the Papal States, and in other parts of Italy, which ten years ago they annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia. When did the church ever do such an act? Never. What university was ever suppressed by any act of hers? None. She encourages science. But at the same time she says, "God has given to man reason and understanding to seek after and to attain knowledge. It is a great and noble gift, to be prized and used rightly, and not turned to an evil purpose. If a father place in the hands of his son, as a gift, a weapon keen and bright, shall that son, with parricidal hand turn the blade against his father? Beware not to turn these gifts of God against God himself. Use them not as pretexts to deny his existence, or shake off his authority, or to impugn his truth when he speaks."

In giving this admonition, the church is acting in her full right. She is in the certain possession of that higher divine truth which her heavenly Founder has placed in her charge, to be carefully guarded and preserved until the end of time, and to be ever faithfully preached. Who ever denies it, she must oppose him. Whatever teaching would make it out to be false, she must condemn. The church, holding with certainty this divine deposit of the revealed truth, must not be compared, either in theory or in practice, with any private individual or society of individuals, who hold and profess religious doctrines on the authority of their own reason and judgment, or of their private interpretation of the Scriptures. In such a case as this, these doctrines are simply beliefs, opinions of men avowedly liable to error in this very matter. They therefore stand on the same level, as to certainty or uncertainty of being true, with the other human judgments in the fields of natural science or human knowledge which may rise up in opposition to them. The two sides are fairly matched, and either may ultimately prevail.

But, on the contrary, the church claims not merely to hold opinions, but, under the guiding light of the Holy Ghost, to have certain and infallible knowledge of the truths of divine revelation. Nothing that contradicts these established and known truths can she admit to be any thing else than error. In the contest between them, the truth must prevail. This is the theory on which the Catholic Church stands, and in which, in reality, all Christianity is involved. The experience of eighteen centuries confirms it fully in practice. Never once in all that period has the church of Christ had to revoke a single doctrinal decision, on the ground that what was believed to be true when uttered has since been proved to be false as the progress of science has thrown fuller light on the subject. In the early days of her existence, Celsus and the other philosophers of that classical period raised manifold objections from reason and such knowledge of nature as they possessed. Their objections accorded well with the public opinion of the time, and were hailed with applause. But the time came when they were felt to be of no force, and now they are entirely forgotten; and the truth they impugned, and were intended to overthrow, stands stronger than ever. The Gnostics, with their varied and fanciful systems of conciliating the power and goodness of God with the presence of evil in the world, and guided, if we listen to their boasts, by the highest light of man's reason, brought forward many objections, then deemed specious. They and their arguments too have passed away, and the Catholic truth stands. So it has been in every age until the present time. One only instance in all history has been alleged, seemingly, to the contrary--the condemnation of Galileo for holding and maintaining the Copernican theory. But there is no real ground of objection here. The facts of the case are misunderstood or misstated. The trial of Galileo, which was in truth more of a personal than a doctrinal issue, was simply before the congregation, or committee, of the Holy Office in Rome, and the sentence was by that congregation and not by the church. The difference between the sentence of such a tribunal and a decision of the church is world-wide. And, as if to mark that difference the more distinctly, that sentence, which, according to the usual course, and at least as a matter of form, should have been countersigned by the reigning pontiff, that it might be put into execution, _never was so signed_. Why, in that case, the formality was omitted, whether it was not deemed necessary, which, considering the usage, would be very strange, or whether, which we think much more probable, it was in due course of procedure presented to the pontiff for his signature, and he abstained from signing it for reasons in his own mind, cannot now be known. But the original official manuscript copy of the sentence is extant, and there is no signature of the pontiff to it. Even had he signed it, that would not have made the document a doctrinal decision of the church. It would have remained simply the regular sentence of a special tribunal; but the absence of the pope's signature, perhaps its studied absence, entirely and unequivocally removes the objection usually brought forward.[139] Here, as in every other case, Christ has protected his church, so that she shall make no false decision as to faith. It is only in virtue of that protection that she claims the paramount authority to speak. Under it she had been appointed to speak, and must speak, if she would not be recreant to her duty. She does not repress science; she saves it. She does not shackle reason; she preserves it from error and ruin. How often is the way of science a narrow ridge, with deep gulfs on either side! Feeble man walks along the narrow crest with trembling limbs, or crawls on, dubiously and slowly, in the dark. The church of Christ cheers him on. She does not bear him over the perilous path; but holds aloft the torch of revealed truth to guide him as he advances, and warns him to proceed by its light, and not to rush heedlessly on, lest he fall into the abyss. And yet should we not expect that the same spirit of insubordinate pride which leads reason to deny the existence of God, or his Divine Providence, or the fact of divine revelations, or emboldens feeble, ignorant man to measure, as it were, his feeble intelligence against the infinite wisdom of God, should also not refrain from charging the Catholic Church with being an incubus on the human mind, with narrowing the intellect and fettering the reason, with restricting our liberty of thought, narrowing the field of science, and dwarfing the whole intellectual man?

But time does her justice. She can point to Origen, Clement of Alexandria, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Anselm, Duns Scotus, Suarez, Vasquez, and the mighty minds of the past. She may point to her children, clergymen and laymen, now standing in the front ranks of every branch of science. What the past ages gave, what the present gives too, the future will as surely not fail to give.

We add to the communication of our Roman correspondent the report of the peroration of an eloquent speech by Signor d'Ondes-Reggio, in the Italian Parliament, as given by M. Chantrel, in his "Chronique du Concile," published in the _Revue du Monde Catholique_ for April 10th.

"The Council of the Vatican comes to save the imperilled civilization of the world, as the preceding councils, from the one of Nice to that of Trent, have saved it.

"Do you know how the Council of Nice saved the civilization of the world, when it condemned Arius? It prevented the human race from returning to idolatry; for, if the founder of Christianity was not God, but a mere man, the adoration of that man would have been an idolatry like all those of the pagans. The human race would have remained in barbarism, deprived of Christian civilization, of the true civilization, which is the civilization given to men by God himself.

"The Council of Trent saved the civilization of the world; because, when the church condemned Luther, Calvin, and their followers, who denied free-will and confounded good with bad actions, even giving the preference to the bad ones, she prevented the human race from returning to the _fate_ of the pagans and to the domination of evil over good. The church saved the civilization of the world.

"When a council condemned schisms, it condemned the breaking up of the human race into factions and protected the unity of the race; it condemned that paganism which divided the nations from each other and made them mutual enemies, whereas all men are brothers, as the children of the same God.

"When a council roused all Europe to follow the cross into Asia, to rescue the sepulchre of Christ, it saved the civilization of Europe, and guaranteed the civilization of the world against Mussulman barbarism.

"When a council condemned the furious iconoclasts, do you know what it did? It prevented the banishment of the beautiful from the world--the beautiful, which is the complement of the true and the good. If this new race of barbarians had not been repelled by the Second Council of Nice, we should not have had either the 'David,' or the 'Moses,' or the 'Transfiguration,' or the 'Assumption.' Italy would not be the queen of the fine arts in the world.

"When the councils smote and deposed corrupt Cæsars, the oppressors of their peoples, it was human reason, enlightened by faith, which conquered error, sustained by brute force; it was charity which beat down tyranny, and civilization triumphing over barbarism.

"The Council of the Vatican, composed of the venerable fathers of the Catholic Church, extended throughout the whole world, differing in customs, habits, complexion, language, but united in the same faith, the same hope and charity--the Council of the Vatican comes to save, by the bishops, a civilization in peril. Errors the most impious, the most deadly, the most pernicious to the human race, which have been spread abroad during the course of ages, and which have sufficed, taken singly, to turn civil society upside down, are now all assembled together, and united with each other to batter and destroy it. Every thing which is the most true, the most sacred, the most venerated, is attacked; and some persons even go so far as to say that it is lawful to kill, to rob, and to calumniate, in order to attain certain ends. The Council of the Vatican has come, yes, it has come! to condemn these blasphemies and iniquities, to awaken sleeping consciences, to confirm consciences which are wavering; it has come to save civilization in peril.

"O venerable fathers! you who have hastened to Rome from the extremities of the world, at the summons of the successor of Peter, and who are at this moment gathered together in the name of God, at the Vatican, all men of good-will have their eyes fixed upon you; and from you they await with confidence the salvation of the world. You, successors of the apostles, will fulfil the commandment given by Jesus Christ to the apostles and to you, to teach the nations the infallible truths; the commandment given, not to kings, emperors, or secular assemblies, but to the apostles and to you--you will teach the nations these infallible truths, and the nations will be saved."

FOOTNOTE:

[139] See CATHOLIC WORLD, Nos. 45 and 46.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

_The Gospel in the Law._ A Critical Examination of the Citations from the Old Testament in the New. By Charles Taylor. Cambridge and London: Bell & Daldy. 1869. The relative positions of the Mosaic law and the new law may be studied from a great many points of view. That chosen by Mr. Taylor, in the volume before us, adds additional interest to his very remarkable work.

The selection and study of citations from the Old Testament found in the New give rise to many questions which, properly elucidated, throw much light on the connection which exists between Judaism and Christianity. Mr. Taylor does not so much occupy himself with that question as with the manner in which the Bible is connected with the Testament. Not that he undertakes to demonstrate that the germ of the new law may be found in the Old; for that no one denies, and the title he has selected shows the object of his work, "the Gospel in the law." Not every thing in the work is new; but the previously accumulated erudition of the subject is admirably _résuméd_, and several chapters are marked by originality--the thirteenth, for instance, on Jewish and Christian morality.

* * * * *

_Varieties of Irish History._ From Ancient and Modern Sources and Original Documents. By James J. Gaskin, Dublin. A handsome volume, illustrated with four chromo-lithographs, and an excellent map of the environs of Dublin. The work appears to be made up of a series of lectures delivered at Dalkey, a well-known charming suburb of Dublin, and of articles published at various times in the Irish newspapers concerning the history of the principal environs of Dublin--Howth, Kingston, Dalkey, Bray, and Killing. The beautiful bay of Dublin and its picturesque shores, of course, come in for their share of notice, and as the author gives himself the amplest verge, he manages, in his numberless digressions, to throw into his pages a reflex of the intellectual history of Dublin during the last century.

* * * * *

One of the most remarkable and eventful missionary fields of the Catholic Church was, unquestionably, Japan. There are few more admirable pages in its history than those which recount the constancy and faith of its first martyrs under one of the most bloody persecutions the world ever saw. M. Léon Pages has just published a work giving the history of Catholicity in Japan from 1598 to 1651: _Histoire de la Religion Chrétienne au Japon, depuis 1598 jusqu'à 1651, comprenant les faits relatifs aux deux cent cinq martyrs beatifiés le 7 Juillet 1867_, par Léon Pages. This volume, published separately, will form the third volume of a large work in four octavo volumes, to be entitled, _L'Empire du Japon, ses origines, son église chrétienne, ses relations avec l'Europe_.

* * * * *

The so-called _Truce of God_ of the middle ages, under which a suspension of arms and hostilities was so often obtained, has too frequently been so imperfectly understood and treated by historians and writers as to be confounded by them with the _Peace of God_--two things essentially different in origin and in application. In 1857, a work on the subject was published at Paris by M. Ernest Semichon, who by his judicious research threw an entirely new light on this question. M. Semichon has just presented the literary world with a new edition of the work of 1857, largely augmented in fresh matter and in historical documents, in which he clearly establishes the distinction between these two institutions, and fixes the origin of the Peace of God at about A.D. 988, and that of the Truce of God at 1027. He follows their development step by step through the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, examining them from the judicial and political stand-points, until the period when Louis le Gros took hold of the movement. After this period, the "Truce of God" becomes the _Quarantaine le Roi_. In treating his subject, M. Semichon presents most interesting views of the great institutions of the middle ages, its associations and customs, and also of the chevaliers, the arts, and the Crusades. His work is entitled _La Paix et la Trève de Dieu_.

* * * * *

Until within a few years there were known to be in existence but three Biblical manuscripts of high antiquity. These were, _First_, the celebrated Vatican manuscript; _second_, that of London, called the Alexandrine; _third_, that of Paris, known under the designation of the Palimpsest of Ephrem the Syrian. The first dates from the fourth century, the other two from the fifth. None of them are complete, however. In that of Paris the greater part of the New Testament is wanting. That of London is deficient in nearly the whole of the first gospel, two chapters of the fourth, and the greater part of the second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. From the Vatican manuscript, the oldest of all, are missing four epistles, the last chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. M. Constantine Tischendorf, a distinguished Russian scholar, known in the scientific world for his superior Hellenic and paleographic acquirements, has the glory of having given to the Christian world, by his discoveries, numerous sacred manuscripts of the highest antiquity, and, above all, the famous _Codex Sinaiticus_, which has over the three MSS. we have enumerated the great advantage of being complete. It dates from the same epoch with that of the Vatican. M. Tischendorf has told the story of its discovery, and of the long and difficult negotiations required for its acquisition, in a work just published, _Terre Sainte_, an octavo volume of 307 pages. The volume also contains an interesting account of his oriental travel in company with the Duke Constantine, and his visit to Smyrna, Patmos, and Constantinople. A fac-simile edition of the new Codex is in preparation in Russia, and a German translation of that portion of it which contains the New Testament will shortly be made.

* * * * *

A noteworthy work is _Le Juif, le Judaisme, et Judaisation des peuples chrétiens_, par M. le Chevalier Gougeuot des Mousseaux. Paris, 8vo, 568 pp. The career of Judaism is here historically traced from the early ages of the church, when it spread through Egypt, Alexandria, and Rome the Gnostic theories of Simon the Magician, down to the present day. The author presents successively all the traditions upon which the belief of the modern Jew is founded. Their Bible is the Talmud, a tissue of absurdities and immoralities. There exists a gulf between the ancient law of Moses and the Talmudic reveries so great, indeed, that the Jew can hardly call his law a religious law without flying in the face of the history and the faith of his fathers. Following these researches comes a keen analysis of the Pharisaical spirit. Concerning the synagogue, the Sanhedrim, the Talmudic rites, and system of education, the work gives the fullest details, with copious extracts from writers all favorable to Judaism, such as Prideaux, Basnage, and Salvador. The result of the author's revelations is to show that the Jewish belief of to-day is absolutely different from that of which Moses was the legislator. Modern Jews are divided into three classes--orthodox, reformers, and free-thinkers. The reformers are the Protestants of the Mosaic law. Nowadays, for the majority of Jews, the coming of the Messiah is no longer understood in its ordinary acceptation. For them the "desired of nations" is merely an abstraction. The author dwells at some length on the spreading influence of Judaism in worldly matters, and sounds a note of alarm that gives his work something of a pessimist tone.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

DR. NEWMAN'S ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR OF ASSENT. By John Henry Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren street. 1870.

SECOND NOTICE.

We have not yet given to this book, destined to become so celebrated and the theme of so much controversy, the careful examination it deserves, and we will not, therefore, pay the poor compliment to the illustrious author of pronouncing a superficial judgment upon it. We have given an analysis of its contents in our last number, which may aid the reader to understand and master its scope and course of argument for himself. At present, we will merely take note of one or two salient points bearing on some questions of lively controversial interest at the present moment. The great subject of controversy in regard to the philosophy of the work has already proved to be what we anticipated at the first glance upon its pages--whether it is, or is not, in contradiction to the scholastic doctrine of the reality of universals. We give merely our impression, and not our judgment upon this point, when we say that it appears to us that Dr. Newman rather leaves aside the pure metaphysics of the question, than either contradicts or affirms any scholastic doctrine of this higher sphere of science. He appears to take the common English axioms of reasoning as they are assumed in every-day life and made the basis of those inductions and illations which make up the opinions of intelligent persons on all sorts of subjects, and the conclusions of practical, scientific men in regard to the inductive sciences. He appeals to the common sense of those who are not sophisticated by any false, sceptical maxims in relation to common things, but who are simply puzzled by an apparent want of the same certitude in religion which they hold as unquestioned in lower branches of knowledge. He undertakes to show that the principles of assent which all men act on in the affairs of this life lead logically to the same certitude of the infallibility of the Catholic Church, and the truth of every thing she proposes to belief, that a man has that Great Britain is an island. If any one thinks there is a break or a weak spot in his chain of reasoning, let him pull it apart and throw the fragments aside, and he will have accomplished a considerable feat in logic. We think that, on account of this manner of approaching the subject, this book is likely to prove extremely useful in convincing sincere, well-intentioned doubters, whose minds have been educated under the same circumstances and in the same intellectual atmosphere with those of the author. As for the analysis of certitude itself, and the metaphysics of the ultimate question how we know, and what is that which we know first, the author may be criticised; but we think, as we have said, that he did not have it in view to propose a theory. We do perceive and know; we do exist, and we know that other things exist, and we are certain of these things, and no pretended sceptic really doubts. We may start from this, therefore, as a fixed base of operation, without waiting for a metaphysical theory. If the theory which we hold is incorrect, we can change it without hurting our argument, just as a person who lives in a regular and sensible manner, and is in good health, can change a physiological doctrine which he finds to be erroneous without changing his practical rules of living. Whether Dr. Newman's statement respecting real and notional assents be correct or not, every candid and honest man will acknowledge that he does assent with certitude to the truth of those things which the author calls notions. We suspect, moreover, that the illustrious author in his affirmation that nothing really exists except individuals, means that there are no other spiritual or material _substances_; or, in other words, that every substance is a simple monad existing in itself and separate from every other. We do not apprehend that, in denying that time, space, relation, etc., are real, he intends to affirm that they are mere subjective affections of our minds without any foundation in objective reality, but only that they are not either spirits or bodies, and would be nothing if there were no spirit or body in existence. We suspect that the nominalism attributed to Dr. Newman is merely in the phrase, and that his difference from the realism of St. Thomas is only in the terminology.

The other point we desire to notice is theological. Our Episcopalian neighbors, and some others also, are accustomed to refer to Dr. Newman as an instance in proof of their frequent assertion that men of genius and learning in our communion chafe under the yoke of Rome, and, if they are converts, feel themselves disappointed in the expectations with which they entered the church. The recent letter of Dr. Newman to Dr. Ullathorne is, of course, a lucky windfall for them, and is interpreted as a proof that they were not mistaken. The volume we are noticing will, for every candid and sensible reader, completely scatter to the winds any false and calumnious attempts to class Dr. Newman with Mr. Ffoulkes, Mr. Renouf, the translator of _Janus_, and the rest of that clique in England, or to impeach the integrity of his faith and loyalty as a Catholic priest and theologian. The letter itself shows that Dr. Newman holds what his writings show he has always held, as the more probable doctrine, that the judgments of the pope in matters of faith are infallible. The utmost extent of his expressions of repugnance to a definition of this doctrine is, that he considers the weakness of faith, the lack of knowledge, and the deficiency of the reasoning faculty in a number of Catholics to be so great, and the bewilderment of mind so extreme in persons outside the church who are seeking the truth, that they cannot bear to have the light too suddenly and brightly flashed into their eyes. The great and holy Oratorian father pities these souls, and wishes to have them cautiously and gently led into the truth; and he is afraid that the pope, sitting in the effulgence of the divine Shekinah in the temple of God, does not appreciate the state of those who are living in the fainter light or the clouded climates of a remoter region. The chapter of the volume under notice entitled, "Belief in Dogmatic Theology," will show beyond a question what we have asserted of Dr. Newman's theological soundness, and we quote one passage as a specimen.

The church "makes it imperative on every one, priest and layman, to profess as revealed truth all the canons of councils, _and innumerable decisions of popes_, propositions so various, so notional, that but few can know them, and fewer can understand them." (P. 142, Eng. ed.)

In the chapter on the "Indefectibility of Certitude" occurs this passage: "A man is converted to the Catholic Church from his admiration of its religious system, and his disgust with Protestantism. That admiration remains; but, after a time, he leaves his new faith; perhaps returns to his old. The reason, if we may conjecture, may sometimes be this: he has never believed in the church's infallibility; in her doctrinal truth he has believed, but in her infallibility, no. He was asked, before he was received, whether he held all that the church taught; he replied he did; but he understood the question to mean, whether he held those particular doctrines 'which at that time the church in matter of fact formally taught,' whereas it really meant 'whatever the church then or at any future time should teach.' Thus, he never had the indispensable and elementary faith of a Catholic, and was simply no subject for reception into the fold of the church. This being the case, when the immaculate conception is defined, he feels that it is something more than he bargained for when he became a Catholic, and accordingly he gives up his religious profession. The world will say that he has lost his certitude of the divinity of the Catholic faith; but he never had it." (P. 240.)

We do not desire to have a party tolerated in the church whose principles are precisely those here condemned by Dr. Newman, or to have the way open for converts to be received who lack the "indispensable and elementary faith of a Catholic." We look with dismay upon the audacious and heretical attitude of that fallen angel F. Hyacinthe, the scandalous position assumed by Huber, Döllinger, and Gratry, and we anticipate greater impediment to the progress of the faith from a miserable counterfeit and pseudo-catholicity, which is nothing else than the base metal coined by Photius, than from the difficulties hanging about the history of the popes, which are no greater than those that beset councils, tradition, or the holy Scripture itself. Whatever definitions are promulgated by the Council of the Vatican, no one pretending to be a Catholic can hesitate to receive them because they are "more than he bargained for." Those who have chafed under the doctrinal authority of the popes have been crying out for a council for two centuries. Those who are _bona fide_ in any doubt or uncertainty respecting questions not yet defined have the way open for their doubts to be settled. If there are persons in the communion of the church who have not the principle of faith in them by which they are prepared without hesitation to believe whatever the Council of the Vatican proposes, we desire that they should leave their external connection with the Catholic Church, which they have already inwardly abandoned. And we think it most necessary that the duty of unreserved submission to the infallible authority of the church, and to the Roman pontiff, as her supreme teacher and judge as well as ruler, should be most distinctly placed before those who seek admission into her fold. We are grateful to Dr. Newman for the clear and unmistakable tones in which he has spoken on the obligation of believing whatever the church commands us to believe through the mouth of the sovereign pontiff; and as for the question what definitions are necessary and opportune for the present time, we confide absolutely in the divinely assisted judgment of Pius IX. and the Catholic episcopate.

Since writing the above, we are glad to see that Dr. Newman has written another letter, in which the following passage occurs: "I have not had a moment's wavering of trust in the Catholic Church ever since I was received into her fold. I hold, and ever have held, that her sovereign pontiff is the centre of unity and the vicar of Christ. And I ever have had, and have still, an unclouded faith in her creed in all its articles; a supreme satisfaction in her worship, discipline, and teaching; and an eager longing, and a hope against hope, that the many dear friends whom I have left in Protestantism may be partakers in my happiness." (_Tablet_, April 16th.) We are glad, we say, to see this, not on our own account, for we have the honor of a personal acquaintance with the illustrious Oratorian, and know him too well to have the need of any such assurance of his firm and ardent Catholic faith and piety; but in order that the mouths of cavillers may be stopped, and those weak brethren who tremble like aspen-leaves in every light breeze be reassured.

* * * * *

THE ORIGIN, PERSECUTIONS, AND DOCTRINES OF THE WALDENSES; FROM DOCUMENTS, MANY NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME COLLECTED AND EDITED. By Pius Melia, D.D. London: James Toovey, 177 Piccadilly. 1870. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren street, New York.

In the year 1868, a London daily newspaper produced editorially one of those statements so frequently made concerning the Waldenses, and which, by dint of repetition, end by passing for recognized facts. It was as follows:

"For sixteen hundred years, at least, the Waldenses have guarded the pure and primitive Christianity of the apostles.... No one knows when or how the faith was first delivered to these mountaineers. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, in the second century found them a church.

"These gallant hill-men have kept the tradition of the Gospel committed to them as pure and inviolate as the snow upon their own Alps. They have maintained an evangelical form of Christianity from the very first, rejecting image-worship, invocation of saints, auricular confession, celibacy, papal supremacy or infallibility, and the dogma of purgatory; taking the Scripture as the rule of life, and admitting no sacraments but baptism and the Lord's Supper.... No bloodier cruelty disgraces the records of the papacy than the persecutions endured by the ancestors of the twenty thousand Waldenses now surviving.... Never did men suffer more for their belief."

As the author mildly presents it, these statements not being in accordance with his knowledge of the subject, he was moved to undertake a thorough investigation of the history of the Waldenses. To this end, in addition to the perusal of a long and formidable list of works given in the preface, and which is valuable as presenting the bibliography of the subject, he made thorough investigation in the great libraries of England, Rome, and Turin, which last collection was found very rich in MSS. referring to the Waldensian period. Fresh stimulus and efficient aid were given to his efforts by the appearance of a very important work by Professor James Henthorn Todd, Senior Fellow of Trinity Church, Dublin, entitled, _The Book of the Vaudois; The Waldensian Manuscripts_, which gives a notice of the long-lost Morland manuscripts lately discovered by Mr. Henry Bradshaw, M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and librarian of that university. These MSS. are undoubtedly "the oldest extant relics of the Vaudois literature," and the most important documents relating to their history.

The author forcibly presents _in extenso_, and in separate chapters, the testimony of Richard, Monk of Cluny, Moneta, De Bellavilla, Abbot Bernard, Reinerius Sacco, Archbishop Seyssell, Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Casini, and many others, and in the fifteenth section addresses himself to prove that the dates which Leger and Morland have assigned to the Waldensian MSS. are counterfeit. Leger assigns A.D. 1100 as the date of the _Nobla Leyçon_ and the _Catechism_ of the MSS. Our author shows that these writings are of the fifteenth, not the twelfth century, and that the date assigned by Leger involves the contradiction of proving that the Waldenses existed as a sect before the period of its founder, Peter Waldo.

One long chapter is devoted to the supposed cruel Waldensian massacre of the year 1655, as related in the often-quoted _Histoire Véritable des Vaudois_, and to the particular murders described by Leger. These are confronted with the legal testimony touching the same facts.

The work closes with an exposition of the Waldensian theological tenets, each one being presented separately with a statement of the Catholic doctrine on that tenet upon the same page.

The book is a beautiful specimen of typography, and is illustrated with several photographs of pages of the Morland manuscripts.

* * * * *

THE CHARLESTOWN CONVENT; ITS DESTRUCTION BY A MOB, ETC. Compiled from authentic sources. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1870.

We remember distinctly the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown, as it appeared forty years ago, crowning a gentle summit with its grave and dignified buildings, and attractive grounds laid out and cultivated with taste; a retreat of piety and a school of religious and solid education. We have often enough since that time looked upon its ruins, a perpetual monument of disgrace to Boston and Massachusetts, a token of shame in close proximity to that other monument, a monument of imperishable glory, which crowns the site of the battle of Bunker Hill. This pamphlet describing the atrocious and barbarian outrage perpetrated on the night of August 11th, 1834, with the train of preceding and succeeding events connected with it, presents a page in our history which many persons would do well to ponder attentively. The outrage was occasioned by the publication of _Six Months in a Convent_, one of a class of vile publications which, for a time, were widely circulated and swallowed with credulity, but afterward universally scouted with that scorn and loathing which the American people always feels when it discovers that it has been duped by the wicked and designing. There would be no need of reviving the memory of these things, if the same style of attack upon Catholics had not been renewed at intervals, and were not adopted at the present moment by restless fanatics, who, knowing that they are incapable of coping with us in fair argument, are fain to resort to these criminal methods of appealing to prejudice, bigotry, ignorance, and passion, hoping to stir up the populace to a crusade against the Catholic religion. The abettors of Rebecca Reed and Maria Monk in the pulpit and the press have had successors to the present time. The Massachusetts Legislature has had its "smelling committee;" Missouri has passed its outrageous laws; other legislatures have attempted to lay their hands upon the property of the Catholic Church; the most infamous laws are even now in consideration before the Legislature of Pennsylvania; we have had the archangel Gabriel, and Judson, and Gavazzi, and Leahy, and we have now Bishop Coxe, Bellows, Hepworth, and Muller. The same firm of publishers which formerly was so active and conspicuous in putting forth the most vulgar and violent attacks upon the Catholic religion, although in one instance it found it expedient to hide itself under an _alias_, continues its work under the guise of a more pretentious literature, embellished by offensive caricatures of the most venerable and sacred objects of the religious veneration of Catholics. The spirit of falsification, the intention to stir up popular passion, the intolerance disguised under the name of liberalism, the determination to treat the Catholic clergy as the heads of a faction with ulterior treasonable and revolutionary designs, and the Catholic religion as a nuisance which ought to be extirpated by violence, are the same in the modern agitators that they were in their predecessors, and are in their English compeers, the Newdegates and Whalleys of the British Parliament. They tend to similar results with those which similar agitators have heretofore produced. The same train is laid, the same spark applied, and the chance of a similar explosion depends on the fact of the existence or non-existence of a similar magazine of slumbering popular prejudice and inflammable passion. We say, therefore, that it is well for considerate persons who desire the peace of the community to read and reflect upon this pamphlet. It is necessary that some very important questions should arise, where Catholics and non-Catholics form important elements in the same political community, with equal rights. It is impossible that peace and good order should be preserved, unless these matters can be discussed and arranged calmly and amicably. Therefore we say that the agitators who appeal to a violent solution, in case Catholics are not content with a simple toleration under a Protestant domination, are enemies of the public peace, and ought to be regarded as such by all good citizens. The Catholic clergy will never be agitators. If the effort is made by demagogues to pervert the Catholic or Irish sentiment into an impetus of illegal, revolutionary movements, like the riot of 1863 and the Fenian plot against Canada, the whole authority of the church and all the influence of the clergy will be put forth against it. It is for the present and future advantage and interest of this country that the influence of the Catholic clergy over their people should be as great as possible, and that of clerical agitators and demagogues reduced to nothing.

* * * * *

LIFE OF ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. Edited by Edward Healy Thompson, A.M. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. 1870.

St. Charles Borromeo was one of the greatest of the true reformers of the sixteenth century. During the lifetime of his Uncle, Pius IV., he held many of the highest offices in the Roman court, possessed the pope's entire confidence, and exerted a powerful influence in favor of whatever was for the good of the church. To his exertions were due, in no small degree, the reassembling of the Council of Trent, and the successful completion of its labors eighteen years after its opening.

At the death of Pius IV., St. Charles returned to his diocese, and straightway entered upon the work of its reformation, in accordance with the decrees of Trent. He succeeded in effecting a complete reform, and the example which he thus gave had a most salutary effect.

The _Life_ before us is well written; it gives not only the facts, but likewise in some degree the philosophy of history; and it is free from that religious mannerism, so to speak, which is not unfrequently met with in books of this class. The typography and binding are in keeping with the contents. There are, however, a great many very serious errors of the press defacing this otherwise well printed volume.

* * * * *

FIRST BOOK OF BOTANY. By Eliza A. Youmans. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870.

This elementary treatise upon botany is arranged in an entirely new manner. The book is intended to cultivate the child's natural powers of observation. In ordinary text-books, the beginner is expected to master a great number of definitions and distinctions before he ventures to go into the fields and study for himself. We have always considered this method irksome, and we know it to be fruitless of result. We therefore very heartily welcome Miss Youmans's little work. We hope that she has inaugurated a reform in the teaching of the natural sciences. We confidently recommend the book to all Catholic schools where botany, or any of the natural sciences, form a portion of the course of studies.

* * * * *

THE WISE MEN: WHO THEY WERE, ETC. By Francis W. Upham, LL.D. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1869.

A book written with sound and solid learning, and originality of thought; pervaded also by a spirit in harmony with Catholic teaching, so far as the topics are concerned upon which it treats.

* * * * *

THE MONKS BEFORE CHRIST; Their Spirit and their History. By John Edgar Johnson. Boston: A. Williams & Co. 1870.

This is one of the most shallow and stupid productions we have met with in a long time. The author met with some rather poor specimens of the monastic order in Europe, and breaks out into the exclamation, "Great heavens! and these are the men who had the exclusive manipulation of our Scriptures for several hundred years!" (Page 18.) One who is so extremely weak in the reasoning faculty as this passage indicates has no business to write a book on serious topics, and is unworthy of refutation. The author informs us that monasticism is based on the Manichæan doctrine of an evil principle in matter. This shows an _inconceivable_ ignorance which we cannot think is _invincible_ or excusable, since the author resided several months at the University of Munich, and was well acquainted with the learned Benedictines of that capital, over whom the celebrated Haneberg is abbot.

* * * * *

THE FLEMMINGS; OR, TRUTH TRIUMPHANT. By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsay. New York: P. O'Shea. 1870.

The author of this volume has given us a pleasant story, interesting both to Catholics and Protestants, as tales of conversions to the true faith cannot fail to be when founded, as this appears to be, on fact. The pictures of natural scenery are fresh and life-like, and the moral and religious teaching unexceptionable. It is carelessly written, which will prevent the book from taking rank as a first-class story, though it will interest and profit certain minds, who would not prize it more highly if it were thoroughly cultivated and refined.

A moment's thought would have prevented mistakes in local customs, such as introducing a hay-tedder into farming operations forty years ago, and making our Puritan forefathers _go up_ to their communion, whereas they had not reverence enough for the _symbols_ to rise or kneel at their reception, but remained seated in their pews, even as their descendants do to this day.

The blunders in spelling which mar many pages of the book would disgrace a third-rate proof-reader, and we are certain the author never saw the proofs. Both paper and type are of inferior quality. These faults are the more inexcusable, as the beautiful covering, with the choice gilded medallion and precious motto, led us to look for something very nice in the way of print and paper.

* * * * *

WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART. By Louis Viardot. Illustrated. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

An interesting book spoiled by careless expressions and incorrect assertions. Such expressions as "the worship of images," (page 28,) instead of "veneration," etc.; the assertion that the "policy of the popes always was to foster disunion in Italy, in order to profit by it," (page 35,) and styling Savonarola "the Italian Luther," (page 111,) make it unfit for introduction among Catholics. It is to be regretted that a book like this, containing as it does so much that is great and good in the history of Catholic art in Italy, should be marred by statements which are not historically true, and have nothing whatever to do with such a work.

* * * * *

HOME INFLUENCE. By Grace Aguilar. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

It is quite refreshing, after the floods of impassioned sensational novels that have poured from the press on all sides for the last ten or fifteen years, to know that there is a call for the purity and high-toned sentiment that flow from the pen of Miss Aguilar.

Twenty years ago, her works afforded interest and instruction, the present volume to mothers especially, and though her children and grown people are sometimes stiff and priggish, and are wont to talk like books, they are always well-bred and refined, never descending to irreverence or slang, as they too often do in stories of to-day.

It was formerly a criticism on her works, that they favored Judaism (the creed of their author) at the expense of Christianity; but no such charge can be brought against _Home Influence_ with any truth.

This volume presents an attractive exterior, and if the works of this author take again with the novel-reading public, it will be a symptom of returning health in the community.

* * * * *

MISSALE ROMANUM, ex decreto sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii VI. jussu editum, Clementis VIII. et Urbani VIII. Papæ auctoritate recognitum, et novis missis ex indulto apostolico hucusque concessis auctum. Mechliniæ: H. Dessain.

This Missal, from the house of the Messrs. Benziger Brothers, is printed in good, clear type, pleasant to the eye; contains the last new masses enjoined by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and is illustrated with excellent full-page engravings. It is besides, as a book, both serviceable and cheap.

* * * * *

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has in press, and will publish, May twenty-fifth, a work by James Kent Stone, D.D., late President of Kenyon and Hobart Colleges, entitled, _The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity_. As the title implies, Mr. Stone will, in this volume, give his reasons for becoming a Catholic.

* * * * *

MESSRS. JOHN MURPHY & CO. announce as in press, _The Paradise of the Earth; or, the True Means of Finding Happiness in the Religious State_, according to the Rules of the Masters of Spiritual Life. Translated from the French of L'Abbé Sanson, by the Rev. F. Ignatius Sisk, of the Cistercian Community, Mount St. Bernard's Abbey. Also, _Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus_. From the Italian of Secundo Franco, S.J.

A DOGMATIC DECREE ON CATHOLIC FAITH.

CONFIRMED AND PROMULGATED IN THE THIRD PUBLIC SESSION OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, HELD IN ST. PETER'S, ROME, ON LOW-SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 1870.

CONSTITVTIO DOGMATICA DE FIDE CATHOLICA.

[This translation has been carefully revised for THE CATHOLIC WORLD by some of the bishops attending the council.]

PIVS EPISCOPVS SERVVS SERVORVM PIUS, BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE DEI SACRO APPROBANTE CONCILIO AD SERVANTS OF GOD, WITH THE PERPETVAM REI MEMORIAM. APPROBATION OF THE HOLY COUNCIL, FOR A PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE HEREOF.

Dei Filius et generis humani Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son Redemptor Dominus Noster Iesus of God and the Redeemer of Christus, ad Patrem coelestem mankind, when about to return to rediturus, cum Ecclesia sua in his heavenly Father, promised terris militante, omnibus diebus that he would be with his usque ad consummationem saeculi church, militant on earth, all futurum se esse promisit. Quare days even to the consummation dilectae sponsae praesto esse, of the world. Wherefore, he adsistere docenti, operanti has never at any time failed benedicere, periclitanti opem to be with his beloved spouse, ferre nullo unquam tempore to assist her in her teaching, destitit. Haec vero salutaris to bless her in her labors, to eius providentia, cum ex aliis aid her in danger. And this his beneficiis innumeris continenter saving providence, unceasingly apparuit, tum iis manifestissime displayed in countless other comperta est fructibus, qui blessings, is most clearly orbi christiano e Conciliis made manifest by those very oecumenicis ac nominatim e abundant fruits which have Tridentino, iniquis licet come to the Christian world temporibus celebrato, amplissimi from œcumenical councils, provenerunt. Hinc enim and especially from that of sanctissima religionis dogmata Trent, although it was held pressius definita uberiusque in evil days. For thereby the exposita, errores damnati atque holy doctrines of religion were cohibiti; hinc ecclesiastica more distinctly defined and disciplina restituta firmiusque more fully set forth; errors sancita, promotum in Clero were condemned and restrained; scientiae et pietatis studium, thereby ecclesiastical parata adolescentibus ad sacram discipline was restored and militiam educandis collegia, more firmly established; zeal christiani denique populi for learning and piety was mores et accuratiore fidelium promoted among the clergy; and eruditione et frequentiore colleges were provided for the sacramentorum usu instaurati. training of young men for the Hinc praeterea arctior membrorum sacred ministry; and finally the cum visibili Capite communio, practice of Christian morality universoque corpori Christi was restored among the people mystico additus vigor; hinc by more careful instruction religiosae multiplicatae and a more frequent use of familiae, aliaque christianae the sacraments. Hence arose, pietatis instituta; hinc ille likewise, a closer union of the etiam assiduus et usque ad members with the visible head, sanguinis effusionem constans and renewed strength to the ardor in Christi regno late per entire mystical body of Christ; orbem propagando. hence the increased number of religious communities, and of other institutions of Christian piety; hence, also, that unceasing zeal, constant even to martyrdom, to spread the kingdom of Christ throughout the world.

Verumtamen haec aliaque insignia Nevertheless, while with emolumenta, quae per ultimam becoming gratitude we call to maxime oecumenicam Synodum mind these and the many other divina clementia Ecclesiae remarkable benefits which the largita est, dum grato, quo par goodness of God has bestowed est, animo recolimus; acerbum on the church chiefly through compescere haud possumus the last œcumenical council, dolorem ob mala gravissima, we cannot suppress our bitter inde potissimum orta, quod sorrow for the grievous evils eiusdem sacrosanctae Synodi which have chiefly sprung apud permultos vel auctoritas from many having despised the contempta, vel sapientissima authority of the aforesaid neglecta fuere decreta. sacred council, or having neglected to observe its most wise decrees.

Nemo enim ignorat, haereses, For it is known to all that quas Tridentini Patres the heresies which the fathers proscripserunt, dum, reiecto of Trent condemned, and which divino Ecclesiae magisterio, res rejected the divine authority ad religionem spectantes privati of the church to teach, and cuiusvis iudicio permitterentur, instead, subjected all things in sectas paullatim dissolutas belonging to religion to the esse multiplices, quibus judgment of each individual, inter se dissentientibus et were, in course of time, broken concertantibus, omnis tandem up into many sects; and that, in Christum fides apud non as these differed and disputed paucos labefactata est. Itaque with each other, it came to ipsa sacra Biblia, quae antea pass, at length, that all belief christianae doctrinae unicus in Christ was overthrown in the fons et iudex asserebantur, iam minds of not a few. And so, the non pro divinis haberi, imo sacred Scriptures themselves, mythicis commentis accenseri which they had at first held up coeperunt. as the only source and judge of Christian doctrine, were no longer held as divine, but, on the contrary, began to be counted among myths and fables.

Tum nata est et late nimis per Then arose and spread too widely orbem vagata illa rationalismi through the world that doctrine seu naturalismi doctrina, quae of rationalism or naturalism, religioni christianae utpote which, attacking Christianity supernaturali instituto per at every point as being a omnia adversans, summo studio supernatural institution, labors molitur, ut Christo, qui solus with all its might to exclude Dominus et Salvator noster est, Christ, who is our only Lord a mentibus humanis, a vita et and Saviour, from the minds of moribus populorum excluso, merae men and from the life and the quod vocant rationis vel naturae morals of nations; and so to regnum stabiliatur. Relicta establish, instead, the reign autem proiectaque christiana of mere reason, as they call religione, negato vero Deo it, or of nature. And thus, et Christo eius, prolapsa having forsaken and cast away tandem est multorum mens in the Christian religion, having pantheismi, materialismi, denied the true God and his atheismi barathrum, ut iam Christ, the minds of many have ipsam rationalem naturam, at last fallen into the abyss omnemque iusti rectique normam of pantheism, materialism, and negantes, ima humanae societatis atheism; so that now repudiating fundamenta diruere connitantur. the reasoning nature of man, and every rule of right and wrong, they are laboring to overthrow the very foundations of human society.

Hac porro impietate circumquaque Moreover, as this impious grassante, infeliciter contigit, doctrine is spreading ut plures etiam e catholicae everywhere, it has unfortunately Ecclesiae filiis a via verae come to pass that not a few even pietatis aberrarent, in of the children of the Catholic iisque, diminutis paullatim Church have wandered from the veritatibus, sensus catholicus way of true piety; and as the attenuaretur. Variis enim ac truth gradually decayed in their peregrinis doctrinis abducti, minds, the catholic sentiment naturam et gratiam, scientiam grew fainter in them. For, humanam et fidem divinam being led away by various and perperam commiscentes, genuinum strange doctrines, and wrongly sensum dogmatum, quem tenet ac confounding nature and grace, docet Sancta Mater Ecclesia, human science and divine faith, depravare, integritatemque et they have perverted the true sinceritatem fidei in periculum sense of the doctrines which our adducere comperiuntur. holy mother the church holds and teaches, and have endangered the integrity and the purity of faith.

Quibus omnibus perspectis, fieri Now, looking at all these qui potest, ut non commoveantur things, how can the church fail intima Ecclesiae viscera? to be moved in her innermost Quemadmodum enim Deus vult heart? For inasmuch as God omnes homines salvos fieri, wills all men to be saved and et ad agnitionem veritatis to come to the knowledge of venire; quemadmodum Christus the truth, inasmuch as Christ venit, ut salvum faceret, quod came to save that which was perierat, et filios Dei, qui lost, and to gather together in erant dispersi, congregaret one the children of God that in unum: ita Ecclesia, a Deo were dispersed; so the church, populorum mater et magistra established by God as the mother constituta, omnibus debitricem and mistress of nations, feels se novit, ac lapsos erigere, that she is a debtor unto all, labantes sustinere, revertentes and is ever ready and earnest amplecti, confirmare bonos et ad to raise up the fallen, to meliora provehere parata semper strengthen the weak, to take to et intenta est. Quapropter her bosom those that return, nullo tempore a Dei veritate, and to confirm the good, and quae sanat omnia, testanda et carry them on to better things. praedicanda quiescere potest, Wherefore, at no time can she sibi dictum esse non ignorans: abstain from bearing witness to Spiritus meus, qui est in and preaching the all-healing te, et verba mea, quae posui truth of God; knowing that it in ore tuo, non recedent de has been said to her, "My spirit ore tuo amodo et usque in that is in thee, and my words sempiternum.[140] that I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, from henceforth and for ever." (Isa. lix. 21.)

Nos itaque, inhaerentes Wherefore, following in the Praedecessorum Nostrorum footsteps of our predecessors, vestigiis, pro supremo Nostro and in fulfilment of our supreme Apostolico munere veritatem apostolic duty, we have never catholicam docere ac tueri, omitted to teach and to protect perversasque doctrinas reprobare the catholic truth, and to nunquam intermisimus. Nunc reprove perverse teachings. autem sedentibus Nobiscum et And now, the bishops of the iudicantibus universi orbis whole world being gathered Episcopis, in hanc oecumenicam together in this œcumenical Synodum auctoritate Nostra in council by our authority, and Spiritu Sancto congregatis, in the Holy Ghost, and sitting innixi Dei verbo scripto et therein and judging with us, tradito, prout ab Ecclesia we, guided by the word of God, catholica sancte custoditum et both written and handed down by genuine expositum accepimus, ex tradition, as we have received hac Petri Cathedra in conspectu it, sacredly preserved and omnium salutarem Christi truly set forth by the Catholic doctrinam profiteri et declarare Church, have determined to constituimus, adversis erroribus profess and declare from this potestate nobis a Deo tradita chair of Peter, and in the sight proscriptis atque damnatis. of all, the saving doctrine of Christ; and in the power given to us from God to proscribe and condemn the opposing errors.

CAPUT I. CHAPTER I.

DE DEO RERUM OMNIUM CREATORE. OF GOD THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.

Sancta Catholica Apostolica The holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Romana Ecclesia credit et Roman Church believes and confitetur, unum esse Deum verum confesses that there is one et vivum, Creatorem ac Dominum true and living God, Creator coeli et terrae, omnipotentem, and Lord of heaven and earth, aeternum, immensum, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensibilem, intellectu incomprehensible, infinite in ac voluntate omnique perfectione understanding and will and in infinitum; qui cum sit una all perfection; who, being singularis, simplex omnino a spiritual substance, one, et incommutabilis substantia single, absolutely simple and spiritualis, praedicandus est re unchangeable, must be held to et essentia a mundo distinctus, be, in reality and in essence, in se et ex se beatissimus, distinct from the world, in et super omnia, quae praeter himself and of himself perfectly ipsum sunt et concipi possunt, happy, and unspeakably exalted ineffabiliter excelsus. above all things that are or can be conceived besides himself.

Hic solus verus Deus bonitate This one only true God, of sua et omnipotenti virtute non his own goodness and almighty ad augendam suam beatitudinem, power, not to increase his own nec ad acquirendam, sed ad happiness, nor to acquire for manifestandam perfectionem himself perfection, but in suam per bona, quae creaturis order to manifest the same by impertitur, liberrimo consilio means of the good things which simul ab initio temporis he imparts to creatures, did, utramque de nihilo condidit of his own most free counsel, creaturam, spiritualem et "from the beginning of time make corporalem, angelicam videlicet alike out of nothing two created et mundanam, ac deinde humanam natures, a spiritual one and quasi communem ex spiritu et a corporeal one, the angelic, corpore constitutam[141]. to wit, and the earthly; and afterward he made the human Universa vero, quae condidit, nature, as partaking of both, Deus providentia sua tuetur being composed of spirit and atque gubernat, attingens a fine body." (Fourth Lateran Council, usque ad finem fortiter, et ch. I. _Firmiter_.) Moreover, disponens omnia suaviter[142]. God, by his providence, protects Omnia enim nuda et aperta sunt and governs all things which he oculis eius[143], ea etiam, has made, reaching from end to quae libera creaturarum actione end mightily, and ordering all futura sunt. things sweetly. (Wisdom viii. 1.) For all things are naked and open to his eyes, (Heb. iv. 13,) even those which are to come to pass by the free action of creatures.

CAPUT II. CHAPTER II.

DE REVELATIONE. OF REVELATION.

Eadem Sancta Mater Ecclesia The same holy Mother Church tenet et docet, Deum, rerum holds and teaches that God, the omnium principium et finem, beginning and end of all things, naturali humanae rationis can be known with certainty lumine e rebus creatis certo through created things, by the cognosci posse; invisibilia enim natural light of human reason; ipsius, a creatura mundi, per "for the invisible things of ea quae facta sunt, intellecta, him, from the creation of the conspiciuntur[144]: attamen world, are clearly seen, being placuisse, eius sapientiae understood by the things that et bonitati, alia, eaque are made," (Romans i. 20;) but supernaturali via se ipsum ac that nevertheless it has pleased aeterna voluntatis suae decreta his wisdom and goodness to humano generi revelare, dicente reveal to mankind, by another Apostolo: Multifariam, multisque and that a supernatural way, modis olim Deus loquens patribus himself and the eternal decrees in Prophetis: novissime, diebus of his will; even as the apostle istis locutus est nobis in says, "God who at sundry times Filio[145]. and in divers manners spoke, in times past, to the fathers by Huic divinae revelationi the prophets, last of all, in tribuendum quidem est, ut ea, these days hath spoken to us quae in rebus divinis humanae by his Son." (Heb. i. 1, 2.) rationi per se impervia non To this divine revelation is sunt, in praesenti quoque it to be ascribed that things generis humani conditione regarding God, which are not of ab omnibus expedite, firma themselves beyond the grasp of certitudine et nullo admixto human reason, may, even in the errore cognosci possint. Non present condition of the human hac tamen de causa revelatio race, be known by all, readily, absolute necessaria dicenda with full certainty and without est, sed quia Deus ex infinita any admixture of error. Yet not bonitate sua ordinavit hominem on this account is revelation ad finem supernaturalem, ad absolutely necessary, but participanda scilicet bona because God, of his infinite divina, quae humanae mentis goodness, has ordained man for intelligentiam omnino superant; a supernatural end, for the siquidem oculus non vidit, participation, that is, of nec auris audivit, nec in divine goods, which altogether cor hominis ascendit, quae surpass the understanding of praeparavit Deus iis, qui the human mind; for "eye hath diligunt ilium.[146] not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him." (1 Cor. ii. 9.)

Haec porro supernaturalis Now, this supernatural revelatio, secundum universalis revelation, according to the Ecclesiae fidem, a sancta belief of the universal church, Tridentina Synodo declaratam, as declared by the holy Council continetur in libris scriptis et of Trent, is contained in sine scripto traditionibus, quae the written books and in the ipsius Christi ore ab Apostolis unwritten traditions which acceptae, aut ab ipsis Apostolis have come to us as received Spiritu Sancto dictante quasi orally from Christ himself by per manus traditae, ad nos usque the apostles, or handed down pervenerunt.[147] Qui quidem from the apostles taught by veteris et novi Testamenti the Holy Ghost. (Council of libri integri cum omnibus suis Trent. Session iv. Decree on partibus, prout in eiusdem the Canon of Scripture.) And Concilii decreto recensentur, these books of the Old and New et in veteri vulgata latina Testament are to be received as editione habentur, pro sacris sacred and canonical, in their et canonicis suscipiendi sunt. integrity and with all their Eos vero Ecclesia pro sacris parts, as they are enumerated in et canonicis habet, non ideo the decree of the same council, quod sola humana industria and are had in the old Vulgate concinnati, sua deinde Latin edition. But the church auctoritate sint approbati; nec does hold them as sacred and ideo dumtaxat, quod revelationem canonical, not for the reason sine errore contineant; sed that they have been compiled propterea quod Spiritu Sancto by human industry alone, and inspirante conscripti Deum afterward approved by her habent auctorem, atque ut tales authority; nor only because ipsi Ecclesiae traditi sunt. they contain revelation without error, but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the church herself.

Quoniam vero, quae sancta And since those things which the Tridentina Synodus de Council of Trent has declared interpretatione divinae by wholesome decrees concerning Scripturae ad coërcenda the interpretation of divine petulantia ingenia salubriter Scripture, in order to restrain decrevit, a quibusdam hominibus restless spirits, are explained prave exponuntur, Nos, idem by some in a wrong sense; we, decretum renovantes, hanc renewing the same decree, illius mentem esse declaramus, declare this to be the mind of ut in rebus fidei et morum, the synod, that, in matters of ad aedificationem doctrinae faith and morals which pertain Christianae pertinentium, is pro to the edification of Christian vero sensu sacrae Scripturae doctrine, that is to be held as habendus sit, quem tenuit ac the true sense of the sacred tenet Sancta Mater Ecclesia, Scripture which holy mother cuius est iudicare de vero sensu church, to whom it belongs to et interpretatione Scripturarum judge of the true sense and sanctarum; atque ideo nemini interpretation of the sacred licere contra hunc sensum, aut Scriptures, has held and holds; etiam contra unanimem consensum and therefore that no one may Patrum ipsam Scripturam sacram interpret the sacred Scripture interpretari. contrary to this sense, or contrary to the unanimous consent of the fathers.

CAPUT III. CHAPTER III.

DE FIDE. OF FAITH.

Quum homo a Deo tanquam Forasmuch as man totally depends Creatore et Domino suo totus on God as his Creator and Lord, dependeat, et ratio creata and created reason is wholly increatae Veritati penitus subject to the uncreated truth, subiecta sit, plenum revelanti therefore we are bound, when God Deo intellectus et voluntatis makes a revelation, to render obsequium fide praestare to him the full obedience of tenemur. Hanc vero fidem, quae our understanding and will, by humanae salutis initium est, faith. And this faith, which Ecclesia catholica profitetur, is the beginning of man's virtutem esse supernaturalem, salvation, the church declares qua, Dei aspirante et adiuvante to be a supernatural virtue, gratia, ab eo revelata vera whereby, under the inspiration esse credimus, non propter and aid of God's grace, we intrinsecam rerum veritatem believe to be true the things naturali rationis lumine revealed by him, not for their perspectam, sed propter intrinsic truth seen by the auctoritatem ipsius Dei natural light of reason, but for revelantis, qui nec falli nec the authority of God revealing fallere potest. Est enim fides, them, who can neither deceive testante Apostolo, sperandarum nor be deceived. For faith, as substantia rerum, argumentum non the apostle witnesseth, is the apparentium.[148] substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. (Heb. xi. 1.)

Ut nihilominus fidei nostrae To the end, nevertheless, that obsequium rationi consentaneum the obedience of our faith esset, voluit Deus cum internis might be agreeable to reason, Spiritus Sancti auxiliis God willed to join unto the externa iungi revelationis interior grace of the Holy suae argumenta, facta scilicet Spirit external proofs of his divina, atque imprimis revelation, to wit, divine miracula et prophetias, works, and chiefly miracles quae cum Dei omnipotentiam and prophecies, which, as et infinitam scientiam they manifestly show forth luculenter commonstrent, the omnipotence and the divinae revelationis signa infinite knowledge of God, are sunt certissima et omnium proofs most certain of divine intelligentiae accommodata. revelation, and suited to the Quare turn Moyses et Prophetae, understanding of all. Wherefore tum ipse maxime Christus Dominus both Moses and the prophets, multa et manifestissima miracula and above all, Christ our Lord et prophetias ediderunt; et de himself, wrought many and most Apostolis legimus: Illi autem evident miracles, and uttered profecti praedicaverunt ubique, prophecies; and of the apostles Domino co-operante, et sermonem we read, "But they going forth confirmante, sequentibus preached everywhere: the Lord signis.[149] Et rursum scriptum working withal, and confirming est: Habemus firmiorem the word with signs that propheticum sermonem, cui bene followed." (Mark xvi. 20.) And facitis attendentes quasi again it is written, "We have lucernae lucenti in caliginoso the more firm prophetical word; loco.[150] whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place." (2 Pet. i. 19.)

Licet autem fidei assensus Yet although the assent of nequaquam sit motus animi faith is not by any means a caecus: nemo tamen evangelicae blind movement of the mind; praedicationi consentire nevertheless no one can believe potest, sicut oportet ad the preaching of the Gospel salutem consequendam, absque in such wise as behoveth to illuminatione et inspiratione salvation without the light and Spiritus Sancti, qui dat omnibus inspiration of the Holy Ghost, suavitatem in consentiendo et who giveth unto all sweetness credendo veritati.[151] Quare in yielding to the truth and fides ipsa in se, etiamsi per believing it. (2 Council of charitatem non operetur, donum Orange, Can. 7.) Wherefore Dei est, et actus eius est faith in itself, even though opus ad salutem pertinens, quo it be not working by charity, homo liberam praestat ipsi Deo is a gift of God; and an act obedientiam, gratiae eius, cui of faith is a work tending to resistere posset, consentiendo salvation, whereby man renders et coöperando. free obedience to God himself, consenting to and coöperating with his grace, which he hath power to resist.

Porro fide divina et catholica Now, all those things are to be ea omnia credenda sunt, quae in believed of divine and catholic verbo Dei scripto vel tradito faith which are contained in the continentur, et ab Ecclesia sive word of God, whether written solemni iudicio sive ordinario or handed down by tradition; et universali magisterio tamquam and which the church, either by divinitus revelata credenda solemn decree or by her ordinary proponuntur. and universal teaching, proposes for belief as revealed by God.

Quoniam vero sine fide And whereas without faith it is impossibile est placere Deo, impossible to please God, and et ad filiorum eius consortium to come to the fellowship of pervenire; ideo nemini his children, therefore hath no unquam sine illa contigit one at any time been justified iustificatio, nec ullus, nisi without faith; nor shall any in ea perseveraverit usque one, unless he persevere therein in finem, vitam aeternam unto the end, attain everlasting assequetur. Ut autem officio life. And in order that we might veram fidem amplectendi, in be able to fulfil our duty of eaque constanter perseverandi embracing the true faith, and of satisfacere possemus, Deus steadfastly persevering therein, per Filium suum unigenitum God, through his only-begotten Ecclesiam instituit, suaeque Son, did establish the church institutionis manifestis notis and place upon her manifest instruxit, ut ea tamquam custos marks of his institution, et magistra verbi revelati ab that all men might be able to omnibus posset agnosci. Ad recognize her as the guardian solam enim catholicam Ecclesiam and teacher of his revealed ea pertinent omnia, quae ad word. For only to the Catholic evidentem fidei christianae Church do all those signs credibilitatem tam multa et tam belong, which have been divinely mira divinitus sunt disposita. disposed, so many in number Quin etiam Ecclesia per se and so wonderful in character, ipsa, ob suam nempe admirabilem for the purpose of making propagationem, eximiam evident the credibility of the sanctitatem et inexhaustam in Christian faith; nay more, the omnibus bonis foecunditatem, ob very church herself, in view catholicam unitatem, invictamque of her wonderful propagation, stabilitatem, magnum quoddam her eminent holiness, and her et perpetuum est motivum exhaustless fruitfulness in credibilitatis et divinae all that is good, her catholic suae legationis testimonium unity, her unshaken stability, irrefragabile. offers a great and evident claim to belief, and an undeniable proof of her divine commission.

Quo fit, ut ipsa veluti signum Whence it is that she, as levatum in nationes,[152] et a standard set up unto the ad se invitet, qui nondum nations, (Is. xi. 12,) at the crediderunt, et filios suos same time calls to herself those certiores faciat, firmissimo who have not yet believed, and niti fundamento fidem, quam shows to her children that the profitentur. Cui quidem faith which they hold rests on testimonio efficax subsidium a most solid foundation. And to accedit ex superna virtute. this, her testimony, effectual Etenim benignissimus Dominus aid is supplied by power from et errantes gratia sua excitat above. For the Lord, infinitely atque adiuvat, ut ad agnitionem merciful, on the one hand stirs veritatis venire possint; up by his grace and helps those et eos, quos de tenebris who are in error, that they may transtulit in admirabile lumen be able to come to the knowledge suum, in hoc eodem lumine of the truth; and, on the ut perseverent, gratia sua other hand, those whom he hath confirmat, non deserens, nisi transferred from darkness into deseratur. Quocirca minime par his marvellous light he confirms est conditio eorum, qui per by his grace, that they may coeleste fidei donum catholicae persevere in that same light, veritati adhaeserunt, atque never abandoning them unless eorum, qui ducti opinionibus he be first by them abandoned. humanis, falsam religionem Wherefore, totally unlike is the sectantur; illi enim, qui condition of those who, by the fidem sub Ecclesiae magisterio heavenly gift of faith, have susceperunt, nullam unquam embraced the catholic truth, habere possunt iustam causam and of those who, led by human mutandi, aut in dubium fidem opinions, are following a false eamdem revocandi. Quae cum religion; for they who have ita sint, gratias agentes Deo received the faith under the Patri, qui dignos nos fecit teaching of the church can never in partem sortis sanctorum in have a just reason to change lumine, tantam ne negligamus that faith or call it into salutem, sed aspicientes in doubt. Wherefore, giving thanks auctorem fidei et consummatorem to God the Father, who hath made Iesum, teneamus spei nostrae us worthy to be partakers of confessionem indeclinabilem. the lot of the saints in light, let us not neglect so great salvation, but looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.

CAPUT IV. CHAPTER IV.

DE FIDE ET RATIONE. OF FAITH AND REASON.

Hoc quoque perpetuus Ecclesiae Moreover, the Catholic Church catholicae consensus tenuit has ever held, as she now holds, et tenet, duplicem esse that there exists a two-fold ordinem cognitionis, non order of knowledge, each of solum principio, sed obiecto which is distinct from the other etiam distinctum: principio both as to its principle and quidem, quia in altero naturali as to its object. As to its ratione, in altero fide divina principle, because in the one cognoscimus; obiecto autem, we know by natural reason, in quia praeter ea, ad quae the other by divine faith; as naturalis ratio pertingere to the object, because, besides potest, credenda nobis those things to which natural proponuntur mysteria in Deo reason can attain, there are abscondita, quae, nisi revelata proposed to our belief mysteries divinitus, innotescere non hidden in God which, unless possunt. Quocirca Apostolus, by him revealed, cannot come qui a gentibus Deum per ea, to our knowledge. Wherefore quae facta sunt, cognitum the same apostle, who beareth esse testatur, disserens witness that God was known to tamen de gratia et veritate, the Gentiles by the things that quae per Iesum Christum facta are made, yet when speaking of est,[153] pronuntiat: Loquimur the grace and truth that came Dei sapientiam in mysterio, by Jesus Christ, (John i. 17.) quae abscondita est, quam says, "We speak the wisdom of praedestinavit Deus ante saecula God in a mystery, a wisdom which in gloriam nostram, quam is hidden; which God ordained nemo principum huius saeculi before the world unto our glory; cognovit: nobis autem revelavit which none of the princes of Deus per Spiritum suum: this world knew; but which God Spiritus enim omnia scrutatur, hath revealed to us by his etiam profunda Dei.[154] Et Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth ipse Unigenitus confitetur all things, yea the deep things Patri, quia abscondit haec a of God." (1 Cor. ii. 7, 8, 10.) sapientibus et prudentibus, et And the only-begotten Son thanks revelavit ea parvulis.[155] the Father that he has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them to little ones. (Matt. xi. 25.)

Ac ratio quidem, fide Reason, indeed, enlightened illustrata, cum sedulo, pie by faith and seeking with et sobrie quaerit, aliquam, diligence and godly sobriety, Deo dante, mysteriorum may, by God's gift, come to intelligentiam eamque some understanding, limited in fructuosissimam assequitur, degree, but most wholesome in tum ex eorum, quae naturaliter its effects, of mysteries, both cognoscit, analogia, tum e from the analogy of things which mysteriorum ipsorum nexu are naturally known, and from inter se et cum fine hominis the connection of the mysteries ultimo; nunquam tamen idonea themselves with one another and redditur ad ea perspicienda with man's last end. But never instar veritatum, qua proprium can reason be rendered capable ipsius obiectum constituunt. of thoroughly understanding Divina enim mysteria suapte mysteries, as it does those natura intellectum creatum sic truths which form its proper excedunt, ut etiam revelatione object. For God's mysteries, tradita et fide suscepta, ipsius of their very nature, so far tamen fidei velamine contecta et surpass the reach of created quadam quasi caligine obvoluta intellect, that even when taught maneant, quamdiu in hac mortali by revelation, and received by vita peregrinamur a Domino: per faith, they remain covered by fidem enim ambulamus, et non per faith itself as by a veil, and speciem.[156] shrouded as it were in darkness as long as in this mortal life "we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, and not by sight." (2 Cor. v. 6, 7.)

Verum etsi fides sit supra But although faith be above rationem, nulla tamen unquam reason, there never can be inter fidem et rationem vera a real disagreement between dissensio esse potest: cum idem them, since the same God who Deus, qui mysteria revelat et reveals mysteries and infuses fidem infundit, animo humano faith has given to man's soul rationis lumen indiderit; the light of reason; and God Deus autem negare seipsum cannot deny himself nor can one non possit, nec verum vero truth ever contradict another. unquam contradicere. Inanis Wherefore the empty shadow autem huius contradictionis of such contradiction arises species inde potissimum oritur, chiefly from this, that either quod vel fidei dogmata ad the doctrines of faith are not mentem Ecclesiae intellecta understood and set forth as et exposita non fuerint, the church really holds them, vel opinionum commenta pro or that the vain devices and rationis effatis habeantur. opinions of men are mistaken Omnem igitur assertionem for the dictates of reason. We veritati illuminatae fidei therefore definitively pronounce contrariam omnino falsam esse false every assertion which is definimus.[157] Porro Ecclesia, contrary to the enlightened quae una cum apostolico munere truth of faith. (V. Lateran docendi, mandatum accepit, Counc. Bull _Apostolici fidei depositum costodiendi, Regiminis_.) Moreover the ius etiam et officium divinitus church, which, together with her habet falsi nominis scientiam apostolic office of teaching, proscribendi, ne quis decipiatur is charged also with the per philosophiam, et inanem guardianship of the deposit fallaciam.[158] Quapropter omnes of faith, holds likewise from christiani fideles huiusmodi God the right and the duty to opiniones, quae fidei doctrinae condemn "knowledge falsely so contrariae esse cognoscuntur, called," (1 Tim. vi. 20,) "lest maxime si ab Ecclesia reprobatae any man be cheated by philosophy fuerint, non solum prohibentur and vain deceit." (Col. ii. 8.) tanquam legitimas scientiae Hence all the Christian faithful conclusiones defendere, sed pro are not only forbidden to defend erroribus potius, qui fallacem as legitimate conclusions of veritatis speciem prae se science those opinions which ferant, habere tenentur omnino. are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially when condemned by the church, but are rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors wearing a deceitful appearance of truth.

Neque solum fides et ratio Not only is it impossible inter se dissidere nunquam for faith and reason ever to possunt, sed opem quoque sibi contradict each other, but they mutuam ferunt, cum recta ratio rather afford each other mutual fidei fundamenta demonstret, assistance. For right reason eiusque lumine illustrata establishes the foundations of rerum divinarum scientiam faith and by the aid of its excolat; fides vero rationem ab light cultivates the science erroribus liberet ac tueatur, of divine things; and faith, eamque multiplici cognitione on the other hand, frees and instruat. Quapropter tantum preserves reason from errors, abest, ut Ecclesia humanarum and enriches it with knowledge artium et disciplinarum culturae of many kinds. So far, then, obsistat, ut hanc multis modis is the church from opposing iuvet atque promoveat. Non the culture of human arts and enim commoda ab iis ad hominum sciences, that she rather vitam dimanantia aut ignorat aids and promotes it in many aut despicit; fatetur imo, eas, ways. For she is not ignorant quemadmodum a Deo, scientiarum of, nor does she despise the Domino, profectae sunt, ita advantages which flow from si rite pertractentur, ad them to the life of men; on Deum, iuvante eius gratia, the contrary, she acknowledges perducere. Nec sane ipsa vetat, that, as they sprang from God ne huiusmodi disciplinae in suo the Lord of knowledge, so, if quaeque ambitu propriis utantur they be rightly pursued, they principiis et propria methodo; will, through the aid of his sed iustam hanc libertatem grace, lead to God. Nor does she agnoscens, id sedulo cavet, ne forbid any of those sciences the divinae doctrinae repugnando use of its own principles and errores in se suscipiant, aut its own method within its own fines proprios transgressae, ea, proper sphere; but recognizing quae sunt fidei, occupent et this reasonable freedom, she perturbent. only takes care that they may not by contradicting God's teaching, fall into errors, or, overstepping their due limits, invade and throw into confusion the domain of faith.

Neque enim fidei doctrina, For the doctrine of faith quam Deus revelavit, velut revealed by God has not philosophicum inventum been proposed, like some proposita est humanis ingeniis philosophical discovery, to be perficienda, sed tanquam divinum made perfect by human ingenuity; depositum Christi Sponsae but it has been delivered to the tradita, fideliter custodienda spouse of Christ as a divine et infallibiliter declaranda. deposit to be faithfully guarded Hinc sacrorum quoque dogmatum is and unerringly set forth. Hence sensus perpetuo est retinendus, all tenets of holy faith are to quem semel declaravit Sancta be explained always according Mater Ecclesia, nec unquam ab eo to the sense and meaning of the sensu, altioris intelligentiae church, nor is it ever lawful to specie et nomine, recedendum. depart therefrom, under pretence Crescat igitur et multum or color of more enlightened vehementerque proficiat, tam explanation. Therefore as singulorum, quam omnium, tam generations and centuries roll unius hominis, quam totius on, let the understanding, Ecclesiae, aetatum ac saeculorum knowledge, and wisdom of each gradibus, intelligentia, and every one, of individuals scientia, sapientia: sed in and of the whole church, grow suo dumtaxat genere, in eodem apace and increase exceedingly, scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, yet only in its kind; that is eademque sententia.[159] to say, retaining pure and inviolate the sense and meaning and belief of the same doctrine. (Vincent of Lerins. Common. No. 28.)

CANONES. CANONS.

I. I.

DE DEO RERVM OMNIVM CREATORE. OF GOD THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.

1. Si quis unum verum Deum 1. If any one shall deny the one visibilium et invisibilium true God, Creator and Lord of Creatorem et Dominum negaverit; things visible and invisible; anathema sit. let him be anathema.

2. Si quis praeter materiam 2. If any one shall unblushingly nihil esse affirmare non affirm, that besides matter erubuerit; anathema sit. nothing else exists; let him be anathema.

3. Si quis dixerit, unam 3. If any one shall say that the eandemque esse Dei et rerum substance or essence of God, and omnium substantiam vel of all things, is one and the essentiam; anathema sit. same; let him be anathema.

4. Si quis dixerit, res finitas, 4. If any one shall say that tum corporeas tum spirituales, finite things, both corporeal aut saltem spirituales, e divina and spiritual, or at least substantia emanasse; spiritual things, are emanations of the divine substance;

aut divinam essentiam sui Or that the divine essence by manifestatione vel evolutione manifestation or development of fieri omnia; itself becomes all things;

aut denique Deum esse ens Or, finally, that God is universale seu indefinitum, quod universal or indefinite Being, sese determinando constituat which, in determining itself, rerum universitatem in genera, constitutes all things, divided species et individua distinctam; into genera, species, and anathema sit. individuals; let him be anathema.

5. Si quis non confiteatur, 5. If any one do not acknowledge mundum, resque omnes, quae in eo that the world, and all continentur, et spirituales et things which it contains, materiales, secundum totam suam both spiritual and material, substantiam a Deo ex nihilo esse were produced, in all their productas; substance, by God, out of nothing;

aut Deum dixerit non voluntate Or shall say that God created ab omni necessitate libera, sed them, not of his own will, free tam necessario creasse, quam from all necessity, but through necessario amat seipsum; a necessity such as that whereby he loves himself;

aut mundum ad Dei gloriam Or shall deny that the world was conditum esse negaverit; created for the glory of God; anathema sit. let him be anathema.

II. II.

DE REVELATIONE. OF REVELATION.

1. Si quis dixerit, Deum unum 1. If any one shall say that et verum, Creatorem et Dominum certain knowledge of the one nostrum, per ea, quae facta true God, our Creator and Lord, sunt, naturali rationis humanae cannot be attained by the lumine certo cognosci non posse; natural light of human reason anathema sit. through the things that are made; let him be anathema.

2. Si quis dixerit, fieri non 2. If any one shall say that it posse, aut non expedire, ut is impossible, or inexpedient, per revelationem divinam homo for man to be instructed by de Deo, cultuque ei exhibendo means of divine revelation, in edoceatur; anathema sit. those things that concern God and the worship to be rendered to him; let him be anathema.

3. Si quis dixerit, hominem ad 3. If any one shall say that man cognitionem et perfectionem, cannot, by the power of God, quae naturalem superet, be raised to a knowledge and divinitus evehi non posse, perfection which is above that sed ex seipso ad omnis tandem of nature; but that he can and veri et boni possessionem iugi ought of his own efforts, by profectu pertingere posse et means of constant progress, to debere; anathema sit. arrive at last to the possession of all truth and goodness; let him be anathema.

4. Si quis sacrae Scripturae 4. If any one shall refuse to libros integros cum omnibus suis receive for sacred and canonical partibus, prout illos sancta the books of holy Scripture in Tridentina Synodus recensuit, their integrity, with all their pro sacris et canonicis non parts, according as they were susceperit, aut eos divinitus enumerated by the holy Council inspiratos esse negaverit; of Trent; anathema sit. Or shall deny that they are inspired by God; let him be anathema.

III. III.

DE FIDE. OF FAITH.

1. Si quis dixerit, rationem 1. If any one shall say that humanam ita independentem esse, human reason is in such wise ut fides ei a Deo imperari non independent, that faith cannot possit; anathema sit. be demanded of it by God; let him be anathema.

2. Si quis dixerit, fidem 2. If any one shall say that divinam a naturali de Deo et divine faith does not differ rebus moralibus scientia non from a natural knowledge of distingui, ac propterea ad fidem God, and of moral truths; and divinam non requiri, ut revelata therefore that for divine faith, veritas propter auctoritatem Dei it is not necessary to believe revelantis credatur; anathema revealed truth, on the authority sit. of God who reveals it; let him be anathema.

3. Si quis dixerit, revelationem 3. If any one shall say that divinam externis signis divine revelation cannot be credibilem fieri non posse, rendered credible by external ideoque sola interna cuiusque evidences; and therefore experientia aut inspiratione that men should be moved to privata homines ad fidem moveri faith only by each one's debere; anathema sit. interior experience or private inspiration; let him be anathema.

4. Si quis dixerit, miracula 4. If any one shall say that no nulla fieri posse, proindeque miracles can be wrought; and omnes de iis narrationes, etiam therefore that all accounts of in sacra Scriptura contentas, such, even those contained in inter fabulas vel mythos the sacred Scripture, are to be ablegandas esse; aut miracula set aside as fables or myths; or certo cognosci nunquam posse, that miracles can never be known nec iis divinam religionis with certainty, and that the christianae originem rite divine origin of Christianity probari; anathema sit. cannot be truly proved by them; let him be anathema.

5. Si quis dixerit, assensum 5. If any one shall say that fidei christianae non esse the assent of Christian faith liberum, sed argumentis humanae is not free, but is produced rationis necessario produci; aut necessarily by arguments of ad solam fidem vivam, quae per human reason; or that the grace charitatem operatur, gratiam Dei of God is necessary only for necessariam esse; anathema sit. living faith which worketh by charity; let him be anathema.

6. Si quis dixerit, parem esse 6. If any one shall say that conditionem fidelium atque the condition of the faithful, eorum, qui ad fidem unice and of those who have not yet veram nondum pervenerunt, ita come to the only true faith, ut catholici iustam causam is equal, in such wise that habere possint, fidem, quam Catholics can have just reason sub Ecclesiae magisterio iam for withholding their assent, susceperunt, assensu suspenso and calling into doubt the faith in dubium vocandi, donec which they have received from demonstrationem scientificam the teaching of the church, credibilitatis et veritatis until they shall have completed fidei suae absolverint; anathema a scientific demonstration of sit. the credibility and truth of their faith; let him be anathema.

IV. IV.

DE FIDE ET RATIONE. OF FAITH AND REASON.

1. Si quis dixerit, in 1. If any one shall say that revelatione divina nulla vera divine revelation includes no et proprie dicta mysteria mysteries, truly and properly contineri, sed universa fidei so called; but that all the dogmata posse per rationem dogmas of faith may, with the rite excultam e naturalibus aid of natural principles, be principiis intelligi et understood and demonstrated by demonstrari; anathema sit. reason duly cultivated; let him be anathema.

2. Si quis dixerit, disciplinas 2. If any one shall say that humanas ea cum libertate human sciences ought to be tractandas esse, ut earum pursued in such a spirit assertiones, etsi doctrinae of freedom that one may be revelatae adversentur, tanquam allowed to hold, as true, their verae retineri, neque ab assertions, even when opposed Ecclesia proscribi possint; to revealed doctrine; and that anathema sit. such assertions may not be condemned by the church; let him be anathema.

3. Si quis dixerit, fieri posse, 3. If any one shall say that it ut dogmatibus ab Ecclesia may at any time come to pass, in propositis, aliquando secundum the progress of science, that progressum scientiae sensus the doctrines set forth by the tribuendus sit alius ab eo, church must be taken in another quem intellexit et intelligit sense than that in which the Ecclesia; anathema sit. church has ever received and yet receives them; let him be anathema.

Itaque supremi pastoralis Nostri Wherefore, fulfilling our officii debitum exequentes, supreme pastoral duty, we omnes Christi fideles, maxime beseech, through the bowels of vero eos, qui praesunt vel mercy of Jesus Christ, all the docendi munere funguntur, Christian faithful, and those per viscera Iesu Christi especially who are set over obtestamur, nec non eiusdem Dei others, or have the office of et Salvatoris nostri auctoritate teachers, and furthermore we iubemus, ut ad hos errores a command them, by authority of Sancta Ecclesia arcendos et the same our God and Saviour, eliminandos, atque purissimae to use all zeal and industry to fidei lucem pandendam studium et drive out and keep away from operam conferant. holy church those errors, and to spread abroad the pure light of faith.

Quoniam vero satis non est, And whereas it is not enough to haereticam pravitatem devitare, avoid heretical pravity, unless nisi ii quoque errores at the same time we carefully diligenter fugiantur, qui ad shun those errors which more illam plus minusve accedunt; or less approach to it; we omnes officii monemus, servandi admonish all, that it is their etiam Constitutiones et duty to observe likewise the Decreta, quibus pravae eiusmodi constitutions and decrees of opiniones, quae isthic diserte this holy see, by which wrong non enumerantur, ab hac Sancta opinions of the same kind, not Sede proscriptae et prohibitae expressly herein mentioned, are sunt. condemned and forbidden.

FOOTNOTES:

[140] Is lix. 21.

[141] Conc. Later. IV. c. 1. _Firmiter_.

[142] Sap. viii. 1.

[143] Cf. Hebr. iv. 13.

[144] Rom. i. 20.

[145] Hebr. i. 1, 2.

[146] 1 Cor. ii. 9.

[147] Conc. Trid. Sess. IV. Decr. de Can. Script.

[148] Hebr. xi. 1.

[149] Marc. xvi. 20.

[150] 2 Petr. i. 19.

[151] Syn. Araus. II. can. 7.

[152] Is. xi. 12.

[153] Ioan. i. 17.

[154] 1 Cor. ii. 7, 8, 10.

[155] Matth. xi. 25.

[156] 2 Cor. v. 6, 7.

[157] Conc. Lat. V. Bulla _Apostolici regiminis_.

[158] Coloss. ii. 8.

[159] Vinc. Lir. Common, n. 28.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XI., No. 64.--JULY, 1870.

THE CATHOLIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Catholic, like the church, is one and the same in all ages and all times. As she came forth from the hands of her Architect finished, complete, and perfect in every particular of solid structure and exquisite adornment, in like manner the individual member, if he be faithful to her tradition, practice, and direction, is, with the allowance of human infirmity, perfect and complete in one age as well as another, without regard to local circumstances of civil government, education, exterior refinement, occupation, complexion, or race.

Religion in its interior nature and intention has reference to the life to come. The life to come is the complement of the present; as the religion of the Catholic Church is perfect, the future life which grows from the seeds planted in time must necessarily be absolute perfection and unending satisfaction. The temporal fruit must likewise become true material well-being, if its growth and perfection be not interrupted by adventitious causes.

The assertion of the absolute perfection of the Catholic religion, with reference to time as well as eternity, is made with precisely the same significance with which we assert the perfection of God. It is made simply and boldly, without hesitation, qualification, or reserve, and it will be the basis of our argument, and the starting-place for the views and opinions we propose to put forth. It is intended for Catholic eyes. The defence of the proposition is no part of our concern.

When they who deny or dispute it shall have vanquished a single one of the great champions of our faith from Athanasius to Archbishop Kenrick, from Cyril of Alexandria to Archbishop Spaulding of Baltimore, picked up the glove which Dr. Brownson has flung down upon the field of controversy, replied to Wiseman, refuted Manning, and silenced Newman, it will be time enough for us to begin to consider the measures necessary for making good the position we have chosen.

Placing ourselves distinctly upon the proposition, we invite attention to certain relations which the Catholic of to-day holds toward his race, his country, his age, and the particular order and condition denominated progress, and the spirit of the nineteenth century.

It becomes necessary under these aspects to consider him as a dutiful subject of the head of the church, and a loyal citizen of an independent state; as a freeman, and one bound by supreme authority; as recognizing and obeying reason, and, in the free exercise of that royal faculty of the soul, surrendering certain prerogatives of private judgment to infallibility; as subject and at the same time sovereign, both obeying and commanding; submissive to the laws and acknowledging the supremacy of a higher law, which he is prepared to vindicate with property, liberty, and life, if the two come in conflict upon any vital point in which he or the church is concerned, in the nineteenth century, precisely as he did in the first, the second, or the third century.

The most obvious, interesting, and important view of the Catholic in his relations to the century is that of voter. Suffrage, or the privilege of voting for our rulers, and indirectly making the laws by which we are to be governed, is not a natural right. It is an acquired privilege, and only becomes a right when conveyed and acknowledged by competent authority. Once obtained, it cannot be abrogated, and can only be lost by revolution, the fruit of gross political misconduct, or by voluntary neglect and disuse.

The right of suffrage bestows special prerogatives upon its possessors. It superadds legislative and magisterial functions to the obligations of private obedience; it communicates grace and dignity to the manly character, imposes definite and heavy responsibilities upon each individual, requires the humblest citizen to participate in the dignity of the highest offices, and holds the most exalted personages to a distinct accountability to the people. It permits every Catholic to share actively in the plans, policy, and beneficent enterprises of the church, and enables him in some sense to take part in the divine government of the universe, physical and moral.

It is a specific and precious gift bestowed on Catholics in this age and country, and we are compelled to stand in the full blaze of the light of the nineteenth century, which is rolling out its illuminated scroll before our dazzled eyes and almost bewildered understandings, charged with the manifold blessings or curses which must flow from the use or abuse of this momentous, one might almost say holy and hierarchical function.

An offer and promise are as distinctly made to the Catholics of this age as they were to the chosen people when released from the Egyptian bondage. A land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, is spread out before them, and offered for their acceptance.

The means placed at their disposal for securing this rich possession are not the sword, or wars of extermination waged against the enemies of their religion, but instead, the mild and peaceful influence of the ballot, directed by instructed Catholic conscience and enlightened Catholic intelligence.

A careful consideration of this subject is particularly important at the present epoch and century.

The nineteenth century is interesting to us because it is _ours_; because it is the expression and exponent of much that has been dark and obscure in the past, because it is the most fruitful and bountiful in material resources and advantages of any of which we possess authentic knowledge, because it shines glorious amidst the centuries by its own intrinsic light, and by the light derived from modern discoveries, investigations, and interpretations thrown back upon the past, and by it reflected in turn upon the present. It is especially important to us as Catholics, inasmuch as it seems to be a critical era in the religious history of the human race, and to have been selected by Providence as a new point of departure in many important particulars of his dealings with mankind.

The radical questions of the relations between the supernatural and the natural, faith and reason, Rome and the world, justice and injustice; between the material and transitory, and the immaterial and permanent; between that which is unchangeable in principle and those things which are progressive in action; between church and state, God and man, are sharply defined, boldly stated, pushed to their ultimate, logical, and practical extremes, and presented with all the arguments, inducements, promises, and threatenings of the most learned and eloquent advocates of the opposing causes to each individual Catholic for his election.

The issue is as distinctly placed before his mind as it was in the case of our first parents in Eden, of Europe in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, of England in the days of Henry VIII. and his anti-Catholic successors.

It is a question of instant and pressing importance, which demands an immediate and definite answer. It must be met and answered by the Catholic of to-day, since to him are committed the obligation and business of perpetuating and regenerating society, purifying legislation, enforcing the administration of the laws, and setting an example of private and public virtue, justice, moderation, and forbearance. He has been furnished with an omnipotent weapon with which to accomplish this great work, and he is provided with an unerring guide to direct him in the administration of these important trusts. We do not hesitate to affirm that in performing our duties as citizens, electors, and public officers, we should always and under all circumstances act simply as Catholics; that we should be governed and directed by the immutable principles of our religion, and should take dogmatic faith and the conclusions drawn from it, as expressed and defined in Catholic philosophy, theology, and morality, as the only rule of our private, public, and political conduct. Those things which are condemned by Catholic justice, we should condemn; those things which are affirmed, we should affirm.

There can be no circumstance, condition, or relation in which the Catholic is left without his guide, and there is absolutely no excuse if he fail in the performance of this duty, upon which rests the future prosperity of civilized society.

While insisting on the dignity and obligations of suffrage, it may perhaps be necessary to observe that the church prescribes no specific form of government. Government itself is required under some form, for the reason that we are created and fulfil our allotted destiny under the operation of an organic law which we have the power, and under certain circumstances the disposition, to violate.

We have no power to annul or abrogate the organic law, and its violation in virtue of its own nature, and our responsibility entails specific penalties in time, and, as it is eternal in its origin and action, eternity. The superiority of the human race, and the merit and honor of obedience, reside in the power of choice, and the ability which we possess to decide our temporal and eternal destiny, and renew and perfect, or reject and obliterate our relations with the Creator. A happy, prosperous, and peaceful temporal condition is not guaranteed, nor is it essential to true well-being but these most desirable concomitants of earthly existence necessarily accompany and flow from the enforcement of the requirements of the organic law upon our own conduct and that of others less disposed to obey them.

All human government rests upon this basis, whether of patriarch, prophet, priest, king, chieftain, pope, bishop, emperor, or people in organized assembly.

The principle underlying every form of government is that of command and obedience, because the government of the universe is one of law. Both command and obedience are of the same nature and alike honorable, because there can be but one source of law, and that is God; and he in his humanity obeyed the laws of his own creation in his divinity, and personally fulfilled the obligations of his own imposition. Who is he who despises obedience, when the Son of Man became obedient to the death of the cross?

All legislation in harmony with the organic law is theocratic and divine; all in violation or opposition, precisely in the measure and degree of departure, unjust, cruel, tyrannical, false, vain, unstable, and weak, and not entitled to respect or obedience.

Since justice and our honor and dignity require that we should obey God, and not man, we are compelled by every reasonable motive to ascertain his will. He does not communicate personally and orally with creatures.

Unless we have the means of ascertaining with certainty what his wishes are on a given subject, whether of the private practice of virtue or the administration of a public duty, we are left to the direction of opinions, interests, and passions more or less superficially instructed and enlightened, and tend inevitably toward barbarism, despotism, and social and political disorganization. The Catholic Church is the medium and channel through which the will of God is expressed. The chain of communication, composed of the triple strand of revelation, inspiration, and faith, stretches underneath the billows of eternity to the shore of time, from the throne of God to the chair of Peter. The finger of the pope, like the needle in the compass, invariably points to the pole of eternal truth, and the mind of the sovereign pontiff is as certain to reflect the mind and will of God as the mirror at one end of a submarine cable to indicate the electric signal made at the other.

The will of God is expressed as plainly through the church as it was through Moses and the tables of the law. It is distinct, definite, intelligible, and precise, and we are bound to execute the will thus expressed, and act in the light of the intelligence thus supplied.

All legislation which has stood the test of time has flowed from the divinely-inspired fountain of natural justice, illuminated by her wisdom, corrected by her experience, interpreted by her theology and philosophy. All tyranny, injustice, force, cruelty, violence, and oppression follow as the result of violation of the organic law as interpreted by the church, or from systems of legislation in opposition to, or abrogation of, her eternal principles.

While immunity from temporal suffering is nowhere promised, it is nevertheless true that the greater portion of evils and sorrows are capable of prevention or relief.

Wealth can be deprived of its satiety, poverty of its sting, labor of its pain, ease of its slothfulness, learning of its pride, power of its arrogance, ignorance of its stupidity.

But though we expect no natural Utopia or earthly paradise, we are no less bound to oppose and correct vices, sorrows, evils, dangers, and oppressions, as they spring, ever fierce and relentless, with their countless heads, whether personal, social, national, or legislative.

The Catholic armed with his vote becomes the champion of faith, law, order, social and political morality, and Christian civilization, no less--in fact, a greater degree, for our present enemies are more dangerous--than his ancestor who hung a wallet over his leathern jerkin, and, shouldering his halberd, followed the lord of the manor to Palestine; than he who aided the Catholic Ferdinand and Isabella to drive the Moor from the soil of Christian Spain, or, under John Sobieski, rolled back the tide of Mohammedan invasion from the European shores of the Mediterranean.

He goes forth furnished with this weapon, which, faithfully and honorably employed, must become invincible, arrest the swollen current of corruption, crime, and lawlessness which threatens to sweep away religion, morality, and liberty, insure the preëminence of law, order, and republican institutions, preserve and perfect the results of material and natural science, put an end to poverty in its abject and hopeless forms, and banish suffering from unrelieved want, and develop and complete a system of jurisprudence which shall sustain what the world has not yet seen, a pure republic of equal rights, exact justice, and assured temporal prosperity, presided over, influenced, and informed by true religion.

The great and undeniably wonderful and valuable fruits of human genius and materialistic science, may be utilized to meet the ends of ideal justice, and true individual and national prosperity and happiness.

With the means of instant intelligent communication and rapid transportation, it is not an impossibility to hope that the head of the church may again become the acknowledged head of the reunited family of Christian nations; the arbiter and judge between princes and peoples, between government and government, the exponent of the supreme justice and highest law, in all important questions affecting the rights, the interests, and the welfare of communities and individuals.

Under such a system, force would give place to reason; the nations would learn war no more, and a general disarmament could be safely imposed. The door of the temple of the demon god of war, which has stood open since Cain imbrued his fratricidal hands in the blood of Abel, would be closed for ever.

"Yea, truth and justice then, Will down return to men, Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between, Throned in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down-steering, And heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall."

Although we are far from expecting a result grand, glorious, and wonderful, realizing in the highest degree the promise made to the human race if faithful to the object of their creation, still we do not hesitate to assert that it is within the power of the ballot, wielded by Catholic hands and directed by Catholic conscience, to accomplish as much and more.

It is no more than the church has a right to expect from her subjects; it is no more than they owe her and themselves; it would be a triumph worthy of the nineteenth century, and worthy of a fallen race deemed worthy to be redeemed by the blood of a God.

The two great questions of marriage and education present themselves in a discussion of the relations which the Catholic sustains toward civil society, as elements of prime and indispensable importance. There can be no permanent Christian society, no civilized and enduring government, which are not perpetuated by Catholic marriage, elevated, instructed, and disciplined by Catholic education. The great civilizations which have arisen and flourished independently, vitalized by the tradition of primitive revelation, are wanting or have forfeited the characteristics of true civilization. Many have perished; others have reached their term, and the hour of their destruction is at hand. The ancient and most remarkable social, civil, and religious polity of India is withering under the remorseless touch of English rule, and China is destined to succumb to steam, machinery, railroads, and sewing-machines.

Nothing but the pure gold of Catholicity can withstand the material flame which burns brightest and hottest in the nineteenth century, and it may only survive stripped of every earthly and human quality, attribute, and advantage.

It is not in our power at this time to follow the line of reflection suggested by the great unchristian and anti-christian civilizations, the Indian, the Persian, the Chinese, and the Mohammedan; but we must confine ourselves to the proposition which their history, brilliant, startling, and splendid though it be, and, to superficial human views, does not in any degree invalidate, that true civilization rests for its foundation upon Catholic marriage and Catholic education.

In contradistinction from suffrage, which is an acquired privilege, marriage is a _natural_ right. Its regulation and control belong exclusively to the church, and are particularly her care and prerogative under the supernatural order.

Marriage is the sacrament of nature, as well as one of grace, and the church insists upon her rightful control, because she depends upon this sacrament not only for perpetuity on earth, but for her eternal representation. She regulates the conditions of marriage and witnesses the contract in whose fulfilment she has such a vital interest, and she becomes the arbiter between the contracting parties in the subsequent stages of their career. She claims its offspring at their birth, and immediately impresses upon them the seal of her proprietorship in baptism; she accompanies them throughout their lives, and dismisses them with unction and benediction; she follows them into the unseen world, and does not relax her grasp till they attain their fruition and become in turn protectors and benefactors of the mother who has given them both natural and supernatural birth. Marriage is the crystal fountain on earth whence flows the perennial living stream which fertilizes and makes glad the plains of heaven.

The Catholic view, or Christian idea of marriage, implies by necessity the Catholic view of all the relations and obligations growing out of it: the education of the young, the custody of foundlings and orphans, and all measures of correction and reformation applicable to youthful offenders and disturbers of the peace of society.

The same view would consign to her care the permanent infants of society, the idiotic, those defective in important organs or senses, the insane, the criminal, the sick poor, and the helpless and wretched of every class. The church is capable, through her orders and congregations of men and women, of undertaking these trusts. There is in this work occupation for all who have not definite vocations, and for the aid and assistance of those who have. It is a species of labor which has never been efficiently and completely performed, and can only be accomplished by those who undertake it under the direction of religion from the motive of heroic and supernatural charity. No compensation, no hope of human reward or praise, can procure such service, tenderness, and succor as that which the unpaid and nameless religious bestows upon the poor and nameless cast-away, for the sake of the humanity of Christ.

The function of education is most closely connected with the authority claimed and exercised over marriage. The custodian of the tree has certainly the right to the fruit of the tree, and to protect it from wayfarers and robbers.

The control and prevention of poverty is an example of the profound science of political economy which is manifested by the church. No state can flourish where hopeless poverty becomes an institution.

A godless system of education, or, what is the same thing, an uncatholic system, is the more refined and elegant but not less certain method of modern times of offering our children to Moloch, and causing our sons to pass through the fire. The right which the church exerts over education does not in any manner impair or contravene the legitimate authority of parents; but, on the contrary, strengthens and supports it, since it is an assertion of the principle of authority and the final obligations toward God due from both parents and children. It asserts the rights of parents and the right which children have to Christian education. Every human creature born into the world has the inalienable right of knowing and obeying the truth, and seeking to attain its own eternal happiness.

While parents have rights over their children, children, in turn, have rights as respects their parents, and the chief of these is Christian education.

The church asserts and defends these principles, and she flatly contradicts the assumption on the part of the state of the prerogative of education, and determinedly opposes the effort to bring up the youth of the country for purely secular and temporal purposes. The state is in its nature godless and material, and, in accordance with its nature, seeks only material ends. No state or nation as such has a supernatural destiny; its rewards and punishments are temporary and finite, and its views, policy, and conduct short-sighted, corrupt, and selfish. While the state has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the superior authority, and that authority can only be expressed through the church, that is, through the organic law infallibly announced and unchangeably asserted, regardless of temporal consequences. The church yields, however, to temporal conditions as far as she can without departing from her organic principle. She resembles a mighty tree tossed by the winds, and apparently yielding to the tempest from whatever quarter it comes, but never giving up its roots, firmly fixed in the ground, and stretching their fibres far out under the surface of things. If she could be moved from her position, torn up by the roots, rifted from her organic basis on the rock of Peter, she would cease to be the church, become a human and fallible institution, and entitled to no more consideration than any other human organization or voluntary society. The hostile and opposing forces recognize distinctly the value and importance to us of the two fundamental institutions, marriage and education. Their efforts are particularly directed at the present time, and in this country, to corrupt and undermine the one and usurp complete control over the other. The attitude of the church on these questions is the cause of nearly all the opposition she encounters, of the secret and open attacks she suffers, and of most of the great persecutions she has experienced. She is attacked in respect to marriage by sensuality, and in regard to education by the arrogance of the state, and the jealousy which human power always manifests of the divine authority.

The order, regularity, charity, and chastity required in marriage by the church--and of which she is the emblem--are repudiated by the world.

This repudiation is manifested by sensuality in its protean forms, from platonic love and sentimental and religious melancholy, all through the descending scale of folly, vice, and crime to the lowest depths, whither the mind refuses to follow and where demons veil their faces, and by legislation the result of this opposition, such as is expressed in the laxity of divorce laws, and a public sentiment which sanctions and countenances divorce and the marriage of divorced parties. It is more or less boldly or covertly expressed in almost the whole range of anti-catholic and uncatholic literature, and in the increasing license of conversation, manners, and amusements. Marriage has lost its dignity and sanctity by being divested of its sacramental character, and its manifest and natural duties and obligations are shunned, despised, and disregarded by a large proportion of those living in outward regard for decorum and morality. The spirit of the nineteenth century, unchastened by Catholicity, by whatever sounding title it may be called--progress, liberty, emancipation of the intellect, dignity of the race, independence of science--is a spirit of gross, cruel, and irrational sensuality, which tends directly and inevitably toward ignorance, bondage, anarchy, and barbarism, and consequent stupidity.

Stupidity may, perhaps, be considered the lowest hell of a creature originally constituted _active_ and _intellectual_.

It is directly against these elements, whose consequences she distinctly foresees, that the church opposes her laws of marriage, and the absolute supernatural chastity of her priests and religious.

It is not that she forbids marriage, as she is sometimes accused, that she offers to certain persons the privilege of electing a superior state and beginning on earth the life of heaven, but in order to provide herself with angels and ministers of grace to do her will, accomplish her work, perform her innumerable acts of spiritual and corporeal mercy, and be literally the godfathers and godmothers to the orphaned human race, while they obtain for themselves and others countless riches of merit. The spirit which we reprobate substitutes lust for love, philanthropy for charity. By subtracting charity from marriage, it virtually divorces the married, and leads directly to the destruction of the species. The children whom it permits to survive it educates for material and temporal objects alone, and the most noble destiny it has to offer is death on the field of battle; its highest reward, a short-lived, temporal honor, and a brief posthumous reputation. The pursuits of honor, of science, literature and art, are noble, and in some degree satisfying. They are, when true and real, Catholic in their nature, and the growth of Catholic soil. Whenever--as in pre-Christian times--they become detached from original revelation, or, in modern, divorced from or hostile to Catholic inspiration, they incline toward cruelty, false science or incomplete science, and in literature and art to decay. The inevitable tendency of incomplete science, that is, imperfect from a radical defect, like a defective formula in mathematics, is to error, obscurity, and confusion. The absence of the supernatural element is the radical defect in all uncatholic natural and metaphysical science; and every superstructure erected upon it, however splendid in appearance, is built upon the sand.

The reason why civil marriage, state religion and education, natural society, and material science do not become more rapidly corrupt, and manifest more speedily their inherent defects, is on account of the vast amount of latent Catholicity which they retain, and without which they could not survive a single day.

It is the tendency of the natural to consume the supernatural, in its efforts to attain its destiny, and, unless fed by new infusions of the divine element, to sink lower and lower toward the abyss.

It is the function of the supernatural society, that is, the church through her ministry and sacraments, to furnish continual supplies of this divine element, to antagonize the decomposition which followed close upon the steps of the terrible twin brethren, sin and death, when they entered the world; renew the almost exhausted life of the soul, and enable it to rise higher and higher, till it is absorbed once more into the source of life eternal, from whence it sprang.

The more respectable and conservative of the uncatholic institutions, which retain most of the latent Catholicity not yet expended in three centuries of separation from the parent fountain, preserve many Catholic ideas, customs, and forms of speech and action.

Such publications as the _New-Englander_, the _Princeton_, _Mercersburg_, and _North British Reviews_, advocate to a great extent the Christian doctrines of marriage and education, and the superiority of religion in all temporal and secular affairs, and deprecate, without the power to remedy or arrest, the evils which they acknowledge to exist.

The advanced portion of the opposing forces, they who have expended their latent Catholicity, denied the faith and impugned the truth, and sunk to the lowest level compatible with life, do not seek to defend their position by any hollow appeals to religion or conscience, but boldly deny all authority excepting their own depraved wills.

Red-republicanism, Fourierism, communism, free love, Mormonism, the Oneida community, the false sciences of mesmerism and phrenology, spiritism and sentimental philanthropy, are exemplary expressions of the forms which sensuality and the denial of authority assume in their retrograde metamorphoses.

The woman's rights movement is the most subtle, dangerous, and treacherous of the later manifestations of the evil spirit of the nineteenth century.

It is more threatening to the public peace than the abolition agitation was at its commencement, and is fostered and fomented by the same or kindred influences, and under some one or other of its forms and phases comprehends every falsehood, error, delusion, and heresy, from the original lie uttered in Eden to the last invented and promulgated by the Satanic press. It has a certain, irresistible tendency to vitiate suffrage, degrade legislation, disturb society, abolish religion, superinduce crime, disease, insanity, idiocy, physical decay, deformity, suicide and early death, abrogate matrimony and extinguish the race.

Every count in this terrible charge is capable of being sustained by the most abundant evidence in history, analogy, facts of daily experience, the declarations of religion, and evidences of the legal and medical sciences.

It is absolutely anti-catholic and unchristian, and could not exist, much less flourish, in an age not far gone on the road to ruin.

It is the Catholic Church, and she alone, which guarantees the rights, freedom, and honor of women. She raises them to a participation in her ministry and apostleship, and pledges herself and all the power of heaven to the protection of the humblest as well as the most exalted of the sex, in her rights and dignity as woman, wife, and mother. She has suffered persecution and dismemberment rather than yield an iota of the vested rights of helpless woman; she has decreed the immaculate conception, the most perfect testimony of the exalted function of maternity and the crowning human glory of the sex, and raised one of their number to be queen of heaven, the crowning superhuman glory.

All that woman can claim is accorded to her by the church, and asserted as her indefeasible right. The only security for woman, her only refuge from the artifice of men and the undeniable oppression of society, is in the church, and the legislation deduced from the original organic law; in the inviolability of the marriage contract, and the sacramental character of marriage.

The difficult and vexed question of mixed education obtrudes itself upon our attention at every step of a discussion like the one in which we are engaged. It is not our purpose to enter upon its details at present. The chief pastors in solemn council assembled will undoubtedly decide upon the line of conduct most expedient for us to follow. While asserting the absolute dependence of natural science for its truth and perpetuity upon divine illumination, we do not intend to disparage human learning and the pursuits of philosophy and science. Philosophy on the intellectual and natural sciences is the most elevating and ennobling of human employments. As truth is simple in its nature and essence, every truth discovered, learned, and elaborated tends to draw the soul toward God. There is and can be no quarrel or discrepancy between revelation and science. The truths of revelation and the truths of science tend infallibly toward mutual illustration and final unity. It is only the effect of false science or imperfect science to divert the mind from God, the origin of truth, or truth itself, and enter upon the path which leads to error, doubt, ignorance, and darkness.

The supremacy asserted for the church in matters of education implies the additional and cognate function of the censorship of ideas, and the right to examine and approve or disapprove all books, publications, writings, and utterances intended for public instruction, enlightenment, or entertainment, and the supervision of places of amusement.

This is the principle upon which the church has acted in handing over to the civil authority for punishment _criminals in the order of ideas_.

It is the principle upon which every civilized government acts in emergencies, and it was asserted rigorously and unsparingly North and South during the recent revolution. It is the principle upon which a father would act in expelling summarily and ignominiously from his house a person detected in corrupting the minds, manners, and morals of his children. It is in fact nothing more than the principle of self-preservation, which is the first law of nature. It is not necessary to raise the question whether this principle has been abused by individuals for mistaken or corrupt objects. It is safe to say that it has been. The admission in no way invalidates the right and obligation involved. There are few good things which men have not abused.

Crimes, cruelties, oppressions and persecutions (especially in the order of ideas) are laid at the door of the Catholic Church, which are the fruit of human passion, avarice, ambition, and resentment, and that strange and devilish infatuation of cruelty which sometimes seizes upon a whole community, and which is analogous to the destructive and suicidal insanities of individuals. The church, however, in her official and organic character, has never abused this principle or any other, whether of discipline or policy. These moral and political catastrophes are wholly independent of Catholicity, are in direct violation of religion, and in disobedience to the commands and entreaties of the church.

Government and legislation informed, directed, and guided by Catholic justice is the most humane, benignant, equal, just, merciful, and forbearing of any that can possibly exist, and the temporal government of the head of the church is to-day the best in the world.

These subjects bring us back to the question of suffrage, and to the Catholic as voter. It is necessary that we should have just laws, primarily and immediately in regard to education and marriage, and that they should have the sanction of sound public opinion, without which the best laws are inoperative.

These laws must grow out of the Catholic conscience of the community, if they are to grow at all.

The labor of strengthening these foundations of society belongs to the Catholic voter, and to him we must look for future safety, peace, and permanence. Every principle of justice is assailed, every bulwark is undermined.

Social eminence, literary ability, exalted political station, and so-called religion combine to give public sanction to unblushing and monstrous adultery, and brand the scarlet letter upon a soul already crimson with guilt as it trembles on the verge of eternity.

Every species and form of vice, crime, and corruption are paraded and presented under disguises, more or less specious or flimsy, of science, literature, religion, or art.

The old are divested of gravity and reserve, and the young have lost the freshness, the sweetness, the innocence, the candor, and the bloom which should belong to youth.

The burlesque is invoked with horrid incantation to degrade the reason, paralyze the understanding, and brutalize the imagination, and oriental lasciviousness to apply the torch of passion to the intellectual and moral ruins.

Current literature is penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness, from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and flippant daily newspaper, and the weekly and monthly publications are mostly heathen or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand, stoical, cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or, on the other, empty and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver to caricature the institutions and offices of our religion, and others to exhibit the grossest forms of vice and the most distressing scenes of crime and suffering.

The illustrated press has become to us what the amphitheatre was to the Romans when men were slain, women were outraged, and Christians given to the lions to please a degenerate populace.

It is obvious, then, if what we have said be true, that there is a great work for the Catholic voter to perform.

The Constitution and Declaration of Independence guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Catholic values his life that he may devote it to the service of the church, and, if required, offer it for her safety and honor; liberty, to be and remain Catholic, enjoy freedom in the exercise of his religion, and transmit this priceless inheritance unimpaired to his descendants; the pursuit of happiness, that he may attain the happiness of heaven!

The Catholic voter meditates no invasion of vested rights. The constitution and government of the United States have the approval of the holy see. The Catholic is satisfied with the laws of his country, and only dissatisfied with local legislation, which contravenes the implied pledges of the constitution and the common law, based upon the canon law.

He demands nothing that natural justice and the legitimate interpretation of the constitution do not guarantee him. Freedom in religion entitles him to protection against open and secret attacks upon what he holds most dear, under the guise of state education, and which are invariably made in every system of uncatholic or infidel education. The great majority of English-speaking Catholics have had a personal and national experience of the bitter fruit of systems of education divorced from the control of the church, and in the French revolution they recognize the results of infidel science, literature, and sentiment practically applied to the reformation of society. France gave the world a terrible illustration of the violent, frantic creed and futile efforts which humanity makes when it would be sufficient for itself and become its own redeemer. France almost expired. Her Catholicity alone saved her. The Goths and Vandals entered Paris, but were compelled to retire. They entered ancient Rome, and remained.

With these truths, lessons, and experiences before his mind, the Catholic anxiously considers the subject of public education, and is resolved when the question is adjudicated to sustain the decision of the church. If he cannot peacefully enact legitimate, equal, and just regulations, he will consent to bear, as he has done before, a double burden; but he, for his part, will make sure that his children are taught to discriminate between the specious and false assertions which are put forth as history and history itself, between human philanthropy and divine charity, between communism and the communion of saints, between spiritism and those things which are spiritual, between pure, noble, and lovely sentiments and a rotting sentimentalism, between the false and the true, injustice and justice, the human and the divine.

By an extraordinary example of divine justice, and the operation of the law of compensation, the men and their descendants who uprooted Catholicity in England and Ireland; who extinguished, as far as they were able, Catholic literature and tradition; who destroyed the venerable seats of learning and charity, sacked the monasteries and despoiled the abbeys, were compelled to prepare a home for Catholics, and establish a political order most acceptable to them, and capable under Catholic auspices of attaining the highest degree of temporal happiness and prosperity.

The men who composed the Protector's famous Ironsides levelled the New England forests and subdued the savage, and now in every city, village, and hamlet of this fair land the cross which they tore down again rises aloft, the first to kindle in the saluting beams of the morning sun, the last to detain his parting lingering rays, and thousands of happy, prosperous people the descendants of those whom Cromwell's dragoons trampled under their bloody hoofs, assemble around that altar and assist at that mass which he could not abide.

The grim old regicide who sleeps his last sleep on the green behind Centre church, in New Haven, if he could rise from his grave some pleasant Sunday morning, would believe that time and old ocean had both been rolled away, and that he was in merry, happy Catholic England of five hundred years ago.

The past has been vindicated; wrongs have been righted.

The uncompromising defence of the rights of Queen Catharine is justified. The Goddess of Reason, in the person of a prostitute, enthroned on the high altar of Notre Dame, has given place to a Catholic lady, wife, mother, and queen, who reigns enthroned in the hearts of her people, the type of every royal, womanly, and Christian virtue.

Absolute Cæsarism itself, touched by Catholic justice, has voluntarily conceded constitutional government, and the successor of him who was both the child and the victim of the revolution, who dragged Pius VII. from the chair of Peter to a French prison, upholds the chief of the apostles as he sits to-day enthroned prince and patriarch and apostle of the assembled and united episcopate of the world.

It is time for Catholics to cease complaining. The church is vindicated. They are vindicated. Reason, science, and religion are united in a species of intellectual trinity, capable of presiding over and directing all human, temporal, and eternal destinies. All that remains is for the individual Catholic, the Catholic voter, to play well his part in the drama whose acts are realities, whose curtain will never fall, and where the only change of scene will be when the vault of the heavens parts in twain and the splendor of the eternal world bursts upon his enraptured vision.

It is in the power of the Catholic voter of the nineteenth century to achieve a consummation such as perhaps saints and prophets have dreamed, but never seen. It is your part, Catholic freemen and electors, to perpetuate the latest and most perfect effort in the human science of government--the constitution of our glorious and beloved country; to check the current of corruption in literature, manners, and politics.

It is in your power to arrest the progress of demoralizing and disintegrating legislation on the subject of marriage and suffrage, and to provide the means for the permanent endowment of colleges, seminaries, and universities. It is in your power to elect able, honest, and virtuous men to office, and to reunite the principles of government with the principles of religion.

Will you respond to the offer which is made you in this country and the nineteenth century, and perfect and complete what may not unlikely be the last opportunity for achieving temporal prosperity in harmony with Catholic justice?

DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.