chapter one hundred and thirty was found[139] in the pylone of the great

temple in the reign of King Housapti, who was the fifth monarch of the first dynasty, and Menkera built the third pyramid. Thus, at these periods, certain parts of the _Todtenbuch_ were discovered as antiquities, the memory of which had been lost; and certainly we find on the wooden mummy-coffins of the eleventh dynasty long passages from it, proving, therefore, its composition to have been long anterior to the Shepherd Kings, and consequently long before Abraham.

Footnote 139:

_Catalogues des MSS. Egyptiens_, p. 51.

The obelisks, or inscriptions in stone, have not, however, the impersonal and theological character of the writing on the rolls. On the obelisks the name of the departed is usually inscribed side by side with the names of his family, parents or children, and his titles and occupation are there given. At the head of the monument he is represented making an offering to Osiris, his judge, or his children are there depicted offering libations before the image of their father and reciting the liturgical hymns for his soul.

It is not rare to find the dead himself asking for prayers. The funereal obelisk of Neb-oua at Boulag ends thus: “To the living; to the ancients of the earth; to the priests; to the panegyrists; to the divine fathers; to all who see this obelisk: make for me your songs, beloved of Osiris, the Eternal King. Say: May the delicious breath of life breathe in the face of Neb-oua, the first prophet of Osiris, the acknowledged just one.”[140]

Footnote 140:

_Notice des Princip. Monum._ Par M. Mariette.

Again, on the lid of a sarcophagus in the same museum (No. 978) we find a “Prayer to be said by every person who draws near to this tomb: May God give thee light,[141] and may its beams shine into thine eyes; may he breathe into thy nostrils the breath which thou must breathe to live.”

Footnote 141:

As this formula recalls the _Lux perpetua liceat eis_ of the Catholic, so also we find on the tombs of Egypt the _Requiescat in pace_.

The personal details, which vary upon every obelisk, are accompanied by formulæ taken from the _Book of the Dead_, which recall the faith of the departed in the resurrection of the body; the rewards and punishments of a future life; the judgment, presided over by Osiris, his redeemer; and the hope of an eternity of happiness flowing from the beatific vision.

Here we have, in fact, the profession of faith of the patriarch Job, a further examination of which will show us that the analogy is carried into the minutest details. In regard to it we will first consider briefly the Egyptian doctrine about God and the Redeemer.

Although nothing was originally more simple than the theology of Egypt, yet nothing could well be more confused and perplexing than it became as the commentaries of the schools and the mythological superfetations of each temple developed in the course of time. From its earliest to its latest days Egypt believed in one God, personal, uncreated, almighty, the author and watchful preserver of the universe. How, then, it may be asked, can its exuberant polytheism be reconciled with this doctrine? In traversing the galleries filled with long ranks of the Egyptian deities—Thoth with the head of an ibis and the hawk-headed Horus being conspicuous among them—we pass along the stony piles of these antique and impenetrable monstrosities as if under the influence of a nightmare, while the words of liberated Israel echo from distant ages in our ears: “Os habent et non loquentur; oculos habent et non videbunt; manus habent et non palpabunt; pedes habent et non ambulabunt; non clamabunt in gutture suo.” And we ask what there can be of just and true behind the strange forms of these old-world phantoms.

The answer is contained in the fact that the Egyptians attributed to God different names and forms, according to the aspects and attributes to which they wished to give prominence, while, under each of these names and forms, God, in his inalienable infinity, remained always the same; and, as if they had anticipated our perplexities at the sight of these battalions of divinities, they have taken exceeding pains to instruct us on this point. As the Eternal, God had one name; as Creator, he had another; as Providence or Preserver, another; and as Judge and Redeemer of souls, the name of Osiris. In each sanctuary the one God of the whole country, living in a Triad which, without division of substance, expressed the phases of his threefold existence, was worshipped under a particular form and name. He had a special worship, rites, chants, and ceremonial, unknown in the neighboring temples; but the hymns and inscriptions constantly dwell on the fact that each temple and each ritual was in honor of the only God, to whom belong all temples, and to whom all prayers are addressed.[142]

Footnote 142:

An historical fact which exercised considerable influence on the religion of Egypt, and which helps to explain the multiplicity of the names given to the Deity, was that the whole of Egypt which Menes united under his sceptre was divided into _nomes_, each having its capital city; and each of these regions had its principal god, designated by a special name, but under these different names the same doctrine always remains of a divine unity. Thus by the side of the political there was also a kind of divine feudality. Tum reigned at Heliopolis, Osiris at Theni and later at Abydos, Ammon was over Thebes, and over Memphis Phtah. Each of these gods, identical in substance with the gods of the other nomes, easily allowed this fundamental identity. Ammon of Thebes gave hospitality in his temple to Min or Khem of Coptos, to Tum of Heliopolis, and to Phtah of Memphis, who on their part received Ammon with equal readiness into their own sanctuaries.

The Egyptians knew that the Deity is an unfathomable mystery and can have no name. “His name,” say the texts, “is mysterious as his being.” Considered from this point of view, he is called _The Hidden One_—Ammon, whose image is enveloped in an impenetrable veil. In his uncreated essence God is invisible, but he has revealed himself in his acts, expressive of his wisdom, power, and goodness, and each of these attributes presents an accessible side, by which the mind can take hold of the incomprehensible, see the invisible, and name the nameless One. Having in himself all powers and every form of greatness, his names and forms are without number, and the texts, as in the Hymn to Ammon, expressly designate him as _The Many-Named_—the _Multitude by the Names_.[143]

Footnote 143:

“The habit of reuniting in one worship the different forms of the Divinity continually led to their fusion into one personality. Sevek, of Fayom, associated with Ra, became Sevek-Ra; Phtah was fused with Sokari under the name of Phtah-Sokari, and Osiris, being afterwards joined to these, made Phtah-Sokar-Osiris. All the divine types were reciprocally interpenetrated and absorbed into the supreme deity. The names and forms of God were indefinitely multiplied, but God, never.”—G. Maspero, _Hist. Anc._, ch. i. p. 29.

The true name of God appears to have been, with the Egyptians as with the Hebrews, the greatest of mysteries. Probably it was not allowed to be written; in any case, as in the papyrus Harris, its utterance was forbidden. “I am He who makes trial of the warriors, he whose name is known to none. His name must be kept in silence on the borders of the river: whoso shall utter it, he shall be consumed. His name must be silent upon earth.”

We find this in the hymn to Ammon,[144] and the remainder of this text leads us further into the doctrine of a Trinity which Egyptian theology had preserved amidst other primeval traditions.

Footnote 144:

See papyri in the museum of Boulag.

“Creator of the pastures whereon the cattle feed, and of the plants which nourish man; he who provides for the fishes of the sea and the birds of heaven, who gives the breath of life to the germ yet hidden in the egg, who feeds the flying insect and the creeping thing, who provides the stores of the mouse in his retreat and of the birds in the forest[145]—homage to thee, the author of all, who alone art, ... who watchest over men when they repose, and seekest the good of thy creatures; God, Ammon, the preserver of all; Tum and Armachis worship thee in their words, and say, Homage to thee, because of thy immanence in us; prostration before thy face, because thou producest us; ... the gods bow before thy majesty, and exalt the soul of him by whom they were produced, happy in the immanence of their generator,” etc.

Footnote 145:

Conf. Job xxxviii. 39-41.

It will be perceived that Tum and Armachis appear to form, with Ammon, a triad, of which the persons are distinct without being separate, each person being represented as reposing in one divine substance, of which each is an aspect, of which each expresses an attribute, and of whose indivisible essence each forms a part.[146]

Footnote 146:

At Heliopolis the divinity appears under three forms: Atoum, the Inaccessible God; Choper, the Creator (the scarabæus God); and Ra, the Manifestation of God—the visible sun. It was not until later that we find a feminine divinity.

It is not to be supposed, however, that this lofty and abstract conception was appreciated by the multitude, with whom, on the contrary, the numerous names and forms of their deity degenerated into a monstrous polytheism, and who, in spite of the reiterated affirmations of the hymns and inscriptions, crowded their altars with fantastic idols.

But for the depositaries of the sacred doctrine there was but one God, living in the midst of the divine triads, uncreated, and the principle of life. He was also the principle of truth: “Hold nothing as truth but the Eternal and the Just.... Man is only the appearance; and the appearance is the supreme lie.... What is the First Truth? He who is one and alone, the Lord of Truth and Father of the gods.”

The explanation to this formula is to be found in the other text which supposes the Word to be the principle of the divine persons:

Hermes Trismegistes, commenting upon the above, says: “He who made the world made it not with his hands, but with his word.” And again:

“The luminous Word (_Verbum_), which emanates from the Intelligence, is the Son of God.... The Intelligence of life and light engendered, by the Word, another creative Intelligence, the god of fire and fluids, who in turn formed seven ministers, enveloping in their circles the sensible world, and governing it by what is called destiny. This spirit is necessary to all; he gives life to all, sustains all. He flows from the holy source, and unceasingly comes to the aid of the spirits and of all things living.”[147]

Footnote 147:

We seem to have here a vague idea of the Holy Spirit, with his Seven Gifts, which are resplendent in the world of nature as well as in the world of grace.

This spirit, Tum, or Tum Cheper (creator), is described in the texts as “Master of understanding, ... giving to all things their motion: when he wrought in the abyss of the waters,[148] then was produced the gladsomeness of the light. The gods rejoiced at its beauty.”

Footnote 148:

“And the spirit of God moved over the waters” (Gen. i. 2). “And God saw the light that it was good” (Gen. i. 4).

The Author of the universe is also worshipped as the principle of Goodness under the name of Oun Nofrè—the Good Being; and the inscriptions reiterate the appellation:

“His love is in the south: his graces in the north: all hearts are transported with his beauty.... When he traverses the heavens in his bark, and travels in peace through celestial space, his rowers are in gladness.”[149]

Footnote 149:

Hymn to Ammon-Ra.

Again, in the wisdom of his secret counsels, God is described as holding in reserve all that may happen in the future. “He is that which is, and that which is not,” says the _Todtenbuch_; “for that which is, is in my hand, and that which is not is in my heart.”

It has been necessary to dwell at some length on the Egyptian doctrines respecting the nature of God and his relation to the world before approaching another feature of exceeding interest in their theology—namely, _the history and office of the Redeemer_.

This mighty Liberator, the first hope of whom was given by God to our first parents, appears under various forms in the traditions of all the peoples of a distant antiquity, and among these traditions the most ancient and the most pure is certainly that of Osiris, whose noble and beneficent attributes raise him above all the divinities of other nations, represented as coming to bring succor to man. The Doctors of the church were themselves struck with admiration before this august figure, and did not hesitate to identify the name of Osiris with that of our Lord Jesus Christ,[150] being convinced that the belief respecting him was but an echo of the primitive revelation. It would indeed be difficult to explain otherwise its correspondence to the Messianic prophecies given later to the chosen people, or the analogies of the Osirian teaching with the accomplishment, in the life of our Lord, of the hopes which, during long centuries, it kept alive in the countless generations of Egypt.

Footnote 150:

This fact, which appeared inexplicable temerity on the part of Tertullian, is justified by what has of late years been discovered from original documents, which correct the classical misrepresentations of Egyptian theology.

The special attribute of Osiris is _goodness_; it is he who is _Oun-Nofre_ the Good Being _par excellence_; it is he who, with Tum (or Phtah) and Thoth, partakes of the divine essence, and is called, like Ammon, _Neb-oua—the Lord alone_.

In the papyrus 3292 in the Hall of Tombs in the Louvre is the following passage: “Hail to thee, Osiris, ... the great eldest Son of Ra, Father of fathers,... King of immeasurable time and lord of eternity.... None knows his name; innumerable are his names in the cities and the nomes.[151]... Hail to thee, ... the one who didst rise from the dead. He is the lord of life, and we live by his creations; none can live without his will.” The second aspect of the life of Osiris is his sojourn upon earth in human form, his death, and passage into the land of the departed. Plutarch tells us that Osiris, lord of time, made himself man and reigned on earth, giving his people wise and holy laws; that he taught them agriculture and reverence to the gods, going through all the country to instruct his subjects, whose attention he won and whose manners he softened by the penetrating charm of his words and by music.[152]

Footnote 151:

It is of these innumerable names that the Egyptians formed their long litanies, which are, as it were, the type of those of the Catholic Church. M. Ancessi mentions having heard at Cairo some wandering musicians chanting under his window an old legend in the simple rhythm in which the melodic phrase, incessantly repeated, has a close resemblance to the Catholic litanies.

The following is a comparatively small portion of the papyrus of Neb-Qed, where the departed, arrived in the hall of Supreme Justice, enumerates the faults which he has avoided, proclaiming, at the same time, some of the titles of Osiris:

“O thou who marchest, [_who art_] _come forth from An_! I am without fault.

“O consumer of shadows! _come forth from the double retreat_; I have not slain any man.

“O purity of the face! _come forth from Rastou_; I have committed no fraud on the measures of corn.

“O Two Lions! _come forth from heaven_; I have committed no fraud in the dwelling of justice.

“O Flame! _come forth in turning backwards_; I have told no lie.

“O Rampart! _come forth from the mysterious abode_; I have done nothing worthy of condemnation.

“O thou that vivifiest the flame! _come forth from Hat-Phtah_; my heart has had no evil intentions.

“O thou that turnest back the head (etc)!... I have been no detractor.

“O mystery of the leg! _come forth from the night_; I have not given way to anger.

“O light of the senses! _come forth from the mysterious region_; I have had no intercourse with a married woman.

“O blood! _come forth from the chamber of the lotus_; I have not been depraved.

“O thou who perpetually renewest that which is! _issued from Khem_; I have not been violent....

“O thou who hidest words!... I have not been prodigal of words.

“O Nofre-Toum in Ha-Phtah-Ka. I have not committed abomination.

“O thou who art unchanging! _issued from Dadou_; I have done no outrage against the gods.

“O thou who sendest forth the heavenly river! come forth out of Saïs; I have not made the slave to be maltreated by his master.

“O thou who vivifiest intelligent beings! I have not defrauded the loaves in the temple.

“O beautiful Neb-Ka! I have not profaned the meat of the gods.... I have not taken off the wrappings of the mummies.... I have not taken away milk from the mouth of the infant.

“O thou whose eyes are like a sword! I have committed no fraud in the abode of justice.”

Each title given to Osiris alludes to some mystery or teaching in the Egyptian theology.

Footnote 152:

Music amongst the ancients was, far more than it is with us, an agreeable pastime. Socrates declares that philosophy is nothing but a sublime music: ὡς φιλοσοφίας μεν οὔσης μεγίστης μουσικῆς. In the third book of his _Republic_ Plato goes much further, and affirms that the musician alone is truly a philosopher: ὄτι μόνος μουσικός ὁ φιλόσοφος. The chanted poems and traditions were for ages the depositaries of the laws, ritual and history of a nation.

Even according to the myths, however, righteousness does not long prosper upon earth. The Principle of Evil, enraged against him, compassed his painful death when his life upon earth had attained twenty-eight years[153]—often represented by twenty-eight lotus-flowers in the inscriptions, and fixed by the traditional age of the Apis.

Footnote 153:

It has hitherto been difficult to discover the circumstances of the death of Osiris, or the primitive tradition of his sufferings, about which several legends have successively prevailed. The one given by Plutarch cannot be of great antiquity. In the Isle of Philæ, which, if we may so express it, had a special _devotion_ to Osiris, the history of his life is given in a series of bas-reliefs in a small sanctuary on the west of the great temple, his death and resurrection forming the principal subjects.

There is a splendid passage relating to this god in Plutarch, ch. lxxix., _Treatise on Osiris and Isis_.

But for Osiris, as for the true Saviour, the hour of death is the hour of victory. He rises again, and reigns henceforth, king of an eternal kingdom.

The priests and faithful of Osiris could not endure the attempts made by travellers and philosophers to find a resemblance between this pure and lofty divinity to any of their own disreputable gods, or to fix in the depths of the earth and the abode of the dead the dwelling-place of him who had “no kind of communication with substances subject to corruption and death.” No other god had in Egypt so many temples and worshippers as this the favorite deity of the country, since, besides its own local divinity, each of the nomes worshipped Osiris and Isis, and thus the “Protector of souls” was, from the Mediterranean to the cataracts, the god of all the Egyptians.

The anniversary of the death of Osiris[154] was every year observed with lamentations throughout the land, until the hour of his resurrection, which was hailed with joy, festivities, and triumph; this people, always so anxious and interested about the future beyond the tomb, having for the “Lord of the life to come” the most deep and tender devotion. For, of all the phases of his worship, that which occupied the largest place and exercised the profoundest influence on the religious life of this great nation is connected with the office of Osiris in regard to each separate soul. All the funereal inscriptions dwell upon this. Osiris was not only their saviour but their judge. In the paintings and sculptures, and the vignettes of the ritual, he is usually represented enthroned in the Hall of the divine Justice, where, enveloped, all but the face and hands, in the shroud which had enfolded him in the tomb, and holding in his right hand the hyk, or pastoral staff (not unlike an episcopal crosier), and in the left a double-thonged scourge, he awaits the soul of the departed. At his feet are the divine balances, wherein will be weighed the heart of the dead. At the threshold of the hall Maat, the symbol of justice and truth, receives the soul and presents it to the Judge.

Footnote 154:

Most nations of antiquity have known the traditional mystery of a god suffering, dying, and rising again. The worship of Adonis, long prevalent among the Syrian races, penetrated, under the name of Thammuz, even into the sanctuary of Israel (Ezek. viii. 14). Macrobius speaks of it also among the Assyrians, and of the lamentations of Proserpine; and the same belief is to be found in the long poems of India. It is also probable that the Moabite worship of Beelphegor was analogous to that of Osiris, Adonis, and Thammuz (see Numb. xxv. 2). Women are here, as in Egypt, at Byblos, and Athens, especially charged with his worship.

The soul’s first words on being brought into the presence of its God were: “I am the Osiris [such a one],” giving his earthly name.[155]

Footnote 155:

In the papyrus Neb-Qed we find as follows: “Words, on entering the Hall of Double Justice to see the face of the gods, spoken by the Osiris Neb-Qed. He said: Hail to thee, great God, Lord of justice! I come into thy presence to behold thy beauties ... _on the day of the giving account of words_ before the Good Being. I place myself in your presence, my lords; I bring you the truth.”

This assimilation of the faithful worshipper with his divine type is one of the most elevated and touching characteristics of the Egyptian doctrine; nor does anything analogous to it exist in any other religion of antiquity—it is only in Christianity that we find it again. In the same way that the Christian is a living member of Christ, sharing in his life, rights, and merits, bearing his name, taking refuge behind the person of his Saviour, so does the worshipper of Osiris become a living member of his liberator, and another Osiris; and at the hour of death the soul calls for aid from him who had also passed its dark portal and come forth again victoriously.

Nothing is more touching than the prayers addressed by these suppliant souls to their protector; thus we read, in a papyrus of the Louvre: “Amensaouef the departed says to Osiris: Receive in peace this Osiris, Amensaouef justified.... Open to him thy gates, that I may enter there when my heart shall desire: may the guardians of thy pylones not fight against me, and may I not be thrust back by thy guards, that I may see God in his beauty; that I may serve him in the place where he dwells.”

To obtain a right to these favors, the soul, as in the litany already quoted from the Book of the Dead, recalled its innocent life; in the _Book of the Breathings_ the dead continues his justification by enumerating his good works: “O gods who dwell in the lower hemisphere! listen to the voice of the Osiris [such a one]; he is come before you. There is in him no fault; no testimony arises against him.... He gave bread to the hungry and water to the thirsty; he gave clothes to the naked;[156] he offered peace-offerings to the gods and oblations to the _manes_.”

Footnote 156:

Cf. Job xxix. 12-17, and xxxi. 16-22.

According to the result declared by the unerring balances, judgment was given, and the name of the righteous written down by Thoth in the Book of Life. The just had right to enter into the “Mysterious Retreat,” the place of eternal bliss, to eat the fruit of the tree of life, _Astu_, and rest in its shadow; to drink the waters of the river of life, to sit down at the heavenly feast with Osiris, and to find the fulness of happiness in the contemplation of the face of God. The impious were driven to endless punishment in the fiery gulfs of _Amma_, while “intermediate souls” were purified, by an expiation proportioned to their faults, in the Lake of Fire.

The most curious document, after the _Todtenbuch_, which Egypt has bequeathed to us on the subject is the long MS. entitled _The Book of that which takes place in the Lower Hemisphere_.[157] The author there describes, as if he himself had visited them, all the various localities of these regions of darkness. In it we advance, with Osiris and his dead, along the gloomy paths which frequently remind us of the wanderings of Dante. The way is divided into twelve “Hours” with their corresponding stations, and is peopled with mysterious phantoms and mythological forms, who sometimes stop the travellers and at others favor their progress. It is said at the seventh hour: “Who knows this, the panther devours him not.”[158] The name of this hour is, “He who repulses the reptile, who wounds the serpent Ha-her.”[159]

Footnote 157:

M. Deveria has given a summary of this book, in his _Notice des Manuscrits du Musée du Louvre_.

Footnote 158:

It is also a panther that Dante encounters at the entrance of the forest which is the commencement of the mysterious realm of Death. The Egyptian texts mention also the lion, of which the Catholic liturgy retains the remembrance in the Offertory for the Mass for the Dead: _Domine Jesu Christe, libera animas defunctorum ... de ore leonis, ne absorbeat eas Tartarus._

Footnote 159:

Each hour of this night has a name, according to the mystery accomplished in it. The eighth hour is characterized by the defeat of the great serpent, cast into the abyss. One of his names is _Apep_—_he who lifts the head_, the _proud one_, represented by a serpent pierced with arrows.

The most detailed description of the Egyptian hell is given in the third register of the eleventh hour. There we are shown seven goddesses standing, each armed with a sword;[160] the flames which spring from their mouths fall into seven gulfs, wherein condemned souls, hieroglyphic symbols of spirits, heads cut off, etc., are confusedly mingled amidst the fire. Each gulf is designated in retrograde characters by the word _Had_, reminding one of the Greek Hades; and each goddess has a name which indicates her powers and functions. It was this hell that was called also _the second death_—an expression preserved by tradition to the days of Christianity, and repeated by St. John in the Apocalypse, in which we find almost all the ancient formulæ of the religious beliefs of primitive times.

Footnote 160:

“In that day, fear ye before the sword; the vengeance of the sword is burning; that ye may know that there is a judgment” (Job xix. 29).

We have now briefly to consider Osiris under the aspect of _the Risen One_. When, like the sun overcoming the shades of night, he rises from the dead, he is called Horus; and although the texts insist upon the absolute identity of the divine personality who manifests himself under these two aspects, Horus nevertheless, in the mythological form of the doctrine, is called his son—the Avenger of his father Osiris.

This formula, “I am Horus, the Avenger of his father,” occurs repeatedly throughout the _Todtenbuch_; the Avenger being the God himself awakening from the tomb under a new form, and taking possession of the second life that knows death no more; that which happened to Osiris being repeated in each departed soul, of whom he was the type and the Saviour.

Later on Egyptian mythology furnished Osiris with assistants for this combat with death. The _Book of the Lower Hemisphere_ represents, at the tenth hour of the journey through the lands beyond the tomb, and at the moment when the trial is about to end, four gods, each bearing a bow and arrows, with the legend: “These with their bows and arrows, going before the great God, open to him the eastern horizon of heaven. This great God says: Choose out your arrows, draw your bows; wound for me mine enemies who are in darkness at the gate of the horizon.”[161] This combat is renewed for each soul, and the avenging God invariably intervenes with his attendant spirits. M. Ancessi considers that we have here an unexpected and natural commentary upon the words of Job, “_I know that my Avenger liveth_,” and proceeds to examine the sense of the word _goel_, or avenger, of the Hebrew text.

Footnote 161:

Cat. of Egypt. MSS., _Book of the Lower Hemisphere_, p. 15.

In the social order of the wandering tribes a traditional law regulated that, in case of murder, it rested with the family of the victim to take vengeance on the murderer. It was for the son to avenge his father, or, in default of a son, the nearest relative, who thus became the _goel_ of the slain. It is easy to imagine the terrible effects of this fatal law, which still prolongs itself through centuries, and sometimes does not end before a whole tribe has been cut off.

But besides the earthly avenger, there was another—God himself, who intervened at the hour of death to adjudge the punishment of the wicked and take in hand the cause of the departed. Such is, in fact, the character of the mysterious protector whose aid is claimed by Job when he exclaims, “I know that my _Goel_ is living”; he can count upon him, as in his tribe he counts upon the never-failing avenger of the cause of the oppressed.[162]

Footnote 162:

Osiris surrounded his children with so much solicitude that he is represented as even sending his attendants to visit their sepulchres. We find, for instance, the following in papyrus 3283 of the Louvre: “Said by Osiris to the gods of his suite: Go, then, and see this dwelling of the departed, that it may be thus constructed; hasten it for the moment of his heavenly birth with you; respect him; salute him, for he is honorable.” It is curious to find so early the _dies natalis_ of our martyrologies.

We need only allude to the frequency with which, in all poetical and imaginative nations, a metaphor becomes a myth, to perceive the facility with which the idea of the resurrection of Osiris became the birth of Horus in the cradle of his father’s tomb. Thus there was a violent death; there was a son; the next step naturally transforms Horus into the avenger.

How often is it the case that a word of apparent unimportance, having found its way into a dogmatic explanation, ends by entirely disfiguring its sense, like a graft left by an unknown hand in the bark of a tree, and which produces a complete change in its fruit![163] Thus, as time goes on, we find grouped around Osiris, Horus the Avenger, who is called his son, Isis and Nephtys, who are his sisters, forty terrible assessors who surround his tribunal and aid him as judge, besides a multitude of details which compromise and disfigure the ancient doctrine; while the text of Job preserves the mysterious germ of the Osirian doctrine in its simplicity and grandeur, and then applies it in prophetic allusion to the death and resurrection of Messias the Redeemer.

Footnote 163:

“How often would the Catholic faith have hopelessly foundered amidst the innovations which the heretics and sectaries of all times have attempted to foist upon her, had not an infallible authority watched over her and secured her integrity! I know nothing more convincing as to the necessity of this doctrinal magistracy than the incessant variation of the religions of antiquity. From a distance, and at first sight, they seem to have changed the least; whereas, on the contrary, their history has been nothing but a gradual and perpetual change, the laws of which it may not be impossible some time to discover.”—_Le Rédempteur et la Vie Future._

An additional probability that the words of Job contain an allusion to this doctrine is to be found in the remarkable identity of the remaining portion of this text with the formula of the Egyptian papyri. After his affirmation of faith in a living Redeemer Job immediately adds, with the theologians of Egypt: “In my flesh I shall see God, whom I, I shall see for myself; mine eyes shall see him, and not [those of] another.”

The passages in the _Todtenbuch_ and funereal inscriptions are numberless in which we find it said of the departed:

Again: “I come to thee, Lord of gods and men; I come to contemplate thy beauties.” “I behold the great God in the interior of his tabernacle; in this day of the judgment of souls.”

The resemblance is so striking between the Hebrew and Egyptian texts that comment is needless; nevertheless, we would guard against the supposition that the ideas uttered by the patriarch were borrowed from Egyptian theology; for, besides that in the words of Job there is the absence of any myth or secondary personage whatever, it appears certain that these doctrines, preserved in greater purity in their primitive form among the Semitic races, may be traced back to the time of the separation of the families of Sem and Cham, whom they respectively accompanied into their distant wanderings as their most precious heritage; but whilst the scribes and doctors of Egypt gradually enveloped them in an exuberant mythology, the pastoral tribes of Sem preserved them in the simplicity of the first ages.

And yet all these doctrines, which are proved to be the heritage of humanity, would have been lost and buried with the Egyptian dead had it not been for the intervention of Christ. In vain for three centuries did the loftiest intelligences of Greece weary themselves in studies whose result was to prove that man was incapable of forming true notions of God, the soul, and our destinies from the chaos of systems which enveloped the original revelation when our Lord brought to the human race the realization of its venerable traditions and the faith of its earliest days.

Let it not be objected that the doctrines of the Redeemer were more ancient than his advent and known to man before he taught them upon earth; for man having always had the same duties to fulfil in regard to his future destiny, of necessity God did not leave him in ignorance of them from the time of his origin; and when, later on, they were forgotten, and the whole world lay in darkness, then arose the Light of which a faint reflection in the firmament had long heralded the approach, though clouded most before the dawn.

MILLICENT.

I.

About two years ago we were sitting in our sunny _salon_ in the Avenue Gabrielle, my mother and I, she reading, I at my harp, when Tomlins, our English maid, opened the door, her face all alight with suppressed laughter.

“Well, Tomlins?” said my mother.

“Please, ma’am, it were _such_ a joke!” said Tomlins. “I was a-comin’ past the porter’s lodge when I 'eard a gentleman trying that 'ard to explain himself, and he 'adn’t 'alf a dozen words o’ French, he 'adn’t; and the _concierge_ he could make neither 'ead nor tail of what he was wanting to say; and it _was_ that funny I couldn’t for the life of me but burst out a-laughin’!”

“That was a shame! You should have gone to the gentleman’s assistance, instead of laughing at him,” said my mother reprovingly; “he would have done so had he seen you in a difficulty.”

“I think he was Hamerican, ma’am,” said Tomlins, in a tone which clearly indicated that she thought this fact an extenuating circumstance of her misbehavior.

“That makes no difference,” said my mother; “you know enough of French, such as it is, to have been useful to him, and you should have come forward. But how do you know he was an American?”

“He wore a white 'at, ma’am, and that’s what Henglish gentlemen don’t use to, leastways not this time of year. He be the family that has took the flat down-stairs for the winter.”

“Oh! he is a neighbor, then!” remarked my mother; and, turning to me, she added: “Perhaps I ought to go down and see if we can be of any use to them?”

“Indeed, mamma,” I replied hastily, “you will do nothing of the sort! We have had enough of American acquaintances. These are most likely enormously rich people, whose neighborhood, if we knew them, would be nothing but a bore.”

“We have known some very rich ones who were exceedingly pleasant,” urged my mother.

“Yes, and that is why I have registered a vow never to know another—not if I can help it, at least,” I replied. “Just as you have grown to care for them they sail away across the Atlantic, and you never see them again! No, please, let us have nothing to do with these people down-stairs! They may be perfectly charming, and, if they are, all the more reason for keeping clear of them.”

“This is all very selfish and not at all like you,” persisted my mother. “These people are at our door, strangers, and at the mercy of the _concierge_, who will fleece them and worry them till they are driven wild; it is a real act of charity to come to their rescue. I will send Tomlins down with my card.”

I gave up the contest. I knew that, when there was an act of kindness to be done, it was no use trying to oppose my mother, especially on such selfish grounds as my present ones. The card was sent accordingly with a message, and about ten minutes later up came the whole tribe—Dr. Segrave, Mrs. Segrave, and Miss Sybil Segrave. They were simply beside themselves with gratitude. Their delight on discovering that there was a deliverer at hand, under the same roof with them, was quite affecting. How they ever found the courage to come and face the situation at all, with such a lively horror of its consequences, was a matter of great surprise to us. Miss Segrave spoke French fluently, but this accomplishment apparently was reserved solely for ornamental purposes; her disconsolate parents had evidently not thought of pressing it into such vulgar service as parleying with the _concierge_ and the cook—two domestic enemies before whom they had already learned to shake in their shoes.

There was something about the three that smote my heart at once. There was a freshness, a frankness, a spontaneous trustfulness that it was difficult to resist. I made a stand for it, nevertheless, and was as coldly unresponsive to their exuberant warmth of manner as was consistent with politeness. The doctor, however, took me by storm, and in one minute and a half I had capitulated.

He was only doctor by courtesy; he had taken every degree that could be taken, but he had only practised as an amateur, being, as my prophetic soul had warned me, “enormously rich.” He was about fifty-five years of age, tall, slim, dark, but he had a quizzical expression of face, a twinkle in his eye, and a spring in his manner that made you forget he was not a boy.

Mrs. Segrave was a complete contrast to him. Middle-sized, stout, and unfashionable in appearance, she had the gentleness and the kindliness of half a dozen mothers rolled up into one; her voice was low, her manner simple almost to homeliness, but full of that easy self-possession that stamped her at once as a lady—a most winning woman.

Sybil—O Sybil! How shall I describe her? She was not a beauty, and yet she made the effect of being one. There was a brilliancy about her that is indescribable; it lighted up the room the moment she entered. Pull her to pieces, and she was nothing; take her as a whole, and she dazzled you. Her features were irregular, her complexion was nothing particular, but there was a sparkle, a glow, a grace about her altogether that were more striking than the loveliest coloring or the most perfect symmetry. I can see her now as she appeared to me that first day, standing on her high heels, a little behind the doctor and Mrs. Segrave, her black eyes glancing right and left like flashes of lightning, her scarlet feather, set like a flame in her black velvet hat, illuminating her olive skin, and her gold-brown silk dress glistening like a separate patch of sunshine in the sunlit room. A most picturesque creature she looked. I longed to hear her speak. No one was kept long waiting for this in Sybil’s presence.

“This is the very kindest thing I ever heard of!” said Mrs. Segrave, holding out her fat little hand to my mother.

“You have saved a family man from suicide, my dear madam!” said the doctor in the heartiest tone.

“Father!” protested Sybil, “there you are making _such_ a character for us! Mrs. Wallace will set us down as a family of mad Americans. I assure you, Mrs. Wallace, we are all perfectly in our right minds, and _very_ grateful to you.”

This sortie broke the ice into splinters. We all laughed, shook hands, and sat down, and the doctor began forthwith to pour out his troubles. Their name was legion. He had not been twenty-four hours in the house, and the _concierge_ had already driven him to the verge of insanity.

“If I could speak to the rascal, I’d be a match for him, and soon make him know I would stand no nonsense,” he went on to explain. “But that’s where he has me on the hip, as Shakspere says; he keeps jabbering on, and I can’t answer the fellow. I know what he’s driving at, I know he’s robbing me; but what aggravates me most is that he thinks he’s fooling me.”

My mother poured all the oil she could on these angry waters, and in ten minutes I could see that she and the doctor were sworn friends.

Sybil listened so far to the conversation with an air of amused interest, just as I was doing; then abruptly turning from it, as if she had had enough of the subject, “You are a musician, I see,” she said—my harp and piano stood open ready for action. “I am perfectly devoted to music! I will come up and play duets with you, if you let me?” I said I should be delighted.

“But I like talking ten thousand times better than music,” she went on. “Music is a way of expressing one’s self with another instrument than one’s tongue; but one tires of it after a while. One never tires of talking; _I_ never do.”

I could readily believe this, but assented as to a general proposition.

“Do you read a great deal?” she continued. “I don’t. I find life is too absorbing, too full; one has no time left for reading. Have you? Human beings are the books I enjoy most. I am so _intensely_ interested in my fellow-creatures! I like to study them, to turn them inside out, to analyze their characters, to exchange views with them. I do so enjoy discussing life. Don’t you?”

This time she did “pause for a reply,” and I was able to make one. It was not very satisfactory.

“No, really! You don’t care for discussing life! Well, I _am_ surprised at that. Dangerous! What a funny idea! But if it were, that would only make it ten times more interesting to me; there is such an excitement in danger! If I had been a man I should have been passionately devoted to tiger-hunting. Now, life is a kind of tiger-hunt, when one comes to think of it; one can always get some excitement out of it—watching other people at the hunt, I mean. Don’t you think so? People take such different views of life. Good gracious! one would never get to the end of one’s friends’ views, if one began, even on one particular subject. Take love and marriage, for instance; what _can_ be more intensely interesting than to discuss marriage with a person who holds views _diametrically_ opposite to one’s own?”

She rattled on in this way for half an hour: it was very amusing. I felt very tame beside her, and I fancied she must have found me insufferably dull and unsympathetic. I found out afterwards that I was mistaken in this; her estimate had been very flattering. On reflection it need not have surprised me; there is nothing a great talker likes so much as a good listener.

We all parted most cordially, with mutual congratulations on the chance that had brought us together.

“I feel as bold as a lion,” said the doctor as he shook hands with my mother. “I am ready to brave an army of _concierges_.”

“Oh! keep the peace; keep friends with him at any cost. If you make him your enemy, he will worry your life out,” was her parting injunction.

“Well,” she said, when the door had closed on our new acquaintances, “what do you think of them?”

“I think them perfectly odious!” I replied.

“My dear Lilly!”

“Yes. They are just the kind of people we are sure to get fond of, to make a friendship with, and then away they will fly, and we shall never hear or see them for the rest of our lives.”

“You are determined to make a tragedy out of it, so I will not contradict you,” said my mother. “Meantime, I shall enjoy the pleasant neighborhood, and trust to its not ending so badly. They are here for six months certain, and if they like it, and the countess likes to renew their lease, they may remain for six months more. They intend to make themselves very comfortable, meantime, and to receive a good deal.”

“Humph! They will be sending us invitations to their entertainments, I suppose,” I said.

“That is very likely.”

“They will have their share in their thanks, as far as I am concerned,” I said; and I sat down to my harp again. “I have no fancy to go and figure as a housemaid amongst their magnificent American toilettes.”

“I am vain enough to flatter myself that my child would look like a gentlewoman, whatever her surroundings might be,” observed my mother quietly, “and that she does not depend on dress for her individuality.”

What else could I do but jump up and kiss her for this speech, and declare myself ready to go and sport my white muslin and pink ribbons in the midst of all the latest wonders of Worth & Company?

It was not many days before I had an opportunity of putting this heroic resolve into execution.

You may laugh; but it was heroic. I realized this distinctly, even before the supreme crisis of the eventful evening came. Sybil herself came up with the card of invitation.

“Mamma was putting it into an envelope to send it by Pierre,” she said; “but I said that was the veriest nonsense, and that I would take it myself. Of course you are disengaged? You _must_ be disengaged!”

“Unfortunately, we are,” I replied.

“Why, Lilly Wallace, what _do_ you mean!” screamed Sybil.

“Just this: that I am a trifle proud, and just vain enough not to care to look a guy wherever I go, and that I am pretty sure to look that at your house on the 22d. You will all be dressed to kill, as you say—rigged out in the very newest fashions by the most expensive dressmakers in Paris—and I shall have to appear like a school-girl in plain white muslin. I never wear anything else; mamma can’t afford it. I shall have a new one, and she will give me a handsome sash and fresh flowers; but that is all. She will appear herself in plain black velvet, without either old point or diamonds. If you think we will make too hideous a blot on your splendor, say so honestly, and we will spare you the disgrace.”

“Lilly, you are the very oddest girl I ever came across in the whole course of my life!” protested Sybil. “Why, how _can_ you talk so? You will look perfectly lovely in your sheer white muslin. I only wish we Americans were not such fools as to spend all our money on our backs as we do; I can tell you most of us hate it and think it awfully hard to have to do it. But we can’t help it; we should get so laughed at if we went to a ball in white muslin that we should _die_ of shame.”

“Well, that’s a pleasant lookout for me!” I remarked.

“Oh! it’s quite a different thing with you,” Sybil declared, and with a warmth I felt was sincere; indeed, I felt she was sincere all through. “You are English, and we know perfectly well you have a different standard in those things.”

“And my mother?” I said. “What sort of effect is she likely to produce in her plain black velvet?”

“She will look like a queen—that’s all; you know she will, Lilly.”

I did know it; I had known it as long as I could remember. I had been brought up by my mother in a black velvet dress, and believed, nay, knew, that she looked as beautiful and queenlike in it as if its soft and sombre simplicity had been embroidered in gems and beflowered by all the Worths in Christendom.

I confess, nevertheless—and I do so with shame—that I felt mortified at her having to present herself in this splendid gathering of Transatlantic rank and fashion in the attire which had borne her triumphantly through many a stately Parisian crowd. I was really dazzled by the splendor of the dresses when we stood in the midst of them. There was no distinguishing the young from the old, the maid from the matron; silks, satins, laces, jewels glistened indiscriminately on all. There was a great deal of beauty amongst the women—there is sure to be in an American assembly; but the richness of their dresses surpassed anything I ever beheld. In a French _salon_ you may expect to meet a great deal of elegance—some dresses that stand out from the common level of taste and becomingness by their more brilliant hues and elaborate trimmings; but here all were brilliant, all were elaborate, all were magnificent. I really did feel an anachronism as I stood there in my innocent, fluttering muslin, while these superb, many-colored birds-of-paradise floated and rustled all round me, sweeping the dark carpet with miles of silk, and satin, and velvet, and lace of every hue in the rainbow. It was like being shut up in a kaleidoscope; the pattern shifted, flashing into new forms before my eyes at every turn, until I felt fairly bewildered by the moving glory. What kind of conversation could go on under external conditions like these? How were people, women at any rate, to collect their thoughts to converse on any possible subject except the one that was under their eyes, brought before them in such victorious, fascinating guise? If they were not talking of dress, their own dress, their friend’s dress, dress in general or in particular, they were most assuredly thinking of it. And small blame to them. I know I, for one, could think of nothing else.

Nothing could exceed the courtesy of our hosts. They led up guest after guest to introduce to us; all the magnates were presented to my mother, all the young ladies to me. They were very gracious, every one of them, but we did not get on well after the first exchange of commonplaces. How could we? What interest could a white-muslin creature like poor me have in the eyes of these sumptuously-attired young ladies? I said simply nothing to them, I suggested nothing; I was a blank. Sybil never sat down for a moment. She was untiring in her efforts to make everybody happy and pleasant and at home. She kept flitting about from room to room, bringing young gentlemen up to young ladies, seeing that no one was overlooked, that congenial elements were drawn together, that antagonistic ones were kept asunder. There probably were some antagonistic ones, though they were invisible beneath the gay, harmonious surface—that pale, stately-looking girl, for instance, whom I had noticed sitting apart beside a large console that separated her from the gaudy group standing close by. I knew she was a great friend of Sybil’s, because I had seen her photograph in a dainty gilt frame in the place of honor on her writing-table. I saw Sybil making a dart to her side every now and then, and interchanging a few hurried words in a tone of close confidence; and yet she took no pains to bring her forward or to introduce people to her. There was something peculiar about the girl’s air and countenance that drew my attention and made me wish to speak to her. I seized the first opportunity to whisper this wish to Sybil.

“The pale girl in the corner? Whoever do you mean? Oh! Millicent Gray. Yes, by and by. I don’t think you would care much to talk to her; I mean I don’t think you and she would hit it off very well,” said Sybil in a hesitating way; and somehow it was borne upon me that she thought exactly the contrary; that we should hit it off too well, and that she preferred, for reasons of her own, not to bring us together. I there and then resolved that I would make Millicent Gray’s acquaintance before I left the room—or die.

Did Sybil see this in my face, I wonder? She had a way of flashing a look at you with her round black eyes that suggested a power of reading you through and through which was sometimes uncomfortable. I felt it so now, and, trying to assume an air of supreme indifference, I observed, looking in another direction:

“Then never mind. I only fancied talking to her because no one else has been doing so; she looked lonely.”

Sybil’s rose-colored skirts floated away in the direction of Millicent Gray, and for a moment I half-expected she was going to bring her up to me. I was mistaken; she bent over her friend, and began talking in animated tones, gesticulating with her fan in an excited manner. Millicent listened apparently with more surprise than approval; there was a faint expression of sarcastic resentment on her pale, thoughtful face, and an imperceptible movement of her shoulders seemed to shrug away some remark of Sybil’s with smiling dissent; as she did so, her eyes turned towards me and our glances met. There was a mute recognition in them which we both felt. I blushed, feeling rather guilty for watching her so closely; she smiled, and, in spite of myself, I obeyed a law of nature and smiled too. The rooms were now so full that it was difficult to move about; there was small chance of the crowd swaying me across towards Millicent, and she sat on, surveying the scene from her nook with a face that was more expressive of quiet observation than enjoyment. She was dressed in white silk, with waves of tulle flowing over it, but without further ornament—neither ribbons nor flowers; she wore one large crimson rose in her hair, a long _trainée_ of leaves dropping down from it and entangling a rich curl of her dark hair. The relative simplicity of the dress singled her out as a very remote cousin to my white muslin, and I felt more than ever convinced we should prove sympathetic to each other. How was I to make good my vow to speak to her or die? The chances were that I should die, for just at this moment Sybil bore down on me from the rear, and took me in tow through the billows of silks and lace into her own boudoir, which was two rooms off from the central _salon_ where my pensive heroine abided.

“Are you having a good time of it, Lilly?” she inquired, darting her bright black eyes through me, when we came to a little breathing space. “What do you think of our American society? Are our women as handsome as yours? Are our young men as agreeable?”

“Four questions in one breath!” I cried, pretending to gasp. “Let me answer the first—the only one I can meet on such short notice: I am having a capital time of it. You are the best hosts I ever saw, all three of you. But, Sybil, do introduce me to that girl in white silk.”

“No, I won’t,” said Sybil. “You must want some refreshment. I don’t believe you’ve taken so much as an ice; I’ve seen you let the trays pass a dozen times untouched. Come into the supper-room and have something. Stay,” and she bent close to me and went on in a whisper: “I will make Mr. Halsted take you in. You see that young man with the fuchsia in his buttonhole? He is perfectly charming. I have had such a delightful talk with him just now!”

“About what?”

“Good gracious! About everything.”

“You have been discussing life with him?”

“Precisely.”

“And what has come of it? Has he proposed, or is he only hovering on the brink, poor wretch?”

“How absurd you are, Lilly, with your English ideas!” cried Sybil, still in a _sotto voce_, although the music drowned everybody’s voice. “You won’t understand that one may discuss life with a young man without meaning any harm!”

“Harm? To his heart, do you mean?”

“Or to one’s own.”

“Have you got one, Sybil?” I asked quite seriously.

“Yes, I have, and a _very_ sensitive one too, let me tell you,” she said in her vehemently emphatic way. “Mr. Halsted, will you take my friend to have some refreshment? Mr. Halsted—Miss Wallace.”

And off I went with this perfectly charming young man.

The first person I met in the supper-room was my mother, whom the doctor had just taken in and was plying with some delicious nectar of an American drink.

“My dear, I was beginning to wonder what had become of you,” she said. “It is growing rather late, is it not?”

The doctor protested, but we made good the opportunity as soon as his hospitable back was turned, and disappeared from the brilliant scene.

And Millicent Gray? I was of course in honor bound to die, as I had not spoken to her; but I thought it better to live, and try and make good my resolution in some other way. Chance favored me unexpectedly. A few days after the magnificent reception on the first floor I went down to discuss life quietly with Sybil for half an hour, when the servant said she had been obliged to run out for a few minutes to her aunt’s, next door, but that she would be back presently, and had begged I would go in and wait for her.

I had not been many minutes in the _salon_ when the doctor came in. He had been “down town” to Galignani’s, and had gleaned all the news that was abroad, what steamers were signalled, which had come in, which had sailed, and who had come in by the last arrival. The doctor was a terrible flirt. He sat down on the sofa beside me, and began to repeat verses from Tommy Moore about my “bright eyes that were his heart’s undoing,” and I know not what besides. Mrs. Segrave heard us laughing, and came in to see what it was all about.

“Ah! my dear,” she said, “he whispered those very same verses to me five-and-twenty years ago. Don’t believe him; he’s a gay deceiver. Charles dear, did you ask Mrs. Wallace what we were going to do about this claim the _concierge_ is making of twenty francs a month extra for bringing up our letters?”

“No, I did not,” said the doctor. “In fact, I had not time yet; but I dare say Miss Lilly can tell us just as well!”

“Oh! if it’s anything about the _concierge_ you had much better appeal to mamma,” I said to Mrs. Segrave. “She is at home now, and if you go up you will find her alone.”

“I see how it is: you want to get me out of the way!” said Mrs. Segrave. “You want to hear what more Charles has to say about your bright eyes. Well, well, I’ll go; I’ll not be a spoil-sport.”

She was going to open the door when Pierre opened it, and in walked—Millicent Gray. After the usual greetings Mrs. Segrave said, turning to me:

“You know Sybil’s friend, Miss Gray, of course? No! I was sure you had met. Then let me introduce you—”

As soon as we had got “well into conversation,” the doctor proposed that he and Mrs. Segrave should leave us young ladies together, and go up to consult my mother about this new imposition of the _concierge_.

When Millicent and I found ourselves alone there was an awkward pause for a moment; we felt as conscious as a pair of lovers thrown together for the first time. At last we looked at each other and began to laugh.

“I am so pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Not so much pleased as I am,” she replied. “I have been entreating Sybil to make me acquainted with you, and she would not. We came near quarrelling over you the other evening.”

“So did she and I! What could have been her motive?” I said.

“Did she not tell you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t guess?”

“No! Pray tell me, if it is not a secret,” I said.

“Oh! no, it’s no secret,” replied Millicent, laughing. “You are a Catholic. She was afraid to let me know you.”

“Lest I should contaminate you!”

“Lest you should convert me.”

I was silent from sheer surprise.

“You see what a dangerous person she thinks you!” said Millicent, laughing.

“I don’t see why she should,” I replied, rather nettled. “I never tried to convert her.”

“Perhaps because you felt it was a hopeless case,” said Millicent, who could not apparently see the thing in a serious light; for she was laughing still, and looked altogether highly amused.

“I don’t know whether I felt about it one way or the other,” I said. “I am utterly bewildered that Sybil should have laid hold of the idea of my being so dangerous in that line; from the moment I discovered what her notions on religion were I avoided even touching on the subject directly or indirectly, and yet she looks upon me as a lion or a fox going about and seeking whom I may devour!”

“No, no; you must not think that,” protested Millicent. “She looks upon you as dangerous, but in quite another sense from proselytizing. She suspects me—very unjustly, I assure you—of having what she calls Roman Catholic proclivities; and when I expressed a wish to know you—she raves about you in the most enthusiastic way—she said nothing would induce her to make us acquainted; that you were just the kind of person to whisk me into the Catholic Church before I knew where I was.”

There was something at once so absurd and so thoroughly characteristic of Sybil in this remark that, in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.

“I promise solemnly,” I said, “that I will not whisk you in without giving you due warning, and, moreover, having your full and free consent to the operation beforehand.”

“Thank you. That is generous,” said Millicent; “and to prove my sense of it I solemnly promise not to whisk you into my church without having your full and free consent beforehand.”

“Yes, by the bye,” I said, “it never seems to have occurred to Sybil that the danger might be mutual; that I ran a risk as well as you by our becoming acquainted?”

Millicent was hesitating in her answer when we heard a loud ring at the door, and in an instant Sybil burst into the room. She stood for an instant looking at us, and then cried out in her ringing tones:

“Well, is it all over with you? Has she done it?”

“Done what?” I said. “Miss Gray has not attempted to do anything except to make herself exceedingly agreeable.”

Sybil laughed merrily.

“I call that exceedingly smart—quite worthy of a Yankee!” she cried. “By the way, it puts the thing in a new light. Milly, turn on the guns and try and convert _her_.” And she pointed to me with her chinchilla muff. “That _would_ be a feather in one’s cap! Good gracious!”

“Then why should you not try for it yourself?” I inquired. “Sybil, I am inclined to be very angry with you for making me such a reputation. You know perfectly well I have never had a word of controversy with you since we have known each other; never done the least thing to try and make a Catholic of you. You know I have not!”

“I know nothing of the sort,” protested Sybil. “I know this: that you and your mother are the very most dangerous pair of Catholics I have ever met—just the kind of Catholics to knock one’s prejudices on the head with one blow.” And she banged the table with her pretty little muff. “You never preach, either of you, or talk controversy, or do any mortal thing to put one on one’s guard; but you do every conceivable thing to make one fall in love with your religion: you are the very milk of human kindness, you never speak ill of any one, you are always ready to help people, you spend your time going after the poor, nursing the sick, and heaven knows what besides; for you are up at cock-crow, and out by candlelight saying your prayers, when we are fast asleep in our beds. Milly Gray, now mark my words”—and she faced round and confronted Millicent with uplifted muff, in a Sibylline attitude of warning—“mark my words: this is none of my doing, and whatever comes of it is not to be laid at my door.”

“Sybil, I promise that, whatever catastrophe the future of this day may have in store, it shall not be visited on you,” said Millicent. “You have warned me of my peril, and, you know, he who is forewarned is forearmed. Tell me, now, what have you done with Mr. Halsted?”

“Done with him? What did you want me to do with him?”

“Either kill him or cure him.”

“I should kill him, if I could,” said Sybil. “I never knew so perverse a man in the _whole course of my life_.”

She dragged out the last words with an emphasis that might have led one to suppose the course of her life embraced a period of at least ninety-nine years.

“What is he perverse about?” inquired her friend.

“He won’t change his politics, he won’t go back to the States, and he won’t marry the girl he ought to marry.”

She enumerated these grievances with a gusto of indignation that made us scream with laughter.

“I thought his politics were on the right side—that is, on your side,” said Millicent when she had recovered her gravity.

“That’s the wrong side,” said Sybil; “_her_ politics are strongly Democratic, and there is not the ghost of a chance for him, unless he turns Democrat too.”

“But if he does not want a chance?” I ventured to put in.

“But he ought; I want him to want it. She’s the very sweetest girl in the whole of the United States; and her father is the dearest old man, and would give her a splendid fortune if Mr. Halsted would marry her. And everybody believed he would; only old Nick put it into his head to come out to Europe, and he has gone and fallen in love with another girl!”

“Who won’t marry him?” suggested Milly.

“_Cer_tainly not!” declared Sybil.

At this juncture Dr. and Mrs. Segrave came in, bringing my mother with them. She was dressed for me to go out with her, so I had to run off to equip myself, having first cordially invited Millicent Gray to come and see me as soon as possible.

She came the next day, and on a strange errand, considering the warnings of Sybil.

“I am anxious to be of some use to the poor,” she said, after we had talked some little time, “and I don’t know how to go about it here. I suppose there are no Protestants to visit, or at least they must be very few; would there be any objection to my visiting Catholics?”

“Not the slightest,” I replied, “unless you intend to whisk them into the Protestant Church before they know where they are; in that case I don’t think M. le Curé would care to enlist your services.”

“I have no sinister designs of that sort, I assure you,” said Millicent; “and to prove it, I want you to let me go with you on your rounds. I will make myself useful in any way you appoint, and I will do exactly as you tell me—as far as I know how, that is.”

I said, of course, that I should be delighted to have her as a companion, and that we should begin our partnership to-morrow; but my mother came in as we were settling about the hour we were to meet, and unexpectedly put a spoke in the wheel.

“Does Mrs. Gray approve of this arrangement, my dear?” she inquired.

“I have not mentioned it to her,” replied Millicent, her American ideas of independence evidently a little shocked by the question; “but she is sure to approve of it when I do. Is there any reason why she should not?”

“There may be. You are a Protestant, and this scheme of visiting the poor with my daughter must bring you in contact with Catholics of various classes—the poor, the Sisters of Charity, perhaps incidentally with M. le Curé and other priests. Before you embark on these perils I should prefer that your mother’s consent was secured. We English mothers have Old-World prejudices about parental authority, you perceive,” added mamma, smiling; “you will not mind humoring mine in this case.”

Millicent declared her perfect readiness to do so. She looked like one who would gladly humor everybody’s wishes. I was already in love with her. The charm which attracted me that night amidst the gay crowd had not fled “like the talisman’s glittering glory” on a nearer approach. I was at a loss to see where the point of mutual attraction lay between her and Sybil; but Sybil was one of those creatures who spirited away your sympathies before you had time to challenge the thief or lay a protecting hand upon your treasure. She was a siren, who drew you to her cave and did not devour you. Millicent was a complete contrast to her in appearance as well as in character; her eyes were deep blue, and her hair, which was very dark, whitened her fair complexion to the transparency of alabaster, and gave a stronger individuality to her delicate features than blond hair, which seemed their natural birthright, could have lent them. She was very tall, and her small, beautifully-formed hands and feet put the seal on the character of singular refinement which pervaded her whole exterior.

My mother was greatly taken with her. “You have committed yourself more seriously in this case, it strikes me,” she remarked when Millicent had taken leave.

“They are settled in Paris permanently,” I replied; “I asked her that at once. I should not have embarked on an intimacy with her, if they had been only birds of passage.”

Mrs. Gray made no difficulty about Millicent’s joining me in my visits to the poor; she observed, indeed—very naturally, I thought—that “Mrs. Wallace ran just the same risk in allowing her daughter to associate with Millicent.” Millicent returned next morning quite jubilant with this message, and we set out on our first walk together. We agreed that we were not to improve this or any future opportunity to convert each other. Was I quite sincere when I entered on this agreement? Looking back on it, I think I can honestly say I was. I meant that I would not discuss religion or say anything to prejudice Millicent against her own; that I would rigidly avoid controversy; and in all this I kept my word. But I did not disguise from myself that I had a great longing to see her a Catholic, and that I should do my best in another way to bring about this result. For this purpose I had her name put down at Notre Dame des Victoires for prayers. I asked several of my friends to pray for the same intention, and I made a point of praying every day for it myself. I took her to see Sœur Lucie, a Sister of Charity I was very fond of, and I interested her in the same object. I counted a good deal, too, on the impression which the faith of the poor was likely to make on her.

I was just then much occupied with a poor woman named Mme. Martin, who was dying, who had been dying these five years of a very painful malady. I think she was the first person I took Millicent to see. She lived in a room on the sixth floor—that is, in the attic—of a house where her mother was _concierge_. She had been better educated than the generality of her class, having been brought up as a teacher of singing. This pursuit had subsequently thrown her into the society of persons much above her in position, and the contact had contributed still more to educate and refine her. She had consequently acquired something of the varnish of a lady, and, without being really educated, she had gained that increased capacity for suffering which even imperfect education gives. Her illness had thrown her back into her original position and surroundings, and these were perfect misery to her. She could not bear the society of the servants—her constant one now, owing to that horrible French system of stowing away the servants of every flat in the same house into pigeon-holes under the roof, old and young, men and women, innocent, honest girls and vicious old veterans in dishonesty, all crammed higgledy-piggledy in a proximity full of dangers to both soul and body. This population of the pigeon-holes was insupportable to Mme. Martin; she had nothing in common with them nor they with her. They pitied her—for the French are always kind-hearted—but they resented her evident superiority, and often showed their pity in a way that hurt more than it soothed. She writhed under the compassion of these coarse, vulgar-minded men and women, whose conversation turned chiefly on the domestic concerns of their masters, how they cheated them, the tricks they practised on them.

They came to see, after a while, that she did not care for their society, and they ceased to inflict it on her, and Mme. Martin came gradually to be as isolated as if she had been living in a desert. She was glad of it in one way. We most of us prefer solitude to unsympathetic company; we had rather be left alone than intruded on by those loud voices and heavy steps that jar so painfully on the nervous atmosphere of a sick-room; but there were times when her loneliness weighed terribly on her, when she longed for any hand that would but raise her paralyzed limbs from a posture that had grown agonizing from prolonged immobility, that would give her the drink that was just beyond the reach of her arm. Her mother could come to her but very seldom; she dared not absent herself during the busy portion of the day from her lodge downstairs. Sœur Lucie was very kind, and came as often as she could; it was she who had taken me to her and begged me to look after her. I was the better able to do so that Mme. Martin lived only five minutes’ walk from our house. I don’t think I ever came in contact with a sufferer who edified me more than this poor woman. It was not that she was so wonderfully pious, or heroic, or resigned; she was all three by turns, but none constantly. Perhaps it was this very fluctuation that made one realize so vividly the supernaturalness of the struggle she was carrying on. You saw the power of the sacraments, the action of grace working on her soul, almost as visibly as that of medicine on the body. She was a woman of very strong passions, acute sensibilities, and ardent imagination; you can fancy what it was to such a nature to be immured in a room about twelve feet long by eight, with a roof slanting to the floor at one side, and a window in the slant, incapable of moving in her bed without help, dependent on charity for even that bed and for the bread she ate. For the first years of her illness this misery was so unendurable, she told me, that she thought it would have driven her mad, and the terror of this prospect was the most unbearable thing of all. She had not the consolations of religion then. Her artist life, with its alluring perils, its wild companions, its passionate aspirations, had led her away from the realities of the faith and gathered a mist before her eyes. But she fell ill, and then the mist began to clear away. The Sisters of Charity found her out, and the old sacred memories of childhood were awakened; her First Communion, with its sweet, pure joys, its lovely, solemn pageant, the bright companionship of kindred hearts starting with the fervent promise to the divine Guest whose first coming was the grand event, the supreme crisis of their little lives, the goal to which, thus far, their lives had tended—all this came back like a well-remembered dream at the sight of the gray habit and the white cornette. It was the old, old story: the prodigal had wandered into a strange country, and had grown homesick and turned back, and the Father had met him half way on the road. She had not fed upon the husks of swine, poor Mme. Martin; only “forgotten to eat her bread,” and hunger had driven her home. She spoke to me of her conversion in terms of such deep humility and compunction that I might have fancied her the most appalling sinner who had ever lived, if Sœur Lucie had not told me the exact history of it.

But it was not all sunshine and smooth waters even after this blessed welcome home. There were dreadful battles to be fought yet. She fought bravely, but not always with a smiling face and a glad heart. Oh! no. There were days, of such terrific anguish, such utter, black despair, that it used to seem to me sometimes that her faith _must_ fail this time, that nothing short of a miracle could save her now. And nothing else did. What greater miracle is there than the triumph of God’s grace over our corrupt and fallen nature, the victory of sacraments over the devil that holds our soul? It was a greater wonder to me every time I witnessed it in Mme. Martin. This presence of an evil spirit in her—a real though invisible presence of tremendous, almost omnipotent power—was so palpable that I used to feel something like the kind of terror one would feel near a person possessed. I always felt perfectly helpless while the crisis lasted, and would sit there and listen dumbly while she uttered her bitter, fierce words, not raving in loud, wild accents, but with a sort of hard, suppressed anger, a deep-down rebellion against the cruel, all-powerful will that was torturing her. There was no use arguing or preaching, or trying to make her see the sinfulness and the stupidity of it all; one could do nothing but bear with it, praying silently to God to come to her, and lay his finger on the wounded soul, and speak with his voice, and bid the winds be still.

One thing struck me with peculiar significance: no matter how fiercely rebellious she was towards God, she could always turn with a softened glance towards his Blessed Mother. There was an old print of the _Mater Dolorosa_ on the wall over her bed, and it was the strangest thing to see the poor sufferer lift her dark, vindictive eyes to it with a tender, compassionate, entreating glance, while words of almost savage petulance against the Son were still hot on her lips. Once I remember her bursting into tears as she turned towards it in one of these sudden appeals. The fiend was exorcised for that day. I sat beside her till she had cried herself to sleep like a tired, naughty child.

These terrible days were invariably followed by periods of compunction, humble self-reproach, and love so fervent and consoling that it used to seem to me they could never pass away, that the darkness could never return, that this time the rescue was complete and irrevocable. The humility with which she would beg my pardon for the scandal she had given me, the way she would upbraid herself for her base ingratitude to our Blessed Lord, were more touching than I can describe. She would look up fondly towards the _Mater Dolorosa_ with such an expression of tenderness on her haggard, sunken face, and say, as if apostrophizing it: “Ah! I knew she would gain the victory. I knew she would not desert me! _Pauvre mère! Elle a tant souffert!_”

The first day that I took Millicent Gray to see her she was in one of these blessed, penitential moods. It had lasted through several days—days of fearful suffering, and nights of sleepless weariness. She uttered an exclamation of joyous welcome when I appeared.

“_Que le bon Dieu est bon!_ I knew he would not keep me waiting much longer. My little stock of patience was just coming to an end!” And she smiled good-humoredly.

“What is it you want?” I inquired.

“I was dying with thirst,” she said, “and I managed to draw this cup to me by hooking my finger in the handle, but I was in such a hurry to drink it that it slipped from me, and I am all wet and half-perished!” And, indeed, she was trembling with cold; her hands were like ice and her teeth chattered. I hastened to lift her up on her pillows and repair the accident, Millicent helping very dexterously. I had prepared Mme. Martin for her visit, so merely introduced her as a friend of mine, who would be glad to come and see her sometimes, if she allowed it.

When we had settled her in some degree of comfort, Millicent and I sat down and began to converse. Mme. Martin was in too great pain to join in the conversation, except by throwing in a word now and then to show she was following it, but one could see she was interested in what we were saying. There was an unusual brightness and peace about her, in the expression of her face and the tone of her voice; I rejoiced that Millicent should see it, for I knew it could not fail to impress her.

“Was last night as bad as the preceding ones?” I said when we were going away.

“Yes; it was very bad. I did not get a moment’s rest till it was daylight,” she said; and she smiled quite serenely.

“My poor friend! How cruelly tried you are!” I could not help exclaiming. “May God give you courage!”

“He does! he does!” she cried fervently. “It is a miracle how good he is to me—a miracle.”

“We must ask him for another one, that your courage may be rewarded by a cure,” said Millicent kindly.

“Oh! no. Don’t ask for that! I don’t want it!” said Mme. Martin quickly, as if she were frightened the miracle was going to be wrought on the spot. “I don’t want to be cured, only to be sustained, and to go on suffering a long time—as long, that is, as He likes—that I may prove I am not ungrateful; that I love him a little bit after all he has done for me! All he has done for me!” There was a look almost of ecstasy on her features as she said this, her face slightly upturned, but her eyes closed as if she were looking within her, into that sanctuary of her soul where God was present. I felt, rather than saw, Millicent turn a sudden, startled glance towards me.

“That is the most precious and most beautiful of all miracles,” I said presently, “that our hard hearts should be softened by the cross, and that we should come to love it for His sake; is it not?”

“Yes,” she replied; “it is the one I have most prayed for. It is to her I owe it.” And she turned to the _Mater Dolorosa_. “In my worst moments I always felt for her; that my cross was nothing compared to hers—nothing! _Pauvre mère!_”

When we were out of earshot, on the landing about half way down the narrow stair, Millicent stopped, and, looking round at me, said: “Her brain has begun to be affected; she is a little mad, poor creature, is she not?”

“Yes,” I replied, “she is; she has got what we call the madness of the cross. Many of our saints have died of it: _la folie de la croix_.”

Millicent stared at me for a moment with an expression that suggested some vague alarm as to my own sanity, but she made no further remark until we had got out into the street.

“What did she mean by saying it was the Virgin Mary that worked the miracle for her?” she then asked.

“She meant that the Mother of Sorrows had prayed for her and obtained a great grace for her.”

“But God would have given it to her, if she had asked him, without going to any creature for it, would he not?” answered Millicent.

“Perhaps; but he would be more willing to grant it to a creature who was sinless and his Mother, and who had stood by the side of his cross, than to a poor weak, rebellious creature who had sinned a thousand times and more. Does it not seem likely?”

“Oh! putting it in that way,” said Millicent dubiously. “But he is God, our Saviour; he must love us more than she does. He died for us; the Virgin Mary did not die for us?”

“Well, really, Millicent—almost,” I said, and, stopping, I looked her straight in the face. “Fancy a mother that loved her son, her only son, as Mary must have loved him, standing by while he was being executed—I don’t say scourged, and beaten, and hammered with nails to a gibbet, murdered piecemeal with the rage of devils let loose from hell, but simply hanged, or even beheaded; would it not be worse to her than any death that ever a mother died? And then fancy her blessing the men that murdered him, praying for them, adopting them! And you can say the Mother of God did not die for us?”

Millicent made no answer, but walked on in silence. We said no more until we got to my door, and then I asked if she would not come up and rest a while.

“No, I prefer to go home, thank you,” she said, putting out her hand. She held mine for a moment, as if she were going to say something; but she did not, and we parted silently.

She seemed strangely moved.

II.

I did not see Millicent until the following Sunday, when she came to ask me if I would go for a walk in the afternoon.

Sybil happened to be there when she came in.

“What hour do you go to church, Milly—the morning or the afternoon?” asked Sybil. I saw the drift of the question: she suspected Millicent had been to church with us.

“I generally go in the morning; mamma likes it best,” replied Millicent. “She was not well this morning, so we are going to late service. And you?”

“Me? I don’t go to late or early. I stay at home and think it over,” said Sybil.

“Think what over?” I asked. “The service?”

“Services in general, religion in its cause and effect—life altogether, in fact,” summed up Sybil. “Will you two let me join you in your walk this afternoon, or shall I be in the way?” We both protested we should be delighted to have her; and at four o’clock we were assembled down-stairs in her boudoir, ready to start, when a loud ring sounded at the door.

“Good gracious!” screamed Sybil; and she dropped into a chair, the picture of astonishment and vexation. “I’ll bet any mortal thing you like that that is Mr. Halsted! Was there ever anything so provoking! I so wanted to have a walk with you!”

“Why need his coming prevent you?” I said. “The doctor and Mrs. Segrave are at home, are they not?”

“Why, Lilly, how can you talk so!” she exclaimed. “What does that matter to Mr. Halsted? He comes to see me!”

“Then you throw us overboard?” I said. “That’s complimentary. What do you say, Millicent?”

Millicent laughed. She was not sorry at heart, I could see, that we were to be left to a _tête-à-tête_. Perhaps Sybil saw it, too, for she said, starting up suddenly:

“I won’t throw you overboard. Let him call again. Let him come with us, if he likes. Have you two any objection?”

Millicent said she had none. I, however, demurred.

“You will think it absurdly priggish,” I said, “but you know I am half-French—at least, I live amongst the French, so I can’t afford to knock against their _hautes convenances_; and if I were seen walking with a gentleman without my mother or some married chaperon, it would make quite a _scandale_.”

“How inconceivably ridiculous!” cried Sybil, staring at me with round, shining eyes. “What a grand privilege it is to be a free-born American woman! I wouldn’t be a slave like you—no, not for the empire of France, Lilly!”

Pierre came to the door to announce Mr. Halsted’s arrival, and we all sallied into the drawing-room. Sybil burst out into regrets at having to go out, and then, pointing a finger of scorn at me, “Only fancy!” she cried—“you’ll hardly believe it, but it’s a fact—Miss Wallace says she dare not come out for a walk with you without her mother, lest it should make a scandal in the town! Did you ever hear anything so pre_pos_terously absurd, Mr. Halsted?” I crimsoned to the roots of my hair, and longed to choke Sybil on the spot. Happily, gentlemen being the same in all countries, Mr. Halsted saw my embarrassment and turned it off with easy good breeding.

“Miss Wallace has been brought up in France,” he said. “It is quite natural she should have adopted the notions and manners of the country; but it’s rather hard on us poor fellows. We are cut off from our most cherished prerogatives here in this centre of civilization. May I call this evening? You promised to teach me the Polish mazurka?”

Sybil hesitated. There was to be a dinner-party that evening, so the dancing lesson could hardly take place, and I knew he wanted to figure in the mazurka at a Polish house the next night.

“I can’t this evening,” she said musingly; then, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, she flung down her muff. “I see I must victimize myself for my country’s sake, and give up my walk to save you from making an exhibition of yourself to-morrow before the assembled nations. You two go and take your walk alone.”

Mr. Halsted entered a feeble protest, which Sybil did not even so much as notice, but proceeded to take off her bonnet and prepare for the dancing lesson.

We were not long on the road together when Millicent opened the subject of religion; Sybil’s idea of “thinking it over” being the ostensible pretext.

“I wonder you don’t talk to her about it,” she said; “you might do a good work in that direction, if you tried.”

“By making a Catholic of Sybil?”

“By making a Christian of her.”

“Poor Sybil! Is she as bad as that?” I said, laughing. “She is more in your line than mine, at any rate. She hates popery like fire; I would as soon try to convert the Great Mogul.”

“You are a great puzzle to me, do you know,” said Millicent, looking at me with a glance of searching curiosity. “Catholics as a rule are such ardent proselytizers, and you seem to have no taste in that direction at all.”

“Have you known a great many Catholics before me?” I asked.

“You are the first I may say I have ever known.”

“Then how can you answer for what we are as a rule?”

“I have always understood it,” she replied.

“You have understood, or rather misunderstood, many things about us,” I remarked. “Is Mr. Halsted in love with Sybil, do you think?”

“Mr. Halsted is _nothing_ of the kind. Nice conversation for the Sunday afternoon!” said a sharp, bright voice, and Millicent and I leaped half a mile asunder as Sybil popped her scarlet feather in between us.

“I made sure you would be discussing theology,” she cried, “instead of which I find you discussing me!”

“And why are not you discussing the mazurka with Mr. Halsted?” demanded Millicent and I together.

“Because I thought better of it,” was Sybil’s terse explanation, nor could we extract any other from her.

“What were you talking about before you began about Mr. Halsted and me?” she inquired, flashing her lightning glances from one to another.

“We were talking about you and the Great Mogul,” I replied, “and I was considering which of you I should first set about converting.”

“You had better begin with him,” said Sybil. “Have you done for Milly already?”

“Not—quite—” I said.

“I should like to have it out with you once for all, Lilly,” she said, “and just hear from beginning to end what your religious views are, and how far exactly they differ from mine.”

“You have views on religion, then?” I said in a tone of surprise.

“Certainly I have, Lilly Wallace,” retorted Sybil with indignant emphasis, “and I should like very much to compare them with yours.”

“That would be difficult,” I replied, “for I have no views.”

“What!”

“Not the ghost of one,” I repeated. “We Catholics never have; we listen to the church and accept all she teaches. There is not such a thing amongst us as a view; we would not know what to do with one.”

“Good gracious! That reasonable beings should let themselves be so gul—so—that you should—in fact, it’s beyond belief!”

“No, that’s just what it is not beyond; it is our belief that binds our reason and puts views out of the question,” I said. “We have our faith propounded to us by the church, and the church is the infallible witness of the truth; we have not to make out a creed for ourselves, as you Protestants have.”

“Then why did God give us brains, if we are not to make use of them?” demanded Sybil. “I would not hand over my conscience to any man or any body of men living; I would rather take my Bible and make out the right and the wrong of it myself.”

“Suppose you make it out all wrong—for you admit there is a right and a wrong to it—what then?” I said.

“It does not much matter, so long as our intention is good. God Almighty does not expect us to be infallible.”

“Certainly not!” I replied; “that is precisely why he made his church infallible, to save us from our own fallibility and teach us what to believe and what not to believe. If I believe black and you believe white, we can’t both of us be right; one or other must be in error, and God, who is Truth itself, can’t approve equally truth and error?”

“I tell you what it is, Milly,” said Sybil, turning round sharply on Millicent, who was walking on the other side of her, “it is _very_ bad for you to be discussing theology with Lilly Wallace in this way. Mind what I tell you, no good will come of it!”

“Why, I’ve not opened my lips!” protested silent Milly. “It is you who are discussing it; it was you began it!”

“If I had not, you would,” retorted Sybil; “you are perfectly _crazed_ on religious discussion. I see how it is going to end!”

I burst out laughing. Millicent, however, looked amazed.

“I will tell you what _I_ see,” I said: “that you had much better have stayed at home and discussed life with Mr. Halsted than come out here to bully us. It would be serving you right if I made a papist of you on the spot.”

Sybil saw that Millicent was vexed, and, adroitly dropping the subject, burst out into vehement denunciation of French conventionalities. If it had been any other country in the universe, Mr. Halsted might have come out for a walk with us, and we should have had an excellent time of it; for he was the very best company she knew. We continued, nevertheless, despite his absence, to enjoy a very pleasant walk, and to steer clear of burning subjects the rest of the way. The incident, however, left its mark on us all three, and from that day forth there was an imperceptible but a very decided change in Millicent’s “views.” As to Sybil’s, I never got a glimpse of them, so it may not be rash judgment to express a doubt whether she had any.

I kept to my promise of avoiding controversy with Millicent, and she, seeing my reluctance to gratify her curiosity on this point, gave up trying to overcome it. We talked very freely on religious customs and institutions, but whenever she demanded my reasons for believing this or that I evaded controversy by that inexorable Catholic answer so aggravating to a Protestant—“The church teaches it.”

The winter passed, and the spring, and my mother and I were preparing to leave Paris to spend the month of June in London. One of my greatest difficulties in going away was how poor Mme. Martin was to get on in my absence. Millicent had come with me once a week to visit her. She would continue to do this when I was gone, I had no doubt; but the poor soul was in a state that required a visit every day, and I hardly dare ask or expect that Millicent would break from her mother and her own occupations regularly every day for this purpose, or that Mrs. Gray would allow it. I told her of my trouble, and the next morning she ran in looking quite radiant.

“Mamma says she will allow me to go every morning from eleven to twelve and sit with Mme. Martin and do all she wants; is it not good of her!” she exclaimed, embracing me.

“It is!” I cried, “and very good of you, dear Milly. You can’t think what a relief it is to my mind! I was miserable at the thought of leaving her without some one to take my place of a morning; and she is so fond of you, poor soul! She is so touched by your charity—above all in a heretic!” I added, laughing.

“Charity covereth a multitude of sins,” said Millicent. “I suppose the sin of heresy is included?”

It was quite true: Mme. Martin was wonderfully taken with her. She admired her grace, the quiet distinction of her manner, the subdued elegance of her dress—a Frenchwoman has an eye for _la toilette_ so long as the breath of life is in her—and most of all the gentle kindness with which Millicent performed the little services of the sick-room. It was quite beyond her comprehension that so much sweetness and goodness should exist in anybody who was not a Catholic; it was most amusing to see her _naïf_ wonder at this phenomenon, and her surprise that I did not abolish it.

“But, mademoiselle, why do you not _explain_ to her how dreadful it is not to be in the true church?” she would urge again and again; and to my answer, “I have tried, but she cannot see it,” she would return the same wondering exclamation, “_Est-il-possible_!”

She evinced as much pleasure as surprise when I told her that Millicent was to come every day during my absence, and read to her and put things tidy in the little room.

“Now,” I said, “you must pay back all this kindness by getting the grace of the faith for her.”

“Oh! if I could but do it,” she exclaimed heartily.

“You may do a great deal,” I said; “your prayers ought to be very powerful with our Blessed Lord, because you are on the cross.”

She shook her head.

“If I lay on it lovingly, as he did,” she said; “but I don’t—not always, at least. I wriggle, and kick, and try to slip off it every now and then.” And she heaved a deep sigh.

“You are not a saint,” I said; “of course you have your ups and downs, but you would rather stay on the cross for any length of time than get off it, if you could, against the will of God, would you not?”

“Oh! yes, that I would,” she answered impulsively.

“Then you are all right,” I said. “Never mind the wriggling and the kicking; your heart is loyal to God, and that’s what he looks to. Set about asking for Mademoiselle Gray’s conversion, and he will not refuse it to you. Offer up all your sufferings for it from this time forth, and I feel perfectly certain our Lord will grant it to you.”

“Well, I will try,” she said, in an accent of simplicity and earnestness that sounded already like a guarantee of success; and then, looking at her _Mater Dolorosa_, she added suddenly: “I will ask _her_ to get it!”

I had brought some fresh flowers, and was arranging them in a pretty vase that Millicent had given her, when my eye fell upon a new book that lay beside it. It was _Notre Dame de Lourdes_, which Sœur Lucie had brought her the day before.

“I will get Mademoiselle Gray to read me some of it every morning,” said Mme. Martin; “they say it is beautiful. Do you think she will mind reading it?”

I thought not, and was delighted with the suggestion.

“I have a beautiful life of St. Francis de Sales which I will bring you,” I said, “and you will ask her to read it to you when this is finished. He was a charming saint, and had a great deal to do with converting Protestants; ask him to help you.”

We consulted what other books it would be advisable to get, and what snares were to be set in other ways for Millicent. Sœur Lucie was, of course, to be actively established in the service, the orphans were to be set to pray—nothing was to be left undone, in fact, for the capture of the unsuspecting soul. Of course this was all very treacherous and base, and we were no better than a pair of designing Jesuits—so our Protestant friends will say, if they should happen to light on my little story. I cannot help it if they think so.

We left Paris, my mother and I, and during the three months of our absence Millicent devoted herself like a real Sister of Charity to the service of our poor friend. The weather became intensely hot, but she never let this deter her; she never missed a day. She was inexhaustible in her devices for amusing and comforting the poor paralyzed invalid: she made her bed, and dusted her room, and kept it fragrant with flowers; she brought her little delicacies of every sort; she read to her by the hour—for, though it had been understood that she was only to devote from eleven to twelve to this visit of charity, she managed generally to spend double that time there. All this kindness called out passionate love and gratitude from Mme. Martin. She longed with the most intense longing to requite it by drawing down a blessing upon Millicent; she told me afterwards that the yearning to obtain the faith for her grew to be a kind of thirst that never left her day or night. She offered her sufferings—and they were manifold and terrible—her weary, sleepless nights, her long days of feverish loneliness, every pain and trial of soul and body, not once nor many times a day, but constantly, for her dear benefactress’ conversion, till it became an _idée fixe_ that was never absent from her mind, and found vent continually in interior aspirations or ejaculatory prayers; waking or sleeping, there it was, a part of herself, something that never left her. If she lay awake at night, restless and throbbing with pain, she comforted herself with the thought that it was so much suffered for this dear object; she fell asleep praying for it, and woke up to pray for it again.

We returned to Paris just as Mrs. Gray and Millicent were getting ready to start for some watering place, from which they were to proceed to the south and not return until the spring. Their departure was a real sorrow to me. I had grown sincerely attached to Millicent, and she to me. I had struggled at first to keep my feelings within the proper bounds, not to let myself slip into bondage and so prepare the day of reckoning that waits on all human affections; but the chains had coiled round me unawares, and when it came to saying good-by I found myself hopelessly a captive. We parted with full hearts and promises of mutual remembrance. Millicent was afflicted with that common vice, hatred to letter-writing, which so many of our friends make us suffer from, so we exchanged no vows in this respect, I steadily refusing to write unless my letters were answered. Our separation was therefore likely to be complete.

“You will pray for me, at all events?” she whispered as we embraced.

“Yes,” I said, “but on condition that you pray for me.”

Sybil went with me to the railway station to see the Grays off. She was sorry to lose Millicent, but I could see at the same time that she was glad to have her out of the way.

“I never expected to see Milly come so safely out of it!” she exclaimed as we turned away, after watching the train puff out of the station. “I could have staked my head on it that you would have made a Romanist of her by this.”

“You would have lost your head, then, and, such as it is, you would be worse off without it,” I answered crossly. “One really would imagine, to hear you talk, Sybil, that the faith was a disease that people caught like measles or the small-pox.”

“And so it is—that is—I don’t mean exactly that—but it certainly is contagious; everybody says it is, and that there is nothing so dangerous as living amongst good Catholics. I was terrified out of my life for Milly; I told her so over and over again, and did my very best to protect her. But I must say you have behaved very honorably, Lilly; I suppose there is hardly a Roman Catholic you know who would have behaved as well.”

“You mean to be complimentary, so I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,’” I replied, while I could not but laugh at her impertinence. “Just tell me one thing, Sybil,” I said: “You admit the right of private judgment, don’t you?”

“Do I? Why, I admit nothing else!” screamed Sybil.

“Then if Protestants, in right of their private judgment, choose to believe in the Catholic Church, what have you to say against it?”

“Only this: that in becoming Catholics they don’t exercise their private judgment, they renounce it,” said Sybil.

“_After_ they become Catholics; but in the first instance? The act of renunciation involves an exercise of the judgment, does it not?”

“Oh! if you are going to be metaphysical, I give in,” said Sybil; “I hate and detest metaphysics!”

“Well, just answer me this much,” I pleaded: “Do you think Catholics are all certain to be damned?”

“Good gracious! I don’t believe one of them will be damned. Not the good ones, at any rate—not such as you, Lilly!” replied Sybil with extraordinary vehemence.

“Then why, in the name of wonder, should you have such a horror of any one becoming a Catholic?” I asked.

“Why? Why, because it’s a dreadful thing to ... change one’s religion, and the Roman Catholic religion is full of superstitions, of mistakes of all sorts.... But look! I declare that’s Mr. Halsted on the other side of the street, and he sees us and is coming across!”

“In time to rescue you from metaphysics,” I said. “I hope he won’t stand and speak to us; do you think he will?”

“I won’t let him; I’ll make him walk on at once with us,” said Sybil.

“O Sybil!” I cried, “you must not do that; mamma would be very angry if I were seen walking with him alone.”

“What nonsense! You’re not alone; _I_'m here,” said Sybil.

“You don’t count,” I said; “you know you don’t.”

“Well, you talk of being complimentary,” protested Sybil, “but that beats all _I_ ever said in the way of polite compliments.”

“You must dismiss him at once,” I said hurriedly, for he was close on us now; “if you don’t, I’ll call a cab and go home alone.”

Mr. Halsted, serenely unconscious of being a cause of terror or contention, approached, smiling, with his hat in the air. He rather affected the extreme of French courtesy in his demeanor towards ladies; which was a mistake, for his native American urbanity, frank and free from grimace and palaver, was much more formidable, if he had but known it. Strange to say, it had not occurred to me before that he was here on invitation; but this fact flashed on me suddenly as I noticed Sybil’s embarrassment. It was certainly hard on her to have to turn him away after inviting him to meet her. I saw but one way to rescue her and myself.

“I am so glad you have come; you will accompany Miss Segrave,” I said. “I am rather tired, and shall be thankful now to drive home. Will you kindly call a cab?”

There was a little pretence of protest, from Sybil, of offering that we should both drive, but I overruled this and had my own way. I was glad to be alone. I wanted to think about Millicent, to look back over the short history of our intercourse, to look forward to its possible issue. I felt disappointed. I had hoped to find her, if not a Catholic, at least very near it, on my return; I had built so much on Mme. Martin’s prayers, on the example of her patient piety, and the living triumph of the faith which she presented. Then I began to reflect that after all I was quite in the dark as to how far these hopes had been disappointed. I had had scarcely any opportunity of judging. Millicent and I had not been once entirely alone since my return, and it was impossible to enter on the subject in a room where others were present. By the time I reached home I had cheered up, and began to take a more hopeful view of things. God works slowly, I said to myself; what are three months to his eternal patience? Mme. Martin was full of hope, though, like myself, the delay seemed long to her.

Her own day of trial was drawing to a close. I found her very much weaker, and altogether more worn and exhausted than when I left. Her soul, on the contrary, seemed to have risen to a higher and purer region, and to be breathing the air from the heavenly hills; her spirit of detachment, her love of the cross, had reached those heights where I could only follow her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken admiration. I had always felt a poor creature by the side of her, but I had felt justified in offering her sometimes what little help I could, reminding her of consolations and truths that temptation or overpowering physical pain had momentarily obscured. From this time forth I never dared to do so. Indeed, the opportunities which she herself had formerly furnished for it never occurred. That folly of the cross which had been a source of mild scandal to Millicent on the occasion of their first meeting had come to be her normal state. She had chewed the bitter wood until it had become sweet. The winter wore on and brought no change in her condition, except the gradual, almost imperceptible decay of strength which foretold the approaching close of the struggle. She continually asked for news of Millicent; I was able to tell her that she was well and happy. There were some American families at Cannes who wrote now and then to the Segraves, and generally reported of mutual friends; but Millicent herself perversely refrained from writing to me. I half suspected that there was a motive in this. I said so to Mme. Martin, and it consoled her greatly.

“Yes, it is very possible,” she remarked. “I often fancied Mademoiselle Gray wished to speak more openly to me than she did; the life of St. Francis of Sales evidently made a great impression on her. Sometimes, when she was reading to me, she would stop and look up as if she were going to ask a question, but, after hesitating a moment, she would go on without saying anything.”

“You must pray harder than ever,” I said; “there is nothing else to be done.”

“When I am in purgatory, please God, I will pray for her,” she replied.

“I hope you may go straight to heaven without going through purgatory at all,” I said; “you have suffered so long and so patiently!”

But she shook her head, and answered, with a look of austere humility I shall never forget:

“What are my sufferings compared to my sins—compared to the holiness of God?”

“Do you long very much to see heaven—to know what it is like?” I said, after we had been silent a while.

“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied. “I only long to see God.”

“Do you realize at all what the vision will be?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were lifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was indescribable. “I realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the most wonderful peace stealing over me—a sense of safety, of rest, of happiness. I can’t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise—_to see God_! That is what makes Paradise!”

She was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely above a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed attic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a thrilling solemnity.

Presently I said: “You will remember me when you see God, will you not? You will pray for me by my name?”

“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered, with a loving smile; “after my mother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how kind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all back to you.”

“There is very little to pay,” I said; “it has been a privilege and a delight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some commissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.”

I gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray’s conversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she would execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there straight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.

It was wonderful to see the calmness with which she lay there discussing the prospects of the life beyond, the simplicity and childlike fearlessness with which she watched the approach of death, while at the same time her soul was filled with a sort of awful reverence at the thought of appearing before God. It was impossible to witness it without having one’s faith quickened.

Christmas came. The winter was unusually severe, and the intense cold, from which it was impossible to protect her fully in her miserable room close under the thin roof, brought terrible aggravation to Mme. Martin’s sufferings. It interfered, too, with my daily visits; when the snow came I was compelled to limit them to one or two a week. This was a privation to both of us. I had grown not only deeply interested in her, but sincerely attached to her, and she, on her side, had come to love me with a love of sympathy as well as gratitude that was very precious. It was like being in the companionship of a soul in purgatory; she seemed so _loosened_ from this life, so lifted up, as if the nearness of God were all but a visible reality to her. The more the shadow of death closed round her, the more fully the light from the heavenly mount seemed to shine upon her. My visit was the solitary break in her long day—the only little breeze of human sympathy and comfort that came to refresh her. I knew it was a great trial to her to be deprived of it; she had often said the sound of my steps on the stairs was like a drink to her when she was parched with thirst; sometimes she greeted me playfully with the salutation, “_Bonjour, mon verre d’eau fraîche_!” But she had now grown so strong in sacrifice that it was difficult to trace the slightest symptom of regret in her. She would reproach me for coming out in the severe weather, declaring that she would rather never see me than have me take cold; that it was wrong of me to run such risks; and that there was no necessity for it, because she wanted for nothing, her mother came up twice a day to look after her, and so on.

One day she asked me if I had any news of Millicent. I had heard that very morning from Sybil that she was figuring with great success in some private theatricals at Mentone. But I did not like to tell Mme. Martin this; I feared it might shock her, or at least jar painfully on her present mood.

“She is very well,” I said. “You know she is very bad at writing letters; I only hear of her through friends.”

“I was dreaming of her last night,” she answered musingly. “How I wish she might become a Catholic before I die! It would be such a consolation to me to hear of it!”

“You will hear of it in the next world, please God,” I said.

“You think souls know what goes on on earth?” she inquired.

“Of course they do!” I said. “How could there be joy in heaven for the return of the sinner unless they heard of it?”

“Ah! yes, in heaven, to be sure; but I was thinking of purgatory. Do you think they know there what happens here below?”

“I see no reason for not believing it,” I replied. “Many saints and doctors have believed it; why should not our guardian angels carry messages from us to the angels of holy souls, if not to themselves direct, and tell them when we are helping and praying for them, and ask their prayers for us in return? It is a belief that fits in perfectly with the doctrine of the communion of saints.”

“It is a most consoling idea,” she said. “I shall be longing for a message from your guardian angel to tell me I have obtained all your requests.”

“Pray hard, then, that you may not have long to wait,” I said, kissing her face, that was looking up at me with a smile. I smoothed her pillows once more, and fussed about the bed and the room, with a pretence of busily setting things to rights, but in reality to hide an emotion that I could neither explain to myself nor master. I remember turning back, as I was closing the door, to have a last look at her. She made a sign with her head, and answered me with an affectionate smile.

On the stairs I met Sœur Lucie.

“She seems just the same, _ma sœur_,” I said. “How long do you think it will last like this?”

“Oh! not very long now,” she replied. “This cold will soon bring it to an end. She may be carried off at any moment.”

My heart gave a great thump against my side. I could not realize it, and yet it had been borne in upon me that this was the last visit I should pay her. The longing to kiss her once more, to say good-by with the full consciousness that it was to be for the last time, was so strong that I could not resist it. I turned back with Sœur Lucie, and went up again to her room. She did not seem surprised—at least, she said nothing about my reappearance. I waited a moment while Sœur Lucie questioned her, and then kissed her and said good-by.

“_Au revoir_,” she said, “_au revoir_. I will not forget your commissions; and mind you pray for me _always_.”

I was laid up with a violent attack of neuralgia for several days after this. One afternoon, about four days after I had seen her, a messenger came from Sœur Lucie to say that Mme. Martin was dying; she was to receive the Viaticum and Extreme Unction in an hour, and had expressed a wish that I might be present. The doctor was in the room when the message was delivered. I entreated him to let me get up and go, if it was possible.

“You will do as you wish,” he replied, “but you will do it against my emphatic prohibition. I won’t answer for the consequences, if you attempt it.”

Of course this settled the question. Had I been rash enough to try to disobey him, my mother was there to prevent it. I was greatly distressed. I had looked forward for so long to being with her at the last, to receiving her last kind word of farewell, and helping her with my love and my poor prayers through the great passage. My mother saw how pained I was, and volunteered to go and take my place, and tell Mme. Martin how grieved I was at being prevented. She just arrived as the room was being made ready for the coming of the priest. The dying woman had insisted on being taken out of bed and placed sitting up in a chair, that she might receive our Lord more befittingly on this his last visit to her; this was done accordingly with great difficulty and immense suffering to herself. She insisted, too, on being washed, and dressed in her best clothes, and, what struck me as still more characteristic at such a moment, she entreated her mother to put on her Sunday clothes, and to wear a cap which was only taken out on very great occasions. When all was ready, and the three assistants sat praying in silence, Mme. Martin signed to my mother that she wished to speak to her. “Give my love and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,” she whispered, “and tell her I will not forget her commissions.” Then, after a short silence, she said, as quickly as she could gasp out the words: “He is coming! Make haste! Light the candles!”

They did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the silver bell was heard on the stairs. Sœur Lucie told me this incident was not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they announce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a long way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual faculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was performed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest gave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he had finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.

About five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent, informing me that she had become a Catholic. “It has been all so quickly done; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the church,” she said, “that I cannot help thinking some powerful supernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning Mohammedan—although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the church by you and Mme. Martin—when one evening I went to act Racine’s _Athalie_ at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the people were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a gentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was a Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible narrative and Racine’s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as I had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking very pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My mother will be happy to see you, M. l’Abbé, if you would not object to call upon a heretic!’ I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say this. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He replied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very glad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics only knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy water! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I saw him alone. I met him several times again, and—well, dear, before the month was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me that I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any conscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead of some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of myself, and here I am safe in St. Peter’s net and happily landed in his bark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has invisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward, silly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for me?”

“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my commission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!” I cried out to my dead friend on reading Millicent’s letter. She has kept me waiting for the other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.

You can imagine Sybil’s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall certainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine displeasure, there was a high note of satisfaction—the exultation of a prophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was a great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly see she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other hand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written; I was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent’s destiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed from the beginning.

In the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and Sybil sailed away to New York.

A few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high excitement.

“Will you believe it!” she cried. “Mr. Halsted has taken his place in the _Tiger_ and is going back with us!”

“Well, and why not?” I said. “You and he will have delightful opportunities for discussing life on deck every day.”

Soon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they had discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be married to him in a month.

THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.

Among the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part of New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy Lake—called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks abound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for English and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what specially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit missionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in the year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake of the Blessed Sacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred upon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake George, after George I. of England.

May its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now stands on the right shore—about a mile and a half from the head—a building known as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,” from which, through the summer months, a silvery bell rings out the _Angelus_ at morning, noon, and evening. Strangers are informed that this building is “the monastery”; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses with all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross upon the roof—for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable “encroachment of popery” in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.

Among the curious who have ventured upon visiting “the monastery,” a certain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and looking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she replied, in the accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives me a feeling as if something was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the Saviour so small! It’s the Saviour that ought to be big.” Now, this sentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology. To one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt; but to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though poorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our friend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the figures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her remark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us, in her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and almost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated, she would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and not as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the writer’s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but that we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at all; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially iconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a Madonna-and-Child.

Here are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially iconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the presence of a Madonna-and-Child.

The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged in the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its condemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical Council. It sought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their being idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the Isaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and “manifesting itself” (to borrow the words of Döllinger) “as a blind and senseless hatred of the imitative arts,” we wonder that such a fanaticism could gain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting heresy which “shed more blood,” says the same writer, “than any which had preceded it.”

Now, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous heresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation; for, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study, that our mind had entertained, at some time or other—though not always culpably, we trust—nearly every heresy ever known. But that Protestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic zeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.

We say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is _necessarily_ iconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name implies—from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to the rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a soul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally seeks to _image_ his ideas—to place them outside of himself in a representative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters of religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations in all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most so the Greek (the _word_ “symbol” is Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of negations—which finds its vitality in protesting against authority—cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has nothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes images, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive, affirmative, dogmatic.

Again, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a tradition of iconoclasm—the principle of a false supernaturalism. The supernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our nature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was wanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with grace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by “faith only”; the righteousness of Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown over our depravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an immediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were no better than ordinary mortals—possessing no merit of their own and nothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.

Furthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of the visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural being evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the natural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and sacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a visible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now, images—representations of any kind—come under the sacramental system, inasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to commune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to invoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to us. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental system.

But, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as elements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the subject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is _God made visible_—God with a human soul and a _material_ body. Surely, then, to maintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the material is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the Incarnation.

This unfamiliarity will become the more apparent when we shall have considered an objection to what has been said on the iconoclastic tendencies of Protestantism. We may not unreasonably be reminded that Protestantism has passed through various important changes in the course of its career, and especially within the last half-century; that the doctrine of total depravity has long gone out of fashion and is practically extinct; and, again, that Protestants do use symbols now—such as the cross and the triangle—while some of them encourage painted windows, and even images, in their churches. Very true. And the change is not surprising—what with unnaturalness of doctrine on the one hand and conflict of principle on the other. “_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_,” says Horace—“You may drive nature off with a pitchfork, yet she will keep running back.” Then, as to principles, logic, like murder, “will out.” The doctrines of the Reformation, though negations of Catholic dogmas, took a positive aspect for themselves; and the right of private judgment, which had made them, was only consistent in destroying them. Within the last half-century—and particularly within the last quarter—the principle of self-sufficiency has found its extreme in the complete rejection of the supernatural. Its votaries who have not reached that terminus are drifting thither, if unconsciously. And hence a reaction, in favor of what are called “orthodoxy” and “churchmanship,” is perceptible among all earnest Protestants who retain belief in Christianity as something more than philanthropy, something with a divine meaning. Not that they at all suspect (except those in the front ranks of the movement—the Ritualists, who openly avow it) that they are going back upon the Reformation. But they are. And as they advance they take in ideas which are less and less compatible with genuine Protestantism. One of these ideas is symbolism, the representation of doctrines by signs or images—as the triangle signifies the Blessed Trinity and the cross the Redemption.

Our argument, therefore, that Protestantism, _as such_, is necessarily iconoclastic or hostile to images, holds good in spite of the fact that modern Protestants are returning to the use of symbols. This return means that they have abandoned the position taken by the Reformers, and have set their faces—how little so ever they think so—Romeward and homeward.

Here, then, comes in a very appropriate question. If Protestants are gradually relinquishing their old iconoclastic spirit—if nowadays they set up the cross to express their faith in the Atonement, and use the triangle as an affirmation of their belief in the Trinity—where is their symbol for the Incarnation? Of course they acknowledge the Incarnation. They bracket it with the Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Then why do they not equally symbolize it? Evidently, their not even attempting to do so—their having no symbol for it—is abundant proof of what has been just said, that, while they profess to receive the doctrine, they are strangers to its meaning. They understand by it merely the divinity of Christ, and beyond this keep it in the background and give it no practical bearing. The Atonement is everything with them; the Incarnation nothing. But Christianity is _the religion of the Incarnation_. For call it, if you will, the religion of the cross, that term does not designate it as a whole. The truth expressed by the cross depends on the truth of the Incarnation; and so does every other Christian dogma. Christianity, therefore, is either the religion of the Incarnation or it is nothing. _As that_ it must stand or fall. And if we would express it as a whole, we must symbolize the Incarnation. Now, the crowning proof (were any needed) that the Incarnation, rightly understood, has no place in Protestant theology lies in the fact that, besides not attempting to symbolize the doctrine themselves, all Protestants agree in a common aversion (not to say abomination) to the only symbol possible, which is—the Madonna-and-Child.

And why is the Madonna-and-Child the only symbol of the Incarnation? Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express the truth that God is man, except by showing that he has a Mother? In his divine nature he has no mother; then, if he has a mother, he is man. Whence the creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that he was “_born of the Virgin Mary_”; “_Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary_”—thus setting forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of Mary. That is, they show us Incarnate God as a Child in his Mother’s arms; they _symbolize_ the Incarnation (a creed is called a “symbol”) by the Madonna-and-Child.

* * * * *

Thus far, then, we have seen that the genius of Protestantism is hostile to images in general, and to the Madonna-and-Child in particular, because it is out of joint (so to speak) with the genius of the Incarnation. We have here a very singular spectacle: a vast body of professing Christians, who hold, with us, the doctrine of the Incarnation, and have not formulated any heresy about it in their “confessions of faith” (we are not including Unitarians among Christians; for they have no more right to the name than Mohammedans); a body of Christians who say with us that they “believe in Jesus Christ ... born of the Virgin Mary”; who keep “merry” Christmas, too, with us—Christmas, the feast of the Madonna-and-Child—who yet, for all this, instead of dwelling with delight on a representation of the Infant Saviour in the arms of his Blessed Mother, invariably show that they are not at home with it as a religious symbol.

Can it be that they are insensible to what is beautiful and touching? No; their hearts are as human as ours. Any other mother and child by an artist of moderate skill could scarcely fail to interest them. Moreover, it is fashionable with cultivated Protestants to admire _this_ Mother and Child where the question is one of art, not of religion. They display a very creditable taste for the Madonnas of Raphael and other great painters. Or if the association of religion add a charm, it is nothing more to them than the glamour which invests a symbol of pagan superstition. And in saying this we speak from experience. When, as a school-boy, the writer became acquainted with the mythologies of Greece and Rome, he found them full of poetry, and soon came to envy the religion of those old pagans—a religion so much in contrast with the aridity of his own. So, too, when, a year or two later, he first saw Catholic worship (it was Benediction, of all lovely rites), he remarked as he came away: “That religion is full of poetry.” “Yes,” was the answer—“of pagan poetry.” And then he was told how all the “corruptions” of Rome had been introduced from paganism; and, as an instance, the Madonna was cited. “They call her the Mother of God,” said the informant (a clergyman of the Church of England, who had learnt his lesson well). “You remember Cybele, the 'mother of the gods’? Well, there’s their Madonna—the Virgin Mary in place of the goddess Cybele.” He was told this and other things of like nature, and so became imbued with the idea that the Catholic religion was a paganized Christianity. Still, for this very reason (as we are free to confess), it had a fascination for us; and the greatest charm of all was its supposed goddess-worship.

At sixteen, again, our attraction to the Madonna was greatly increased by some stanzas of Lord Byron, in which that most wonderful of poets, inspired by the beauties of the Mediterranean twilight, and with some famous painting in his mind, thus apostrophizes Our Lady:

“Ave Maria! Over land and sea, That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!

“Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of prayer! Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of love! Ave Maria! _May our spirits dare Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!_ Ave Maria! O that face so fair! Those downcast eyes beneath th’ Almighty Dove! What tho’ ’tis but a pictured image strike, _That_ painting is no idol—’tis too like!

“Ave Maria! Blessed be the hour, The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft! As swung the deep bell in the distant tower, And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft: While not a breath crept thro’ the rosy air, Yet all the forest leaves seem’d stirred with prayer!”

Perhaps, too, we were even more impressed by a single stanza in another canto of the same poem, where, in his description of Norman Abbey (his own Newstead), he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child which had been standing amid the ruins:

“But in a higher niche—alone, but crown’d— The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child, With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round: Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil’d. _She made the place beneath seem holy ground._ This may be superstition, weak or wild: But ev’n the faintest relics of a shrine Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.”

Lord Byron, it is true, was not a Protestant, but a deist. But this makes it all the more evident how full of poetry the Catholic religion is—and particularly in its worship of the Madonna—when it could so attract a mind that rejected Christianity altogether. Other non-Christian poets have proved the same thing, and none more so than our own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow, whom, when we first read “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,” we supposed to be a Catholic. But Protestant poets, too, and of various persuasions, have evinced a sympathy with particular features of the Catholic religion as it appears to those outside of it, and especially with the Madonna. These see an _ideal_ in our Virgin-Mother. And none has expressed this higher view so well as Wordsworth in his celebrated sonnet—to which, perhaps, we are indebted for our own first glimpse of her as an ideal. It is one of his _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and comes among a series in which, as a true poet, he is forced to lament the destructive work of the so-called Reformation.

“Mother, whose virgin bosom was _uncrost With the least shade of thought to sin allied:_ Woman above all women glorified— _Our tainted nature’s solitary boast!_ Purer than foam on central ocean tost: Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon, Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast! Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween, Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend, As to a visible Power, in which did blend All that was mix’d and reconciled in thee Of mother’s love with maiden purity— Of high with low—celestial with terrene!”

Clearly, therefore, it is _not_ an obtuseness to the beautiful, or even to the ideal, that alienates the Protestant mind from our symbol of the Incarnation. No; the key to the puzzle is this: that the system of Christianity known as Protestantism cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol _of itself_—has nothing in it capable of being symbolized by either Madonna or Child.

* * * * *

The Incarnation, once more, is God made visible. As such it must needs create for itself a visible kingdom on earth: a kingdom over body as well as over soul—a kingdom in the world of mind, and equally into the world of sense and matter. The kingdom thus created will, of course, be in harmony with that which created it—the Incarnation—and, therefore, with the symbol of the Incarnation—the Madonna-and-Child; and so will find in the Madonna-and-Child the symbol _of itself_—the mould upon which it was cast.

Here, then, the reader will perceive what we mean by calling the Madonna-and-Child a _test_-symbol. Whatever system of Christianity is not at home with this symbol, or not entirely in harmony with it, is thereby convicted of being false, as not the kingdom of the Incarnation. So that, to demonstrate the true Christianity, out of all existing systems calling themselves Christian, we have only to confront them with the Madonna-and-Child.

Let us do this. And, first, we will call up all the Protestant communions, and particularly the two most important and respectable—the state church of England and her daughter in America; excluding on the one hand whatever sects deny the divinity of Christ, and on the other that party in the said Episcopalian churches which is working, more or less consciously, to bring back “popery without the pope.” Neither of these extremes is genuine Protestantism.

All classes of genuine Protestants, when confronted with the Madonna-and-Child, acknowledge it, of course, the representation of an historic fact in which they believe—the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary—but instinctively feel that it _means a great deal more_. They principally object to the Madonna, as giving the Blessed Virgin too much prominence. “We all know,” they argue, “that she is the Mother of our Saviour; but, beyond this, what is she to _us_?” They are not accustomed to speak of her, except when they mention her in the Creed; or even to think of her, except when they pity or abuse their “idolatrous” fellow-Christians. At the same time neither do they care to see the Child, particularly in Mary’s arms or by her side. “He did not remain a child all his life,” they say. “It was not as a child that he came out in public to work miracles and preach the Gospel; it was not as a child that he suffered and died. Then what is his childhood to _us_?” In a word, our symbol of the Incarnation reminds them of nothing with which they are familiar.

The secret is, they are not within the visible kingdom of the Incarnation; they are outside the visible church. Each sect will call itself a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians have something to show for theirs, because, in its outward form, it is a fair imitation of a real hierarchy. But when they say in the Creed, with us, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” they do not mean at all what we mean. To them the Catholic Church of the Creed is the collective multitude of omnigenous believers in Christ, instead of signifying a visible institution divinely endowed to teach and govern, and standing to them in the relation of a _mother_—carrying them in her arms and feeding them at her breast. If they _did_ mean _this_ by the Catholic Church, they would recognize at once in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of that church with them in her arms, and would, so far, feel at home with the Madonna-and-Child.

Neither, again, have they the Blessed Sacrament—that lovely “second infancy” of Jesus—or they would joyfully acknowledge in the Madonna-and-Child an image of the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her keeping.

But especially would their attitude towards Our Lady be different from what it is now. Believing in a visible church, they would not insist, as now, on having nothing between themselves and Christ, who, by instituting the church, chose to place an entire system between himself and them. And, seeing the type of this church in Mary, they could not vituperate our doctrine of the latter’s maternal mediation; not only because of the church’s mediation, but also because Mary, as the type of mother church, must needs be _Mother_ Mary.

Now, to the writer this is all the more clear because it is the history of his conversion. Having come—and, thank God! not so late as it might have been—to feel the necessity of a visible church as a mother and guide, at whose feet we could sit child-like and learn from her “the words of eternal life”—to hear whom would be to hear Christ; to go to whom, to go to Christ—we gradually discovered that the Church of England, in which we had been reared, and to whose ministry we were looking forward, was no such mother and guide, nor ever could be. We found that she did very well as a state church, a moral police, a “part of the civil service”; but that her success in being _fashionable_ was owing—_not_ to any _divine_ commission, _not_ to her speaking “as one having authority,” _not_ to her teaching one definite body of doctrine—but, on the contrary, to her being the creation of Parliament; to her _disclaiming_ all authority to teach, except as a fallible human witness; and to her leaving the utmost latitude for every variety and _contradiction_ of opinion, so that her clergy were equally at liberty to hold or deny such vital doctrines as baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, sacerdotal absolution, and apostolical succession. Added to these doctrines—which we had come to believe from joining first the moderate High-Church party, and then the extreme, or the Ritualists—was a parallel attraction to the Blessed Virgin, whom we had discovered to be truly the Mother of God. And the two ideas of a mother in the church and a Mother in the Blessed Virgin rose together and grew together, till we found them both realities in the kingdom of the Incarnation.

* * * * *

And now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting us to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when we take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of Christianity—to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and enter that sanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home there, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from establishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed Christianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as neither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and therefore—virtually and logically—not Christianity at all.

The Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet. There is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent communions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?

While on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church. Most Anglicans of the “High” school are—because they know very little about her. (A case where “distance lends enchantment”—and a very hazy distance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to know about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her worship of the Blessed Virgin is more “excessive” (to use their own phrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess that, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So far, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least—unlike other Anglicans, who protest especially against our “Marian system” (as they call it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of union with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church was not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly imbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was “Antichrist” and the “Man of Sin,” that the influence of this monstrous superstition haunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in some shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist was yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he. Nevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a usurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the Latin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out of communion with the other western churches. While under instruction for reception into the church we read Mr. Allies’ _See of Peter_; and our amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our indignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with such pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof from the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.

Well, then, the Greek Church _is_ in harmony with our test-symbol to a certain and considerable extent. In the first place, she holds the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the background, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy. And since she teaches the devotional use of representations, particularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are with the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly, although (as must be the case) they have not the same tender _mother_ in their church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith being by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of “our mother the church.” And, again, though they are made much less familiar with the Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a sham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real Presence is a living fact with them. So that they _may_ see in the Madonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.

The Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon which the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any single particular. If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox” Greek Church be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point, she is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in harmony with it at no point.

Now, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point: viz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a _divided_ church. But the Madonna can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe _one_ Catholic and Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be _visibly_ “one,” are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an invisible church. That a visible church, of which _oneness_ is a mark, need not be _visibly one_!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go further?

Again, if this theory of the church as a whole—that she is no longer visibly one as her divine Author made her—renders it impossible to see the type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will it find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a unity which it denies; and in the Child—either nothing at all, or something which it consciously rejects.

What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a church are a _bishop_ with a clergy and laity in his communion. The bishop is its nucleus, and _makes_ the church in the sense in which the head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession. So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they set at defiance both authority and logic.

A bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or representative church. Now, we see in this representative church the form of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is not. Every priest is “another Christ”—in the celebrated words of St. Bernard; and the bishop is the _complete_ priest, as having the power to confer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the Christ-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more the episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a Daughter and a Spouse—for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer and Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy Son!”) and her Spouse as the Spouse of all elect souls, among whom she is “as the lily among thorns”—so, too, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a spouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold relation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is “the first-born among many brethren,” his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an elder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother; and, if the priest, much more the bishop.

There is nothing fanciful, then, in our view of the Madonna-and-Child as a symbol of the normal or representative church. But what does this mean, if not that the collective church, consisting as it must of a multitude of single churches, has equally the form of the Madonna-and-Child—is equally capable of being symbolized thereby? or, in other words, that all single episcopates must be subordinated to one universal episcopate? Now, the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting (at least in theory) the principle of hierarchical subordination from the bishop up to the patriarch, stupidly contradicts her own assertion of this principle, and destroys the church as a whole, by rejecting the supremacy of the Pope. She is, therefore, in this all-important point, as much out of harmony with our test-symbol as the Anglican and the other Protestant sects; and is ruled out of court, in her turn, as neither the kingdom of the incarnation nor any part of that kingdom.

* * * * *

So at last we have only the Roman Church to contrast with the Madonna-and-Child. And small need have we to show how harmoniously at all points she corresponds with our test-symbol. The Catholic recognizes in the Madonna-and-Child not only the Incarnation but its kingdom. He sees there the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her hands; and, again, the church our _mother_ with her Christ-child at her breast; and, lastly, this same mother as our lady and queen, with her eldest son the Pope ruling his brethren from his throne on her heart, the _Sancta Sedes_.

With regard to this last point we think it strange that controversialists have made so little use of the Madonna-and-Child of the Apocalypse.[164] We proposed to conclude our subject with a proof of the Papacy from this vision, but must reserve it for a separate article.

Footnote 164:

Chap. xii.

COLLEGE EDUCATION.

The schools of the country have held their days of exhibition or of graduation, the young men are enjoying their holidays, and the teachers are preparing themselves for a new year of work. It would seem to be a favorable moment to say a word about the question that more or less occupies all who think seriously of the future—education. This word, so often used, conveys different ideas, according to the person who speaks. Its etymology undoubtedly gives it a certain definite meaning: _educo_, _erudiri_ are two words that signify the bringing forth from a negative state to a positive one—from ignorance and rudeness to knowledge and culture. But this general idea does not cover the whole matter. We have to consider the end to which this process is directed in order to have an adequate idea of what it should be. Now, this end we shall have clearly before us if we call to mind the end for which man is here on earth. Christians all acknowledge and teach that man is here to know, love, and serve God and save his soul. These two, therefore—redemption from ignorance and a rude state, and the end for which man is here—give us the right idea of what education ought to be. The appreciation of both will enable us to avoid two fatal obstacles—presumption and error. The proper state of mind of any one beginning a course of education is the recognition of his want of knowledge. There is nothing so hurtful as a spirit of pride; for this blinds the mind, makes one overweeningly confident of his powers, attached to his own opinions, and loath to receive instruction. We have heard in our day young people discussing the question whether a man were not able to work out the most difficult problems of human science of himself; whether he absolutely stood in need of the guidance of others; and whether there were any branch of human knowledge or achievement of past times _any one_ might not be able to attain to or accomplish, provided he turned his attention to it, and circumstances were favorable. And when a young man had succeeded in mastering a certain amount of learning or science, we have been witnesses of the very remarkable phenomenon of seeing him set himself up as one whose opinion should cut short every discussion, and form the law of belief or action for those around him. Any one having had any experience of truly learned men, who even may not have been models of virtue, must have been struck at the humility of mind they give proof of. They, more than others, appreciate how little they know of what it is possible to know; they see the vast field of knowledge of which they individually can but cultivate a part, and common sense keeps them from thinking themselves possessed even of all that can be known of what they are actually engaged in. They agree in spirit with the celebrated master of Plato, whose saying is familiar to us: “I know only this: that I know nothing.” The first requisite, therefore, for sound education is a humble state of mind, a disposition to be taught and receive the lessons with docility—a disposition not only needful in a beginner, but required even more the further one advances into the domain of knowledge. When one adds to the original and relative ignorance of us all the further fact of the ease with which we go astray, fall into error—a facility so great as to have given rise to the adage in universal use, “_Humanum est errare_”—it is impossible a man of sense should not recognize the necessity of keeping down the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and confess that, in not having controlled himself in this respect, he has given the most complete proof of the adage in his own case. We are therefore all in the same condition, all in need of learning, and stand in want of a teacher to instruct us and lead us in the path of truth. What is the truth we are to seek after, who the teacher we are to go to, results from the study of the end to which education is to be directed. We have seen that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God and save his soul, and this tells us what education should be. Anything that conflicts with this end is to be rejected; whatever aids us in attaining it is to be embraced; and as all truth is in harmony with that end, it follows that education can embrace all sciences that are truly such, while it must eliminate all error; for error has a logical effect of keeping us from the attainment of that end, especially where that error regards the higher branches of speculative education.

Here, then, comes in the most important element in the education of man—religion; religion, that is, to teach his head and train his heart. If, as is most certainly the fact, man was made for God and for immortal life hereafter, education that would exclude this element—religion—which regulates the relations of man with God, and teaches him how he may gain that everlasting state for which he has been created, is wanting most deplorably in the one thing needful. Such an education fits a man only for matter; is of the earth earthy. It has no higher aim than the objects around him; it is a guide that does not bring into the presence of the King, but takes one no further than the domain over which the King’s power is exercised. However much it may delight the eye with grandeur of scenery, proofs of power and of wisdom, it has no right or ability to introduce into a close communion with the Sovereign, the source of all it beholds. It is simply an unworthy servant banished for ever from the face of his Master. This kind of education, which we shall style secular, professedly excludes all religious control of any kind whatsoever, and it consequently relies only on reason and scientific examination. Now, reason has been found wanting. In the brightest examples of pagan times, familiar to students of history, are to be found not only actions nature itself condemns, but principles laid down by them subversive of natural society and of all Christian virtue—pantheism and immorality. And we owe it to Christianity that we have been rescued from the social life in which such principles prevailed and were in practice. Any one nowadays who knows something of men will bear witness to the fact that both the one and the other—pantheism and immorality—are on the increase and show themselves publicly in the speech of the men and women of to-day. This can be owing only to one cause—the divorce of religion from education. And because this is so, because secular education does not lead us to God, but takes us from him, a dividing line must be drawn between religious education and secular education; an insuperable barrier exists between them, which must and ought to keep all that believe in revelation on the side of a training under the eye of religion. And if this be the case with regard to all who profess belief in Christ, how much truer is it with reference to those who have given their names to the Catholic Church and look to her infallible voice for their guidance! In saying this we do not wish to speak disparagingly of the learning, the ability, or the zeal of those engaged in the cause of education who are not with us. We respect all those who are striving to increase the treasure of human knowledge or dispense it to their fellow-men. We join hands with all who are earnest in their study of true science, and rejoice in their success. We have no right to question their sincerity. But between their efforts and success in discovery, or in acquiring and imparting learning, and the way in which they educate, there is a difference most vital and essential. The one investigates the works of the Creator, while the other leads men practically, where it does not absolutely tell them as much, to ignore the Creator himself. Godless science can only fill a man with himself, while it offers no guarantee for the preservation of his morals and the attainment of his last end.

On the other hand, religion goes before the education which is allied with her. With her torch of faith she illumes the darkness of men’s minds. She shows them how much more beautiful is the Author of all the beautiful things they contemplate than are the objects themselves. She makes them behold in him the original essential beauty of which the universe is only a faint participation, and yearn for the possession of that Beauty and sovereign Good she tells them is within their reach; and she shows them how, under her direction, they may not be carried away by transient allurements, by what they see around them, but attain to an indissoluble union with that Beauty and sovereign Good—with God himself.

But it may be said religion has nothing to do with natural science; it cramps man’s mind, fetters his intellect, stops his investigation. It will do well enough in its sphere, but its action is hurtful to scientific pursuits.

Is this true? It is not true; and we can refute the charge by principle and by fact.

All that exists belongs to God. All science, all truth comes from him, the great First Cause, from whom all things proceed, in whom there can be no contradiction. His works, therefore, cannot contradict him nor contradict each other. Natural truth and revealed truth must, then, be in harmony, and we do not fear a conflict between them. The Catholic student of science is as fearless an investigator as is his rationalist _confrère_; but the former will not rashly give himself up to speculations the other’s further experience will oblige him to retract. The facts of science will never be in opposition to revelation, though the interpretation of scientific men may be, to their discomfiture later on. Even if the teacher of revelation, the church, should by any possibility, as is asserted in the case of Galileo, fail in a _disciplinary_ decree with regard to scientific research, such decrees not being infallible utterances of the Holy See, there remains always the remedy of a reversal when the incontestable proof of the contrary, such as he did not bring forward, shall be produced. So spoke Cardinal Bellarmine, one of Galileo’s judges. Though we may safely say that those in charge of the interests of the church do well in being exceedingly careful how they interfere with scientific investigation, it nevertheless may become necessary at times to curb the license of those who undertake to interpret the truths of revelation according to their ideas or appreciation of science. How many scientific theories fall to pieces every day! And is it not reasonable that those who believe in a revelation should not be left at the mercy of every clever scientific man who is pleased to have a tilt against it? Let any scientific truth be fully proved, and the Catholic Church will be the first to applaud, for it redounds to the glory of her Head.

We need not, however, confine ourselves to this negative way of advocating the cause of revelation as friendly to science, for there is no dearth of positive proof of the fact.

Revelation is positively of advantage to the study of science. It is clear that any one who keeps me, when on a journey, from going out of my way saves me an amount of time and trouble. Instead of wandering in the woods and bypaths, I am enabled to keep the highway and so reach sooner my destination. This is one of the important services revelation renders science. It tells us: Don’t direct your attention hither or thither; for you will find out you are wrong, after losing precious time and making yourself a laughing-stock. Don’t go in search of the “missing link,” for you won’t find it. Don’t divide the unity of the human race, for it is one—of one man and one woman. Don’t grovel with the materialists; for man has a spirit, and he is destined for a better life hereafter. Such like warnings we have from revelation, and, instead of going astray with evolutionists and so-called philosophers, we employ our time and talents on points that are serious and practical in science and nature; and Heaven knows there are plenty of these to engage us. The result is useful knowledge that does not undo but builds up society and perfects civilization. For this our grateful thanks are due revelation.

Then, again, revelation opens up to us new fields of thought. It gives us an insight into what we could not otherwise know. It is as if chance discovered to us some principle of art or science no one had before suspected. Once presented, reason can occupy itself on it, explore it as far as possible, make deductions and applications. How much human ethics have gained in clearness and usefulness by the light of the command to love our neighbor, and by the example of the Redeemer of man! How much speculative philosophy with regard to personality, responsibility, good and evil, and the future life! The crude theories of pagan times excite our compassion nowadays, though we honor the ability of their original propounders; yet these same theories we see now broached by those who have cast aside revelation, but often with less depth and less wisdom than the pagan in whose mind not all the light of natural religion was quenched. No! revelation is the friend of science; science divorced from religion, the vaunted glory of to-day, is the enemy of progress; retrograde in all save the energetic talent that is lost in its service.

A few examples will show what revelation or the church has done and is doing for the cause of education; whether it has checked the development of man or favored it.

We will go to the “dark ages,” in which those who oppose the church as an educator are wont to find their _cheval de bataille_, their bugbear to frighten off those inclined to trust her. We say nothing of the unfairness of Protestants who wilfully ignore the sad state of the Roman world consequent on the barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, and the struggles with the Saracens, who penetrated even into Italy—a condition of things most inimical to the quiet requisite for study; who pass over the conquest of those barbarians and their civilization by the church; who pretend to know nothing of what was done by the monks to preserve learning in their monasteries, to whom the preservation of the classic, philosophic, and ascetic works of antiquity and of the early church—the Bible among them—is due. We come to the thirteenth century. There we see, burning with a light that is celestial, a luminary not of the church only but of human reason—St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. There was hardly a branch of intellectual pursuit of which he was not a master. His works are wonderful, and have always been a precious and useful legacy in every subsequent age. His great work, the Sum of Theology, has remained the text-book of theologians. In fact, no theologian is master of his subject who has not made St. Thomas the object of his constant study. Though at times somewhat neglected, we may safely say that at present there is an increasing appreciation of his works. Certainly this is true of his philosophical treatise _Contra Gentiles_. There is now a wide-spread movement in all civilized nations to return to the use of the metaphysical and ethical teachings of St. Thomas, and it will be the means of regenerating such philosophical studies in this epoch of individual self-assertion, of _ipse dixits_, when every man of talent who lists puts forth his own hazy speculations as the truth, and strives to force down his deductions as the _ne plus ultra_ of science. Domenico Soto, at the Council of Trent, defined scholastic theology to be reason illumined by faith; we may, like him, style scholastic philosophy reason kept in its right path by the torch of faith. In the works of St. Thomas will be found the refutation of the pantheism of Spinoza and the present German school, of the materialism of Hobbes and Büchner, of the utilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer, and others of the followers of Puffendorf. We shall find, too, in his writings the ablest defence of revelation, and the sound principles that will enable us to put to flight the whole host of mythical theorists of the age. So much for theology, metaphysics, and ethics.

If we wish to speak of the work of the church in poetry, science, and literature, we have a monument of what she could do, even in the middle ages, in Dante. We hardly know which to admire most in this extraordinary man—his native genius, his extraordinary powers of imagination, the beauty of his imagery, the remarkable knowledge of theology and philosophy he exhibits in his writings, or the beauty of the language he created. His culture was due to the church; his inspiration was drawn from revelation; and his science he drank in at the great schools established and carried on by the church in Italy, in France, and in England. So pre-eminent is this writer, philosopher, and poet, that even in the nineteenth century our own poet whose works are read and justly appreciated wherever the English language is spoken—Henry W. Longfellow—has deemed it well worthy of his own genius to be his translator. Yet Dante is the product of the Catholic Church.

But the fashion to-day is to extol physical science. Of a truth, physical science does not hold, and should not hold, the first place. If man were only matter, it might and should; but he has a soul, and the spiritual and intellectual world is his proper sphere. Scientific knowledge is useful for the arts that serve to make commerce prosper, and should be sought after; but to make commerce and what pertains to it, and the material comforts of man, the main object of his thoughts and aims is a monstrous disorder.

However, even in this sphere of physical science the church is not afraid of her competitors. We leave to one side old Friar Bacon and other patriarchs of science, and we come to our own day. The church can point to Angelo Secchi, one of the first of living astronomers and physical scientists, and a member of a society that counts among its members men distinguished in every branch of human knowledge—the Society of Jesus. So great is the pre-eminence of this distinguished _savant_ in his native Italy that, since the city of Rome has been in the hands of the present rulers, they have left nothing undone to gain him over to their side. And it is a pleasure to us to pay this public tribute to the noble fidelity he has shown to his faith, his church, and his society, giving as he does a splendid example of the alliance between the most advanced physical science and the Catholic Church.

As faithful adherents to revelation, though not Catholics, we may mention the late Prof. Faraday and the no less distinguished Dr. Carpenter, who show that revelation and science do not war against each other.

But we need not content ourselves with showing that the church is not hostile to human learning. It is easy to bring forward facts that put her before the world in her true character as the real friend of man, the guardian of his dignity, the zealous protectress of the truth of his intellect and of the freedom of his will. _In medio stat virtus_—Virtue avoids extremes. Our tendency to go wrong is by doing too much or too little, and we need something to keep us from either of these two extremes. It is here the church comes in to fulfil this friendly and much-needed office.

There was in the fourth and fifth century an intellectual movement that attributed more than its due to human nature. The Pelagian errors gave to man a power he does not possess, and those errors are very widely spread in this nineteenth century. They ignore the efficacy of grace, or the help the will stands in need of to serve God. Grace, according to their most favorable view, was only a light for the intellect. Here was an excess; too much was claimed for human nature. Such doctrine is contradicted by Scripture and by the Fathers. Our Lord tells us: “I am the vine, and you are the branches; without me you can do nothing.” And St. Paul says: “We are not able to think of anything [conducive to salvation] of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.” And St. Augustine, against those who spoke of some of the precepts as impossible, writes: “God does not command what is impossible; but commanding [thereby] counsels us to do what we can, to ask for aid to do what is beyond our power, and aids us that we may be able to do it.” In this case we have the church curbing human pride and keeping the intellect and will within its true limits.

In the sixteenth century there was a movement, resulting from pride and rebellion, that had its own punishment in the degradation to which it reduced man’s nature. Luther’s dogmatic system had, and has—for it lives in Protestantism—the effect of so debasing human nature as to deny light to the intellect and power to the will to do anything that was not sinful; for he held that the will of man is essentially changed, so that it depends on who directs it, God or the devil; and, besides, whatever it does is sinful, though covered by the merits of Jesus Christ, which, like Esau’s garments, prevent the knowledge or sight of the true state of things and the imputation of sin.

Here was a defect; human nature was denied some of its powers.

The church fulminated this doctrine, and taught formally that man’s intellect and will, though weakened by sin and passion, are not essentially changed, and that all man’s acts are not sinful. She recognized something of his original dignity in man. Hers is the spirit of the great St. Leo, whose eloquent words made the Christians and Romans of his day remember their origin, and the height to which they had been raised by the Incarnation. He exclaims: “Remember, O man! thy dignity, and, having been made a partaker of the divine nature, return not by degenerate conversation to thy former vileness.” She bade man remember that his nature, never essentially corrupt, had been purified by the grace of God, and that “in those that please God there is nothing defiled.”

Luther’s teachings shed a sinister influence far and wide that tainted even Catholic universities and affected writers who still professed to be in union with the church.

In the former University of Louvain Jansenius went so far as to say that some of the gospel precepts were impossible, and that no grace was given to fulfil them. The words that were used by St. Augustine to refute the Pelagians were turned against Jansenius, and the voice of the church was heard anew vindicating man from the necessity of committing sin. Later on came Baius, of the same university, teaching also a doctrine of universal depravity; and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed that negative infidelity—that is, idolatry in good faith—is not a sin; that consequently those who have not grace or the illumination of faith can do many good actions, though such actions have not the merit of those which are made available through the merits of Christ. Thus again did the church prove herself the friend of human dignity.

Further on we meet those who, suffering the infection of the air caused by the doctrines of universal depravity, deny to the intellect the power of discovering the truth by itself. The traditionalists wish to trace everything to an original revelation; man has nothing he has not received from outside. Even his knowledge of God comes from tradition. And this doctrine the church, through her supreme teacher, discountenanced. She bade them recall to mind the words of the Book of Wisdom and of St. Paul, where we are told that God can be known from the contemplation of this visible world.

We will crave indulgence if we go so far as to venture the assertion that the doctrines of Malebranche and his school had their origin in this same depreciation of the powers of the human intellect. It may be said that the idea of intuition is a nobler one than that of painful analysis and deduction; that intuition—vision—is the lot of the blessed, and therefore a higher state. But this is a state above nature, for the blessed; not a natural state in our present condition. Moreover, there are reasons to make us believe that Malebranche did not escape the infection of the world of thought prevalent in his day—the disesteem of human nature; an infection not, indeed, logically connected with the system of Luther. It was, if we may be permitted so to speak, a psychological effect—a habit of mind being induced, whereby one was led so to think. This would appear to be evidenced by his doctrine of occasionalism, which made God always acting because man could not—a doctrine the authority of the church obliged him to modify, for he would thereby have made God the author of sin. Though no official condemnation of the theories of Malebranche, regarding the primary mode of knowing truth, has ever been given by the church, or is at all likely to be given, the deductions of certain of his followers have been condemned; and it is well known that the weight of the influence of the Holy See has been cast in the scale of the psychological theories of St. Thomas, whose principle, clearly laid down, is: “Operatio intellectus præexigit operationem sensus”—“The operation of the intellect prerequires the operation of sense”—I. 2, quæst. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his first part, quæst. xviii. art. 2, he writes: “Intellectus noster qui proprie est cognoscitivus quidditatis rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a sensu; cujus propria objecta sunt accidentia exteriora. Et inde est, quod ex his quæ exterius apparent de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam essentiam rei”—“Our intellect, that properly takes cognizance of what a thing is (its essence) as its proper object, receives of the senses, the proper objects of which are external accidents. Hence it is that from what appears externally in a thing we come to know its essence.” Of course sense is to be taken in its widest meaning, so as not to exclude the perception of the modifications going on in our internal being, which are the accidents of our spiritual essence. Man, therefore, has no natural revelation, but he arrives at knowledge by the essentially inherent powers of his mind—perception, abstraction, generalization. God sees by intuition everything in himself—this is essential in him; created intellects see what is, or intellectual truth, the archetype in God, reflected from creation as from a mirror.

From these instances, then, it is evident that the church has always been the friend of human nature, asserting for it the possession of faculties denied it, protecting it from error, and guiding it in the search of truth. She is, therefore, worthy of the gratitude of mankind for what she has done in the cause of education, as well as of the confidence of men as an instructor of youth in the future.

We come now to a more directly practical part of our assumed task, and shall consider it our duty to speak plainly, and perhaps in a way to be censured by some; but we do it in what seems to us the interest of our people and country. The Rev. Father. T. Burke, O.S.D., while in this country some years ago, addressing a society of young men, told them that Americans could not expect to take their position among the civilized nations of the world unless they studied, and studied not superficially but well. For our part, we thank him for this word. It is time to put out of our heads that we are the most cultivated, civilized, well-informed people of the world. We are not. Alongside the generality of the educated men of Europe the generality of the educated men of America do not appear to advantage. Who and what is to blame for this?

In the first place, we blame parents. They ought to know better; they have had experience of the world. They are the natural guardians of their offspring, and should provide by their experience a remedy for the inexperience of youth. Yet they, and especially Catholic parents, are those who put the greatest obstacles in the way of those engaged in teaching. They want their boys hurried through school; they can’t see the use of Latin, much less of Greek. As for philosophy, a man can make a fortune without philosophy; as if a fortune were the only thing worth living for! If that were the case, your California stage-driver who has struck a “bonanza” is the type of what a man should be intellectually. Heaven save the mark! We have had such men say to us: “I assure you, sir, it is a very great misfortune my education was neglected; I have wealth and don’t know how to enjoy it.” There are numbers of unhappy wealthy Americans travelling in Europe whose children are looking forward to brilliant futures, but who themselves rush from one place to another, tortured by the necessity of having to come in contact with educated people and learn daily their own inferiority. We have met such people, and, out of sheer pity for their unhappy lot, have done what was in our power to make them forget for a while their troubles.

The fact is, no greater boon can a wealthy parent bestow upon his child than a thorough, careful education, and every effort should be made to secure such education. And one of the first steps to be taken is that parents second the efforts of zealous educators in our Catholic institutions. These institutions have their defects, but those defects can hardly be remedied without the co-operation of parents. What that co-operation should be will be seen further on.

There are defects in our institutions of education. This is our next point. These defects are in the manner of teaching and in what is taught.

We acknowledge that there have been great improvements in the manner of teaching since we were boys; but with all this the want of uniformity, scarcely attainable in this country, will always leave the door open to defects in teaching. As a rule, the mind of a boy is too much taxed with speculative matter, and his memory comparatively neglected. The memory is one of the first faculties to show itself active, and it is also capable of wonderful development. In the earlier education of the child the exercise of the memory should predominate; as little strain as possible should be put on the mind yet tender. As the education progresses the exercise of the memory should be kept up; choice extracts from the best poets and writers should alternate with the useful storing in the mind of facts and definitions. The preliminary education should consist in the learning of languages, which are means of acquiring further knowledge by intercourse and reading, not by any means the sum total of education. We wish our Catholic parents would understand this; for when a boy succeeds in knowing a little French and German they seem to think everything done. These languages are only the keys to the treasures locked up in the writings of other nations. They are principally to be acquired by memory; and, in fact, this is the way the most successful and generally used method—that of Ollendorf—adopts. There is no reason why the boy should not be put at a very early age to learning foreign languages. There is, too, one great advantage in this: that his work at such languages will be lighter and less absorbing when he comes to be engaged in scientific study. Again, care should be taken not to put into the hands of a child books of an abstruse or relatively difficult character; for excessive caution against straining the mind of such a scholar can scarcely be taken. A great deal of harm is sometimes done from the too high standard exacted by school-boards of the various categories of boys. We have never ceased to praise the judicious interference of our father, who, finding us with an analytical arithmetic put into our hands at seven years of age, took it away and placed it on the highest shelf of his closet.

When a boy is well under weigh in the languages—we do not speak of religious education, which we take for granted—he may very properly be introduced to the study of experimental science and the more difficult problems of analytical arithmetic and mathematics. But these branches should not be arranged in such a way as to compete, as it were, with that much-neglected study, so lightly thought of—mental philosophy. If one visits our different Catholic institutions of learning, and examines their system, still more looks into the practical working of it, he will find that the year of philosophy, much talked of, is employed in a most perfunctory manner. We would not be understood as attributing any _culpa theologica_ to the instructors. We consider this state of things owing first to parents, and consequently to their children, and in part to the want of appreciation of the need of such philosophical training on the part of the teachers; though also, sometimes, to want of competency in the teachers themselves, whose previous education has been on the old plan. We conceive that too great attention and zeal cannot be expended in the correction of these defects. Corrected they can be, and they must be, if we wish to take and keep our proper standing. We cannot have a university for the present, and therefore it is all important that the one essential thing a university can give—a higher mental training—should be given to our young Catholic men. They must receive this in our colleges; they will not have it elsewhere. Of the need of it there can be no question. The great number of able, educated Europeans who, from political causes, have had to leave their native country and come to us, and the large number of Americans who nowadays study in European universities, all of whom, in conversation and through the press, retail to us the wildest phases of infidel, metaphysical, and social doctrine, is a sufficient argument to decide the matter, should any one hesitate. The church, to be sure, is our infallible guide, but there are many questions she does not treat, or, if she has treated them, her decisions can be understood only by careful study and explanation in the language of philosophy. So far from discouraging the study of philosophy, of metaphysics, and of ethics—possibly the more important of the two—she encourages us to make a good use of this handmaid of theology. It is therefore a duty incumbent on those in whose hands is placed the education of our young men to pay more attention than ever to this kind of instruction. We know of efforts in some instances that have been made in this direction, but which have failed. We are afraid they were not very numerous. In some instances a tincture of metaphysics was deemed enough; ethics were wholly neglected. How this could be has always been a puzzle to us. But it should not be any longer. A careful course of metaphysics that would embrace particularly the refutation of pantheism and materialism, besides establishing thoroughly the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of the soul; and an equally careful course of ethics that would refute the utilitarians and socialists of the day, while making clear the claims of authority, the nature of law, the origin of right in the eternal fitness of things as seen in the divine Mind, and such kindred questions, should be the object of the most earnest solicitude of the superiors of our Catholic colleges. The young students should be made to apply their knowledge thus received either by short compositions in addition to the repetition of the lessons taught; or, far better still, by academic exercises in which one student defends in the school-room before his teacher and fellow-students a thesis or proposition already explained, while one or two others object against it all they can think of or learn, and this, too, in strict syllogistic form. Exercises such as these would be of the greatest advantage in training the mind to the ready use of logic, and to refuting the arguments possible to be urged against sound doctrine. Nothing better than this would tend to take away the reproach so often, and perhaps in some cases most unjustly, made against our educational institutions, of incompetency for thorough education. Did it depend on us to have the recasting of the system of education, we should be inclined to add on a year of further study as a requisite for graduation, and during the last two years of a young man’s course we would employ him entirely in the study of metaphysics and ethics, including the principles of political economy, of the philosophy of history—in which the great questions of history, as far as possible, might be reviewed—and in the further polish of his literary English training. The philosophy of history is most important, for it is a powerful teacher. History is not to be studied as a bare narrative of facts; the facts have a language of their own which needs an interpreter. The polish of literary education is of great necessity, as it is the one thing those educated in the non-Catholic colleges may be said to excel us in. We do not dwell much on scientific education, because that is really of secondary importance, and it is impossible to give boys more than an elementary training in this branch, which may serve as a ground-work for further pursuit of it, if one is destined to turn his attention in that direction. To enable the superiors of our colleges to carry out such a plan would depend upon the parents of young students having the fortitude to oblige their sons to remain the requisite time and make a diligent use of their opportunities. Herein lies their co-operation in the great work of the future education of the young Catholic men of America; and our word for it, if they follow this counsel, they will never have cause to repent. They will give us, too, far abler champions of truth than our young men have shown themselves to be in the past.

THE DANCING PROCESSION OF ECHTERNACH. FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.

In the year of our Lord 690 a vessel from the island of Britain left upon the coast of Catwyk, in Holland, twelve young Anglo-Saxons who had abandoned their newly-converted country to carry the blessing of the Gospel to their brethren of the Continent. Chief among these young men, several of whom were of noble birth, was Willibrord, predestined from his mother’s womb to be a glory to the church and famous in the estimation of men. The young strangers separated, to work, each in his own way, in the vineyard of the Father. Willibrord began that very day the long and heroic apostolate of fifty years which ceased only with the pulsations of his heart. If we except his two journeys to Rome, where the great servant of the Papacy twice received the blessing and encouragement of the Sovereign Pontiff, he did not relax for a single day his labors in the vast region which stretches from the mouths of the Elbe and the Rhine to the banks of the Moselle. At his voice nations sitting in darkness rose up to behold the light, idols crumbled before the amazed eyes of their worshippers, churches arose from the soil and gathered about their altars multitudes of Christians, lay society organized itself little by little after the model of spiritual society.[165]

Footnote 165:

_V._ Alcuin in _Vita Willibrordi_ ap. Mabillon. _Acta Sanctorum_, Ord. S. Benedicti, t. iii. p. 567, Venetian edition.

Tradition and history show us by turns the great Anglo-Saxon apostle in Friesland as the master of St. Boniface; in Denmark, preceding by more than a century the famous St. Anscarius; in the island of Helgoland, destroying the idol of Fosite and braving King Radbod’s wrath; in the Isle of Walcheren, where he nearly fell a victim to his heroism and apostolic zeal; in Campine as the friend of St. Lambert, another untiring athlete of Christ; and, finally, in Luxembourg, where even more than elsewhere his name is glorified and revered. For half a century he stood with Lambert and Boniface in the breach, the father of civilization in Western Germany and one of the most signal benefactors of mankind.

The common people, though they forget great poets and great generals, preserve the memory of saints. Seventeen churches in Belgium and fifty-eight in Holland are under his patronage, without counting those in the valleys of the Moselle and the Rhine, where his fame is equally wide-spread. Sixty-three leagues apart, a small section of St. Willibrord’s vast itinerary, two villages to-day preserve in their own names the undying memory of his works: Wilwerwiltz on the sterile moors of the German Ardennes, and Kleemskerk on the low, fertile plains of maritime Flanders.[166] Drawn, as it were, from nothingness by this great man, these two localities, were other witnesses wanting, would tell to later ages the glory of their sublime founder. Answering one to the other across the whole extent of Belgium, they testify to his vast labors and his devotion to the Roman Church, which we unworthily defend to-day against the barbarism conquered by him twelve centuries ago.

Footnote 166:

Wilwerwiltz is a contraction of Willibrordswiltz. As to Kleemskerk (Clement’s Church), we know that in Rome Willibrord received the name of Clement, as did Winfrid that of Boniface, under which he is venerated.

I.

During his apostolic missions through the forests of Luxembourg Willibrord remarked one of the most charming and romantic spots in that fine country. It was at a turn of the Sûre, which even to-day flows on beneath the shade of savage rocks and deep forests. The valley, widening at this place, must at that time have presented a most imposing aspect, while it offered every facility for a settlement of human habitations. Indeed, the dwellings were even then of ancient date. The place bore a name recalling incontestably its first Celtic occupants: Epternacum. There, too, the Romans had left traces of their passage. A short league from Echternach archæologists may still read beneath the great shadowy oaks and thick brushwood that half hide it the following inscription engraved on the base of a monument:

DEÆ DIANÆ Q. POSTVMIVS POTENS. V. S.

The upper part of the monument is gone, but enough remains to show that it represented two persons—no doubt the goddess and her worshipper, with a hunting-dog crouched at Diana’s feet. He who overthrew the false gods of Helgoland and Walcheren must have crushed in holy ire this monument of the paganism he had just destroyed.[167] At all events, the image of Diana, once proudly throned above the valley at the edge of the wood, now hides, degraded and mutilated, in the dank gloom of brambles and brushwood—an eloquent emblem of St. Willibrord’s work in this country. Echternach, where even then two little Christian oratories stood on the site of the two churches of to-day, attracted the great man’s attention and heart. He built there a Benedictine monastery, which was favored from its foundation by the bounty of two royal families, the Merovingians and Carlovingians. Around this focus of Christian life habitations gathered, and, as always happened, the monastery expanded and became a town. Such was the origin of the commune of Echternach, one of the most flourishing in that happy country of Luxembourg which knows neither great cities nor great miseries.

Footnote 167:

This, at least, is the plausible conjecture of a scholar of the first rank—F. Alexander Wiltheim—in his fine book, _Luxemburgum Romanum_.

The monastery of Echternach was always dearer to its founder than his other foundations. There he loved to pass his rare hours of repose. There, on the 6th of November, 739, at the age of eighty-one years, he reached the term of his mortal career. His remains were laid in the basilica of the abbey among his monks and his people. Even in the tomb he continued to be the father of that country and to exercise over men the sovereign authority which his virtues and labors had won. Death has no hold upon the saints; when we lower their bodies into the grave we rear their images upon our altars. St. Willibrord, more than any other patron of the country, is one whose sepulchre may be called glorious. Few tombs have inspired a veneration so extraordinary, attracted the faithful in such crowds, excited acts of faith so intense. No sooner was he laid in his grave than multitudes came to invoke the apostle of Luxembourg, and frequent miracles bore witness to his powerful protection. A century had not elapsed when this wonderful devotion was spoken of by the greatest writer of his time—Alcuin, the biographer of our saint.[168] His festival was celebrated by an immense concourse, who filled the air with his praise. “See, brethren,” says St. Alcuin. “Behold the glory of serving God. Our holy patron, for love of Christ, left his native country and led the life of a pilgrim. He trampled under foot the riches of this world; he loved, he clung to poverty. And you know the glory he acquired among men. But preferable far is that which he possesses for all eternity among the angels.”[169] And the illustrious friend of Charlemagne, speaking to his contemporaries of facts of which he had been an eye-witness, told of the iron fetters on the wrists and ankles of devout pilgrims which burst asunder when they came to do penance for their sins at the venerated tomb.[170]

Footnote 168:

Ibi usque hodie divinâ operante misericordia signa et sanitates ad sancti viri et sacerdotis reliquias fieri non cessant.—_Alcuin O.C._, iii. p. 571.

Footnote 169:

Id. in _Mabillon_, iii. p. 575.

Footnote 170:

Id. ib. iii. p. 572.

Two centuries afterward the voice of Theofrid, St. Willibrord’s successor and later biographer, echoes the powerful voice of Alcuin and tells of the ceaseless devotion which brings crowds to Echternach every year. He, too, bears witness to the saint’s miracles—so numerous, he says, that a yoke of oxen could not drag the chariot that would hold the votive offerings of wax and metal. And among these wonders, as in Alcuin’s day, were to be seen broken chains and instruments of torture worn by slaves, which were shattered into splinters.[171] No miracle is oftener recorded of our saints than this one. I confess I never read the record in the quaint and simple narrative of our ancient hagiographers without emotion. Wherever they went the breakers of idols were also breakers of fetters; that word which called men to the knowledge of the true God called them also to the enjoyment of true liberty. _Christus nos liberavit._ Therefore the church has been honored by the opposition of all the tyrants who have wished to subjugate nations. They have felt that liberty could be easily destroyed, if they could destroy her who is the fertile mother and the fearless guardian of freedom. But nothing can avail against the church nor against the liberty which is her offspring, which her voice called into life, which she has bathed in the blood of her idol-breakers.

Footnote 171:

_Theofridus vita S. Willibrordi_, c. 24 (sæc. xii.) This life of St. Willibrord is still unpublished; only a few fragments having appeared in _Mon. Germ. Hist._, t. xxiii. Script. The fact I mention is taken from M. Krier’s pamphlet, _Die Springprocession_, p. 33, from the MS. life.

It was St. Willibrord’s destiny to see crowned heads bow among the crowds that pressed around his altars, and the imperial purple of Germany trailing in the dust before his coarse robes of haircloth. In the imposing procession of generations marching towards the saint’s tomb it is difficult to distinguish the royal forms mingling with the crowd of pilgrims, so petty seem to him who gazes from the altar the earthly grandeur which sets them apart from other Christians.

Many a time in earlier days the Carlovingians had come to pray and humble themselves in the sanctuary at Echternach. They came with hands filled with gifts, and, by one of those strange vicissitudes which the finger of Providence points out, it was one of their number who, blind, outcast, and bereft, came later to eat the bread of St. Willibrord and seek refuge in the shades of his monastery. History hardly mentions the wretched Carloman, rebel son of Charles the Bald, whose eyes were put out by his father’s orders, and who received in charity from his uncle Louis the Abbey of Echternach _ad subsidium vitæ_.[172] The families who succeeded the Carlovingians in Germany never forgot the saint or the duty of paying him homage. In the year 1000 the list of imperial pilgrimages was opened by Otto III., the young and brilliant prince who planned so many great expeditions, and whom death had already marked with his mysterious seal. Lothaire of Saxony, and Conrad of Hohenstaufen, came in their turn to pray before the saint’s relics, the one in 1131, the other in 1145. Then, in 1512, Maximilian joined in the procession, and in memory of his visit gave to the town the bell which bears his name and still rings on feast days. Thus, except the sacrilegious house of Franconia, all the dynasties of the German Empire seem to have been represented at Echternach, and to have paid court to this prince of peace, greater and more respected than they.

Footnote 172:

M. G. xxiii. Script., _Catalogus abbatum Epternacensium primus_.

Echternach was always the capital of St. Willibrord’s peaceful realm. There was his tomb; there rose convent and basilica, perpetual heralds of his great deeds. The convent was a city in itself, and the basilica is a most precious relic of eleventh-century architecture—a veritable pearl which alone would make the reputation of a town. I will not be drawn into further details, for fear of leaving my subject.[173] It suffices to remember that this wonderful monument, a victim of revolutionary vandalism, had been sold as national property, and was falling into decay, when the piety and patriotism of the people of Echternach snatched it from certain destruction. They formed, under the name of _Willibrordus Verein_, a society whose aim was to recover the basilica and restore it to worship. This society, founded in 1862 by a few citizens in a little town of four thousand souls, now numbers its members by hundreds. It has already devoted more than one hundred thousand francs to the basilica, and will soon crown its work by bringing back the shrine of the saint, now preserved in the parish church. All reverence to the intelligent Christian people who guard their honor so faithfully and understand so well the interests of their own glory! Inspired by the three-fold love of religion, country, and art, the Willibrordus Verein is one of the finest institutions that I know. It does honor to the whole of Luxembourg, and will leave a lasting memory. Of how many associations of our day can as much be said?

Footnote 173:

On the basilica of Echternach read a good notice by Prof. Namur inserted in t. xxii. of _Annals of the Archæological Academy of Belgium_; and another by M. Bock, in _Rheinlands Baudenkmale des Mittelalters_.

The entire town of Echternach has retained that stamp of antiquity so eagerly sought by artists, and so much despised by our petty, material generation. Surrounded by the fantastic hills that form the valley, whose strange summits look like crumbling castles; still enclosed by three-quarters of its ancient fortifications, with here and there a ruined tower, it strikes the beholder with a surprise which only increases as he penetrates to the interior of the town. Passing through crooked and narrow streets, where each house has an architecture of its own which is often very impressive, he reaches the public square, where stands the antique town-hall, known by the more ancient name of Dingsthal, an interesting building which rests on Gothic arcades. The parish church is equally worthy of attention for its old Romanic architecture and its beautiful position upon the summit of an eminence overlooking the town.

What especially tends to give to Echternach its peculiar character is the habits of its population, so in harmony with the tranquil, cheerful country and its mediæval monuments. Here more than elsewhere Catholic faith has impregnated the life of the people. All their actions reflect its powerful simplicity, its generous hardihood, its customs of ten or fifteen centuries back. The poetry of the past, that exquisite influence of ancient times which we inhale with delight, is here an incense ever ascending from this happy valley. In this respect nothing can equal the dancing procession of Echternach, which takes place always on Whit-Tuesday, in honor of St. Willibrord, and attracts those who come especially to invoke his aid for nervous diseases. This procession has taken place for more than five hundred years. It can be traced back to the fourteenth century, and may be perhaps of even earlier origin. The dance has been explained in various ways: sometimes as expressing the joy of a Christian people coming to venerate the relics of their patron saint; sometimes as a symbolical representation of nervous attacks, epilepsy, and other maladies of the kind, from which the country was delivered by St. Willibrord’s intercession in the fourteenth century.

It is this ceremony, whose original and picturesque character is quite unique in the Christian world, which I am about to describe to the reader.

II.

When Whit-Sunday comes an amazing animation rouses the little town from its habitual tranquillity, and the excitement only increases on the Monday. Hotels and private houses are thronged with guests; many travellers, unable to get lodgings, camp out in the neighboring villages or go back to _die Kirch_, to return by railway the next day. The streets are thronged with dusty tourists: gentlemen of leisure regarding everything with a patronizing smile, peasants in rustic garb, rich strangers arriving in spruce equipages, and respectable jaunting-cars with three rows of seats, conveying the opulent farmers of the neighborhood. Booths are planted everywhere, blocking up the streets and setting their backs against every available corner. Mountebanks and charlatans, who come to levy their tithe on public piety, stun with their piercing outcries the busy folk running about to look for lodgings. Religion preludes the imposing solemnities of the following morning. The faithful flock to religious offices and sermons. All day long they are at prayer before the sarcophagus where lies the body of the saint. There you will see the most fervent; and by their attitudes, the expression of their faces, and the ardor of their gaze, it is plain that they have some great favor to implore and hope not to go away unsatisfied. Prostrate before the altar, these rude laborers from the Eyfel and the Ardennes, with their great horny hands and tanned faces, opening their whole hearts to God and absorbed in prayer, are beautiful to look upon. They seem to symbolize the destiny of mankind, born to labor, to suffer, and to pray. It is pleasant to ponder and pray in the stillness of that little Romanic church, beside the greatest man of the country.

It was an humble church with vaulted roof, The church we entered in, Where for eight hundred years the sons of men Had wept and prayed ’gainst sin.

There, on the hill sacred for so many ages, under the shade of the lindens that screen the courtyard of this modest edifice, in the presence of the wide and peaceful landscape, the heart feels at ease, the mind is in repose. It is like a haven of rest or like some enchanted country. The hideous, infernal tumult of the church’s enemies dies away in this Catholic oasis. Man and nature are in harmony; the serenity that reigns in this lovely country sinks into the most stormy heart. Here Dante would have found the peace he sought under the vaulted roof of the monastery at Monte Corvo.

Evening fell; the chants for Benediction rang through the church as I entered. Thousands of voices, accompanied by the grave and solemn tones of the organ, were singing the beautiful litany of St. Willibrord, which is like the national air of Echternach, and has a peculiar sweetness in a language that admits of saying _thou_ to God and to the saints:

St. Willibrord, shining star of our country, St. Willibrord, ornament of the Roman Church, St. Willibrord, breaker of idols, _Pray for us_.

I cannot describe the effect of this chant, rising on so many voices in accents of plaintive supplication, penetrating the heart with its expression of love and trust. These people love St. Willibrord and treat him with a sweet familiarity. “Who and what was he that men should come every year to kneel before his relics and pay him honors so exceptional? What had he more than others, and by what was he distinguished? By beauty, genius, science, riches?” Such was the idea of the sermon which followed Benediction, and was heard by that whole multitude in breathless attention, some standing, others kneeling on the flags—for all the chairs had been taken away. The sacred orator developed his theme with remarkable skill, and, after proving that St. Willibrord had shone by none of these gifts, he concluded that he had reached this exceptional glory on earth and in heaven because he had understood and applied better than others the divine command, “Love God above all things, and thy neighbor as thyself.”

O grandeur of Christianity! O eternity of the church! A thousand years ago Alcuin said the same in his panegyric; the modern preacher’s noble words were like the lingering echo of the same Christian voice sounding through ages—of that voice which ever repeats itself, and yet is always fresh, for it is the voice of truth. Thus, at the two extremities of this decade of centuries, the friend of Charlemagne and the young priest of Luxembourg were the two ends of a chain whose every link is an extinct generation, and which brings down to our own day the unchangeable, immortal tradition. One thousand years hence other pilgrims will come to contemplate these great lessons of time and pray before the sacred tomb, treading beneath their feet the ruins of our civilization and modern society.

After Benediction I went to walk on the heights above the town. The night was clear and the moon hung calmly serene in the heavens. Every time I pass through Echternach I climb these hills; the place is full of calm and refreshment, and I always feel happy there. Looking down upon the town, with its spires and ancient roofs mirrored in the peaceful river, I listened to the last sounds dying away in the streets; for the town went to rest as early that night as on any other. Heaven and earth seemed so quiet, so infinitely peaceful! If at that hour propitious to dreams you would evoke in spirit the memory of the past, it would rise like a gigantic phantom. One glance cast into the domains of fancy would show the wild valley heaped with Druidic stones, crowned with altars and Roman monuments, and traversed by the swift, silvery flood of the Sûre, which seems to pierce like a dart the mysterious depths of the ancient Ardennes. On the summit of the height appears a wonderful man, who breaks the Gallic and Roman idols, and with their fragments builds Christian oratories; he levels the forest and cultivates the valley; builds dwellings around the church, calls men, and they come at his bidding; and this new Orpheus, with no lyre but his voice, leads in his train Barbarism, conquered, charmed, converted.

The next day I breakfasted between five and six o’clock in one of the many pretty pleasure-gardens of the town. The evening before had been very warm; the day dawned under the same auspices, but perfectly clear. The people of Echternach declare that it cannot rain on the day of their procession, or, at least, that the rain must stop before they enter the church. On all sides resounded clear and full the voices of pilgrims coming in procession from villages near by and chanting the litany of St. Willibrord. These aerial tones, coming to us in the freshness of dawn through blossoming trees, opened the day very pleasantly. I went out. Through every street there poured a stream of country people, preceded by crosses and banners. Whole parishes came with their pastors; they had left home at daybreak and walked several leagues, with prayers and chants rousing the wondering birds, unused to hear human voices praise the Creator in advance of them. The nearest villages came in procession; others, who could not send a solemn train, furnished a large number of pilgrims, who marched in isolated groups. Without counting the pilgrims of the Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Russia are represented every year. The number of devout Christians whom each anniversary brings to the sacred tomb varies from 12,000 to 15,000, leaving out those who come without having made a vow, some from religious feeling, others from mere curiosity. About 20,000 strangers in all crowd into the narrow precincts of the little town every Whitsuntide. For whole hours you see the flood of humanity ascend and descend the steps of the parish church; for all the pilgrims on their arrival go first to kneel at the saint’s shrine. About eight o’clock the multitudes pass over to the other bank of the Sûre, where the procession is to begin. The Sûre forms the boundary between the territory of Luxembourg and Prussia. Just there the procession falls into line of march. At the foot of the hills, beside a little stone cross, they erect a temporary pulpit, from which a priest addresses the people before the ceremony begins. Thousands had collected to await the coming of the clergy. Some walked about, others sat along the edge of the road or leaned against the parapet of the bridge. The crowd, scattered in picturesque confusion and disorder, buzzed like a hive of bees. The throng increased; along every road came hosts of pilgrims ploughing their way. From afar came vague, indistinct sounds of singing, and along the valley, through the narrow road traced between the Sûre and the hills, there advanced a long column. Banners floated in the sunshine and gleamed through the trees; the procession undulated and unrolled its length as it followed the windings of the river. The voices, as they drew nearer, became distinct, and soon the head of the procession appeared. They were pilgrims from Prüm, in the Eyfel, more than twelve leagues from Echternach, coming to make their annual devotions to St. Willibrord. These good people had set out on Sunday evening; they had walked part of that night and of the next day, praying and chanting. On Monday evening they had disbanded, scattering about through fields and in barns a few leagues from Echternach, and had resumed their march early in the morning. Tanned, heated, dusty, clad in coarse raiment, they came on in good order, forming an almost interminable train. It seemed as if the whole village had come. Their accoutrements were rustic, fantastic even; the men carried crosswise over their backs an umbrella fastened by a string which passed over their breasts, crossing the strap of a large leathern valise hanging on the other side. The women had baskets on their arms. These valises and baskets held the provisions for that journey of four or five days. It is remarkable that this pilgrimage of the people of Prüm is voluntary and a popular movement; the clergy take no part in its organization, and seldom join it, the parishioners making it their own affair. On this occasion, indeed, a priest was with them, but the order of march and the devotions were directed by a certain number of men placed at intervals in the procession. They carried, as the insignia of office, a red staff surmounted by a little copper cross. The priest, who closed the procession, walked between two young men clad in quaint and antique garb, with hats turned up and trimmed with flowers. One carried the cross, the other a large votive candle adorned with emblems, the annual gift of their village to the patron of Echternach. The procession advanced in perfect order. Indifferent to curious looks, turning their eyes neither to the right nor to the left towards the human hedge that lined their path, they passed on, saying their rosary aloud and repeating after each _Ave_ this familiar salutation, full of simplicity and grace: “St. Willibrord, we are coming to thy tomb!” I loved to see and hear them. Their fervor in prayer and contempt of fatigue, their rustic dress and primitive manners, their indifference to all but their one object, made these peasants a people set apart, and their pilgrimage a type of the pilgrimage of human life as it ought to be made. I watched the pious train until it entirely disappeared on the other side of the bridge; for, before returning to the Prussian bank to take part in the sacred dance, the people of Prüm were going to kiss the shrine and pray before the relics of the saint.

At last, about nine o’clock, a numerous band of clergy appeared, and the ceremony opened with the accustomed sermon. Fancy the scene: the lovely morning and beautiful country, the vast host of listeners intent on the words of the priest. For a frame there were the high hills on one side, on the other the silvery course of the Sûre, and below the spires of the town.

Not less wonderful was it to hear on Prussian ground a Catholic voice calling upon thousands of the faithful to pray for the Holy Father and the persecuted church. And while the priest was speaking there came from all the heights belated pilgrims hastening to the ceremony. They were seen afar off, coming down the steep paths bordered with flowering hedges; and the bells rang out full peals, and the word of God was scattered among the multitude with the song of birds.

When the sermon was ended, the clergy, in white surplices, formed in line of march and opened the procession. Behind them came the musicians, and afterwards the immense throng of those who were to join in the dance. At first there was much crowding. Leaning against the parapet of the bridge, I had to ply my elbows lustily to prevent the multitude from suffocating me, and farther on, when the train began to defile through the narrow street which leads to the Sûre, the pressure was quite frightful. There were not ushers enough to preserve order. A few firemen and policemen had to be everywhere at once, and were swallowed up in the billows of the confused crowd. The cause of the disorder was the impatience of some people, who, instead of waiting until the street should be cleared for the beginning of the dance, went forward to post themselves higher up in the procession. This choked the way in some places, and there was terrible pushing. Women screamed; several were nearly suffocated. I saw some men, who, as they awaited their turn with philosophic patience, set their backs against walls and rowed with their arms against the human flood to save themselves from wreck. A hospitality, as unexpected as it was welcome, rescued me from the tumult to become a peaceful spectator in a neighboring house instead of an actor in the scene. “It is sweet,” says Lucretius, “when the sea is swollen and tossed by rough winds, to look from the shore upon the distress of others, not finding pleasure in their troubles, but in our own exemption from them.” I felt, in selfish enjoyment, the spirit of these lines, gazing at my ease from an upper window upon the undulation of several thousand heads floating apparently upon a liquid expanse. Actually, a needle thrown from above would not have reached the ground.

Order was soon restored. The police got angry and used their fists unsparingly to force back into their places the intruders, who continued to leave the ranks and insinuate themselves in among the front rows of the procession. All this went on while the head of the _cortége_ disappeared at the turn of the street, dancing to the traditional air played by the musicians. It was a quaint tune, rather quick in measure and old-fashioned. It was hard to say whether it expressed joyful excitement or the emotions of grief; for music, with its wonderful suppleness, may sometimes speak to us of our joys and sorrows, according to the mood in which we listen. And now this melody, centuries old, set in motion a dancing multitude. The sight was strange, striking, indescribable. To an unaccustomed spectator the first moment is of stupefied amazement. His fancy enters a new world; the movement of all these heads bending and rocking in a rhythmic measure produces a fantastic effect that no words can convey. I do not know whether I can tell exactly what I saw, or if my sketch will give even a faint idea of a scene which defies analysis and description.

Think of a stream of twelve thousand persons in a street where only eight can walk abreast; fancy all these people, in rows of four, six, or eight, advancing, held together by handkerchiefs or staves to keep order in the ranks and measure in the dance; fancy them, I say, executing a dance which consists of three steps forward and two back, and which moves the whole multitude from end to end with one unceasing action of ebb and flow. The interminable train stretched over about fifteen hundred metres from the bridge of the Sûre to the parish church. It took not less than four hours to accomplish that quarter of a league by dancing, and under the direct rays of the sun, without a moment’s rest. It is easy to imagine that order and regularity were sometimes disturbed, but what was lost in symmetry was gained in picturesque originality of detail. There were almost as many different styles of dancing as there were various groups, everybody managing his own affairs. The groups just behind the musicians succeeded best, being kept in step by the music; and in general the people of Echternach danced more harmoniously and correctly than the others. As the bands were few and stationed quite far apart, the pilgrims who could not hear them hopped about in utter confusion, while the rest had a certain harmony of movement. These eccentricities of choreographic movement were worth seeing; here they glided with light step, elegantly and smoothly; there they jumped about with heavy tread and immense exertion. Watching carefully those who seemed to have best preserved the tradition, I thought that the most pure and “classic” rhythm consisted in five steps of a dance, quite slow and without turning, three forward and two back, made by gliding rather than bounding. The whole character was grave, solemn, and suited to a religious dance. A band from Echternach opened the march and played the tune for the first pilgrims. The others danced to the strains of a few isolated instruments. Each _cortége_ had its own musicians, and, as each parish danced separately, they had their local players. It is needless to say that variety reigned among the instruments—drums, violins, flutes, clarionets, and hautboys—all hard at work and producing combinations hardly grateful to musical ears. But the good fellows did not pretend to be artists. They worked for conscience’ sake; they piped and they blew, they beat and they scraped, with all the accumulated force of lungs, fists, and bows. St. Willibrord is not fastidious; he takes the will for the deed, and if there be here and there some cockney scandalized by this cacophony, so much the worse for him. Ill though they play the melody, it is a good work to make the attempt, and the worthy pilgrims accommodate themselves to circumstances. Formerly no fiddler was allowed to play in village fairs, if he had not paid for the privilege at the procession of Echternach that same year. This custom, with many others, is obsolete, but many musicians remain faithful to tradition.

This year, while the procession was crossing the town, there came marching through a cross-street a brilliant band of music preceded by a banner; it was a philharmonic society from Remich on the Moselle, and was received with acclamation. It joined the procession, and its fine execution came as a welcome reinforcement to the poor musicians, who were nearly exhausted.

I could not take my eyes off the wonderful scene, sometimes taking in the whole picture at a glance, sometimes pausing to examine details in all their picturesque variety. Most attractive of all was the sight of the children of Echternach, dancing at the head of the procession just behind the village band; they put such life into the affair, and felt it such a festive occasion. It was refreshing to watch the rosy-cheeked, laughing rogues, usually in their shirt-sleeves, bounding merrily “for St. Willibrord.” Then came the grown folk of Echternach, then the various parishes, each, as I said, forming a distinct group with its own musicians. The sexes were separated. Formerly the pilgrims from Prüm and Waxweiler, who came from the most distant points, had the right of opening the procession, while the inhabitants of Echternach, through courtesy, took the last place. Now there is no fixed order; the parishes take their places at hap-hazard, and many people leave the ranks to join the front rows at the risk of throwing the whole procession into confusion. I saw the good people of Prüm, with their monumental green and blue umbrellas capable of sheltering whole households. Now they were unstrung from their proprietors’ backs, and, bound two and two, served as a balustrade to be grasped by three or four persons to keep them even in the ranks and regulate their step. Here and there, amid the rhythmic movement of these thousands of heads, I descried some unhappy being afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance, shown by wild, spasmodic springs, violent excitement, and the pitiful rocking of all the limbs. They were usually women, young girls stricken with this terrible disorder. I noticed one in particular whom every one looked at with earnest sympathy. She leaped in a wild, feverish way, supported under the arms by her mother, whom I knew by the look of anxiety and sadness imprinted on her face. The kind people of the town stood ready at their doors with refreshing beverages for these poor creatures; but they hardly stopped to drink before continuing their dance under the whip of the sun, as the great Alighieri says, whose words came to my mind more than once at sight of these miseries. So drawn along by this weird dance, the pilgrims appeared and vanished, as wave follows wave, and the monotonous melody carried on ten thousand people to the sound of its fantastic cadences. Add one or two thousand pilgrims who, not joining in the dance, followed the procession, saying their beads or reciting the litany, and you have in all twelve thousand Christians of both sexes and of every age and rank, who, through four whole hours, formed St. Willibrord’s triumphal procession and visited his sacred tomb.[174]

Footnote 174:

According to the _Echternachter Anzeiger_ of June 5, the number of dancers was 10,600; of other pilgrims 1,800. This does not include 188 musicians, 72 priests, 1,100 chanters, and various corporations. There were, moreover, 14,000 or 15,000 spectators, making a total of about 30,000 people. Comparing these numbers with those of former years, we shall see that the ancient ceremony increases in importance and _éclat_. This conclusion is correct, as M. Krier’s statistics show, _Die Springprocession_, p. 148. Since the beginning of this century the number of dancers had not before reached 10,000.

All the energy of the vigorous Luxembourg sinews is required to bring to a successful close this long and fatiguing pilgrimage, whose difficulties increase as they near their end; for I forgot to say that the procession danced up the sixty-two steps which lead to the parish church. Not every one can go to Corinth, says the proverb. The same is true of Echternach, though in a different sense, thank God! But it would be a mistake to think that the famous ceremony demands anything excessive or superhuman. The calm, grave character of the dance, and the numerous pauses which are made necessary by the blocking of the way, suffice to husband the pilgrim’s strength. Their vow, though hard and laborious, is not impossible or dangerous. The proof of this is that many children in the procession dance the whole length of the way twice over. No sooner do they reach the church at the head of the procession than they scamper back to join the rear and begin the exercise over again. Pilgrims who, on arriving at Echternach, do not feel equal to executing their vow, and yet wish to contribute to the brilliancy of the festival, give a few sous to one of these children, and the indefatigable little fellows acquit themselves of their task with imperturbable seriousness and charming grace. But prodigious people are again the people of Pürm. They arrive at the town, to use a familiar expression, with twelve leagues in their heels; and at once they set to work and dance four long hours. Then, when their devotions are ended, they take barely time to eat their modest fare out doors or at an inn table, and go home singing and praying to the high table-lands and extinct volcanoes of their wild country.

One should be in the church when the procession pours in by traditional custom through the left aisle, to pass round the altar in the choir and go out through the right aisle. The dance does not cease an instant as they pass through the sanctuary; the orchestra goes on playing the quaint, archaic melody, the dancers make the old Romano-vaulted roof ring with the clang of their measured steps. The pilgrims do not think their vow fulfilled until, after making the tour of the church, they find themselves in the courtyard before an old wooden cross, where they break ranks. Nothing can be more fantastic than this irruption of dancing and music in the house of God. The spectacle in the church is beyond description; you feel as if you were dreaming, and your spirit floated in the domain of the impossible. What do the people mean? Have they come to pillage and destroy? Is this tumultuous throng the prey of a sudden delirium, of a dancing mania? Or, if it be worship, does it not revive the solemn orgies of ancient Greece, where certain deities of Oriental origin were honored by the leaps, the cries, and the races of their idolaters? No; to the first instant of amazement there succeeds a more correct and complete judgment. Beneath the external agitation, beneath the noise and movement, you see the religious calm which fills these souls, and the solemnity pervading the expression of their inner feelings. It is this contrast which gives to the singular ceremony its character of deep originality. No doubt we have lost the sense of mysterious symbolism in the sacred dance; we no longer see its true motive or significance; we only know or divine that the devout thought which first inspired it animates it at the present day.

Among various ideas suggested by this astonishing experience, there was one that I could not get rid of, and which returned to me on the festival and its eve again and again. While multitudes knelt before the altar, kissed the shrine, touched it with objects of devotion, and filled the church with their prayers, you would have said that the great man must be there, present among the faithful, speaking to them and listening to them. What glory equals that of the saints? What other son of Adam enjoys such honors? Those whom the Catholic Church has crowned with eternal palms do not reign only in heaven; the human glory which they despised is given to them abundantly, and these little ones, who passed through life obscure and despised, see themselves suddenly surrounded with an amazing glory with which Cæsar, Homer, Archimedes, and Plato do not shine. The world rings with their name, and the least and most ignorant of human beings know, love, and revere them. They are not only illustrious, they receive solemn veneration, they share in a certain way the honors of God himself. Their names are uttered with bended knee, nations flock to their tombs, and they are gloriously enthroned in Christian hearts. Beside such a destiny is it worth while to try to immortalize one’s name and to flutter, as the poet says, upon the lips of men? What is the greatest name on earth, unless it be encircled with the aureole of sanctity? Ignored by the crowd, uttered coldly by most of those who know it, respected by a few, but invoked by no one with clasped hands and heart uplifted to him who bore it. The name of the least saint prostrates in the dust all human generations through the long succession of ages, and resounds like a word of life on all lips. The church alone is the dispenser of glory, and even among secular names the noblest and most lasting are those of Catholic associations.

III.

The reader asks, no doubt, what is the final impression produced by the spectacle of the dancing procession, and how we should estimate this strange ceremony? I will try to answer the double question clearly. In the first place, one must see the procession with one’s own eyes to judge it fairly. The public must beware of newspaper reports, which are numerous and usually wholly incorrect, not to use a more uncivil term. There is no name which certain papers have not applied to the subject; for correspondents of a farcical turn amuse themselves every year at the expense of a credulous public. We may say, _en passant_, that no class of beings can be more contemptible than reporters hunting for a sensation—travelling bagmen of the press who are allured by scandal as the vulture is by a carcase. It is easy to fancy what the ceremony at Echternach must have become under their pen. The very name of dancing procession makes them scent a topic, and, devoid of all religious feeling, they describe first and judge afterwards a spectacle they are incapable of understanding. Their descriptions are so unfaithful that you doubt whether the good people ever saw the procession, or whether they did not write the account before going to the ceremony. They give caricatures of a mass of humanity entangled in frightful confusion and bounding with all their strength to the sound of a gigantic hubbub. The ranks get mingled; the dancers crush each other and spring about, regardless of the toes of their neighbors, who scream for mercy. With rubicund faces streaming with perspiration, and with eyes starting from the sockets, these wretched fanatics would die rather than pause. On all sides numbers give up in despair and drop breathless among their barbarous companions. Sometimes they are drawn out of the crowd by compassionate persons and restored to life, but no one in the procession stops for anything, and the pitiless Catholic _bamboula_ goes on and on, sowing devastation at every step. I spare the reader further details and give only the canvas of an embroidery more or less varied according to the imaginative powers of the correspondent. In short, despite the diversity of some details easy to add, this fancy sketch has appeared in nearly all the anti-religious papers in Belgium, and will end in being stereotyped. It is needless to say that it is false throughout. Among ten thousand persons who were dancing I did not see one give out. Also, contrary to another assertion, the number of epileptics and other invalids in the procession is very small. I saw in all five or six persons evidently afflicted with nervous diseases.

After reading this high-toned description, flavored with a few Voltairean jests of the old type, it is natural to pronounce the procession of Echternach an absurdity. The sarcasms of free-thinkers annually assail the venerable ceremony, but without injuring it. In fact, it is irreverent enough in this nineteenth century to increase in importance. Eye-witnesses of the strange spectacle always retain an impressive memory of it. I confess to having been rather prejudiced against the grotesque scenes I expected to see. At the end of a quarter of an hour I was convinced of the powerful religious character of this great public act, and I remarked that all the spectators shared my feeling. Any one must have a singularly empty mind and heart not to be struck by the grandeur of the scene. Those who always take a petty view of things, because they can take no other, may laugh at the discordant music and the clumsy dancing of some of the pilgrims. For myself, when I see the same belief, centuries old, translated by thousands of men into bold, spontaneous action, I cannot restrain my admiration. Before the intrepidity with which these men, trampling under foot all human respect, honor with consecrated rites their patron saint, I feel moved and impressed. Where is there such faith left in Israel? “When I hear the old tune,” said one of the most honorable _bourgeois_ of Echternach to me, “and when I see the first pilgrims arrive, I feel something circulate between my flesh and skin that makes me fairly shiver.” A young student of the town said to me very prettily: “I do not care much for the dancing of the grown people, but the sight of the dancing children carries me back to my own happy childhood, and my eyes fill with tears.”

These feelings are unanimous. You see once in a while in the crowd a travelling clerk on his vacation hazarding a timid and colorless sarcasm which a generous public passes over unnoticed. Beyond dispute, the sight of the procession exercises a moral and religious influence. Like incredulity, faith is contagious; timid spirits feel strengthened in this region where the breath of Catholic life circulates so freely; sick hearts come out renewed from the spectacle of thousands of Christians revealing the true remedy for human woe. The people of Luxembourg, essentially serious and meditative, understand the aim of the ceremony; its quaintness does not prevent them from seeing it as it really is—a great and solemn affirmation of faith, at once an act of penance and a prayer, to be preserved in the original form out of respect to their ancestors and veneration for the saint. Whatever the origin of this ancient custom,[175] it deserves to be preserved not only because it fosters and develops religion in the people, but because it revives before our eyes, in the most picturesque way, the manners of our fathers, whose least traces historians and archæologists are jealous to discover. A Luxembourg writer says well on this subject: “We preserve with scrupulous fidelity old monuments and objects of antique art. Why not do our best to preserve in its original type this remarkable procession, this monument graven in the living hearts of our brethren?”[176]

Footnote 175:

I have given the two current opinions on the origin of the dancing procession. I share neither, and hope my different explanation clear by weight of proof.

Footnote 176:

Krier, _Dancing Procession_, p. 55. This author wrote his work first briefly in French, then in German with more details. The latter is a serious and interesting work as regards the ceremony. It is also an edifying appeal from a Christian priest to his brethren.

The intelligent town of Echternach perfectly understands that it is incumbent upon its honor to respond to this wish. It has neglected nothing in the cause, and at various times has had to surmount great obstacles. The administrative prohibitions of Joseph II., the brutalities of the French Revolution, the petty opposition of the Dutch government, have not discouraged them; they have held faithfully to their patriotic tradition, and have no cause to repent it, for they find in this devotion a source of great prosperity. Their unalterable attachment is the more remarkable because even the clergy have often been opposed to the procession. In 1777 the Prince Elector of Treves, Clement Wenceslaus—under the reign of the Febronians, I should add—actually forbade the dance, and thus furnished excuse to Joseph II. to forbid it also a little later. To-day quite a number of the clergy look unfavorably on these extraordinary demonstrations of faith. They think religion is compromised by associating it with practices which, without being bad in themselves, may provoke the mockery of the incredulous and alienate them farther from the church. This opinion, based, of course, on a sincere devotion to religious interests, appears to me an unconscious and useless concession to the petty spirit of the age, which is never satisfied with half-measures. Anti-religious fanaticism will not be appeased by our throwing to it as a sop a small portion of Catholic treasure. What it wants is the entire suppression of religion. To yield any point whatever will only serve to whet its appetite and augment its pretensions.

Far from sharing these fears, I think that in these days of struggle it is important to oppose the faith as a whole to unbelief as a whole, and not yield an inch of ground, unless we wish to lose all. From the earliest days of Christianity there have been people who took scandal at faith which goes beyond what is strictly necessary; among Christ’s apostles there were those who blamed Magdalen for anointing the feet of her Master with precious ointment. It is instructive to remember that it was Judas who showed himself most shocked by what he called useless expense. We may be sure that, as a general rule, the enemies of the church detest all her practices and would like to see them every one abolished. Give them the dance of Echternach to-day; to-morrow they will demand the suppression of the procession itself, and soon after they will wish to close the church where the saint’s relics are venerated. We know something of this in Belgium. Because we submitted to the proscription of jubilee processions last year, we have had to resign ourselves this year (1876) to seeing God in the Eucharist confined to the temple; and we shall see worse things still, if we do not guard against them in time. It would, therefore, be mere folly to sacrifice to interested claimants a venerable custom, dear to whole populations and full of poetry and originality. “But why dance?” you ask. “Cannot faith be shown in some other way?” Of course it can. Do not let us kneel down to pray, or stand uncovered before holy images, or make the sign of the cross, or do a hundred other things equally useless, strictly speaking. Yet who would propose to give them up? There is in the heart of man a powerful, mysterious tendency to express the inner feelings of the soul by symbolical actions. Thence come these many ceremonies which have no sense in themselves, and all owe their worth to a hidden significance. The dance of Echternach has no other origin; it is the symbolical representation of the sentiments of joyful confidence which the people feel in the holy patron of their town. In every age joy has been expressed by dancing, and among those who blame the custom of Echternach may there not be some one who has danced for joy at hearing good news? Many examples could be cited since David danced before the Ark of the Alliance down to our own days, so readily do these impetuous emotions of the soul translate themselves into movements of the body.

Still, the church, while introducing into her ceremonies a rich and varied symbolism, has never admitted dancing; and this prudent reserve is to be admired because dancing, harmless in itself, is one of those dangerous things which can, according to time and place, produce deplorable abuses. With the same wise moderation she has not absolutely forbidden it; and where the practice has been introduced naturally, and has become a part of popular devotion, she has tolerated it, as at Echternach, and even encouraged it because she saw in it clearly a religious element. Nothing is more wonderful in the church than this perfect wisdom, this superior good sense, with which she regulates great social and political questions and decides the petty details of individual life. Her attitude towards this ancient ceremony is as clear and correct as possible; she mildly favors it in spite of its strange forms, and refuses to blame these unless they become an occasion of scandal. From the moment that the dance should lose its traditional character of austere and respectable devotion, and become a pretext of pleasure and disorder, it would be at once condemned by the church and would fall into discredit. Thank God! that day is not near, and the procession of Echternach will still outlive many a kingdom and empire.

As a matter of course, it will be discussed as long as it lasts, and will always have adversaries and partisans. Prose and poetry will for ever dispute over human society, and will seek to model it after two opposite fashions. We live to-day in a prosaic age. Prose triumphed with the French Revolution and has passed through western Europe with a hammer, destroying, together with works of art, all the flower of Catholic institutions and habits. They will revive, but slowly, and this generation will not see their complete restoration. Now, despoiled of all which lent a charm to existence, society languishes in a desert of monotony. Rhythm, so to speak, has disappeared from our lives with that glorious succession of festivals, customs, memories, and hopes which surrounded us from the cradle to the grave. All that was Catholic poetry; it enlivened the existence of the poor laborer, and made of a peasant, attached to the soil and toiling for his master, a happier man, more contented with himself, than workmen in the cities who get a good salary and enjoy their independence. There is in the human soul a sublime aspiration after beauty and poetry which nothing can destroy, and its wings grow strong as they meet with resistance. Does not the tedium which has devoured the last generation betray a sense of want and an aspiration after Catholic life with its artistic magnificence and poetic influences? Humanity is tending in that direction, and has already met the enemy who would bar the way. Thence comes the loud and terrible struggle which tears the whole earth, and of which we may, without presumption, hope to see the close.

The procession of Echternach, like the mysteries of Oberammergau in Upper Bavaria, is a precious relic of the old popular poetry of Catholicity translated into the habits of life. That is its true and complete meaning. It is neither more nor less; it is not an act of worship nor a vulgar profanation. It stands on that boundary line where the church condescends to popular feeling and makes the hard road through life easier by her help. It is the natural fruit of popular devotion which sprang from a religious feeling and has been preserved with respectful piety. It could not be imitated or transplanted; like generous wine, it would lose the flavor of the soil if it were cultivated on strange land. It is only possible there where all is harmonious with it. One must have a studied hostility towards religious things to fail to see its æsthetic character, even without recognizing the sincerity and the venerable tone of the old custom. Some people fall into ecstasies over Grecian theories and the beautiful religious dances sculptured on the metopes of the Parthenon. Others devote their lives to the study of the chorus in ancient tragedies and its evolutions on the stage. I do not say that the dance of Echternach, as such, is comparable to these choreographic works of art, but why refuse to a Christian practice in use among our fathers the benevolent attention lavished on pagan society? Has it not a double claim to study in the fact that we received it from our Catholic ancestors? For five centuries, at least, it has lived and flourished among the populations of the Ardennes and its surroundings. Every year it draws from their homes thousands of these sedentary peasants; it furrows with the steps of pilgrims the long, white, desert roads of Luxembourg; it draws together in fraternal relations men far removed from each other, by the same prayers and the same emotions; it lifts towards heaven in unalloyed joy their faces bowed pitilessly earthward all the rest of the year. It teaches them to know beyond their own fireside and parish the great Christian family of which they are members, and leaves in their memory for all the rest of the summer and through the long winter evenings ineffaceable impressions of peaceful happiness. That is poetry, it seems to me, and of the best kind; more is the pity for those who cannot feel it. As the name of _pèlerinard_ is not one that frightens or mortifies me, I will assert that the ancient procession of Echternach inspired me with unlimited admiration, that it edified, moved, and consoled me, and appeared to me a most charming episode in the great, mournful epic of human life.

THE PAN-PRESBYTERIANS.

After two years of careful preparation the great Pan-Presbyterian Council has assembled; has eaten seven luncheons in public and at the public expense, and a corresponding number of breakfasts, dinners, and suppers in private and at private cost; and has dispersed; its members talked much—but these were their only deeds. The labor of the Pan-Presbyterian mountain brought forth not even a mouse. Its promise was large; its performance was ludicrously small—so small that the leading journals of England appear to have been almost unaware of the existence of the Pan-Presbyterians, while the principal organ of opinion in the Scotch city where the council was held—“close to the grave of John Knox, the founder of Presbyterianism”—gave to the record of its proceedings not so much space as it often devotes to the report of a local synod, and dismissed it at its close with good-humored but contemptuous ridicule. Here, however, the ingenuous reader may inquire, “Who are the Pan-Presbyterians, and for what purpose were they in council?” The question would be a natural one, and he who propounds it need not blush for his ignorance. The people of Scotland may be presumed to know all that is worth knowing about Presbyterianism in all its forms; but it appears that in certain rural districts of that very Presbyterian land the impression prevailed that Pan-Presbyterian was the title of a new sect indigenous to America, and recently smuggled into Scotland like the Colorado beetle; while in the more learned circles of Edinburgh this bucolic delusion was derided by erudite philologists, who explained that “Pan-Presbyterianism is a learned form of stating that Presbyterianism is Everything, and that a Pan-Presbyterian is a person who holds that comprehensive yet exclusive doctrine.” In point of fact, however, the Pan-Presbyterians were simply three hundred and twenty-five gentlemen, most of them with the handle of reverend to their names, who claimed to be the delegated representatives of the various Presbyterian sects throughout the world. From time to time some of the almost innumerable Protestant sects show that they are ashamed of their sectarianism. Those of them who recognize at all the fact that Jesus Christ established _one_ church in the world are uneasy when they remember that they are members only of a sect which has a human origin. This feeling, if rightly nurtured and obeyed, would lead those who entertain it into the fold of the church; but prejudice, pride, ignorance, and self-interest too often stand in the way, and lead to attempts to satisfy the natural Christian yearning for unity by projects for the amalgamation of a few of the sects into one body. Thus we have had a Pan-Anglican Congress, a Bonn Conference, and an Evangelical Alliance; and now this Pan-Presbyterian Council. Presbyterianism has a history of about three hundred and twenty-five years, and in this period it has succeeded in dividing and subdividing itself, until even its own doctors do not know with exactness how many different kinds of Presbyterians there may be, or in what manner the points of doctrine which separate them should be formulated. It was suggested at the council that accurate information upon this subject was desirable, and the task of obtaining it was entrusted to a committee, who hope they may be able to report in three years’ time. The project for the Pan-Presbyterian Council was originated by an eminent American Presbyterian minister—President McCosh, of Princeton (New Jersey) College; and it took definite shape at a meeting held in London in 1875, when “the alliance of the reformed churches throughout the world holding to the Presbyterian system” was organized. Before the council could be summoned, however, careful precautions had to be taken in order to prevent the assemblage, which was to meet for the promotion of unity, from breaking up in a row and resulting in the establishment of one or more new schisms. A charm of novelty was thus imparted to the undertaking; every one felt that a Presbyterian synod which could hold its sessions without a free fight would indeed be a new spectacle. The harmony of the council was to be assured beforehand by forbidding it to exercise any authority whatsoever. It was especially prohibited from attempting to “interfere with the existing creed or constitution of any church in the alliance, or with its internal order or external relations.” Thus the door was opened for the admission of the representatives of sects who are almost as wide apart from each other in what they believe and teach as they are from the church. So long as they called themselves Presbyterians, or “held to the Presbyterian system of church government,” it was enough. There is a Presbyterian sect in Holland whose pastors, at least, teach that the Bible is not an inspired book, and who deny the divinity of Christ; there is a Presbyterian sect in France which avows the boldest rationalism; there are Presbyterian sects in the United States who rejoice with exceeding great joy in the belief that there are millions of infants not a span long frying in hell; and there are others who have recoiled so far from Calvinism that they have fallen into Universalism. In Scotland itself bitter strife prevails between the various Presbyterian sects on such questions as the connection of the state with the church, the binding force of the “Standards,” and the extent and nature of the Atonement; and there is a large party which is declaring that if a certain reverend professor, who has written to prove that parts of the Bible are forgeries, myths, or fables, is disciplined for that expression of opinion, they will revolt and help him to set up a sect of his own. But the Pan-Presbyterians resolved to concern themselves with none of these things. Everything unpleasant was to be avoided; unity was to be talked about, but no attempt to effect it by defining truth or denouncing error was to be made. Even with these restrictions the promoters of the council realized the danger of their experiment, and at the last moment they diminished its perils by enacting that no one should speak twice on the same subject, and that the discourses should be limited from twenty to ten minutes each. The latter provision, which was stringently enforced, more than once saved the council from painful scenes. We had occasion, when writing in these pages six months ago,[177] to show that in the Presbyterian body in Scotland theoretical infidelity had made such headway and had obtained so firm a foothold that to deny the inspiration of the Bible, and to cast doubt upon the authenticity of the miraculous events recorded in its pages, was regarded by a powerful section as an evidence of profound scholarship and of a fearless love for truth, rather than as a proof that the advocates of these opinions had ceased to be worthy of the name and position of Christian teachers. In a word, the condition of the Presbyterian sects throughout the world was such that a general council of its leading men was highly desirable, provided that there remained in the sects anything worth saving, and they possessed in themselves the power of saving it. For ourselves, we believe that the mutilated fragments of Christian truth still retained by the majority of the Presbyterian laity and by a considerable number of the Presbyterian ministers are well worth saving; but we fear that the Presbyterians themselves will not, or cannot, save them. If these Pan-Presbyterians were truly representative men, then, we should say, it is all up with Presbyterianism. The spirit which conceived the council and which governed its proceedings was the spirit of cowardice, of temporary expediency, of prophesying smooth things, and, if we must speak with entire plainness, the spirit of utter and base unfaithfulness to God’s revealed truth, even to that version of his revealed truth which the Presbyterians profess with their lips, and which they have formulated in their own creeds, confessions, and catechisms. In the face of the fact that on the Continent of Europe their co-religionists are rapidly becoming Unitarians, rationalists, and infidels; that in Scotland German rationalistic philosophy has won its way into their theological schools and poisoned the very fountains of their ecclesiastical learning, so that it has now become notorious that a large share of their ministers either do not believe what they preach or else preach that which is in irreconcilable antagonism to the “Standards”; and that in America the Presbyterian bodies are drifting into Socinianism on one hand, and back into the hardest and most repulsive form of Calvinism on the other—in view of all these undeniable facts, or rather with assumed and predetermined blindness to them, the chosen representatives of the Presbyterian sects assemble, spend seven days in talking with each other, and separate without uttering a word or performing an act in affirmation or defence or vindication of absolute and divine truth. No! That was not in the programme; it was only on condition that nothing of the kind should be attempted that the council was got together at all; it was only because this promise was observed that the council managed to do its talking and to disperse in peace. At one of its meetings a curious scene occurred. A woman—an earnest Presbyterian of the old sort, a spiritual descendant of Jennie Geddes—had made her way into the council, and had listened to the debate for some time in silence; but her emotions at last overcame her, and, rising to her feet, she politely informed the chairman that she hoped God’s lightning would come down and strike the assembly for its unfaithfulness. This irate lady was indiscreet; but she only expressed, we suppose, the feelings of many an honest Presbyterian. The council, however, was wise in its generation, and it must be confessed that it acted upon strictly Protestant principles. The essence of Protestantism is a revolt against supreme authority; it is the affirmation of the idea that one man’s opinion is as good as another’s, and perhaps better. An attempt to provide means for an organic unity of the sects represented would have ended in a free fight; the affirmation of positive truths condemnatory of the heresies which honey-*comb the sects was impossible so long as the bargain by which these heresies were to be ignored was carried out.

Footnote 177:

See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April.

The official programme of the work of the council was thus conceived:

“To consider questions of general interest to Presbyterians; to strengthen and protect weak and persecuted churches; to explain and extend the Presbyterian system; and to discuss subjects of church work—evangelization, training of ministers, use of the press, colportage, suppression of intemperance, observance of the Sabbath, systematic beneficence, and the suppression of Romanism and infidelity.”

We must here record, with a grateful heart, that “Romanism” came off very lightly. We are not certain that for this crowning mercy we are not indebted to those wily fellows, the Jesuits. For it was observed that, whenever one of the speakers began to adduce evidence that the Pope was Antichrist, the chairman suddenly discovered “that time was up”; and it was likewise remarked that more than one soul-stirring revelation of the diabolical seductions of the Scarlet Woman was cut short by the announcement that “the luncheon hour had arrived, and that Bailie McTavish would preside”—an intimation which never failed to empty the hall. Now, there are Jesuits in Scotland—no less than a score of them—and that they are quite equal to the task of devising means like these for their protection cannot be doubted by any enlightened Protestant mind. As for the twin sister of Romanism—infidelity—that escaped almost scot free. The learned and pious delegates fought shy of the subject; it was felt to be a dangerous one.

The council began its sessions in the Free Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, on the 4th of July. It was found to consist of 325 members, of whom 238 were regularly-appointed delegates, and 87 were honorary, or associate, delegates. Thirty-one of the delegates were from the Continent of Europe; Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland sent 92 delegates; the colonies 30; and the United States 85. The American delegates had brought with them 32 “associates”; and it was, perhaps, in order to guard against bulldozing on the part of the Americans that the Scotch delegates appointed on the spur of the moment 48 “associates” to sit with their delegates and thus maintain a proper balance of power. The precaution was not unnecessary; even after it had been adopted the Americans did far more than their share of the talking. The established church of Scotland, in appointing its delegates to the council, had instructed them to take a high and mighty attitude, and to refrain from doing or saying anything which would imply that they had been sent there to treat on terms of equality with the representatives of the other sects. The American delegation was respectable for its ability, and the ultra-orthodox element was dominant in it. The two hostile camps into which the handful of French Presbyterians are divided were both represented; and so were the two Presbyterian sects of Holland. There were enough Presbyterians in Belgium to send one delegate, and no more. The German Presbyterians declined to be officially represented, and the three German members of the council came as volunteers. Bohemia and Hungary had their delegates; Switzerland sent some gentlemen who were rather sat upon; the modern inheritors of the old Waldensian heretics were the constituents of a delegate who had little to say; and the remainder of the thirty-one European delegates were representatives of “the missionary churches” in Italy, Spain, and Greece. As nearly as could be ascertained, there are about fifty different Presbyterian sects, and it was estimated that more than half of these were represented in the council. But the delegates were not endowed with any power to act, or even to speak officially, in the name of their respective constituents. Those of the sects in Switzerland, Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary which have a connection with the state had either refused to be represented at all or had permitted their members to attend only as individuals. This complete absence of everything like legislative or judicial power in the council is a sufficient apology for its failure to promulgate new decrees or to define any dogma. But had the Pan-Presbyterians been of one mind and heart, they might at least have lifted up their united testimony, in some shape or other, in defence of those cardinal truths of Christianity which are now assailed, all the world over, by men in their own ranks. This they did not venture to do, for the reason that, had they tried to do it, their congress would have ended in a row.

The opening sermon of the council was preached by Professor Flint, who took for his text the prayer of our Lord for the unity of his church, and whose discourse was an argument to the effect that when the Founder of the church prayed that his followers “all may be one,” he intended that they should be all divided. “A universal church,” says Professor Flint, “was as grandiose and diseased a dream as was a universal empire”; and he warned the council against striving after organic unity even among the fifty separate Presbyterian sects. The adoption of the rules of order, which provided that the meetings “should be opened shortly with prayer,” caused a member to complain that it was very awkward to use the word “shortly” in connection with prayer; but the chairman replied that while it was awkward it was very necessary, else they would have nothing but praying. The first subject of discussion was “Harmony of Reformed Confessions,” which were divided into three classes—ante-Calvinistic, Calvinistic, and post-Calvinistic. These originally were not intended to be formulas, but only apologies—“vindications of the Protestant faith against Romish misrepresentation and slander.” For a while these confessions maintained their supremacy, but now “they have lost their authority in almost every country except England, Scotland, and the United States”; and each church interprets the Scriptures to suit itself, even upon such grave questions as “reprobation and infant salvation.” Should the council@ leave this matter in its present indefinite state, or should it undertake to formulate a new confession to which all Presbyterians should subscribe? A Swiss delegate ventured the startling suggestion that if such a confession were formulated “the Divinity of Christ should be the central stand-point in it”; and another delegate produced the draught of a new dogmatic constitution, in thirty-one articles, which had been obligingly formulated by Professor Kraft, of Bonn, who had patched it up from the various confessions and had sent it to the council with his compliments. Principal Brown, of Aberdeen, remarked that it would be extremely desirable that this or some other similar constitution should be adopted, or something else done, chiefly “in order to silence—no, it would not do that—but to put to shame the calumny of the Church of Rome, which said that the Reformed churches were divided into as many distinct and conflicting religions as there were sects of them. The more intelligent Romanists knew this was false” (then we cannot be classed among the more intelligent Romanists), “but it suited them all the same to say it and repeat it, because it had a certain pithy and plausible sound. And Presbyterians were there to testify that it was false, and that in all that was substantial and vital in Christianity the Reformed churches were practically one.” After this bold declaration it would have been naturally in order to take the step necessary to prove it. But canny Professor Brown hastened to add that, on second thoughts, he was of the opinion that the council had better leave the matter alone and not attempt any unity save that of “sympathy.” Professor Candlish lamented that “there was not now that lively sense of the unity and harmony of the Reformed confessions that there once was.” In fact, no one knew exactly what changes the various churches had made in the “Standards,” and he thought it would be interesting, at least, to collect information on that point, so as to ascertain how many different Presbyterian beliefs there were. Dr. Lang, of Glasgow, warned the council that it was treading on dangerous ground. “There were deeper issues involved than merely touching the surface of their confessions: there was the whole question as to the authority and place of the Bible, and behind that the whole question of the supernatural.” The widest differences of opinion existed on these questions—every one knew that—but as long as possible let them be kept in the background. By covering them up, and avoiding “a restless and continual nig-nagging at the matter,” a sufficient degree of harmony could be maintained, at least for the present. A lay delegate, a lawyer, said that if the council once ventured to deal “with the very complicated, delicate, and difficult question of creeds,” there might be found many who would propose to solve the difficulty by dispensing with all creeds. Dr. Begg at this point boiled over, and read the council a severe lecture, expressing the disgust with which he had listened to some of the statements which had been made and apparently accepted.

“Every age had its own theology!—(laughter and applause)—he did not in the least believe that. Theology had been the same since the days of Eden. The idea of having a new theology at every stage was a blunder. (Laughter.) They heard of discoveries being made; but these discoveries were only resurrections of old errors. (Laughter.) He found a revolt against the divine authority and the divine Word—and the rebels were the discoverers of these new theologies.”

The discussion was now growing warm, but as it was announced that “the hour for luncheon had arrived, and that Mr. Stevenson, M.P., would preside,” the threatened fight was averted, and the subject was disposed of at a subsequent meeting by the passage of the following resolution:

“That this council appoint a committee with instructions to prepare a report to be laid before the next General Council, showing, in point of fact—1. What are the existing creeds and confessions of the churches composing this alliance, and what have been their previous creeds and confessions, with any modifications thereupon, and the dates and occasions of the same from the Reformation to the present day. 2. What are the existing formulas of subscription, if any, and what have been the previous formulas of subscription used in those churches in connection with their creeds and confessions. 3. How far has individual adherence to those creeds by subscription or otherwise been required from the ministers, elders, or other office-bearers respectively, and also from the private members of the same. And the council authorize the committee to correspond with members of the several churches throughout the world who may be able to give information; and they enjoin the committee, in submitting their report, not to accompany it either with any comparative estimate of those creeds or with any critical remarks upon their respective value, expediency, or efficiency.”

There was an unhappy and heated controversy concerning the appointment of some of the members of this committee, but this excitement was unnecessary. The information can all be obtained by the purchase of a few books and pamphlets; and as the committee is forbidden to accompany its report with “any critical remarks,” the presence upon it of a few rationalists or Universalists can do no mischief.

The remainder of the time of the council—and it sat thrice a day for a week—was occupied with talk. Nothing was done that was worthy of the name of action. Extracts from scores of religious essays were read; hundreds of little religious or semi-religious speeches were made; and that was all. We do not know what the Presbyterians here and elsewhere expected; but if they expected anything practical they have been sadly disappointed. Some of the little speeches were comic—as, for example, that of “the Rev. Mr. Robinson, of Louisville, U. S.,” who seems to have pursued antiquarian researches with startling results, since he has ascertained that Presbyterianism began with Abraham; that Moses was a member of the presbytery of Egypt; and that Elisha and Ezechiel were the moderators of the Presbyterian synods of Samaria and Jerusalem. Presbyterianism was the true form of government in the Jewish Church, and it was the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Judea that passed sentence of death on Jesus of Nazareth. Nay, according to this sprightly Kentucky divine, heaven itself will be a Presbyterian community, governed by a presbytery of four-and-twenty members. To listen to such excellent fooling as this; to read the essay laboriously prepared at home in Peoria or Dundee, and carefully rehearsed to admiring wife and wondering bairns for months before starting; to discuss, even in ten-minute speeches, such thrilling and novel themes as the uses of elders, the sinfulness of Sabbath-breaking, the advantages of assemblies, the wickedness of the Pope, and the unquestionable mental, moral, and religious superiority of Presbyterians in general, and Pan-Presbyterians especially, over all the rest of mankind—all this, no doubt, was pleasant enough to the participants; but it was scarcely the entertainment to which the outside world had been invited. True, there was voted, at the close of the council, and after an unusually hearty luncheon at which the brethren tarried long, “an address to the queen,” accompanied by what an Edinburgh journal irreverently describes as “unanimous votes of thanks to the Deity, Mr. A. T. Niven, C.A., and the lord provost.” Probably her majesty will never read the address, as it is a long one and does not call for a reply. But if she should peruse it, she will scarcely thank its authors for suggesting that she, too, is a Pan-Presbyterian, or that she changes her religion every time she crosses the Tweed. It appears something like an impertinence in the Pan-Presbyterians to write thus to the queen:

“We venture to indicate the deep interest which we take in the circumstance that, while residing in Scotland, your majesty joins in the Presbyterian worship and communion.”

The queen goes to a Presbyterian church when in Scotland because Presbyterianism is the religion of the state in Scotland, of which she is the head; and she goes to an Episcopalian church when in England because episcopacy is the religion of the state in England. If she were in India, and Mohammedanism were the state religion there, she would probably go to a mosque with the same good grace that she displays when sitting under the parish minister near Balmoral. The council also appointed a committee to see whether money could be raised for the publication of a mass of old treatises and essays upon Presbyterianism which no private publisher has ever thought of reprinting; and another committee to “consider” what could be reported to the next council—which, by the way, is to be held at Philadelphia in 1880, if the world and Pan-Presbyterianism be then in existence. That portion of the programme which promised “the suppression of infidelity” was not carried out; a day was spent in talking about the best methods of getting the better of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Bradlaugh, and the like, but the matter ended with the acceptance of the remark of Prof. Cairns, that disputation with such people is rather worse than useless, since they are well skilled in argument, and that the only thing to be done with them is to pray for them. As Americans we record with justifiable pride the encomiums bestowed upon the American delegates by the great Dr. Phin, and the still greater Dr. Begg. “Sound Christian doctrine,” said the first, “in this land has received a most powerful impulse from the addresses of the American brethren”; and Dr. Begg “rejoiced because of the firm tone which had characterized the addresses of the American speakers, as we require in Scotland an ecclesiastical tonic to brace us up to a firm maintenance of our own Scriptural principles.” The firm tone was not backed up by firm action, nor by any action at all; but, all the same, Dr. Begg is of the opinion that if the orthodox Presbyterians in Scotland could talk as their American brethren do, there would soon be an end to the croaking of “the frogs of infidelity that are coming into our churches like the frogs that went into Pharao’s bed-chamber.” But it may prevent some disappointment in the future to our American Presbyterian friends if we convey to them the warning uttered by the Edinburgh _Scotsman_ at the end of the council—a journal whose opinion on the affair is all the more valuable from the fact that its editor is a Presbyterian clergyman of renown who has abandoned the pulpit for the press:

“Meanwhile,” says the _Scotsman_, “what with choking 'frogs’ and covering up disputable subjects, the appearance of a complete, if not a completely beautiful, harmony was unquestionably produced. But it is only right to warn the Pan-Presbyterians that if they leave us with the notion that, because all is peaceful now, unity is established, they are the victims of a delusion. They may depart to their Swiss hamlets or their Transatlantic cities with psalm-tunes sounding peace within Jerusalem ringing in their ears, and imagine that after this most refreshing time the millennium has come when Dr. Phin and Dr. Blaikie will lie down together, and Dr. Marcus Dods and Dr. Moody Stewart will kiss each other. But, alas! shortly after they have told their deeply-affected flocks at home of the harmony which prevails in Bible-loving Scotland, some morning when Dr. Rufus Choate examines his Chicago _Trumpet_, and Dr. Brunnelhanner lays down his meerschaum to take up his paper, they will find that all the old dissensions have broken out again with alarming violence; that ministers who agreed on a platform of wood can agree upon no other; that Dr. Blaikie has attacked Establishments from love of their members, and has Dr. Pirie’s head in Chancery; that Dr. Phin has a new scheme to 'dish’ the Dissenters; that those who led the devotions are now leading the fray; that those who were at peace are not on speaking terms, or on terms in speaking which are very bad indeed; while those who lauded the agreement between confessions cannot agree amongst themselves as to what these confessions mean to say. The visit of the Pan-Presbyterians may, after all, share the fate that generally overtakes the other numerous excursionists who appear among us about this season. For the moment we may be struck by their numbers and their banners with their strange devices, and be moved to the heart, or even deeper, by their bass-drum and their instruments of brass; but when they have gone, if any memory of them remains, it is only of something that was loud and singular, but what it was or what it did there is nothing palpable to show.”

The Pan-Presbyterians repeated very often that, while they did not expect, or even desire, to effect “organic unity” between their various sects—that unity being, in their opinion, opposed to the will of God—they were, all the same, “one in spirit and in sympathy.” But the hollowness of even this pretence was manifested when an attempt was made to induce them to unite in what they call “partaking of the Lord’s Supper.” Toward the close of the council it was announced that “Dr. Moody Stewart and his session invited the members of council to communion at half-past twelve on Saturday.” Now, from a Catholic, or “Romanist,” point of view, it is rather surprising that a convention of eminent Christian ministers, assembled for what they professed to regard as the most important purposes, should have already spent several days without performing this supreme act of Christian devotion. But Pan-Presbyterian ways are not as our ways. Nevertheless, one would have supposed that, being thus invited to do what they had neglected, they would at least have received the invitation kindly. On the contrary, a most unhappy scene followed. The Orthodox Pan-Presbyterians were willing to talk with their unorthodox colleagues; they would eat luncheons with them, make speeches and read papers to them, and even listen to their speeches and papers in return; but when it came to “partaking of the sacrament” with them, they would not do it at any price. Dr. Phin at once protested against the idea that he, for one, could thus be yoked unevenly with unbelievers. “He happened to entertain certain old-fashioned ideas with respect to the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper” which would prevent him from joining in it unless he knew his company. For instance, there should be “the fencing of the tables”; and this fencing would surely shut out either the sheep or the goats. The “fencing of the tables,” it appears, is a curious custom prevalent in Scotland, and may be thus explained: an invitation to “the communion” is given, and then every one who wishes to receive it is scared off either by terrific denunciations of the awful guilt incurred by those who partake unworthily, or is compelled to pass a severe competitive examination as to the soundness of his faith and his acceptance of the “Standards.” Dr. Phin was, no doubt, correct in supposing that the application of these tests would produce unpleasant results, and his conscience would not permit him to assist at a communion where they were not applied. Dr. Begg took the same view, and “regretted that the invitation had been given.” The chairman—who on this occasion happened to be Dr. Ormiston, of New York—sought to get over the difficulty by suggesting that “it would be understood that nobody was committed except the gentlemen who took part in it,” and he added the remarkable declaration that “as members of council not one of them had any responsibility to the weight of a hair.” A lay member “protested against any administration of free communion in connection with the council”; and Dr. Blaikie said the committee had “taken every precaution that the council should not be committed in any way.” With this assurance the subject “was allowed to drop,” and when the time for the communion arrived only one hundred and thirty of the three hundred and twenty-five Pan-Presbyterians presented themselves to receive it—and among these neither Dr. Phin nor Dr. Begg was seen.

The Continental Pan-Presbyterians made a pitiful show for themselves during the council. Few of them could speak English; and the linguistic accomplishments of the majority of their colleagues being limited, they were compelled, when they spoke at all, to express themselves through an interpreter, which is not generally an exhilarating process. One of the French delegates said there were forty Presbyterian congregations in France without pastors, and he suggested that a collection might be made to aid in hiring men to fill these vacancies; but this hint was not taken. A volunteer member from Berlin read a sensible paper upon “missions,” in which he ridiculed the present system of Protestant missions, and said that their only fruits were the inculcation of hypocrisy and of pauperism among the so-called converts. On this same subject, by the way, one of the members put forth the novel idea that the conversion of one Jew was worth more than the salvation of a hundred pagans. Dr. Hoedemaker, of Amsterdam, said that the Presbyterians there had long been poisoned with the virus of rationalism, and that forty years ago “there were very few who preached the living Christ in his church”; but now, he hoped, there was some improvement. M. Decoppet, of the French Presbyterian body, complained that the sect could make no progress there, “because they were not allowed by the law to give a tract on the street or to deliver public lectures”; but still he was confident that “France would soon become a Protestant nation”—by the aid of M. Gambetta and the Reds, we presume. The representative of the Waldensian heretics apologized for the bad character of some of its ministers, but said that as fast as the false shepherds were detected they were expelled from the fold.

Politeness, perhaps, would command us to express our acknowledgments of certain courteous, sensible, and truthful things which were said about the church—as, for example, that “she was the mother of infidelity” and the fountain and origin of all civil, moral, and religious evil. But, on the whole, we think our readers will have had enough of the Pan-Presbyterians. Dr. Begg, at the last meeting of the council, said that “they saw the shadow of the great eclipse of Romanism again cast over the country.” We take this to be the Beggonian method of expressing the fact that the few Christians who remain in Scotland are on the way to return to the church of their forefathers—the church which civilized and Christianized Scotland, and which had the unhappiness to nurture in her bosom the apostate priest who was the father of Scotch Presbyterianism. Dr. Begg is not an infallible prophet, but such events as the Pan-Presbyterian council are calculated to hasten the event which he predicts. For the council has shown that the Presbyterian Church throughout the world, as represented by its chosen men, is undermined by infidelity, and that its existence, in their opinion, depends upon concealing this fact and pretending that no one has the right to proclaim it.

TRANSLATION FROM HORACE. ODE 14, BOOK 2.

_Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume!_

Alas! my Posthumus, our years Glide silently away; no tears, No loving orisons, repair The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair, That drop forgotten to the tomb: Pluto’s inexorable doom Mocks at thy daily sacrifice; Around his dreary kingdom lies That fatal stream whose arms enfold The Giant race accursed of old; All, all alike must cross its wave, The king, the noble, and the slave. In vain we shun the fields of war, And breakers dashed on Adria’s shore; Vainly we flee, in terror blind, The plague that walketh on the wind; The sluggish river of the Dead, Cocytus, must be visited; And Danaüs’ detested brood, Foul with their fifty husbands’ blood; And Sisyphus, with ghastly smile Pointing to his eternal toil. All must be left: thy gentle wife, Thy home, the joys of rural life; And when thy fleeting days are gone, Th’ ill-omened cypresses alone Of all those fondly-cherished trees Shall grace thy funeral obsequies, Cling to thy loved remains, and wave Their mournful shadows o’er thy grave. A lavish but a nobler heir Thy hoarded Cæcuban shall share, And on the tessellated floor The purple nectar madly pour, Nectar more worthy of the halls Where Pontiffs hold their festivals.

S. E. DE V.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; their History, Condition, and Management. Special Report. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education. 1876.

In 1874 the Commissioner of the Bureau of Education in the Department of the Interior at Washington began the preparation of a complete Report on the Public Libraries in the United States; on the 31st of August, 1876, the report was submitted; it was printed, and it makes a volume of 1,187 pages. A careful study of the contents of this unique work compels us to express, in the first place, our most cordial appreciation of the great labor which has been expended upon it, and of the value of the information which it contains. The size of the volume, we fear, has deterred many into whose hands it has fallen from more than glancing over its pages; we confess for ourselves that we shrank, for a while, from the task of reading it. But we have been amply repaid for our toil, which soon became a pleasure; and we may say here that we have seen in foreign periodicals and journals a number of highly eulogistic and discriminating reviews of the report. We propose to make our readers share in the satisfaction we have derived from our study of this work; but our space will permit us only to give a condensed summary of a portion of its contents.

No less than 132 pages of the report are taken up with a table giving the statistics of all the “public libraries” in the United States and Territories numbering 300 volumes or more, excepting common or district school libraries. The table is as complete as it could be made from the returns received in 1875-76; but it is incomplete, because many of the libraries named in it do not report the date of their foundation, their average annual increase in books, their financial condition, or their yearly expenditures. But with all these defects the table is extremely valuable. It shows, to begin with, that the total number of these libraries is 3,647, having as their total number of volumes 12,276,964. We pause here for a moment to say that the report also shows that in the district-school libraries, not included in the table, there are 1,365,407 volumes, and that in all the libraries there are about 1,500,000 pamphlets not classed as “volumes.” The census of 1870 showed that there were 107,673 private libraries, containing 25,571,503 volumes, exclusive of those which may be in the State of Connecticut, from which State no returns on this subject were received. Here, then, we have a total of 39,213,874 volumes of books in the public, private, and school libraries of the country—a mass of printed matter large enough, estimating each volume to weigh a pound, to fill nine merchant vessels of 2,000 tons burden each. Let us also in this place give the following list of the number of volumes in several noted libraries in other countries, with the remark that, as the statistics of these libraries differ widely according to different authorities, we have in each case taken the highest number given, and that this number relates only to books, and not to manuscripts or pamphlets, fugitive publications, etc.:

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris 2,000,000 Mazarin Library, Paris 160,000 Royal Library, Madrid 200,000 Convent Library of the Escorial, Madrid 130,000 Vatican Library, Rome 1,000,000 Magliabecchíana Library, Florence 200,000 Laurentian Library, Florence 120,000 Museo Borbonico, Naples 200,000 University Library, Bologna 200,000 Brera Library, Milan 200,000 Ambrosian Library, Milan 140,000 University Library, Turin 150,000 Royal Library, Berlin 700,000 Royal Library, Dresden 500,000 University Library, Breslau 350,000 University Library, Göttingen 400,000 Ducal Library, Wolfenbüttel 300,000 University Library, Freiburg 250,000 Royal Library, Stuttgart 450,000 Royal Library, Munich 900,000 Royal Library, Copenhagen 550,000 Bodleian Library, Oxford 700,000 Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh 300,000 University Library, Edinburgh 130,000 Imperial Library, St. Petersburg 1,100,000 City Library, Augsburg 150,000 University Library, Cambridge 400,000 City Library, Frankfort 150,000 Ducal Library, Gotha 240,000 City Library, Hamburg 300,000 City Library, Leipsic 170,000 University Library, Leipsic 350,000 British Museum, London 1,020,000

In these 33 libraries in the Old World there are 14,110,000 volumes, exclusive of manuscripts, or 1,833,176 more volumes than we have in all of our 3,647 public libraries. We say nothing of the comparative value of the collections, for of course there is no comparison between a collection which has been accumulating for a thousand years and one which was made yesterday. But we have no reason to be ashamed of our American public libraries; on the contrary, as the report which we are reviewing abundantly shows, we have every reason to be proud of them. We take from this report the following table:

Whole number of public libraries 3,647

Whole number of volumes 12,276,964

Average number of volumes 3,366

Yearly additions (1,510 reporting) 434,339

Yearly use of books (742 reporting) 8,879,809

Amt of permanent fund (1,722 reporting) $6,105,581

Yearly income (830 reporting) $1,398,756

Yearly expenditures for publications $562,407 (769 reporting)

Yearly expenditures for salaries, etc. $682,166 (643 reporting)

The 3,647 libraries are distributed among the various States and Territories as follows; and here we make our only complaint against the report—to wit, that its laborious and faithful editors have not furnished the footings, which we have been compelled to make for ourselves:

Alabama, 31 libraries; Alaska, 1 (the post library at Sitka, and now removed since the garrison has been withdrawn); Arizona, 3 (two of them being military libraries); Arkansas, 6; California, 87; Colorado, 8; Connecticut, 125; Dakota, 4 (two being military libraries); Delaware, 18; District of Columbia, 57 (31 of them belonging to the federal government); Florida, 6; Georgia, 44; Idaho, 1; Illinois, 177; Indiana, 133; Indian Territory, 4 (two of them military libraries); Iowa, 80; Kansas, 19; Kentucky, 72; Louisiana, 31; Maine, 85; Maryland, 77; Massachusetts, 453; Michigan, 89; Minnesota, 39; Mississippi, 23; Missouri, 87; Montana, 2; Nebraska, 14; Nevada, 6; New Hampshire, 86; New Jersey, 91; New Mexico, 4 (one of them a military library, and two of the others belonging to Catholic academies); New York, 617; North Carolina, 37; Ohio, 223; Oregon, 14; Pennsylvania, 367; Rhode Island, 56; South Carolina, 26; Tennessee, 71; Texas, 42; Utah, 5; Vermont, 65; Virginia, 63; Washington Territory, 2 (one of them a Catholic library); West Virginia, 23; Wisconsin, 73; and Wyoming Territory, 3.

These figures are suggestive in various ways, and many interesting and valuable inferences might be drawn from them. But a careful analysis of the other portions of the table would also be necessary in order to avoid mistakes; and the wholly unknown quantity in the problem—the comparative value of different collections—would imperil the accuracy of any deductions which might be made from the statistics in this table. For instance, the 31 libraries in Alabama contain 60,615 volumes—nearly 5,000 less than are in the New York Society Library alone. A library is a library, for the purposes of this report, if it contain 300 or more volumes, just as a book is a book although there may be nothing in it. Who is to say whether some of the smaller collections in the South are not really more valuable than the larger and newer libraries in the North? We fear it is not so; but there is no test by which to decide the question. If we leave this point, and turn our attention to the statistics relating to the principal libraries, we shall come upon more satisfactory ground.

The thirty-eighth chapter of the report, filling 273 pages, is devoted to a review of the public libraries of ten principal cities—Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Charleston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco. In these ten cities there are 471 public libraries with 3,447,628 volumes, viz.:

_Name of City._ _No. of Libraries_ _Volumes._ Charleston 6 26,600 Chicago 23 141,910 San Francisco 30 164,228 Brooklyn 21 165,112 St. Louis 31 170,875 Cincinnati 30 197,890 Baltimore 38 230,342 Philadelphia 102 707,627 Boston 68 734,741 New York 122 906,203 —- ————- Total 471 3,445,528

To this list we add, in order that the South may have justice done to her:

_Name of City._ _No. of Libraries_ _Volumes._ New Orleans 15 94,080 Louisville 6 65,897 Richmond 17 63,526

A library containing 10,000 volumes or more, if well selected, may be said to be a respectable collection. Now, there are no less than 266 libraries of this class in the United Slates, and they contain a total of 6,984,882 volumes—an average of 26,259 volumes in each. These 266 libraries, it will be seen, account for more than one half of the total number of volumes in all the public libraries, and they reduce the average number of volumes in the remaining 3,381 libraries to 1,565. But even a library with 1,500 good books is not to be despised.

The largest library in the United States is that of the National Congress at Washington, which has 300,000 volumes; and then follow:

Social Law Library, 299,869 Boston

Harvard University 227,650

Mercantile, New York 160,613

Astor, New York 152,446

Mercantile, Philadelphia 125,668

House of Representatives, 125,000 Washington

Yale College 114,200

Athenæum, Boston 105,000

These are the only libraries which have 100,000 volumes and more. Those which have 50,000 and less than 100,000 volumes are the

State Library at Albany 95,000

New York Society, New 65,000 York

Antiquarian Society, 60,497 Worcester

Peabody Institute, 57,458 Baltimore

Apprentices’, New York 53,000

Dartmouth College 52,550

Mercantile, Brooklyn 50,257

State University, Baton 50,000 Rouge

There are 10 libraries having more than 40,000 and less than 50,000 volumes; 23, with more than 30,000 and less than 40,000; 49, with more than 20,000 and less than 30,000; 52, with more than 15,000 and less than 20,000; 100, with more than 10,000 and less than 15,000; 264, with more than 5,000 and less than 10,000; 156, with more than 4,000 and less than 5,000; 236, with more than 3,000 and less than 4,000; 362, with more than 2,000 and less than 3,000; 762, with more than 1,000 and less than 2,000; and 925, with more than 500 and less than 1,000.

Of the whole number of 3,647 public libraries mentioned in this report, we find 221 which we recognize as those of Catholic institutions. There are no doubt others in the list, but there is no mark by which they can be certainly recognized. Of these 221 distinctively Catholic libraries the following are the chief:

_Place._ _Name._ _Origin._ _Vols._

San Francisco, St. Ignatius’ College, 1855 11,000

Santa Clara, Santa Clara College, 1851 10,000

Georgetown, Georgetown College, 1791 32,268

Washington, Gonzaga College, 1858 10,000

New Orleans, Libraire de la famille, 1872 15,000

Baltimore, Archiepiscopal, .... 10,000

Baltimore, Loyola College, 1853 21,500

Baltimore, St. Mary’s Seminary, 1791 15,000

Hagerstown, St. James’ College, 1842 11,000

Worcester, College of the Holy Cross 1843 12,000

St. Louis, College of the Christian 1860 22,000 Brothers,

Brooklyn, St. Francis’ College, .... 13,970

Fordham, St. John’s College, 1840 15,000

New York, St. Francis Xavier’s 1847 21,000 College,

Cincinnati, Mount St. Mary’s, 1849 15,100

Cincinnati, St. Xavier’s College, 1840 17,000

Latrobe, Penn., St. Vincent’s College, 1846 13,000

In these 17 Catholic libraries there are 264,838 volumes. It is a very respectable number, and, when the probable quality of the books contained in these collections is taken into account, the value of such comparatively small libraries will be seen to be great. The number of volumes in the other 204 Catholic libraries, as we have ascertained by a laborious examination of the tables, is 448,688, so that the total number of volumes in the distinctively Catholic libraries is 713,526. It is a large number of books; but one might complain that it was not larger. We are not sure that these complaints would be well founded. As Catholics we establish our own libraries, but as citizens we aid in the labor and share the cost of forming the general libraries, and we have our part in the advantages which they afford. It will always be our duty, of course, to exert our influence in preserving these collections of books from the contamination of the works of authors whose aim is to undermine morals and to destroy faith; and to introduce to their shelves the writings of the best and most able defenders and advocates of truth and religion. But this duty being well performed, we are free to aid in the work of building up our general libraries and in enjoying the pure intellectual delights which they may afford.

Thirty-eight pages of the report before us are devoted to a chapter upon Theological Libraries. A table is given of 44 of the principal theological libraries in the United States; they contain 528,024 volumes. Eight of them belong to Catholic theological seminaries and contain 71,600 volumes. The two largest of the theological libraries are those of the Union Theological Seminary of New York, and the Andover Theological Seminary, each of which contains 34,000 volumes. The report states that, with a few exceptions, the public theological libraries in this country are the libraries of theological seminaries. The exceptions are the General Theological Library in Boston, established in 1860, and now containing 12,000 volumes; and the library of the Congregational Association in the same city, which contains 22,000 volumes and 80,000 pamphlets. None of the theological libraries are 100 years old. The eldest of all of them is the library of St. Mary’s Theological Seminary of St. Sulpice in Baltimore, founded in 1791 by the Sulpician Fathers. It now contains 15,000 volumes. The report devotes considerable space to a dissertation upon “Catholic Libraries,” and its remarks upon this head are conceived in a kindly and enlightened spirit. “All learning,” writes the reporter, “is welcome to the shelves of Catholic libraries, and nothing is excluded from them that should not equally be excluded from any reputable collection of books. Nor will anti-Catholic works be found wanting to them, at least such as possess any force or originality. The history of the church being so interwoven with that of the world since the days of Augustus Cæsar, there is no period which is not redolent of her action, and consequently no history which does not have to treat of her, either approvingly or the reverse. In regard to general literature, she preserved ... all that has come down to us from classic sources, and therefore works of this character can be no strangers to shelves of Catholic libraries. Still less can the Sacred Scriptures be, which Catholic hands collected, authenticated, and handed down for the use of the men of our time. Nor will the sciences be overlooked by ecclesiastics in forming their libraries; for in past ages it was the care of their brethren, with such limited facilities as were at their command and in days inauspicious for scientific investigation, to cultivate them.” No new truths these; but they are well expressed, and it is worth something to have them set forth in a volume prepared by federal authority and published with federal approval. The report goes on to speak of the general characteristics of Catholic theological libraries. They contain, it says, abundant versions of the Sacred Scriptures in all languages, with copious commentaries and expositions; and the writer adds that the professors of our Catholic theological institutions “are generally graduates of the best theological schools in Europe.” He thus proceeds:

“Next in authoritative rank come the Fathers and Doctors of the church, from those who received instruction from the apostles themselves and committed their doctrine to writing, down to almost our own day; for St. Alphonsus Liguori, the latest on whom the Holy See has conferred the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, died only in the latter part of the last century, and his authority is that which is principally followed in the treatment of moral questions. Works also by later writers, principally on dogmatic subjects, are constantly appearing. The study of dogma embracing an investigation into all revealed truths, and therefore essential to those who are to instruct others authoritatively, involves a reference to many learned books in which proofs and illustrations are elaborated to the last degree of exactness, side by side with every possible difficulty or objection that can be brought to bear against each doctrine treated of. Some works are occupied with the discussion of but a single point; others take in a wide range, and some voluminous authors have published an entire course of dogma....” “The study of moral, the other great branch of Catholic theology, embraces a scrutiny into every question of morals that needs to be investigated by those who have the direction of consciences, or whose duty it is, in the tribunal of penance, to adjudicate upon matters affecting the rights of others. As solutions in these cases are sometimes attended with considerable difficulty, and a grave responsibility is attached to the delivery of an opinion, authorities for reference must be ample and exhaustive. Such authorities will be found in the theological libraries, and are relied upon in proportion to their world-wide repute, as representing the opinions of prudent, learned, and experienced men.”

The report goes on to speak of the reasons why every complete Catholic library must have copies of the published acts of the general councils of the church, and of national and provincial councils, as well as of the decisions and solutions of the various congregations at Rome, and other documents emanating from the Holy See. The supply of “works on ritual,” and those necessary for a thorough course of rational philosophy, must be ample, and there must be works on mathematics, physics, astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, and other sciences. We again quote:

“The attention given in these schools to sacred eloquence—for practice in which students are required to prepare and deliver sermons in presence of the community—calls for the best models of sacred oratory, besides works on rhetoric and elocution. As models of composition, arrangement, and intrinsic solidity, the sermons of the ancient fathers share equal attention with those of the great French orators of the last century, and no library for the use of ecclesiastics will be without a copious supply of the works of those and others of the best pulpit orators in the church. Catholic libraries in general—and not those alone which are attached to theological schools—will be found amply supplied with controversial works written by Catholic authors. These are needed, however, not so much for the use of the owners as for that of non-Catholic inquirers who wish to be enlightened in regard to some controverted point, or who desire to learn the evidences upon which the Catholic Church bases her claims to the credence of mankind. Catechetical works, of which there are a great number, answer this purpose still better when the polemic spirit has been allayed, and it is impossible to conceive of a Catholic library, large or small, without an abundance of both these classes of books. The controversial works discuss every objection which can be alleged against the church or the practice of members of it, and are necessarily very numerous. Every age has left behind it these testimonies to the controversies that agitated it, and the present age is no less prolific than its predecessors, though the grounds of dispute are shifting now rather from dogma to historical questions and matters of science, indicating the lessening hold which doctrine has on the non-Catholic mind.”

And again:

“Ecclesiastical history, of course, forms an important element in Catholic libraries; but this history not only includes the exhaustive tomes of writers who take in the whole history of the church, but of others who illustrate a particular age, country, event, or transaction. Works concerning the history of the church in the United States, or in particular States, form a growing collection. The current of contemporary Catholic history is well shown forth through the monthly and weekly publications which appear in many countries and languages. The Catholic quarterlies, however, and some of the monthly publications, are devoted chiefly to literary or scientific criticism. The Catholic weeklies in this country are now so numerous that their preservation in libraries is seldom attended to. If this apology is needed for the absence from such libraries of publications that will form an important reference hereafter for others besides Catholics, it ought to be coupled with the suggestion proper to be made in a work which will be placed in the hands of persons of all religions: _that a general Catholic library ought to be established at some central point where every Catholic publication, at least among those issued in this country, may have a place. Materials for history would gather in such a collection that might not readily be found combined in any other._

“Having thus touched upon the more important characteristics of Catholic libraries, it would be well, perhaps, to observe that while the leading ones in this country are attached to seminaries, colleges, or religious houses, there are many private collections of considerable value, especially those in episcopal residences, or belonging to gentlemen of the clergy or laity who, together with literary tastes, possess the means to gratify them. Catholic libraries are also beginning to be formed in cities and towns, chiefly under the auspices of associations that seek to provide a safe and pleasant resort for young men in the evenings. In these libraries will be found the lighter Catholic literature, to which no reference has so far been made in this paper—travels, sketches, poems, tales, etc., a few of which are by American and some Irish authors, but the majority by English writers, chiefly converts, or translated from the French, German, Flemish, and other Continental languages. Finally, it would be well to observe that Catholic libraries are accessible for reference, if not for study, to all inquirers. In most cases non-Catholic visitors would doubtless be welcomed to them with great cordiality. _Those who have these libraries in keeping rather invite than repel scrutiny into whatever is distinctively Catholic in their collections._”

We regret that the limits of our space forbid us to dwell further upon the contents of this really fascinating volume. To use such an adjective in speaking of a “Blue-Book,” or an official report, may seem extravagant, but in this case it is not so. Its chapters upon the growth of libraries in the United States; college libraries; law, medical, and scientific libraries; libraries in prisons and reformatories; libraries of the general and State governments; libraries of historical societies; and upon “catalogues and cataloguing,” are crammed with useful and important information; and whatever may have been the sins of omission or commission that may be laid at the door of the “Department of the Interior at Washington,” we are willing to bear witness that its Bureau of Education, in the preparation and publication of this report, has done much to atone for them.

ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRY. By G. M. Searle, C.S.P. With an Appendix containing Problems and Additional Propositions. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 1877.

The object of this work is to place geometry on a more perfectly logical basis than it has been usually considered worth while to adopt in text-books. Geometers at the present day generally agree as to the unsatisfactory nature of the axioms usually adopted, some being superfluous, and others, especially the famous one about parallels, not being clearly self-evident.

The reduction in the number of axioms has of course introduced some complexity into the reasoning in this book, and the difficulty about parallels is not completely removed; nor does the author pretend completely to remove it. Some new views, however, are presented which may be worthy of consideration.

ELEMENTS OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. Adapted especially to the Discipline of the Church in the United States. By Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D., formerly Professor of Canon Law, author of “Notes,” etc., etc. New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Einsiedeln: Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 1877.

This work of Dr. Smith’s cannot fail to be a welcome addition to any theological library. There are a great many works on canon law, it is true, but very few which give much information on the discipline of the church here, which is what priests in this country and those who are preparing for the priesthood principally need to understand.

The present volume goes far to supply this deficiency, and the author promises to supplement it soon by another, for which we shall look with interest. He has made a good choice in writing in English; there seems to be no need of choosing Latin for a book on this subject, and intended for this nation chiefly.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.

Typographical errors were silently corrected.

Spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.

Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).