III. THE BODY OF CHRIST.
Next to the idea of the kingdom of God, the most significant expression for the inner essence of Catholicism is found in the scriptural conception of the body of Christ. As his body, the Church is intimately connected with him. Christ and the Church belong together as the head and the body; both constitute a single whole. This intimate relation between Christ and the Church is described by the Scriptures in animated terms. The Church, it says, is for Christ what our own body is for us; as members of the Church we are members of the body of Christ, of his flesh, and of his bones. On one occasion, indeed, the apostle uses the word Christ as synonymous with the Church, so intimate is their relation.
And it is the Son of Man, or Christ in his human capacity, as whose body the Church is regarded. For as the head thereof the apostle designates him who was raised from the dead. The Church here enters into a profoundly intimate relation to the sacred humanity of Christ. We shall seek further profit from this idea in the sequel.
Immediately after having called the Church the body of Christ, he calls her the
. This epithet results from the foregoing. It is because she is the body of Christ that the Church is the
. I translate these difficult words, the fulness of him who filleth all in all. God who filleth all things with his essential presence, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, hath his fulness in the Church. The Church is entirely filled with God. But how? Is not God, in his very nature, present everywhere? How then can the Church be filled with God in a greater degree than the world without? As the body of Christ, she has this capacity. For if the Church, as Christ's body, assumes a special relation, peculiar to herself, to his sacred humanity, then, by that very assumption, she acquires a share in the
of the Deity which dwells bodily in that sacred humanity. She thereby becomes the spot where God is especially revealed and glorified. For while God, in the fulness of his nature, is present over all the world, nevertheless this presence is more largely apparent in the Church than elsewhere. By the Church alone the manifold wisdom of God is known unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places. In him is glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Thus she stands approved as his pleroma, as entirely filled with God.
But how are we to understand this repletion of the Church with God? It is well known that Moehler sees in the visible Church the "Son of God continually appearing among men in human form, constantly re-creating, eternally rejuvenating himself, his perpetual incarnation." In this sense he apprehends the scriptural conception of the body of Christ, the "interpretation of the divine and the human in the Church." This proposition, which has become celebrated, was intended, in the first instance, to afford a more profound insight into the visibility of the Church, in addition to which it is inseparable from Moehler's views on the subject of the means of grace. In this twofold light we must make it the subject of examination.
Moehler goes on to argue that, if the Church is a continuance of the incarnation, she must be, like the latter, a visible one. This can mean no more than that even as the Son of God during his stay upon earth wrought visibly for mankind in the flesh, so also the saving efficacy of Christ, abiding after his departure from the earth, requires a visible medium. Such a point, however, Protestantism is far from disputing. In the separate congregations, in their visible means of grace, and in the audible exposition of the word of God, even Protestants admit that the efficacy of Christ is visibly perpetuated, and the idea of Christianity and the Church gradually realized. Every Protestant denomination aspires to be the palpable image, the living presentment, of the Christian religion. Moehler's conception of the Son of God continually appearing among men in human form has even become a favorite theme of modern Protestant theology. This will appear from the mere perusal of the disquisitions on this head of the so-called Christological school. The advantage gained for the Catholic interpretation amounts to nothing. For the point is not that the efficacy of Christ is perpetually exercised among men in a visible manner, but it is in question whether this continued exercise ensues only in the fold of a particular institution, and by particular means of grace.
Moehler arrived at his doctrine in [{676}] reference to the Church through the medium of his views regarding the means of grace. In his opinion "the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God" (and the same must be inferred to apply to all the means of grace which it is the function of the Church to administer [Footnote 149]) "is a part of the totality of his merit, wherewith we are redeemed." The sacramental offering of Christ is "the conclusion of his great sacrifice for us," and in it "all the other parts of the same sacrifice are to be bestowed upon us; in this final portion of the objective offering, the whole is to become subjective, a part of our individual being." But the incarnation of God, or, in other words, the work of our salvation accomplished by Christ during his walk upon earth, stands in need of no continuation or completion by a posthumous labor of Christ, constituting "a part of the totality of his merit, wherewith we are redeemed." The perpetual condescension of Christ, administered by the Church, to our helplessness, does not form a complement to the objective work of salvation; it is not an integral part of it, but only its continued application. "Christus" says Suarez, "jam vero nos non redimit, sed applicat nobis redemptionem suam" [Footnote 150] If this work of redemption were even now in progress—that is to say, if "the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God" were "a part of the totality of his merits, wherewith we are redeemed," then Christ would not have fully taken away the sin of the world once for all on Golgotha. Who would maintain such a proposition? Moehler would be the last man to do so. He would therefore undoubtedly have renounced the opinion in question if these, its logical results, had presented themselves to his mind. The sacramental offering of Christ, as indeed the whole of his perennial saving efficacy in the sacraments of the Church, wherewith we are saved, is only the means by which it is applied to our salvation. The ground of salvation for all mankind was perfected in the sufferings and death of Christ. The realization of salvation for individuals is accomplished by their appropriating to themselves the salvation purchased or achieved for all mankind by the precious blood of Jesus Christ; a work in which, undoubtedly, Christ himself co-operates as the head of the Church.
[Footnote 149: For, according to St. Thomas, "the Eucharist is the perfectio omnis sacramenti, habens quasi in capitulo et summo omnia, quae alia sacramenta continent singillatim; the perfection of the whole sacrament, having as it were in an epitome and a summary all the virtues which, other sacraments contain singly."—IV. Sent. a. 8. q. 1, a. 2, solut. 2 ad. 4.]
[Footnote 150: At present Christ does not redeem us, but applies to us his redemption. De Incarnat., Par. I., Disp. 39, Sec. 3.]
In this sense the apostle says that he fills up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh. By faithfully following Christ, we partake more and more of the fruits of redemption. Thus is Christ likewise gradually fulfilled in the individual Christians—that is to say, he finds in them a more and more ample expression. And in the same degree in which Christ stamps himself upon the single members of the Church, the latter also is more and more filled with him.
Scarce has the apostle declared of Christ, in Col. ii. 9, that in him dwelleth all the
of the Godhead corporally, when he turns to the Colossians with the words, "And you are filled in" God—that is to say, "in him," i.e. in Christ, in so far as ye stand in communion with him, "which is the head of all principality and power." This communion of individuals with Christ, and their attendant participation in the fulness of the Godhead which dwelleth in him, is accomplished by the instrumentality of the Church, particularly by the sacrament of baptism, which incorporates the individual with the Church. Verse 10-12: "Et estis in illo repleti. In quo et circumcisi estis, circumcisione non manu facta, sed in circumcisione Christi, consepulti ei in baptismo."
Thus the Church is seen to be the pleroma of the Godhead in a twofold [{677}] point of view. First, in her members, which, being gradually filled with God, become partakers of the divine nature. In the second place, in the active cooperation of the Church herself in the performance of this work.
In the first regard, the repletion of the Church with God is not a state attained once for all. It is rather a process of measured growth
. The measure of the age of the fulness of Christ is the goal and the objective point of the entire development of the Church. It will be attained when every individual shall have become complete in Christ, and therewith also in his own person a pleroma of Christ. In the edifying of the body of Christ, or in the establishment of the Church, therefore, we must work without repose till we all meet in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. In this sense only can it be said that there is a progress in the Church. This continued development of Catholicism the apostle regards as a gradual repletion of the single members of the Church with all the fulness of God,
We have as yet, however, come to know but the one phase of this relation of the Church to Christ, or to the pleroma of the Godhead. The Church is not only destined to present herself at the close of her historical development as the pleroma of him that filleth all in all; she is even now entitled to this attribute, by virtue of her essential character.
On this head we derive instruction from a nearer contemplation of the process of development in which the erection of the Church is completed. "The whole body," says the apostle, meaning the body of Christ himself, "maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity." The Church therefore carries within herself, in the inmost recesses of her being, the principle and the germinal power of her whole development. This fundamental principle of Catholicism is Christ himself, who pervades the Church as his body.
There is a subjective and an objective repletion of the Church with Christ. The former progresses gradually, in so far as the single members of the Church assimilate themselves more and more to Christ. The latter is a given state of things from the first. In it consists the most subtle essence of the Church. This objective presence of Christ in her approves itself as the vital power of her growth. The gradual ripening of the Church therefore grows up into Christ (
, Eph. iv. 15) on the one hand, and proceeds from him (
) on the other. From him—that is to say, by means of the vivifying influence of the Son of God, present in the Church, she maketh increase of herself unto the edifying of herself in charity.
It is the same idea, when the apostle characterizes the growth of the Church as an
, an augmentum Dei, i.e., a growth emanating from God. God effects it, but by the instrumentality of the Church, within her and as issuing from her. For this purpose God hath installed her as his pleroma. Precisely because the Church is filled with God, or is his pleroma, the members of the Church may gradually become complete in him. Thus there is a development and a progress only for the individual members of the Church. She herself, by virtue of her essential character, is superior to development, and acts as the impelling force of this development. Christianity has a history, but it is not itself a history. The essence of Christianity, which is that of the Church, is not a thing in process of formation, it is a thing accomplished and perfect from the beginning.
The scriptural idea of the body of Christ presents the principle of Catholicism in a new light. The Church alone has Christ for her head. It is her exclusive privilege to be the body of Christ. This gives her a fellowship of life with Christ, by which she is distinguished from the world, the [{678}] latter sustaining to him no relation but that of subjection and dependence. But upon what rests this privilege of the Church? Why is she alone the body of Christ, the pleroma of the God-head?
Christology must supply the fundamental reason. According to the Catholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only by virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth only the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal himself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ than by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in all! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters through the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily.
The idea of Catholicism, therefore, coincides with that of fulness. As the pleroma of him who filleth all in all, the Church harbors in her bosom a treasure, the richness of which is inexhaustible. Every created thing, every single period, every particular phase of the culture of the human mind, has some good attribute. Yet this attribute is a mere special advantage, a peculiar quality, a feeble reflex of the chief good, a single ray of the shining sea of goodness inclosed in the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence, of the fulness of the Godhead. The completeness of the revelation of God's goodness is found only in the sacred humanity of Christ, and therefore in the Church. Hence the Church is the highest good that is to be found on earth. Let the productions of the human mind, at a given stage of its development, be ever so glorious and sublime, they can never supplant the pleroma of the Church. Her wealth is fraught with all the possible results of the human intellect and imagination; and these, in the fulness of the Church, are intensified, raised, as it were, to a higher power of goodness. Every production of the human mind is more or less in danger of falling short of the requirements of later ages. The metal of all such fabrics needs to be recast from time to time, as forms and fashions change. In default of this, it gradually degenerates into mere antiquity, or, in the most fortunate event, it preserves only the character of an honored relic. From this fate of all that comes into existence the Church is exempt. She alone is ever young, and always on a level with the times. This qualifies her to be the teacher of the world from age to age. Hence, also, she is enabled to minister an appropriate remedy for the disease of every generation. How, then, can a movement which makes war on the Church claim to be an advance of the human mind in the right direction? The interests of true civilization will never interfere with those of the Church.
As well that the Church is the body of Christ as that in her is the fulness of him who filleth all in all—both of these attributes adhere to her in virtue of her divine foundation. Thus Catholicism, whose fundamental principle we have contemplated in this twofold scriptural aspect, is not the product of the combination of any external circumstances. It is grounded in the very idea of the Church, in the inmost depths of her being. Therefore she remains the Catholic Church in every vicissitude of her external condition, whether in the splendor of princely honors, or under the crushing weight of Neronic persecution.
If, then, Catholicism is of the essence of the Church, the momentous conclusion is irresistible, that the true Church is capable of realization in such an image only as enables her to present herself in her essential feature of catholicity. It follows that the papacy, as necessary to the Catholic manifestation of the Church, is imperatively demanded by the law of her being.
[Continued on
]
From Once a Week.
THE CATHEDRAL LIBRARY.
It is now between forty and fifty years ago that I obtained leave from the dean and chapter of Winterbury Cathedral to read for some weeks in their cathedral library. The editions of the fathers and of some important middle-age writers which are preserved in that quiet library boast of peculiar excellence, and I well remember the exultation with which I, then a very young man, received news of the desired information to ransack those treasures. Having secured a small lodging in the close, or cathedral enclosure, I set out for Winterbury early in the year 182-. Through the kindness of one of the canons, who seldom had to consult the library on his own account, I was provided with a key to the library buildings, and allowed to keep undisturbed possession of it as long as my visit lasted. This key gave access not only to the library, but to all parts of the cathedral likewise, including even the cloisters, so that I was able to let myself in and out of the noble edifice at all hours of the day or night, and to ramble unchallenged through aisle, crypt, stalls, triforium, and organ-loft.
I have never forgotten, and shall never forget, the day on which I first took my seat in the room which was to be the special scene of my labors. The library lay on the south side of the cathedral, being a lower continuation of the south transept, and forming one side of the cloister court. It was obviously, therefore, raised above the height of the cloister vaulting, and it was reached by a flight of stairs opening into the cathedral itself. Narrowness (it measured about eighty feet by thirty), and a certain antique collegiate air (and smell, too, to be perfectly accurate) about the bindings of the books and the coverings of the chairs, were its chief characteristics. There was a bust of Cicero at one end, and of Seneca at the other. Some smaller busts of the principal Greek fathers adorned the side-shelves, and a dingy portrait of the "judicious" Hooker abode in a musty frame over the heavy stone mantelpiece. The fender itself was of stone, or rather the fireplace was not protected by a fender at all, but by a small stone wall, about three inches thick and six inches high, which afforded blissful repose to the outstretched foot.
One April evening, shortly after sunset, when there was still daylight enough to read the titles on the backs of books, I walked across the close in order to fetch and bring away with me a couple of volumes of which I stood in need. It was an hour when the grand old cathedral is accustomed to put on its very best appearance. The heaven-kissing spire and the far lower, but beautiful, western towers are tinted with the faint rose color which suits old stonework so admirably; and the deep gloom of the cloisters, tempered by the glow from the noble piles of masonry overhead, makes it possible and easy to realize some of the rapturous visions of the recluse. I passed as usual down the nave, and having ascended the little staircase, let myself into the library, and was on the point of attacking the necessary bookshelf, when instead of placing the key in my pocket, as it was my habit to do, I tossed it carelessly on to the sill of an adjoining window. The woodwork of the library was by no means in a sound condition, and between the inner edge of the sill and the wall there was a wide chink, opening down into unseen depths of distance. Into this chink, impelled by my evil genius, or by one of the ghostly beings that (as [{680}] I was assured by the verger) haunt the library and cloisters, down tumbled my unlucky key. I saw it disappear with a sharp twinge of vexation, principally, however, at the thought of the time and trouble that would be consumed in bringing it to light again. To-morrow, I said to myself, I shall be forced to get a carpenter to remove this sill, and rake up the key from heaven knows where; while smirking Mr. Screens, the verger, will watch the whole proceeding, and insinuate with silent suavity a doubt whether I am a fit person to be entrusted with Canon Doolittle's key. It was not until I had come down from the short ladder with the books under my arm, and, warned by the deepening shades, was about to leave the library, that the full effect of the key's disappearance presented itself to my mind. The outer gate and inner door of the nave had been carefully shut by me, according to custom, on entering the cathedral. All the gates and doors were fitted with a spring-lock, so that without my key I was double-locked into the building. My first thought was one of amusement, and I fairly laughed aloud at my own perplexity. It seemed an impossible and inconceivable thing that one might really have to pass the entire night in this situation. Presently I left the library, the door of which I had not shut on entering, and went down the staircase into the transept, and then into the nave. I carefully tried the inner door, but without effect. I had done my duty on entering, and it was hopelessly and mercilessly fastened against me. Resolved on maintaining unbroken self-possession, I returned to the library. It was now quite dark, the only light being that reflected from the shafts of the cloisters, on which the moonbeams were now beginning to fall. I sat down in a large arm-chair which stood at one end of the library table, and thought over all the possible means of extricating myself from an unexpected durance. Should I go up to the belfry in the north-western tower and toll one of the bells until the verger, roused from his first sleep, should come to see what was the matter? but even this I could not do without the key, which would be required to open the door at the entrance of the tower. Or should I make my way into the organ-loft, and filling the bellows quite full, strike a succession of loud chords, until the music might attract the attention of some passer-by? this might be done, but it would be a perilous experiment. Half Winterbury would be seized with the belief that their old cathedral was haunted. The organ-loft would be invaded by vergers, beadles, and constables—there were no blue-coated police in those days— and I should move about the ancient city ever after with the stigma of a madcap on my head. People would nod knowingly to one another as I passed, and significantly tap their foreheads, by way of hinting that I was "a little touched." Canon Doolittle would recall his key, and abstain from inviting me to his hospitable table. Gradually, therefore, I gave up the scheme of saving myself by means of the organ; and the belfry being already set aside, no other resource remained but to stay where I was, and quietly to pass the hours as best I could until Mr. Screens should open the doors at about half-past six in the morning, ready for the seven o'clock prayers in the Lady chapel.
I was luckily undisturbed by any fears arising from the possible anxiety of my landlady. Winterbury is near the sea; and I had on more than one occasion spent the greater part of the night on the cliffs, watching the glorious moonlit effects upon the romantic coast scenery of that district. These Mrs. Jollisole was accustomed to call my "coast-guard nights;" and I made no doubt that, should I fail to appear, the sensible old lady would go contentedly to bed, supposing me to have mounted guard on the cliffs.
I therefore lost no time in composing myself, if not to sleep, at any rate to an attempt at sleep. The library table was always surrounded by an [{681}] array of solemn old oak chairs, padded with cushions of yellowish leather, and looking as though—if their own opinion were consulted—no mortal man of lower degree than a prebendary should ever be allowed to seat himself upon them. At each end of the table there was a chair of a superior order—a couple of deans, as it were, keeping high state amidst the surrounding canons. These chairs were made of precisely the same kind of oak, and covered with leather of exactly the same yellowish tinge as the others, but their whole design was larger and more imposing, and what was of the most consequence to me in my present position—they were arm-chairs, affording opportunity for all manner of easy and sleep-inviting postures. Throwing myself into one of these dignified receptacles, I soon fell asleep, and soon afterward took to dreaming.
Leaning in my dream on the sill of the library window, I fancied myself to be gazing down into a peaceful church-yard. One by one, like gleams of moonlight in the dark shade of the surrounding cloisters, I saw a number of young girls assemble, and fall with easy exactitude into rank, as if about to take part in a procession. Each slender figure was draped in the purest white muslin, with a veil of the same material arranged over the head, and partially concealing the face. Just as one sees at the present day in Roman Catholic churches at the more important fêtes, the procession was arranged according to the gradations of height. The very young children were in the front, and as the other end of the line was approached, the pretty white figures grew gradually taller, until girls of eighteen or nineteen brought up the rear. They presently began to move, and it was clear that they were about to take part in some solemn office for the dead. With two priests at their head, they made the circuit of the cloisters, moving along with graceful regularity of step. Between each pair of the slender columns of the cloister building, I imagined that a small stone basin (or "benitier") was set, standing on a low pedestal, and filled with holy water. Each girl walking on the side next to these basins was furnished with a small broom of feathers, like those which may at any time be seen in the Continental churches. Dipping these brooms from time to time into the basins of water, they waved them in beautiful harmony with their own harmonious movements, sprinkling the ancient monumental slabs over which they were stepping. They sang to a strain of rare melody the familiar words of Requiem AEternam.
Presently they seemed to change time and tune, and to sing a hymn of many verses, each verse ending with a refrain. A single voice would give the verse, but all joined together in the plaintive music of the refrain:
"Through life's long day and death's dark night,
O gentle Jesus! be our light!"
I have heard much music, secular and sacred, since then; but I know of no musical effect which abides with me so constantly as that imagined chanting of young voices heard long ago.
One girl in particular attracted my attention as I dreamt. She was one of the pair who closed the procession, and was of a commanding height and extremely elegant figure. She had, as it seemed to me, taken excessive precaution in drawing her ample veil closely around her head and face,
* * * *
On a sudden I awoke. There, in one of the decanal arm-chairs, I was sitting—in an easy, familiar posture, as if I had been myself a dean— and there beside me, close at hand, within reach of my outstretched arm, was a tall figure in white, clearly a female form, and the precaution had been taken of drawing an ample veil closely around the head and face. Any one but an imbecile would have acted as I did, though I remember taking some credit to myself at the time for my coolness and presence of mind. I simply sat still and stared; and by degrees I observed, I conned. Years before, in my boyhood, I had walked a good [{682}] deal on the stretch; and I had known what it was in North Devon to wake up "upon the middle of the night," to feel the hard, unyielding turf underneath one's back, and see and gaze, gaze wistfully upon the bright unanswering stars above one's head. Even then one could divine the true value of a bed. But to wake on the downs in the small hours is a trifle compared with waking in a cathedral any time between dew and dawn. More especially when, as was my case, you have a ghost at your elbow. Not that my ghost remained long stationary. She did not. Starting from my arm-chair, she began a survey of the shelves by moonlight in so active and business-like a manner that I felt no doubt, given her quondam or present mortality, she was or had been a "blue." In five minutes, my powers of decision were wide awake, and the question of her mortality was settled. She was not a thing of the past, but alive as I myself was; and the only scruple was, how or how soon to awaken her from her somnambulist's dream. While I was debating with myself the best means to pursue, she suddenly passed out of the library door on to the stone staircase. My alarm was now fairly excited. She had two courses to pursue in her sensational career—I employ the word in a more correct use than it is commonly put to. She might either turn downward toward the floor of the church itself, in which case she could do herself little or no harm; or she could mount the ascending staircase, and reach an outward parapet, with heaven knew what mad scheme in view, before I had time to overtake her. She chose the second alternative, and—she leading, I following—we mounted the lofty staircase that leads to the base of the spire. I was aware that the door at the top of this particular ascent was not furnished with a lock; it was fastened by a simple bolt, and I had little doubt that my sleep-walking friend would shoot that bolt back as readily as she had taken down and replaced the books on the library shelves. My greatest fear was that she might begin playing some mad prank upon the parapet before I was sufficiently near to arrest her movements. I need hardly add that, influenced by the dread of consequences commonly said to follow on a sudden awakening from a fit of somnambulism, I inwardly resolved to try every means of humoring and coaxing my companion down again to terra firma, and only as a last resort to attempt arousing her. In a few moments we stood side by side on the platform looking down on Winterbury, which lay outstretched in the white moonlight. It was a tranquil and beautiful scene. There was the church of St. Werburgh, a noble monument of thirteenth century building, which would attract instantaneous admiration anywhere but under the shadow of Winterbury cathedral. There was the fine old market-place, with the carved stone pump at which Cromwell drank as he passed through the city; and the charmingly quaint guildhall, and the ruins of the abbey skirting the river in the distance. I was not permitted, however, long to enjoy the prospect. Before I could lift a finger to arrest her rapid movements, my mysterious companion had stepped lightly on to the parapet, and began a quick and perfectly unembarrassed walk around it. Dreading the experiment of forcible rescue, it occurred to me to try the effect of quietly accosting her, and endeavoring—by humoring her present mental condition—to decoy her away from her perilous amusement. It was an awful moment of suspense. Should she lose her balance and her life, it would be next to impossible for me ever totally to clear up the enigmatical circumstance of my having been actually present by her side during that weird moonlit dance upon the parapet. If, on the other hand, I were to seize and lift her from the top-stone, she might rouse the whole close with frightful screams, she might faint—might even die—in my arms, or from the shock of sudden awakening she might lose her reason.
But there was no time to stand balancing chances. Accordingly, I gently drew toward her side, and said, in as easy and collected a tone as I could command,
"I think we left the library door unlocked; before you complete your rounds, had we not better go down the stairs and secure it? Having been allowed the entry of the cathedral, I think we are bound in honor to shut doors after us."
"To be sure," she replied, and instantly, to my intense relief, dropped cleverly down into the space between the parapet and the lower courses of the spire. "To be sure, the door should be locked at once. Let us go down. I cannot make out who you are. In none of my former visits to the cathedral have I met you; but you seem to be no intruder, and I will certainly go down and secure the door as you suggest."
All this was uttered quickly and easily, but with an abstracted air, and without the slightest motion of her steadfast eyes. While still speaking, she stooped under the low door-way at the stair-head, and began to descend. I followed, busily devising plans for preventing any fresh ascent, and yet still avoiding the necessity of breaking the curious spell which bound her. We reached the library door. To my surprise, she produced a key of her own, and was about to turn the lock, when I remembered that at this rate I should be deprived for the rest of the night of my only comforts, the warm atmosphere of the library and the decanal arm-chair. I therefore extemporized a bold stroke.
"Excuse me," I said, "I have left my hat and a few papers inside, and having a canon's key, I will save you the trouble of locking up. But permit me to suggest that it is still very early in April and the night is cold. Why not give up the rest of your walk for to-night, and return again on one the glorious nights in May or June?"
Without uttering a syllable in reply, she turned on her heel, and began slowly descending the staircase into the transept. My curiosity was now fairly on the alert, and I resolved to unravel the mystery, at least so far as to discover by what means she would leave the cathedral, and in what direction she would go. Stepping for a moment inside the library, I hastily but quietly slipped off my shoes on the matting of the floor, and followed her barefoot and silent. She was just stepping from the staircase into the transept, when I caught sight of her again. With the same steady and self-possessed action which she had displayed throughout, she crossed the transept, and made straight for a small postern door which led, as I knew, into the garden of the bishop's palace. This she unlocked, and I made sure that, having passed through, she would lock it again behind her. Whether, however, she was a little forgetful that night, or whether the unexpected rencontre with a stranger had ruffled the tranquil serenity of her trance, it so happened that she omitted to turn the lock, and I was able, after gently reopening the door, to trace her progress still further. Under the noble cedars of the episcopal gardens, past long flower-beds and fresh-mown lawns, I followed her barefoot, until we arrived within a few yards of the hinder buildings of the palace. Here I stopped under the dark shade of a cedar, and watched my companion walk coolly up to a little oaken, iron-clamped door, open it, and disappear within the house. Then of course I retraced my steps toward the cathedral. But stopping again under one of the magnificent cedars, I could not avoid a few moments' reflection on the exceedingly odd position into which accident had brought me. Here was I, alone and barefooted, standing, at two o'clock in the morning, on the lawn of the palace, where I had no more business than I had at the top of the spire; and the only place in which I could find shelter for the night was the cathedral itself, a building [{684}] that most people would rather avoid than enter during the small hours. The queerness of my situation, however, did not prevent me from enjoying to the full the extreme loveliness of the gardens, and the glorious view of the splendid edifice, rising white and clear in the moonlight above their shady alleys and recesses.
On regaining the library, I dozed away the remainder of the dark hours in the same commodious arm-chair, and as soon as the bell began to toll for the seven o'clock prayers, I passed unnoticed out of the building and regained my lodgings.
"Been keeping a coast-guard night, sir?" said Mrs. Jollisole, as she set the breakfast things in order.
"Why, yes, Mrs. Jollisole," I answered; "I did enjoy some rather extensive prospects last night."
And that was all that passed. I had fixed it in my own mind that I would keep my own counsel strictly until I should have called at the palace, and communicated the whole of the circumstances in confidence to the bishop, with whom I was slightly acquainted.
This plan I carried into effect in the course of the morning. His lordship was at home, and listened with his customary kindness and courtesy to the whole of my romantic recital. Just as I was finishing, his study door opened, and a young lady entered, dressed in black, tall, and strikingly beautiful, though looking pale and fagged. Glancing at me she gave a slight start, and taking a book from one of the shelves, instantly left the room, after a few muttered words of apology for disturbing the bishop. It was my companion of the library and the tower.
"I see," said his lordship, "that you have recognized the ghost. That young lady is an orphan niece of mine, and has been brought up in my house from her infancy. Never strong, she has reduced what vigor she possesses by her ardent love of books, and her intellectual interest is awake to all kinds of subjects. She is equally unwearied in visiting amongst the poor, and often returns home from her rounds in a state of exhaustion from which it is difficult to rouse her. About a twelvemonth ago we first noticed the appearance of a tendency to somnambulism. She was removed for several weeks to the sea-side, and we began to hope that a permanent improvement had set in. A severe loss, however, which she has lately sustained, has, I fear, done her great injury, and here is proof of the old malady returning. We are indebted to you, sir," added the kind old man, "for your judicious and thoughtful way of proceeding under the circumstances of last night, and for at once putting me in possession of the details, which will enable me to take the necessary precautions."
Before leaving the bishop's company, I begged him to go with me into the cathedral, and to be present while a carpenter removed the woodwork of the library window in order to recover the key. This he consented at once to do, and we crossed the gardens by the very route which "the ghost" and I had traversed during the night. On removing the panelling, we found that the depth of the chink was comparatively trifling, and the key was soon seen shining among the dust.
I was further gratified by another discovery, which, together with the extreme pleasure that it gave the bishop, quite indemnified me for my night's imprisonment. We noticed, partially concealed by rubbish in a niche of the wall below the panelling, the corner of a vellum covering. On further examination, this proved to be a MS. copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, not indeed of the most ancient date, but adorned with very rare and curious illumination, and making an excellent addition to the stores of the library. After a tête-à-tête dinner that evening with the friendly bishop, we spent a pleasant hour or two in a thorough inspection of the newly-found treasure.
It was little more than a month afterward that I heard the great bell in the western tower toll the tidings [{685}] of a death. One week more, and a sorrowing procession of school-children and women of the alms-houses filed from the transept into the quiet cloister-ground, there to bury the last remains of one who would seem to have been to them in life a loving and much-loved friend. It was so. The eager brain and the yearning heart, worn out with unequal labors, were laid to rest for ever. The bishop's frail nursling was dead.
From The Month.
CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The errors of the present day are generally the consequences of some false principle admitted long ago, and many may be traced clearly to the calamities of the sixteenth century. One of these is, that the mediaeval learning preserved (as was declared at the Council of Trent) chiefly among the monks was in its nature useless and trifling, fitted only to amuse ignorant and narrow-minded men in the darkness of the middle ages, and consisted in certain metaphysical speculations and logical quibbles, called scholastic teaching. Several French writers have done much to disabuse men of this prejudice, by making known the amount of knowledge and science attained by mediaeval scholars, whose works are despised because they are too scarce to be read, and perhaps too deep to be understood in a less studious age. One of these champions of he truth is Ozanam, who has traced with a master-hand the preservation of all that was valuable in antiquity, through the downfall of the empire; and he has rendered a subject which otherwise it would have been presumption to approach a plain matter of history, which the reader has only to receive, like other facts; so that we see how, under the safeguard of the Church, the same powers which were formerly used in vain by the philosophers for the discovery of truth, were successfully used for the attainment its deeper mysteries. But all that is human is marked by imperfection; and the very instinct which led philosophers to "feel after" their Creator, and seek that supreme good for which we were created, was misled by errors which all ultimately ended in infidelity. It is not necessary to dwell on these. A few words will remind the classical scholar that the Ionian school, which sought truth by experiment, through the perception of the senses, leads to fatalism and pantheism; while Pythagoras, who sought by reason and the sciences him who is above and beyond their sphere, left the disappointed reason in a state of doubt and indifference, or else despair. Plato alone pursued a course of safety. Taking the existence of God as a truth derived perhaps from patriarchal teaching, he used the Socratic method of induction only for the destruction of falsehood, and received with fearless candor all that the poets taught of superhuman goodness and beauty; for though the symbolism of the poets degenerated into disgusting idolatry, they have been called the truest of heathen teachers. It is well known how Aristotle strengthened the reasoning power; but the mighty power had no object on which to put forth its strength, and the more noble minds rejected at once both reasoning and experiment, and sought for religion in the mysticism of Alexandria. Such was the wreck and waste of all that man could do without revelation, [{686}] and so sickening was the disappointment, that St. Augustin would fain have closed the Christian schools to Virgil and Cicero, which he loved once too well; but St. Gregory, brought up as he was a Roman and a Christian, had nothing to repent of or to destroy, and classic letters were preserved by Christians.
Ozanam found pleasure in believing that Christianity, while as yet concealed in the catacombs, was "in all senses undermining ancient Rome," and that it had an ameliorating effect on the Stoic, which was then the best sect of the philosophers; so that Seneca, instead of following the lantern of Zeno, who confused the natures of God and man, learnt from St. Paul not only to distinguish them, but also the relation in which man regards his Creator and Father, whom he serves with free-will and love, by subduing his body to the command of his soul. But the pride of philosophy may be modified without being subdued. The principle of heathenism is "the antagonist of Christianity: one is from man, and for man; the other from God, and for God." It was the object of St. Paul and the first fathers of the Church to liberate the intellect as well as the affections from perversion, and to teach how the treasures of antiquity might be used by Christians for religion, as the spoils of Egypt and the luxurious perfumes of the Magdalen. And after the fierce battle of Christianity with paganism was over, the triumph of the Church was completed under Constantine by the Christianization of literature; that is, by using in the service of truth all those powers which had been wasted in the ineffectual efforts for its discovery. "A mixed mass of ancient learning was saved from the wreck of the Roman world; and as Pope Boniface preserved the splendid temple of the Pantheon, and dedicated it to the worship of God glorified in his saints, so the doctors of the Church employed the logic and eloquence of the philosophers without adopting their theories. This was not always easy, and some, like Origen and Tertullian, fell into error; for the distinctive character of Christian teaching is to be dogmatic, not argumentative, submitting the conclusions of reason to the decisions of inspired authority, and the province of reason has bounds which it cannot pass."
Gradually a Christian literature arose. Not only in the still classical Roman schools, but in those of Constantinople, Asia, and Africa, pagan writings were used as subservient to the training of Christian authors, and the fourth century was the golden age of intellect as well as sanctity. The fathers employed their classical training in the study of the Holy Scriptures; but, according to the true principle of sacred study, they sought from Almighty God himself the grace which alone can direct the use of the intellectual powers. "From the three senses of Holy Scripture" (says St. Bonaventure, in a passage quoted by Ozanam out of his Redactio Artium ad Theologiam) "descended three schools of Scriptural teaching. The allegorical, which declares matters of faith, in which St. Augustin was a doctor, and in which he was followed by St. Anselm and others, who taught by discussion. The moral, on which St. Gregory founded his preaching and taught men the rule of life, in which he was followed by St. Bernard who belongs also to the mystical school and by a host of preachers. While from the third or analogical sense, St. Dionysius taught by contemplation the manner in which man may unite himself to God." Ozanam names a chain of authors as belonging to this school of "Boethius, who on the eve of martyrdom wrote the consolations of that sorrow which is concealed under the illusions of the world; Isidore, Bede, Rabanus, Anselm, Bernard, Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, who rejoiced 'to cast his sentences like the widow's mite into the treasury of the temple, Hugo, and Richard of St. Victor, Peter the Spaniard, Albert, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas."
"Under the barbarian rule, all the intellectual, an well as the devout, took sanctuary in the cloister; so that when the Arian Lombards attacked the centre of Christendom, they were opposed only by the teaching and discipline of the Church as perfected by St. Gregory; and the power of these must have been supernatural, as the influence of letters was nearly lost in Rome. Then, in defence of the faith, St. Benedict marshalled a new band of devoted champions in the mountains of Subiaco, and he made it a part of their duty to preserve the treasures of learning, and to employ them in the service of religion; and these monks," says Ozanam, "who spent six hours in choir, transcribed in their cells the historians and even the poets of Greece and Rome, and bequeathed to the middle ages the most valuable writings of antiquity."
It is agreed by all that Charlemagne was the founder of the middle ages; and he opened the schools in which theology was formed into a science, and gained the title of scholastics. Alcuin was the instrument by whom Charlemagne remodelled European literature, with the authority of the Church and councils, tradition and the fathers. Of these the Greek were little known west of Constantinople; and the chief representative of the Latin fathers was St. Augustin. There were a few later writers, as Boethius on the "Consolation of Philosophy," and Cassidorus, who wrote De Septem Disciplinis.
"Every one knows," says Ozanam, "that when Europe was robbed of ancient literature by the invasion of barbarians, the remains of science, saved by pious hands, were divided into seven arts, and enclosed in the Trivium and Quadrivium." These arts were grammar, rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, which last comprehended arithmetic and geometry, music and astronomy. "The establishment of public schools in cent, ix.," says Ozanam, "assisted the progress of reasoning, till it became in itself an art capable of being employed indifferently to prove either side of an argument. The science of words was no longer that of grammar, but became dialectics; and words were used lightly as a mere play of the intellect, or as a mechanical process to analyze truth." But it can never be lawful for a Christian to discuss what has been revealed, as though it were possible that those who reject it may be right; nor to consider truth as an open question, which is still to be decided, and may be sought by those rules of reasoning which had been laid down by Aristotle for the discovery of what was as yet unknown. It was for this reason that, as Ozanam says, Tertullian called Aristotle the patriarch of heretics; yet his rules of reasoning were right, and the error lay in using them amiss. Thus the Manichaeans reasoned when they should have believed, and the Paulicians subjected the Holy Scriptures to their own interpretation, and rejected all that was above their comprehension; and thus in after-times did the Albigenses, and then the Protestants of the sixteenth, and the Liberals of the nineteenth, century.
It was in 891 that Paschasius wrote, for the instruction of his convent, a treatise on the Holy Eucharist, in which he proved by reasoning that doctrine which "the whole world believes and confesses;" but he was contradicted by Ratram, who first put forth the heresy that the real presence is only figurative, and then the Church pronounced the dogma of transubstantiation. From that time theologians were obliged to confute the intellectual heresies of philosophers by fighting, as on common ground, with the weapons of argument which were used by both, in order to defend the doctrines which had been hitherto declared simply and by authority, as by our Lord himself. "Now," says Ozanam, "mysteries were subjected to definitions, and revelation was divided into syllogisms. And as the love of argument 'increased, the disputants took up the question which [{688}] had been discussed among heathen philosophers as to the abstract existences which are called universal forms or ideas; types of created things eternally existing in the mind of God, according to the teaching of St. Bonaventure. And when these were discovered by metaphysics, logic was exercised upon them; and a dispute arose as to whether truth exists independently of the perceptions of man. The Platonists asserted that it does, and this belief, which they called idealism, was held by the divines, and was called realism, while those who denied that it exists independently of man were said to be nominalists." In modern days the dispute of realism and nominalism is laughed at as an idle war of words; but the war is, in truth, on principles, and still divides the orthodox and unbeliever, and the names of realism and nominalism are only changed for objective and subjective truth.
A painful experience had long prevailed that the spirit of controversy is destructive of devotion; and the more devout, weary of the wars of philosophers, rejected logic, and found in the mystic school that repose which had been sought even by heathens in a counterfeit mysticism, in which the evil powers deluded men by imitating divine inspirations. According to Ozanam, "Christian mysticism is idealism in its most brilliant form, which seeks truth in the higher regions of spontaneous inspiration;" and he goes on to explain, from the writings of St. Dionysius, that its nature is contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical. It is contemplative, as it brings man into the presence of the immense indivisible God, from whom all power, life, and wisdom descend upon man through the hierarchies of the angels and through the Church, and whose divine influences act in nine successive spheres through all the gradations between existence and nothing. It is ascetic, as it acts on the will through the link which connects the body with the mind, and regulates the passions through the inferior part of the soul. This "medicine of souls" was taught by the fathers of the desert, who were followed by all the mystic doctors; and it was on this reciprocal action of physics and morals that St. Bonaventure afterward wrote the Compendium. It is symbolic, because it takes the creation as a symbol of spiritual things, and the external world as the shadow of what is invisible. The union of man with God is the object and fullness of the knowledge which regards both the divine and human nature, and levels all intellects in the immediate presence of God. This was imparted to Adam, and restored by Christ our Lord, who left it in the keeping of the Church. The first uninspired teacher of this mystic theology is thought to have been Dionysius the Areopagite, and the martyred Bishop of Athens, or, as some say, of Paris. In the festival of his martyrdom it is declared "that he wrote books, which are admirable and heavenly, concerning the divine names, the heavenly and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and on mystical theology." Ozanam quotes a fragment from his writings, which teaches that the indivisibility of God is intangible by mathematical abstractions of quantity, and indefinable by logic, because definition is analysis; and it is incomparable, because there are no terms of comparison.
The teaching of St. Dionysius was not forgotten when the knowledge of Greek was lost in the west. He was succeeded in this religious and Christian philosophy by St. Anselm in the eleventh century. In his Monologium, De Ratione Fidei, he supposes an ignorant man to be seeking the truth with the sole force of his reason, and disputing in order to discover a truth hitherto unknown. "Every one, for the most part," he says, "if he has moderate understanding, may persuade himself, by reason alone, as to what we necessarily believe of God; and this he may do in many ways, each according to that best suited to himself;" [{689}] and he goes on to say that his own mode consists in deducing all theological truths from one point—the being of God. All the diversity of beautiful, great, and good things supposes an ideal one or unity of beauty, and this unity is God. Hence St. Anselm derives the attributes of God—the creation, the Holy Trinity, the relation of man to God, in a word, all theology. The Proslogium, or truth demonstrating itself, is a second work, in which St. Anselm proposes to demonstrate truth which has been already attained. "As in the first he had, at the request of some brothers, written De Ratione Fidei in the person who seeks by reasoning what he 'does not know, so he now seeks for some one of these many arguments which should require no proof but from itself. He was the first to use the famous argument, that from the sole idea of God is derived the demonstration of his existence. He thus begins the Proslogium: 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Wherefore the most foolish atheist has in his mind the idea of the sovereign good, which good cannot exist in thought only, because a yet greater good can still be conceived. This sovereign good therefore exists independently of the thought, and is God.'" It is not worth while to follow out the errors which arose in the middle ages from nominalism. In the eleventh century Roscelin carried it to the absurdity of saying that ideas are only words, and that nothing real exists except in particulars. And Philip of Champeaux asserted the opposite extreme, and denied the existence of all but universals; as that humanity alone exists, of which men are mere parts or fragments. It was in the twelfth century that Abelard, who had been trained in both these systems, came forth in the pride of his vast intellect to reconcile them by a new theory, but his search after truth was by a mere intellectual machinery, to be employed by science in order to construct general scheme of human knowledge; while it led to the rejection of that simple faith which believes without examination, and substituted the system of rationalism, so fruitful to this day of error and unbelief.
It was while men were constructing this intellectual tower of Babel that Almighty God raised up as the champion of the truth the meek and holy St. Bernard. Like David he laid aside his weapons of reasoning, and left his cloister to overthrow the gigantic foe. In the cowl of St. Benedict, he declared that the truth, which men sought by human efforts, was to be received in faith as the gift of God, from whom all knowledge and light proceeds. And it was not the powers of his well-trained faculties, nor his classical and poetical studies, but his prayers, which gained the victory; so that, as by miracle, Abelard, the most eloquent disputant of his age, stood mute before the saint, who taught that faith is no opinion attained by reasoning, but a conviction beyond all proof that truth is revealed by God. This had been the teaching of St. Gregory, who said that faith which is founded on reason has no merit; and of St. Augustin, who said that faith is no opinion founded on reflection, but an interior conviction; and of the apostle, who said that faith is the certainty of things unseen. It is consoling to read that the holy influence of St. Bernard did not only silence his adversary; the heart of Abelard was melted, he laid aside the studies in which he had so nearly lost his soul, and he made his submission to the Church, and sought the forgiveness of St. Bernard. Soon afterward he died a penitent, sorrowing for his moral and intellectual offences. But evil does not end with the guilty; and his school has continued brilliant in intellect and taste, but presumptuous in applying them to the examination of truth. On the other hand, the two folio volumes of St. Bernard have been always a treasury of devotion, where the saints and pious of all succeeding ages have been trained. It is impossible for words to [{690}] contain more thought; and he had the gift of penetrating thoughts contained in the inspired writings; as when he wrote twenty-four sermons on the three first verses of the Canticles. Ozanam says that St. Pierre perceived a fresh world of insects each day that he examined a single strawberry-leaf; and thus in the spiritual world the intellect of St. Bernard contemplated and beheld wonders with a sort of microscopic infinity, while his vast comprehension was analogous in its discoveries to the telescope. Such were the gifts conferred by God on the humble abbot of Clairvaux.
There were in the time of St. Bernard other great teachers: Peter the Venerable, St. Norbert, Godfrey, Richard, and Hugo, all monks of St. Victor. Ozanam says that he embraced the three great modes of teaching—that is, the allegorical, moral, and analogical; and preceded St. Bonaventure in a gigantic attempt to form an encyclopaedia of human knowledge, based on the truth declared by St. James, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of light, who is above.
With a vast amount of literary treasures the crusaders had brought from the east, in the twelfth century, the Greek authors, with their Arab commentators. They brought the physics, metaphysics, and morals of Aristotle; and they brought also the pantheism, which, says Ratisbon, the Saracens, like the early Stoics, had learnt from the Brahmins, who believe that men have two souls—one inferior and led by instinct, the other united and identical with God. This fatal error was received by a daring school, to which Frederic of Sicily was suspected to belong. It was to confute this school that St. Bernard had taught in his sermons on the Canticles that union with God is not by confusion of natures, but conformity of will. The poison entered Europe from the west as well as the east; the Arabs in Spain mixed the delusions of Alexandria with the subtleties of Aristotle, and the result was such men as Averroes and Avicenna. Gerbert, afterward Silvester II., had himself studied in Spain, and brought back into the European schools not only the philosophy of Aristotle, but the Jewish translations of Averroes. The unlearned monks of the west were naturally alarmed at the new works on physics, astronomy, and alchemy, and especially at the logic of Aristotle, and the terrible eruption of pantheism. It was then that the Church exercised her paternal authority, and condemned the confusion of the limits between faith and opinion, and the degradation of the sciences to mere worldly purposes. Ozanam gives the bull issued in 1254 by Innocent IV., in which he complains that the study of civil law was substituted for that of philosophy, and that theology itself was banished from the education of priests. "We desire to bring back men's minds to the teaching of theology, which is the science of salvation; or at least to the study of philosophy, which, though it does not possess the gentle pleasures of piety, yet has the first glimpses of that eternal truth which frees the mind from the hindrance of covetousness, which is idolatry."
The tendency of philosophical errors was now rendered apparent by their development, so that what was at first a vague opinion was now a broad and well-defined system. Those who were firm in the teaching of the Church found it necessary to use every means for opposing such multiplied evils, and they boldly ventured on a Christian eclecticism, which should employ all the faculties and all the modes of using them in the service of religion; but it was not like the eclecticism of Alexandria, where the ideas of Plato were united with the forms of Aristotle, and adorned by the delusions of magic. The strength of Christian eclecticism lay in the pure unity of faith, defended by all the powers of man. [{691}] "Both analysis and synthesis," says Ozanam, "are harmonized in true science: they are the two poles of the intellectual world, and have the same axis and horizon. The intersecting point of the two systems was the union of what is true in realism and nominalism with mystic teaching, and the eclectic admitted the experience of the senses as well as the deductions of reason and the intuition of mysticism with the testimony of learning. Thus were united in the study of truth the four great powers of the soul, reason, tradition, experience, and intuition." But it has been remarked that some of the masters who taught by experiment and tradition were persecuted as magicians, and some of those who used reason and intuition were canonized. Both, however, observed the ascetic life, of which the abstinence of Pythagoras and the endurance of the Stoics were imitations, and all practised the virtues most opposite to heathen morality, namely, humility and charity. The first attempt at uniting the different opinions of the learned was made by Peter Lombard, who collected the sentences of the fathers into a work, which gained him the title of Master of the Sentences, and which was afterward perfected in the Summa of St. Thomas. Albert the Great left the palace of his ancestors for the Dominican cloister. He studied at Cologne, and was unequalled in learning and psychology. While he reasoned on ideas, he made experiments on matter; nay, he used alchemy, to discover unknown powers and supernatural agents. It is said that his twenty-one folio volumes have never been sufficiently studied by any one to pronounce on their merits. His work on the universe was written against pantheism, and declares the presence of God in every part of creation, without being confused with it. That divine presence is the source of all power. "He was," says Ozanam (p. 33), "an Atlas, who carried on his shoulders the whole world of science, and did not bend beneath its weight." He was familiar with the languages of the ancients and of the east, and had imbibed gigantic strength at these fountains of tradition. He believed in the title of magician, which his disciples gave him; and he is remembered by posterity rather as a mythological being than as a man.
The contemporary of Albert, says Ozanam, was Alexander Hales, who wrote the "Summa of Universal Theology." William of Auvergne was a Dominican and preceptor of St. Louis; he wrote Specimen Doctrinale, Naturale, Historiale; a division of the sciences and their end, containing—1, theology, physics, and mathematics; 2, practice, monastic, economic, and politic; 3, mechanics and arts; 4, logic and words. Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, was more accurate in learning than Albert himself; sound, though no discoverer in physics, and deep in mathematics. He commented on Aristotle and Peter Lombard. From his strength, sagacity, and precision, he was named the Doctor Subtilis. He wrote on free will, and says that its perfection is conformity to the will of God; and derives the moral law from the will of God, according to St. Paul, "Sin is the transgression of the law." When St. Thomas taught that the moral law is necessarily good because God is good, and this question divided the learned into the schools of Scotists and Thomists, Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan, was the pupil of Scotus; but he was eclectic, and admitted both exterior and interior experience, and the deductions of reason, into the intercourse of the soul with God. Though he condemned magic as an imposture, he wrote on alchemy, and with the simplicity of enthusiasm he hoped to find the philosopher's stone, and to read the fall of empires in the stars. He believed in the powers of human science, and he hints at the possibility of a vessel moving without sails or oars; and imagined a balloon, a diving-bell, a suspension bridge, and other miracles of art, especially a telescope and a multiplying-glass. Speaking of Greek [{692}] fire and unquenchable lamps, he says that art as well as nature has its thunders, and describes the effect of gun-powder, the attraction of the loadstone, and the sympathies between minerals, plants, and animals; and says, "When I see the prodigies of nature, nothing startles my faith either in the works of man or in the miracles of God;" concluding, that Aristotle may not have penetrated the deepest secrets of nature, and that the sages of his own time will be surpassed by the novices of future days. He had the same clear and sound views of supernatural things, and wrote on the secret works of art and nature, and the falsehood of magic. "Man cannot influence the spiritual world except by the lawful use of prayer addressed to God and the angels, who govern not only the world of spirits, but the destinies of man." Though called the Doctor Mirabilis, he was suspected of magic, and died neglected in a prison, where he had no light to finish his last works. His manuscripts were burned at the Reformation, in a convent of his order, by men "who professed," says Ozanam, "to restore the torch of reason, which had been extinguished by the monks of the middle ages."
Raymond Lulli, the Doctor Illuminatus, was a Franciscan, the great inventor of arts; but he was a philosophical adventurer, whose cast of mind was Spanish, Arabian, African, and eastern. His youth was licentious, his life turbulent, and his imagination restless; but he died as a saint and a martyr on his return from liberating the Christian slaves in Spain.
The glory of the Franciscan order is the Seraphical Doctor, St. Bonaventure. He was educated under Hales, the Irrefragable Doctor. His genius was keen and his judgment just, and he was a master of scholastic theology and philosophy. But when he studied, it was at the foot of a crucifix, with eyes drowned in tears from incessant meditation on the passion of Christ. His life was dedicated to the glory of God and his own sanctification; yet he spent much time in actual prayer, because he knew from mystic theology that knowledge and obedience are the gifts of God; and devoted himself to mortifications, because they alone prepare the soul for the reception of divine grace and intuition. Yet though he obtained the gift of ecstacy and the grace of crucifying the human nature, he placed Christian perfection not in heroic acts of virtue, but in performing ordinary actions well. Ozanam quotes his words: "A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue; it is a continued crucifixion of self-love, a complete sacrifice of self, an entice submission to grace." And his own pale and worn countenance shone with a happiness and peace which exemplified his maxim that spiritual joy is a sign that grace is present in the soul. Though his desire for sacramental communion was intense, yet we are told his great humility once kept him at a distance from the altar, till an angel bore to him the consecrated host; and the raptures with which he always received his God are expressed, though doubtless imperfectly, in the burning words, Transfige Domine, etc., which he was wont to utter after he had himself offered the holy sacrifice. His devotional works, written for St. Louis and others in his court, fill the heart with their unction, and rank him as the great master of spiritual life. It was during the intervals of ecstasies that he wrote; and while he was occupied on the life of St. Francis, St. Thomas beheld him in his cell raised above the earth, and the future saint exclaimed: "Leave a saint to write the life of a saint."
It is with profound reverence that we must inquire what was the intellectual teaching of so holy a man; and it is, indeed, so vast and yet so deep that it exhausts all the human powers in contemplating the nature of God and the end of man, which is his union to God. Ozanam gives a passage from his work on the "Reduction of Arts to Philosophy," in which he [{693}] says that philosophy is the medium by which the theologian forms for himself a mirror (speculum) from created things, which serve him as steps by which he may ascend to heaven. He begins by the revealed truth, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of light, and teaches of its descent by these four ways—exterior, inferior, interior, and superior—through successive irradiations, namely, Holy Scripture, experimental mechanics, and philosophy, which succeed each other like the days of creation, all converging in the light of Holy Scripture, and all succeeded by that seventh day in which the soul will rest in the perfect knowledge of heaven.
1. Exterior light, or tradition, relates to the exterior forms of matter, and produces the mechanical arts, which were divided by Hugo into seven—weaving, work in wood and in stone, agriculture, hunting, navigation, theatricals, and medicine.
2. Inferior light, or that of the senses, awakens in the mind the perceptions of the five senses, as St. Augustin says, by that fine essence whose nature and whose seat baffles all our discoveries.
3. Interior light, or reason, teaches us by the processes of thought those intellectual truths which are fixed in the human mind by physics, logic, and ethics, through rational, natural, and moral action on the will, the conduct, and the speech, which are the triple functions of the understanding, and on the three faculties of the reason—apprehension, judgment, and action; this interior light acts on outward things by physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, and perceives God in all things by logic, by physics, and by ethics. And he goes on to consider truth as it is in the essence of words, things, and actions.
4. The superior light proceeds from grace and from the Holy Scriptures, and reveals the truths relating to salvation and sanctification. It is named from its raising us to the knowledge of things above us, and because it descends from God by way of inspiration and not by reflection. This light also is threefold. Holy Scripture contains, under the literal sense of the words, the allegorical, which declares what must be believed concerning God and man; the moral, which teaches us how to live; the analogical, which gives the laws by which man may unite himself to God. And the teaching of Holy Scripture contains three points—faith, virtue, and beatitude. The course by which knowledge must be sought is by,
1, tradition; 2, experiment; 3, reason; and 4, a descent as it were by the same road, so as to find the stamp of the divinity on all which is conceived, or felt, or thought. All sciences are pervaded by mysteries; and it is by laying hold of the clue of the mystery that all the depths of each science are explored.
It was to Mount Alvernia, where his master, St. Francis, so lately received the stigmata, that St. Bonaventure retired to write the Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum, in which he treats on the divine nature, and considers God as manifesting himself in three modes, and man as receiving the knowledge of him by the three functions of memory, understanding, and will.
Ozanam says: "To these triple functions of the mind God manifests himself in three ways: 1, by the traces of his creation in the world; 2, by his image in human nature; 3, by the light which he sheds on the superior region of the soul. Those who contemplate him in the first are in the vestibule of the tabernacle; those who rise to the second are in the holy place; those who reach the third are within the holy of holies, where the two cherubim figured the unity of the divine essence and the plurality of divine persons." He likens the invisible existence of God to the light, which, though unseen, enables the eye to perceive colors; and proves from his existence his unity, eternity, and perfection; and from the eternal action of his goodness he deduces the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Breviloquium treats on the nature of man, who exists not of himself, nor by emanation from God, but was called into life out of nothing by the Creator, and lives by no mortal life borrowed from the outer world, but by its own and immortal life, intelligent and free. These attributes of God are communicated by him to his creatures according to his own law, "that the superior shall be the medium of grace to the inferior." The happiness of the soul must be immortal and is in God, and she can exist separated from this body which she inhabits and moves. Ozanam says: "The Compendium Theologies Veritatis treats of the connection between physics and morals, and inquires how the body indicates the variations of the soul by that mysterious link on which the scientific speculate, but which the saint treats as a subject not for dogmatizing but for contemplation, assisted by the mortification which alone brings the passions into subserviency. But the Seraphic Doctor left his teaching unfinished. Some of his spiritual works have been translated by the Abbé Berthaumier; and the reader will find that what has been said gives an imperfect idea of the writings of this doctor of the Church, which fill six folio volumes, and have scarcely been mastered by a few, though they have warmed the devotion of many; and one short treatise, called the "Soliloquy," is of such a nature as to include the whole science of devotion. It represents the soul contemplating God, not in his creatures, but within itself, and asking what is her own position in his presence: created by him, and sinning against him; redeemed by him, and yet sinning; full of contrition, yet firm in the hope of glory. The teaching of St. Paul is continued by St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and St. Bernard; and it seems as if no other book were needful. One passage, and one only, may show the treasures it contains. The soul is convinced of the vanity of created things, and asks how men are so blinded as to love them. Because the soul is created with so glorious and sensitive a nature, that it cannot live without love; and while the elect find nothing in created things which can satisfy their desire of happiness, and therefore rest in the contemplation of God, the deluded multitude neglect themselves for passing objects, and love their exile as if it were their home. But Ozanam does not leave his history of intellectual progress to treat of spiritual gifts.
St. Thomas was born nearly at the same time as St. Bonaventure, in the same wild valleys of the Apennines. They studied together at Paris; they lived and died and were canonized together.
It was said by Pallavicini that "when, in the twelfth century, the Arabs made Cordova a second Athens, and Averroes used the philosophy of Aristotle as a weapon against the faith, God raised up the intellect of St. Thomas, who, by deep study of Aristotle, found in his own principles a solution of the arguments used by infidels; and the scholastics, following him, have so employed Aristotle to defend Christianity, that whosoever rebels against the Vatican rebels also against the Lycaeum." St. Thomas had, however, to confute the errors of Aristotle, and of Abelard and others who had followed them, while he set forth the great truths of reason which he taught. It was in 1248 that he published a comment on the "Ethics." He had himself, says Ozanam, the learning and the weight of Aristotle; his power of analysis and classification, and the same sobriety of language. He had also studied the Timaeus of Plato, the doctrines of Albert, Alexander Hales, and John of Salisbury. He followed the school of St. Augustin, and drew from St. Gregory his rule of morals. His comments on the Sentences contain a methodical course of philosophy, as his Summa contains an abridgment of divinity. In an extract given by Ozanam, St. Thomas says, faith considers beings in relation to God; philosophy, as they [{695}] are in themselves. Philosophy studies second causes; faith, the first cause alone. In philosophy the notion of God is sought from the knowledge of creatures, so that the notion of God is second to that of his creatures; faith teaches first the notion of God, and reveals in him the universal order of which he is the centre, and so ends by the knowledge of creatures; and this is the most perfect method, because human understanding is thus assimilated to the divine; which contemplating itself contemplates all things in itself. Theology, therefore, only borrows from philosophy illustrations of the dogmas she offers to our faith.
It was in 1265 that, at the request of St. Raymond de Pennafort, St. Thomas wrote the Summa Theologies against the infidels in Spain; a book which has ever since been considered as a perfect body of theology and the manual of the saints. "In the philosophy of St. Bonaventure," says Ozanam, "the leading guide was perhaps rather the divine love than the researches of intellect." St. Thomas combined all the faculties under the rule of a lofty meditation and a solemn reason, uniting the abstract perceptions beheld by the understanding with the images of external things received by the senses. "It was a vast encyclopaedia of moral sciences, in which was said all that can be known of God, of man and his relations to God; in short, Summa totius theologies. This monument, harmonious though diverse, colossal in its dimensions, and magnificent in its plan, remained unfinished, like all the great political, literary, and architectural creations of the middle age, which seem only to be shown and not suffered to exist." And the Doctor Angelicus left the vast outline incomplete. That outline is to be appreciated only by the learned; the ignorant may guess its greatness by a catalogue, however meagre, of its contents. In the first part, or the natural, St. Thomas treats of the nature of God and of creatures; his essence, his attributes, and the mystery of the Holy Trinity; then, in relation to his creatures, as their Creator and Preserver. In the second, or moral, part he treats of general principles, of virtues and vices, of the movement of the reasonable creature toward God, of his chief end, and on the qualities of the actions by which he can attain it, of the theological and moral virtues. In the third, or theological, part he examines the means of attaining God, the incarnation and the sacraments. In the Summa, says Ozanam, "the notions of things lead to the attributes of the divinity, unity, goodness, and truth; thus, natural theology arrived at the unity as well as the attributes of God, while from his action is deduced his Personality and Trinity. Then follows the nature of good and bad angels, of souls in a separate state; and then the science of man considered as a compound being of soul and body, endowed with intellect for receiving impressions from the divine light above, and from its reflection on things below. He is also endowed with desire, by which he is formed to seek goodness and happiness, but is free in will to chose vice or virtue; and the rejection of sin, and acquisition of virtue, in a life regulated by divine human law, is a shadow of life in heaven. Enough has been said to show how lofty was the teaching of the saint; to whose invocation large indulgences are attached, and who had the task of composing the office used on the festival of Corpus Domini. The great object of his adoration and contemplation was the mystery of the real presence; and his Adoro Te devote may be used as an act of worship at the holiest moment of the sacrifice of the altar. The ecstasy of his joy in communion is expressed in the Gratias Tibi ago; and he declared his faith in the mystery as he lay on the ashes where he died. And this pure faith is recorded by Raphael, who represents him in his picture of the 'Dispute on the Blessed Eucharist' among the doctors of all ages before the miraculous host."
Like all other saints, he sought detachment by mortification, and the love of God by prayer. His principle was, that prayer must precede study, because more is learnt from the crucifix than from books; and his last maxim was, that in order to avoid being separated from God by sin, a man must walk as in the sight of God and prepared for judgment. When he laid aside his religious studies to prepare for eternity, he used the words of St. Augustin: "Then shall I truly live when I am full of thee and thy love; now am I a burden to myself, because I am not entirely full of thee."
Mystic theology was now carried to perfection by Gersen, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Verceuil from 1220 to 1240. Many attribute to him the authorship of the "Imitation of Christ;" there are, however, a number of others who do not agree with this opinion. The "Imitation" is generally ranked as coming very close after the inspired writings. What is said of the interior life is more or less intelligible to those who are endeavoring after perfection, but must be unintelligible to any who have not the faith: "Una vox librorum" (iii. 43), says the author; but the one voice does not teach all alike, for he who is within is the teacher of truth. The four books are in the hands of all. The contents of the first are on the conduct of men as to the exterior world, and the qualities necessary for the following of Christ—humility, detachment, charity, and obedience; then grace will be found, not in external things, but within, in a mind calm, obedient, and seeking not to adapt but to master circumstances. The second teaches him who turns from creatures that the kingdom of God is within, and that the government of this inner world is the science of perfection: "Give room to Christ and refuse entrance to others; then will man be free amid the chaos, and creatures will be to him only the speculum vitae." Seek Christ in all, and you will find him in all; seek self, and you will find it everywhere: one thing is above all, that leaving all you leave self. In the third book the soul listens to the internal voice of God, who makes known to her that he is her salvation; and she therefore prays for the one gift of divine love. It is impossible, perhaps not desirable, to repeat the devout aspirations of this divine love. May those who read the holy words receive their import through the light of grace! The fourth book relates to the union of the soul with her Lord through sacramental communion; and this can only be read in the hours of devotion.
It is presumptuous to say even thus much of the great saints who lived in the thirteenth century, how is it possible to undervalue the progress they made in all the highest powers of the soul? or who can speak of the schools of the middle ages as deserving of contempt in days which cannot comprehend them?
Ozanam desires to show that Dante was trained in this exalted learning, and has embodied what he learnt in his Divina Commedia. He speaks of the full development attained by scholastic teaching in those great teachers, after whom no efforts were made to extend the limits of human knowledge; and he speaks of the perplexities which arose with the anti-papal schism. "It was to the calm and majestic philosophy of the thirteenth century," says Ozanam, "that Dante turned his eyes; and his great poem declared to an age, which understood him not, the contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical teaching of the mystic school, which he had studied in the Compendium of St. Bonaventure and the Summa of St. Thomas;" and he proves by an analysis of that wonderful poem that it contains not only the great truths of revelation, but the spirit of the decaying mediaeval philosophy:
"O voi che avete gli intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina che ascende
Sotto 'l velame del versi strani."
Translated from the Revue du Monde Catholique.
WHAT CAME OF A PRAYER.
In the fifth story of an old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, lay a sick woman whose pale emaciated face bore traces of age and sorrow. Beside her bed was a young man, whose tender care showed him to be her son. The furniture of the apartment, though of the plainest kind, was neatly and carefully arranged, while the crucifix at the head of the bed and a statue of the Blessed Virgin marked the Christian family. The youth had just given his mother a spoonful of gruel, and she had fallen asleep smiling on her son—that quiet sleep attendant on recovery from severe illness. He knelt to thank God for having saved his mother's life, and while he prays, and she sleeps, without disturbing the prayer of the one, or the sleep of the other, I will tell you their story in a few words.
The father was a printer at Sceaux. Industrious, prudent, of scrupulous integrity, loving justice and fearing God, he acquired by his honest labor a competence for his old age and a fair prospect for his son. Losses, failures, and unforeseen misfortunes ruined him, and he found himself bankrupt. This blow sensibly affected him, but did not overwhelm him. He was offered a situation as compositor in a printing office in Paris, resumed the workman's dress, and courageously began to work. His wife, as strong as he, never uttered a complaint or regret. Their son was withdrawn from college to learn his father's trade, and although so young, his heart was penetrated with profound religious faith. Thus lived this humble household, resigned and happy, because they loved each other, feared God, and accepted trials. Several years elapsed, years of toil in their endeavors to liquidate the debts of the past: fruitful, however, in domestic joys. The child became a young man, and fulfilled the promises of his childhood. God blessed these afflicted parents in their son.
Suddenly the father fell sick and died. Those of us who have wept at the death-bed of a father, know the anguish of those hours when we contemplate for the last time the beloved features which we are to see no more on earth; the impressions of which grief time softens but can never efface. For those who live entirely in the domestic circle, the separation, in breaking the heart, breaks at the same time the tie to life. Left thus alone, the mother and son were more closely united, each gave to the other the love formerly bestowed upon him who was no more. Jacques Durand was now twenty-five years old. His countenance was frank and open, but serious and grave. He had the esteem of his employer, the respect of his companions, and the sympathy of all who knew him. He was not ashamed to be a mechanic, knowing the hidden charm of labor when that labor is offered to God. During the month of his mother's illness he did not leave her pillow. The physician pronounced her, the day before our story opens, out of danger. You understand now why the young man prayed with so much fervor while his mother slept. His devotions were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Mme. Antoine, the porter's wife, a little loquacious, but obliging to her tenants, in a word, such a portress as we find only in books. Jacques, who was going out, had requested her to take his place beside his mother. She entered quietly for fear of disturbing the patient, received the directions which the young man gave her in a low voice, and seating herself near the bedside, busied her skilful fingers with her knitting. Old Antoine, the porter, stopped our friend Jacques at the foot [{698}] of the staircase. He was polite, benevolent, attached to his tenants, did not despise them if they were poor, and rendered them a service if he could. He was an old soldier of 1814. He delighted to speak of the French campaign, wore with pride the medal of St. Helena, and showed a seal which he received at Champaubert. "In remembrance of Napoleon," he says, raising his hat and straightening his bent figure. I don't know of any fault that he had except relating too often the battle of Champaubert.
"Well," said he, "how is Mme. Durand?" "Much better," replied the youth, "she has just fallen into a quiet sleep, which the doctor declares favorable to her recovery." "God be praised," resumes Antoine. "Beg pardon, M. Jacques, I can tell you now Mme. Durand has made us very uneasy." In saying this he gave the young man a cordial shake of the hand, which the latter heartily returned.
In going out Jacques took the Rue du Vieux-Colembier, and entered the office of the Mont-de-piété at the corner of La Croix-Rouge.
During his mother's illness he had spent many hard-earned savings, for you already know he had imposed on himself the obligation of paying the debts of the failure, and beside, detained at home with his mother, he had been unable to earn anything during the month. Still the doctor had to be paid, and medicines bought; the small sum advanced by his employer was nearly exhausted, and he was now on his way to pawn a silver fork and spoon. A young girl stood beside him in the office, and as there were many to be served before himself, he relieved the weariness of waiting by watching her. Her cap had no ribbons, but was gracefully placed on her light hair; a woollen dress, not new, nor of the latest fashion, but clean and well kept, a wedding ring (doubtless her mother's legacy), and a plain shawl, completed her poor toilette. Jacques was attracted by her modest air. Some industrious seamstress, he said to himself. As his turn had now come, he presented the fork and spoon—the value was ascertained—and the sum paid. The girl, following him, drew from a napkin a half worn cloak, which she offered with a timid air.
"Ten francs," says the clerk.
"Oh!" said she blushing, "if you could give me fifteen for it! See, sir, the cloak is still good."
"Well, twelve francs; will you trade at that price?"
Having given her assent, she took the money and the receipt, and went out. Jacques preceded her, and before passing out the door, he saw her dry a tear. "She is weeping," he said to himself; "I suppose the rent is unpaid. Poor girl! Stupid clerk!" With these reflections he arrived at the druggist's; he bought the remedies prescribed by the doctor; then certain that Mme. Antoine was taking good care of his charge, he thought he should have time to say a prayer at the church of St. Sulpice. Jacques had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It is to her intercession he attributed his mother's cure: it is before her altar that he knelt. His prayer was an act of thanksgiving and a petition for a new favor. His mother wished him to marry; he had often dreamed of cheering her old age by the affection of a daughter, and he asked the Virgin to guide him in his choice.
Happiness disposes the soul to charity. He thought of the motherless, the suffering, and the sorrowful, and prayed for them. He remembered the young girl he had just seen weeping, and prayed for her. At this moment, a woman kneeling in front of him rose, and as she passed him to leave the church he recognized the young girl. Prayer has the secret of drying our tears; her face had resumed its usual serenity. He still prayed for her: "Holy Virgin, watch over that child, grant that she may be ever pious and chaste, and all else shall be added to her." As he prepared to leave, he saw a letter beside the chair where [{699}] the girl had knelt. He made haste to rejoin her in order to restore it; but she had already left the church. He put it in his pocket, intending to burn it when he reached home.
That evening, as he sat by his mother's side while she slept, here-viewed the events of the day, according to his custom, preparatory to his examination of conscience. Thus he recalled the incidents of the morning, and having drawn the letter from his pocket prepared to burn it. He approached the fire and was about to throw it in. What restrains his hand? In the letter he feels something—a piece of gold, perhaps. It was not sealed; he opened it, and drew out a medal of the Blessed Virgin. The open letter excited his curiosity; he was tempted to read it. Do not blame him too severely, reader, if he yields to the temptation. He has finished his perusal, and I see he is affected. His emotion excites my curiosity, and I am tempted to read it in my turn. Will you be angry with me, or will you be accomplices in my fault? Here are the contents of the letter:
TO M. LUCIEN RIGAUT,
CORPORAL IN THE 110TH REGIMENT, METZ.
"MY DEAR BROTHER:—I cannot send you the hundred francs you ask me for. Do not blame me, it is not my fault; work is not well paid, and everything is very dear in Paris, and you must know last month I had to pay something to the man who takes care of mamma's tomb. When you return I am sure you will be much grieved if that is neglected. You shall receive fifty francs. Here are thirty from me; the remainder is from the good Abbé Garnier whom I went to see, and who wishes also to assist his extravagant child. At the same time he gave me for you a medal of the Blessed Virgin, which you will find in my letter, and which you must wear on your neck. That, my naughty brother, will preserve you from danger and keep you from sin. Promise me never more to associate with bad companions, who lead you to the cafes and who are not too pious, I am sure. You must say your prayers morning and night, go to mass on Sunday, confess, and live like a good Christian. I will not reproach you for having neglected your duties, but I am grieved, and if you could have seen your poor sister weep I am sure you would reform. Do you remember when mamma was about to leave us, and we were beside her bed restraining our tears that she might have as a last joy in this world the smile of her children, how she made us promise to be always good and religious? Never forget that promise, Lucien, for the good God punishes perjured children. What will you think of my letter? Oh, you will call me a little scold. You will be angry at first, then you will pardon me; you will put the medal around your neck, and you will write me a good letter to restore gaiety to my heart. You do not know how well I have arranged my room. When you return you will recognize our old furniture. Mamma's portrait hangs over the bureau, and I have placed our first communion pictures on each side. When I have money I buy flowers, and for four sous I give to my abode the sweet odor of the country. Shall I tell you how I employ my time? I am an early riser. First my housekeeping, then my breakfast; afterward I hear mass, and from the church to my day's work. Thanks to the recommendation of the Abbé Garnier and of the sister at the Patronage, I do not want for work. In the evening, before returning, I say a prayer in the church; then my supper, and a little reading or mending till bed-time. On Sunday after mass I go to the cemetery to pray at mamma's tomb, afterward to the Patronage, where we enjoy ourselves much. I wish you could see how good the sister is, how she spoils me, how gently she scolds me when I am not good, for in spite of all my sermons it sometimes happens that I deserve to be scolded. You see, brother, that I have no time to be sad. If in the evening I feel [{700}] lonely, I think of God, who is always near us, of my good friends, of you, whom I shall see next year, and these sweet thoughts make me forget the isolation of my little room. How proud I shall be to go out leaning on your arm, and to walk with you on Sunday in the Luxembourg! With the corporal's ribbons and the Italian medal, I am sure everybody will turn round to look at you. Do you know I have made a novena that you may be made sergeant before the beginning of next year? I will send you every month ten francs to finish paying your debt. Have no scruples in accepting them; it is superfluous money which would have served to buy gew-gaws. You do me a favor in taking it, as I shall be prevented from becoming a coquette. What shall I say more to you? Be good, be a Christian; but I have already said that. Do not forget me, but write often. We must love one another, since each of us is all the family of the other. Farewell, Lucien.
"Your affectionate sister,
MADELEINE."
I do not regret having been curious. I understand the emotion of Jacques. I am also moved. This letter from a sister to a brother, so simple and naive, breathes in every word the perfume of sincere piety, and in each line is found the candor of an innocent heart. When Jacques had finished reading it, he still lingered before throwing it into the fire. He wished to read it again. He read it several times; then he shut it up in a drawer, and put the medal around his neck. He was charmed. He loved this simple letter, and he loved, almost without knowing it, this child whose thoughts had been accidentally made known to him. He guessed what the sister did not tell her brother, the pawning of the cloak to complete the fifty francs, the privations to which she submits in order to send every month the promised ten francs. "I understand now," said he, "the secret of her tears. Three francs are wanting for the required sum."
He was still more moved by her tears now that he had the secret of them. "A good Christian girl," thought he. In his evening prayer she was not forgotten.
The following day, as his mother was tolerably restored, he returned to the printing office. As he worked he thought of Madeleine, and was sad that he should see her no more. It was a folly, but who has not been foolish? A little folly is the poetry of youth.
Time passed, the impression grew fainter, but was not effaced. It was like a dream we try to retain on awakening, but whose brilliant colors fade by the light of day. Mme. Durand was fully restored, but although occupied with the care of the household, she did not go out, and this explains why on Easter Sunday Jacques was alone at high mass in the church of St. Sulpice. This festival, when the faithful are united in one common joy, disposes the heart to serene impressions. After having thanked God for his mother's recovery, he dreamed of a new affection, and begged the blessed Virgin to guide him in his choice. Mass being ended, a young girl on her knees in front of him rose to leave the church, and he recognized Madeleine. He left in his turn, and during the day he thought of that sweet face, which had twice appeared to him, as if in answer to his prayer. It is Madeleine whom he will marry, her smile shall make the joy of his Christian fireside; still, how is he to see her again? He knows not; the Blessed Virgin, when she chooses, will bring him back to her.
In their evening chats, when his mother made plans of marriage for him, he never uttered Madeleine's name.
Again, on one of those mild days which are the charm of the month of April, he was walking in the Luxembourg. It was a beautiful Sunday, the lilacs were in flower, and the old garden seemed rejuvenated in its new dress. As he thought of Madeleine, [{701}] two verses from Brizeux recurred to his memory:
"Vienne Avril, et jeunesse, amours, fleurs sont écloses;
Dieu sous la même loi mit les plus belles choses."
At the turn of a walk, in a fresh, simple dress, he saw her once more. When she had passed he followed her. He knew not why himself, but an indescribable charm attracted and retained him near her. He left the Luxembourg, went down the Boulevard Mont Parnasse, and saw her enter a house which he recognized as an asylum for young work-women.
One morning, as he stopped at Antoine's lodging, he saw on his face traces of sorrow.
"You seem sad," he said to him; "has any misfortune happened to you?"
"No," replied Antoine, "but I am grieved. A young woman, beg pardon, who has lived above for two months, has just fallen ill, of bad fever, the doctor says. She is a good girl, M. Jacques—a good industrious girl. She has worked hard and sat up late, which brought on fever, and when I think of it I am troubled."
"Is she alone?" asked Jacques.
"Entirely alone; but so gay, of a disposition so sweet, that though poorly fed and overworked she never complained. When she passed, morning and night, she had always a pleasant word for old Antoine. You will not believe it, but for three days she has not been down. I have been as much afflicted as if she were my own child."
So saying, he wiped a tear which fell on his white mustache.
During the day Jacques recalled the words of the old man. He was sad at the thought of the poor girl, sick without a friend near her, for even Antoine was detained at the lodge during his wife's absence. He did not know her (and that was not surprising, as in Paris two neighbors often live strangers to each other) and had never seen her: he was troubled that she suffered, and that no one was near her to alleviate her suffering. He resolved to speak to his mother in the evening of her case, that she might go and take care of her. He thought how Madeleine might fall sick, and have no one near her. He determined to confide to his mother the secret of his love, and to beg her to see Madeleine and obtain her consent to their marriage.
In the evening he informed his mother of their neighbor's illness, and the next day Mme. Durand took her place at her bedside. It was a dangerous illness, but youth, good care, prayer, and a novena to the Blessed Virgin triumphed, and at the end of fifteen days she began to improve. During this time Mme. Durand devoted herself to this sweet, patient child. When her care was no longer necessary she continued to go every morning to her patient's room. They worked and talked together. Mme. Durand spoke of her son and she of her mother whom she had lost, and insensibly a mutual affection sprang up between them. Jacques listened with interest to his mother's praise of the sick child, and was for a moment distracted from his remembrance of Madeleine. He had, moreover, that modesty of true love which shrank from the avowal of its tenderness. His mother knew nothing of his love, and touched by the sweetness and patience of the young girl whom she had nursed, hoped she might yet become her son's wife.
One evening in the month of June he was walking with his mother in the gardens of the Luxembourg. He remembered his last meeting with Madeleine, which recalled these verses of Brizeux:
"Un jeune homme
Natlf du même eudroit, travailleur, économe
En vòyant sa belle âme, en voyant sou beau corps
L'airnée: les vieilles gens firent lea deux accords."
He was about to speak to his mother of Madeleine when she said to him, "My son, you are entering your [{702}] twenty-sixth year, it is time for you to marry, and if you wish, I should like to call our neighbor, the young girl whom I have nursed, my daughter."
"Mother," said Jacques, "I cannot marry her, I love another." He then related his simple story, and pronounced for the first time Madeleine's name. Mme. Durand listened much moved. She understood and shared the trusting faith of her son. "My child," said she, "it shall be as you desire. I will go on Sunday to the Patronage."
The week passed. Mme. Durand continued to see her patient often, and she, nearly restored, came sometimes to her apartment at the time Jacques was at the printing office, for his mother wished to prevent a meeting which might perhaps trouble an innocent heart. But on Saturday, having returned sooner than usual, he found the young girl in his mother's room. They conversed a moment, and she withdrew. In the pallid face he recognized the sweet countenance of Madeleine. When she had gone, he embraced his mother, weeping and smiling at the same time. "It is she, it is my sweet Madeleine." His mother, returning his embrace, exclaimed, "She shall be your wife and my daughter."
I must tell you how, on Jacques' return from work, Mme. Durand went for Madeleine, how they passed many a pleasant evening in conversation or in reading a good book, and under their mother's eye loved each other with a pure and earnest love.
At the end of a month Mme. Durand obtained the consent of Madeleine, but she said nothing to her of her son's secret, of their meeting, of the letter, of the feelings so long cherished, nor of the protection of Mary, who had brought together these two Christian souls. This she left for him to relate one day when he was alone with his betrothed. She listened much affected, and you may be surprised to learn that she forgot to ask for the lost letter and the medal of the Virgin.
Mme. Durand saw the good abbé and the sister at the Patronage, and they approved the marriage. The consent of the soldier brother was asked and obtained.
The marriage was to take place in a few days. "Beg pardon," says Antoine, "these two young people were made for each other—a fine match really. You will not believe me, but I love them as if they were my own children."
Lucien came to Paris for the wedding. From the first he made a conquest of Antoine. It turned out that Antoine too had served in the 110th. The two heroes talked of their campaigns. One related the battle of Champaubert, the other that of Solferino. The medal of St. Helena fraternized with the Italian medal; they drank to the laurels of the old 110th, to the triumphs of the new. The veteran and the conscript became the best friends in the world.
The great day arrived. The abbé blessed the union and Antoine gave away the bride. He straightened his bent figure; he put a new ribbon in his medal. He was prouder than on the evening of Champaubert, when Napoleon said, "Soldiers of the 110th, you are heroes?" Brother Lucien, with his corporal's badge and his Italian medal, added much to the brilliancy of the cortege. Mesdames Durand and Antoine put on their richest dresses. What shall we say of Madeleine in her bridal dress? of her veil, and the wreath upon her auburn tresses? of the sweet face reflecting the purity of an innocent heart and a chaste love? of the tears which flow when the heart is too full? of the sacred hour when this Christian couple unite in a common prayer?
Now they are married they do not seek pleasures abroad. Their happiness is found in their daily labor, their evening conversation, or reading; on Sunday, after mass, a walk to the Tuileries, while their mother at their side smiles on their love. Their hearts are drawn so near together that [{703}] they beat in unison, they think and feel at the same time. At last a child makes one more joy in this joyous house—one stronger bond between these united souls. Such is their pure affection: a love which age can never wither, a love born of a prayer, and blest by God.
Jacques has reaped the fruit of his labor; he has paid all the debts of the past, and ease and plenty have returned to the household. He hopes to be soon taken into partnership with his employer.
They do not wish to leave the old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, so filled with sweet memories, but they have taken a lower floor, they have a large apartment, and are almost rich. The poor have their share of their riches.
Lucien, the soldier, has entirely reformed, and has risen to the rank of sergeant. Perhaps he may yet wear an officer's epaulettes.
Old Antoine grows old, but his heart remains young; his figure is more bent, but he still straightens it when he speaks of Napoleon, and relates to our friends the battle of Champaubert. He was the godfather of the little boy. "A fine child," said he "Beg pardon, we will make a general of him." "I am willing, I am sure," said Madeleine, "but we must first make him a Christian."
From The London Review.
CATHOLIC PROGRESS IN LONDON.
There are few questions upon which there exists a greater variety of opinion, and with regard to which such contradictory statements are published, as upon the increase of Roman Catholicism in the metropolis. There are those on one hand who believe that it has made no progress at all, and that the rumors of "conversions," and even those Roman Catholic buildings which have of late years sprung up in such abundance around us, are not to be taken as proofs of such an increase in the numbers of Roman Catholics as the latter at least seem to indicate. Others believe without doubting that the Catholic Church is silently and energetically spreading its ramifications over the metropolis, and that there is hardly a household of any respectability in which its agents, in some form or other, have not contrived to get a footing; while there are persons who go so far as to assert that many of the Protestant clergy themselves are the direct emissaries of Rome, doing her work, and doing it consciously—nay, doing it under compact—while receiving the pay of the National Church. We believe that the truth will be found to lie between these extreme views. Not only has the Church of Rome gained ground in London, but it is steadily progressing, even at the present time, though by no means at such a rate, except in certain parishes, as to occasion the slightest danger to the Protestant cause, if only a moderate amount of energy and good will is shown by the Reformed denominations in securing their flocks within their own folds. We have already stated our belief that the fact of a clergyman holding High or Low Church views is not in any manner whatever necessarily connected with the increase of Catholicism among his congregation, but that such increase is owing either to the lack of a sufficient staff of the Protestant clergy to [{704}] repel its advances, or to the apathy or inefficiency of the incumbent, or, as may be especially shown in some wealthy districts, to that mysterious want of power in the clergy of the Church of England over the minds of the rich and influential of their parishioners. And that this view is not without some basis in fact, will be seen when we have described the present relative position of the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the wealthy, aristocratic, and populous parish of Kensington, comprising as it does the three wards of Notting-hill, Kensington, and Brompton.
Formerly, for the accommodation of the whole of the Roman Catholics of the parish of Kensington, there was but one small chapel near the High street, which appeared amply sufficient for the members of that creed. But ten or twelve years ago a Roman Catholic builder purchased, at an enormous price, a plot of ground about three acres in extent beside the church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton. For a time considerable mystery prevailed as to the uses it was to be applied to; but, shortly after the buildings were commenced, they were discovered to be for the future residence and church of the Oratorian fathers, then established in King William street, Strand. As soon as a portion of the building was finished, the fathers removed to it from their former dwelling; and the chapel, a small and commodious erection, was opened for divine service. At first the congregation was of the scantiest description; even on Sundays at high mass, small as the chapel was, it was frequently only half filled, while, on week days, at many of the services, it was no uncommon circumstance to find the attendances scarcely more numerous than the number of priests serving at the altar. By degrees the congregation increased, till the chapel was found too small for their accommodation, and extensive additions were made to it; but these, again, were soon filled to overflowing, and further alterations had to be made, till at last the building was capable of holding without difficulty from 2,000 to 2,500 persons. It is now frequently so crowded at high mass that it is difficult for an individual entering it after the commencement of the service to find even standing room. In the meantime the monastery itself, if that is the proper term, was completed—a splendid appearance it presents— and we believe is now fully occupied.
The Roman Catholic population in the parish, or mission, under the spiritual direction of the fathers of the Oratory, now comprises between 7,000 and 8,000 souls. The average attendance at mass on Sundays is about 5,000, and the average number of communions for the last two years has been about 45,000 annually. But in addition to this church, Kensington has three others, St. Mary's, Upper Holland street, St. Simon Stock, belonging to the Carmelite Friars, and the church of St. Francis Assissi in Notting Hill. Of monasteries, or religious communities of men, it has the Oratorians before mentioned, and the Discalced Carmelites, in Vicarage place. Of convents of ladies, it has the Assumption in Kensington square, the Poor Clares Convent in Edmond terrace, the Franciscan Convent in Portobello road, the Sisters of Misericorde, 195 Brompton road, and the Sisters of Jesus, 4 Holland villas. Of schools, the Roman Catholics possess, in the parish of Kensingtion, the Orphanage in the Fulham road, the Industrial School of St. Vincent de Paul, as well as the large Industrial Schools for girls in the southern ward. All these schools are very numerously attended, the gross number of pupils amounting to 1,200, those of the Oratory alone being 1,000. The kindness and consideration shown by the Roman Catholic teachers to the children of the poor is above all praise, not only in Kensington, but in all localities where they are under their charge.
It might be imagined from this account of the Roman Catholic institutions in Kensington, that a general [{705}] rush had been made upon that parish, and that the surrounding districts were comparatively free from Roman Catholics. Such, however, is very far from being the case. In the union of Fulham and Hammersmith we have the Roman Catholic church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the church of the Holy Trinity, Brook-green, and the church of Our Lady of Grace, Turnham-green. Of monasteries there are the St. Mary's Training College and the Brothers of Mercy, and for ladies there is the order of the Good Shepherd. Of charities and schools they have the Holy Trinity alms-houses on Brook-green, a home for aged females, a refuge for female penitents, most admirably managed and producing a most beneficial effect, an excellent reformatory for criminal boys, the large industrial schools of St. Vincent de Paul, and a home, St. Joseph's, for destitute boys. In Bays-water there is the cathedral of St. Mary's of the Angels (of which the celebrated Dr. Manning is the superior) and the convent of Notre Dame de Sion. In Chelsea there is the church of St. Mary's, Cadogan terrace, a convent for the Sisters of Mercy, another for the Third Order of Servites, as well as two well conducted and numerously attended schools.
In the united parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's, Westminster, a few years since, the priests opened their campaign with considerable energy. In addition to their church in the Horsferry road, which was opened in 1813, they erected those of St. Peter's and St. Edmond's in Palace street, the superior priest of the latter being the celebrated Father Roberts, a man not only respected for the energy he shows in the cause of his religion, but beloved by all classes for his philanthropy. To these some schools and convents were added, the most celebrated of the latter being that of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street. At first the priests seemed to be sanguine of success in the parish; but their advance was met by men of as much ability, courage, and energy as themselves.
On the Surrey side of the water the Catholic Church has the magnificent cathedral dedicated to St. George, in St. George's Fields; the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Parker's road, Dockhead, Bermondsey; the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Trinity road, Rotherithe; that of Our Lady of La Salette and St. Joseph, Melior street, Southwark; and the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Windham street, Camberwell; beside several others in Peckham, Clapham, Lambeth, and the surrounding districts. Of communities of men there are the Capuchines at Peckham and at Clapham, the Redemptorists, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Of convents they have the Religious of the Faithful Virgin at Norwood, which also comprises an orphanage; the order of the Sisters of Mercy in Bermondsey; the order of the Sisters of the Christian Retreat, St. Joseph's, Kennington; the Little Sisters of the Poor, Fentiman road, Lambeth; beside one or two others of minor importance. It should also be remarked that all these establishments, with one or two exceptions, have sprung up within the last ten or twenty years. Of the numbers of the congregations of the different churches it would be difficult to form a just idea, but they are certainly very great; that properly attached to St. George's cathedral alone we have been assured, on most reliable Roman Catholic authority, amounting to 12,000 or 13,000. The number of children attending the schools is doubtless proportionably great.
In the north-eastern portion of the metropolis, we find the Roman Catholics, although they have lately built several new churches, are fully occupied in holding their own ground without exerting themselves to make converts. And here, opposed as we are to their creed on doctrinal points, it would be unjust to withhold our meed of praise to the exertions of the priests in relieving the temporal miseries of [{706}] their poor. It would be difficult to imagine charitable efforts carried on more indefatigably or nobly. Few who have not visited and personally inspected the different courts and alleys in the neighborhood of Spitalfields, Bethnal-green, St. George's-in-the-East, and Ratcliffe Highway, inhabited as they are by the poor Irish, can have an idea of the abject poverty which reigns in them, or the amount of patience, courage, and Christian feeling necessary to relieve it. Yet all this is cheerfully performed by the Roman Catholic priesthood, their energies appearing to increase in proportion as the difficulties and dangers before them become greater. It would perhaps be an injustice to their body in this district to select any for notice in preference to the rest; but we cannot refrain from making special mention of the labors of the Rev. Father Kelley, of Ratcliffe Highway, and the Rev. Father Chaurain, of Spitalfields, into the results of whose exertions we have made personal investigation.
In the northern districts of the metropolis, especially in Islington and its surrounding neighborhoods, the Roman Catholics appear to have made considerable progress. They have lately built several new churches as well as houses for religious communities, both for men and women. That their progress in the metropolis is not solely the result of the High-Church practices in the establishment may be presumed from the fact that, although the inhabitants of Islington and its vicinity are particularly noted for their attachment to Low-Church principles, Catholicism has gained more ground there than in localities where Puseyism is dominant. In the north-western districts it does not appear to have increased, though the churches are well attended, and the congregations apparently very numerous. That of one of the largest, Our Lady's church, in St. John's Wood, is 6,000, and the children in the schools 600. In the central districts of London Roman Catholic churches are very numerous and proportionately well attended; those in Moorfields, and those in the neighborhood of Covent Garden and Piccadilly, being particularly so.
One of the most effective means employed by the Roman Catholics to make the conversions is the opening of schools for the education of children of the poor; nor do they hesitate to admit that these schools are not only open to the children of their own persuasion, but to all who may choose to avail themselves of them. This is clear from the speech of the late Cardinal Wiseman at the Roman Catholic Congress held at Malines in the autumn of 1863. Speaking of the hundreds of ragged children, scarcely knowing their parents, he had been accustomed to meet in the different lanes and alleys of the poorer London localities, he says: "We are doing all we can to gather these poor little outcasts together, and to give them Christian training. The schools in which they are taught, and to which I am at present alluding, are themselves situated in a truly fearful spot, Charles street, Drury lane. We owe them in a great measure to the great zeal of the fathers of the Oratory. Their cost has been no less than £12,000. The Religious Sisters from Tournay, with a devotion truly heroic, have undertaken the care of the girls' school. For some time past we have had the consolation of seeing increased, by 1,000 a year, the number of children attending our schools for the poor; there still remain 17,000 poor children who attend no school."
The Catholic Church judges rightly that a few years hence the children under its care will not only augment the number of adult members of its faith, but will proportionately swell their ranks in the next generation. Nor is this danger to the Protestant cause to be despised. All their schools are admirably managed, and the children in them are treated with the greatest kindness and consideration. We have visited several, and in all we remarked a great affection and [{707}] respect existing in the minds of the pupils for their teachers, the latter not considering that their duties are over when the classes are dismissed, but afterward entering into their amusements and occupations with great patience and good humor. We lately visited unexpectedly the school alluded to by Cardinal Wiseman, and although lessons were over we found one of the masters in the large play-room busily employed in instructing a dozen of the most ragged urchins it would be possible to find in that squalid and impoverished locality in the mysteries of spinning peg-tops. Such acts of kindness to children are not forgotten when they grow up, and a better means of binding them to their faith when adults it would be impossible to imagine.
In Gate street, Lincoln's Inn-fields, is another school of the same description. We have watched its progress since its establishment, and marked the great increase in the number of its scholars. It commenced with very few, but must now number several hundreds. Those in Drury-lane have more than four hundred children, among whom, perhaps, not ten before the buildings were erected were receiving any instruction whatever. All the Roman Catholic charities appear to be admirably managed; their orphanages especially so. Those of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street, Westminster, and Norwood, considering the comparatively small means at the disposal of their priesthood, are perfect models of what institutions of the kind ought to be; at the same time, it must not be imagined that the Roman Catholic charities in London are solely of a description calculated to obtain converts to their creed. Their reformatories for fallen women and their exertions for the relief of the sick are worthy of the highest praise. An hospital, with a church attached, solely for chronic and incurable diseases, has for some time been established in Great Ormond street, at the expense of a gentleman of wealth. The hospital is under the care of the prioress and sisters of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and we never saw an infirmary of the kind better managed. A large staff of nuns nurse the sick; and not only are their numbers greater in proportion to those of the patients than in any of our metropolitan hospitals, but their attention and kindness to those under their charge might serve as a model to many of our Protestant institutions of a similar character.
From Chambers's Journal.
A VANISHING RACE.
The residence of Captain C. F. Hall in the arctic regions, and his explorations among the solemn and majestic wastes surrounded by the "hyperborean seas," have invested the Esquimaux with a degree of interest which they had never previously excited. The savage inhabitants of the more beautiful and fertile regions of the earth have been observed by travellers with close and careful attention, which leads to hopeful efforts for their civilization. As the map of the world is opened up to our comprehension, new schemes and prospects for the advance of the human race are opened with it; savans, artists, missionaries, merchants, gird themselves to the contest with the material and moral conditions of the peoples yet, though the world's day has lasted so long, in their infancy, whose unknown future may contain histories as brilliant as those of the civilizations of the present and the past. But there is a race who have not excited such hopes, who have not given rise to such exertions—a race whose life of unimaginable hardship gives them a mysterious resemblance to the phantoms of mythological belief, and places them beyond the reach of the sympathies of civilization by its physical conditions, the amelioration of which is impossible. Beyond the stern barrier which nature has set in the northernmost part of her awful realm, behind the terrible rampart of snow and ice, and storm and darkness, these creatures of her wrath, rather than of her bounty, dwell. To reach their land, the traveller must leave behind him every familiar object, and abandon every habit or need of ordinary life. He must bid farewell to green trees, to fertile fields, to the crops which give food to man and beast, to the domestic animals, to every mode of conveyance, to every implement of common use, to food and clothing such as even the poorest and roughest sons of a less terrible clime may command; to the thousand voices of nature, even in its secluded nooks, It is a mockery to speak of the arctic regions as the land of the Esquimaux, for nowhere on the earth is man less sovereign. Here nature is indeed grand beyond conception, but also terrible, implacable, and impenetrable. She sets man aside in her awful scorn; he is a thing of no moment, a cumberer of the ice-fields, learning the simple lessons whereby he supports his squalid existence from the brutes, which are lordlier than he, inasmuch as the ice-slavery is no chain of servitude to them; and heedless of him, of his terrible hunger and destitution, of his hopeless isolation, she builds her ice-palaces upon the seas, and locks the land in her glittering ice-chains, and flings her terrific banners of flame wide against the northern sky; and sends her voice abroad, without a tone of pity in its vibrations, sounding through the troubled depths of the waters and the rent masses of the many-tinted icebergs. Nature is indeed beautiful in her northern strongholds, but her beauty shows only its terrible aspects, its dread grandeur. The face of the mighty mother does not soften into a smile for the feebleness of her youngest-born offspring, but is fixed in its awful sublimity. There is no point of contact between this ice-kingdon and European civilization, and men of our race and tongue shrink from it with an appalled sadness, for has it now been the tomb of many of our brave and beloved? Three centuries ago it earned that evil reputation, which, in the then elementary state of geographical knowledge, and the general prevalence of superstition, assumed a weird and baleful form. It has but increased [{709}] in degree, though differing in kind, in our days, and we think of the arctic regions as the sepulchre of the beloved dead, the land toward which the heart of England yearned, and which kept pitiless silence through long years of hope deferred. But of its people we do not think; we are satisfied to have but a vague notion of them; to wonder, amid the many marvels of that mighty problem—the distribution of the human race—how human beings ever found their way to those dreadful fastnesses, more cruel in their exaction of human suffering than the desert and the forest. This indifference gives way when we learn what manner of people these are whom we call Esquimaux, a word which signifies "eaters of raw food," but who call themselves Innuit, or "the people," and explain their own origin by a story which is a pleasing testimony to the common possession of self-conceit by all nations. They say that the Creator made white men first, but was dissatisfied with them, regarded them as worthless unfinished creatures, and straightway set about making the Innuit people, who proved perfectly satisfactory.
Captain Hall lived among this strange race for two years and a half, and he is about to return and prosecute his researches in Boothia and King William's Land. This time, his object is to trace the remnants of the Franklin expedition, which—as he finds the history of the few events which have ever marked the progress of time in that distant land handed down by oral tradition with extraordinary distinctness—he has no doubt of being able to do. His first journey was in search of relics of the Frobisher expedition, and was as successful as it was daring, patient, and persevering. His experiences were strange in all respects, and in many most revolting; but we owe much to this cheerful, courageous, simple-hearted American gentleman, who has revealed the Esquimaux to us as Captain Grant has revealed the African tribes, and oriental tourists the dwellers in the deserts. There is poetical harmony in the stern conditions of life among the Innuits; there is the impress of sadness and of sterility upon them all. Time itself changes its meaning in a land where
"The sun starts redly up
To shine for half a year,"
and dim wintry twilight lasts throughout the other half, and hunger is the normal state of the people. The traveller's route is to be traced on the map, which is mere guess-work hitherto, up the western side of Davis's Strait; and once away from Holsteinborg, the journey assumes all its savage features. The terrible icebergs rear their menacing masses in the track of the ship; the sun pours its beams upon them, and bathes them in golden light; they appear in fantastic shapes of Gothic cathedral, of battlemented tower, of clear single-pierced spire, of strong fenced city, of jewel-mountain, of vast crystal hills; and so, as the voyager leaves art and civilization behind, their most supreme forms flash a mirage-like reminiscence upon him, intensifying the contrast of the prospect, and luring him to a frantic and futile regret.
A grand and terrible confusion reigns around; the voyager shrinks from the overwhelming scene, where ranges of mountains, islands, rocks, castles, huge formless masses, and gorgeous prismatic lights, surround that laboring speck upon the mystic sea, of whose littleness he is so small an atom; and a strange sense, which is not fear, but awe, comes to him with the knowledge that nothing of this sublime confusion is real, on the horizon or beyond it. For all the time of his stay in the arctic regions he is to be surrounded by contradictions, by the sublimest manifestations of nature, by the lowest conditions of humanity, by gorgeous and majestic optical delusions, and by the hardest and most grovelling facts of daily existence; he must share, to their fullest extent, the relentless physical needs of the [{710}] people, and live, if he would live at all, in close contact with them—and yet his solitude must be inwardly profound and unapproachable; his purposes unintelligible to his associates; and their language, elementary in itself, dimly and scantily comprehended by him even in its most sparing forms. All this without any of the alleviations of life among savages in southern countries—without the warmth, which, if sometimes oppressive, is ordinarily grateful—without the rich and genial beauties of nature—without the resources of sport without the natural fruits of the earth—without the intellectual occupation of speculating upon development, of ascertaining capabilities, or of investigating sources of wealth. The civilized dweller in arctic regions has none of these. He beholds, with admiration so solemn as to be painful, the unapproachable dignity and hard implacable stillness of nature; but he never dreams of treasure to be wrested from the cells of the ice-prison; he seeks the dead—the dead of centuries ago—the dead of a decade since, to be found, it may be, incorporated with their frozen resting place; for the fiat of nature arrests decay in these terrible regions, where death and life are always at close gripes with one another. While the mind is ceaselessly impressed with sadness and solemnity, the body asserts its claim to superiority; it will not be forgotten or neglected, for cold encompasses it with unrelaxing menace of death, and hunger preys upon the vitals, whose heat wanes rapidly in the pitiless climate, and which crave for the nutriment so hard to procure, so repulsive when procured.
Toil is the law of the ice-clad land—toil, not to wrest from the bosom of the earth her children's sustenance, but to tear from the amphibious creatures, from whom they have learned how to shelter themselves from the cold, and whose skins cover them, the unctuous flesh, which they devour raw in enormous quantities. The Innuit are, on the whole, a gentle people, driven by the relentless need and severity of their lives into close and peaceful companionship. They have no king, no government, no law, no defined religion, no property; they have, for all these, custom—the oldest law; they are animated by the same spirit that dictated the reply once made to one who sat by Jacob's well: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and we worship." As "the old Innuits" did, so do their successors. They have no bread, no medicine, no household furniture; they are poor human waifs upon the wide white bosom of the frozen seas; and they have, no help or resource but in the seal, the walrus, the white bear, the rein-deer, and the wonderful Esquimaux dogs, which are by far the noblest living creatures in all those sterile wastes. From the seal they have learned to make the igloo, which is the house of the Innuit. They eat the flesh of this animal, and drink its fresh warm blood; they kill its young, and eagerly swallow the milk of the mother, found in the stomach of the baby seal. When the sudden summer comes, and the snow melts, and leaves the surface of the ice bare, they are houseless; the igloo melts away; their home is but of frozen water, and suddenly it disappears. Then they have recourse to the tupic, which is a huge sheet of skins hung across a horizontal pole, supported at either end. Their bed is a snow platform, strewn with the moss which is the rein-deer's food, and covered with skins. Their choicest dainties are the fat of the tuktoo, or rein-deer, the marrow procured by mashing the bones of the legs, and the thick, white, unctuous lining of the whale-hide.
The interior of an igloo presents a picture more repulsive than that of any African hut or Indian wigwam, more distressing to human feelings and degrading to human pride. The igloo is a dome-shaped building, made of ice-blocks, with an aperture in the roof, and a rude doorway at one side, closed [{711}] with ice-blocks, when the inmates are assembled. The snow platform which forms the bed is occupied by the women and the stranger. Men and women are clad in skins, put together with neatness and ingenuity. The dress of the sexes differs only in two particulars; that of the women is furnished with a long tail, depending from the jacket, and has a sort of hood, in which loads and children are carried. The life of the infant is preserved by its naked body being kept in contact with that of the mother. One household implement they possess—it is a stone lamp; something like a trough, with a deep groove in it, in which the dried moss, used as a wick, floats in the seal oil, expressed by the teeth of the women from lumps of blubber, which they patiently "mill" until the precious unguent is all procured. But this lamp too often fails them, and darkness and hunger take up frequent abode with the Innuit. Days and nights are passed by the men, sitting singly, in death-like stillness and silence, by the hole which they have found, far under the snow, at which the seal will "blow." It is strange and terrible to think of those watches, in the midst of the desolation, under that arctic sky, with the cold dense fog now swooping, now lifting, in the enforced stillness, with famine gnawing the watcher, and famine at home in the igloo, and the chance of food depending on the sureness of one instantaneous stroke, down through the snow, through the narrow orifice in the ice, into the throat of the animal with the sleek skin, and the mournful human eyes, which vainly implore mercy from raging hunger.
When the Innuit brings the seal to the igloo, a crowd invades the narrow space, for the simplest hospitality prevails, and the long watch, the skilful stroke, do not constitute sole ownership of the prize. The skin is stripped off the huge unsightly carcass, and a horrible scene ensues. The flesh is torn or cut with the stone knives in large lumps, and having been first licked by the women, to remove any hairs or other adhesive matter, is distributed to the party, and devoured raw; the blood is drunk, the bones are mashed, the entrails are greedily eaten, the dogs sharing in all; and the blubber is made to yield its oil by the disgusting process already described. One turns silenced from the picture; from the sights, and sounds, and scents; from the vision of dark faces, eager with gluttonous longing, gathered round the red, flaring light; from the skin-clothed bodies, reeking with grease and filth, and the foul exhalations of the mutilated animal; from the lumps of flesh torn by savage hands, and crammed dripping into distended mouths; from the steaming blood, and the human creatures who rapturously quaff it in the presence of the white man, who sits among them and feeds with them, whose heart yearns with dumb compassion for them, who has wonderful scientific instruments in his pockets, and his Bible in his breast. As the seal teaches the Innuits the art of housing themselves, so the white bear teaches them how to kill the walrus, their most plentiful and frequent food, when the ice is drifting, and the unwieldy creatures lie upon the blocks close inshore; then the bear climbs the overhanging precipice, and taking a heavy block in his deft forepaws, he hurls it with rare skill and nicety of aim upon the basking monster below. So brutes train men in those dreadful regions, and not men brutes. The life of the Innuits is full of such contradictions. And their deaths? From the contemplation of these one turns away appalled, for they die in utter solitude.
When Captain Hall first heard of this horrible custom, he started off at once to see its truth; and having removed the blocks with which the doorway had been built up, entered an igloo, and found a woman who had yet many days to linger thus fastened up in her living tomb. Again, hearing that a woman had been abandoned to die, at a great distance, he set forth, [{712}] and having reached the spot with immense difficulty and danger, he managed to remove the snow and the block which closed the hole in the top of the igloo, lowered himself into it, and found the woman dead, and frozen as hard as her bier and her tomb, with a sweet serene smile upon the marble face. So this is the close of a life of toil and privation—the withdrawal of every kindred face, the fearful solitude of the ice-walls, the terrible arctic darkness and silence, and the frozen corpse lying unshrouded, naked, beneath the frozen skins, until the resurrection. Surely the angel of death is an angel of mercy there, and does his errand gently, bearing away the lonely, terrified spirit to the city of gold, the gates of pearl, the jasper sea, the land where there is no darkness, physical or mental, for evermore. The earth, always pitiless to them, which never feeds them from her bosom, does not suffer her dead children of the Innuit people to sleep their last sleep in her lap. Their graves are only blocks of ice piled around and above the corpses, which remain unharmed, unless when the blocks melt, as they sometimes do, and the wolves, dogs, or bears gain access to the frozen remains. The Innuits are dying out; disease is making havoc among them; consumption, formerly unknown, is thinning their numbers by its slow, furtive, murderous advance; their children are few, and fewer still are reared; and the long story of awful desolation draws to a close. Who can regret it? Who can do aught but desire that the giant wastes of the arctic regions should be left to the soulless creatures of God; that the great discord between them and human life has ceased to trouble the harmony of creation; that the mystery of such an existence is quietly laid at rest, among the things which "we know not now, but which we shall know hereafter?"
MISCELLANY.
SCIENCE.
A New Kind of Mirror.—The Chemical News states that M. Dode, a French chemist, has introduced platinum mirrors, which are greatly admired, and which present this advantage, that the reflecting metal is deposited on the outer surface of the glass, and thus any defect in the latter is concealed. The process, which is patented in Paris, is described as follows: Chloride of platinum is dissolved in water, and a certain quantity of oil of lavender is added to the solution. The platinum immediately leaves the aqueous solution and passes to the oil, which holds it in suspension in a finely divided state. To the oil so charged the author adds litharge and borate of lead, and paints a thin coat of this mixture over the surface of the glass, which is then carried to a proper furnace. At a red heat the litharge and borate of lead are fused, and cause the adhesion of the platinum to the softened glass. The process is very expeditious. A single baking, M. Dode says, will furnish 200 metres of glass ready for commerce. It would take fifteen days, he says, to coat the same extent with mercury by the ordinary plan.
African Silkworm.—A silkworm before unknown in Europe has been introduced into France from Senegal, and without suffering from change of climate. It yields a richer silk than that of any other worm known to naturalists, and its cocoons are twice the ordinary weight. It is to be tried in Algiers, and if successful there, this new and rich silk may become in time an important article of commerce.
Science in a Balloon.—Mr. Glaisher has [{713}] given, in a lecture at the Royal Institution, a resumé of his scientific experiments in balloons. Tables recording the decline of temperature with elevation, show that when the sky was clear a more rapid decline took place than when the sky was cloudy. Under a clear sky, a fall of 1° takes place within 100 feet of the earth, but at heights exceeding 25,000 feet it is necessary to pass through 1,000 feet of vertical height to obtain a fall of 1° in temperature. At extreme elevations, in both states of the sky, the air became very dry, but as far as his experiments went, was never quite free from water. From ascents made before and after sunset, Mr. Glaisher concludes that the laws which hold good by day do not hold good by night; indeed, it seemed probable that at night, for some little distance, the temperature may increase with elevation, instead of decreasing. From experiments made on solar radiation with a blackened bulb thermometer, and with Herschel's actinometer, it was inferred that the heat rays from the sun pass through space without loss, and become effective in proportion to the density or the amount of water present in the atmosphere through which they pass. If this be so, the proportion of heat received at Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn may be the same as that received at the earth, if the constituents of their atmospheres be the same as that of the earth, and greater if the amount of aqueous vapor be greater, so that the effective solar heat at Jupiter and Saturn may be greater than at either the inferior planets, Mercury or Venus, notwithstanding their far greater distances from the sun. This conclusion is most important as corroborating Professor Tyndall's experiments on aqueous vapor. Experiments on the wind showed that the velocity of the air at the earth's surface was very much less than at a high elevation. A comparison of the temperature of the dew point, as shown by different instruments, gave results proving that the temperatures of the dew point, as found by the use of the dry and wet bulb thermometers, and Daniell's hygrometer, are worthy of full confidence as far as the experiments went.
The Eruption of Mount Etna.—At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an important letter was read from M. Fouqué to M. Saint-Claire Deville on the eruption of Etna, which has presented several phenomena of great scientific interest.
The eruption commenced at half-past ten on the evening of January 31. On the previous day two successive shakings of the earth had been noticed. Just before the eruption began a violent earthquake was felt, the wave travelling to the north-east; after this, slight oscillations continued until about 4 A.M. Large flames now rose from a point on the north-east side of Etna 5,500 feet above the snow line, and lava began to flow rapidly. In two or three days the lava traversed a space of 19,000 feet, with a width of from 10,000 to 12,000, and a variable thickness, but often reaching to the depth of 30 or 60 feet. After destroying for some distance everything in its passage, the current of lava struck one of the old craters, and then bifurcated. The stream on the west side moved very slowly, and, becoming subdivided, it nearly ceased to move; the stream on the east side fell over a deep and precipitous valley, which it soon filled, being then able to continue its progress, until finally it was stopped by a lava mound of a previous eruption.
The number of the craters is seven; of these five form a vast elliptical enclosure, the major axis of which is directed toward the north-east. A deep fissure, 1,500 feet in length, opened from the base of a former crater, Frumento, to the nearest of the present cones. This chasm, M. Fouqué shows, was probably formed by the shock at the commencement of the eruption. This fissure, and also a depression of the crater Frumento, is in a right line with the major axis of the ellipse formed by the craters. The same general fact has been several times noticed in previous eruptions.
The vapors attending an eruption have been divided into the dry, containing chiefly chloride of sodium and no water, the acid, which contain a large amount of watery vapor, the alkaline, and the carbonic. The first indicates the maximum, and the last the minimum of volcanic action. Each of these varieties of vapor, succeeding in their order, were noticed at this eruption. M. Fouqué found the dry vapor upon the still incandescent lava; the acid vapor in those parts where the temperature was over [{714}] 400°; the alkaline, where the temperature was lower, but generally over 100°; and finally, carbonic acid has been detected in one of the adjacent old craters, which was at the ordinary temperature. The first three varieties of vapor were thus found upon the same transverse section of the lava, less than 150 feet distant from each other. In all these vapors the atmospheric air which accompanied them was deprived of part of its oxygen, generally containing only from 18 to 19 per cent., and in some alkaline vapors the proportion was still less.
In this eruption there was a remarkable absence of sulphur and its compounds; chemical tests as well as the sense of smell could detect no trace of them. The eruption indeed was characterized by the absence of the compounds of sulphur and the abundance of the compounds of chlorine. Hydro-chlorate of ammonia, which was found in abundance, has generally been regarded as exclusively belonging to the alkaline vapors; but here it has been discovered among the other varieties, whilst the alkaline vapors were distinguished by the carbonate rather than by the hydrochlorate of ammonia.
At the present time, M. Fouqué writes, the eruption is most active in the four lowest craters; these throw liquid lava into the air, and emit a nearly colorless smoke; the three superior craters eject solidified lava and black stones, at the same time pouring out a dense smoke charged with aqueous vapor and brown-colored ashes.
The three higher craters produce every two or three minutes a very loud report resembling the rolling of thunder; the four lower craters, on the contrary, send forth a rapid succession of ringing sounds, which it is impossible to count. These sounds follow each other without any cessation, and are only to be compared to the noise produced by a series of blows from a hammer falling on an anvil. If the ancients heard these noises in former eruptions, it is easily conceivable how they imagined a forge to exist in the centre of the volcano, with Cyclops for the master workman. The lava is black, rich in pyroxene, and strongly attracted by a magnet. Since the commencement of the eruption, the central crater of Etna has emitted white vapors, which continually cover its summit. Several good photographs of the eruption have been taken by M. Berthier, who accompanied M. Fouqué in his explorations, which were by no means unattended with danger.
M. Saint-Claire Deville then made some observations on this paper. He explained the almost entire absence of sulphur by the fact that M. Fouqué only examined the vapors from the lava. These nearly always contain chlorine for their electro-negative element, and scarcely show, and that not until later, sulphuretted and carbonic vapors. After the eruption of Vesuvius in 1861, very light deposits of sulphur were found covering the hydrochlorate of ammonia, which shows that the former body is not absent from the lava. The existence of hydrochlorate of ammonia in the emanations does not necessarily exclude that of the vapors of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids.
Magnetism of Iron-clad Ships.—Staff-Commander Evans, of the British navy, and Mr. Archibald Smith, who have devoted themselves for several years to investigations into the character of the magnetism of iron-built and armor-plated ships, have embodied the results of their studies in an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Royal Society. It is well known that iron ships have been very difficult to navigate because of the disturbing effect of the iron upon the compass, and serious accidents have happened in consequence. But underwriters, and the whole naval profession, will be glad to hear that the difficulty and risk are now greatly lessened, if not entirely removed. For the results established by the paper in question are—That it is no longer necessary to swing a ship in order to ascertain the compass deviation, or error, seeing that it is possible to determine the various forms of error by mathematics; that an iron ship should always be built with her head to the south; if built head north, there is such a confused amount of magnetism concentrated in the stern as to have a violent disturbing effect on the compass; that if, after building, a ship is to be armor-plated, the head, during the fixing of the plates, should be turned in the opposite direction— that is, to the north; and that especial pains should be taken while building an iron ship to provide a [{715}] suitable place for the standard-compass. Beside these particulars, the shot and shell stowed in the vessel, the iron water-tanks, and, indeed, all the iron used in her interior fittings, are to be taken into account; and it is satisfactory to know that the influence exerted on the compass by any one or all of these conditions can be ascertained, and allowed for, as in the other cases above mentioned.
"Gyges" Explained.—The London Reader gives the following explanation of a curious experiment in optics which has been performed at one of the London theatres under the name of "Eidos AEides," and reproduced in New York under the appellation of "Gyges." It consists in causing an actor or an inanimate object which is in full view of the audience at one moment to disappear instantly, and then to reappear with the same rapidity. The means by which this is accomplished are very simple, and are to some extent similar to those used in exhibiting "Pepper's Ghost." A sheet of plain unsilvered glass is placed upon the stage, either upright or inclined at a suitable angle, at the place where the actor or object is to disappear. This glass is not perceived by the audience, and it does not interfere with their view of the scenery, etc., behind the plate. A duplicate scene representing that part of the back of the stage covered by the glass is placed at the wing, out of sight of the spectators. With the ordinary lighting of the stage the reflection of this counterfeit scene in the glass is too faint to be observed; but when a strong light is thrown upon the scene, the stage lights being lowered at the same time, the image becomes visible. This duplicate scene being an exact fac-simile of the background of the stage, the change is not noticed by the audience, the only difference being that they now see by reflection that which they saw a moment previously by direct vision. The actor, standing a sufficient distance behind the glass, is completely hidden from view, and he is again rendered visible by turning down the light on the false scene and allowing the stage lights to predominate. When "Eidos AEides" was being performed at Her Majesty's Theatre, it was, however, possible, with a good opera-glass, to distinguish the outline of the figure behind the plate. The effects produced may of course be modified. An actor may be made to appear walking or flying in the air, or dancing on a tight-rope, by eclipsing or obscuring a raised platform on which he may be placed.