The Catholic World, Vol. 06, October, 1867 to March, 1868.

by Various

The Church and Her Attributes.

The heterodox of all shades recognize, in some form or in some sense, what they call the church of Christ, and hold it in some way necessary, or at least useful, to salvation. The Anglicans profess to believe in a church founded by Christ himself, of which they claim to be a pure or purified branch; the Presbyterians profess to believe that there is a church, out of which there is no salvation; the Methodists and Baptists call their organizations churches, and hold them to be parts or branches of one universal or catholic church; and even Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, who deny the incarnation, speak of the church, though precisely what they mean by it is not easy to say. So far as we know, there is no sect, school, or party, not included among those whom our theologians call infidels or apostates, that does not profess a belief, of some sort, in the holy catholic and apostolic church of the creed.

In a controversy between us and the heterodox, the question is not, An sit ecclesia? but, Quid sit ecclesia? The controversy hinges, not on the existence of the church, but on what the church is, and only rarely on which is the true church; for when all have once come to agree as to what the church is, there will be little dispute as to which she is. We start, then, with the assumption that there is something to be called the church of Christ, and proceed at once to point out what she is.

The church of Christ, taken in its most comprehensive sense, in all states, places, and times, is, says Billuart: "Congregatio fidelium in vero Dei cultu adunatorum sub Christo capite—the congregation of the faithful, united under Christ the head, in the true worship of God." Most of the heterodox, as well as all Catholics, will accept this definition. But this definition includes the faithful who lived before Christ; as well as those who have lived since, and as those who lived and died before the incarnation could not enter into heaven before the way was opened by our Lord himself, who is the first-born from the dead, and the resurrection and the life, a definition more particularly adapted to the state of the church since the coming of Christ is needed. The church has indeed existed from the beginning; but before the Word was actually incarnated, she existed by prophecy and promise only; but Christ having come and fulfilled the promise, the church exists now in fact, in reality, for the reality foretold and promised has come. Hence St. Paul, in referring to the faithful of the Old Testament, says, "And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise"—or the fulfilment of the promise—"God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." Heb. xi. 39, 40. The church, before Christ, was incomplete, and needed further fulfilment or perfecting; the church in the state in which she exists since Christ, is the church realized, completed, or perfected. According to this state, and as the kingdom of God on earth, she is, as Billuart again defines: "Societas fidelium baptizatorum ejusdem fidei professione, eorumdem sacramentorum participatione, eodem cultu inter se adunatorum sub uno capite Christo in coelis, et sub ejus in terris vicario summo pontifice—the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, united in the participation of the same sacraments and the same worship, under one head, Christ in heaven, and on earth under his vicar, the supreme pontiff." [Footnote 70]

[Footnote 70: Billuart, De Reg. Fid. Dissert. III. De Eccl. Art. I.]

All will not accept the whole of this definition; but all will agree that the church is a society embracing all the faithful, united in the true worship of God under one head, Jesus Christ in heaven; but the heterodox deny the union under one head or one regimen on earth. But what is a congregation or society of the faithful under Christ its head? A congregation or society under one head implies both unity and multiplicity, either many made one, or one manifesting or explicating itself in many, and in either sense supposes more than the heterodox in general understand by the church. The faithful, congregated or associated under one head, Christ, are one body, for Christ is the head of the congregation or society, not merely of the individuals severally; but the heterodox generally, in our times at least, make the church consist solely of individuals aggregated to the collective body of believers, because already united as individuals by faith and love to Christ, as their head; which supposes Christ to be the head of each individual of the church, but not of the church herself. According to this view, men are regenerated outside of the society or church, and join the church because supposed to be regenerated or born again, not that they may be born again. The church in this case is simply the aggregate of regenerated persons, and derives her life from Christ through them, instead of their deriving their life from Christ the head through her. The one view makes the church a general term, an abstraction, performing and capable of performing no part in the regeneration and sanctification of souls; the other makes the church a reality, a real existence, living a real life not derived from her members, and the real medium through which our Lord carries on his mediatorial work; and therefore union with her is not only profitable to spiritual life, but necessary to its birth in the soul, and therefore to individual salvation. This must be the case if we suppose Christ to be the head of the congregation or society called the church, and of individuals severally only as they are affiliated to her.

There is, we suspect, a deeper philosophy in the church than the heterodox in general are aware of. "The church," it was said in this magazine, in one of the essays on The Problems of the Age, "is the human race in its highest sense," that is, the regenerated human race, the human race in the teleological order, not in the order of natural generation, which is simply cosmic and initial. This supposes in the church something more than individuals, as, indeed, does society itself. With nothing but individualities brought together there is no society, there is only aggregation, because there is no unity, nothing that is one and common to all the individuals brought together. In all real society there is a social principle, a social life, in which individuals participate, but which is itself not individual, nor derived from the individuals associated. Thus in every real nation, not a pseudo nation made up of the forced juxtaposition of distinct and often hostile communities, there is a real national life. An insult to the nation each one feels is an insult to himself; and if the existence of the nation is threatened, every one in whose heart throbs the national life, rises, and all, in the fine Biblical expression, "march as one man" to the rescue, prepared to save the nation or die in its defence.

The unity of social life is still more manifest when we come to the race. We are aware of the old quarrel between the nominalists and conceptualists on the one hand, and the old realists on the other; but we disposed of that controversy in the article entitled An Old Quarrel, in the Magazine for May of last year, and established, we think, the reality of genera and species, while we denied that of abstractions, or simple mental conceptions. If we deny the reality of genera and species, we must deny the fact of generation, and the Catholic dogmas of the unity of the species and of original sin. If all men have not proceeded from Adam by way of natural generation, there can be no unity of the species; and if no unity of the species, there can be no original sin, which is "the sin in which we are born," the sin of origin, the sin of the race, transmitted by natural generation from Adam to all his posterity. To deny the reality, of the species is to deny this, is to deny generation, that we are born in any sense of Adam; to deny generation is to deny regeneration; and to deny regeneration is to deny the whole Christian or teleological order. We cannot then logically be nominalists or conceptualists and Christian believers at one and the same time.

We do not pretend that the species subsists without individualization any more than we do that the individual can subsist without the species. What we contend for is, that in every individual there is that which is not individual, but distinguishable from the individuality, which is common to all the individuals of the species, and which in men binds all men, from the first to the last, together in the unity of their natural head or progenitor. The species is more than the individual, operates in the individual, determines his specific nature, and separated from which the individual is nothing; but the species does not subsist without individualization, and could not be explicated by natural generation if not individualized. Yet the entire race was individualized in Adam.

We can now understand the assertion that "The church is the human race in the highest sense," the regenerated race in its progenitor, its unity and reality, therefore in its real head, in the supernatural order. The head of the regenerated race, or the race in the supernatural or teleological order, is Christ himself, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. Hence the apostle says, (i Cor. xv.,) "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive." The apostle, in this fifteenth chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, draws a parallel between the first Adam and the last Adam, which must hold good be the race as born of the first Adam, and the race as born anew of the last Adam; and, therefore, the race born anew must hold to Christ in the order of regeneration a relation strictly analogous to that borne by it in the natural or initial order, to the first Adam. The difference is, that in the natural order the race is explicated by natural generation, and in the supernatural or teleological order by the election of grace. But the relation between the members and the head is no less real in the one case than in the other, and we live in the order of regeneration, if born again, the life of Christ as really and truly as in the natural order we live the life of Adam. The church, then, proceeds as really through grace from Christ, the supernatural head, as the race itself proceeds from Adam, the natural head.

This view of the church is sustained by Saint Augustine, who represents Christ as both the head and the body of the church, and says Christ and his members are the whole Christ—totus Christus. If we view the church in her origin, her principle, her life, that is, in her head and soul, she is Christ himself; if we view her as the congregation or society of the faithful, made one in the unity of the head, the church is the body of Christ. Hence, Saint Paul teaches, (Colossians i. 18,) that Christ "is the head of the body; the church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead;" "the head, from which all the body, by joints and bands being supplied with nourishment and compacted groweth unto the increase of God." (Ib. ii. 19.) "Christ is the head of the church; he is the Saviour of his body." (Eph. v. 23.) "Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member." (i Cor. xii. 27.) "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Eph. v. 30.) "And if one member suffer anything, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it." (i Cor. xii. 26.) Nothing can more clearly or unequivocally assert Christ as the head of the church, the church as the body of Christ, or the members of the church as members of his body and members of one another, or the perfect solidarity of Christ and the church, and of the members of the church in Christ, and with one another, as implied in the definition of the church quoted from Billuart.

The men of the world do not understand this, because they recognize no existence but that of individual things, and have no conception of unity. What transcends the individual or particular, is, for them, an empty word, or a pure abstraction, therefore nothing. They have never asked themselves how individuals or particulars can exist without the general or universal, nor how there can be men without the generic man. What has not for them a sensible existence is, indeed, no existence at all. They seem never to reflect that, if there were no supersensible reality, there could be no sensible reality. The sensible is mimetic, depends on the intelligible or noetic which it copies or imitates. Take away the intelligible or non-sensible, and the sensible would be a mere appearance in which nothing would appear—less than a vain shadow.

We have defined the church in her origin, principle, and life, to be Christ himself; as the society of the faithful, to which all the faithful are affiliated, to be the body of Christ. But the principle on which we have asserted this union of the faithful with Christ, applies only to those who are in the order of regeneration; for in that order only is Christ our head, or are we, as individuals, affiliated to him, and included in him, as the father of regenerated humanity; and hence they who die unregenerated, suffer the penalty of original sin and of such actual sins as they may have committed. How then do we enter that order? By the new birth; by being born of Christ into it, as we enter the natural order by being born of Adam. The Pelagians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists reject the distinction of the two orders, and recognize no regenerated humanity; the Calvinists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Evangelicals, etc., hold that we are translated from the order of nature into the order of grace by the direct, immediate, and irresistible operation of the Holy Ghost. But the Holy Ghost, in his immediate operations, is God acting in his divine nature, and the medium of our regeneration is God in his human nature, the Man Christ Jesus, who, on this view, would be superseded as the mediator of God and men. The order of regeneration originates in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, or God in his human nature, not in God in his divine nature; and therefore, to be in that order, we must be born of God in his humanity. If we could be regenerated by the Holy Ghost, or God in his divine nature alone, without the intervention of God in his human nature, or the Man Christ Jesus as the medium or mediator, the incarnation would go for nothing, and we should be made by the new birth, sons of God in his divine nature; since neither the Father nor the Holy Ghost assumed flesh; as the eternal Word is himself the son of God, and God as he is God; which, we need not say, is simply impossible and absurd. By the hypostatic union with the Word, man becomes God in his personality, but not in his nature, for the human nature remains always human nature. The two natures remain, as we are taught in the condemnation of the Monophysites, for ever distinct in the unity of the one divine person. By regeneration we are elevated, indeed, to be sons of God, but sons of God by participation with the Eternal Son in his human, not in his divine nature. We are made joint-heirs with Christ, and sons of God by adoption, not by nature.

There is no act conceivable without principle, medium, and end. In the creation of man and the universe, the three persons of the holy and indivisible Trinity concur, but in diverse respects—the Father as principle, the Son or Word as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end or consuminator. In the regeneration, which St. Paul calls a "new creation," the whole Trinity also concur, the Father as principle, the Son as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end, consummator, or sanctifier; but here it is the Son in his human nature, not in his divine nature, that is the medium; for St. Paul says, "There is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The Son, in his human nature, is the medium of the whole order of regeneration, or of our redemption, new birth, and return to God as our final cause or last end. We must then be begotten of him in his humanity by the Holy Ghost, as the condition of being born into the regeneration, and becoming members of the regenerated human race. The heterodox overlook this fact, and even when asserting the incarnation, leave it no office in the regeneration and sanctification of souls, or, at best, no continuous or permanent office. According to them, the mediatorial work was completed when Christ died on the cross, at least, when he ascended into heaven; and now the salvation of souls is carried on by the Holy Ghost without any medium or any participation of God in his human nature, as if one person of the indivisible Trinity could operate alone, without the concurrence of the other two! This, if it were possible, would imply the denial of the unity of God, and the assertion of the three persons of the Godhead as three Gods, not three persons in one God. The heterodox, the supernaturalists, as well as the naturalists, really deny the whole order of grace as proceeding from God in his human nature, its only possible medium, and hence the reason why they so universally shrink from calling Mary the Mother of God, and accuse of idolatry the devotion which Catholics pay to her. Though the eternal Word took the flesh he assumed from her, yet, as that flesh is not in their view the medium of our spiritual life, they cannot see in her, more than in any other pure and holy woman, any connection with our regeneration, and our spiritual or eternal life. They cannot see that, in denying her claims, they virtually reject the whole Christian order.

The difficulty, though not the mystery, disappears the moment we recognize the sacramental principle, which it was the prime object of the Reformers to eliminate from the Christian system. In the definition of the church, she is said to be "the society of the faithful baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same sacraments." The sacraments are all visible signs signifying, that is, communicating grace to the recipient. Among these sacraments is one, which is the sacrament of faith, the sacrament of regeneration, that is, baptism, in which we receive the gift of faith, and are born members of Christ's body, and united to him as our head, and as the head of the regenerated race. In baptism we are regenerated, born into the supernatural order, the kingdom of heaven, and have the life of Christ infused by the Holy Ghost into us, so that henceforth we become flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, one with him, and one with all the faithful in him, as really united to him in the spiritual order, as we are to Adam in the natural order, and derive our spiritual life from him as really as we derive from God, through Adam, our natural life. This is what we understand St. Paul to mean when he says, "It is written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit." The sacraments are all effective ex opere operato, and through them the Holy Ghost infuses the grace special to each, when the recipient opposes no obstacle to it. Infants are incapable of offering any obstacle, and are regenerated by baptism in Christ and joined to him. In the case of adults who have grown up without faith, the prohibentia, or obstacles to faith, must be removed, by reasons that convince the understanding and produce what theologians call fides humama, or human faith, such faith as we have in the truth of historical events; but this faith is wholly in the natural order, although it embraces things in the supernatural order as its material object, and does not at all unite us to Christ as our head. It brings us, when faithful to our convictions, to the sacrament of baptism, but cannot introduce us into the order of regeneration; the faith that unites us to the body of Christ, and through it with Christ himself, or divine faith, is the gift of God, and is infused into the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sacrament of baptism itself. [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: Theologians generally teach that an act of supernatural faith, elicited by the aid of a special transient grace, precedes the infusion of the habit of faith.—Ed. Catholic World.]

Hence, in her present state, only the baptized belong to the society called the church of Christ, and only the baptized are united as one body under Christ, their head in heaven, or under his vicar on earth. The satisfaction or atonement made by our Lord to divine justice, though it was made for all, and is ample for the sins of the whole world, avails individuals, or becomes practically theirs, only as through baptism, vel in re, vel in voto, they are really united to Him, and are in Him as their head, as we were in Adam; and hence the dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, judged by the world to be so harsh and illiberal, is founded in the very nature and design of the church, of the whole mediatorial work of Christ, and in the very reason of the incarnation itself. To say a man can be saved out of the church, is saying simply a man can be saved out of Christ, without being born of Him,—as impossible as for one to be a man and, in humanity, without being born of Adam. The justice, the sanctity, the merits, the life of Christ, can be really ours, only as we are really assimilated to His body, and are in Him as our living head, our Father in the order of grace; and hence it was not idly or inconsiderately, that St. Cyprian, one of the profoundest of the fathers, said: "He cannot have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother." It lies in the very nature of the case.

The other sacraments are channels of grace from the head to the body and its members; and are all means of sustaining or restoring the life begotten in baptism, preserving, diffusing, or defending the faith, bringing up children in the nurture of the Lord, augmenting the life and compacting the union of the body of Christ, and solacing individuals in their illnesses, and comforting and strengthening souls in their passage through the dark valley of death. The sacramental system is complete, and provides for all our spiritual wants. Baptism initiates us into the life of Christ; the Holy Eucharist nourishes that life in us; Penance restores it when lost by sin; Confirmation gives strength and heroic courage to withstand and repel the assaults of Satan; Orders provide priests for offering the unbloody sacrifice, the stewards of the mysteries of Christ, intercessors for the people, teachers, directors, and defenders, in the name of Christ, of the Christian society; Matrimony institutes and blesses the Christian family; and Extreme Unction heals the sick, or sustains, strengthens, and consoles the departing. Indeed, the sacraments meet all the necessities of the soul, in both the natural and the supernatural orders, from its birth to its departure, and even leave us not on the brink of the grave, but accompany us till received into the choir of the just made perfect.

The medium of all sacramental grace is the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, and the sacraments are the media through which the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ flows out from him, the Fountain,—the grace that begets the new life, justifies, sanctifies, and makes pleasing to God, we mean,—is infused by the Holy Ghost into the soul, and constitutes alike the vital principle of the individual, and of the whole body, quickening and sustaining each. In rejecting sacramental grace, the heterodox separate the individual soul, and also the church herself, from all real communion or intercourse with Christ, or God in his human nature, and accept the seminal principle of rationalism, into which we see them everywhere falling. They dissolve Christ, and render the Word efficient only in his divine nature. The sacraments are the media of our union with God in his human nature, through which the hypostatic union is, in some sort, repeated in us, or made by the Holy Ghost practically effectual to the justice and sanctity of believers, and the perfecting of the church, which is the body of Christ; and as this grace, in its principle and medium, is Christ himself, all who are born of it are born of him, and the life which they live in and by it is the one life of God in his humanity. Looking at the church, in what theologians call her soul, she is literally and truly the man Christ Jesus, and looking at her as the whole congregation of the faithful, she is the body of Christ, and related to him as the body to the soul. It is this intimate relation of the church to God in his human nature, that led Moehler to represent the church as in some sort the continuation on earth, in a visible form, of the Incarnation; and she is certainly so closely united to his divine personality, that we may say truly, that he is her personality, as really as he is the personality of the flesh he assumed and hypostatically united to himself. Perrone says that, if we exclude from this view all pantheistic conceptions, it is scriptural, and, moreover, sustained by the fathers, especially St. Athanasius, who says, in writing of the Incarnation, "Et cum Petrus dicat: certissime sciat ergo omnis domus Israel, quia et Dominum eum, et Christum fecit Deus, hunc Jesum quern vos crucifixistis: non de divinitate ejus dicit, quod Dominum ipsum et Christum fuerit, sed de humanitate ejus, quae est UNIVERSA ECCLESIA, quae in ipso dominatur et regnat, postquam crucifixus ipse est: et quae erigitur ad regnum coelorum, ut cum illa regnet, qui seipsum pro illa exinanivit et qui induta servili forma, ipsam assumpsit." [Footnote 72] Christ, in his humanity, is the universal church, which rules and reigns in him. We cannot study the great fathers of the church too assiduously, and we wish we had earlier known it. The doctrine we are trying to set forth is there.

[Footnote 72: Edit. Maur. opp. tom. i. p. 2, p. 887; apud Perrone, Praelect. Locis Theolog. p. I. c. 2; De Anima Ecclesiae, Art. I.]

There is nothing here that favors pantheism:

1. Because the hypostatic union is by the creative act of God, as much so as the creation of Adam.
2. Because, although God is really the church, regarded in her soul, it is God in his human, which is for ever distinct from his divine nature, and therefore in his created nature.
3. Because the Word was incarnated in an individual, not in the species, as some rationalists dream, save as the species was individualized in the individual nature he assumed; and,
4. Because, though Christ is identically the soul, the informing principle, the life of the church, the individuals affiliated to the body of the church retain their individuality, their human personality, and therefore their own free-will, personal identity, activity, or their character as free moral agents.

Not all individuals apparently affiliated to the body of the church are really assimilated to her, and vitally united to the body of Christ. They pertain to the society externally, but not by an inward union with Christ, the head and soul. They are, as St. Augustine says, "in not of the church," as the dead particles of matter in the human body which receive not, or have ceased to receive, life from it, and are constantly flying or cast off. Gratia supponit naturam. All the operations of grace presuppose nature, and nature has always the power to resist grace. Without grace nature cannot concur with grace; yet even they who have been born again, and have entered into the order of regeneration, are always able to fall away, or back, practically, into the natural order. Not every individual in the church is assimilated to her, nor every one who is assimilated to her will continue to the end. But she herself survives their loss and remains always one and the same body of Christ.

We have dwelt at great length on this view of the church, not because we have any special partiality or aptitude for mystic theology, but because we have wished to show that the church is not something purely external and arbitrary. We hold that all the works of God are real, and have a real and solid reason of being in the order of things which he has seen proper to create. He does nothing in the supernatural order, any more than in the natural order, without a reason, and a good and valid reason. We have wished to get at the reality, and to show that Catholicity is not a sham, a make-believe, a reputing of things to be that are not; but a reality, as real in its own order as the order of nature itself, and, in fact, even more so, as nature is mimetic, and Catholicity, to borrow a term from Plato, is methexic, and participates of the divine reality itself. All heterodox systems are shams, unphilosophical, sophistical, and incapable of sustaining a rigid examination. Their abettors do not, and dare not, reason on them. The age supposes Catholicity is no better, is equally unsubstantial, unreal, dissolving and vanishing in thin air at the first glance of reason. We have wished to show the age its mistake, and to let it see that Catholicity can bear the most thorough investigation, and that it has nothing to fear from the most rigid dialectics. We do not pretend to divest it of mysteries, or to explain the mysteries so as to bring them within the comprehension of our feeble understandings, but to show that the church, with all her attributes and functions, has a reason in the divine mind and in the order of things of which we make a part, and is a real, inward life, as well as an outward form.

From the view of the church which we have presented, it is easy to deduce her attributes. She is in some sort, according to St. Athanasius, the human nature of Christ, or Christ in his humanity, and he is her divine personality, for his humanity is inseparable from his divine person. That she is one, follows, necessarily, from the unity of Christ's person, from the fact that, in her soul, she is Christ and, in her body, is his body. Her unity is the unity of Christ himself, and the unity of the life she lives in him. There are individual distinctions and even varieties of race or family among men in the natural order, but all men are men only in that they are one in the unity of the species. Jesus Christ is not only the individual man Christ Jesus, but also in the order of regeneration the species, as Adam was both an individual man and the entire species in the order of genesis or generation. The church as growing out of the incarnation, and, in some sense, continuing it, and in her body composed of individuals born of him and affiliated to him, must necessarily be one, one in her faith, one in her sacraments, one in her worship, one in her love, one in the life that flows through her, animates and invigorates her, from the one Christ, who is her forma, or informing principle, as the soul is the informing principle of the body—anima est forma corporis, as the holy Council of Clermont defines. Diversity in any of these respects breaks the unity of the body and interrupts communion with the head, and the communion of the body with the soul, whence is derived its life. It is therefore all Christians have always held heresy and schism to be deadly sins, and the most deadly of all. They not only sever those guilty of them from the body or external communion of the church, but from her internal communion, from Christ himself, the only source of supernatural and divine life. There is not only the grossest ingratitude and baseness in heresy and schism, but there is spiritual death in them. By them we die to Christ as, in the natural order, we should die to Adam, or lose our natural life, if we were deprived of our humanity or cut off from communion with its natural head. It is not from bigotry or intolerance that the church regards heresy and schism with horror; it is because they necessarily separate the soul from Christ, and destroy its spiritual life; because they reject Christ, and crucify him afresh. It is so in the very nature of the case, and she can no more make it not so, than the mathematician can make the three angles of a triangle not equal to two right angles. It is not, therefore, without reason that the church has always insisted that to keep the unity of the faith is the first of Christian duties, or that St. Paul bids St. Timothy to keep the deposit, and to hold fast the form of sound words; for without the faith it is impossible to please God. We know men may err without being heretics; we know that invincible ignorance, an ignorance not culpable in its cause, excuses from sin in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but there is no invincible ignorance where one may know the truth, but will not; and invincible ignorance itself cannot regenerate the soul, and elevate it to the supernatural order, which can be done only by faith given in baptism.

The church is holy, holy in her doctrines, her worship, her life, and in her living members. This follows necessarily from the fact, that in her soul she is Christ, and her body the body of Christ. She is holy as he is holy, and because he is holy, as she is one because he is one. Doubtless all individuals in her communion are not holy; for men may, as we have seen, be in the church and not of the church. Regeneration, or the infused habits of faith, justice, and sanctity, do not destroy one's individuality, or take away one's free-will; men may, if they will, profane the sacraments, eat or drink unworthily, even fall from grace, and become gross sinners against God and criminals before the state. These are not holy, but the reverse; yet all who are born again, and are united by a living bond to the church, may derive, if they will, life from Christ through her, and all who do so are holy in her holiness, as she is holy in the holiness of Christ. His life, the life of God in his humanity, is their life.

The attempt to disprove the sanctity of the church from the bad conduct of some, if you will many, of her members, overlooks the real character of the church, supposes her to be simply an aggregation of individuals, living only the life she derives from them; and it also starts from the false assumption that grace is irresistible and inamissible. Poor Luther, in the morbid state into which he fell in his convent, could find relief only in assuming that, as he had once been in grace, he must be still in grace, and sure of salvation; for grace, once had, can never be lost, however one may sin after having received it. Yet this doctrine was false, and but for his morbid, half insane state of mind, he would never have entertained it for a moment. Protestantism sprang from the diseased state of Luther's soul. A sad origin.

The church is visible as well as invisible. This also follows necessarily. The internal life of the church is invisible, hidden with God; but the body of the church is visible, as was the body of Christ when on earth. The church is composed, as we have seen, of body and soul, and everybody living on earth in space and time, is by its own nature visible, and would not be body if it were not. The body of the church is composed of individuals united in the profession of the same faith, and in the participation of the same sacraments, under one head, and is therefore, since the individuals are visible, a visible body. The whole analogy of the case supposes her to be both invisible and visible, as are all the sacraments, which are visible signs or media of invisible grace. The church is the medium through which the soul is regenerated and comes into communion with Christ, the head, and derives life from his life; and how if not visible could we know where to find her, or be able to approach her sacraments, and through them be born again, and be united in the supernatural order to Christ, as in the natural order we are united to Adam? No: the church is as a city set on a hill, and cannot be hidden; and is set on a hill, made visible, that all may behold her, and flock within her walls.

The church is indefectible. This follows from the fact that Christ himself whose body she is, is indefectible, and dies no more, but ever liveth and reigneth. No matter whether you call the rock on which he said he would build his church, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, Peter, the truth that Peter confessed, or Christ himself, her indefectibility is equally asserted. He himself in every case, is the chief corner-stone, is, in the last analysis, the rock; and the church cannot fail, not because men may not fail, but because he who is her support, her life, cannot fail, since he is God, and as truly God in his human nature as in his divine nature. The heterodox of all shades, however they may err as to what she is, hold, as we have seen, that the church is, in some form, indefectible.

The church is authoritative. Her authority is the authority of Christ; and his authority is the authority of God in his human nature. "All power is given unto me," he said, "in heaven and in earth," and therefore is he exalted to be "King of kings and Lord of lords," so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. The church is Christ in his humanity, and his authority is hers, for it is in and through her that he exercises his authority. To resist her, is to resist him, and to resist him is to resist God. "He that despiseth you, despiseth me, and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." This is no arbitrary authority, or authority resting solely on an external commission or appointment. It is internal and real in the church, as the body of Christ, because he is in her, lives in her, and governs in and through her. It is, then, no light thing to resist the authority of the church; for to do so, is not to resist the authority of fallible men, but the authority of God—is to resist the authority of the Holy Ghost himself. The age feels it, and seeks to justify itself in rejecting the church by denying the Divine sovereignty, or that God has any rightful authority over the creatures he has made. It demands liberty, and M. Proudhon, a man of iron logic, maintained that to assert liberty in the sense this age asserts it, we must dethrone God, and annihilate belief in his existence. "Once admit the existence of God," he said, "and you must admit the authority claimed by the church, the papal despotism and all." We have met this denial of the Divine sovereignty in the essay on Rome and the World, in the current volume of the Magazine, and proved, we think conclusively, that God is sovereign Lord and Proprietor of all his works. Very few people are willing to avow themselves atheists, however atheistic may be their speculations; and most people have, after all, a lurking belief that God is sovereign, and has plenary authority over all the creatures he has made. Concede this, and the authority of the Son is conceded; and if the authority of the Son is conceded, that of the church cannot be denied or questioned.

The church is infallible. This follows necessarily, if our Lord himself is infallible, which it were impious to doubt. Our Lord is God in his human nature indeed; but God in his human nature is God no less than in his divine nature. In this is the mystery of the incarnation—that God should humble himself, assume the form of a servant, annihilate himself, as it were, become man, and be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and yet be God, have all the fulness of the Godhead dwell in him bodily; this is a mystery that only God himself can fathom. We know from revelation the fact, and can understand its relation to our redemption, justification, sanctification, and glorification; but it remains a fact before which we do, and always must, stand in awe and wonder. If Christ is God, God in his humanity and also in his divinity, for he includes both natures in the unity of his divine person. He has all the attributes of divinity, while he has also all the attributes of humanity, what the fathers mean when they say, "he is perfect God and perfect man." He knows all things, and can do all things, and can neither deceive nor be deceived. He is the divine personality of the church, who is not the individual man, but the human nature hypostatically united to himself, as we have seen from St. Athanasius. His life is her life, and she must, therefore, be infallible as he is infallible. He who is infallible as God is infallible lives in her, and she lives, breathes, moves, and acts by him and in him. How then, can she be not infallible? How could she err? She could no more err as to the truth that lives and speaks in her than God himself, for she is all in him, and in her soul indistinguishable from him. She is not infallible by external appointment or commission alone, but really so in herself, in her own life and intelligence. We speak of the soul of the church, but as her soul and body are not separated or separable, she must be equally infallible in her body, or as the body of Christ, who is the life and informing principle of the body. The body of the church, by virtue of its union with Christ is, and must be, infallible. But the body of the church is a society of individuals; and is it meant that all individuals in the communion of the church are infallible? There is in the church regenerated humanity which, though it subsists not without individualization, is not individual. This regenerated humanity is united to Christ, its regenerator, and derives its life from him. In all the individuals affiliated or assimilated to the body of the church, there is both this regenerated humanity and their own individuality. As regenerated humanity, no one can err, but in their individuality all individuals do or may err more or less. Reason is in all men, and reason within its sphere is infallible; but all men are not infallible in their understanding of what is reason, or what reason teaches. Individuals who are in the communion of the church, so far as made one with her body and one with the indwelling Christ, are infallible in his infallibility; but in their individuality they are not infallible. Hence, when it is said the church is infallible, the meaning is, that she is infallible in the universal, not in the particular, or in the sense in which she is one, not in the sense in which she is many. Our faith as individual believers is infallible only in believing with the church, what she in her unity and integrity believes and teaches.

The church, we should have said before, is catholic. This follows from her unity and completeness. Catholic means the whole, or universal; and since the church is one, and is the body of Christ, who is "the way, the truth, and the life," she cannot but be catholic. She is catholic, in the words of the catechism, "because she subsists in all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth." She is catholic because in her soul she is Christ himself; because in her body she is the body of Christ; because she is the whole regenerated human race in their head, the second Adam. Having Christ, who, in the order of regeneration, is at once universal and individual, she has the whole, has the universal life of Christ, has all truth, for he is the truth itself and in itself, and is the only way of salvation; for there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved—neither is there salvation in another. She subsists in all ages, prior to the incarnation, as we have seen, by prophecy and promise; since the incarnation, in fact and reality; and has authority to teach all nations, and is set to make all the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of God and his Christ. Whatever is outside of her is outside of Christ, and is necessarily non-catholic.

The church is apostolic. This means that she is endowed with authority to teach and govern, not merely that she descends in the direct line from the apostles, the chief agents in founding and building her up, though, of course, that is implied in her unity and catholicity in time no less than in space. It means that she is clothed with apostolic authority; that is, authority in doctrine and discipline. This authority is distinguishable from the sacerdotal character conferred in the sacrament of orders. Men may have valid orders, be real priests, and actually consecrate in schism, or even heresy, as is the case with the clergy of the schismatic Greek Church and some of the Oriental sects. But these schismatic or heretical priests have no apostolic authority, no authority to teach or govern in the church, no authority in doctrine or discipline, and all their sacerdotal acts are irregular and illicit. This authority, which we have seen the church derives from the indwelling Christ, and possesses as his body, we call the apostolate. It is inherent in Christ himself, and is and can be exercised only in his name by his vicar, the supreme pontiff, and the pastors of the church under him and in communion with him. All the arguments that prove the visibility of the church prove equally the visibility of the apostolate, or, as Saint Cyprian calls it, the episcopate; all the arguments that prove the unity of the church prove the unity of the apostolate or episcopate; and, therefore, with those which prove the visibility of the church, prove a visible centre of authority, in which the episcopate takes its rise, or from which the whole teaching and governing authority under Christ radiates and pervades the whole body. The visible church being one, demands a visible head; for if she had no visible head, she would lack visible unity; and would be, as to her teaching and governing authority, not visible, but invisible. Hence Saint Cyprian, after asserting the episcopate or apostolate, held by all the bishops in solido, says, that the unity might be made manifest, or the apostolate be seen to take its rise from one, our Lord established one cathedra and gave the primacy to Peter. Saint Cyprian evidently assumes the necessity of a visible centre of authority, so that we may as individual members of the church, or as persons outside the church seeking to ascertain and enter her communion, know what is her authority and where to find it. Hence in the definition of the church we began by saying she is defined to be "the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same sacraments, and in the true worship of God, under Christ the head in heaven, and under his vicar, the supreme pontiff on earth." The papacy is the visible origin and centre of the apostolate, as Christ is himself its invisible origin and centre, and is as essential to the being of the visible church as are any of the attributes we have seen to be hers. To make war on the supreme pontiff is to make war on the church, and to make war on the church is to make war on Christ, and to make war on Christ is to make war on God and man.

It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the constitution of the hierarchy or external organization of the church, which, to a certain extent, is and must be a matter of positive law, and which, though having its reason in the very nature and design of the church as founded by the incarnation, lies too deep in that mystery of mysteries for us to be able to ascertain it by way of logical deduction. The idea of one living God includes the three persons in the Godhead; the idea of the incarnation includes the church; and the idea of the church includes unity, sanctity, catholicity, visibility, indefectibility, infallibility, apostolicity; and the idea of apostolicity includes authority in its unity and visibility; and, therefore, the papacy is the visible origin and centre of the authority of the church as the visible body of Christ. So far we can go by reasoning from the ideas, principles, or data supplied by revelation. The rest depends on authority, and is not ascertainable by theological reason.

We know from the New Testament that our Lord has set in his church some to be apostles, some to be pastors, etc.; but these are all included in the supreme pontiff, who possesses the priesthood, the episcopate, the apostolate, the pastorate, in their plenitude; and all, except what is conferred in the sacrament of orders, is derived directly or indirectly from him, as its origin and source under Christ, whose vicar he is. This is enough for our present purpose, and it is worthy of remark that always has the papacy been the chief point of attack by the enemies of the church; for they have had the sagacity to perceive that it is the keystone of the arch, and that if it can be displaced, the whole edifice will fall of itself. It is the pope that heresy and schism today war against, and the whole non-catholic world seek to deprive him of the last remains of his temporal authority, because they foolishly imagine that the destruction of the prince will involve the annihilation of the pontiff. It is the pontificate, and Garibaldi avows it, not the principality, that they seek to get rid of. But they may despoil the prince; they cannot touch the pontificate. He who is King of kings and Lord of lords has pledged his omnipotence to sustain it. Our Lord has prayed for Peter that his faith fail not.

It were easy for us to cite the commission of our Lord to the teaching church, and from that to argue her authority to govern under him, and her infallibility in teaching; but we have had another purpose in view. We have wished, by setting forth the relation of the church to the incarnation, and deducing from that relation her essential attributes, to show how the church can be holy and yet individual Catholics can be unholy, and how individuals, all individuals in their individuality, can be fallible and err, and yet she be infallible. The heterodox argue against the church from the misconduct of individual Catholics. They ransack history and collect a long list of misdeeds, crimes, and sins, of which Catholics have been guilty, and then ask, How can a church who has done such things be holy or be the church of God? In the first place, we answer, none of the things alleged have been committed by the church, but, if committed at all, it has been by individuals in the church; and in the second place, even rebirth in baptism does not, as we have seen, destroy the personality of the individual, or take away his free-will. He can sin after grace as well as before, and glorification is promised only to those who persevere to the end. The church is holy by her union with Christ, as his body; individuals are so by their assimilation to her, and by living through her the life of Christ.

It is asked again how, if the church is infallible, can individuals be fallible; and if individuals are fallible, and do not unfrequently err, how can the church be infallible? How from any possible number of fallibles get an infallible? The answer is in principle the same. The church is infallible, for he who assumed human nature, and whose body she is, is her personality, for she is individualized in the individual human nature he assumed; but the individual is not in himself infallible, for he retains his own personality with all its limitations and imperfections. The infallibility is in Christ, and proceeds from him to the regenerated race, not to the individual member in his individuality. Our Lord assumed human nature without its human personality, though human nature individualized; but individuals assimilated to Christ through the church retain their proper human personality, and are infallible only in the church, only so far as they think and speak her thoughts, and believe what she believes and teaches. The pope himself is not personally infallible, but at most only when speaking ex cathedra, in union with the mind of the church, and declaring her faith. Hence some theologians maintain that the papal definitions themselves are reformable till expressly or tacitly accepted by the universal church, though we do not agree with them; for we regard the pope as the vicar of Christ in teaching as well as in governing, and, therefore, as expressing, when speaking officially, the infallible faith of the universal church. For us, in the language of St. Ambrose, ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia. Whenever the church speaks, she speaks the words of her Lord, and is infallible and authoritative; whenever the individual speaks in his own individuality, he is fallible, and his words, as his, have no authority. The church can then be infallible and individuals fallible. Consequently, any arguments drawn from the errors and misdeeds of individuals have no weight against the church.

If non-Catholics would pay attention to this, they would write fewer books, publish fewer essays, and preach fewer sermons, against the church, for they have hitherto alleged little or nothing against her but the errors and bad conduct of churchmen. When they wish for examples of the purest and most heroic sanctity, they are obliged to seek them in her communion, and the most anti-Catholic among them feel that they may assert without proof any doctrine they happen to like, if the church has taught and teaches it. It is remarkable with what confidence and mental relish they assert particular doctrines for which they feel that they have her authority. Is it because a secret conviction of her infallibility lurks in the minds of all who are Catholic by their reminiscences? and would they not be far less enraged against what they call "the seductions of Rome," if it were not so, if they did not feel themselves constantly tempted to return to her communion? They resist her influence, in fact, only by a constant effort, by main strength.

But it is time to bring our remarks to a close. We have opened a vast subject, one to which we could do scant justice in a magazine article, even if we were otherwise able, as we are not, to treat it not altogether unworthily. No mortal can speak worthily of the church of Christ, in which the power, the wisdom, the justice, the love, and the mercy of God, of the indivisible and ever Blessed Trinity, in all their infinitude are, so to speak, embodied and displayed. Even God himself cannot do more or better than he has done in the church, for he gives in her himself, and more than himself even he cannot give. How great, how glorious, how awful is the church! How great, how exceeding great, the loving-kindness of God, who permits us to call her our mother, to draw life from her breasts, and to rest on her bosom! We love the church, who is to us the sum of all things good and holy, and we grieve daily over those who know her not; we grieve when her own children seem to treat her with levity or indifference; we are pained to the heart when we hear men, who have souls to save, for whom Christ died, and whom she longs to clasp to her loving bosom, railing against her, calling her "the mystery of iniquity," and her chief pontiff "the man of sin." We seem to see our Lord crucified afresh on Calvary, and to hear her sweet voice pleading, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

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Magas; or, Long Ago.
A Tale Of The Early Times.

Chapter IV.

Four years are past since the incidents above related took place. The scene is neither at Athens nor at Corinth, but at Nauplia. [Footnote 73] Here, suddenly, a new school had been opened by a lady, which attracts a vast concourse of disciples. The lady is young, eloquent, beautiful, and the favor she meets with is almost unbounded. Powerful protectors are around her; and philosophy and science bow to her, though they hardly as yet determine to what school the doctrines she propounds belong. Among those who are attracted by her fame is a lady, just arrived from Athens to be enrolled among the followers of the new Aspasia, or Leontium as she is more generally called. Lotis is herself no mean or obscure daughter of those muses which this new professor has worshipped to such advantage. But Lotis is disappointed in her expectations; the entrance to the academy is guarded with such jealous care, that admission is not easy; in vain she sends her name as daughter of a citizen of Athens of some distinction in the philosophic world; strangers, and above all those from Athens, are carefully excluded. Yet the city continues to derive new lustre from this new propounder of exalted themes; and those who were fortunate enough to gain admission to her lectures, rang with applauses of the lucid doctrines taught; they compared her eloquence to that of Plato, her music to that of Amphion; and contended that, while all other sects were tending to the destruction of ancient truth, this lady demonstrated its existence in every nation, and brought it home to the heart and feelings. Lotis heard of nothing throughout the city but praises of the new exponent of wisdom who had travelled throughout the earth, and had learnt to harmonize the teachings of all philosophies.

[Footnote 73: The Napoli di Romania.]

"'Tis strange she will not admit you," said Lydon, a young disciple, to whom Lotis was complaining of her exclusion; "and the more to be regretted as she is preparing for departure; it seems she did not intend to stay so long at Nauplia in the first place; she was waiting for her protector, who had business at Athens. They will both set out for Rome when he returns."

"And is he expected soon?"

"It is not easy to say. Magas is uncertain in his movements; he often acts from mere caprice. He may be here shortly."

"Magas!"

"Yes, do you know him?"

"I knew one of that name formerly. He was of noble birth; of Athens."

"Likely it is the same. He has been travelling for these few years past, and in his travels picked up this philosopheress, who has so enchanted him."

"Is she really so beautiful as they say?"

"Words cannot describe her. She has the attractions of Venus with the majesty of Minerva. When in repose, her calm dignity demands our homage; but when she speaks, her features are lighted up with an expression which defies description; her eyes, deeply set as they are, dazzle with the intensity of their fire; she does not declaim, she speaks in a low yet in a distinct and earnest tone which all hear, words which seem to have been gathered at the very fount of wisdom. There is an indescribable melody in her voice, which melts the heart, and communicates the persuasion that she knows more than she says; that she holds back something as fearing the light would be too bright for our unaccustomed eyes: she infuses the desire to know the truth, the certainty that there is a truth; yet somehow, on reflection, the truth itself seems withheld, and we hope next time to hear a fuller exposition of that which no one doubts she possesses."

"What is her doctrine?"

"It would take herself to expound it, in the clear, musical, irresistible manner with which she enforces conviction. I am afraid I should only spoil her discourse by repeating it."

"Try, nevertheless."

"She teaches that truth is one—an immutable, eternal essence, containing within itself all good, all beauty, all harmony, all being; and that in it resides the creative power.

"She says this creative power is an emanation of the Deity, or rather the Deity himself made manifest. It is termed the Word.

"And the Word or creative power made the universe—made all those orbs which we see move around us by night and by day; and moreover, breathed life and intelligence into organic forms, that they might become conscious of, and enjoy existence. But for man she claims a higher life; she says he was created in harmony with the eternal essence, that he might know and enjoy a higher life than that of animals, but that he disregarded the conditions on which this higher life was held, and by violating them brought the disorder into the world which now oppresses it. Man is the only animal unfaithful to his instincts; the only one who does not trust his own nature; the only one who is unhappy in the non-realization of his aspirations."

"But what remedy does she propose?"

"She does not propose one; she declares one. She says the Word became flesh, to communicate to man the Holy Spirit he had lost, and by losing which his misery was occasioned. This Holy Spirit comes alike from the Eternal Essence, and from the Word which is its manifestation, and purifies the heart of man, and so restores it to its primal state, or to a more holy one yet."

"But how is this to be effected for ourselves?"

"That is just where she disappoints us. She gives glowing descriptions of truth, beauty, beneficence in every sort of manifestation, material and mental, and shows how the aspirations of the poets prove that a sublime ideal raises man above the practical existence we see him lead every day; but how to obtain this Holy Spirit we have not yet learnt."

"Has she given no rule?"

"None but material ones; and according to her, material rules are only types of spiritual ideas. She says, as the body has assumed too much sway, it must be subdued by violence—that is, by maceration, fasting, and such like. She says passion must give way to reason, and the affections be rightly governed. This we knew before; but what we want is 'power' to carry out in practice the precepts we admire; or as she would say, 'how to obtain that Holy Spirit which is to live in us and direct us.'"

"And you think she knows how?"

"I feel satisfied she does; we all feel satisfied she does. Her words come forth as oracles; we question not—we believe. She has been in India, in Cathay, in Tartary; and everywhere she says the same truth lies hidden under some material form, and needs but the light of the Holy Spirit to pierce through the veil and make itself manifest."

"Would I could see her!"

"You would be carried out of yourself. Yesterday she spoke on Light. Material light, with her, is but a type of a far higher light, which penetrates the spirit with beauty, harmony, and love, and makes it pure, holy, eternal, and capable of receiving true knowledge. Light, material light, was created at the same moment that intelligences and harmonies of a high spiritual order sprang to life, to enjoy it. She went off into something of this strain;

God said: Let there be light!
Effulgent light!
As the wild watery mass chaotic lay;
While o'er it did the Holy Spirit move.
Obedient to the WORD, the glorious day
Sprang into being; and effulgent light,
Intelligence all bright
Of seraph holy and of angel sweet,
In glorious ecstasy their Maker greet,
And the deep bliss of their creation prove.
Spirits of beauty, spirits of power
Then wakened to welcome the wonderful hour
That gave them existence, with light for their dower!
All dazzling the brightness illuming space,
Investing all matter with beauty and grace—
All lustrous the beauty, the grandeur divine
That did in full glory resplendently shine:
The Truth—though revealed—
As in Type, yet concealed.
The rays of the sun are less dazzling to sight,
Than the sparkles begemming the pinions so bright
Of the spirits who bowed at that mystical shrine,
When first with an impulse or instinct divine
They blent their sweet voices throughout every sphere,
To worship in love that doth worship endear.
Entrancing and entranced in love to greet,
These beauteous spirits kindled into glow,
And shed their lustre all that chaos through.
And as those rays the harder mediums greet,
The sleeping atoms wake as from a trance;
The sparks electric shoot in mystic dance,
Rousing the power inert to onward move;
Impelled by rays of light, create by love,
Light's piercing gleams evolve material day
And angels' glances brighten up the clay;
Refracted rays, the types of virtue bright,
Enkindled atoms with their dazzling light;
Splendor and brightness caught from angels' wings,
Infuse their action; and such beauty springs
From forth the atoms that, erst void and dark,
Had lain awaiting th' ethereal spark,
That now material beauty wears a grace
In which a type of heaven itself we trace.
All hail! material light!
Emblem of seraph bright.
Glowing with intelligence, the mirror of our God,
Still dost thou bless our sense.
Vesture of Omnipotence;
Still with thy visions bright
Dost dispel our darksome night,
Thou image bright of heaven, on earth's else dreary sod.

"You must hear her to catch her fire, to glow with her enthusiasm. I give her words imperfectly; but her action, her delivery, the way in which she sounds the very depths of her hearers' hearts—that I cannot give you an idea of."

"I must hear her, Lydon; cannot you smuggle me into her presence?"

"I will try, but it will be difficult; the old door-keeper, stationed to keep her company select, will not take a bribe; and a list of names is daily handed to him of those who are to be admitted. But I will try."

"Has she ever been to Athens?"

"I think not. I have heard her speak of Egypt, India, and Cathay, [Footnote 74] but of Athens, never. To-morrow I will try to get admission for you as a resident of the city."

[Footnote 74: The ancient name for China.]

But neither Lydon, nor Lotis, nor any disciple was to be admitted on the morrow. The report was, that Leontium was ill, very ill; a sudden attack of one of those autumnal fevers to which Nauplia is subject, rendered her unable to appear in public. As days went on, the accounts became even more unfavorable; her delirium alarmed her attendants, who spoke of her being given over to the furies, and seemed to shrink from their duties. The arrival of Magas, after a few days, enforced attendance on the lady; the fever left her; but, weak and subdued, and laboring under the influence of the evil tongues of her attendants, Leontium awoke, to find much of her former prestige taken from her—nay, she even fancied Magas himself grown cold. But this last was a mere fancy; the intellectuality, the poetic fire with which she was endowed, and which never left her, animated her features unconsciously, and the pallor and loss of flesh were more than compensated for by the ethereal expression which exalted her countenance to something beyond the human, albeit there were times when it became a question whether the genius that animated them were of Elysium or Tartarus. Magas paid homage to the mind, and was held captive; he asked not whence proceeded the charm that entranced him, he yielded to its influence, and was blest; the altered tone he attributed to the effects of fever; and the signs of mental disturbance, reported by the attendants, were laid to the account of the delirium usually attending such fever; he little dreamed that it was the mind acting on the body, not the body acting on the mind, that caused the derangement. . . .

Chapter V.

Lotis was a woman, with a woman's curiosity and a woman's pertinacity. She was one who had risen superior to the prejudices of her age and nation. She reverenced, nay, she worshipped greatness; but greatness, with her, meant power of intellect, strength of character, genius; thus, herself a free woman, she had not disdained to form an intimacy with a slave, when, in that slave, she recognized superior qualities. She had been the pupil of Chione in poetry, music, and eloquence, and had been aware of the passion Magas entertained for the beautiful slave. She was curious to see who had replaced her image in his heart; for she remembered enough of Magas to feel assured that, to ensure his constancy, he must worship as well as love; as also, that it required a woman of commanding genius to hold his mind in bonds.

Therefore was it, that she set a watch upon the house that contained the famed Leontium, that she diligently informed herself of her convalescence, and sought to know her daily movements.

One day, she heard that the lady's litter was being borne from the house to outside the city. Hastily she commanded a litter to be got for herself, and desired the bearers to follow whithersoever the other litter was borne. This was not, however, altogether so easy a matter; for the litter was no sooner out of the city gates, than the bearers proceeded rapidly across the plains for upward of a mile and a half, when they entered on a more sandy district. Gray, craggy rocks, of a dreary aspect, utterly devoid of verdure, began to hem in the prospect, and, at length, the bearers set down the litter in a heap of ruins of very astonishing character. Large stones, measuring twelve or fifteen feet in length, four or five in width, and of an equal length, rough and unhewn, were built into walls, without mortar, in the most solid manner, the walls being from twenty to twenty-five feet thick. Ruined gateways of unequal size, one looking toward Argos, the other northward, toward the mountain, peculiar in shape and construction, attested a workmanship of a race who had long since disappeared, since their work was modelled on another form than that which is termed Grecian, and was beyond the physical strength of the present race. Evidently, it was a citadel in ruins. The site, an abrupt rock, commanding the adjacent country, was admirably fitted for the purpose; but the city it was to protect, the inhabitants to whom it was to guarantee security, where were they to be found? The enclosure, about seven hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred and sixty broad, was nearly filled with rubbish, or rather with stupendous stones; and outside of the enclosure all traces of the former city were completely obliterated. It was difficult to account for the invalid lady's choice of such a site for her meditation; but certain it is, she got out, clambered over the stones, motioned her attendants to keep themselves at a distance, and disappeared within the enclosure.

Lotis was now at a loss what to do. She descended from her litter; but to plunge at once into that unknown abyss of sand and ruin, she had hardly courage. Then what excuse could she frame for intruding? Hesitatingly she proceeded; but curiosity got the better of every other feeling; she climbed up the ruined citadel and looked down. It was not possible! yes, it was true—it could be no other! There, seated on a fallen column, leaning against the ruined arch, sat—Chione, the very picture of despair!

To descend softly, so as not to alarm her—to glide to her side as gently as the rugged pathway would allow, was the next idea, and this Lotis accomplished, though with some difficulty; she stood beside her former friend, unseen, unheard. Chione's distraction was too intense, her reverie too deep; her eyes were turned upward, tearless from the very depth of her emotion, and her hollow voice sounded at intervals but these sad words:

"My God! to know thee only by my loss! My God! can it be possible? My God! may I never, never love thee again? Thou first, thou fairest, thou only love!"

The despair of these accents, the deadly pallor of Chione's cheeks, the attitude, the site, the recollection of the past, struck a pang through the frame of Lotis; her tongue seemed to cling to the roof of her mouth; in her excitement she could but advance one step, lay her trembling hand on her friend's shoulder, and utter one word, "Chione!"

The lady started, and gazed earnestly at the form before her. It was some minutes before she spoke; when she did so, the tone of her voice was very low and soft; she simply said, "And what brings Lotis to the ruins of Tiryns?"

"To see the famed philosopher of the east. Three weeks have I been in the city, awaiting an introduction. This morning I followed the litter, that I might at least see the celebrated lady who has made all Nauplia ring with her name."

"And you are punished for your curiosity by finding only Chione."

"I should have been yet more earnest, had I known it was Chione I was seeking. Your disappearance made a great sensation among your friends, and none missed you more than myself. You had bidden me hope, after that day at the temple, that our intercourse was to be renewed, but my hope was cheated. Why did you leave without telling me you were going?"

"I did not know it myself. My mistress disposed of me to a friend of hers at Corinth. I was taken away in the night."

"And how came you with Magas again?"

"I led a dreary life at Corinth. The people I was with were good enough, but unlettered, and the woman was entirely given to housekeeping. She put a distaff into my hands, and thought badly of me that I would not spin from morning to night. I could not; my heart had been devoted to philosophy, to poetry, to art; this drudgery revolted me, though, as I said, the people were good, and of the true religion."

"And what religion was that?" asked Lotis, with a smile.

"Nay, ask me not; I cannot tell you now. I will tell you how I got away, or rather was forced away. One day, when on a errand for my mistress, I encountered Magas, and he seized me. He would hear no remonstrance; his boat was in the bay; he hurried me off. I went with him through Asia, visiting the temples, the schools of philosophy, the halls of art, the academies of science. Magas has been to me a patron, friend, encourager; he has brought me out, induced me to appear in public; and in fact, done all he could to make my life an elysiun. Impetuous as he is, to me he has been faultless."

"And yet you are not happy?"

"Happy! Happiness is scarcely a plant of this earth, Lotis!" sighed Chione.

"Then why have you spoken as if it were attainable? Why have you fired all hearts, in speaking to them of an indwelling God, who is to restore all things to more than primitive order and happiness? Why have you called the human soul the divine image, if it is not capable of happiness?"

"I said not that the human soul is not capable of happiness. I said only that supreme happiness is not a plant of this earth, and that is true. The earth has been cursed through the fault of man; it cannot yield us this happiness."

"But you give your hearers to understand that, through some means or other, happiness may dwell in our hearts; therefore I say, Chione, why dwells it not with you? Have you the means, or have you not?"

"I had," said Chione sadly. "Once I had the means of happiness; once I was blest. I have forfeited the means, I am happy no more."

"Are they not recoverable then?" asked Lotis.

"I hardly know. Sometimes I think on certain conditions they might be; but those conditions, those conditions, O Lotis!"

"Are they so very hard?"

"They bid me renounce all! This life of excitement, this love of Magas, this applause of the multitude, this luxury of existence—to become again a slave. You know it well, Lotis, I am but a runaway slave."

"Your philosophy must be false, Chione, which implies such hard conditions. Slavery is a necessary evil, I grant; but still it is an evil to such as you, whose mind is exalted above the level of the herd. I cannot think that you are bound to slavery by any divine law; and as for human law, why, if you can keep clear of that, as you have done lately, who on earth will blame you?"

"You do not understand, you cannot understand how I am bound. Magas, you are aware, is not—can never be my husband."

"Well, I don't see why he might not be, if he paid the purchase-money for you, freed you, and then married you."

"He is too proud to marry a nameless slave!"

"But you are not nameless; you have made yourself a name in all the cities through which you have passed. We have heard of your fame at Smyrna, at Halicarnassus, at Ephesus, at—"

"Stop! Unconsciously you are paining me. It was at Ephesus I received the blow which is destroying me.'

"At Ephesus!"

"O Lotis! if I could but tell you of the hollowness of this philosophy the world so much admires; if I dared speak to you of the light that shineth in darkness, though the darkness comprehendeth it not; if my lips were not profane; if my life were not blighted like a tree struck by lightning; then I might tell you of that wisdom which is not in man's speech, but 'in the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.' But I dare not; I am unhallowed, unworthy. Leave me, Lotis. Seek another teacher."

"What did you hear at Ephesus that has so unnerved you?"

"I will tell you, though to you the words will bear no meaning. But my heart must ease itself. I was walking through the streets, when I observed a crowd entering one of those temples frequented by the new sects. I entered with the rest. The preacher was dilating on the necessity of his auditors having the spirit of Christ, which if ye have not, he said, ye are none of his. He then proceeded to show how the world's sin had crucified the Lord of heaven; how essential purity, truth, virtue are to the Christian character; how every Christian's body was to become the temple of the Holy Spirit; and how impossible it was for the Holy Spirit to dwell with aught unholy, or aught not in union with God. Hence the absolute necessity of sanctity to be wrought in us by the power of God, to whom we must surrender our being. He then went on to speak of such Christians as had apostatized; and the words, he used burned into my heart like words of fire. 'It is impossible,' he said, 'for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.' [Footnote 75] I heard no more; I fainted away. When I waked from my trance, I was at home, and Magas was standing over me. His anxiety respecting my health scarce enabled him to suppress his anger at my having been seen in a Christian assembly."

[Footnote 75: Hebrews vi 4-6.]

"That I can easily believe; nor do I see what you wanted with such low company, who have evidently bewitched you; for what need you care what was said in such an assembly as that?"

"What indeed, what indeed! O my God! that it should come to this, that I dare no longer pronounce thy name, that I should be ashamed of thee!" And Chione buried her face in her hands, and gave way to an excessive fit of weeping.

Lotis was puzzled. "Is this the great philosopher?" thought she; "the new Sappho, the Aspasia of the age? Is it illness or magic that has worked this mental derangement? for derangement it evidently is."

Lotis bent over her friend, endeavoring to console her, yet not knowing how, when she was suddenly relieved by the sound of horses' hoofs. She climbed to the top of the ruins. Magas was in sight. She returned to whisper the news to Chione. Chione rose, dried her tears by a strong effort of her will, and prepared to greet her protector with a smile. He was evidently in an ill-humor.

"What sudden caprice is this? What possessed you to come out here to a city of the past? A fine place this for a sick woman!"

"You said you were going to Argos. I knew not that you would require my presence."

"I was going to Argos, but was hindered when setting out; and when I inquired for you, and heard you had come hither, I put off my journey to learn what attraction could draw you to this place."

"The attraction of the past. Who raised these walls, Magas?"

"How should I know? The Cyclops, I presume. Who else could have lifted these immense stones? What have you to do with who raised them or who destroyed them?"

"The place was in harmony with my feelings, with the meditation I was about to make on the transitory nature of human grandeur. It will be my next theme."

"You might choose a livelier one to advantage, Leontium," said Magas. "You are destroying your own mind by cherishing these gloomy thoughts. If, however, you want a fallen city to meditate on, Mycenae is but seven miles ahead; and there you may ruminate, if you will, on all the incidents of the Homerian epoch; and the wild, savage waste may be the savage emblem of the royal Agamemnon; while the ruins, which are absolutely magnificent, may prove another puzzle—as to how the mighty stones that form the edifices could have been lifted there. I measured two myself. They were immense. One single stone extends across a wide passage, and rests on the massive walls, forming the lintel. Another extends from the lintel to the interior of the edifice. It is thirty feet long, five feet thick, and twenty in width. It is becoming fashionable to doubt the existence of the Cyclops. But, I'd like to know, if they did not lift these stones into their places, who did do it? No mortal men of the present race would be able. So I go in for the old tradition of Cyclopean workers.

"Ah! Lotis, I did not observe you. I inquired for you at Athens, but was told you were travelling. Did you come out here with Leontium? Our secret will be safe with you, of course?"

"Of course," answered Lotis. "But I think you are somewhat too near Athens for safety from other tongues. You will not be able to keep the secret long from the public."

"I shall not try. We are bound for Rome shortly, and there we shall be safe. I would purchase safety, if safety were to be bought; but the mistress who held my Chione will not part with her right. Many offers have been made to her. She still hopes to reclaim Chione, and will not listen to money proposals. When you return, you may renew the offers, if you will favor me so much. I should prefer a legal release, if I could get one; but it matters little."

"You have not told me to whom I am to apply."

"I thought you knew. To the Lady Damaris."

"Why, she is said to be a Christian."

"That does not invalidate her rights."

"No; but it causes me surprise that it should be herself who refuses freedom to Chione. I know many cases where she has freely granted it."

"She is an enigma, and so are all these people. It is not worth talking about. I don't believe she'd prosecute her claim to Chione, did she know Chione and Leontium were one and the same person."

During this colloquy Chione had sat motionless as a statue, and had seemed so absorbed in her own thoughts as to be unmindful of what was said. On its being ended, she rose, and requested Magas to call for her litter. When he had departed to do so, she turned to Lotis, and said earnestly:

"Lotis, when you return to Athens, will you do me a favor?"

"Assuredly, I will."

"Let the Bishop Dionysius know, in confidence, who Leontium is, and what I said to you of Ephesus today."

"The Christian bishop?"

"Yes."

"For what earthly purpose?"

"No matter. Magas is coming back. Do you promise me?"

"I do."

"And you will keep the secret to all the rest of the world?"

"I will."

"Even to Magas?"

"Yes."

"Thanks, thanks. We will return home now."

Chapter VI.

"Chione in grief, and a prey to despair!"

It was the Christian bishop who spoke, and his interlocutor was Lotis.

"Even so, my lord. During her illness the report was that she was beset by the furies. When I saw her, it seemed as though the hand of some avenging god lay heavy on her. If, my lord, you Christians are adepts in magic, as many people believe I would ask you to disenthrall her from the influence under which she suffers, whatever it may be."

"And it is Chione who is this famous Leontium, who has made so great a sensation in the eastern cities?" continued Dionysius, as if not hearing the last speech of Lotis.

"It is so."

"From what I have heard, her eloquence is something unusual."

"I too have heard so; but for myself, I was never present at one of her instructions. I saw her alone, bowed down as it were beneath the weight of the truth she was carrying; but unable to speak the last word, that word which promised to be the key to all the rest, the solution of mystery, the harmonizer of ideas. That last word was not spoken at Nauplia; her pupils awaited it, but her tongue was as it were paralyzed. Some powerful influence seemed ever to prevent her from speaking it."

"Poor Chione!"

"My lord, may I venture to ask of you, do you believe, as some do, that Chione is in possession of a truth she dare not declare? that some divine hand is pressing down within her the word that is panting for expression? Is Chione bewitched?"

"She is suffering from a supernatural influence, that is certain."

"And can you deliver her? Why else did she send me to you?"

"If she so will, she may be delivered; but the supernatural Word she cannot speak has been offended; the sacrifice he demands is great; will she make it?"

"If in her power, I think she will. She is a mystery to me, as all life seems to be. What is that Word Chione has offended? how did she offend? what must she do to appease the divine wrath?"

"My child," said the old Areopagite solemnly, "truth is not a plaything wherewith to amuse the intellect, not a toy to while away a tedious hour with. Truth is the manifestation of the eternal harmonies, those harmonies which man has interfered with, into which he has introduced a discord, the discord of sin. The humility of man, the recognition of sin, such a recognition as brings the voluntary humiliation of self, must precede his admission to the kingdom where those harmonies are restored. The vainglory of philosophy, the pride of science, however correct may be their surmises, are without life. They can neither restore these harmonies, nor catch a glimpse of the glory of that eternal comprehensive Unity, in which all beauty, melody, and good reside; that eternal idea of which matter is the varied type. A type now deranged by man's act so hopelessly, that human power is utterly inadequate to its restoration."

"But the restorer comes; the expectation of nations points to this," said Lotis; "and that expectation is everywhere; in India as in Cathay, in Greece and among the barbarians."

"The deliverer is come already," said Dionysius.

"Then why is he not proclaimed? Is this the unspoken word that Chione might not utter? Why, if the deliverer is here, is he not announced?"

"Because, before the disorder of exterior things can be remedied, the interior remedy must be applied to the soul. Exterior forms obey the interior impulse. Man is lord of matter, and man's disordered soul reflects itself upon the material subject to him. The disorder manifest throughout exterior creation will be remedied when the disordered spirit of man is healed. Therefore is it that, now that the restorer is come, he is not recognized; for he insists on the purification of the spirit, on the annihilation of selfishness, on the necessity of being reunited in spirit with the essential good as a precursor of other renovations. That done, exterior good follows as of course."

"Even as wealth follows industry, and health the practice of temperance," said Lotis.

"Natural virtue brings its results sometimes," said the venerable teacher, "when justice rules; but as matters stand now, the winner of wealth has often the least share. Oppression is one of the inevitable results of making self-love the centre of action instead of taking the justice of the eternal God for our guide. Man's soul was created in the image of God. Hence its affinity for beauty, its appreciation of lofty idea, its glowing enthusiasm at recital of heroic deeds: but man's will snapped the cord that bound it to the eternal will. Enamored of his own charms, he forgot the source of his beauty; proud of his mighty intellect, he has ceased to adore the God of all understanding; freeing himself from the shackles of duty, he cast away alike the nourishment of his beauty and the food of his towering intellect. Man's will must be directed to DESIRE God ere he can regain good. Hence the work of the Redeemer is interior; it is the implanting of the Holy Spirit as the necessary step to the true redemption."

"Chione's philosophy resembles this in some degree," said Lotis.

Dionysius did not answer, Lotis resumed.

"Who is this Word of whom Chione speaks?"

The answer came slowly, solemnly, deliberately, and it fell on the ear of Lotis, as if a divine power accompanied it:

"Jesus Christ."

"The Saviour anointed," whispered she to herself, as she translated the words: "The Saviour of men, anointed by God." There was evidently a revelation to her, conveyed by the words; one of those miraculous influences which, in the early days, "long ago," were so common among truth-seeking souls. Her reverie lasted long, and the good bishop did not interrupt her. He knew that the Holy Spirit was shedding his influence upon her. Suddenly she turned upon him with the question:

"And is Jesus Christ an inspired man, or is he God?"

"Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," answered the bishop.

Lotis replied not. The bishop continued in a very low voice:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (St. John i. 1-5.)

And Lotis fell on her knees, saying, "Lead me to him, to the Divine Word, to Jesus Christ, for I will have no other master."

"It is well, my child," said the good bishop, laying his hand solemnly on her head. "It is well. May he who has thus directed your choice give you the further grace to continue unto the end. But, Lotis, you must learn the price of redemption; you must know who the Master is you have chosen."

And the venerable bishop, in a few short but impressive words, traced the history of the world from Adam's fall, through the line of patriarchs, through the perversion of morals which called forth the deluge. He spoke of the call of Abraham, of the mission of Moses, of the succession of the prophets unto John the Baptist; and finally, of the advent of our Lord himself; of his coming to his own, and of his own receiving him not; of his life, miracles, and crucifixion; of his death, resurrection, and ascension; and finally, of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

Lotis listened and believed, and demanded to be washed from her sins, that she might understand. She, yet a neophyte, seemed to comprehend that sin forms the darkness which hinders the soul from contemplating God. "Wash me from my sins," she said, "that I may see the light."'

To Be Continued.

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