THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS.

NO. IV.

After the very full and detailed exposition of the facts of the liquefactions, as millions have seen them in the past—as tens of thousands may, and do still, see them each year—the question forces itself on us: Is this a miracle, as the Neapolitans believe, and as many earnest and critical examiners from other lands have been led to hold, after a careful and candid investigation into the facts of the case? Is it a suspension of the ordinary laws of nature, and an intervention of the supernatural power of the Most High, producing an effect above and beyond the ordinary course of nature? or is this liquefaction a phenomenon entirely within the sphere of natural laws—either the result of some law, or combination of laws, producing this effect; or is it the result of the art and skill of men? One of these three it must be: either the spontaneous effect of some natural laws, or the artificial result of human trickery, or a miracle. The decision must depend on the character of the facts.

The Neapolitans, and, with them, Catholic writers generally, hold it to be a miracle. On the other hand, such a visible substantiation of the claims made by the Catholic Church that miracles do continue in her fold, as the Saviour promised, and are the seal and confirmation of her divine authority, has not failed to arouse the opposition of those who deny that authority.

In meeting the argument, or the facts of the case, they have not always followed the same line. Two or three centuries ago, they contended that the liquefaction was a lying wonder produced by witchcraft or magic, or by the power of Beelzebub. A little later, natural philosophy was appealed to. This liquefaction of the blood, when the vial was brought near to the head, arose, they said, from a law of sympathy in nature, akin to if not merely a peculiar form

of that law which causes blood to flow from the wounds of a corpse if the real murderer lay his hand on the dead body.

These replies, or attempts at a natural solution, are antiquated. We need not seriously consider them.

In the last century, the objectors took a very different ground. The whole thing, they said, was a device of the priests. Some called it a “trick of long standing and great ingenuity”; others stigmatized it as “one of the most bungling tricks ever seen.”

This style of objection still holds its own.

During the present century, another style of objection has come into vogue, based on the ever-increasing spirit of rationalism. The laws of nature, we are told, are invariable and supreme. No violations of them are possible. All miracles—in the sense of occurrences above and beyond those laws of nature, occasional interruptions in the grand scheme of universal order, law, and causation—are to be at once rejected. “The idea of their possibility can only occur to those who have failed to grasp the great inductive principle of invariable uniformity and law in nature.” “It is hardly a question of evidence. The generality of mankind habitually assume antecedently that miracles are now inadmissible; and hence, that, in any reported case, they must in some manner be explained away.... Of old, the sceptic professed he would be convinced by seeing a miracle. At the present day, a visible miracle would be the very subject of his scepticism. It is not the attestation, but the nature of the alleged miracle, which is now the point in question. It is not the fallibility of human testimony, but the infallibility of natural order, which is now the ground of argument.” (Rev. Baden Powell, Order of Nature.)

We have not the space to examine this theory at length, and to show that it is at bottom anti-christian and pantheistic, contrary to the soundest principles of true philosophy. Nor is it necessary for our purpose to do so. All the philosophical disquisitions in the world will not prove to a man having eyes that, because “the laws of nature are immutable, and miracles are therefore impossible,” the blood which stands in the ampulla was liquid when taken out, or is solid at the conclusion. He saw that it was hard, and sees that it is now fluid. He will laugh at the philosopher and believe his own eyes.

Neither is it necessary to confute at length the opinion accepted so blindly by Protestants, that the age of miracles has long since past, and that miracles have entirely ceased since the days of the apostles. If God can work miracles, what man can limit him in the exercise of that power, either in time or place? And did not the Saviour promise the continuance of signs among them that believe—a continuance to which he put no limitation?

The assertion that the Catholic Church is erroneous, and that consequently there can be no miracles in her fold, is more than akin to the words of the Pharisees to the blind man, whom our Lord had restored to sight: “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” The appropriate answer was: “If he be a sinner, I know not: one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see” (John ix. 24, 25).

We therefore leave the general subject of miracles to be treated by others; and we confine ourselves to the fact of the liquefaction. In this, as in every other case of alleged miracles, the decision depends entirely on the character of the testimony

and on the nature of the facts which that testimony establishes.

The testimony in this case is overwhelming in amount and unimpeachable in character. The liquefaction with its marked features and details are clearly established. We have only to seek its cause.

Is it due to the regular action of the natural laws which, under the given circumstances, produce the liquefaction, independently of any special act of men designed to bring it about? How does a solid body naturally pass into a fluid condition?

A solid body may become fluid by deliquescence. Certain substances drink in water from the atmosphere around them to such an extent as to become fluid. They are said to deliquesce.

Is this liquefaction a deliquescence? Most assuredly not.

1. The substance within the ampulla—the indurated blood—so far as the eye can judge of it, through the glass of the ampulla and the glass sides of the reliquary, bears no resemblance to any of the substances which are known to deliquesce.

2. The process of deliquescence is well known and is not to be mistaken. It is gradual; and the exterior of the deliquescing substance, being in immediate contact with the water-bearing atmosphere, is always seen to yield first to the liquefying influence of the water. On the contrary, the liquefaction is often instantaneous—in un colpo d’occhio; in un tratto. Even when gradual and not instantaneous, the differences are marked. The upper portion will become perfectly liquid while the lower portion remains still hard; or the lower portion will liquefy while the upper portion retains its hardness; or, again, the upper and lower portions may both remain hard while the middle portion becomes fluid; or the middle

portion will continue hard and solid while they become perfectly liquid: sometimes, the outer surface next to the glass sides of the ampulla will be seen to soften and liquefy first—in this case following the course of a deliquescence; sometimes precisely the reverse occurs—the central portion is seen to become liquid while the exterior remains hard and unliquefied. When we add that occasionally one side or lateral half liquefies while the other preserves its hardness, and also that, while frequently the entire mass becomes liquid, yet, on many occasions, a certain portion remains hard for hours and days and then liquefies—perhaps gradually, perhaps only after the entire mass has become hardened again—it will be seen that this liquefaction presents every possible mode and shade of difference to distinguish it from the single mode of deliquescence.

The difficulty becomes greater if we consider the obstacles to a freer communication between the outer atmosphere and the substance within the ampulla. The ampulla is a tightly-closed glass vessel, and is itself held within the reliquary, another tightly-closed vessel of metal and glass. This twofold barrier must forbid any ready and rapid passage of atmospheric water from the air to the substance within the ampulla.

Again, no connection whatever can be discovered between the superabundant moisture or the dryness of the atmosphere at Naples and the occurrence or non-occurrence of the liquefaction. We may take a series of twenty days, which the diary marks as very rainy, or occurring in a long-continued rainy season; and a series of twenty others, when the weather was dry—so dry, they were praying for rain. It will be seen that the phases of the liquefactions for

each series are so alike that they might be interchanged. The general hygrometric condition of the atmosphere evidently has no perceptible influence for or against or on the liquefactions.

Nay, more, it frequently happens that the blood, after liquefying, grows solid again on the same day, and then liquifies, perhaps solidifies anew, and liquefies a third time. All these changes have sometimes taken place within one hour. Now, did the atmosphere, during that hour or during that day, pass through corresponding extreme changes of its hygrometric condition? Ordinary men did not feel them. Meteorological observers have not noticed them. Registering instruments do not record them. And yet, the habit of watching their neighboring and often threatening volcano has made the people of Naples as observant of such changes as sailors at sea, and has given to that city one of the ablest schools of meteorology on the Continent.

We may well conclude, therefore, that the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius is not the deliquescence of a solid body, arising from humidity of the air to which it is exposed.

Is it the melting of a solid substance through the action of heat?

This is a more important question. Many of those who charge bad faith and trickery on the “priests and monks” officiating at the expositions, maintain that it is by an adroit application of heat that the liquefaction is brought about. Others, who admit the sincerity and good faith of the Neapolitan clergy—which, knowing the men, they feel cannot be impugned—still attribute the liquefaction to the heat of the altar, all ablaze with lighted tapers, and of the crowd thronging the chapel, and packed most closely just in the sanctuary itself and around the altar.

We undertake to show that the liquefaction is in no way produced by or dependent on heat.

I. Often, when the crowd is greatest, and the heat most intense—say in September—the liquefaction is delayed for hours; perhaps does not occur at all, or only a portion liquefies, while another portion remains solid.

II. On the contrary, it has occurred quickly and for the entire mass, even though the crowd was comparatively small. This is especially seen in the extraordinary expositions, even in winter, when not a score of persons were present.

III. It has taken place in the open air, while the reliquary, placed upright in an open framework, and held aloft above the heads of the people, was borne in procession through the streets; and this in the winter months of December and January, as well as on the vigils at the beginning of May.

IV. It has occurred on days when snow covered the streets, or the cold was so excessive as to cause the usual procession through the streets to be dispensed with. As the churches in Naples are not heated, the temperature within the cathedral must have been very low, probably not above 45° Fahrenheit.

V. This very question has been submitted to scientific investigation. The professors of the Royal University of Naples, headed by Dr. Nicholas Fergola, the most eminent physicist of the faculty, instituted a number of interesting observations, which Dr. Fergola published. We copy from his work a table giving the actual temperature in a number of instances, as shown by a standard thermometer which they stationed on the altar in close proximity to the reliquary at the time of the liquefaction:

TABLE.

Observations for Temperature and Time and Character of the Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius, made by the Professors of the Royal University, Naples.

A, date; B, temperature, Fahr.; C, number of minutes which elapsed from the commencement of the exposition of the relics on the altar, until the liquefaction of the blood; D, character of the liquefaction.

A.B.C.D.
 1794. Sept. 19.80°27´ From hard to perfectly liquid.
20.80 21   ”  ”  ” liquid.
21.80 19   ”  ”  ”  ”
22.78 24   ”  ”  ”  ”
23.77 25   ”  ”  ”  ”
24.78 5   ”  ”  ”  ”
25.80 10   ”  ”  ”  ”
26.77 5   ”  ”  ”  ”
 1795. May. 2.76 12   ”  ”  ” semi-liquid.
3.76 2   ”  ”  ” perfectly liquid.
4.77 41   ”  ”  ” liquid.*
5.80 22   ”  ”  ”  ” *
6.75 12   ”  ”  ”  ” *
7.76 29   ”  ”  ”  ” *
8.77 29   ”  ”  ”  ” *
9.80 33   ”  ”  ”  ” *
10.67 15   ”  ”  ”  ” *
 1795. Sept. 19.74 25   ”  ”  ”  ” with floating lump.
20.78 26   ”  ”  ” perfectly liquid.
21.81 27   ”  ”  ”   ”   ”
22.78 25   ”  ”  ”   ”   ”
23.80 24   ”  ”  ”   ”   ”
24.81 32   ”  ”  ”   ”   ”
25.78 18   ”  ”  ”   ”   ”
26.74 3   ”  ”  ”   ”   ”

On the six days in May, marked *, the reliquary was placed on its stand on the altar about mid-day, for the afternoon intermissions. A silk veil was thrown over it; and it was left undisturbed until after 3 P.M. At that hour, the blood was found hard each day; and subsequently it liquefied again, during the afternoon service.

The foregoing very important table speaks for itself. Once the temperature stood at 67°, and the liquefaction took place in 15 minutes, although the day before, with the thermometer standing at 80°, it had been delayed more than twice that time. Twice the thermometer marked 74°; the liquefaction was delayed in one instance only 3 minutes; in the other, full 25 minutes. Once the temperature was 75°. In that case 12 minutes of delay were counted. Thrice it was 76°; and the times were 2 minutes, 12 minutes, and 29 minutes. Four times it was 77°; the liquefaction occurred after a lapse of 5, 25, 29, and 41 minutes, respectively. Five times the thermometer stood at 78°; and the times of delay in the several cases were 5, 18, 24, 25, and 26 minutes. Seven times it stood at 80°; and the delays were respectively 10, 19, 21, 22, 24, 27, and 33 minutes. The highest point observed at the time of the liquefaction was 81°. It was reached twice. Here again the times differed. On one occasion the liquefaction was delayed 27 minutes; on the other, 32 minutes.

In view of these varied results from so many careful tests, the commission of professors could only report, as

they did, and as Dr. Fergola maintains in his essay, that the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius evidently does not depend on the degree of heat to which it is subjected during the expositions.

VI. The same conclusion may also be reached by a single consideration. When a solid substance is liquefied or melted by heat, it will continue liquid if the heat is kept at the same temperature or rises. It will resume its solid condition only when the temperature falls below that degree which is the melting point of the substance.

Now, in those summer days which we have spoken of—such as the six days of May, 1795, marked in the table of Fergola—days on which the Neapolitans seek the repose of a siesta—the hottest hours are from 12 M. to 3 P.M. During these hours, the temperature is naturally higher than it was at 9.30 or 10 A.M., or is afterward at 4 P.M., or later. Yet the blood, which liquefied at 9.30 or 10 A.M., almost invariably becomes solid again during these hottest hours, if the reliquary be placed on the altar and a silk veil thrown over it, and it liquefies again during the afternoon exposition, although the heat of the day is then sensibly diminishing.

The more accurately and carefully the facts of the liquefaction are studied, the more clearly do we see that it does not depend on temperature, general or local. It is not produced by the action of heat.

This exclusion of the agency of heat has “considerably exercised” some of the opponents of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. Confident that all miracles are, now at least, inadmissible, and that this and every other alleged miracle is susceptible of a natural explanation, if we only knew it, they eagerly

catch at any, even the most far-fetched and improbable theories, and put them forward with equal inconsiderateness and confidence.

We have heard it said: Oh! Naples is an exceptional, volcanic district. There may exist there some occult or obscure volcanic agency, which suffices to produce the liquefaction; who can tell what strange results may come from a combination of all the volcanic agencies ever at work in that vicinity?

Is Naples the only volcanic district in the world? Does any other volcanic district present anything like this liquefaction, or calculated to throw light on it? Even in Naples, is there another similar example? And has not this liquefaction continued regularly, even when Vesuvius was quiescent for a long term of years. Previous to December, 1631, the volcano had slumbered in perfect tranquillity for nearly two centuries. A French traveller tells of the flocks of cattle he saw browsing within the very crater itself, then a vast green valley sunk in the plateau forming the top of the mountain. Yet all this while the liquefactions continued as they had done before, and as they have done ever since, in other seasons of quiet, and in seasons of active volcanic eruption.

And then, we ask, what other sign or indication is there giving evidence of this natural influence or law? And what sort of a natural law is that which acts only on one single vial of blood, and has not acted on the thousands of others in the same conditions.

Again, it has been urged, in much the same strain, that our knowledge of the laws of nature is still very imperfect. Many laws are as yet undiscovered. Every year is marked by some advance in our knowledge of them. It by no means follows that

this liquefaction is miraculous, merely because as yet we are unable to assign the precise law or laws of nature which govern it. Perhaps, some time, men will discover them. Then all will be plain. Until then, they tell us, philosophy requires us to note carefully and accurately the facts of the case, and to wait for some explanation or solution of them in the future.

It is always well to take note of the facts, and to make our theories subordinate to those facts. What we find fault with our opponents for, in this question, is that they do precisely the reverse: they fix a theory in their minds, and if the facts of the case do not agree with their theory, why, so much the worse for the facts.

One word on the laws of nature. Although there may be many of which we have now no knowledge, and which we may hereafter discover, still we do know some. These may be supplemented—they cannot be contradicted or reversed by any laws hereafter to be discovered. The legitimate conclusions based on the certain knowledge which we have, are not to be impugned or held doubtful until we discover other laws. We do know, for example, that when a man’s head is severed from his body, he dies. All the known and unknown laws of nature cannot make him live again.

It will not do to base an argument in one paragraph on the invariable uniformity of law and order in nature, and, in the next, to maintain that we are as yet all at sea about these laws.

Among the well-known and uncontested laws of nature by which we may be guided in our argument, are several which have a close connection with the subject before us. We refer to them.

I. We know that solid bodies become liquid by increase of temperature; for each body, there is a certain melting-point. Above that, the solid body becomes liquid; below that, it remains solid, or returns to solidity.

II. The same liquid, at the same temperature, has the same volume, or occupies the same space. It is on this law that our thermometers are constructed.

These two laws are known and established beyond doubt, if anything is known or established beyond doubt in physical science. Let us consider them in reference to the substance which is seen to liquefy in the vial or ampulla in the reliquary.

I. This substance has no fixed melting-point. Looking at Fergola’s table, we see that it liquefied one day at 67° in 15 minutes, while the day before, at 80°, it liquefied only in 33 minutes. One day at 76° it liquefied perfectly in 2 minutes, and the next day at 77° it occupied 41 minutes. It has liquefied in the month of January, during a procession in the public street, while it was borne aloft on a stand, and freely exposed to the general temperature—then probably between 50° and 60°, if not lower. At other times, in midsummer, with a temperature over 80°, it has remained solid and unliquefied for hours and for days. Nay, after having become liquid, it frequently solidifies again, just at the hours between 12 M. to 3 P.M., when the heat of the day reaches its maximum. It is clear that this liquefaction completely sets aside the first-mentioned law of the melting-point.

II. The law of volume is set aside with equal peremptoriness. As you look at the liquid in the vial, you see that it changes in volume, either increasing or decreasing. Sometimes the liquid occupies only about three-fourths of the space within the vial. Before

your eyes, it will increase, sometimes with froth, sometimes even bubbling more or less violently, sometimes retaining a perfectly tranquil and level surface; sometimes rising very slowly, sometimes rapidly; and it may continue to rise until it fills the vial. Or again, if the vial be full, or nearly full, the liquid within it will sink, either suddenly or gradually, hour by hour, with or without froth or bubbling, until it occupies perhaps three-fourths of the space. These changes take place in summer and in winter indifferently. They are entirely independent of the temperature. They evidently set aside the second law we have recited regarding volume.

III. A third law of nature is, that her steps are forward and not backward. A movement once made is never revoked. Chemical changes are progressive, and, so long as the ingredients and agents remain the same, they never go back to repeat a combination which has once been made and then changed for another.

Yet continual repetitions of the same forms, combinations, or conditions of the substance within the ampulla are a special characteristic of the liquefactions.

We will produce, hereafter, in a fitting place, evidence that for centuries the ampulla has not been opened, and consequently that its contents have not been changed. Nevertheless, the alternate hardenings and liquefactions, the variations of color, the frothing, and the ebullitions, and the increases and decreases of volume, have continued to succeed each other, and to be repeated hundreds, some of them thousands, of times.

Nay, leaving aside for the moment these longer periods, and confining our examination to the ten or twelve hours of a single day, during which

the ampulla is all the while under the public gaze, and any interference of chemical art with the contents is absolutely impossible, we still find these repetitions of the same form or combination. The blood was solid when first taken out, it liquefied, stood liquid for an hour or two, solidified again, and again liquefied. Perhaps it solidified a third time, and a third time liquefied. It commenced to froth, and it ceased, then commenced again, and again ceased. It changed color, and again returned to the prestine tint. It changed in bulk, either increasing or decreasing, and again returned to its former level.

This reiteration of some or of all of these changes, in a single day, while the ingredients in the ampulla are evidently neither added to nor diminished, is contrary to the course of nature. The opposition is seen, the same in character, but manifested in vaster proportions, when evidence compels us to admit that the substance in the ampulla has not been changed or meddled with for years, and even for centuries; while yet these reiterations ever continue. The argument is the same in both instances.

There is no uncertainty as to the facts of the liquefaction or the well-known laws of nature which we have referred to. Nor is there any doubt that the facts are violations of those laws. Other laws of nature, yet to be discovered, may fill gaps in our knowledge, and may complement the laws already known. None will be discovered to contradict or upset them. It is as vain to wait for the discovery of some unknown law which may account for the facts of the liquefaction, as it would be to look for some other unknown law of nature in virtue of which Lazarus lived again, and came forth from the

tomb—a law which, curiously enough, happened to act just at the moment when our Saviour stood before the tomb, and cried out: “Lazarus, come forth.”

Can anything be more absurd than this theory which, with words of seeming scientific caution and of wide philosophic views, would attribute the liquefaction to the action of some as yet undiscovered laws. In truth, what sort of a regular natural law would that be which manifests its unshakable uniformity by somehow or other coming into play, and producing the liquefaction, just at those precise days, hours, and places which men have from time to time selected, because convenient to them or suited to their thoughts of religion—a law which caused the blood to liquefy regularly on the 14th of January, each year, so long as that day was celebrated as a festival; and skipped back to December 16 when a new festival on that day was substituted instead—which is ready to put off the liquefaction from the 16th of December to the Sunday following, whether the delay be of one, two, three, four, five, or six days, according to the day of the week on which the 16th may fall, and continues its complaisant action for the quarter of a century during which several archbishops of Naples preferred a celebration on the Sunday after to a celebration on the 16th of December itself; and which was quite ready to go back again to liquefying the blood on the 16th of December as soon as another archbishop decided to return to the old usage—which is equally accommodating in May, and always commences its series of liquefactions for nine consecutive days precisely on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May, regardless of whether it fell on April 30 or any day after up to and including

May 6—and which, stranger yet, has been known often to adapt itself to the journeyings of strangers coming to Naples, and to bring into play its power of liquefaction on the very days and hours when these strangers could come to the Tesoro chapel, and the ecclesiastical and the civil authorities had come to an understanding, and the relics were brought out and placed on the altar?

It is useless to multiply words. The theory of general law must be ruled out, as utterly inconsistent with the facts of the case.

Whenever the liquefaction occurs, it must be each time in consequence of something done or occurring on that occasion; either because of something done by man intentionally and advisedly for the express purpose of producing the liquefaction, or perchance unintentionally—that is, without a knowledge of the effect to follow—or else because of the exercise on the part of God of his supernatural power, in answer to the faith and earnest prayers of a believing people. In this case, it is a miracle, as the Neapolitans and those who agree with them steadfastly hold it to be.

We have already stated facts amply sufficient to exclude one arm of this alternative. The liquefaction cannot be the natural result of any action of man, whether intentional or accidental. Any liquefaction produced by the art of man would of course be within the sphere of natural action, and would necessarily be subject to the natural laws of liquefaction. If produced by heat, the law of the melting-point would be observed. If it in any way depended on the mutual action of chemical ingredients, the laws of such action would never be seen to be reversed and set aside repeatedly, even in a single day. In whatever way the

liquid was obtained, it would observe the law of constant volume at the same temperature, and would not so frequently either decrease or increase its bulk. In one word, man has no power to set aside the laws of nature as we plainly see them set aside in this liquefaction. We are forced to conclude that it is not his work. The liquefaction which is seen at Naples is not, and cannot possibly be, the natural result of any art or skill, or of any blundering of the Neapolitan clergy.

This will be made still clearer if circumstances allow us to examine somewhat in detail, as we hope to do in a closing article, the various solutions which have been proposed, and the attempted imitations of this liquefaction. Their signal failure in every instance serves as practical confirmations of the conclusion to which we have been already led. If with the aids of science and skill at their command, men have failed to reproduce the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, is it not clear that the priests and monks of Naples are not competent of themselves to produce the original?

The liquefaction must be, as the Neapolitans hold it to be, a miracle—a fact contrary to the laws of nature, wrought by the power of God for a purpose worthy of himself.

THE PRINCETON REVIEW ON DR. FABER.[94]

Twenty years ago, Dr. Newman delivered a series of lectures on “The Present Position of Catholics in England.” The scope of these lectures was the exposition of the English Protestant view of the Catholic Church. Dr. Newman showed, with an ability, skill, and cogency of argument, a mastery of language, a wealth of illustration, and a keenness of satire which even he has rarely equalled in his voluminous writings, what is the nature, origin, basis, and life of this view. Its sustaining power, he proves, is tradition, its basis fable, its life prejudice, its protection ignorance. We take the liberty of recommending this volume to the writer whom we are now intending to criticise, to the conductors of the distinguished review for which he writes, and to the clergy and reading laity in general of his eminently respectable denomination. The indignation to which the British Lion was roused, and the fierce assault which he made upon the illustrious athlete who entered his cage and took him by the beard of prejudice, so thick, of such ancient growth, and so venerable in his own eyes, is an evidence of the power of Dr. Newman’s arm and the efficacy of his weapon. The exposure which he made of one of the apostate traducers of the Catholic religion, after whom the English public for a while ran open-mouthed, gave occasion to a prosecution for libel, as the result of which Dr. Newman was condemned to a fine and imprisonment. It was a striking illustration and confirmation of what Dr. Newman had so boldly declared.

The consequence has been that the person whom Dr. Newman was judged by the English jury to have libelled stands just where he did before the sentence was pronounced, and that Dr. Newman himself is fawned upon by the British Lion with almost the affection which another lion felt for Androcles when he drew a thorn from his paw.

The old Protestant tradition or view about Catholics lingers still about its ancient haunts in England, and probably survives in the minds of a majority of the English people. Its force is, however, diminished, and its prestige is waning, thanks, in great part, to Dr. Newman, but in a considerable measure also to his gifted and holy friend and disciple, Dr. Faber. In the United States, the Protestant view and tradition about Catholics was colonized along with the other British institutions which the first settlers transplanted from the mother country. It has given way in part within the last quarter of a century, and with more facility than in England. Yet it still retains an extensive and strong hold upon our soil, and needs many vigorous efforts in order that it may be wholly uprooted. The article we are reviewing is an instance and an evidence of the condition in which this old Protestant view is lying at present in a large class of minds, of whom the author may be taken as a representative. On the one hand, his whole tone and line of thought and reasoning is a perfect illustration of the thesis of Dr. Newman’s lectures. On the other, his manner of speaking about Dr. Faber and his writings shows the beginning of a caving-in of the great dyke of prejudice even among the stricter and more old-fashioned Protestants. As to the way in which a Catholic should endeavor to open a breach for the tide through this heap

of sand, Dr. Newman has shown it to such perfection in his aforesaid lectures that we can only follow out and apply his method, and push forward in some new directions the work which he has substantially completed. We will, therefore, begin by a somewhat long quotation from one of these lectures, as the basis of the remarks we have to make ourselves, in which we shall endeavor to make the line of argument adopted by Dr. Newman bear more directly and in detail upon certain specific topics brought to view in the article under notice:

“PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW.

“In attributing the extreme aversion and contempt in which we Catholics are held by this great Protestant country to the influence of falsehood and misrepresentation, energetic in its operation and unbounded in its extent, I believe in my heart I have referred it to a cause which will be acknowledged to be both real and necessary by the majority of thoughtful minds, Catholic or not, who set themselves to examine the state of the case. Take an educated man, who has seen the world, and interested himself in the religious bodies, disputes, and events of the day—let him be ever so ill-disposed towards the Catholic Church, yet I think, if he will but throw his mind upon the subject, and then candidly speak out, he will confess that the arguments which lead him to his present state of feeling about her, whatever they are, would not be sufficient for the multitude of men. The multitude, if it is to be arrested and moved, requires altogether a different polemic from that which is at the command of the man of letters, of thought, of feeling, and of honor. His proofs against Catholicism, though he considers them sufficient himself, and considers that they ought to be sufficient for the multitude, have a sobriety, a delicacy, an exactness, a nice adjustment of parts, a width and breadth, a philosophical cumulativeness, an indirectness and circuitousness, which will be lost on the generality of men. The problem is, how to make an impression on those who have never

learned to exercise their minds, to compare thought with thought, to analyze an argument or to balance probabilities. The Catholic Church appeals to the imagination, as a great fact, wherever she comes; she strikes it: Protestants must find some idea equally captivating as she is, something fascinating, something capable of possessing, engrossing, and overwhelming, if they are to battle with her hopefully: their cause is lost unless they can do this. It was, then, a thought of genius, and, as I think, superhuman genius, to pitch upon the expedient which has been used against the church from Christ’s age to our own; to call her, as in the first century Beelzebub, so in the sixteenth Antichrist; it was a bold, politic, and successful move. It startled men who heard; and whereas Antichrist, by the very notion of his character, will counterfeit Christ, he will therefore be, so far, necessarily like him; and, if Antichrist is like Christ, then Christ, I suppose, must be like Antichrist; thus, there was, even at first starting, a felicitous plausibility about the very charge which went far towards securing belief, while it commanded attention.

“This, however, though much, was not enough; the charge that Christ is Antichrist must not only be made, but must be sustained; and sustained it could not possibly be, in the vastness and enormity of its idea, as I have described it, by means of truth. Falsehood, then, has ever been the indispensable condition of the impeachment which Protestants have made; and the impeachment they make is the indispensable weapon wherewith to encounter the antagonist whom they combat. Thus you see that calumny and obloquy of every kind is, from the nature of the case, the portion of the church while she has enemies—that is, in other words, while she is militant—her position, that is, if she is to be argued with at all; and argued with she must be, because man, from the very force of his moral constitution, cannot content himself in his warfare, of whatever kind, with the mere use of brute force. The lion rends his prey, and gives no reason for doing so; but man cannot persecute without assigning to himself a reason for his act; he must settle it with his conscience; he must have sufficient reasons, and, if good reasons are not forthcoming, there is no help for it; he must put up with bad. How to conflict with the moral

influence of the church being taken as the problem to be solved, nothing is left but to misstate and defame; there is no alternative. Tame facts, elaborate inductions, subtle presumptions, will not avail with the many; something which will cut a dash, something gaudy and staring, something inflammatory, is the rhetoric in request. He must make up his mind, then, to resign the populace to the action of the Catholic Church, or he must slander her to her greater confusion. This, I maintain, is the case; this, I consider, must be the case; bad logic, false facts; and I really do think that candid men, of whatever persuasion, though they will not express themselves exactly in the words I have used, will agree with me in substance; will allow that, putting aside the question whether Protestantism can be supported by any other method than controversy—for instance, by simple establishment, or by depriving Catholics of education, or by any other violent expedient—still, if popular controversy is to be used, then fable, not truth; calumny, not justice, will be its staple. Strip it of its fallacies and its fiction, and where are you?”[95]

Where would the Rev. Mr. Scribner be if his article were stripped of its fallacies and its fiction? What would become of the Princeton Review if it should publish a fair and favorable account of the life and writings of Dr. Faber, without the potent antidote administered along with that sweet draught of stolen waters which might otherwise prove too alluring to some of the young and candid members of the Presbyterian flock? The writer of the article, who has evidently been educated in the old-fashioned Protestant tradition about the Catholic Church, has fallen in love with Dr. Faber and his works, and with the greatest frankness and candor has opened his mind to the public. We can see plainly reflected in his pages the astonishment which came over him as he began and went on from volume to

volume of the writings of the eloquent Oratorian, and from page to page of his charming biography. We can see, with equal distinctness, how he fell back on the old Protestant view, the old prejudice, with a sort of violent effort, in order to protect himself against the new light which had beamed on his mind and the new sentiments which had stolen unbidden into his heart. Moreover, since he could not deny himself the pleasure of communicating the new treasure he had found to his fellow-Presbyterians, he could not help feeling that they also needed a safeguard, and could find none that would answer except the old one behind whose shelter he had hidden himself. Suppose that a number of earnest and inquisitive Presbyterians should be induced, by reading the sketch of Dr. Faber’s life and writings furnished by one of their own pastors, to purchase or borrow the books which he so much delights in? Suppose they should come to the conclusion that the beautiful character of F. Faber is a fair specimen of the fruit which the Catholic religion produces? That his doctrine is really and truly the Catholic doctrine which flows from the lips of all our preachers and from the pens of all our spiritual writers? Suppose these same persons should meet with some priest possessing somewhat of the same spirit with F. Faber, should listen to his conversation and hear his sermons, or should perhaps attend a mission or retreat? We ask the question, not as a Catholic, but as any one might ask it, and simply looking at it as a question of the gain or loss of vantage-ground by the respective parties. Does not any one see, that whereas we have need of nothing more than a fair chance to compare the evidence, the excellence, the attractiveness of the two

religions, in order to hold our old ground and gain new, the Presbyterian has lost the greatest advantage he has hitherto possessed, as soon as the frightful cloud of odium which the old Protestant view has thrown around us has been dissipated? Therefore, that odium must be kept up; that antecedent impossibility that there can be any truth in the claims of the Catholic Church because it is so very wicked, must be placed as a bar to the ingress of every argument. So has the Rev. Mr. Scribner reasoned and acted. We will not impute to him a deliberate and conscious purpose to falsify or calumniate, and are willing to admit that he is probably in a great measure the victim of the gigantic fraud which he indorses and recommends. His language about the Catholic Church and her hierarchy is of that kind which might justly cause the cheek of any one not steeled to the endurance of the grossest insults to mantle with indignation. But, when we reflect on the fact that many honest, candid, and well-disposed minds are duped to such an extent by this fraudulent Protestant tradition that they are almost incapable of seeing anything except through its medium, we are more inclined to pity than anger. It is a great misfortune, even when it is not a wilful fault, to be under the control of this horrid delusion, this gloomy nightmare, which besets the very cradle, haunts the nursery, and sits brooding and glowering on the breast of so great a multitude of our fellow-Christians. We will, therefore, try to do something to relieve them of this incubus, and to lead them to think and feel more rationally and justly about Catholics and their religion. We will take the expression of the common Protestant view by the author before us in its objective

sense, without reference to his personal and subjective motives in repeating such ignominious charges, and simply examine them in themselves and with reference to the grounds on which they rest.

The first passage we quote is the last sentence of the article. It is expressed conditionally as to the form, because the direct statement of the author was quite different, and apparently contrary to it. Yet it does not appear that the author entertains any doubt, or at least intends to suggest any doubt, of its truth:

“We may admit that the Papacy is the Mystical Babylon, the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist drunk with the blood of the saints, ‘the great Whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication,’ and yet believe that God has a people in the Church of Rome who live and die within her pale.”

Here we have what Dr. Newman calls the “expedient of superhuman genius,” the startling, fascinating, terrifying idea, the Protestant view, which forestalls all argument by prepossessing the imagination with a nightmare of preternatural horror. The writer has had this image before him from a child. He alludes to it as something well known to his readers. It is like the “Old Smoker” in the chimney, or the goblin in the garret, or the mad bull around the corner, waiting to execute vengeance on naughty little girls and boys who ask questions. We find it very difficult to argue seriously against this chimera. It is like arguing against the odd fancy of the eccentric Jesuit Hardouin, that the North American Indians are the descendants of devils. It is revolting or ludicrous as it is looked at in different lights. It appears to our mind to be vulgar, silly, superstitious, and fanatical. Not, of course, because it is the use of

language and imagery taken from the Scripture, but because it is a wholly arbitrary, fanciful, and unwarrantable use and application of such language and imagery. It is like the grotesque use of Scriptural names and images by the fanatics of the Cromwellian revolution. It is assumed as something certain and well known that the Papacy is foretold and described in these prophetic visions and predictions, as certain and well known as the interpretation of Joseph’s dream, the dreams of the chief butler and chief baker of Pharaoh, the vision of Nabuchodonosor, or the Messianic predictions of Daniel. Nothing short of this would justify the manner in which Protestant writers apply these terms to the Roman Church, and shut out all calm and sober consideration of her claims and doctrines by an appeal to the prophecies respecting Antichrist and Babylon. You cannot argue from a mere hypothesis, as if it were a fact or a certain truth. In this case, the entire probability of the hypothesis depends on first proving that the Roman Church really possesses and exhibits the qualities which must belong to the objects of the prediction. A sober and rational inquiry into the real meaning of these sublime, terrible, and obscure prophecies exacts, first of all, a study of the interpretation of the fathers. It requires, moreover, an examination and due appreciation of the expositions of Catholic commentators. It must be dispassionate and scientific in its character. Now, the vulgar Protestant application of these prophecies to the Roman Church has none of these characteristics. It finds no countenance from any writers before the time of the so-called Reformation. It was invented and used as a convenient and telling weapon of assault. It is rejected by

some of the eminent scholars of the Protestant persuasion. On what does it rest? On nothing but the conjectural interpretation of a certain number of individuals. We should find no difficulty in proving its absurdity and falsity if we chose to undertake the task. But that is not our object. All we contend for at present is, that it is an irrational and abusive employment of terms to call the Roman Church by the names of symbolic persons or objects in the prophecies, as if it were certain that this application is just and true, and that these names need only to be repeated in order to designate the Catholic religion as a detestable monster, to be shunned and fled from, but not to be approached and fearlessly examined.

As the Rev. Mr. Scribner has been haunted from infancy by these Apocalyptic monsters, and has always associated them in his imagination with the Roman Church, it is quite natural that distinctive Catholic doctrines should appear to him clothed with the same alarming and hideous outward semblance of monstrosity. So, then, he says that,

“Even if the sincerity of some who profess to have been converted to the belief of the monstrous doctrines of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, the supremacy of the Pope, purgatory, the worship of the saints, and the adoration of the Virgin, must be admitted, still there are some who have secret doubts as to the possibility of such persons being true Christians” (p. 516).

Why are these doctrines called monstrous? Doubtless, all error is more or less monstrous, as a greater or less distortion of the truth. Therefore, one who considers these doctrines erroneous might mean no more in calling them monstrous than if he said they are great errors. But it seems to us that our author used the word to express an antecedent,

obvious monstrosity of some sort, which makes these doctrines incredible in themselves, without any reference to the fact of their being either proved or disproved to be parts of revealed doctrine. Now, looking at the matter as if we were mere inquirers or philosophers, what is there more incredible in the doctrine of transubstantiation than in that of the Incarnation, in the sacrifice of the Mass than in that of the Cross, in the supremacy of the Pope than in the supremacy of the twelve apostles, in purgatory than in hell, in the worship of the saints and the Virgin than in the divine adoration of the humanity of Christ? Whoever will take the trouble to read our philosophers and theologians, will find that they demonstrate the futility of all the antecedent objections which can be made to the credibility of any Catholic doctrines. As to the arguments in proof of these doctrines from Scripture, tradition, and reason, whoever maintains that they are so obviously proved to be false by the contrary arguments, that it is only a monstrous ignorance, folly, credulity, or wickedness which can induce any one to hold them as Christian doctrines, had better favor the public with a clear and succinct treatise containing the reasons for his opinion. It might, perhaps, answer the purpose of a Protestant End of Controversy, which has been a great desideratum for a long time.

When he incidentally hits on the subject of relics and miracles, our estimable author is still more overcome. Dr. Faber, in his eyes, is always a charming, grown-up infant, who is only made more lovely and attractive by believing everything. But not so with those who cannot claim his sympathy for their sweet simplicity, and must be considered as grown-up men:

“With the exception of a few such men as Faber, it is not to be believed for a moment that the educated prelates and priesthood of the Romish Church have themselves a particle of faith in what they teach the people concerning their Popish legends. We do not know what to think of the man who does not feel intense indignation at the bare thought of Pope, cardinals, and priests all encouraging the people to reverence the disgusting pretended relics with which their churches are filled. Let it be remembered that the highest Romish authorities in all countries continue to this day to give their sanction to what they know to be imposition on the credulity of the people; and can it be doubted that even the most bigoted person, if he knew the real facts, would question the truth of a system which rests so extensively on known and deliberate deception?” (p. 528).

There is something which seems so honest and unpremeditated about this outburst of indignation that we are disposed to give the author the benefit of that excuse of childlike simplicity which he so kindly makes good in behalf of Dr. Faber. He has no thought of proving his assertions, does not seem to think they require any proof, or that they can be questioned by any one who is not ignorant and bigoted. Let it be remembered, he says, as of something learned in childhood, like the rules of grammar or the date of the discovery of America. Evidently, here is the old Protestant view, the old tradition, which has all the force of an infallible authority. Now, it is not the fault of Presbyterians and other Protestants that they have had this prejudice instilled into their minds in youth. While their ignorance is invincible, it is also inculpable. But if they adhere to it without reason, through supine indifference to truth or affection for their old prejudices, when their attention has been called to the reasons and motives for doubt and examination, they become morally blameworthy.

A simple denial of the truth of the accusations made in the foregoing paragraph, on our part, is enough to destroy all their prestige in the mind of any candid and intelligent Presbyterian who is not ignorant or bigoted. Our word carries as much moral weight as that of the conductors of the Princeton Review. And we deny emphatically, invoking God as a witness to our sincerity and truth, every item of the foregoing accusation. It is an atrocious calumny, and those who have uttered it are bound to prove it or retract it, even if they have been themselves deceived, and have had no intention to calumniate. This is all the reply we have to make to the attack on the personal honor and integrity of the Catholic priesthood. But in regard to the topic itself of relics and miracles, we will say a word out of charity to our bewildered and indignant friend, and to all like him who are willing to hear the other side.

Disgusting pretended relics. What is the sense of that word disgusting? Does it mean that real relics are disgusting, or that pretended relics are disgusting because of the imposition? If it mean the former, we do not understand the feeling any more than we understand the feeling of one who is disgusted with the furniture which has been in the family for a long time. You cannot argue the question in that way. The only way of arguing the matter at all is to discuss the matter itself. If the relics of the saints are entitled to reverence, and have a secret, miraculous power, the feeling of disgust is simply an abnormal and senseless feeling, which ought to be suppressed by an act of the will. If it is a question about the genuineness of the relics, no one who is not grossly ignorant of history can be unaware of the fact that, from the second century down, relics of

martyrs and saints have been highly honored and religiously preserved. There has never been any difficulty in procuring genuine relics in abundance of the contemporary saints. As regards the relics of the cross, and other relics connected with the persons of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, the apostles, and the most ancient and illustrious saints, we must refer the curious reader to books for information. We can only strike, so to speak, a few random blows at the prejudice which encrusts the Protestant mind, and endeavor to crack it. We merely wish to convince our friends of the absurdity of their hasty and wholesale condemnation of our motives, spirit, doctrines, and practices, that they may think it worth while really to examine the matter with seriousness. So, without going into any general examination of relics universally, we will just take up an instance of a particular case of relics in the house where we are writing, as an example of our ordinary and practical conduct in respect to relics. In an oratory which is used for private devotion, there is placed above the altar a large and ornamental sarcophagus, the front and sides of which are of plate glass. Within is a wax figure of a Roman youth reclining on a crimson couch, dressed in crimson silk, crowned with a chaplet of flowers, and with the eyes closed as if he had just died. Within the breast is a reliquary, with relics of a body taken from the Roman catacombs. In the corner is a phial, marked with a red ribbon, and which once contained blood. These are the relics of Justinus, a young martyr of Rome, which are duly and officially authenticated as having been taken from the Catacombs. Now, whoever knows anything of Roman archæology knows that the most learned and careful

antiquarians give us certain marks by which the remains of martyrs may be identified. The Rev. Mr. Scribner will not hazard his reputation as a scholar, we presume, by classing the folios of De Rossi and other savants of Rome among the impostures of priestcraft. We have, then, the relics of a true martyr, arranged and placed in such a way as to make an object of contemplation to the eye of taste and of Christian faith, which is pleasing, instructive, and fitted to excite pious emotions. What is there disgusting in this?

But then there are the legends about miracles wrought by the relics of the saints, and other miracles. Very true, my dear friend, and, no doubt, very puzzling and startling to one who has been accustomed to believe that the marvellous and miraculous passed away with the age of the Bible. But, reflect for a moment on the full extent of the admission you will have to make to the infidel rationalist, to the enemy of Christianity, who makes our whole religion mythical, if you reject all this portion of the belief of Catholics as founded on the fabulous. Read Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, the twenty-third book of St. Augustine’s City of God, St. Ambrose’s description of the discovery of the relics of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, and Isaac Taylor’s Ancient Christianity. You will find that we modern Catholics are in the same boat with the fathers, the prelates, the Christian people of the fifth century. We float or sink together. It seems to us, however, that before one resolves to follow the shallow and sophistical Isaac Taylor and his servile copyist, the translator of the City of God, in condemning our Christian forefathers as the authors or the dupes of a gigantic system of imposture, and before one pronounces

a similar sentence on the whole body of their modern descendants, it would be well to examine somewhat carefully the evidence in the case. For instance, to confine ourselves to modern times, there are: the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius; the ecstatic virgins of the Tyrol, and the recent similar case in Belgium; the miraculous conversion of the Jew Ratisbon; the case of Mrs. Mattingly of Washington; the miracles of Lourdes; the miraculous cure of a young lady at St. Louis, attested by three physicians; the miracles wrought by the relics of F. Olivaint, the martyr of Paris; the miraculous conversion of sixteen Mohammedans at Damascus, one of whom has suffered martyrdom; and many other events, believed by a vast number of intelligent persons, upon grounds of evidence, to be supernatural and miraculous. We do not ask our Protestant friends to believe these things on our word or without evidence. We simply say that it is the part of good sense and necessary for you, if you expect to sustain your own cause against us, that you should examine these things, and, if you deny altogether this whole class of professed facts, should give good reasons for it. Will you rule the whole case out of court by a sweeping principle that these things are in themselves impossible and incredible, and therefore false? We defy you to do it without subverting the whole basis on which rests the belief in the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. Moreover, we defy any one to evade or rebut the evidence of some of the miracles we have mentioned, especially the cure of Bourriette at Lourdes and of Mrs. Mattingly at Washington. We mention these, because we have given the evidence of the former in our own pages, and of the latter in the edition

of the works of Bishop England, prepared for the press by the author of this article more than twenty years ago. The authority of the Roman Church, nevertheless, and the truth of the Catholic faith, do not in any manner rest on any one or all together of the visions, revelations, or miracles in question as their basis, and as the ground of a divine faith. Their highest value, even when fully proved, is to confirm and enliven our faith in truths of which we are previously certain.

The Rev. Mr. Scribner says with great truth that “one great lesson taught by this biography [of Dr. Faber] is the lesson of charity” (p. 531). He is also so obviously correct in his remark that “charity does not require us to admit that to be true which is false,” that we wonder he took the trouble to make it. Moreover, we cannot and do not wish to dispute his right “to pronounce a flaming Roman Catholic professor a child of the devil who shows himself to be one.” But we wish to add to his statement one more, which is that justice requires, as well as charity, that one should not make atrocious charges or apply opprobrious epithets without adequate proofs and motives. Let the reverend gentleman consider, then, coolly and deliberately, and let every Protestant reader of this article consider and judge of the following sentence:

“It would not be enlightened charity which would make us think that, perhaps, after all, the licentious Roman Catholic priests of Spain and Italy, and the brutal priests of Ireland, are Christian men” (p. 531).

Charity! We do not ask your charity. We spurn with indignation any such despicable counterfeit of charity as that which is here repudiated.

The Catholic Church does not need any mantle to throw over any priests who are either “licentious” or “brutal.” Let the jurisdiction over clerical delinquents, which rightfully belongs to her, be admitted and sustained by the civil governments, and she will treat them with the right kind of charity, by restraining them from all power to sin, and giving them an opportunity of doing penance. Civil governments, when they have been engaged in a conflict with the church, and Protestant leaders, have always been ready enough to encourage, to employ, and to reward these outcasts of the priesthood, or impostors who have falsely pretended to be priests. By their suborned testimony, the British government hanged Oliver Plunkett at Tyburn. For the sake of another of the same sort, an English jury fined and imprisoned the most honorable and illustrious writer in England. Examples nearer home are not wanting, and are not, we suppose, quite yet forgotten. All those worthless members of the priesthood who have been disgraced, or who deserve to be, we leave to bear by themselves the judgment both of men and of God. But on what evidence are the priests of Spain and of Italy called in general and unqualified terms “licentious,” and the priests of Ireland “brutal”? We would like to know what opportunity American Presbyterians have of knowing accurately the condition of the Spanish clergy. Blanco White, as Dr. Newman shows, furnishes no testimony which can be used to prove any such assumption as that of our very confident friend Mr. Scribner. In regard to Italy, is there any testimony given by trustworthy, competent witnesses, who have lived there long enough to know what the character of the clergy is, or anything which the violent

enemies of the church in Italy have been able to establish against the clergy, which warrants the opprobrious epithets applied to them in the elegant passage we have cited above? That the busybodies who are trying to make mischief in Italy, and whose proceedings are viewed with intense disgust by some honorable Protestant clergymen, keep some very disreputable company among the Italian clergy, we have no doubt. We suppose there are more than one hundred thousand priests in Italy, and, as we have seen two such specimens as Gavazzi and Achilli, we cannot wonder if there are some scores of similar individuals who are able to keep their places under the protection of so detestable a government as that of Victor Emanuel. These are the men who consort with Protestant emissaries, and who malign the virtue of their brethren, which they hate and envy because of their own wickedness. But, as Dr. Newman remarks, those who leave the Catholic Church, and yet retain some moral probity and gentlemanly honor, do not furnish Protestants with the evidence they want in order to sustain their defamation of the Catholic priesthood. Men like Wharton, Blanco White, Lord Dunboyne, Gioberti,[96] Capes, Hyacinthe, and Döllinger, do not answer the purpose for which they are wanted, because they will not utter the gross calumnies or invent the startling, sensational lies which certain infamous scribblers like Maria Monk, or mountebank lecturers like Leahy and the last new Baron, manufacture for the greedy ears of a credulous public.

The insult offered to the clergy of Ireland is equally offensive and touches us still more closely. It is not so bad an epithet which is applied to them, but, while it is vague enough to make it difficult to seize and expose the precise calumny which the writer intends to fasten, it is forcible enough to make it as insulting and opprobrious as any epithet which a gentleman could well use, or a refined and scholarly periodical suffer to appear on its pages. It is like the gross caricatures of Harper’s Magazine. We blush at the thought of noticing such an aspersion on the Irish clergy. The priests of Ireland brutal? The Irish people are not a brutal people, and it is impossible that a brutal clergy should spring from them. The clergy are loved by their people, they cannot therefore be brutally cruel; they are respected by them, and therefore they cannot be brutally vicious. They are educated men; they meet noblemen and gentlemen on equal terms. Irish society is cultivated, refined, and polished, and the Catholic priests of Ireland are respected by the respectable Protestants of Ireland. Such an accusation as this could not be made in Dublin, or on the floor of the British House of Commons, without calling derision on the head of the unlucky person who ventured to use a sort of language about Catholics, which polite society is beginning to regard as unfit for its ears.

It is no wonder that a gentleman so prejudiced against the Catholics and their religion as Mr. Scribner has shown himself to be, should be astonished or puzzled at the conversions which have taken place in the past twenty-five years:

“How one educated in the Protestant faith can become a sincere Papist it is difficult for us to understand, and to many minds the thing seems impossible” (p. 516).

He tries to diminish, and as far as possible to shirk the difficulty by laying the blame on Anglicanism and Puseyism:

“It must be remembered that for an Anglican or Puseyite to become a Catholic is a very different thing from the conversion to Romanism of any other intelligent Protestant.”

The perusal of Dr. Newman’s Lectures will show that the Protestant view and the Protestant prejudice have had as deep and strong a hold in the English Establishment as in the Kirk, and, therefore, the difficulty remains where it was. But, although we may allow that a High-churchman is logically nearer to a Catholic than is a Presbyterian, there are plenty of cases of the conversion of those who were brought up in the other Protestant churches. Hurter, Phillipps, Stolberg, and De Haller were Lutherans. Mr. Lucas was a Quaker, and F. Baker was brought up a Methodist; Dr. Brownson was a Unitarian, and Judge Burnett was a Campbellite. There are numbers of converts in the United States from the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, and other denominations. It does not alter the case that some of the best known of the converts who were brought up in various sects became Episcopalians first, and afterwards Catholics. For, as our author asserts, they became by that step “almost Catholics.” And how did they first become convinced of those “almost Catholic” doctrines, and altogether Catholic principles which they only logically followed out when they became Catholics? Then, again, we have the two Drachs, the two Ratisbons, Hermann and Veith, who were Israelites. Infidels, too, have been converted, as well as Protestants and Jews; men of every country, rank,

and profession, noblemen, clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, physicians, merchants, military and naval officers, have embraced the Catholic faith. Since the time of the so-called Reformation, these converts have amounted to hundreds of thousands, and it is our opinion that there must be at least fifty thousand at the present moment in the Catholic Church of the United States. This fact must, therefore, be looked in the face, and it must be admitted that there is something in the Catholic religion which is capable of convincing the understanding and winning the homage of the most intelligent, upright, and conscientious persons, even though they have been educated in Protestantism.

Mr. Scribner admits, with a commendable candor and frankness, the sincerity and excellence of Father Faber:

“One at least who followed Dr. Newman into that communion deserves, as far as his love for the Lord Jesus and his self-sacrificing zeal are concerned, to be held as a model—Frederick William Faber. In his numerous devotional books, in all his correspondence, and in his hymns, almost all of which are of the highest order for beauty, tenderness, and spirituality, there breathe sweet humility, childlike trust in Jesus as the Saviour of the lost, and the most loving submission to the divine will.... And yet this man, whose self-sacrificing piety and loveliness of Christian character all must acknowledge, was, during almost the whole period in which he so earnestly sought the good of others by his incessant toil, as sincere and thorough a Romanist as if he had drunk in the system with his mother’s milk.... But as long as one retains with these errors (‘the monstrous doctrines of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, the supremacy of the Pope, purgatory, the worship of the saints, and the adoration of the Virgin’), however inconsistently, the essential truths of the Gospel, his holding them is not incompatible with piety. Whoever is a true worshipper of Christ is born

of God, and that the subject of this biography worshipped and loved the Saviour it is impossible to doubt.... One great lesson taught by this biography is the lesson of charity, and that we should be cautious in assuming that a man is not a Christian because he is a Romanist. Undoubtedly, when we obey the injunction of the Scripture to pray for ‘all saints,’ we pray for many who are in the Church of Rome. Even a Romish priest who prays to the Virgin, and who teaches the people to pray to her, as Faber certainly did, may be, like him, an humble worshipper and lover of Jesus. And though he may practise austerities, he may do so in a different spirit from that which actuates the masses in his own church, for, instead of being full of self-righteousness, he may have no confidence in his own righteousness.... We may admit, etc., and yet believe that God has a people in the Church of Rome who live and die within her pale” (pp. 515, 516, 517, 531, 532).

Let the reader peruse these passages carefully. They read very differently from the other set of extracts, and yet they occur together, mixed up with each other, and we have separated them in order to exhibit more clearly the singular clashing in the author’s mind between old, timeworn prejudices, and a new, intruding set of thoughts and sentiments derived from the perusal of F. Faber’s life and writings. We have shown how he attempts to reunite the two. But they cannot live peaceably together in the same breast, any more than could Sara and Agar in the same tent. They are incompatible. It is impossible to make out of Father Faber an exceptional case. If the charge of idolatry is sustained against us, and if, in other respects, the Roman Church deserves the epithets applied to her by our enemies, Father Faber went with his eyes open, and remained with his eyes opening wider and wider, and died in a religion which cannot be embraced without bringing death to the soul.

He was no adherent of any softening, modifying, minimizing school. He was not like any of those whom Protestants are wont to regard with favor as belonging more to themselves than to us, as a sort of secret, unconscious Protestants, who are only externally united to the Roman Church, while their spirit is alien from her spirit. There was nothing of Pascal, Martin Boos, or Hyacinthe about him. He was not even one of those who stopped short at the line of strictly defined and obligatory doctrine, as if afraid of being extreme Catholics. He was no Gallican, no rigorist, no advocate of anything that might be called Neo-Catholic or Anglo-Catholic. Even in regard to minor and accessory matters, to modes and ways in which there is great room for variation in opinion and practice, he preferred those which characterize the genius of the Italian and Spanish nations, and which seem to the colder and more reserved temperament of the English to be the most remote and foreign to their tastes and intellectual habits. He endeavored to divest himself of everything which bore the semblance of conformity even in accidentals to Anglicanism, and to throw his whole soul into what he considered to be the most perfectly Catholic mould. He outran in this many both of the old English Catholics and of his fellow-converts. Especially in regard to the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, he made himself the champion of the most exalted views concerning the power and glory of the Mother of God, and the importance of her cultus in the practical teaching and piety which is directed to the end of the conversion and perfection of souls. He followed St. Bernardine of Sienna, St. Alphonsus, and the V. Louis Grignon de Montfort, and his entire spiritual doctrine is derived

from similar sources, as it were flowing from the very topmost heights of mystic contemplation, above the clouds, and far remote from the paths and ken of ordinary mortals. In his theology, which is remarkable both for accuracy and depth, he always follows those authors whose doctrine accords with the strictest criterion of Roman orthodoxy. It is not, then, anything in Father Faber which is peculiar and self-originated, or which he brought over from his Protestant education, and has mixed with Catholic doctrine as a clarifying ingredient, that makes his books popular with Protestants, and has excited the admiration of the writer in the Princeton Review. F. Faber’s doctrine and sanctity are purely Catholic products. The homage which he has extorted is homage paid to the school in which he learned, and the masters and models he followed. The sheep shows the quality of his pasture in the fineness and whiteness of his wool. “Men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles.” If our reverend friend were more familiar with the lives of the Saints and the works of Catholic spiritual writers, he would cease to wonder at F. Faber and his works. We can point him to whole libraries of works in which the characters and actions of a multitude of similar men and women are depicted, and where countless forms of the same divine truths and holy sentiments are presented. Those who “practised austerities” to the greatest possible extent, the solitaries of the desert, the holy monks and nuns, the saints of the most heroic type, are precisely those who were marked at the same time by their entire conformity to the doctrine and spirit of the Roman Church, their profound humility, and their ardent love of the great Lord and Saviour of mankind. Contrasting

F. Faber, and others like him, with the great body of fervent Catholics, as if they had a “different spirit,” the great body being “full of self-righteousness,” and these select few having “no confidence in their own righteousness,” is sheer nonsense, and an unmeaning rattle of words. We cannot all pretend to possess the genius, the loveliness of character, the extraordinary graces, or the exalted sanctity of F. Faber. But all those who hold the genuine Catholic doctrine which our holy mother the church teaches, and possess in any degree the genuine Catholic piety which she inculcates, are, so far, like F. Faber. The same spirit is in all, whether they be the frail and sinful confessing their sins with contrition, the sincere though imperfect who are striving to keep God’s commandments with more or less diligence, or the more advanced in Christian virtue and holiness of life. Those who have a false and counterfeit piety, who indulge in the spiritual sins of pride, self-confidence, and vainglory, who are willing victims to the illusions of the devil, and seek to play the part of saints in order to gratify their self-love and win applause, are like other sinners, except that they have more of the hypocrite about them. They generally become heretics, or fall into open sin, and cease acting their wearisome part, unless they are truly humbled and converted. These are the persons who have a “different spirit” from that which actuates the true children of the church. That F. Faber touched the common chords which vibrate through the great Catholic heart is shown by the fact that he is the most popular spiritual writer of this century. Three hundred thousand copies of his works, in some six or seven languages, had been sold some time ago, and they still continue

to circulate everywhere. It is not a little remarkable that the same chord is obedient to his touch in the hearts of so many Protestants. What genius, learning, reasoning, philosophy, cannot do, the faith and love which spring from prayer and penance accomplish with ease. It is a remarkable fact, and we call the attention of Catholic preachers and writers to it, as well as that of Protestants. One who disdained the thought of diluting Catholic doctrine to suit the delicate palate of the age, who was regardless of the opinion of men, who plumed his pinions for a kind of audacious flight into the lofty ether in which saints alone are wont to soar and poise in contemplation, who threw off all drapery from the glorious form of Catholic truth, and loudly called on all men to gaze and worship, is the one who wins the confidence and captivates the hearts of the greatest number of the church’s lost and estranged children. We trust that his works will win their way, and exercise their gentle, attractive force still more extensively among evangelical Protestants. The recommendation of a Presbyterian pastor, which goes forth under the sanction of Princeton, will, we trust, produce its full effect, and excite the pious curiosity of a great number of readers to become acquainted with the biography and writings of the gifted, lovely, holy poet, priest, and teacher, who has been called the Bernardine of Sienna of the nineteenth century.

We have endeavored to bring out into strong relief what is really of the greatest moment in the article of the Princeton Review, and what the weak though violent counter-protests only make more prominent and definite, that the concessions to the personal and doctrinal purity of Father Faber are a yielding of the most grievous

of the charges against Catholics and their religion. It argues, we hope, a change in the spirit and manner of maintaining the controversy with us which is coming on. The teaching of Father Faber is admitted to contain the “essential truths of the Gospel,” and his most distinctively Catholic and Roman doctrines are admitted to be “not incompatible with piety.” The conclusion is rigidly logical and irresistible, that Calvinists must consider the controversy between us as one not respecting directly, but only indirectly, the essential, fundamental dogmas and precepts of the Gospel and Christianity. Let them, then, realize this view to themselves, think in accordance with it, and regulate their conduct and language in harmony with it. Let them no longer ignore and practically abjure the Christian church from the fourth century to the present moment, and confine their sympathies to an imaginary primitive period and the sphere of modern Protestantism. Let them study ancient, mediæval, and modern Catholic authors, read history and theology, and learn to discuss the real issue with us. The Chinese method of warfare, charging upon us with shields aloft, bearing the hideous figure of the beast with seven heads and ten horns, with outcries and shouts of derision and vituperation, will not answer any longer. Those who choose to follow such tactics will soon be forced to throw their shoes into the air and take to flight. It is too late to frighten even Presbyterian children with such nonsense. The weakness and helplessness of the poor Irish Catholics, and of the handful of Catholics in England, made them for a long time the easy victims of oppression and calumny. But the day for treating the Catholics of the English-speaking world with haughtiness and contumely has passed by. We desire, however, no revenge or retaliation. We ask nothing of Protestants except that they will seek the truth. In the words of Montalembert: “The truth, and nothing but the truth—justice, and nothing but justice—let that be our sole revenge!”[97]

[94] The Princeton Review, October, 1871. Art. II.: The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber. By Rev. William Scribner.

[95] Lecture IV., p. 206. Dublin. Third Edition.

[96] We do not intend to affirm positively that Gioberti formally renounced the communion and faith of the Catholic Church, a matter about which there hangs a great obscurity. But his violent enmity to the Jesuits and his revolutionary principles in general would have certainly led him to attack the clergy and the existing order in the most vulnerable part.

[97] Monks of the West, Introduction, last paragraph.