The Church In F——.
Build up the church! Let its turrets rise,
With cross-crowned summits, to kiss the skies;
Hollow its centre, in nave and aisle,
From its walls let heaven-rapt faces smile.
Make its fair altars to glow with light,
Where priest and ministering acolyte
May kneel, with incense and book and bell,
The praises of God and his saints to swell.
Let the deep tones of the organ roll
With thunderous music, to stir the soul,
While spirits soar, as on wings of fire,
'Mid the holy chants of the surpliced choir.
But when the crowd has passed away,
And the lights burn low and the church is gray,
And in their solitude aisle and nave
Are still and stern as a martyr's grave,
All is not over of praise and prayer:
The mourner, shrinking from crowd and glare,
May kneel in the shadow, and veil her eyes
Before the Lord of the sacrifice.
The sacred Presence that throws its spell—
An ever-abiding miracle—
O'er the empty fane and the silent shrine,
Is there at all seasons—the Host divine.
Are You My Wife? Chapter I.
By The Author Of “A Salon In Paris Before The War,” “Number Thirteen,” “Pius VI.,” Etc.
Chapter I. A Few Pages From Clide De Winton's Note-Book.
It was not the reception I ought to have had; but that was my own fault. The old house was not in the habit of giving such a cold welcome to the eldest son who brought home his young bride. On the contrary, fireworks and bonfires, and bells ringing, and flags flying, and universal rejoicing both inside and outside the house, had been the traditionary mode of proceeding, on such occasions, since the Conquest, when it first owned a master of the name of De Winton. My earliest recollections of a distinct kind are of my father bringing home my step-mother to the old place, and of my peeping out from my nursery-window, and vaguely connecting the strange lady, who came in the midst of us heralded by such noise and splendor, with the story of the Queen of Sheba that my nurse read to me very often on Sundays out of a pictured story-book. This infantine delusion had long vanished before I quite lost the sense of childish bewilderment that accompanied the occasion. I was an odd child, I suppose; old-fashioned, but not at all precocious; and the dreamy impressions of childhood held their grasp on me longer than usual, probably from my having no children to play with and keep me from dwelling so long and so exclusively on the fancies of my own hazy little mind. I can recall vividly even now how I hated all the noise and fuss that followed the wedding; how I shrank from being dressed in my scarlet cashmere frock, and being sent for to the drawing-room, and introduced to strangers, by my stiff, stately step-mother, as “my son, Master Clide de Winton.” There seemed no end to the strangers that came trooping in to shake hands with my father and to be introduced to his wife. And then the dinners that were given, and the noise of music afterwards, that used to wake me up in the nursery, and make me dream such noisy, confused dreams when I fell asleep again! How I detested it all! And when I expressed something of this to my nurse, and wondered why the house, that used to be so quiet when we had it to ourselves, had become so full of noise and strange people from the moment my new mamma came home, she found no better comfort than to tell me that that was always the way after a wedding, and that when I was grown up and married myself I should make just as much fuss, and a great deal more, because I should be younger, and my wife too. It may sound absurd, like so many other reminiscences of childhood that were once bitterly real to all of us; but this horoscopic view of life poisoned many an hour of those nursery-days to me. The fact that the dreaded ordeal was yet distant [pg 597] gave me no consolation. I leaped over the gulf that separated six years old from five-and-twenty, and saw myself miserable in the midst of a pandemonium of noise, and strange people, and dinners, and pianoforte-playing. I was no doubt a morbid little boy, and no doubt my nurse discovered this, and with the unconscious cruelty of her race took pleasure in playing upon my idle terrors. I know she used to terrify me by graphic descriptions of the wedding ceremonial from first to last; and the more I showed that I was terrified, the more eloquent and inventive—as I afterwards discovered—she grew. She had been three times through the performance herself, and thus was peculiarly qualified to speak of it. I remember once when she told me I would have to stand up before all the company at a long table and make a speech. I could bear it no longer, and I began to cry. This did not soften her; she only laughed at me for a silly little goose, and assured me that, when the time came, I would enjoy it all as much as I now enjoyed flying my kite and other juvenile amusements. I ran out of the nursery and away up to a garret where I sometimes hid myself when I expected to be sent for to the drawing-room. and flung myself on the floor, and literally bellowed with misery. I suppose I cried myself to sleep, for when 1 awoke I was still in the same place, tired and cold. I considered quietly what I might possibly do to avert the catastrophe that so appalled me in the distance. I could think only of one thing: that was to run away before the wedding-day arrived. I had heard stories about boys running away from school when they were very naughty or very unhappy; why should they not run away from home, if driven to extremities? This resolution soothed me. I crept down from my solitude a happier child than I had entered it.
If this account of myself sounds unnatural, I can only answer that it is true. If my step-mother had been a loving, motherly woman, she would probably have found out something of these sufferings, and have sought to modify them by moulding my character; but she was not a woman to win a child's confidence, even if she had tried; and she did not try to win mine. She found me shy, reserved, ungracious, and she left me so. She did her duty by me as far as she knew how. I was conveyed every day regularly from the nursery to the dining-room after dinner. I grew resigned to the daily punishment after a time, and in reply to the usual questions, “Had I been a good boy?” and “Would I like an apple?” I learned to answer boldly that I had and that I would, and to stand straight on both legs and without wriggling. My step-mother patted me on the cheek, and observed to my father that I was improving in my manners. She seldom went further than this in motherly caresses for the first two years after her marriage. Then my father died, and I can remember that she kissed me often, and was altogether more gentle in her manner towards me, and that I felt it, and liked the change, though I could in no way account for it. I was still miserably shy, and I retained the same intense dread of notoriety and fuss of every description. Perhaps it was this that partly decided her on sending me to Eton when I was barely old enough to be in the school-room. Other motives may have added weight to this one, but I shall say nothing of that now. If [pg 598] her object was to cure me of the painful timidity which still beset me, it was perhaps a justification for sending the fatherless and motherless boy away from the solitude and isolation of a gloomy home into the stir and life of a public school, where shyness, like so many other foolish weaknesses, is quickly rubbed off by contact with those intolerant pedagogues—companions of one's own age and rank. I was happy enough at Eton, in spite of the dreaded future that still loomed in the distance. I had forgotten the spectre of a possible wedding-breakfast and its accompanying horrors. I knew now that it was in my own hands to suffer or to avoid them. Meantime, my natural timidity still asserted itself in a way that was much deplored by my step-mother. I was an intelligent boy, and might have distinguished myself over my fellows, had I chosen; but the same morbid folly that had embittered my childhood now paralyzed my ambition, and prevented me trying for prizes in any department of study. Public speaking comes into play very much with candidates for honors at school, and the finest gold medal that was ever awarded for a Greek and Latin essay would not have tempted me, if I foresaw the necessity of reading the essay aloud before that redoubtable array of critics, my assembled masters and companions. I passed for an oddity, and so I was. My step-mother sighed over it in her calm, correct way; regretted I had not the honorable ambition to make a name for myself and conquer a position amongst my fellow-men, and so on. To this I modestly replied that I was satisfied with the name my fathers had transmitted to me, and which I hoped to carry honorably at least through life, if not proudly. Pride of birth was one of the earliest lessons she had endeavored to instil into my mind, and in this respect I did not prove as stubborn as in others. I remember saying, in reply to some remarks of hers as to the advisability of my distinguishing myself in some public career, “When a man has the good luck to be born a De Winton he is distinguished enough”; and I remember the smile of approval that accompanied her demure shake of the head.
I left Eton in course of time, and went to the university. The change from the now familiar world of school was accomplished with immense reluctance, and perhaps would never have been accomplished at all without the combined influence of my step-mother, my uncle, Admiral de Winton, and Sir Simon Harness, who was one of my guardians and my father's oldest friend. I soon grew to like my new life, and to make friends with a few of my new companions. I was still too shy to form friendships easily, or to be what is called popular. Everything however, went smoothly with me till I was a little over twenty, and then a circumstance occurred which woke up the old terrors, and showed too plainly that much of the puerile folly of childhood clung to me still. I am almost ashamed to write it at this lapse of time; but I shall have more grievous follies to confess by-and-by, so there is no use passing over this one. It arose out of a proposal to give a farewell dinner to a fellow who was one of our set and extremely popular. I chimed in heartily with the scheme the moment it was broached, but when one of my chums, out of pure mischief as I afterwards found out, suggested that we should one of us make a farewell speech, expressing [pg 599] the regret and so forth of the rest, and that I should be the speaker, I got savage, and was for not appearing at all at the dinner, unless they gave me a solemn promise that I should not be asked to open my lips, even to propose a toast. We were near quarrelling over it; the others were so amused at my anger and fright that they kept up the joke, and bullied me until I was in a downright passion. When it was over, and I had joined in the laugh against myself, my tormentor said, quite hap-hazard, and not with the least idea of rousing me again:
“I say, old boy, how will it be when you come of age? You'll be giving a grand blow-out at the Moat, of course, and we'll all drink to your health with three times three; but you will have to return thanks, you know, and address the tenantry, and that sort of thing. It will be awful fun to see you stammering and haw-hawing, and assuring us that the affecting occasion is really—aw—too much for you—aw—and so forth. When is it to be? About this time twelve-month, eh?”
I don't know what I said to him. I think I felt he was too great a brute to be spoken to, except in a language which it would not do for a De Winton to use. But could this be true? Was I making a fool's paradise to myself, while every day hurried me on to this dismal catastrophe?
I feigned a sudden call home on family business that required my presence, and started by the six a.m. train next morning for the Moat.
My step-mother was surprised to meet me on coming down to breakfast—surprised, not startled. She was not a woman to be startled.
“Madam,” I said, after greeting her ceremoniously, according to my step-filial habit, “have you any plan in view respecting the event of my majority?”
“You speak in enigmas, my dear Clide. Pray explain yourself,” replied Mrs. de Winton; and went on washing her hands in that deliberate way of hers that always exasperated me. Perhaps it was this trick of perpetually washing her hands that made me think her so uncommonly like the picture of Lady Macbeth hanging over the library mantel-piece.
“To be explicit, then,” I replied, “do you intend making a Coming of Age of it? Do you purpose setting the tenantry into fits making a fuss over me? In a word do you purpose calling up the seven devils commonly catted rejoicings and loyal demonstrations? Do you mean to do these things, madam?”
Whether she thought I had gone suddenly mad, or that, notwithstanding the early hour, I had been indulging too freely in convivial libations, I could not tell; but she decidedly thought I was laboring under some sort of cerebral inflammation. Suspending abruptly the ablutionary movement, she joined her hands coldly, and looking at me with a severe countenance, not devoid altogether of pity, “Clide, you surprise me,” she said. “I hoped that you had sufficient respect for yourself and for your ancestors to understand....”
“Madam,” I broke in, trembling with excitement, “I respect you and I respect my ancestors; but as to making a fool of myself for the gratification of their ante-diluvian crotchets, I won't do it. No; if every De Winton from the Flood down were to stalk out of his coffin and bully me, I won't.”
“Won't what?” demanded my [pg 600] step-mother, looking now rather alarmed.
“I won't have those seven devils let loose over the place,” I said defiantly; “and unless you pledge me your word of honor that there will not be anything of the sort, as sure as I'm a living De Winton I'll bolt from the country, and never set foot in it again!”
“You misapprehend our relative positions altogether, Clide,” resumed Mrs. de Winton. “When the time of your majority has arrived, you will, by the very fact of its advent, be master to deal with it as you choose, quite independent of my wishes. I should hope, however, that by that time you will have conceived a better notion of your duty to society in your own person, and to the traditions of the illustrious race from whom it is your privilege to descend, than you seem to possess at present. It has been from time immemorial the custom in the family to celebrate with pomp and festive gatherings the majority of the heir. I am at a loss to understand why this venerable custom should inspire you with such irrational fury; why you should anticipate the welcome that awaits every De Winton on his coming of age otherwise than with a sense of grateful and honorable pride.”
I had calmed down when I discovered that I was my own master in the matter. Otherwise I should not have listened so patiently to the end of her tirade. When it was over, I began to feel rather ashamed of myself. I had been making a storm in a butter-boat.
“If I have forgotten in the least degree the deference I owe you, madam,” I observed, twisting my wide-awake to give myself what the French call a countenance, “I apologize for it.”
“I trust you will learn to control yourself, in future, for your own sake,” observed Mrs. de Winton, washing her hands again. “Be assured of one thing: I shall take no steps towards the celebration of the event, which is looked forward to by the tenantry with very different feelings from yours, without having your consent. I would not expose them or you to such an exhibition as that I have just witnessed. But you have twelve months to wait, and to improve, I hope, before your coming of age makes it necessary to remind you what that circumstance involves.”
“If it involves a fuss, madam,” I said emphatically, and waxing wroth again, “once more, I won't have it. I'd rather never come of age!” And having delivered myself of this decided opinion, I wished her good-morning.
I came of age in due time, and fearing that, in spite of my commands to the contrary, the tenantry might get up some insane rejoicings and caterwaulings, I feigned illness and waited in London till the anniversary was a week old.
That Rubicon was no sooner safely passed than the other, the fearful one that had been the nightmare of my childhood, threatened to overtake me. I had so constantly announced at school my determination never to marry that my views on that subject were known to all who knew me, and the reputation of a woman-hater preceded me amongst my own people. Still, the Moat being a fine old place, with a clear rent-roll of fifteen thousand pounds a year, and I being an only son and in all other respects what dowagers call an “eligible young man,” the female mind of ——shire resented such a resolve on my part as premature [pg 601] and absurd, and set to work diligently to bring me to a better way of thinking. I pass over the history of that merciless campaign of match-making mothers and enterprising daughters. The very thought of it now is painful to me. Enough that I came out of it unscathed. After two years of comparative quiet—for I persistently refused to be lured to the sirens' caves in the neighborhood, and forced them to beard the lion in his den, which gave me no inconsiderable vantage-ground over the enemy—the fire slackened, and I was left in peace.
My step-mother did not attempt to coerce me; on the contrary, she commiserated my position, and more than once expressed her disapproval of the way in which, as she said, I was hunted down by all the marriageable womanhood of the county. She insisted on giving one ball when I came home, to introduce me to her own and my father's friends and such members of the family as I only knew by name or very slightly; but after that she subsided, and my life was as free from fuss as any life in this fussy world could be.
“Clide,” observed Mrs. de Winton one morning, as we sipped our tea over the breakfast-table, “do you think it quite impossible you should ever marry?”
“Well,” I said reflectively, “as far as a man can answer for himself, I should say quite impossible.”
“But how far is that?” observed my step-mother with a sceptical smile. “You have not yet been put to the test. You have not yet come across the woman who could persuade you that marriage is the Elysium of man here below. Supposing—I merely put it in the light of a remote supposition—that you should come across her some day...?”
“I should probably accept my fate as many a wiser man has done before me, and capitulate on reasonable terms—namely, that we should be executed at six o'clock in the morning, no wedding-dress, no bridemaids, no speechifying—no fuss, in fact, and nobody present but a beggar-woman and a policeman. Then, when we come home, no entertaining, giving and taking dinners, and that sort of fuss that comes like the farce after the tragedy. If I ever meet with a pretty girl willing to take me and the Moat on these conditions, then I will not answer for the consequences.”
One year after this conversation with my step-mother I met that pretty girl; the result was what I tacitly foretold it would be. I married her. It happened in this way: I was seized with a desire to travel, and, instead of beginning with the stereotyped grand tour, I determined to go first to America. I had a hunger for grand, wild scenery. The vast primeval forests of the far West, the awful grandeur of Niagara, drew me powerfully; so off I set, accompanied by a confidential servant named Stanton. Shyness went for something in the choice. I felt attracted towards the new young continent as by a sense of homelikeness and kindred. I was not disappointed. Everything I saw there was at once novel and familiar. I could converse with the people in my own language, and was thus spared the mortification of stuttering out my inquiries in dubious French or German, or trumpeting them through an interpreter, as must have been the case on the grand tour.
Niagara appalled and fascinated me. Day after day I stood contemplating the torrents of foam that surged up to meet the great sheet of water that flung itself in a majestic arch of hard green crystal down into the boiling, creamy gulf. I gazed and gazed till sight was dim and sense was lost in a torpor of exquisite delight—neither trance nor vision, but a state that hovered between both. The thunder of the rushing waters, the sparkling of the prism that danced and flashed and faded with the changing lights, reflecting every tint in the sunset, until the cataract blazed before my dazzled eyes like a thousand rainbows melted into one, then fainted and died, leaving a uniform sheen of emerald in its place—all this was like some magnificent apotheosis that kept me spell-bound, fascinated, entranced. I had come intending to remain three days; but a week slipped away and found me still at Niagara. At last I determined to break the spell. I must tear myself from the spectacle before it overmastered my reason; for there were moments when, after standing for hours looking down into the seething abyss of foam, I felt as if an invisible chord were drawing me on and on, nearer and nearer, luring me in a dreamy way towards the water. Then I would rouse myself and rush away; but it would not do to go on playing with a danger that was sweet and potent as a magician's spell. I came out one morning to take my last look. It was just after sunrise. The falls had never looked so beautiful, the booming of the water had never sounded so solemn, the light had never evolved such a fairy tracery of jewelled glory on the silvery vapor and the green crystal. The effect was overpowering. For one moment it seemed to me that I heard the voice of Jehovah speaking in the roar of many waters; that I stood within the sanctuary, separated by an impenetrable and mysterious wall of thunder from the outer, visible world. A spontaneous and almost unconscious impulse made me uncover myself and stand bareheaded, as in the presence of the Unseen and Omnipresent. How long I stood thus I cannot say; I know that I was roused from my revery by a sound that struck in upon my dreamy deafness with strange and thrilling effect. It was the singing of a human voice; the words were inarticulate, but I knew the music well. It was a wild, weird Highland melody; the rhythm was barely distinguishable, as the notes rose and fell through the roar and boom of the waterfall, sounding nevertheless preternaturally clear and sweet, like the wail of a spirit or some sweet sea-bird's cry. What was it? Some Undine risen from the spray, and pouring out her lament to the wave? I dared not look round, so fearful was I to banish the songster. When the voice ceased, I turned my head and looked. Was I dreaming, or was it indeed a spirit that I beheld? I doubted at first. But as I kept my eyes steadily fixed on the figure, it moved towards me, and I knew that it was neither sprite nor shadow, but a woman, a young girl rather—for she seemed barely emerged from childhood to maidenhood—more beautiful than any picture I had ever seen or that my imagination had ever painted. She was small, below the middle height. Her hair fell in profuse ringlets or coils—it seemed an accidental arrangement—down her back; it was black and glossy as [pg 603] jet. Her eyes were lustrous and dark as a gazelle's; her complexion almost colorless. She was dressed in dark green, a loose, unconventional sort of garment that draped her something after the fashion of a Roman stola; her straw hat had either fallen off or she had taken it off, and held it dangling from her arm; her hands were clasped, and her eyes fixed on the fall, as it plunged from the rocky ledge down, down into the eternity of waters.
She had come within a few yards of me before she seemed conscious of my presence—of anything but the majestic spectacle that was riveting her whole soul through her eyes. She walked on like a somnambulist. A sudden dread seized me. Was she asleep, or was she experiencing in its uttermost degree the terrible attraction that I had felt more than once, and walking on unconsciously to death? I advanced a few steps, so as to stand in her path as she drew near. The effect was instantaneous. She started as if some one had struck her. I thought she would have fallen, and rushed to prevent it by stretching out my arm. The movement apparently recalled her to the sense of where she was. With a slight acknowledgment of my courtesy, she turned quickly away, and hurried on out of sight. I followed her, and it was with an unreasonable thrill of delight that I saw her enter the hotel where I was staying. Who was this siren, or how did one so young and so beautiful come to be alone in this lonely place? Before the day was over I met her again. Chance brought us together once more in the same spot. This time she was not alone. An elderly man, whom she addressed as uncle, accompanied her. He was not prepossessing in his appearance, and I doubt whether I should have overcome my natural shyness so far as to address him, if he had not himself broken the ice by asking me if I had ventured to walk under the fall, and whether the experience was worth the risk. I assured him that it amply compensated for any imaginary danger that might exist, and volunteered to accompany him if he decided on trying it. This brought us into communication, if not into sympathy. I did not like him, consequently he did not like me. We both felt this instinctively, no doubt; there was an opposing element of some sort between us that made friendship impossible, though it did not prevent that kind of superficial intimacy which is almost inevitable amongst people of the same country who find themselves thrown close together under the same roof in a foreign land. He was Scotch, as I knew at once by his name, Prendergast, and by his accent. He was a thin, medium-sized man, and could not have been more than forty, though his silver hair gave him a prematurely old look, which was perhaps increased by a settled expression of ill-temper about the mouth, arising, so his niece affectionately alleged, from chronic tooth-ache. He seemed indeed a martyr to that trying complaint, and wore his head tied up in a woollen comforter, which must have been miserably uncomfortable; for the days were hot and the nights as balmy as June. I fancied that his beautiful niece disliked him, or at least feared him considerably more than she loved him. I noticed how the merry, bright little creature started at the sound of his voice when he called to her sharply, and how she quailed when his cold, [pg 604] hard eye lighted on her in the midst of one of her childish peals of laughter, checking it as by a cold bath. It struck me even more than once that she cast a glance towards me, as if claiming my protection—against whom or what I could not imagine; but I was resolved to ascertain, and, if my assistance or sympathy could avail her, to let her have them at any cost. We happened to be alone on the third day after our first meeting. Isabel—so I heard Mr. Prendergast call her—was apparently as pleased at the opportunity as I was. She talked to me with the frank, artless abandon of a child; and, without in the least intending it, she told me enough of her antecedents and position to satisfy me that I was right in supposing her not very happy with her uncle. She told me he was her guardian, and had brought her up since she was quite a child, her parents having died when she was five years old. Her mother was his sister; her father's name was Cameron. He held a large tract of land in Canada, and had a great deal of money—“heaps of money,” was her childish estimate of it—in banks and things in England; and she, being the only child, was heiress to all this wealth. Mr. Prendergast had had the management of it up to the present, and continued to treat her as an infant, though she was now of age, she said. He had by nature a tyrannical temper, and it was increased and rendered irritable and fierce by years of tooth-ache. He had been away in hot climates to seek relief for his exasperated nerves, and it was only on her account that he had returned to England of late. He had come out to America to look after her property, and also for the benefit of her health, which had required change and a long sea-voyage. I felt grateful to him for this at least, as the sacrifice had evidently been crowned with success. Miss Cameron looked the very picture of health, and she said the voyage had made her stronger than she had ever been in her life. It had, however, proved very disastrous to Mr. Prendergast, whose teeth had not given him a day's rest since they left England; “and of course this makes him very cross,” his niece observed deprecatingly, with a little sigh.
After this conversation we became perfectly at ease with each other, and tacitly watched for opportunities of renewing it. I need not say that I relinquished my plan of leaving the falls, which day after day grew more beautiful, more irresistibly attractive, to me. A week passed in a dreamy state of blissfulness, and then a crisis came. Mr. Prendergast, who had been howling all night in the room next to me with the tooth-ache, set off after breakfast, in spite of his swelled face, with a party that were being taken to walk under the arch of the fall. He wound a quarter of a mile of Shetland shawls round his head, and, thus fortified, donned the leathern costume of the occasion, and down he went. Everything went well enough until he was emerging from the tremendous roar that had covered him in like a curtain, and was setting his foot on dry land above, when he was seized with a rush of blood to the head, and fell insensible to the ground. He was carried to his room, and lay there dangerously ill for several days. Isabel was not allowed to see him. The doctor enjoined absolute quiet as of the first necessity; no one entered the sick-room but the medical man and a nurse whom he sent for to the nearest town. This catastrophe naturally threw Miss Cameron [pg 605] and me a good deal together. We wandered out to admire the falls by sunrise; we were to be seen there again at sunset, when the clouds rolled in golden cascades over the western sky, and made a spectacle of rival glory above and beyond the everlasting glory of Niagara. What could come of all this but what came of it? We loved each other, and we confessed it. It was a wild act on my part. I knew nothing of Isabel's family and antecedents but what she had accidentally told me; but to a man in love, first love, what more was wanted? She bore a name that was ancient as my own. As to her fortune, I cared nothing for that. She told me it was already legally in her own power; that she was twenty-one. I believed this, since she said it, but it required a strong effort of faith to credit that beaming young face with more than seventeen years in this cold world. Those were blissful days while we walked arm-in-arm through the yellowing forest, and alongside the river beyond the falls, cooing our young loves to one another, as foolish and as tender as any two Babes in the Wood. But Mr. Prendergast was getting well now, and called Isabel constantly to his side, and sternly catechised her as to what she did when she left him. He was to be down-stairs to-morrow, and they were to leave Niagara in a few days, and sail for England by the next boat that left Quebec. She whispered this to me with white lips one morning, and then rushed up-stairs to answer the call of the dragon, who was shouting to her from his open window. I waited till she came down again, and then drew her out into a favorite spot of ours at a little distance from the house.
“Isabel,” I said, “does your uncle know that we love each other?”
“Oh! no, no; he would kill me if he knew it,” she replied, speaking in a whisper, and looking up at me with an expression of terror and trust that nerved me to anything.
“What, then, are we to do? Shall I speak to him at once?” I asked.
“There is no use speaking to him; he will never let me marry you, Clide. Forgive me for making you unhappy,” she said, clasping her hands on my arm, while the big tears ran down her face. “I never ought to have let you care for me. I never ought to have let myself love you, but I could not help it; I could not help it.”
Her head fell on my shoulder, and the sobs shook the frail little figure that leaned against me with the artless confidence of a child.
“You shall marry me, darling,” I cried; “no uncle that ever lived shall separate us. I swear it! We shall be married before we leave this. Trust to me to do everything; we will arrange it all before that old Turk knows or suspects anything. Promise only to trust to me entirely and to do as I ask you. Promise me, Isabel.”
She promised, placing her hand confidingly in mine.
Next morning, soon after sunrise, while Mr. Prendergast was still asleep, we two stole out to the little church where a few stray worshippers sang their hymns to the music of the waterfall, and were married by the old clergyman of the place. My man, Stanton, and the sexton were the only witnesses. It was indeed a wedding after my own heart, all done as quietly as if marrying a wife were as much an every-day accident in life as taking a walk before breakfast. Isabel was, if possible, more delighted with the mode of proceeding than [pg 606] I was. I forget how she came to make the avowal, but I know it was quite spontaneous, that she hated the fuss and paraphernalia of a wedding in England as she hated a thunder-storm; and that if she had been given her choice, she would infinitely have preferred this quiet little marriage of ours to the most magnificent display that could have been got up for her in Scotland. We were as happy as two children as we walked home together. But then came the business of telling Mr. Prendergast. Isabel declared she would rather die than enter his presence now alone; he would read her rebellious act on her face, and he would kill her. He was capable of anything when he was roused. I was not going to risk my treasure within his reach. I sat down and wrote a respectful letter, informing him that I had become the husband of his niece, and requesting his forgiveness for what might seem a violation of good faith, but which his own conscience would, I felt sure, find an excuse for in my behalf. I stated my fortune and position more accurately than I had been able to do to Isabel, who put her hand to my mouth when I attempted to speak of settlements and so forth, saying she wanted to hear nothing about my money. I now begged of Mr. Prendergast to let me know what his wishes were concerning his niece's fortune, and pledged myself beforehand to conform to them, and prove by my conduct in this respect that money was the last consideration that had actuated me in marrying an heiress. In answer to this I received a curt line informing me that I had behaved like a scoundrel, and that, as a gentleman, Mr. Prendergast declined to meet me, and that I had better take myself off with my wife before chance threw me in his way again. Isabel was overjoyed at this unexpected issue. I was stung by the man's insolence and his unjust accusations, but, on the whole, it was the easiest way of getting rid of him and securing myself and Isabel from his brutal temper and ungovernable violence.
We left Niagara that day. I wrote to my step-mother, acquainting her that I was a married man, and announcing the day she might expect to see us at the Moat. I wrote for places in the next steamer, and we were fortunate enough to find two vacant ones at nearly the last moment in a splendid vessel that sailed from New York. It had occurred to me that before leaving America it would have been prudent and rational to make some inquiries concerning the landed property which my wife held in Canada; but as she did not propose this, I feared it might strike her unfavorably if I did, and suggest that her uncle's insulting insinuations were not as unfounded as I wished her to believe. I therefore abandoned the idea, and we left the United States without my asking a single question on the subject.
The voyage homeward was delightful. Isabel formed plans for the future that sounded like songs from Arcadia, and drew a picture of our life at the Moat that looked like a vision of the Elysian fields. We stopped a week in London to extemporize a trousseau and purchase some trinkets, and then I took my wife to her Welsh home. My step-mother gave her a gracious, if not a hearty, welcome. It was a very quiet home-coming; nothing, indeed, could have been tamer. There were no tenantry to meet us, no rejoicings either in the village or [pg 607] at the house. I thought this strange, though it was strictly in accordance with the desires I had always expressed on the subject to my step-mother. Isabel, however, was entirely satisfied, and confessed to me that she had been in a nervous flutter all the way home, fearing to find some horror in the shape of a deputation from the tenants or something awaiting us at our journey's end.
A few days after our arrival, when I came down to breakfast alone, my step-mother said to me, “Clide, it is time that you thought a little of business now. I think you told me that your wife's fortune is in her own right; this is very desirable to begin with, but of course it cannot remain so. Your rights as a husband must be properly protected.”
“My wife's affection and my confidence in her are the only security I require on that, madam,” I replied stiffly.
“The sentiment does honor to you both,” observed Mrs. de Winton, with an undertone of sarcasm that did not escape me; “but you do not expect Admiral de Winton or Sir Simon Harness to be satisfied with such a sentimental guarantee.”
“I understand you, and I respect your motives,” was my cold rejoinder; “but as I am not responsible to any one but myself for the good or bad management of myself and my property, I do not recognize any one's right, trustee or relation, to interfere with me, and still less to interfere with my wife.”
“Who talks of interfering with your wife? You tell me she is an heiress with forty thousand pounds in the Funds and an estate in Canada. Your father's widow and your late guardian and trustee have certainly a right to ask the whereabouts of the money and the land. Admitting that your wife be as devoted and as disinterested as you believe, is she entirely her own mistress? This tyrannical old uncle who has kept her in such bondage—how far did he or does he hold control over her fortune? For her sake as much as for your own you should put yourself in possession of these facts.”
This view of the case had not occurred to me. I saw the justice of it, and frankly said so.
“Isabel will put no obstacle in the way of a just and prudent arrangement; I am quite sure of that,” I said emphatically. “My only fear is that she should see in this horrid investigation a desire on my part to count my prize, and perhaps suspect me of having had a base, ulterior motive in marrying her; and rather than wrong myself or wound her by such a suspicion, I would sooner never see a penny of her money or an acre of her land.”
“And does your wife share these sentiments? Is she quite as indifferent about the matter as you are?” inquired my step-mother.
“Every bit!” I answered vehemently.
“Did she tell you so?”
“Do you suppose I would ask her?”
“Ridiculous boy!” sneered my step-mother. “But taking for granted that just at present she does share your juvenile folly and poetical want of common sense, how long will it last, do you think? A bride in her honeymoon is a very different being from a wife of a few years' standing. She knows nothing of the value of money now; but when she finds herself the mother of a family, with daughters growing [pg 608] up to be married and portioned, she will awake to the value of it in a way that will astonish you. And when a few years hence she asks you for an account of her own splendid fortune, what answer will you make to her? You were too delicate to hurt her feelings by any inquiries about so insignificant a matter, so you left it to her uncle to see to it!”
“I said I was prepared to do what was necessary to protect her interests,” I replied. “I will speak to her on the subject this afternoon. What am I to do next?”
“Write to Sir Simon Harness, and beg him to fix a day to come down here; and when he has done so, you will write to the family lawyer, and request him to be here to meet him. Of course you will write to Admiral de Winton, as your father's executor and your nearest relative now.”
“What a confounded fuss it will be!” I exclaimed impatiently, and, kicking over a footstool, I started up and began to walk up and down the room. “I wish I had married a milkmaid!”
“Don't talk like a fool, Clide!” said my step-mother. “I do believe your pretended delicacy and fear of hurting Isabel's feelings are nothing but a cloak to cover your dread of a fuss!”
I was going to protest, but the door opened, and Isabel walked in.
She looked so beautiful in her pink cashmere drapery, breaking into the brown old wainscoted room like a sunbeam, that even my step-mother was surprised into an involuntary tribute of admiration; and when my wife, coming up to her in that pretty, kitten-like way that was so bewitching, stooped down to be kissed, my step-mother responded quite warmly, and actually put up her hand to caress the sunny face after she had kissed it.
I felt so proud of my lovely Isabel, and so grateful to my step-mother for this unfeigned recognition of her loveliness, that I was seized with a strong impulse to embrace them both on the spot. I restrained it, however, and we sat down to breakfast; my wife, as mistress of the house, presiding over the cups and saucers.
“Clide,” began my step-mother (she prefaced every remark by my Christian name), as soon as Isabel had provided us respectively with tea and coffee, “what are we going to do to make Mrs. de Winton welcome amongst us? Now, don't answer me with your usual lazy outcry about fuss. My dear,” she said, turning to Isabel, “you will have a great deal to do in the way of reforming him; and if you succeed, it will be little short of a miracle.”
“Isabel will find out my vices soon enough, without your enlightening her beforehand,” I protested. “It's not fair to take away a man's character without giving him a chance of redeeming it.”
“Then begin and redeem it in time,” said my step-mother. “Here is a good opportunity. Have some people down from London to put the house in order, and then give a series of proper entertainments to introduce your wife to her new family and friends.”
“Oh! please ...” cried Isabel, pursing up her rosebud of a mouth, and joining her hands with a delicious little pantomime of fright.
“What! are you as silly as himself? Or has he spoilt you already?”
“I was ready spoilt for him, dear Mrs. de Winton. I hate being introduced; and as to refurnishing anything, I wouldn't have it for the [pg 609] world. I adore old furniture!” declared Isabel.
“Old furniture is one thing, and shabby furniture is another,” observed my step-mother, resuming the chronic rigidity of manner which Isabel's beauty and sweetness had thawed for a moment. “If Clide had done me the honor of confiding his intentions to me in time, I certainly would have taken upon myself to make the house decently clean to receive you. I had for some time past urged on him the necessity of getting new carpets and curtains; it was not surprising he shrank from the annoyance of a few days' hammering merely to make it habitable for me, but I fancied for his wife he might have undergone as much.”
“I shall be delighted to hear the hammers going for a month, if Isabel likes it,” I replied evasively.
“But I don't like it; I hate it, Clide!” exclaimed my wife passionately.
“Well, then, you sha'n't have it, my darling,” I said. My step-mother sat back in her chair and washed her hands. She said nothing, but this was sufficiently suggestive.
“Have you announced your marriage to Sir Simon Harness?” she resumed after a pause.
“Not yet. I mean to write to him to-day.”
“Who is Sir Simon Harness?” inquired Isabel.
“He was my father's particular friend and the trustee during my minority,” I explained.
“You had better ask him to come down here for a few days to make your wife's acquaintance,” suggested Mrs. de Winton.
“No, he sha'n't!” broke in the angel in pink. “I don't want to make his acquaintance. He's a mean, disagreeable old man. Trustees always are. I hate them!”
I thought this charmingly innocent and childlike, though, it must be confessed, she put more vehemence into her manner than the case warranted; but remembering the type of trustee on which she had built her opinion of the class, I could not resent her prejudice against my old friends. My step-mother took a less indulgent view of the sortie. Seeing me cast a smile of tender indulgence on the culprit, she looked at me very sternly.
“Do you mean to requite years of faithful kindness and interest in your concerns by such a gross breach of respect and common courtesy as not to invite Sir Simon Harness to your house on such an occasion as this?” she demanded.
“Isabel is mistress of her own house. I cannot insist upon her receiving any one against her will,” I replied; “but when I have explained to her what kind of man Sir Simon is, I think she will consent to make his acquaintance.”
Isabel peeped at me from behind the urn, and made a face indicative of anything but consent.
Luckily, my step-mother did not see the little by-play, and, taking her silence for acquiescence, she said, addressing me:
“And Admiral de Winton—of course you mean to ask him down?”
“Is that another trustee?” asked Isabel.
“Not exactly, though he often acted with Sir Simon in my affairs, being next of kin,” I said. “He was my father's executor.”
“Executor! Why, that's worse than a trustee! I won't have him come here, Clide! You're going to fill the house with horrid old men who will worry me to death. I know they will. But I won't submit to it!”
She pushed away her cup with a sudden gesture that made the china rattle, and, flushing up scarlet, walked away from the table, and flung herself into a chair near the fire. If she had flung the tea-pot at my head, I could not have been more taken aback. It was impossible to deny that the burst of temper was very becoming to her complexion, but ... I was conscious of a very distinct sense of disappointment. Yes, disappointment; there was no other word for it. As to my step-mother, she looked from me to my wife, and from my wife to me. Isabel, meantime, sat trembling and excited, her eyes sparkling, her face glowing like an angry rose.
“Dearest....” I began, “really....”
“Oh! don't,” she shrieked, and burst into a torrent of tears.
Mrs. de Winton, prompted either by delicacy or by disgust, got up and left the room, leaving me to conjure as best I could the storm that had suddenly broken out in my conjugal paradise. I was utterly at a loss to understand Isabel. She said she was inconsolable at having vexed me, but to all my entreaties and arguments would answer nothing except that she was frightened at strangers, and above all at horrid old men; and that if I loved her, I was not to introduce her to anybody, but to let us live all our lives alone in the dear old Moat. She wanted no society but mine, and surely, if I loved her, I ought not to want any but hers! This was irresistible logic to my heart; but my reason, being less infatuated, perversely refused to abide by it. There was no use at this crisis in broaching prudential arrangements as an excuse for inviting down my two friends. Such an insinuation would only have added fuel to the fire. Yet the new aspect in which my heiress-wife was revealing herself made it clear that some such measures as my step-mother had suggested were absolutely necessary to protect Isabel against her own folly and deplorable ignorance of life.
The storm of sobs and tears subsided by degrees. Isabel declared she was ready to make any sacrifice of her own feelings to mine; that if I liked to invite all the trustees in Lincoln's Inn and Chancery Lane down to the Moat, she would do her best to receive them properly, so that I should not be ashamed of my wife; but of course there was an end to her happiness. Arcadia was gone. All her dreams of romantic bliss had vanished into thin air. She was after all to be nothing more than a humdrum wife with a house to look after and guests to entertain.
“O Clide, Clide! is this what you promised me?” she cried, her voice still broken with sobs. “Is this my dream? or was it only a dream, nothing but the baseless fabric of a vision?”
She clasped her hands, and, throwing back her head, fixed her eyes on the ceiling, as if the vision were disappearing in that direction, and she were straining for a last glimpse of it.
I was so spell-bound by the extraordinary beauty that borrowed a new charm from her emotions and from the despairing tenderness of her voice and manner that I entirely lost sight of every other point in the picture. In fact, I lost my head. I was after all no more than a man, and the wisest of us is but a fool in the hands of a woman. What could I do but what I did do? Fall upon my knees and swear that she should have Arcadia back again, [pg 611] adjure her to build up a new vision, and, if she loved me, never to talk about baseless fabrics and such like again; and as to her sinking down into a humdrum wife, it was preposterous nonsense. She could never be anything but an archangel to me, and that.... But why do I bear witness in this wanton way to my own folly? We made up our quarrel, as all such quarrels are intended to be made up. Isabel went to her room, and I went round to the stables. I had no fancy for meeting my step-mother just now, and I had a vague sense of something having gone wrong with me which a gallop over the downs would set right.
It was a cold February morning—bitterly cold, but bright and bracing, just the sort of day to enjoy a ride across country; so as soon as I was out of the park I set spurs to my horse and galloped away, taking flying leaps over everything, hurdle, and ditch, and brook, as if the hounds were ahead, and my life staked on being in at the death. After five miles of this going-in-for-the-Derby pace I drew rein at the foot of a hill, and walked my horse to the top. The hard riding had made him so hot that his flanks smoked like a steam-engine, and sent up clouds of vapor that enveloped me in a tepid bath; but I did not feel that the violent exercise had produced any effect on myself. I was not clear as to the nature of the effect I had expected, and still less could I analyze the cause that demanded it. Something was wrong somewhere. I looked about me vacantly, persistently, as men do when they feel they ought to look within themselves for the object of their search, and dare not.
I cast my eyes to the sky. It was as blue as liquid sapphire, and as cloudless. But it said nothing to me. The river winding round the foot of the wooded hill was ice-bound and silent as death. The trees stood up naked and grim against the blue, like skeleton giants, and whispered nothing. There was no rustle of leafy tongues. They were dead and gone down into the dumb sod. There was no ripple of tiny cascades; no buzzing of insects holding council in the grass that grew high and free on the hill-side; no song amongst the birds. Nothing spoke to me. Everything was dumb. Everything was cold. Everything was a disappointment. I began to whistle. The sound of my own voice echoed merrily through the wood, but it woke no responsive note from linnet or blackbird or robin. Silence everywhere.
“What can it mean?” I said aloud, the apostrophe not being addressed to the birds that could sing, and would not sing, but to my own perplexity concerning the scene at the breakfast-table. There was something out of all reason in the passionate energy Isabel had displayed. Excuse it as my heart and my vanity would on the ground of a jealous love that shrank from any intrusion on our solitude capable of distracting my thoughts from her, which she chiefly urged as her motive of dislike to my two friends' visit, I could not see it in a satisfactory light. Again, it was simply preposterous that a girl of one-and-twenty, who had seen even as little of the world as Isabel had, could be so morbidly shy as to cry herself into hysterics at the mere idea of being introduced to two old gentlemen in her own house. There was some motive in the background which it behooved me for my own peace of mind to discover.
Removed from the magnetic influence of her beauty, and her distress, and her pretty, endearing ways, I was able to look back dispassionately at the morning's entertainment; and the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. The undisciplined outburst of temper which revealed to me the painful fact that Socrates was henceforth to be my model, and patience under an inevitable evil the sustained effort of my life, was in itself no small matter for regret. But this, though the most tangible of my cares, was not the one that chiefly possessed me. No; I could have signed away every penny of my wife's fortune on the spot to feel sure that it had been a genuine outbreak of mere temper; but it was borne in on me, not by circumstantial, but by strong internal evidence that she was actuated by fear. Fear of whom? Of what? What could her young life have done, or suffered, or known, that she should be afraid? Her uncle had been very tyrannical, and was now very much incensed with her on account of her marriage. But she had nothing to fear from him now. He might storm and fume, but she was out of his reach; he could not hurt her. Besides, she had not hinted at any fear of malice or vengeance on his part as a reason for shunning the society or acquaintance of other men. Who or what was she afraid of? “She hated fuss, and I promised her this and that and the other.”
Nonsense! Two old friends of my father's sleeping a night or two in the house did not constitute a fuss. “She hated trustees; they were always....” Stop! No; I'm a fool and a brute to wrong the child by such a thought. Besides, I never hinted, even indirectly, at anything like inquiries and settlements. I avoided the subject scrupulously. No; there could be nothing in that.
The fact is, the dear child is in love with me, and wants to play at Romeo and Juliet for the rest of her life; and here am I, like a born idiot, making a mountain out of a mole-hill, instead of blessing my stars for my luck. This, by a natural train of thought, led me to picture her standing on the balcony by moonlight, and myself in the garden below looking up and worshipping.
“What a distracting Juliet she would have made!” I exclaimed aloud, carried away by my imagination. Then—I can't for the life of me tell why—but I remembered how she had looked a while ago with her hands clasped and her head thrown back, and how she had suddenly checked her passionate complaint to assume the rapt attitude, the pose of picturesque despair, and how very melodramatic the effect had been. If it had not been the purest nature, it would have been the most finished piece of acting that ever drew down the house to a Siddons or a Kemble. But it was pure nature. Then why do I start, and why does my heart begin to thump against my coat in this inexplicable way? Pshaw! Because I am a fool. I set spurs to my horse, and galloped home, whistling defiantly all the way.
My wife was watching for me, Juliet fashion, from the window of her turret chamber, and, as soon as she caught sight of my horse entering the park, flew down to meet me in the hall.
“Why did you stay away so long, Clide? Mrs. de Winton ‘sent me her compliments to know if I wouldn't like to go and see the [pg 613] dairy’; but I didn't like. I was afraid it was just an excuse to get me all to herself and scold me. I knew I was naughty this morning, and you may scold me as much as you like; but I won't be scolded by anybody else.” And nestling up to me in her childlike way, Isabel laid her cheek on my shoulder, and looked up at me with two eyes that would have melted a judge and won from any twelve men in England an unhesitating verdict of—innocent as a babe unborn. Linking her arm in mine, and whispering all the way as if we were a pair of lovers stealing a clandestine interview, she carried me off to her boudoir. Then, when we were safe in the room, she turned the key in the door, and began to skip and dance about like an emancipated kitten, giving me chase round the room, clapping hands and laughing and singing in frantic merriment. We kept up this impromptu game of puss-in-the-corner till she was fairly tired out and allowed herself to be taken prisoner and held in durance vile on my knee, while she panted for breath, and shook back her hair, that had slipped from its imprisoning pins, and fell in long, black ripples down her shoulders. Thinking the moment opportune, “Now, my darling,” I said, “let us have a quiet little talk together. How are we to make it straight with the dowager? It won't do to have her suspect my dear little dove of not being as good and as sweet-tempered as I know her to be, and I'm afraid that silly pout at breakfast has put you in a false light with her.”
Isabel said nothing for a moment, but went on shaking her curls.
“Do you wish me to go and beg her pardon?” she said at last. “I will, if you like, Clide.”
“My angel! no. I doubt the wisdom of that,” I replied, laughing at the naïveté of the proposal. “It would be better if we took some more practical means of pacifying her. Suppose we give in about asking down these two old friends of mine?”
“Very well. I will do anything you like, Clide,” she answered indifferently, rolling a curl on her two fingers, and not looking up at me.
“The admiral is the jolliest old tar in the world,” I continued, “and will never talk a word of politics or business, or anything you don't care about; and as to Sir Simon, my only fear is that you will fall in love with him, and some fine morning elope after him, or with him if he stays long enough. He's the most unmerciful lady-killer in the three kingdoms.”
“Is he?”
This was said in a sort of absent way, as if she had been only listening with one ear to what I was saying; all her thoughts were intent on the curling operation, that was again recommenced and completed for the tenth time.
“Then shall I tell Mrs. de Winton that we will ask them both for Wednesday—till Saturday, say? If you like them, it s very easy to renew the invitation.”
“Of course,” assented Isabel, and began a fresh curl.
“How proud I shall be introducing my wife!” I said, pushing back the heavy veil of hair that partly hid her face from me.
She shook it down again, not roughly, but there was a touch of impatience in the movement that surprised me. I thought it best, however, not to seem to notice it. Suddenly she started from my knee, flew to the piano—I had ordered a Cottage Pleyel for her private use—and [pg 614] broke out into a gush of song that made the air literally thrill with melody. Passionate, tender, angry, and entreating by turns, her voice poured out the florid Italian music with the full-throated carol of a thrush. Singing was as natural to her as speaking. In fact, she appeared to find it an easier medium of emotion, whether of pain or pleasure, than speech; and when she was excited, her first impulse was to break out in thrills and cadences just as a bird might do. Once started, she could go on for ever. I sat a full hour this morning listening to her running through a repertoire of varied power and beauty. Schubert, Rossini, Beethoven, Verdi—she was at home in every school, and her rich soprano voice adapted itself to each as if that one had been her sole and special study. But while I sat there drinking in the intense delight, my mind divided between it and the beauty of her face, some sudden expression of the latter every now and then startled me. The wonderful mobility of her features reflected every changing emotion of the music with a responsive fidelity which it is impossible to describe. I suppose it was the absence of the artistic instinct in me, combined with a total ignorance of the emotional law of music, that made this appear to me unnatural, and filled me with a sudden and painful misgiving as to the genuine truthfulness of Isabel's nature. Was it possible to feign so perfectly, and to be at the same time thoroughly truthful?
But I was cut short in my perplexing reflections by the luncheon-bell, that sounded a vigorous carillon at the foot of the stairs leading up to my wife's boudoir. She shut the piano quickly, and, passing her arm through mine, marshalled me down to the dining-room, humming the “Valse de Venzano” all the way.
I observed casually during lunch that we had fixed on Wednesday to have Sir Simon and the admiral down to the Moat. Mrs. de Winton slowly elevated her eyebrows, but gave no articulate indication of surprise.
I did not look at Isabel while I made this announcement, but when, a moment after, I stole a glance at her, she was as pale as the table-cloth. Instantaneously I grew a shade paler. I felt I did. My heart stood still. What in the name of wonder was behind this dislike of hers to see these two men? There was a mystery somewhere. She was afraid of somebody or something. At any and every cost I must find it out.
To Be Continued.
Religion And State In Our Republic.
The great questions which concern the relation of the state to the church have already been partially treated of in this magazine. The vast importance of the subject, however, demands that we should return to it once more, and will serve as a sufficient excuse if we even repeat many things which have already been said in previous articles. The relation which the state ought to have to the church according to sound principles of philosophy, the relation which it is intended to have according to the principles of the Constitution of this republic, the relation which it ought to have according to the principles of the canon law and theology of the Catholic Church, and the bearing of these various questions severally toward each other, both in their theoretical and practical import, make up together a complex topic which is under a perpetual and ardent discussion, and which is felt by all parties to involve momentous issues. We have no unwillingness to express fully and unreservedly all our convictions and opinions upon any of the several parts of this question. It is undoubtedly much desired by many who are hostile to the Catholic religion or suspicious of it, on account of its bearing upon the science of politics, that competent persons should make such full explanations of the real and genuine principles by which all sound and thoroughly-instructed Catholics of the present time in our own country, as well as elsewhere, are and will be guided. We see no reason why their desire should not be gratified, but, on the contrary, every motive and reason worthy of having any weight with a sincere and courageous advocate of the Catholic cause, why the discussion should be brought as speedily and directly as possible upon the merits of the case fully exposed.
The leaders of the Catholic body, and, in due measure, the great body itself, are credited by many persons with certain views and intentions concerning the institutions, laws, and political destinies of this republic which necessarily cause them to regard the increase of our numbers and the extension of our influence in the nation with alarm. Such persons would like to know what we would really undertake to do with this republic, if we had the power to do what we pleased. We are willing to let them know precisely what our opinion about the matter is, and to use our best endeavors to explain what those principles of the Catholic Church are which must form the conviction of every one of her devoted and instructed members upon the right and just method of applying the divine law to the various conditions in which a state may exist; from that in which the church is at her lowest point of depression, to that in which she is at the summit of her influence. In our own case, as citizens of the United States, the manner in which Catholic principles require us to act, as voters, judges, legislators, with that degree of influence we now have, and in which the same [pg 616] principles would require us to act if we were equal or superior in number and influence to non-Catholics, if we were in the majority, or if we were practically the whole people, is a topic upon which we think it desirable that all should be enlightened, as well those who are members of the church as those who are aliens from her fold. Stated in an abstract form, the question is, What is the ideal Christian state when actualized in its perfection, and what is the difference between that state and the one which is the best practically in our real circumstances?
In discussing this theme we must beg the indulgence of our readers if we begin at a considerable apparent distance from the practical point we intend to come at eventually. We have to lay down some general principles about government, and to make some explanations about the American Constitution, before we can grapple with the main difficulty. In our opinion, many maxims usually taken for granted by speakers, writers, and by their blind followers, in treating of political constitutions, and specially of our own, are sheer assumptions which will not bear examination. Such are, that in general, the spiritual and temporal orders are in their nature and ought to be kept separate from each other, and are really separated in our own political constitution. Those sophistical maxims have been combated by Dr. Brownson so frequently and victoriously that we can scarcely hope to produce any new arguments or more lucid expositions to convince those whom he has not been able to satisfy. Sometimes, however, a sound from an unexpected quarter startles the attention which has remained sluggishly insensible to a louder and more continuous booming to which it has been accustomed for a long time. We trust, therefore, that the authority of a great foreign writer, who is a Protestant withal, and one of the most celebrated historians of the age, will claim some little deference from those who may refuse it to any one of ourselves. And we accordingly resort to Prof. Leo, of Halle, rather than to any Catholic author, for an exposition of the general relation of the state to the church, and of the particular form of that relationship in the United States.
In the introduction to his great work, Lehrbuch der Universalgeschichte, Leo develops with masterly force of reasoning the fundamental principle upon which his entire work is constructed, and which is, in truth, the architectonic law of the history of the human race. The history of mankind is the evolution in successive and progressive stages of the grand plan of God to conduct the human race to its prefixed supernatural end of beatitude in God through the incarnation of the Word. The organization of the various portions of the human race in distinct nations, with their laws, political institutions, and governments, is subordinated to this end, and therefore subordinated to that higher and more universal organization in which all are included, and which dominates over all—the church. The nations which have been broken off from the church which God established from the foundation of the world for all mankind, have been broken off through sin, revolt against God, defection from the movement of the human race on the line marked out by the Creator towards its end and destiny. Yet, even in this defection, they derive all their [pg 617] constitutive and organic principles and forces from their previous union with the divine society or church, and are formed by religious ideas which are merely perverted, corrupted, travestied imitations of the revealed dogmas which their forefathers had received. All true reform, restoration, renovation, and improvement must be effected by a return to unity, a reincorporation into the church, and a reflux of organic life from the centre into the chilled and deadened members.
“No religion can unfold itself among men, extend itself, or maintain its existence, without social relations existing between men themselves. Every religion presupposes a state originating together with itself or already previously formed; but it is equally true that no state is conceivable without a religion, for every state includes a system of moral conceptions, and is itself a system and manifestation of moral conceptions; and a system of moral conceptions without a religious force underlying it is something unthinkable.”
Here we have the statement of the universal principle that the religious and political orders, the spiritual and the temporal, or, otherwise, church and state, are, like soul and body, though distinct, inseparable in living, organized humanity. The author then goes on to prove the truth of his assertion by the example of our own republic, apparently the most notable exception to his rule, and an instance sufficient to disprove to most men of modern habits of thought the universality of the rule as an organic principle of society.
“In appearance, some particular religion may leave the state free to shift for itself or make itself free from it, and some particular state act in the same way toward religion; but this is only in appearance, for when, for example, the North American state proclaims that the religious confession is a matter of indifference in respect to its existence, it proceeds on the assumption that there could not be any religious confession, except such an one as should include in itself that which constitutes its own proper religious force. Just suppose that a religion like that of the Assassins or Robber sects of the East should make its appearance in North America, and you would speedily see how the entire body politic would be violently agitated by efforts to cast out this foreign religious force, and to annihilate it within its own precinct. You would see then at once that the North American state, in spite of all its contrary assurances, has its own religion, and a state religion at that, as the collision of some of the North American states with the Mormons has already amply proved. This North American religion of state only avoids assuming the name and aspect of a religion or an ecclesiastical organization, and manifests itself rather altogether in the ethical institutions of the state as they are for the time being, and consequently permits a most extraordinary variety of religious doctrines and churches to exist alongside of the state, yet only under the tacit condition that they all acknowledge that which is the religious force of the state as their own. If, therefore, the North American state proclaims that religion is an indifferent matter, it proceeds from an absurd imagination that there cannot be any religion which does not include in itself that particular religious force which its own moral subsistence has need of. In point of fact, religion and the state form one ethical whole, precisely as in individual men the soul remains an inseparable whole, although we separately consider particular faces of its exterior surface as special faculties—understanding, will, etc. Religion and state are one single ethical whole, which, although divided into distinct members, and apparently separated in these, must always be united in one germinating point and a common vital root.”[151]
A singular corroboration of the doctrine of Leo in its application to the United States is furnished by the following extract from the New York Herald. If it seem to any one singular that we [pg 618] cite the Herald on such a question, it will cease to appear so when we explain our reason for doing it. This well-known paper is remarkable for a certain tact and sagacity in divining and expressing the instinctive dictates of American common-sense upon questions which concern practical, temporal interests. We cite it, therefore, in this instance, as a proof of the fact that the public sensibility is stirred by any practical collision of a foreign and hostile religious force with the latent religious force underlying our own legislation, just as Leo says it must be. Theories and phrases are disregarded; and the mouth-piece of popular opinion strikes at once, promptly and surely, upon the very head of the nail, and drives it home. It is very singular to see, in the extract we are about to cite, how the instinct of self-interest and self-preservation evolves by a short process the same conclusion which the philosopher establishes as the result of long study and thought. Here is the extract in full, with some passages marked in italics by our own hand, to which we wish to call special attention, as containing the nucleus of the whole matter, and agreeing almost verbally with the language we have quoted from Dr. Leo:
“Brigham Young And Polygamy—Will The Prophet Take Sensible Advice?
“Judge Trumbull, United States senator from Illinois, has just had a conversation with Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, which, as reported, is of more than ordinary significance and importance. It seems that as the judge was taking leave of Young, the latter remarked that on returning to Congress he (the judge) might hear of some persons—obnoxious federal officials—being put out of the Territory, and, if done, he might be sure it would be for just and good reasons. Judge Trumbull replied by requesting Young, before he took any step of that kind, to make known his grievances to President Grant, remarking that the President was a just man, intending to do justice to all, but that he would not permit a violation of law to go unpunished, and adding that it would ‘not be safe to molest public officers in the discharge of their duties.’ The judge then asked Young if he promised obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the Union. The latter replied that he would adhere to the Union, but that there was ‘one enactment of Congress which the Mormons would not obey,’ namely, the one forbidding polygamy.
“Here, then, is the whole Mormon question in a nutshell—the positive declaration on the part of the Mormon leader that federal officers, sent to Utah, unless acceptable to himself, should be banished the Territory, and that there was at least one law of Congress he positively refuses to acknowledge or obey. Now, what is the plain duty of the national government in the face of these revolutionary averments? It is to see that the enactments of Congress are enforced without respect to persons or religions, and that the representatives of the federal government legally appointed for that purpose shall be upheld and protected, if it be necessary to employ the whole power of the nation. This Mormon matter demands decisive action on the part of the administration. President Grant has already declared his purpose of enforcing the laws impartially, even the most obnoxious, and there is no good reason why the Mormons should be exempted from the operations of this policy. The fact is, Brigham Young and his satellites have been treated with too much leniency and good-nature by the United States government ever since they settled upon the national domain, and whatever they have done for the improvement of the wilderness in which they settled they have done for their own benefit, and have reaped the rewards of their industry and frugality. Among the many other settlements that have sprung up in the great West and grown into populous cities and States since the Mormon hegira from Nauvoo, where can one be shown to have defied the United States government, and to have treated its laws and its public officials with the contempt and insolence the Mormons have? On the contrary, among the most loyal States in [pg 619]the Union, and among those which sent into the field the greatest armies during the struggle for our national existence, are States in which the earlier pioneers had to undergo as many perils, hardships, and privations in organizing their communities, in subduing the forests and the savage, and in implanting the seeds of civil and religious liberty and constitutional law, as ever the Mormons did in erecting their Salt Lake empire, and in establishing in the heart of the nation's public domain a religious organization the corner-stone of which is a dogma abhorrent to modern civilisation and in violation of all the received rules of decent social and domestic life and society. Therefore the claims of these impertinent and rebellious Mormon squatters for immunity from the operations of the general laws of the country, on account of the service they have rendered in improving a barren waste, but more properly in making fortunes for themselves out of the Gentiles and the government, are idle and ridiculous. Greater hardships and more personal sacrifices, we repeat, have been undergone by settlers in other tracts of territory, now become great and prosperous States, respecting the laws and fighting for the national flag, than ever these Mormon adventurers encountered from the time when old Joe Smith went into the tablet business, after the manner of Moses, and founded the Mormon sect, up to the moment of the conversation Brigham Young held with Senator Trumbull, as related above. They have no claims for political sympathy, for immunity from legal responsibilities, nor for hardly the consideration paid to other religious communities; for the odor of their sanctity is foul, and their moral practices are unlike those of all modern Christians. We say, therefore, to Brigham Young and his deluded followers, that they had better accept the sensible advice of Judge Trumbull, consult with President Grant before they proceed to extremities, accept the laws of Congress in regard to polygamy, as well as in regard to everything else they are required to, and either haul in their rebellious horns or prepare to pack up their baggage for a tramp to some distant country outside the boundaries of the United States. You must obey the law, Prophet Brigham, or you must march. Uncle Sam has stood your nonsense long enough. He will tolerate it no longer.”
What is it which is thus asserted by a paper always considered as advocating the most extreme modern notions respecting religious liberty? It is that there is something in our civilization, our received rules of morality, our lawful principles and acts of administration, intolerant of certain religious dogmas and tending to exclude them. This latent something is what Leo calls our state religion, the religious basis of our institutions and laws, of our whole political and social fabric.
The first point we wish to come at, in our evolution of the whole question under discussion, is, what is this religious basis or fundamental religious law, essentially and precisely? According to Leo and excellent authors of our own, it is the moral law, so far as that law governs political and social relations. Whatever is contra bonos mores is prohibited and excluded by it, and nothing more. But this is too general. We are obliged to ask what moral law, what standard or criterion of good or bad morals, is tacitly understood? To this we reply that, in our opinion, it is the Christian law, as embodied in the common and statute laws under which we have been living since the origin of our nation. If we ask, further, what fixes and determines this Christian law—that is, what criterion determines that which is really prescribed or forbidden by this law—we can assign nothing more definite and precise than the common and general conscience of the sovereign people, as this exercises its controlling power through legislative and judicial enactments and decisions. It is therefore not an unchangeable quantity, but variable and varying in the different laws of the distinct States, and in the different laws of separate [pg 620] epochs which are the result of the change for better or worse which takes place in the moral sense of the community. We cannot enumerate a definite number of moral canons forming our state religion in every part of the country during every period of its history. But we can, at any one time, designate a certain number of things required, permitted, or forbidden by our state code of morals, without respect to the doctrines of any particular religious body. Whatever religious doctrine professed by any set of men contradicts any part of this code, although it may be maintained and advocated theoretically with impunity so long as this can be allowed without immediate danger of inciting to an open violation of the laws, cannot be reduced to practice without bringing the offending parties within the coercive jurisdiction of the courts of justice. A Mahometan or a Mormon will be allowed to advocate in speech or writing the claims of Mahomet or Joe Smith as the great prophet of God, and to defend polygamy as a divine institution; but if he attempts to keep a harem, the law will condemn the act, and will punish it, at least to a certain extent, by inflicting legal disabilities on every one of his wives and children who is not regarded as legitimate by the statutes of the State where he lives. Any enthusiast may give himself out as an inspired prophet; but if he is directed by his fancied revelations to kill some one, to set up a kingdom for himself, or to undertake anything else against the laws, the laws will avenge themselves without regard to his liberty of conscience or his interior conviction that he is executing the commands of God. A very piquant and characteristic expression of this principle was once given by General Jackson. After the capture of the Indian chief Black Hawk and his adviser, the Prophet, an interview took place between the warlike president and these dusky potentates of the forest. The president demanded of the chief an account of the reasons and motives which had led him to make war on the United States. The crestfallen warrior laid all the blame on the Prophet, who was in turn subjected to the stern glance and imperious demand of the formidable old general. Quailing and abject beneath the superior moral force of the great white chief, the trembling Prophet excused himself by saying that he had been deceived by what he thought was the voice of the Great Spirit, but which was only the whispering of his own mind. Upon this the old general, gathering up all the dignity and force of his character into his brow and attitude, and raising his voice to a tone of thunder, turned upon the poor Prophet, and anathematized him with this terrible dogmatic decree: “If you ever again mistake the hallucinations of your disordered imagination for the inspirations of the Divine Spirit, by the Eternal! I will send you where it will be for ever impossible for you to repeat the mistake!” Our chief magistrate spoke according to the written and unwritten law of our constitutions and our traditions. There is a certain point beyond which the practical carrying out of opinions or beliefs, whatever claim they may make to be derived from a superhuman source, will be resisted by the entire coercive and penal force of the law. There are and must be certain inherent principles in our laws, whether these are vague or definite, variable or [pg 621] fixed, which determine this point of physical resistance to liberty of conscience or liberty of religion. These constitute our state religion, which claims for itself a legal infallibility, as exacting and unyielding as that of the Holy See, so far as outward submission and obedience are concerned.
We come now at our immediate question, namely, the attitude of the Catholic religion towards this state religion; and if we are able to designate and define this accurately, we are able by logical consequence to conclude precisely what degree of agreement or opposition is contained in the essence of Catholic and of American principles respectively to each other. We intend to meet this question fairly and squarely, without trying to twist either the one or the other set of principles, or to invent a medium of compromise between them. We take the Catholic principles as they are authoritatively promulgated by the supreme authority in the church, the Roman Pontiff, particularly as contained in the encyclical Quanta Cura, with its appended Syllabus, and as they are taught and explained by the most approved authors in canon law. These definitions and expositions alone have authority in the church, and these alone have any weight or significance in the minds of thinking men who are not members of the church, but are more or less positively hostile to her extension in our country. Private versions or modifications of Catholicity count for nothing, for they are merely the theories of individuals, and will have no influence over the real development of the church, in so far as they disagree by excess or defect with her authoritative teaching. For ourselves, we are purely and simply Catholic, and profess an unreserved allegiance to the church which takes precedence of, and gives the rule to, our allegiance to the state. If allegiance to the church demanded of us opposition to political principles adopted by our civil government, or disobedience to any laws which were impious and immoral, we should not hesitate to obey the church and God. We should either keep silence and avoid all discussion of the subject, or else speak out frankly in condemnation of our laws and institutions, if we believed them to be anti-Christian or, which is the same thing, anti-Catholic in their principles.
We do not try and judge Catholic principles and laws by the criterion of the American idea, as it is called, nor do we justify and vindicate these principles on the ground that they are in harmony with, or reconcilable to, the maxims and ideas upon which our political fabric is based. We aim at making an exposition of the case as it really is; and if we take a view of it favorable to our American political order, it is for the sake of justifying that order, and proving both to our own adherents and to our opponents that our duty to God does not require us to make war on it, so that all the arguments and motives for creating a conflict on the political arena may fall to the ground, and the battle-field be restricted to the fair, open ground of theological polemics.
What is it, then, which furnishes to a certain set of violent enemies of the Catholic Church in this country a pretext for making the issue between Catholic and Protestant principles a political one, and inclines a great number of the mass of the people to believe or suspect that this [pg 622] pretext is valid? The newspapers, publications, and speeches which have been giving utterance to the sentiments of those who dread and oppose the spread of our religion, ever since it began to show signs of vitality and growth in this country, furnish the answer. The pretext is that all Catholics who thoroughly understand and are loyal to the principles of their religion wish to change or overthrow the republic, and substitute for it a political order fundamentally different; and that, if they ever become strong enough, they will do what they can to carry out their design. Is there any truth in this pretext? We will express our own convictions on the matter as fully and clearly as possible, and leave them to exert what influence they may upon those really sincere and intelligent persons who may honor us with their attention.
In the first place, as to the republican form and constitution of our government. There is no doubt a difference of opinion among our clergy and intelligent laymen in regard to the abstract question what form of government is the most excellent and perfect. In regard to this subject, it is a part of our American liberty that we should be free to form and express our own opinions, and there is undoubtedly a diversity of opinions regarding it among non-Catholics, as well as among ourselves. It is certain that many of our bishops, clergy, and educated laymen have a very decided preference for the republican form of government, where it can be established under conditions favorable to order, stability, and success. And as to the mass of our people, they have suffered so much from tyranny and oppression that they are inclined to go to the extreme left rather than the extreme right in all questions of political authority and liberty. If we look at the question closely, we shall see that the difference of opinion which may exist in regard to the form of government among those who hold to the divine institution of the state, and the divine sanction to political authority and law, is really not concerning essentials. S. Thomas teaches that the best form of government is one which combines the monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements in just proportions. Bellarmine maintains that absolute monarchy is ideally the most perfect form of government, but that, considering the actual state of men, the mixed form is the best in practice. It is our opinion that very few men among the leading classes in the Catholic Church could be found, either in this country or in Europe, who would not agree with the second member of Cardinal Bellarmine's proposition. This is quite enough for the justification of the governmental order established by our constitutions and laws in our United States. We have the monarchical principle in our president, and governors, and the mayors of cities. We have the aristocratic in the legislators, judges, and magistrates. The existence of the democratic element need not be proved. The difference between our monarchy and aristocracy and those which are hereditary is only that ours is elective, and the difference between them and certain others which are elective is that our election is only for a certain term and by a popular vote. The Pope is an elective monarch. The governing aristocracy of Belgium is elective. The essential principle of the mixed government is simply a stable and legitimate order, under which the monarchy, aristocracy [pg 623] and democracy are created and sustained in the regular exercise of certain functions of government. Catholics are therefore bound by their own principles to recognize the political order in the country as lawful, and to give it their allegiance. Moreover, without any question, apart from singular and individual opinions which Catholics as well as Protestants may entertain, the Catholics of this country are agreed in the conviction that the republican institutions of the United States are the best and the only possible ones for our own country. They have no desire to subvert them, and there has never been any conspiracy against them, except in the malicious or deluded brains of fanatical anti-Catholic writers and speakers and of the crowd which they have duped. Genuine Catholics will never conspire against our government and laws, but will always be true and loyal American citizens. If the majority of the people or the whole people were to become Catholics, they would not use their power to subvert our American institutions, or substitute for them those of any European nation. On the contrary, nothing could happen which would secure the perpetuity of the republic and promote its political prosperity and glory with anything like the influence which the Catholic religion would exercise in producing such desirable results. The dangers we have to apprehend come from the sectarian divisions which waste and neutralize the religious sentiment and force of the country, from infidelity and radicalism, from vice and immorality, from secret societies, from public and private corruption and profligacy, from swindling and maladministration in high quarters, from principles akin to those of the conspirators of Europe, from detestable books like Lothair, atheistical magazines and unprincipled newspapers—evils for which the Catholic Church alone can furnish a remedy.
Another part of the subject is worthy of much more serious consideration, and requires far more elucidation in order to be presented in its true light. This relates, not to the outward form of the government, but to its inward spirit; to the scope and quality of the legislation, and not to the manner of designating the legislators or judges. All forms of government are lawful before the church, whether absolute monarchies or republics. It is evident that a republic may be governed in perfect accordance with Catholic principles, and that an empire may be governed in complete discordance with the same. A sensible man would not, therefore, be likely to consider the form of our government as the object which demands his particular solicitude in view of the progress of the Catholic religion. He would consider, rather, that the gist of the matter lay in the relation of Catholic principles to that which we have called, after Leo, the state religion. If we are correct in our preliminary statements, the Catholic religion always tends to infuse itself into the state in which it exists, and succeeds as soon as it has become the governing moral force which constitutes the soul of the body politic. Now, what is the relation of the Catholic religion to the actual state religion in our country, and, when they come strongly in contact, what degree of struggle will ensue between them, and what amount of change would be produced by the predominance of the Catholic force?
In the first place, let us consider the case in reference to those things which the Catholic conscience positively enjoins or positively prohibits. In every case of this kind a Catholic must obey his conscience; and if he is subject to a civil law which requires him to violate it, he must die rather than submit. Formerly we have had to make this passive resistance to laws existing in the American colonies; and in some cases—as, for instance, in regard to certain oppressive laws passed in the State of Missouri, it has been necessary to resist some state laws. On the whole, however, we may say that our laws do not put the Catholic citizen into the alternative of incurring a penalty from either the human or the divine law. This part of the case can be therefore dismissed as not practical.
In the second place, we have to consider those things which are the rights and privileges of the Catholic conscience, but which do not concern its indispensable obligations. In regard to these things, a Catholic must obey the law, and he must refrain from all violent and seditious conduct. He must submit to the abridgment of his rights and liberties so long as he cannot obtain their free possession and use by lawful means. But, under our free institutions, it is the right of the Catholic citizen, by argument, influence, and voting, to secure as much as possible of his just religious liberty without prejudice to the natural or civil rights of others. Therefore, as a matter of course, whenever Catholics obtain sufficient power to command a majority of votes, they will, if they act on Catholic principles, demand and obtain all their rights and full equality before the law with other citizens. For instance, in regard to schools, prisons, hospitals, ships of war, fortresses, etc., they will secure the complete right of Catholics in these places to practise their religion and to be free from the interference of non-Catholic religious teachers appointed by the state.
But what would be the action of Catholics, if they should ever become the majority, in regard to requiring or prohibiting by law those things in which the Catholic conscience differs from the Protestant and non-Catholic standard of right and wrong? It is always necessary in such a case for all parties to exercise the greatest forbearance, moderation, and fairness toward one another, in order that these questions should have a peaceable solution. Therefore those violent and fanatical or selfish demagogues, both clerical and lay, who seek to exasperate the non-Catholic citizens of this country against their Catholic fellow-citizens, are the most dangerous enemies of the public peace. We appeal to all candid, impartial, intelligent American citizens to say who are they who seek to fan the embers of strife into a flame; are they Catholic leaders, or are they the chiefs and orators of a violent, sectarian, anti-Catholic party? Our Catholic citizens, if fairly treated, will always respect the rights of their fellow-citizens. They will never take part in despoiling churches, societies, colleges, or other institutions of their property or chartered privileges, as radicals and infidels most assuredly will, so far as they have any power. Catholics will not do anything of this sort, even in case they should in certain States become an overwhelming majority. They will never seek to tyrannize over their fellow-citizens, to establish their religion [pg 625] by force, or to compel any one to do those things which are required only by the Catholic conscience. The difficulty lies chiefly in respect to those laws which forbid certain things as contrary to the divine law. The civil code consists chiefly of laws prohibiting crimes against the moral law, and annexing penalties to the commission of them. The law must therefore have some ethical standard of right and wrong, and must be based on some interpretation of the divine law, or, in a Christian state, of the Christian law. Now, if the interpretation of the Christian law of morals held by one large portion of the community differs from that of another large portion, what is to be done? This is the precise question which we are seeking to answer in reference to the Catholic and non-Catholic portions of the community in any State where the former should be in the preponderance. The case of divorce and marriage is one precisely in point, and the most important and practical of all others which could be mentioned. Let us suppose, then, that the reformation of the marriage code were to come up before a legislature in which the majority were Catholics, under the leadership of sound jurists who were also strictly conscientious in fulfilling their duty of obedience to the church. Would they make the canon law also civil law in globo, without regard to the opinions or wishes of the minority? We think not. In our view of the case, the right and the wise thing to do would be to bring the law back to the condition in which it was during the earlier and better period of our existence as a people, in so far as the assent of the whole people could be secured with a moral unanimity. As for the rest, it would be altogether in accordance with Catholic precedents and Catholic principles not to legislate at all, but to leave the church and the other religious bodies to exert their moral influence over their own members.[152]
If we suppose the entire people of the United States to become a Catholic people, we must suppose, as a matter of course, that the entire law of the Catholic Church, in so far as it is an ethical code, becomes per se the sovereign law of the collective people. This follows by a rigorous deduction from the principles we have laid down respecting the religion of the state. The religion of the state, as we have seen, is its body of ethical principles. This body of principles came by tradition from the Christian teaching which created European civilization. It is, in a vague and general sense, the Christian law. It is good so far as it goes, and in harmony with Catholic principles. But it is imperfect and liable to change, for the want of a competent tribunal to pronounce upon its true, genuine sense in disputed cases. This is seen in the instance of marriage, there being in courts and legislatures no right or power to decide from the New Testament or any other source what the divine or Christian law really prescribes. Let the collective conscience of the country become Catholic, and it at once, without changing the fundamental principle of our organic law, obtains an infallible and supreme interpretation of that law which raises it to the standard of ideal perfection. It becomes a perfect Christian republic, [pg 626] passing under the control of a higher law in all that is comprised within the sphere of ethical obligation, but retaining political, civil, and individual liberty in all other respects, guarded by more powerful sanctions than it ever before possessed.
Do our fellow-citizens who are not Catholics think it possible that this will ever take place? We suppose not. Nor have Catholics any certain grounds for expecting it, whatever they may hope from the power and grace of Almighty God. There is no reason, therefore, for making a controversy about what the Catholic Church would do in the United States if the whole people were her docile children. The question of real importance relates to the action which Catholics ought to take, and probably will take, as one factor of greater or less power in the political community. Our aim in discussing topics of this kind is, first, to animate Catholics to a manly and honorable determination to secure their own equal rights, and to obey strictly their conscience in all their political and civil relations. It is, in the next place, to persuade our fellow-citizens that conscience and obedience to the teaching of the Catholic Church do not require or permit Catholics to make an aggressive party, to disturb the peace of the commonwealth, to subvert our laws or liberties, or to invade the rights of our fellow-citizens, and seek the opportunity of establishing the supremacy of the Catholic religion by violent and forcible means. We have no expectation of convincing, conciliating, or silencing the greater portion of our active opponents. We have not the slightest hope of seeing them desist from their utterly unfair and fallacious method of conducting the controversy between us. Their only chance of success lies in sophistry, artifice, appeals to prejudice, ignorance, and passion, and the evasion of all serious argument. We have, however, great hopes of gaining more and more the hearing, the attention, and the confidence of that vast body of thinking and reading Americans who, if not convinced of the divine origin of the Catholic religion, are certainly devoid of all respect for every form of fanatical sectarianism. They know well that these violent parties, however loud in the assertion of liberal sentiments, are invariably tyrannical when they have power; and we hope to convince them that the Catholic Church, while condemning a false liberalism, is ever the guardian angel of true right and liberty.
All the foregoing portion of this article was written four years ago, and has been waiting until the present moment for a suitable occasion of publication. The controversy aroused by Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet in November of the last year has furnished a better occasion than we could have hoped for, and we have therefore offered this contribution to the discussion now going on. The statements we have made in regard to the essential relation between religion and the state with reference to our own republic are equally applicable to the European nations. They cover the whole ground of allegiance due from Catholics to an infallible authority, in respect to the domain of political ethics. This infallible authority is the proximate rule of faith in regard to what must be done or omitted in order to obey the law of God. It is the higher law, the objective rule, directing [pg 627] the subjective conscience, or practical judgment respecting right or wrong, in the individual. It is of course, supreme; for it is an unerring promulgation of the divine law. The definition of the infallibility of the Pope has not made the slightest practical change in respect to his authority of defining and proclaiming this infallible Catholic rule of conscience. All Catholics, bishops included, even when assembled in general council, were always required to assent to and obey his judgments in matters of faith and morals, as final and without right of appeal. The assent of the church could never be wanting, since it was obligatory on every bishop, priest, and layman to give it at once, under pain of excommunication. If some were illogical enough to maintain that the infallibility of his judgments depended on this assent, the erroneous opinion which they held did not subject them to excommunication as formal heretics before the solemn definition of the Vatican Council had condemned and anathematized their error as a heresy. Yet the Roman Pontiff always exercised his infallible prerogative without hesitation, and was always obeyed, except by heretics and rebels. In respect to the promulgation of the divine law to the consciences of all men, the Pope has always been, by divine right, just what he now is—the supreme teacher and judge of the whole earth, as the Vicar of Christ. His power is spiritual, and its executive is the conscience of each individual. Infallibility is obeyed only by interior assent, which is a free act of volition not subject to any coercive force. It is utterly silly, therefore, to say that this submission is a surrender of freedom, or that obedience to a rule of conscience subsisting in an infallible tribunal interferes with allegiance to civil authority one whit more than obedience to any kind of rule whatever. In fact, what Prince Bismarck denounces and wishes to crush is the resistance of subjective conscience to the absolute mandates of the state, for which we have his own plain and express words. His doctrine is the very quintessence of the basest and most degrading slavishness—the slavishness of intelligence and conscience crouching abjectly before pure physical force—la force prime le droit.
Legislative and governing authority in the church is something quite distinct from infallibility. It proceeds from the power delegated by Jesus Christ to his Vicar to exercise spiritual jurisdiction over all bishops and all the members of their flocks, and in general over all the faithful. No direct temporal jurisdiction is joined with it by divine right. The direct temporal jurisdiction of the Pope in his kingdom is from human right, and his ancient jurisdiction as suzerain over sovereign princes was also a mere human right. The indirect jurisdiction which springs from the divine right is only an application of spiritual jurisdiction, varying in its exercise as the civil laws are more or less conformed to the divine law, and depending on the concurrence of the civil power. Suppose, for instance, that a bishop revolts against the Holy See. The Pope judges and deposes him. This act deprives him of spiritual rights and privileges. If he is to be violently expelled from his cathedral, his palace, and the possession of his revenues, the civil magistrate must do this in virtue of a civil law. If he were one of the [pg 628] prince-bishops of a former age, and were deprived of his principality, the civil law would deprive him. If he married, and incurred temporal penalties thereby, it would be through the civil law. The judgment which pronounces him guilty, deposed, excommunicated, invalidly married, and therefore liable to all the temporal penalties incurred under the civil code, is an act of spiritual jurisdiction. The temporal effect of this judgment is indirect, varies with the variation in civil jurisprudence, and depends on an executive clothed with a direct temporal and civil authority.
Nothing is more certain than that the church has always recognized the immediate derivation of the civil power in the state from God, its distinction from the spiritual power, and its sovereign independence in its own sphere of any direct temporal jurisdiction of the Pope. The statements made above show how the immutable rights of the Pope as Christ's Vicar in respect to indirect jurisdiction in temporal matters have a variable application in practice, according to the variation of times, laws, and circumstances. It is futile, therefore, to attribute to the Holy See or to Catholics in general, on account of the doctrine of Papal infallibility and supremacy, the intention of striving after a restoration of all that actual exercise of ecclesiastical power in political affairs which was formerly wielded by popes and bishops. Much more futile is it to suppose that a claim to revive ancient political rights derived purely from human laws and voluntary concessions is always kept in abeyance, and to be ever dreaded and guarded against by states.
Catholics ought to beware, nevertheless, of regarding the ancient constitution of Western Christendom under the headship of the Pope as something needing an apology, or as a state less perfect than the one which has supplanted it. We do not share in or sympathize with this view or with the political doctrines of those who hold it, however estimable they may be, in the slightest degree. Although convinced that the mediæval system has passed away for ever, and that the present and coming age needs a régime suited to its real condition, and not to one which is ideal only, we glory in the past which partly realized that Christian ideal.
France was par excellence the Christian nation, as even Duruy, advocate though he be of the principles of '89, proclaims with a Frenchman's just pride in the Gesta Dei per Francos. Her golden age was the period between Louis le Gros and Philippe le Bel. Her decadence and disasters began with the contest of the latter sovereign and the infamous Nogaret, precursor of the Cavours and Bismarcks, against Boniface VIII. Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, the dismemberment of France, the conquests of Edward III. and Henry V., the apparition of Etienne Marcel, the father of Parisian revolutionists and communists, were in logical sequence from Philippe's rebellion, and the logical antecedents of the modern French Revolution and the disasters of 1870. In that olden time France was rescued only by the miraculous mission of Joan of Arc, a kind of living personification of the Catholic Church, in her three characters as virgin, warrior, and victim. So, at a later period, S. Pius V., that pontiff whom Lord Acton has so vilely calumniated, saved Europe from [pg 629] the Turkish invasion to which the recreant sovereigns had exposed it by basely abandoning the Crusades to despoil each other. It needs but small knowledge of history to see through the sophisms of second-class writers like Buckle and Draper, who seek to despoil the Catholic Church of her glory as the sole author and preserver of civilization in Western Christendom. The history of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to this moment is only the record of an effort of the popes to lead the nations in the path of true glory and happiness, and of the ever-recurring struggle of the civil power, of sophists, and of revolutionists to drag them aside into the path of degradation and misery, for their own base and selfish purposes. Faithless priests, unworthy heirs of noble names, men who have perverted the highest gifts of nature and grace, have, during this long, eventful course of time, been mixed up with the arrogant tyrants, cunning politicians, bold blasphemers, shameless sensualists, and their common herd of followers, in the war against the vicegerent of God and the spouse of Christ. What is now, has been in the time past, and will be until the curtain drops after the finished drama. There are similar actors on both sides now, and a similar struggle, to those recorded in the history of the past. We may expect a similar result. La Pucelle was falsely accused, unjustly condemned, suffered death by fire, and triumphed. The Catholic religion is La Pucelle. Abandoned, falsely accused, doomed to the flames, by an ungrateful world, recreant or cowardly adherents, and open enemies, it will be hailed in the age to come by all mankind as the saviour of the world.