The death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply affected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious faith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious convictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace vivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and more absorbing every day. He at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to defend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by his piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the habit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.
Some of our readers must still remember the remarkable speech which the Marquis de Valdegamas pronounced in the Spanish Cortes, January 4, 1849--mdash;a speech that produced a marked effect in France, and indeed throughout all Europe, not to add America--mdash;in which he renounced all liberal ideas and tendencies, denounced constitutionalism and parliamentary governments, and demanded the dictatorship. It had great effect in preparing even the friends of liberty, frightened by the excesses of the so-called liberals, red republicans, socialists, and revolutionists, if not to favor, at least to accept the coup d'état, and the re-establishment of the Imperial régime in France; and it, no doubt, helped to push the reaction that was about to commence against the revolutionary movements of 1848, to a dangerous extreme, and to favor, by another sort of reaction, that recrudescence of infidelity that has since followed throughout nearly all Europe. It is hardly less difficult to restrain reactionary movements within just limits than it is the movements that provoke them.
The new American Cyclopedia says Donoso Cortes published his Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism in French. That is a mistake. He wrote and published it in Spanish, at Madrid, in 1851. The French work published at Paris, the same year, was a translation, and very inferior to the original. A presentation copy by the distinguished author of the original Spanish edition of 1851 to the late Mr. Calderon de la Barca—so long resident Spanish minister at Washington, and who was his life-long personal and political friend—is now in my possession, and is the very copy from which Mrs. Goddard, now the noble wife of Rear Admiral Dahlgren, made the translation cited at the head of this article. Mr. Calderon—a good judge—pronounced the work in Spanish by far the most eloquent work that he ever read in any language; and I can say, though that may not be much, that it far surpasses in the highest and truest order of eloquence any work in any language that I am acquainted with. In it one meets all the power and majesty, grace and unction of the old Castilian tongue, that noblest of modern languages, and in which Cicero might have surprised himself.
The work necessarily loses much in being translated, but Mrs. Goddard's translation comes as near to the original as any translation can. It is singularly faithful and elegant, and reproduces the thought and spirit of the author with felicity and exactness, in idiomatic English, which one can read without suspecting it to be not the language in which the work was originally written. There is scarcely a sentence in which the translation can be detected. It must have been made con amore, and we can recommend it as a model to translators, who too often do the work from the original language into no language. The following, from the opening pages, is a fair specimen of the thought and style of the author, and of the clearness, force, and beauty of the translation:
"Mr. Proudhon, in his Confession, of a Revolutionist, has written these remarkable words: 'It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all our political questions complicated with theological questions.' There is nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr. Proudhon Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from eternity. All things are in God in a profound manner in which effects are in their causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms in their eternal exemplars. In him are united the vastness of the sea, the glory or the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur or the universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens. In him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things proceed from him with number, weight, and measure. In him are the inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular law. All that lives, finds in him the laws of life; all that vegetates, the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws or motion; all that has feeling, the law or sensation; all that has understanding, the law of intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation of human society. Omnis humana societatis fundamentum convellit qui religionem convellit, says Plato in Book 10 of his laws. According to Xenophon (on Socrates), "the most pious cities and nations have always been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes) 'that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society without a belief in the gods.' Rousseau, in his Social Contract, Book iv., ch. viii., observes, 'that a State was never established without religion as a foundation.' Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration, ch. xx., 'that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society exists.' All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of gods. Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest, precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words: 'May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they make war against the Republic.'
'The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. All an evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious incredulity and of highest culture that have shown in history with a phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that their splendor is only the inflamed glare or the lightning's flash. It is evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine pencil of the sovereign painter.
"What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth, neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions and sophists are succeeded by hangmen.
"He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends, the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God knows these laws; and he knows God who listens to what he affirms of himself, and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily resolves itself into a theological truth.
"If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated, theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality, which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and supreme. He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology, has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is the perpetual object of human speculations.
"Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Diety, even that which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically exclaims, 'I abhor thee; thou art not!' illustrates a complete system of theology, as he does who raises to him a contrite heart, and says, 'Lord, have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee.' The first blasphemes him to his face, the second prays at his feet, yet both acknowledge him, each in his own way; for both pronounce his incommunicable name."