"O God! will you let the orphan, whom you have taken under the wings of your love, perish in this mountain solitude? Will not his pious invocation be carried to your throne by the angel of prayer?"
Listen! The liberators come; the snow is scratched away with precaution, and they are found by the noble dogs, gifted with almost sublime instincts which they consecrate to man, with a devotion and fidelity that puts to shame many of the human species. Yes; it was "Help" and "Saviour" who had found the spot where Robert and the guide lay, and breathed on their hands and faces to try to relieve them; but, being unable to do it, they made the mountain re-echo with their barks, which brought out the monks, whom they guided to the spot. The bodies were then carried to the convent, and after a few hours restored to consciousness; and the kind monks heartily gave thanks that they were permitted to rescue from certain death two of their fellow-beings. Could any mission be more noble than theirs; any devotion more self-sacrificing? Impossible; and in all the known world they are honored for their sublime virtues, and acknowledged as noble martyrs of Christian charity.
Robert passed eight days at the convent, and on each one saw the touching piety and indefatigable solicitude of the monks. The last few days he made several excursions over the mountain, where perpetual winter reigns; and was dazzled by the lustre of the immense glaciers, and the glory of his lonely surroundings. He sometimes thought if he were not an artist he would consecrate the remainder of his life to the practice of charity, but his love of art was too strong, and sunny Italy held out such attractions that be was lured on, carrying with him the benediction and good wishes of those noble men who had brought him back to life.
From the Dublin Review
Lecky's History Of Rationalism.[Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. Lecky, M.A., London: Longmans, Green & Co.]
It has been said by a very high authority that the study of history is destined to assume a new aspect, from the application to it of a higher order of minds and a more philosophical method of treatment. We are passing out of the age of speciality into the age of generalization. Innumerable observers have collected facts, and innumerable speculators have multiplied theories; and we now seem to have arrived at that period when it becomes the proper function of the thinker to co-ordinate the stores of knowledge which have been set apart for him by others; evolve laws from the multitude of instances; separate the truth from the falsehood of conflicting theories; conjoin effects with their causes, and trace the half-revealed and far-reaching relations between distant and apparently unconnected phenomena. The influence of such a spirit—long felt in the less complicated sciences—is now, even in England, beginning to act on those which are more intricate. For history the time is rapidly passing away during which a great but much erring thinker could say that it was the unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man that, although its separate parts had each been handled with considerable ability, hardly anyone had hitherto attempted to combine them into a whole, or to ascertain the way in which they are connected with each other. On the contrary, he said, a strange idea prevailed among historians that their business was merely to narrate events; so that, according to the notion of history in his day prevalent, any writer who, from indolence of thought or from natural incapacity, was unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, had only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he was, ipso facto, qualified to be a historian. The time is fast coming when those dreary and monotonous narratives of court intrigues and party cabals will exist only to memorialize an age when the history of kings was substituted for the history of nations, and the consideration of the actions of a few individuals for the exposition of the life of the whole social organization. History is growing to be less of a chronicle and more of a science; her office is no longer thought to be confined to the registration of a few superficially prominent facts; but the discovery, by a scientific induction, of historical laws, and the investigation of causes, is chiefly aimed at; and, as the circumstances which have to be taken into account in such a method of writing history are often dismissed by the older school of writers as almost unworthy of notice, and are, moreover, exceedingly numerous and of almost infinite complication, a far wider and more diversified range of learning and a far greater power of analysis than were formerly either required or expected are supposed in the historian.
It would be idle to imagine that the influence of this more philosophical way of writing history will not extend, or has not extended, to theology. One of its first results has been the unpremeditated vindication by non-Catholic writers of the mediaeval church. And that naturally; for the action of the church in the middle ages was founded on their social state, and it was therefore only when history descended into the bosom of society that she could receive a fuller meed of justice. The Catholic Church has been more philosophically treated, and her primary attribute, that she is a kingdom, more perfectly realized; while a flood of light has been thrown on the historical character of Protestantism, and to that farrago of heresies the conclusions arrived at have been almost uniformly unfavorable. Nor must we suppose that it will affect only the treatment of the external history of Christianity, and leave untouched the history of its dogmas. It has effected, and will hereafter, to a still greater extent effect, that both Catholic doctrines and heretical opinions will be studied not only, as heretofore, in their objective aspect—with respect to their evidence and connections one with another—but more and more in their subjective aspect, as to their influence on the minds of those who hold them. We have, to a great extent, yet to see the results of a profound and extensive study of dogmas in this light; but to study them in this light is undoubtedly the tendency of the present age. We have thus opened to us a field of investigation almost new, and in its nature very different from the beaten tracks in which controversialists have hitherto followed one another. Whatever be the results that may be thus finally arrived at, there cannot be a doubt but that they will be fraught with immense advantage to the cause of truth; and in the course of any researches that may be made into the subjective influence of individual dogmas a number of facts hitherto but little attended to—will be brought forward from the most various sources; so that it will exceedingly behove those who have to attend to the defence of Christianity to make sure that these are truly alleged and represented.
Mr. Lecky, as we have before noticed, endeavors to apply to religious the more advanced method or secular history. He attempts to trace the subjective influence of religious opinions, the manner in which they mutually affected each other, and in which they acted or were reacted on by the other influences of their time. He does not pay much attention to the question of evidence, or to the arguments by which they were supported, except in so far as the use of particular arguments or lines of argument affords him some indication of the temper of the times of which he writes. The very idea of his work—a history of religious opinions—compelled him to attend to this rather than to the alleged evidence of particular doctrines: the latter being the proper province of the theologian as the former is of the historian. But from this necessary one-sidedness of his work Mr. Lecky seems to have been led into a corresponding one-sidedness of mind. Every one will grant that education, disposition, the opinions, and, still more, the tone of those around us make it exceedingly difficult to treat religious questions on the sole ground of evidence; and Catholics are continually urging this against the Protestants who, by their denial of the infallibility of the church, multiply indefinitely the number of questions which have to be thus decided; but Mr. Lecky goes further, and says that there really is not sufficient evidence for us, situated as we are, to come to a reliable conclusion at all. It is natural, therefore, that he should now and then take occasion to sift supposititious evidence and fallacious arguments; and in several places he states with great force the nature and logical value of the reasons given against some or other of the old doctrines now denied by Protestants. An instance of this may be interesting to our readers; the subjoined passage is taken from his second chapter On the Miracles of the Church:
"If we ask, what are the grounds on which the cessation the of miracles is commonly maintained; they may, I suppose, be summed up such as follows: