The Life of Columba, whose title is placed at the head of this notice, is, as we have implied already, a monograph extracted from the great work on the Monks of the West, by Montalembert. It is a small book of only 170 duo-decimo pages, and therefore readable by almost everybody who ever reads anything better than newspapers and dime novels. It is, above all others, a book for every one, young or old, who has Celtic-Catholic blood in his veins. It is time now to use that English language which was forced by the haughty conqueror upon the Irish people, from a cruel motive which God has overruled for their glory and his own, as the means of diffusing the treasures hidden hitherto, so to speak, under a cromlech. Those who put this unwilling people into a compulsory course of English, little thought what a keen-edged weapon they were placing in their hands, and training them to use. They could not foresee what use would be made of it by Curran, O'Connell, Thomas Moore, Bishop Doyle, and Father Meehan. The possession of the English language places the Irish people in communication with the whole civilized world, without depriving them of their rich patrimony of traditional lore, legend, and song. It is incumbent on all who love the faith, and sympathize with the wrongs and hardships, of the Irish people, to strain every nerve to increase the number and diffuse the circulation of books, in which this religious and patriotic tradition may be perpetuated. Wherever the Irish people are, in Ireland, England, America, Australia, they are deriving their intellectual nutriment more and more from English books; and thus, in proportion as they become readers, are coming under the influence of writers who write in the English language. It is most important, therefore, for those who are charged with the responsibility of watching over their religious, moral, and intellectual culture, to see to it that their minds are not flooded with an excess of purely secular literature, which has in it no mixture of the Catholic tradition. The greatest danger and misfortune of our rising generation of Catholics in America is the lack of this tradition in historical, poetic, and romantic literature. Even those who are the descendants of parents and progenitors of the old Catholic stock, must necessarily lose by degrees all vivid sentiment of any other nationality than the American, and be more influenced by the genius loci than by any other genius, whether Celtic or Teutonic. The danger to be guarded against is a peril of becoming so much Americanized as to be reduced to a caput mortuum in the process. An American citizen, without faith and religion, even though he may be born and live in Boston, is involved in the consequences of original sin as well as others. It is no gain to transform a poor, simple, believing, fervent Catholic immigrant, in the second or third generation, into an intelligent, well fed, healthy animal, with a comfortable farm and the elective franchise, but with no more soul than the man with the muck-rake in the Pilgrim's Progress, or those dirty heathen in the suburbs of the holy city of New York, who spend their Sundays in weeding cabbages. This deleterious change must be prevented, not only, by purely spiritual means, but also by preserving and fostering as much as possible the natural bonds which connect our youth of Catholic origin with the traditions of their ancestry. Hence, we are in favor of multiplying and circulating as much as possible those books which relate the history of the Catholic Church of Ireland, of her saints and prelates, her gallant chieftains and noble martyrs, her sufferings and persecutions. The English Catholic tradition, and the Scottish, are unfortunately broken. A dreary gap of three centuries intervenes between the present and the Catholic past; but in Ireland the continuity is perfect from the fifth century to the present moment. This is the great artery of life to the Catholic Church of the British empire and its colonies, and it must not be severed. There is an intense sympathy between the people of the United States and the people of Ireland. This is chiefly a sympathy with their oppressed condition as a people, and with their just demands for expiation and redress for the wrongs they have suffered from the hands of the British government. It would be prudent for the gentlemen of the English parliament to take note of this, and to be wise in time, by conceding all those rights and privileges at once with a good grace, which Ireland is sure to obtain sooner or later, whether parliament is willing or unwilling. This merely political sympathy will, we trust, prepare the way for a higher and holier sympathy with the faith, the constancy, the invincible fortitude of the Irish people as a Catholic nation, the Spartans of a sacred Thermopylae, who have immolated themselves to save the faith. It is time that the American public should learn what is the Irish Version of the History of the Reformation. This presupposes a previous knowledge of the first planting and cultivation of Christianity. When it is seen that the Irish fought and died for the very same religion which was planted among them by their first apostles, it will be easy to judge of the claims which the religion of Elizabeth and Cromwell had upon their submission. The labors of Montalembert are therefore invaluable, as bringing to light the hidden treasures of Irish ecclesiastical history, and in all his great work there is no chapter to be found more charming than the biography of the great patriarch of Iona. We conclude with the eulogium which Fintan, a contemporary monk, pronounced upon St. Columba in an assembly of wise and learned men, and which is justified by the history of his life. "Columba is not to be compared with philosophers and learned men, but with patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The Holy Spirit reigns in him; he has been chosen by God for the good of all; he is a sage among all sages, a king among kings, an anchorite with anchorites, a monk of monks; and in order to bring himself to the level even of laymen, he knows how to be poor of heart among the poor; thanks to the apostolic charity which inspires him, he can rejoice with the joyful, and weep with the unfortunate. And amid all the gifts which God's generosity has lavished on him, the true humility of Christ is so royally rooted in his soul that it seems to have been born with him."
Ecce Homo. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
Strahan & Co., London. G. Routledge & Sons,
416 Broome street, New York. 1868.
On the day of writing this notice, Mr. Gladstone is introducing his motion for overthrowing that monstrous iniquity, the Irish Establishment. We feel, consequently, especially well-disposed toward him. Nevertheless, with all our respect for his talents and character, we cannot help being reminded of his illustrious countryman, that great ornament of the sea-faring profession. Captain Bunsby. Our English brethren, when they take up solid topics, appear to think laborious dulness and tedious obscurity the evidence of deep learning and sound judgment. Their essays are like those of collegians, who affect to write on political or philosophical subjects in an extremely old-mannish, old-cabinet-minister-like style. This is remarkably the case with the venerable university dons who advocate rationalistic opinions. The style of arguing adopted by these worthy and dignified gentlemen bears a striking resemblance to the movements of one who is carefully wending his way among eggs. As an instance, we may cite the Essays and Reviews, perhaps the dullest book ever written, unless the Treatises on Sacred Arithmetic and Mensuration, by Dr. Colenso, may be thought worthy to compete for the prize. The Ecce Homo is not to be placed in precisely the same category. It is, nevertheless, in our humble opinion, a very vague, wearisome, and unsatisfactory book. We cannot account for its popularity in any other way than by ascribing it to the restless, sceptical, misty state of the English mind on religious subjects; the uneasy desire to find out something more than it knows about Christianity and its author. After eighteen centuries have rolled by, the question. Who is Jesus Christ? still remains a puzzle to all those who will not submit to learn from the teacher commissioned by himself. The author of Ecce Homo has endeavored to throw himself back to the time and into the period of the disciples of Christ, to examine with their eyes his words and actions, and from these to abstract a mental conception of his true character. What that conception is, remains as much a puzzle as the gospels themselves are to a rationalist, or the Exodus to Dr. Colenso. The language of Ecce Homo is certainly irreconcilable with the definitions of the Catholic Church respecting the divine personality of Christ. Some of its statements respecting the nature of the work accomplished by him on the earth, and the evidence thereby furnished of his divine mission, are forcible and valuable, and perhaps to rationalists, Unitarians, and doubters, the work may be useful. No one, however, who understands Catholic theology, and believes in the true doctrine of the Incarnation, can read it without a strong sentiment of repugnance and dissatisfaction. Mr. Gladstone, nevertheless, although professing to accept the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, undertakes the defence of the book, and even apologises for its most offensive passages. By doing this he shows that he himself does not grasp the full meaning of the formulas to which he gives his assent; and although he is not a rationalist, yet, from perpetual contact with them, and the influence of that halting, inconsequent state of mind produced by Anglicanism, he has acquired something of that dark-lantern style of which we have spoken above. There are gleams of light and passages of beauty here and there, especially on those pages where the author treats of the Greek Mythology as an imperfect effort to realize the idea of Deity incarnate in human form. As a whole, the essay, which is a mere review of another book, was well enough for a magazine article, but not of sufficient importance to warrant its publication in book form. Every person who acknowledges the true divinity of Jesus Christ while rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, stands in a position logically absurd, and is therefore incapable of adequately advocating the cause of Christ and Christianity against the infidelity of the age. No one but a Catholic, endowed with genius, and fully imbued with the spirit of Catholic theology, can ever write in a satisfactory manner upon the Life of Christ, so as to meet that demand which causes the abortive efforts of unbelievers and half-Christians to find such an extensive circulation.
On the Heights. A Novel.
By Berthold Auerbach.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.
This volume, professing to be a translation from the German, is most thoroughly permeated with German mysticism; one can hardly give it the dignified name of theology. It carries one back in its bewildering metaphysics to the days of The Dial, when every girl of eighteen belonging to a certain clique, was devouring Bettina's correspondence with Goethe, and listening with rapt soul to lectures on "Human Life," from the oracular lips of a favorite seer; discourses utterly beyond the comprehension of the maiden's papa, but which she understood perfectly.
We are led to wonder, in our republican ignorance, if people in court life converse and act in the stilted, theatrical manner in which they are here represented; every person being what in these days would be called "highly organized." In this particular, and in the tedium and repetition of court detail, we were forcibly reminded of the voluminous works of Miss Mühlbach, with this difference, that On the Heights makes no historical claim.
There are, however, very many sweet touches of nature in the book, gems of thought; and now and then a rare pearl of good counsel, near which, in reading, one involuntarily draws a pencil-line, that they may be found again. Maternal love is beautifully portrayed, both in high and low life, in the queen, and in the foster-mother of the prince.