touch me!” prevented the advent of that martyr-spirit which brings with it every virtue.
Humility is a flower that grows on the mountain-tops of the soul, and is reached only by striving and endeavor. That is not true humility which the mean heart plucks in the lowlands, calling on God ‘twixt swamp and slough; nor does the child’s hand bear it, nor yet does it shadow the untried maiden’s brow, over her lowered eyelids. We must come out above the belt of pines and the gentian meadows, we must scale the dizzy track where to look down is destruction, and face the bitter cold of the glacier, and, over all, we shall find that exquisite blossom, its pure blue drooped earthward under the infinite blue of heaven.
Therefore we claim not humility for Edith, for she was not wise enough for that, and she was too true and brave for its counterfeit; but she had that scorn for meanness and tyranny which is one of the first milestones on the road to humility.
While his niece was walking unprotected through the crowd without, Mr. Yorke was in the hall, seated near the platform, on which were all the ministers, and the prominent Know-Nothings, several of the latter town-officers. One after another spoke, and was loudly applauded. The excitement and enthusiasm were immense. Mindful of his wife’s charge, Mr. Yorke restrained his indignation, and listened attentively, sifting out what was essential in this commotion and common to all its participants. As he listened, the vision of a possible future of his country appeared before him, and made the hair rise on his head. He saw the anarchy and bloodshed of a religious war more terrible than any war the world had seen—a massacre of innocents, a war of extermination.
This was possible, was probable, was inevitable, unless men would listen to reason. And why would they not? He weighed all that was said, carefully attending to the most revolting and worthless arguments, and under all that foam and roar saw the one rock. However different might be the principles and feelings of those anti-Catholic speakers, they all converged, consolidated, and struck fire on that one point.
It was not that they were fanatic, for fanaticism cannot exist without some strong religious conviction, and by far the largest number of them had no religious belief; while many interpreted religious freedom to mean freedom from religion. It was not that they were intolerant of any man’s simple belief. The majority were more likely to laugh at faith than to be angry with it. Indeed, their scepticism made them incapable of practising real religious toleration, for that is to bear, without any manifestation of resentment, that your neighbor shall tacitly scorn what you hold sacred; a virtue most difficult to the faithful, but comparatively easy to the sceptic. It was not that they cared for its own sake whether the Bible was read in school or not, for the larger number of them never read it at home, many quoted it only in mockery, and every one denied the truth of some of its most plainly uttered tests. In short, the rock on which this tempest rose and dashed was a deadly fear and hatred, not of the Catholic Church, but of the Catholic clergy. The only question which interested these men in connection with any Catholic dogma was, How much temporal influence will it give to the priest? The supernatural side they cared not a fig for. To their minds it was impossible that a Catholic priest should be a truthful, plain-dealing, straightforward
man. He shuffled, evaded, intrigued. His aim was less to christianize the world than to govern it, less to enlighten than to direct.
Let us give the Know-Nothings and their sympathizers their due. Bad as they were, slanderers and law-breakers, and absolutely irreligious for the most part, the worst fault of many of them was that they knowingly used bad means to what they believed to be a good end. There was some sincerity in the movement, though it was, at its best, irrational, inconsistent, and un-American, as alien, indeed, to our republic as it charged the church with being. They believed that the Catholic clergy acquire power by insidious means, and that, once in power, they will destroy all that makes our dear country the abode of freedom and equal rights, and the bountiful home where all the starving, shivering exiles of other lands may feed and warm themselves. Once prove that the church is friendly to the republic, and the vertebra of their opposition is broken.
Mr. Griffeth was the only one of these speakers who cleared the question from the débris of personal slander and misrepresentation of doctrine.
“You mistake, gentlemen,” he said, “if you think that the doctrines of the Catholic Church are either ridiculous or bad. Such an opinion would show you ill-informed or incapable of comprehension. On the contrary, they are glorious. But they are such as can be safely preached and enforced only by saints and angels, or by men of such exalted holiness as the world seldom sees. In the hands of weak men, they may be, and have been, perverted to base uses. The dogma of the Infallibility of the church is a crown of living gold on the head of the mystical Spouse, and a mantle of cloth of gold