“My brethren,” he began, “this year has been a silent one compared with its last two predecessors; but none the less a year of sacrifice, of heroic expiation, of patient humility of spirit. We have lived amid perils as deep as religious persecutions; amid the perils of a civilization that is unchristian, and of refinements worse than heathen. The worship of the false gods has come back, and we are surrounded with a corruption as terrible as that of imperial Rome or effeminate Byzantium. Our name is no longer supreme, our escutcheon no longer unstained, our sword is broken in the hands of others, our missions are unprotected, and our influence no longer paramount among barbarians and plunderers, and still our corruption flourishes as unblushingly and undauntedly as ever, and our rivals, nay, our very captors, come to learn it at our feet. This is now our shameful supremacy; but, in the midst of these Capuan revels, is there still a hope for the nation? Yes, my brethren, the same hope that our glorious iron-crowned compeer has told us was his hope—the church, the faith, the truth. If our rulers, like those of our whilom foes, forget the Christian heroes whom we call our forefathers, the men who at the field of Tolbiac vowed our nation to the God of armies, and in a thousand fields in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt redeemed that holy vow, we do not and cannot forget it. Sons and daughters of the Crusaders, heirs and heiresses of the Kings of Jerusalem and the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, many of our nation are now in the holier army, the holier knighthood of religion; their habit is their coat of mail, their swift prayers and their swifter sacrifices are their battle-axes, their spears, their maces; in every land they are fighting the battle of their own, in every breach defending the honor of their fallen country. All eyes are still upon their acts; their land, like a magnet, compels the glance of Europe and the world. The saviours who are working hiddenly at the regeneration of ‘the eldest daughter of the church’ are of no party, own no secret master, work for no wages, and seek no reward; they [pg 535] are soldiers of the cross, children of God, who, in the hospitals, the prisons, the galleys, the schools, the Chinese stations, the Canadian missions, the cloistered monasteries, under the names of Sisters of Charity, Order of Preachers, Missions Etrangères, Christian Brothers, Benedictines of Solesmes, Jesuits, and Sulpiciens, work for God, in God, with God. ‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ”[201]
The choir of white-robed angels that clustered round the one who had ceased speaking took up the grave refrain, and chanted it as their brethren had done before, and the song swelled majestically as it seemed to reach the uttermost bounds of the living barrier of angel faces round the central groups. Ere yet it had subsided, the last of the heavenly speakers wrote his record in the book, and gave the pen into the hand of a third angel who stood in grave expectancy by his side.
This one was tall and stalwart-looking, a warrior-angel, one would involuntarily be sure to think, yet his long trailing robe of crimson was woven not with dragons or golden leopards, but with miniature cathedrals, abbeys, and priories. The heaviness of this golden embroidery seemed to drag the garment into yet more statuesque folds, as the mighty wearer drew himself slowly up and took the pen, letting go, as he did so, his hold upon a silver shield bearing a blood-red cross. His fair waving locks were uncrowned, and he bent his head towards the two who had spoken before.
“My brethren,” he began, and his voice sounded clear and clarionlike, “you have each of you sought in the continuation of the traditions of the past a pledge of the regeneration and safety of the future. I, too, looked to the early past for the golden age I would fain see revived among us, but, unlike you, it is neither persecution nor bloodshed that I have to record. Our nation is not eclipsed in power or in influence; and although our rulers are hardly worthy of their chivalric forerunners, yet there are yet among them some who are heirs to their fathers' greatness of soul, though not to the integrity of their faith. Still, our race has kept more unblemished than others that reverence for authority without which no faith is sure, no empire stable. Our life flows more calmly on in our island-home than does the troubled stream of our brethren's days beyond the sea. Still, amid benefits without number, amid the march of science and the progress of art, things that in exchange for the ancient gift of faith our second fatherland every day gives us in return, we have one fruitful source of dread and danger—the sordid love of gain which makes our people restless during life, and leaves them hopeless in death. To strive against this demon of the air—for we seem to breathe his spirit in the very atmosphere—is the constant endeavor of my being. To knit art to God as it was joined to him in the olden days, to put honor before wealth, and conscience before success, to raise principle triumphant over interest, is my daily, necessary, but most wearisome task. Many voices erstwhile charmed our nation—that of the warrior, the bard, the monk; the voice of glory, the voice of learning, the voice of holy love. Now one cry alone harshly calls our children together—the cry of gain. Our country has forgotten its ancient fanes of learning, its island monasteries, its townlike abbeys, its [pg 536] glorious cathedrals, colleges, libraries, and halls, it has forgotten its tournaments of science, its chants, its liturgies, even its earthly pageants, and has run after the abject golden calf of these latter days. Not the poor alone, but the noble and great have with less excuse come down into the new arena, and lowered themselves to the level of money-seekers, till the chivalry of our race has become a forgotten dream, a talisman that has lost its charm, a thing as out of date as a crowded abbey with its holy pomps of daily service would be among the darkened, busy streets of a modern gold-coining city. And yet in many a nook, in many an obscure street of a little town, in many a shady, peaceful country home, are rising the fair progeny of our statelier fanes of old, and beneath groined roofs and before carved altars rise prayers as beautiful and as divers as the trefoils and roses on capital and pillar. In prayer, whether petrified into fair churches standing for ever, or moulded into golden altar-plate rich with chasing and with gems, or flying straight to God's feet in ardent, winged words of love, we place our last hope, the hope of the only true conversion our land can ever know; for ‘there is a success in evil things to a man without discipline, and there is a finding that turneth to loss.’ ”[202]
Here a countless host of angels, as gravely radiant, yet with the same solemn shade of sadness in their aspect, as the last speaker, took up his parting words, and chanted them slowly. I thought they caught unconsciously the ring of the holy words chanted so often through the ages of faith, in that land of cathedrals and cloisters. Indeed, the angel choir and their stately leader seemed none other than monastic champions turned into bright heavenly spirits, so akin is everything in that isle to the claustral ideal from which sprang its life—civil, collegiate, ecclesiastical, feudal, and social.
As the chanted dirge grew less and less distinct, another angel advanced to take the pen his predecessor had just laid in the folds of the book, after having written his year's record within. This one had stood so far in the background as to have escaped my awed notice until now. He wore a long, loosely-falling robe of black, and bowed his head as if in grief; his hands were clasped, and a golden and a silver key were held between his fingers; in his step there was no elasticity, and in his eye no gladness. All those who followed him seemed equally sorrowful, but soon I heard why it was, and no longer marvelled at it.
“Brethren,” he said, in mournful tones, “brethren of all climes, who once envied me my proud position of warden over the land which holds the father of all Christians, envy me no longer the sad honors I must yet bear. When I look at my nation, I can see nothing through my tears. Once I saw treasures of art and beauty; I can take pride in them no longer. I saw fair landscapes, the envy of the world, the garden of Europe, the beautiful God's-acre of a past of heroic deeds, buried in honorable oblivion as the seedlings of a more glorious crop of Christian heroism—I can take pleasure in these no more. I saw a people mild, inoffensive, believing, loving; now I see them corrupted, deluded, led away, and turned into furies. I saw churches gorgeous with the many gifts of fervent piety and grateful wealth; I see ruins now, sacrilegiously used for godless purposes, in derision and contempt of their lofty [pg 537] dedication. I saw one city, the jewel of the universe, the city of sanctuary and refuge, where faith reigned, and grief was comforted, and weakness was made strength; a ‘city of the soul,’ where God held court mid thousands of earthly angels, and where he found again the mingled worship of the mysterious Hebrew temple and of the holy, silent house of Nazareth. But now, brethren, rude men have scattered our treasures, profaned our churches, seized our cloisters, driven away learning and charity to put lewdness and brutality in their place, and have renewed, with far more blasphemous intention, the horrors of the barbaric invasions. I see the father of the faithful with the crown of martyrdom surmounting his tiara, waiting, like the Ecce Homo eighteen hundred years ago, the final verdict of an infuriate mob, while other nations, Pilate-like, wash their hands of the sacred, helpless charge it were their first duty to defend. My brethren, weep with me, weep for me, and yet rejoice; ‘for the Lord will not cast off for ever.’[203] ‘And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see.’ ”[204]
Many were the eager voices that took up the words of hope and sang them with a fervor which only guardian spirits can know. As the strain swelled and spread, then fell into a gentle murmur, as if the singers were loth to leave off the prayer of faith and hope, the angel had written his short record for the passing year, and looked around to welcome his next successor. There was a pause, and among the angelic conclave a swaying to and fro denoted that some suppressed feeling was at work. Those who had spoken stood apart in a conspicuous group, conferring among themselves; but I looked with awe and interest at those who had hitherto been silent.
The old year's span was very short now. On earth the snow was falling, preparing a fitting shroud for the departing guest, and a fitting cradle for the coming stranger; there were revellers in many houses, heedless sleepers in more, and watchers in only a few; there were monastic choirs filing into silent churches for the coming office of matins; and there were also miserable outcasts, some voluntary slaves of the world, others unwilling watchers, poverty-stricken, hunger-smitten, desperately tempted creatures who might murmur at and even curse their fate, yet would not begin the year by breaking God's commandments; there were many sinners doing penance, many happy death-beds, many freed souls rushing on the wings of long-repressed desire towards the goal that weary years of purgatory had hardly hidden from their longing gaze; and well might the angelic host thrill with holy delight as all these sights and sounds struck upon their consciousness. The good surely outweighed the bad!
Just then an angel stepped from among the hitherto silent throng—an angel with a face full of suffering, sweetness, and patience, yet withal a look of something deeper and stronger than mere patience; and his black robe was sown with silver stars, while a star glittered also on his forehead. In quick accents, full of strength, he addressed his companions, holding the pen in his hand.