Among the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part of New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy Lake—called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks abound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for English and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what specially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit missionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in the year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake of the Blessed Sacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred upon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake George, after George I. of England.
May its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now stands on the right shore—about a mile and a half from the head—a building known as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,” from which, through the summer months, a silvery bell rings out the Angelus at morning, noon, and evening. Strangers are informed that this building is “the monastery”; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses with all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross upon the roof—for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable “encroachment of popery” in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.
Among the curious who have ventured upon visiting “the monastery,” a certain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and looking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she replied, in the accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives me a feeling as if something was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the Saviour so small! It’s the Saviour that ought to be big.” Now, this sentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology. To one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt; but to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though poorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our friend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the figures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her remark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us, in her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and almost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated, she would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and not as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the writer’s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but that we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at all; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially iconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a Madonna-and-Child.
Here are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially iconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the presence of a Madonna-and-Child.
The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged in the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its condemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical Council. It sought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their being idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the Isaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and “manifesting itself” (to borrow the words of Döllinger) “as a blind and senseless hatred of the imitative arts,” we wonder that such a fanaticism could gain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting heresy which “shed more blood,” says the same writer, “than any which had preceded it.”
Now, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous heresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation; for, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study, that our mind had entertained, at some time or other—though not always culpably, we trust—nearly every heresy ever known. But that Protestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic zeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.
We say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is necessarily iconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name implies—from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to the rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a soul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally seeks to image his ideas—to place them outside of himself in a representative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters of religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations in all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most so the Greek (the word “symbol” is Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of negations—which finds its vitality in protesting against authority—cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has nothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes images, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive, affirmative, dogmatic.
Again, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a tradition of iconoclasm—the principle of a false supernaturalism. The supernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our nature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was wanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with grace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by “faith only”; the righteousness of Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown over our depravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an immediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were no better than ordinary mortals—possessing no merit of their own and nothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.
Furthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of the visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural being evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the natural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and sacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a visible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now, images—representations of any kind—come under the sacramental system, inasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to commune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to invoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to us. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental system.
But, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as elements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the subject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is God made visible—God with a human soul and a material body. Surely, then, to maintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the material is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the Incarnation.