Such, then, was the mission of the Jews; they constitute the true church before Christ for the preaching of God’s future kingdom that shall have no end. We see them dispersed throughout the world; we meet them on all the highroads of humanity, confessing the only Lord of heaven and earth, and holding in their hands their sacred writings, showing to all that a peaceful Ruler would rise from the land of Juda and would restore all things. And when the times were accomplished, and the earth was to behold its Saviour, all nations were held in expectation of the mighty event.
We have here endeavored to give a brief sketch of the Jewish history. No one can deny that the very raison d’être of the Hebrew nation was the hope of a Messias who was to restore all things and establish upon earth the kingdom of God. The prophets speak of him and of his glorious reign; they predict his universal dominion; it will have no end in time, and its boundaries will be those of the universe. The destiny of the Jews is unique. After a comparatively short period of splendor which the conquests of David and Solomon shed upon Palestine, they lose their political independence, and henceforth they shall be forced to mingle with the Gentiles, whose social habits they will adopt, but at the same time unflinchingly adhering to their own religious tenets. The result is also an historical fact: a Liberator of the human race is expected by all nations, et erit expectatio gentium. Is it possible for an unprejudiced mind, for one who does not read history in the light of preconceived systems, not to see in that well-connected whole a design of Providence which ordains means to the obtaining of a clearly-defined end? Historical atheism refuses to recognize any such design, as atheism, in the conception of nature, refuses to recognize an intelligent Creator. It gives us, instead of life, dry bones and ashes, barren and unmeaning facts in history, and in nature phenomena with no intelligible cause for their production, and tending to no assignable end. In every sphere of knowledge atheism does nothing else but spread darkness and desolation all around. But as one who is not wilfully blinded will always discern by a kind of rational instinct the action of an infinitely wise and omnipotent Being in the order displayed in the world, so will he admit the action of God in the direction of human events in which a divine intelligence is no less clearly manifested. The ever popular argument of St. Paul with its consequence, against those men that detain the truth of God in injustice, holds good in both cases: “That which is known of God is manifest in them; for God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: his eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable” (Rom. i. 18-20).
THE LESSONS OF THE CAXTON CELEBRATION OF 1877.[[76]]
England’s first printer was a Catholic. He lived and died in communion with the Holy See. He established his press in England beneath the shadow and on the grounds of the Abbey of Westminster, protected and encouraged by its monks. He translated and printed books of Catholic piety, and seems especially given to devotions for a happy death. He made bequests to the church, and the Requiem was said at his death.
Among all incunabula Caxton’s issues rank among the scarcest. Why? The Reformation made war upon them, so that many have perished utterly; six are known only by some scanty fragment preserved by being used to form part of a book-cover; of thirty-two more only a single copy has been preserved to our day. How many have perished and left no trace whatever, no man can tell.
“Be it therefore enacted by the king, our sovereign lord, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present parliament assembled, that all books called antiphoners, missals, grailes (graduals), processionals, manuals, legends, piès, portuasses (breviaries), primers in Latin and English,[[77]] couchers, journals (diurnals), ordinals, or other books or writings whatsoever, heretofore used for service of the church, written or printed, in the English or Latin tongue, other than such as shall be set forth by the king’s majesty, shall be by authority of his present act clearly and utterly abolished, extinguished and forbidden for ever to be used or kept in this realm, or elsewhere within any of the king’s dominions.
“And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that if any person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition soever he, she, or they be, bodies politic or corporate, that now have, or hereafter shall have, in his, her, or their custody any the books or writings of the sorts aforesaid, or any images of stone, timber, alabaster, or earth, graven, carved, or painted, which heretofore have been taken out of any church or chapel, or yet stand in any church or chapel, and do not, before the last day of June next ensuing, deface and destroy or cause to be defaced and destroyed, the same images and every of them, and deliver or cause to be delivered all and every the same books to the mayor, bailiff, constable, or church wardens of the town where such books then shall be, to be by them delivered over openly, within three months next following after the said delivery, to the archbishop, bishop, chancellor, or commissary of the same diocese (to the intent the said archbishop, bishop, chancellor, or commissary, and every of them, cause them, immediately after, either to be openly burnt or otherwise defaced and destroyed), shall for every such book or books willingly retained ... forfeit for the first offence ten shillings, and for the second offence shall forfeit and lose four pounds, and for the third offence shall suffer imprisonment at the king’s will” (Statute 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. x.)
Neglect on the part of the archbishops and the others named to burn the books involved a penalty of forty pounds.
Thus Protestantism destroyed Caxtons. “A glance at the titles of the uniques will show that the books most liable to destruction, probably owing in part to their being much used, and in part to the destructiveness of religious sectarianism,”[[78]] says Blades, “are those directly or indirectly of an ecclesiastical character—such as ‘Horæ,’ ‘Psalters,’ ‘Meditacions,’ etc.”
Last year, 1877, being, it was believed, the fourth centenary of the first book printed by Caxton at Westminster, a Caxton celebration, proposed by Mr. Hodson, was carried out in London with no little pomp and display. Caxton imprints were brought together from many choice collections, with incunabula of all countries, and especially editions of the Bible, from Gutenberg’s to one printed for the occasion at Oxford.