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“Then, oh, then how could the council declare the Pope to be infallible?”
Tito regarded his friend pityingly. “My wonder is,amico,” he replied seriously, “that they did not declare himimmortalas well. When you read the true history of those exciting days and learn something of the political intrigue with which the Church was then connected, you will see certain excellent reasons why the Holy Father should have been declared infallible. But let me ask you,amico, if you have such doubts, why are you here, of all places? Surely it is not your own life-purpose to become a priest!”
“My life-purpose,” answered Josè meditatively, “is to find my soul––myrealself.”
Tito went away shaking his head. He could not understand such a character as that of Josè. But, for that matter, no one ever fathoms a fellow-being. And so we who have attempted a sketch of the boy’s mentality will not complain if its complexity prevents us from adequately setting it forth. Rather shall we feel that we have accomplished much if we have shown that the lad had no slight justification for the budding seeds of religious doubt within his mind, and for concluding that of the constitution of God men know nothing, despite their fantastical theories and their bold affirmations, as if He were a man in their immediate neighborhood, with whom they were on the most intimate terms.
In the course of time Josè found the companionship of Tito increasingly unendurable, and so he welcomed the formation of another friendship among his mates, even though it was with a lad much older than himself, Bernardo Damiano, a candidate for ordination, and one thoroughly indoctrinated in the faith of Holy Church. With open and receptive heart our young Levite eagerly availed himself of his new friend’s voluntary discourses on the mooted topics about which his own thought incessantly revolved.
“Fear not, Josè, to accept all that is taught you here,” said Bernardo in kindly admonition; “for if this be not the very doctrine of the Christ himself, where else will you find it? Among the Protesters? Nay, they have, it is true, hundreds of churches; and they call themselves Christians. But their religion is as diverse as their churches are numerous, and it is not of God or Jesus Christ. They have impiously borrowed from us. Their emasculated creeds are only assumptions of human belief. They recognize no law of consistency, and so they enjoy unbridled license. They believe what they please, and each interprets Holy Writ to suit his own fantastical whims.”
“But, the Popes––” began Josè, returning again to his troublesome topic.
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“Yes, and what of them?” replied his friend calmly. “Can you not see beyond the human man to the Holy Office? The Holy Father is the successor of the great Apostle Peter, whom our blessed Saviour appointed his Vicar on earth, and constituted the supreme teacher and judge in matters of morals. Remember,Jesus Christ founded the Catholic religion! He established the Church, which he commanded all men to support and obey. That Church is still, and always will be, the infallible teacher of truth, for Jesus declared that it should never fall. Let not Satan lead you to the Protesters, Josè, for their creeds are but snares and pitfalls.”
“I know nothing of Protestant creeds, nor want to,” answered Josè. “If Jesus Christ established the Catholic religion, then I want to accept it, and shall conclude that my doubts and questionings are but the whisperings of Satan. But––”
“But what, my friend? The Popes again?” Bernardo laughed, and put his arm affectionately about the younger lad. “The Pope, Josè, is, always has been, and always will be, supreme, crowned with the triple crown as king of earth, and heaven, and hell. We mortals have not made him so. Heaven alone did that. God himself made our Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church superior even to the angels; and if it were possible for them to believe contrary to the faith, he could judge them and lay the ban of excommunication upon them.”
Josè’s eyes widened while his friend talked. Was he losing his own senses? Or was it true, as his lamented father had said, that he had been cast under the spell of the devil’s wiles? Had he been foreordained to destruction by his own heretical thought? For, if what he heard in Rome was truth, then was he damned, irrevocably!
“Come,” said his friend, taking his arm; “let us go to the library and read theCredoof the Holy Father, Pius the Fourth, wherein is set forth in detail the doctrinal system of our beloved Church. And let me urge you, my dear young friend, to accept it, unreservedly, and be at peace, else will your life be a ceaseless torment.”
Oh, that he could have done so! That he could have joined those thousands of faithful, loyal adherents to Holy Church, who find in its doctrines naught that stimulates a doubt, nor urges against the divine institution of its gorgeous, material fabric!
But, vain desire! “I cannot! I cannot!” he wailed in the dark hours of night upon his bed. “I cannot love a God who has to be prayed to by Saints and Virgin, and persuaded by them not to damn His own children! I cannot believe that the Pope, a mere human being, can canonize Saints and make spiritual45beings who grant the prayers of men and intercede with God for them! Yes, I know there are multitudes of good people who believe and accept the doctrines of the Church. But, alas! I am not one of them, nor can be.”
For, we repeat, the little Josè was morbidly honest. And this gave rise to fear, a corroding fear that he might not do right by his God, his mother, and himself, the three variants in his complex life-equation. His self-condemnation increased; yet his doubts kept pace with it. He more than ever distrusted his own powers after his first four years in the seminary. He more than ever lacked self-confidence. He was more than ever vacillating, hesitant, and infirm of purpose. He even at times, when under the pall of melancholia, wondered if he had really loved his deceased father, and whether it was real grief which he felt at his parent’s demise. Often, too, when fear and doubt pressed heavily, and his companions avoided him because of the aura of gloom in which he dwelt, he wondered if he were becoming insane. He seemed to become obsessed with the belief that his ability to think was slowly paralyzing. And with it his will. And yet, proof that this was not the case was found in his stubborn opposition to trite acquiescence, and in his infrequent reversals of mood, when he would even feel an intense, if transient, sense of exaltation in the thought that he was doing the best that in him lay.
It was during one of these lighter moods, and at the close of a school year, that a great joy came to him in an event which left a lasting impress upon his life. Following close upon a hurried visit which his uncle paid to Rome, the boy was informed that it had been arranged for him to accompany the Papal Legate on a brief journey through Germany and England, returning through France, in order that he might gain a first-hand impression of the magnitude of the work which the Church was doing in the field, and meet some of her great men. The broadening, quieting, confidence-inspiring influence of such a journey would be, in the opinion of Padre Rafaél, incalculable. And so, with eager, bubbling hope, the lad set out.
Whatever it may have been intended that the boy should see on this ecclesiastical pilgrimage, he returned to Rome at the end of three months with his quick, impressionable mind stuffed with food for reflection. Though he had seen the glories of the Church, worshiped in her matchless temples, and sat at the feet of her great scholars, now in the quiet of his little room he found himself dwelling upon a single thought, into which all of his collected impressions were gathered: “The Church––Catholic and Protestant––is––oh, God, the Church is––not sick, not dying, but––dead! Aye, it has served both God46and Mammon, and paid the awful penalty! And what is left?Caesarism!” The great German and British nations were not Catholic. But worse, the Protestant people of the German Empire were sadly indifferent to religion. He had seen, in Berlin, men of family trying to resell the Bibles which their children had used in preparation for confirmation. He had found family worship all but extinct. He had marked the widespread indifference among Protestant parents in regard to the religious instruction of their young. He had been told there that parents had but a slight conception of their duty as moral guides, and that children were growing up with only sensuous pleasures and material gain as their life-aims. Again and again he was shown where in whole districts it was utterly impossible to secure young men for ordination to the Protestant ministry. And he was furnished with statistics setting forth the ominous fact that within a few years, were the present decline unchecked, there would be no students in the Protestant universities of the country.
“Do you not see in this, my son,” said the Papal Legate, “the blight of unbelief? Do you not mark the withering effects of the modern so-called scientific thought? What think you of a religion wherein the chief interest centers in trials for heresy; whose ultimate effect upon human character is a return to the raw, primitive, immature sense of life that once prevailed among this great people? What think you now of Luther and his diabolical work?”
The wondering boy hung his head without reply. Would Germany at length come to the true fold? And was that fold the Holy Catholic Church?
And England––ah! there was the Anglican church, Catholic, but not Roman, and therefore but a counterfeit of the Lord’s true Church. Would it endure? “No,” the Legate had said; “already defection has set in, and the prodigal’s return to the loving parent in Rome is but a matter of time.”
Then came his visit to the great abbey of Westminster, and the impression which, to his last earthly day, he bore as one of his most sacred treasures. There in the famous Jerusalem Chamber he had sat, his eyes suffused with tears and his throat choked with emotion. In that room the first Lancastrian king long years before had closed his unhappy life. There the great Westminster Confession had been framed. There William of Orange had held his weighty discussion of the Prayer-Book revision, which was hoped to bring Churchmen and Dissenters again into harmony. And there, greatest of all, had gathered, day after day, and year after year, the patient, devoted group of men who gave to the world its Revised Edition of the Holy47Bible, only a few brief years ago. As the rapt Josè closed his eyes and listened to the whispered conversation of the scholarly men about him, he seemed to see the consecrated Revisers, seated again at the long table, deep in the holy search of the Scriptures for the profound secrets of life which they hold. He saw with what sedulous care they pursued their sacred work, without trace of prejudice or religious bias, and with only the selfless purpose always before them to render to mankind a priceless benefit in a more perfect rendition of the Word of God. Why could not men come together now in that same generous spirit of love? But no, Rome would never yield her assumptions. But when the lad rose and followed his guides from the room, it was with a new-born conviction, and a revival of his erstwhile firm purpose to translate for himself, at the earliest opportunity, the Greek Testament, if, perchance, he might find thereby what his yearning soul so deeply craved, the truth.
That the boy was possessed of scholarly instincts, there could be no doubt. His ability had immediately attracted his instructors on entering the seminary. And, but for his stubborn opposition to dogmatic acceptance without proofs, he might have taken and maintained the position of leader in scholarship in the institution. Literature and the languages, particularly Greek, were his favorite studies, and in these he excelled. Even as a child, long before the eventful night when his surreptitious reading of Voltaire precipitated events, he had determined to master Greek, and some day to translate the New Testament from the original sources into his beloved Castilian tongue. Before setting out for Rome he had so applied himself to the worn little grammar which the proprietor of the bookstall in Seville had loaned him, that he was able to make translations with comparative fluency. In the seminary he plunged into it with avidity; and when he returned from his journey with the Papal Legate he began in earnest his translation of the Testament. This, like so much of the boy’s work and writing, was done secretly and in spare moments. And his zeal was such that often in the middle of the night it would compel him to rise and, after drawing the shades carefully and stopping the crack under the door with his cassock, light his candle and dig away at his Testament until dawn.
This study of the New Testament in the Greek resulted in many translations differing essentially from the accepted version, as could not but happen when a mind so original as that of the boy Josè was concentrated upon it. His first stumbling block was met in the prayer of Jesus in an attempt to render the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread,” into idiomatic modern thought. The word translated “daily” was not to be48found elsewhere in the Greek language. Evidently the Aramaic word which Jesus employed, and of which this Greek word was a translation, must have been an unusual one––a coined expression. And what did it mean? No one knows. Josè found means to put the question to his tutor. He was told that it doubtless meant “super-supernal.” But what could “super-supernal” convey to the world’s multitude of hungry suppliants for the bread of life! And so he rendered the phrase “Give us each day a better understanding of Thee.” Again, going carefully through his Testament the boy crossed out the words translated “God,” and in their places substituted “divine influence.” Many of the best known and most frequently quoted passages suffered similarly radical changes at his hands. For the translation “truth,” the boy often preferred to substitute “reality”; and such passages as “speaking the truth in love” were rendered by him, “lovingly speaking of those things which are real.” “Faith” and “belief” were generally changed to “understanding” and “real knowing,” so that the passage, “O ye of little faith,” became in his translation, “O ye of slight understanding.” The word “miracle” he consistently changed to “sign” throughout. The command to ask “in the name of Jesus” caused him hours of deep and perplexing thought, until he hit upon the, to him, happy rendering, “in his character.” Why not? In the character of the Christ mankind might ask anything and it would be given them. But to acquire that character men must repent. And the Greek word “metanoia,” so generally rendered “repentance,” would therefore have to be translated “radical and complete change of thought.” Again, why not? Was not a complete change of thought requisite if one were to become like Jesus? Could mortals think continually of murder, warfare, disaster, failure, crime, sickness and death, and of the acquisition of material riches and power, and still hope to acquire the character of the meek but mighty Nazarene? Decidedly no! And so he went on delving and plodding, day after day, night after night, substituting and changing, but always, even if unconsciously, giving to the Scripture a more metaphysical and spiritual meaning, which displaced in its translation much of the material and earthy.
Before the end of his seminary training the translation was complete. What a new light it seemed to throw upon the mission of Jesus! How fully he realized now that creeds and confessions had never even begun to sound the profound depths of the Bible! What a changed message it seemed to carry for mankind! How he longed to show it to his preceptors and discuss it with them! But his courage failed when he faced this thought. However, another expedient presented: he would49write a treatise on the New Testament, embodying the salient facts of his translation, and send it out into the world for publication in the hope that it might do much good. Again, night after night in holy zeal he toiled on the work, and when completed, sent it, under his name, to a prominent literary magazine published in Paris.
Its appearance––for it was accepted eagerly by the editor, who was bitterly hostile to the Church––caused a stir in ecclesiastical circles and plunged the unwise lad into a sea of trouble. The essay in general might have been excusable on its distinct merits and the really profound scholarship exhibited in its composition. But when the boy, a candidate for holy orders, and almost on the eve of his ordination, seized upon the famous statement of Jesus in which he is reported to have told Peter that he was the rock upon which the Lord’s church should be eternally founded, and showed that Jesus called Peter a stone, “petros,” a loose stone, and one of many, whereas he then said that his church should be founded upon “petra,” the living, immovable rock of truth, thus corroborating Saint Augustine, but confuting other supposedly impregnable authority for the superiority and infallibility of the Church, it was going a bit too far.
The result was severe penance, coupled with soul-searing reprimand, and absolute prohibition of further original writing. His translation of the Testament was confiscated, and he was commanded to destroy all notes referring to it, and to refrain from making further translations. His little room was searched, and all references and papers which might be construed as unevangelical were seized and burned. He was then transferred to another room for the remainder of his seminary course, and given a roommate, a cynical, sneering bully of Irish descent, steeped to the core in churchly doctrine, who did not fail to embrace every opportunity to make the suffering penitent realize that he was in disgrace and under surveillance. The effect was to drive the sensitive boy still further into himself, and to augment the sullenness of disposition which had earlier characterized him and separated him from social intercourse with the world in which he moved apart from his fellow-men.
Thus had Josè been shown very clearly that implicit obedience would at all times be exacted from him by the Church. He had been shown quite unmistakably that an inquisitive and determined spirit would not be tolerated if it led to deductions at variance with accepted tradition. He might starve mentally, if his prescribed food did not satisfy his hunger; but he must understand, once for all, that truth had long since been revealed, and that it was not within his province to attempt any further additions to the revelation.
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Once more, for the sake of his mother, and that he might learn all that the Church had to teach him, the boy conscientiously tried to obey. He was reminded again that, though taught to obey, he was being trained to lead. This in a sense pleased him, as offering surcease from an erking sense of responsibility. Nevertheless, though he constantly wavered in decision; though at times the Church won him, and he yielded temporarily to her abundant charms; the spirit of protest did wax steadily stronger within him as the years passed. Back and forth he swung, like a pendulum, now drawn by the power and influence of the mighty Church; now, as he approached it, repelled by the things which were revealed as he drew near. In the last two years of his course his soul-revolt often took the form of open protest to his preceptors against indulgences and the sacramental graces, against the arbitrary Index Expurgatorius, and the Church’s stubborn opposition to modern progression. Like Faust, his studies were convincing him more and more firmly of the emptiness of human hypotheses and undemonstrable philosophy. The growing conviction that the Holy Church was more worldly than spiritual filled his shrinking soul at times with horror. The limiting thought of Rome was often stifling to him. He had begun to realize that liberty of thought and conscience were his only as he received it already outlined from the Church. Even his interpretation of the Bible must come from her. His very ideas must first receive the ecclesiastical stamp before he might advance them. His opinions must measure up––or down––to those of his tutors, ere he might even hold them. In terror he felt that the Church was absorbing him, heart and mind. His individuality was seeping away. In time he would become but a link in the great worldly system which he was being trained to serve.
These convictions did not come to him all at once, nor were they as yet firmly fixed. They were rather suggestions which became increasingly insistent as the years went on. He had entered the seminary at the tender age of twelve, his mind wholly unformed, but protesting even then. All through his course he had sought what there was in Christianity upon which he could lay firm hold. In the Church he had found an ultra-conservative spirit and extreme reverence for authority. Tito had told him that it was the equivalent of ancestor-worship. But when he one day told his instructors that he was not necessarily a disbeliever in the Scriptures because he did not accept their interpretation of them, he could not but realize that Tito had come dangerously near the truth. His translation of the Greek Testament had forced him to the conclusion that much of the material contained in the Gospels was not Jesus’ own words,51but the commentaries of his reporters; not the Master’s diction, but theological lecturing by the writers of the Gospels. Moreover, in the matter of prayer, especially, he was all at sea. As a child he had spent hours formulating humble, fervent petitions, which did not seem to draw replies. And so there began to form within his mind a concept, faint and ill-defined, of a God very different from that canonically accepted. He tried to believe that there was a Creator back of all things, but that He was inexorable Law. And the lad was convinced that, somehow, he had failed to get into harmony with that infinite Law. But, in that case, why pray to Law? And, most foolish of all, why seek to influence it, whether through Virgin or Saint? And, if God is a good Father, why ask Him tobegood? Then, to his insistent question, “Unde Deus?” he tried to formulate the answer that God is Spirit, and omnipresent. But, alas! that made the good God include evil. No, there was a terrible human misunderstanding of the divine nature, a woeful misinterpretation. He must try to ask for light in the character of the Christ. But then, how to assume that character? Like a garment? Impossible! “Oh, God above,” he wailed aloud again and again, “I don’t know what to believe! I don’t know what to think!” Foolish lad! Why did he think at all, when there were those at hand to relieve him of that onerous task?
And so, at last, Josè sought to resign himself to his fate, and, thrusting aside these mocking questions, accept the opportunities for service which his tutors so wisely emphasized as the Church’s special offering to him. He yielded to their encouragement to plunge heartily into his studies, for in such absorption lay diversion from dangerous channels of thought. Slowly, too, he yielded to their careful insistence that he must suffer many things to be so for the nonce, even as Jesus did, lest a too radical resistance now should delay the final glorious consummation.
Was the boy actuated too strongly by the determination that his widowed mother’s hopes should never be blasted by any assertion of his own will? Was he passively permitting himself to be warped and twisted into a minion of an institution alien to his soul in bigoted adherence to his morbid sense of integrity? Was he for the present countenancing a lie, rather than permit the bursting of a bomb which would rend the family and bring his beloved mother in sorrow to the grave? Or was he biding his time, an undeveloped David, who would some day sally forth like the lion of the tribe of Juda, to match his moral courage against the blustering son of Anak? Time only would tell. The formative period of his character was not yet ended, and the data for prognostication were too complex52and conflicting. We can only be sure that his consuming desire to know had been carefully fostered in the seminary, but in such a manner as unwittingly to add to his confusion of thought and to increase his fear of throwing himself unreservedly upon his own convictions. That he grew to perceive the childishness of churchly dogma, we know. That he appreciated the Church’s insane license of affirmation, its impudent affirmations of God’s thoughts and desires, its coarse assumptions of knowledge of the inner workings of the mind of Omnipotence, we likewise know. But, on the other hand, we know that he feared to break with the accepted faith. The claims of Protestantism, though lacking the pomp and pageantry of Catholicism to give them attractiveness, offered him an interpretation of Christ’s mission that was little better than the teachings he was receiving. And so his hesitant and vacillating nature, which hurled him into the lists to-day as the resolute foe of dogma and superstition, and to-morrow would leave him weak and doubting at the feet of the enemy, kept him wavering, silent and unhappy, on the thin edge of resolution throughout the greater part of his course. His lack of force, or the holding of his force in check by his filial honesty and his uncertainty of conviction, kept him in the seminary for eight years, during which his being was slowly, imperceptibly descending into him. At the age of twenty he was still unsettled, but further than even he himself realized from Rome. Who shall say that he was not at the same time nearer to God?
On the day that he was twenty, three things of the gravest import happened to the young Josè. His warm friend, Bernardo, died suddenly, almost in his arms; his uncle, Rafaél de Rincón, paid an unexpected visit to the Vatican; and the lad received the startling announcement that he would be ordained to the priesthood on the following day.
The sudden demise of the young Bernardo plunged Josè into an excess of grief and again encompassed him with the fear and horror of death. He shut himself up in his room, and toward the close of the day took his writing materials and penned a passionate appeal to his mother, begging her to absolve him from his promises, and let him go out into the world, a free man in search of truth. But scarcely had he finished his letter when he was summoned into the Rector’s office. There it was explained to him that, in recognition of his high scholarship, of his penitence and loyal obedience since the Testament episode, and of the advanced work which he was now doing in the seminary and the splendid promise he was giving, the Holy Father had been asked to grant a special indult, waiving the usual age requirement and permitting the boy to be ordained53with the class which was to receive the holy order of the priesthood the following day. It was further announced that after ordination he should spend a year in travel with the Papal Legate, and on his return might enter the office of the Papal Secretary of State, as an under-secretary, or office assistant. While there, he would be called upon to teach in the seminary, and later might be sent to the University to pursue higher studies leading to the degree of Doctor.
Before the boy had awakened to his situation, the day of his ordination arrived. The proud mother, learning from the secretary of the precipitation of events, and doting on the boy whom she had never understood; in total ignorance of the complex elements of his soul, and little realizing that between her and her beloved son there was now a gulf fixed which would never be bridged, saw only the happy fruition of a life ambition. Fortunately she had been kept in ignorance of the dubious incident of the Testament translation and its results upon the boy; and when the long anticipated day dawned her eyes swam in tears of hallowed joy. The Archbishop and his grim secretary each congratulated the other heartily, and the latter, breaking into one of his rare smiles, murmured gratefully, “At last! And our enemies have lost a champion!”
The night before the ordination Josè had begged to occupy a room alone. The appeal which emanated from his sad face, his thin and stooping body, his whole drawn and tortured being, would have melted flint. His request was granted. Throughout the night the boy, on his knees beside the little bed, wrestled with the emotions which were tearing his soul. Despondency lay over him like a pall. A vague presentiment of impending disaster pressed upon him like a millstone. Ceaselessly he weighed and reviewed the forces which had combined to drive him into the inconsistent position which he now occupied. Inconsistent, for his highest ideal had been truth. He was by nature consecrated to it. He had sought it diligently in the Church, and now that he was about to become her priest he could not make himself believe that he had found it. Now, when bound to her altars, he faced a life of deception, of falsehood, as the champion of a faith which he could not unreservedly embrace.
But he had accepted his education from the Church; and would he shrink from making payment therefor? Yet, on the other hand, must he sacrifice honor––yea, his whole future––to the payment of a debt forced upon him before he had reached the age of reason? The oath of ordination, the priest’s oath, echoed in his throbbing ears like a soul-sentence to eternal doom; while spectral shades of moving priests and bishops, laying54cold and unfeeling hands upon him, sealing him to endless servitude to superstition and deception, glided to and fro through the darkness before his straining eyes. Could he receive the ordination to-morrow? He had promised––but the assumption of its obligations would brand his shrinking soul with torturing falsehood! If he sank under doubt and fear, could he still retract? What then of his mother and his promise to her? What of the Rincón honor and pride? Living disgrace, or a living lie––which? Sacrifice of self––or mother? God knew, he had never deliberately countenanced a falsehood––yet, through circumstances which he did not have the will to control, he was a living one!
Fair visions of a life untrammeled by creed or religious convention hovered at times that night before his mental gaze. He saw a cottage, rose-bowered, glowing in the haze of the summer sun. He saw before its door a woman, fresh and fair––his wife––and children––his––shouting their joyous greetings as they trooped out to welcome him returning from his day’s labors. How he clung to this picture when it faded and left him, an oath-bound celibate, facing his lonely and cheerless destiny! God! what has the Church to offer for such sacrifice as this! An education? Yea, an induction into relative truths and mortal opinions, and the sad record of the devious wanderings of the human mind! An opportunity for service? God knows, the free, unhampered mind, open to truth and progress, loosed from mediaeval dogma and ignorant convention, seeing its brothers’ needs and meeting in them its own, has opportunities for rich service to-day outside the Church the like of which have never before been offered!
To and fro his heaving thought ebbed and flowed. Back and forth the arguments, pro and con, surged through the still hours of the night. After all, had he definite proof that the tenets of Holy Church were false? No, he could not honestly say that he had. The question still stood in abeyance. Even his conviction of their falsity at times had sorely wavered. And if his heart cried out against their acceptance, it nevertheless had nothing tangibly definite to offer in substitution. But––the end had come so suddenly! With his life free and untrammeled he might yet find the truth. Oath-bound and limited to the strictures of the Church, what hope was there but the acceptance of prescribed canons of human belief? Still, the falsities which he believed he had found within the Church were not greater than those against which she herself fought in the world. And if she accepted him, did it not indicate on her part a tacit recognition of the need of just what he had to offer, a searching spirit of inquiry and consecration to the unfoldment of truth? Alas!55the incident of the Greek translation threw its shadow of doubt upon that hope.
But if the Church accepted him, shemustaccept his stand! Hewouldraise his voice in protest, and would continually point to the truth as he discerned it! If he received the order of priesthood from her it was with the understanding that his acceptance of her tenets was tentative! But––forlorn expedient! He knew something of ecclesiastical history. He thought he knew––young as he was––that the Church stood not for progress, not for conformity to changing ideals, not for alignment with the world’s great reforms, but forherself, first, midst, and last!
Thus the conflict raged, while thoughts, momentous for even a mature thinker, tore through the mind of this lad of twenty. Prayers for light––prayers which would have rent the heart of an Ivan––burst at times from the feverish lips of this child of circumstance. Infinite Father––Divine Influence––Spirit of Love––whatever Thou art––wilt Thou not illumine the thought-processes of this distracted youth and thus provide the way of escape from impending destruction? Can it be Thy will that this fair mind shall be utterly crushed? Do the agonized words of appeal which rise to Thee from his riven soul fall broken against ears of stone?
“Occupy till I come!” Yea, beloved Master, he hears thy voice and strives to obey––but the night is filled with terror––the clouds of error lower about him––the storm bursts––and thou art not there!
Day dawned. A classmate, sent to summon the lad, roused him from the fitful sleep into which he had sunk on the cold floor. His mind was no longer active. Dumbly following his preceptors at the appointed hour, he proceeded with the class to the chapel. Dimly conscious of his surroundings, his thought befogged as if in a dream, his eyes half-blinded by the gray haze which seemed to hang before them, he celebrated the Mass, like one under hypnosis, received the holy orders, and assumed the obligations which constituted him a priest of Holy Church.
CHAPTER 8
On a sweltering midsummer afternoon, a year after the events just related, Rome lay panting for breath and counting the interminable hours which must elapse before the unpitying sun would grant her a short night’s respite from her discomfort. Her streets were deserted by all except those56whose affairs necessitated their presence in them. Her palaces and villas had been abandoned for weeks by their fortunate owners, who had betaken themselves to the seashore or to the more distance resorts of the North. The few inexperienced tourists whose lack of practical knowledge in the matter of globe-trotting had brought them into the city so unseasonably were hastily and indignantly assembling their luggage and completing arrangements to flee from their over-warm reception.
In a richly appointed suite of the city’s most modern and ultra-fashionable hotel two maids, a butler, and the head porter were packing and removing a formidable array of trunks and suit cases, while a woman of considerably less than middle age, comely in person and tastefully attired in a loose dressing gown of flowered silk, alternated between giving sharp directions to the perspiring workers and venting her abundant wrath and disappointment upon the chief clerk, as with evident reluctance she filled one of a number of signed checks to cover the hotel expenses of herself and servants for a period of three weeks, although they had arrived only the day before and, on account of the stifling heat, were leaving on the night express for Lucerne. The clerk regretted exceedingly, but on Madam Ames’ order the suite had been held vacant for that length of time, during which the management had daily looked for her arrival, and had received no word of her delay. Had Madam herself not just admitted that she had altered her plans en route, without notifying the hotel, and had gone first to the Italian lakes, without cancelling her order for the suite? And so her sense of justice must convince her that the management was acting wholly within its rights in making this demand.
While the preparations for departure were in progress the woman’s two children played about the trunks and raced through the rooms and adjoining corridor with a child’s indifference to climatal conditions.
“Let’s ring for the elevator and then hide, Sidney!” suggested the girl, as she panted after her brother, who had run to the far end of the long hall.
“No, Kathleen, it wouldn’t be right,” objected the boy.
“Right! Ho! ho! What’s the harm, goody-goody? Go tell mother, if you want to!” she called after him, as he started back to their rooms. Refusing to accompany him, the girl leaned against the balustrade of a stairway which led to the floor below and watched her brother until he disappeared around a turn of the corridor.
“Baby!” burst from her pouting lips. “’Fraid of everything! It’s no fun playing with him!” Then, casting a glance of inquiry57about her, “I’d just like to hide down these stairs. Mother and nurse never let me go where I want to.”
Obeying the impulse stimulated by her freedom for the moment, the child suddenly turned and darted down the stairway. On the floor beneath she found herself at the head of a similar stairway, down which she likewise hurried, with no other thought than to annoy her brother, who was sure to be sent in search of her when her mother discovered her absence. Opening the door below, the child unexpectedly found herself in an alley back of the hotel.
Her sense of freedom was exhilarating. The sunlit alley beckoned to a delightful journey of discovery. With a happy laugh and a toss of her yellow curls she hurried along the narrow way and into the street which crossed it a short distance beyond. Here she paused and looked in each direction, uncertain which way to continue. In one direction, far in the distance, she saw trees. They looked promising; she would go that way. And trotting along the blazing, deserted street, she at length reached the grateful shade and threw herself on the soft grass beneath, tired and panting, but happy in the excitement of her little adventure.
Recovering quickly, the child rose to explore her environment. She was in one of those numerous public parks lining the Tiber and forming the city’s playground for her less fortunate wards. Here and there were scattered a few people, mostly men, who had braved the heat of the streets in the hope of obtaining a breath of cool air near the water. At the river’s edge a group of ragged urchins were romping noisily; and on a bench near them a young priest sat, writing in a notebook. As she walked toward them a beggar roused himself from the grass and looked covetously through his evil eyes at the child’s rich clothes.
The gamins stopped their play as the girl approached, and stared at her in expectant curiosity. One of them, a girl of apparently her own age, spoke to her, but in a language which she did not understand. Receiving no reply, the urchins suddenly closed together, and holding hands, began to circle around her, shouting like little Indians.
The child stood for a moment perplexed. Then terror seized her. Hurling herself through the circle, she fled blindly, with the gamins in pursuit. With no sense of direction, her only thought to escape from the dirty band at her heels, she rushed straight to the river and over the low bank into the sluggish, yellow water. A moment later the priest who had been sitting on the bench near the river, startled by the frenzied cries of the now frightened children, rushed into the shallow water and brought the girl in safety to the bank.
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Speaking to her in her own language, the priest sought to soothe the child and learn her identity as he carried her to the edge of the park and out into the street. But his efforts were unavailing. She could only sob hysterically and call piteously for her mother. A civil guard appeared at the street corner, and the priest summoned him. But scarcely had he reported the details of the accident when, suddenly uttering a cry, the priest thrust the girl into the arms of the astonished officer and fled back to the bench where he had been sitting. Another cry escaped him when he reached it. Throwing himself upon the grass, he searched beneath the bench and explored the ground about it. Then, his face blanched with fear, he rose and traversed the entire park, questioning every occupant. The gamins who had caused the accident had fled. The beggar, too, had disappeared. The park was all but deserted. Returning again to the bench, the priest sank upon it and buried his head in his hands, groaning aloud. A few minutes later he abruptly rose and, glancing furtively around as if he feared to be seen, hastened out to the street. Then, darting into a narrow crossroad, he disappeared in the direction of the Vatican.
At midnight, Padre Josè de Rincón was still pacing the floor of his room, frantic with apprehension. At the same hour, the small girl who had so unwittingly plunged him into the gravest danger was safely asleep in her mother’s arms on the night express, which shrieked and thundered on its way to Lucerne.
CHAPTER 9
Always as a child Josè had been the tortured victim of a vague, unformed apprehension of impending disaster, a presentiment that some day a great evil would befall him. The danger before which he now grew white with fear seemed to realize that fatidic thought, and hang suspended above him on a filament more tenuous than the hair which held aloft the fabled sword of Damocles. That filament was the slender chance that the notebook with which he was occupied when the terrified child precipitated herself into the river, and which he had hastily dropped on seeing her plight and rushing to the rescue, had been picked up by those who would consider its valuenilas an instrument of either good or evil. Before the accident occurred he had been absorbed in his writing and was unaware of other occupants of the park than himself and the children, whose boisterous romping in such close proximity had scarce interrupted his occupation. Then their frightened cries59roused him to an absorbing sense of the girl’s danger. Nor did he think again of the notebook until he was relating the details of the accident to the guard at the edge of the park, when, like a blow from above, the thought of it struck him.
Trembling with dread anticipation, he had hurried back to the bench, only to find his fears realized. The book had disappeared! His frenzied search yielded no hint of its probable mode of removal. Overcome by a sickening sense of misfortune, he had sunk upon the bench in despair. But fear again roused him and drove him, slinking like a hunted beast, from the park––fear that the possessor of the book, appreciating its contents, but with no thought of returning it, might be hovering near, with the view of seeing what manner of priest it could be who would thus carelessly leave such writings as these in the public parks and within the very shadow of St. Peter’s.
But to escape immediate identification as their author did not remove his danger. Their character was such that, should they fall into certain hands, his identity must surely be established. Even though his name did not appear, they abounded in references which could hardly fail to point to him. But, far worse, they cited names of personages high in political and ecclesiastical circles in references which, should they become public, must inevitably set in motion forces whose far-reaching and disastrous effects he dared not even imagine.
For the notebook contained the soul-history of the man. It was thejournal intimewhich he had begun as a youth, and continued and amplified through succeeding years. It was the repository of his inmost thoughts, the receptacle of his secret convictions. It held, crystallized in writing, his earliest protests against the circumstances which were molding his life. It voiced the subsequent agonized outpourings of his soul when the holy order of priesthood was conferred upon him. It recorded his views of life, of religion, of the cosmos. It held in burning words his thoughts anent the Holy Catholic faith––his sense of its virtues, its weaknesses, its assumptions, its fallacies. It set forth his confession of helplessness before circumstances too strong for his feeble will, and it cited therewith, as partial justification for his conduct, his tender love for his mother and his firm intention of keeping forever inviolable his promises to her. It voiced his passionate prayers for light, and his dim hopes for the future, while portraying the wreck of a life whose elements had been too complex for him to sift and classify and combine in their normal proportions.
A year had passed since the unhappy lad had opened his mouth to receive the iron bit which Destiny had pressed so mercilessly against it. During that time the Church had conscientiously60carried out her program as announced to him just prior to his ordination. Associated with the Papal Legate, he had traveled extensively through Europe, his impressionable mind avidly absorbing the customs, languages, and thought-processes of many lands. At Lourdes he had stood in deep meditation before the miraculous shrine, surrounded with its piles of discarded canes and crutches, and wondered what could be the principle, human or divine, that had effected such cures. In Naples he had witnessed the miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. He had seen the priests pass through the great assemblage with the little vial in which the red clot slowly dissolved into liquid before their credulous eyes; and he had turned away that they might not mark his flush of shame. In the Cathedral at Cologne he had gazed long at the supposed skulls of the three Magi who had worshipped at the rude cradle of the Christ. Set in brilliant jewels, in a resplendent gilded shrine, these whitened relics, which Bishop Reinald is believed to have discovered in the twelfth century, seemed to mock him in the very boldness of the pious fraud which they externalized. Was the mystery of the Christ involved in such deceit as this? And perpetrated by his Church? In unhappy Ireland he had been forced to the conviction that misdirected religious zeal must some day urge the sturdy Protesters of the North into armed conflict with their Catholic brothers of the South in another of those deplorable religious––nay, rather,theological––conflicts which have stained the earth with human blood in the name of the Prince of Peace. It was all incomprehensible to him, incongruous, and damnably wicked. Why could not they come together to submit their creeds, their religious beliefs and tenets, to the test of practical demonstration, and then discard those which world-history has long since shown inimical to progress and happiness? Paul urged this very thing when he wrote, “Proveall things; hold fast to that which is good.” But, alas! the human doctrine of infallibility now stood squarely in the way.
From his travels with the Legate, Josè returned to Rome, burning with the holy desire to lend his influence to the institution of those reforms within the Church of which now he so clearly saw the need. Savonarola had burned with this same selfless desire to reform the Church from within. And his life became the forfeit. But the present age was perforce more tolerant; and was likewise wanting in those peculiar political conditions which had combined with the religious issue to send the great reformer to a martyr’s death.
As Josè entered Rome he found the city in a state of turmoil. The occasion was the march of the Catholic gymnastic61associations from the church where they had heard the Mass to St. Peter’s, where they were to be received by the Holy Father. Cries of “Long live free-thinking!” were issuing from the rabble which followed hooting in the wake of the procession. To these were retorted, “Viva il Papa Re!” Josè had been caught in themêlée, and, but for the interference of the civil authorities, might have suffered bodily injury. With his corporeal bruises he now bore away another ineffaceable mental impression. Were the Italian patriots justified in their hostility toward the Vatican? Had United Italy come into existence with the support of the Papacy, or in despite of it? Would the Church forever set herself against freedom of thought? Always seek to imprison the human mind? Was her unreasonably stubborn attitude directly accountable for the presence of atheism in the place, of all places, where her own influence ought to be most potent, the city of St. Peter?
For reasons which he could only surmise––perhaps because of his high scholarship––perhaps because of his remarkable memory, which constituted him a living encyclopedia in respect of all that entered it––Josè was now installed in the office of the Papal Secretary of State as an office assistant. He had received the appointment with indifference, for he was wholly devoid of ecclesiastical ambition. And yet it was with a sense of relief that he now felt assured of a career in the service of the Administrative Congregation of the Church, and for all time removed from the likelihood of being relegated to the performance of merely priestly functions. He therefore prepared to bide his time, and patiently to await opportunities to lend his willing support to the uplift of the Church and his fellow-men.
The limitations with which he had always been hedged about had not permitted the lad to know much, if anything, of the multitude of books on religious and philosophical subjects annually published throughout the world; and his oath of obedience would have prevented him from reading them if he had. But he saw no reason why, as part preparation for his work of moral uplift, he should not continue to seek, at first hand, the answer to the world-stirring query, What does the Bible mean? If God gave it, if the theory of verbal inspiration is correct, and if it is infallible, why then was it necessary to revise it, as had been done in the wonderful Jerusalem Chamber which he had once visited? Were those of his associates justified who had scoffed at that work, and, with a sneer on their lips, voiced the caustic query, “Fools! Why don’t they let the Bible alone?” If the world is to be instructed out of the old sensual theology, does the Bible contain the truth with which to62replace it? For to tear down an ideal without substituting for it a better one is nothing short of criminal. And so Josè plunged deeply into the study of Scriptural sources.
He had thought the rich treasures of the Vatican library unrestrictedly open to him, and he therefore brought his fine Latin and Greek scholarship to bear on its oldest uncial manuscripts. He began the study of Hebrew, that he might later read the Talmud and the ancient Jewish rabbinical lore. He pursued unflaggingly his studies of the English, French, and German languages, that he might search for the truth crystallized in those tongues. As his work progressed, the flush of health came to his cheeks. His eyes reflected the consuming fire which glowed in his eager soul. As he labored, he wrote; and his discoveries and meditations all found lodgment in his sole confidant, his journal.
If the Church knew what Christianity was, then Josè was forced to admit that he did not. He, weak, frail, fallible,remit sins? Preposterous! What was the true remission of sins but their utter destruction? He change the wafer and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus? Nay, he was no spiritual thaumaturgus! He could not do even the least of the works of the Master, despite his priestly character! Yet, it was not he, but the Christ, operating through him as a channel, who performed the work. Then why did not the Christ through him heal the sick and raise the dead? “Nay,” he deplored, as he bent over his task, “the Church may teach that the bones, the teeth, the hair, and other human relics of canonized Saints can heal the sick––but even the Cardinals and the Holy Father when they fall ill demand the services, not of these, but of earthly physicians. They seek not the Christ-healing then; nor can they by their boasted powers heal themselves.”
Israel’s theme was: Righteousness is salvation. But Josè knew not how to define righteousness. Surely it did not mean adherence to human creeds! It was vastly more than observance of forms! “God is a spirit,” he read; “and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Then, voicing his own comments, “Why, then, this crass materializing of worship? Are images of Saviour, Virgin, and Saint necessary to excite the people to devotion? Nay, would not the healing of the sick, the restoration of sight to the blind, and the performance of the works of the Master by us priests do more than wooden or marble images to lead men to worship? Proof! proof! proof! ‘Show us your works, and we will show you our faith,’ cry the people. ‘Then will we no longer sacrifice our independence of thought to the merciless tyranny of human tradition.’” And he knew that this related to Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Mohammedan alike.