{583}
I have stated their arguments as fairly as I can, but you must not for an instant suppose, my brethren, that I admit either their principles or their facts. It is a simple paradox to say that ecclesiastical and temporal power cannot lawfully, religiously, and usefully be joined together. Look at what are called the middle ages—that is, the period which intervenes between the old Roman empire and the modern world; as I have said, the Pope and the bishops saved religion and civil order from destruction in those tempestuous times—and they did soby meansof the secular power which they possessed. And next, going on to the principles which the Pope's enemies lay down as so very certain, who will grant to them, who has any pretension to be a religious man, that progress in temporal possessions is the greatest of goods, and that everything else, however sacred, must give way before it? On the contrary, health, long life, security, liberty, knowledge, are certainly great goods, but the possession of heaven is a far greater good than all of them together. With all the progress in worldly happiness which we possibly could make, we could not make ourselves immortal—death must come; that will be a time when riches and worldly knowledge will avail us nothing, and true faith and divine love and a past life of obedience will be all in all to us. If we were driven to choose between the two, it would be a hundred times better to be Lazarus in this world than to be Dives in the next.
However, the best answer to their arguments is contained in sacred history, which supplies us with a very apposite and instructive lesson on the subject, and to it I am now going to refer.
Now observe, in the first place, no Catholic maintains that that rule of the Pope as a king, in Rome and its provinces, which men are now hoping to take from him, is, strictly speaking, what is called a theocracy, that is, a divine government. His government, indeed, in spiritual matters, in the Catholic Church throughout the world, might be called a theocracy, because he is the vicar of Christ, and has the assistance of the Holy Ghost; but not such is his kingly rule in his own dominions. On the other hand, the rule exercised over the chosen people, the Israelites, by Moses, Josue, Gideon, Eli, and Samuel, was a theocracy: God was the king of the Israelites, not Moses and the rest—theywere but vicars or vicegerents of the Eternal Lord who brought the nation out of Egypt. Now, when men object that the Pope's government of his own states is not what it should be, and that therefore he ought to lose them, because, forsooth, a religious rule should be perfect or not at all, I take them at their word, if they are Christians, and refer them to the state of things among the Israelites after the time of Moses, during the very centuries when they had God for their king. Was that a period of peace, prosperity, and contentment? Is it an argument against the divine perfections, that it was not such a period? Why is it, then, to be the condemnation of the Popes, who are but men, that their rule is but parallel in its characteristics to that of the King of Israel, who was God? He indeed has his own all-wise purposes for what he does; he knows the end from the beginning; he could have made his government as perfect and as prosperous as might have been expected from the words of Moses concerning it, as perfect and prosperous as, from the words of the prophets, our anticipations might have been about the earthly reign of the Messias. But this he did not do, because from the first he made that perfection and that prosperity dependent upon the free will, upon the cooperation of his people. Their loyal obedience to him was the condition, expressly declared by him, of his fulfilling his promises. He proposed to work out his purposes through them, and, when they refused their share{584}in the work, everything went wrong. Now they did refuse from the first; so that from the very first, he says of them emphatically, they were a "stiff-necked people." This was at the beginning of their history; and close upon the end of it, St. Stephen, inspired by the Holy Ghost, repeats the divine account of them: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do you also." In consequence of this obstinate disobedience, I say, God's promises were not fulfilled to them. That long lapse of five or six hundred years, during which God was their king, was in good part a time, not of well-being, but of calamity.
Now, turning to the history of the papal monarchy for the last thousand years, the Roman people have not certainly the guilt of the Israelites, because they were not opposing the direct rule of' God; and I would not attribute to them now a liability to the same dreadful crimes which stain the annals of their an ancestors; but still, after all they have been a singularly stiff-necked people in time past, and in consequence, there has been extreme confusion, I may say anarchy, under the reign of the Popes; and the restless impatience of his rule which exists in the Roman territory now is only what has shown itself age after age in times past. The Roman people not seldom offered bodily violence to their Popes, killed some Popes, wounded others, drove others from the city. On one occasion they assaulted the Pope at the very altar in St. Peter's, and he was obliged to take to flight in his pontifical vestments. Another time they insulted the clergy of Rome; at another, they attacked and robbed the pilgrims who brought offerings from a distance to the shrine of St. Peter. Sometimes they sided with the German emperors against the Pope; sometimes with other enemies of his in Italy itself. As many as thirty-six Popes endured this dreadful contest with their own subjects, till at last, in anger and disgust with Rome and Italy, they took refuge in France, where they remained for seventy years, during the reigns of eight of their number. [Footnote 170]
[Footnote 170: I take these facts as I find them in Gibbon's History, the work which I have immediately at hand; but it would not be difficult to collect a multitude of such instances from the original historians of those times.]
That I may not be supposed to rest what I have said on insufficient authorities, I will quote the words of that great saint, St. Bernard, about the roman people, seven hundred years ago.
Writing to Pope Eugenius during the troubles of the day, he says: "What shall I say of the people? why, that itisthe Roman people. I could not more concisely or fully express what I think of your subjects. What has been so notorious for ages as the wantonness and haughtiness of the Romans? a race unaccustomed to peace, accustomed to tumult; a race cruel and unmanageable up to this day, which knows not to submit, unless when it is unable to make fight. . . . I know the hardened heart of this people, but God is powerful even of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. . . . When will you find for me out of the whole of that populous city, who received you as Pope without bribe or hope of bribe? And then especially are they wishing to be masters, when they have professed to be servants. They promise to be trustworthy, that they may have the opportunity of injuring those who trust them. . . . They are wise for evil, but they are ignorant for good. Odious to earth and heaven, they have assailed both the one and the other; impious towards God, reckless toward things sacred, factious among themselves, envious of their neighbors, inhuman toward foreigners, . . . . they love none, and by none are loved. Too impatient for submission, too helpless for rule; . . . importunate to gain an end, restless till they gain it, ungrateful when they have gained it. They have taught{585}their tongue to speak big words, while their performances are scanty indeed." [Footnote 171]
[Footnote 171: St. Bernard is led to say this to the Pope in consequence of the troubles created in Rome by Arnald of Bresela. "Ab obitu Caelestini hoc anno invalescere coepit istiusmodi rebellio Romanorum adversus Pontficem, eodemque haeresis dicta Politicorum, sive Arnaldistarum. Ea erant tempora infelicissime, cùm Romani ipsi, quorum fides in universo orbe jam à tempore Apostolorum annunciata semper fuit, resilientes modo à Pontifice, dominandi cupidine, ex filiis Petri et discipulis Christi, fiunt soboles et alumni pestilentissimi Arnaldi de Brixiâ. Verùm, cùm tu Romanos audis, ne putes omnes eâdem insaniâ percitos, nam complures ex nobilium Romanorum familiis, iis relictis, pro Pontifice rem ageoant, etc." Baron. Annal. in ann. 1144. 4.—De Consid. iv. 2.]
Thus I begin, and now let us continue I parallel between the Israelites and the Romans.
I have said that, while the Israelites had God for their king, they had a succession of great national disasters, arising indeed really from their falling off from him; but this they would have been slow to acknowledge. They fell into idolatry; then, in consequence, they fell into the power of their enemies; then God in his mercy visited them, and raised up for them a deliverer and ruler—a judge, as he was called—who brought them to repentance, and then brought them out of their troubles; however, when the judge died, they fell back into idolatry, and then they fell under the power of their enemies again. Thus for eight years they were in subjection to the king of Mesopotamia; for eight years to the king of Moab; for twenty years to the king of Canaan; for seven years to the Madianites; for eighteen years to the Ammomites; and for forty years to the Philistines. Afterward Eli, the high priest, became their judge, and then disorders of another kind commenced. His sons, who were priests also, committed grievous acts of impurity in the holy place, and in other ways caused great scandal. In consequence a heavy judgment came upon the people; they were beaten in battle by the Philistines, and the ark of God was taken. Then Samuel was raised up, a holy prophet and a judge, and in the time of his vigor all went well; but he became old, and then he appointed his sons to take his place. They, however, were not like him, and everything went wrong again. "His sons walked not in his ways," says the sacred record, "but they turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment." This reduced the Israelites to despair; they thought they never should have a good government while things were as they were; and they came to the conclusion that they had better not be governed by such men as Samuel, however holy he might be, that public affairs ought to be put on an intelligible footing, and be carried on upon system, which had never yet been done. So they came to the conclusion that they had better have a king, like the nations around them. They deliberately preferred the rule of man to the rule of God. They did not like to repent and give up their sins, as the true means of being prosperous; they thought it an easier way to temporal prosperity to have a king like the nations than to pray and live virtuously. And not only the common people, but even the grave and venerable seniors of the nation took up this view of what was expedient for them. "All the ancients of Israel, being assembled, came to Samuel, . . . and they said to him . . . Make us a king to judge us, as all nations have." Observe, my brethren, this is just what the Roman people are saying now. They wish to throw off the authority of the Pope, on the plea of the disorders which they attribute to his government, and to join themselves to the rest of Italy, and to have the King of Italy for their king. Some of them, indeed, wish to be without any king at all; but, whether they wish to have a king or no, at least they wish to get free from the Pope.
Now let us continue the parallel. When the prophet Samuel heard this request urged from such a quarter, and supported by the people generally, he was much moved. "The word was displeasing in the eyes of Samuel," says the inspired writer, "that they should say, Give us a king. And Samuel prayed to the Lord."{586}Almighty God answered him by saying, "They have not rejected thee, but me;" and he bade the prophet warn the people, what the king they sought after would be to them when at length they had him. Samuel accordingly put before them explicitly what treatment they would receive from him. "He will take your sons," he said, "and will put them in his chariots; and he will make them his horseman, and his running footmen to go before his chariots. He will take the tenth of your corn and the revenue of your vineyards. Your flocks also he will take, and you shall be his servants." Then the narrative proceeds, "But the people would not hear the voice of Samuel, and they said, Nay, but there shall be a king over us. And we also will be like all nations, and our king shall judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles for us."
Now here the parallel I am drawing is very exact. It is happier, I think, for the bulk of a people to belong to a small state which makes little noise in the world than to a large one. At least in this day we find small states, such an Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, have special and singular temporal advantages. And the Roman people, too, under the sway of the Popes, at least have had a very easy time of it; but, alas that people is not sensible of this, or does not allow itself to keep it in mind. The Romans have not had those civil inconveniences which fall so heavy on the members of a first-class power. The pontifical government has been very gentle with them; but, if once they were joined to the kingdom of Italy, they would at length find what it is to attain temporal greatness. The words of Samuel to the Israelites would be fulfilled in them to the letter. Heavy taxes would be laid on them; their children would be torn from them for the army; and they would incur the other penalties of an ambition which prefers to have a share in a political adventure to being at the head of Catholic citizenship. We cannot have all things to our wish in this world; we must take our choice between this advantage and that; perhaps the Roman people would like both to secure this world and the next, if they could; perhaps, in seeking both, they may lose both; and perhaps, when they have lost more than they have gained, they may wish their old sovereign back again, as they have done in other centuries before this, and may regret that they have caused such grievous disturbance for what at length they find out is little worth it.
In truth, after all, the question which they have to determine is, as i have intimated, not one of worldly prosperity and adversity, of greatness or insignificance, of despotism or liberty, of position in the world or in the church; but a question of spiritual life or death. The sin of the Israelites was not that they desired good government, but that they rejected God as their king. Their choosing to have "a king like the nations" around them was, in matter of fact, the first step in a series of acts which at length lead them to their rejection of the Almighty as their God. When in spite of Samuel's remonstrances they were obstinate, God let them have their way, and then in time they became dissatisfied with their king for the very reasons which the old prophet had set before them in vain. On Solomon's death, about a hundred and twenty years after, the greater part of the nation broke off from his son on the very plea of Solomon's tyranny, and chose a new king, who at once established idolatry all through their country.
Now, I grant, to reject the Holy Father of course is not the sin of the Israelites, for they rejected Almighty God himself: yet I wish I was not forced to believe that a hatred of the Catholic religion is in fact at the bottom of that revolutionary spirit which at present seems so powerful in Rome. Progress, in the mouth of some people—of a great many people—means apostasy. Not that I wouldn't deny that{587}there are sincere Catholics so dissatisfied with things as they were in Italy, as they are in Rome, that they are brought to think that no social change can be for the worse. Nor as if I pretended to be able to answer all the objections of those who take a political and secular view of the subject. But here I have nothing to do with secular politics. In a sacred place I have only to view the matter religiously. It would ill become me, in my station in the church and my imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case, to speak four or against statesmen and governments, lines of policy or public acts, as if I were invested with any particular mission to give my judgment, or had any access to sources of special information. I have not here to determine what may be politically more wise, or what may be socially more advantageous, or what in a civil point of view would work more happily, or what in an intellectual would tell better; my duty is to lead you, my brethren, to look at what is happening, as the sacred writers would now view it and describe it were they on earth now to do so, and to attempt this by means of the light thrown upon present occurrences by what they actually have written, whether in the Old Testament or the New.
We must remove, I say, the veil off the face of events, as Scripture enables us to do, and try to speak of them as Scripture interprets them for us. Speaking then in the sanctuary, I say that theories and schemes about government and administration, be a better or worse, and the aims of mere statesmen and politicians, be they honest or be they deceitful, these are not the determining causes of that series of misfortunes under which the Holy See has so long been suffering. There is something deeper at work than anything human. It is not any refusal of the Pope to put his administration on a new footing, it is not any craft or force of men high in public affairs, it is not any cowardice or frenzy of the people, which is the sufficient explanation of the present confusion. What it is our duty here to bear in mind is the constant restless agency over the earth of that bad angel who was a liar from the beginning, of whom Scripture speaks so much. The real motive cause of the world's troubles is the abiding presence in it of the apostate spirit, "The prince of the power of this air," as St. Paul calls him, "The spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief."
Things would go on well enough but for him. He it is who perverts to evil what is in itself good and right, sowing cockle amid the wheat. Advance in knowledge, in science, in education, in the arts of life, in domestic economy, in municipal administration, in the conduct of public affairs, is all good and from God, and might be conducted in a religious way; but the evil spirit, jealous of good, makes use of it for a bad end. And much more able is he to turn to his account the designs and measures of worldly politicians. He it is who spreads suspicions and dislikes between class and class, between sovereigns and subjects, who makes men confuse together things good and bad, who inspires bigotry, party spirit, obstinacy, resentment, arrogance, and self-will, and hinders things from righting themselves, finding their level, and running smooth. His one purpose is so to match and arrange and combine and direct the opinions and the measures of Catholics and unbelievers, of Romans and foreigners, of sovereigns and popular leaders—all that is good, all that is bad, all that is violent or lukewarm in the good, all that is morally great and intellectually persuasive in the bad—as to inflict the widest possible damage, and utter ruin, if that were possible, on the church of God.
Doubtless in St. Paul's time, in the age of heathen persecution, the persecutors had various good political arguments in behalf of their cruelty. Mobs indeed, or local magistrates, might be purposely cruel toward the Christians; but the great Roman government{588}at a distance, the great rulers and wise lawyers of the day, acted from views of large policy; they had reasons of state, as the Kings of the earth have now; still our Lord and his apostles do not hesitate to pass these by, and declare plainly that the persecution which they sanctioned or commanded was the word, not of man, but of Satan. And now in like manner we are not engaged in a mere conflict between progress and reaction, modern ideas and new, philosophy and theology, but in one scene of the never-ending conflict between the anointed Mediator and the devil, the church and the world; and, in St. Paul's words, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places."
Such is the apostle's judgment; and how, after giving it, does he proceed? "Therefore," he says, "take unto you the armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in all things taking the shield of faith, whereby you may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take unto you the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." And then he concludes his exhortation with words which most appositely bear upon the point toward which all that I have been saying is directed—"praying at all times with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching therein with all instance and supplication for all the saints, and for me," that is, for the apostle himself, "that speech may be given me, that I may open my mouth with confidence to make known the mystery of the gospel."
Here, then, we are brought at length to the consideration of the duty of prayer for our living apostle and bishop of bishops, the Pope. I shall attempt to state distinctly what is to be theobjectof our prayers for him, and secondly, what thespiritin which we should pray, and so I shall bring my remarks on this great subject to and end.
1. In order to ascertain the exactobjectof our prayers at this time, we must ascertain what is theoccasionof them. You know, my brethren, and I have already observed, that the Holy Father has been attacked in his temporal possessions again and again in these last years, and we have all along been saying prayers daily in the mass in his behalf. About six years ago the northern portion of his states threw off his authority. Shortly after, a large foreign force, uninvited, as it would scene, by his people at-large—robbers I will call them—(this is not a political sentiment, but a historical statement, for I never heard any one, whatever his politics, who defendant their act in itself, but only on the plea of its supreme expedience, of some state necessity, or some theory of patriotism)—a force of sacrilegious robbers—broke into provinces nearer to Rome by a sudden movement, and, without any right except that of the stronger, got possession of them, and keeps them to this day. [Footnote 172]{589}Past outrages, such as these, are never to be forgotten; but still they are not the occasion, nor do they give the matter, of our present prayers. What that occasion, what that subject is, we seem to learn from his lordship's letter to his clergy, in which our prayers are required. After speaking of the Pope's being "stripped of part of his dominions," and "deprive of all the rest, with the exception of the marshes and deserts that surround the Roman capital," he fastens our attention on the fact, that "now at last is the Pope to be left standing alone, and standing face to face with those unscrupulous adversaries, whose boast and whose vow to all the world is not to leave to him one single foot of Italian ground except beneath their sovereign sway." I understand, then, that the exact object of our prayers is, that the territory still is should not be violently taken him, as have been as larger portions of his dominions of which I have already spoken.
[Footnote 172: The following telegram in The Times of September 13th, 1860, containing Victor Emmanuel's formal justification for his invasion and occupation of Umbria and the Marches in a time of peace, is a document for after-times:TURIN, Sept. 11, evening.The king received to-day a deputation from the inhabitants of Umbria and the Marches.His majesty granted the protection which the deputation solicited, and orders to have been given to the Sardinian troops to enter those provinces by the following proclamation:"Soldiers! You are about to enter the Marches and Umbria, in order to establish civil order in the towns now desolated by this rule, and to give to the people a liberty of expressing their own wishes. You will not fight against the armies of any of the powers, but will free those unhappy Italian provinces from the bands of foreign adventurers which infest them. You do not go to revenge injuries done to me and Italy, but to prevent the popular hatred from unloosing itself against the oppressors of the country."By your example you will teach the people forgiveness of offenses, and Christian tolerance to the man compared the love of the Italian fatherland to Islamism."At peace with all the great powers, and holding myself aloof from any provocation, I intend to read Central Italy of one continual cause of trouble and discord. I intend to respect the seat of the chief of the church, to whom I am ever ready to give, in accordance with the allied and friendly powers, all the guarantees of independence and security which his misguided advisors have made hope to obtain for him from the fanaticism of the wicked sect which conspires against my authority and against the liberties of the nation."Soldiers! I am accused of ambition. Yes; i have one ambition, and it is to re-establish the principles of moral order in Italy, and preserve Europe from the continual dangers of revolution and war."The next day The Times, in a leading article, thus commented on the above:"Victor Emmanuel has in Garibaldi a most formidable competitor. . . . [Piedmont] must therefore, at whatever cost or risk, make herself once more mistress of the revolution. She must lead that she may not be forced to follow. She must revolutionize the Papal States, in order that she may put herself in a position to arrest dangerous revolutionary movement against Venetia. . . . These motives are amply sufficient to account for the decisive movement of Victor Emmanuel. He lives in revolutionary times, when self-preservation has superseded all other considerations, and it would be childish to apply to his situation the maxims of international law which are applicable to periods of tranquility."These being the motives which have held Piedmont to draw the sword, we have next to see what are the grounds on which she justifies the step. These grounds are two—the extraordinary misrule and oppression of the Papal government, and the presence of large bands of foreign mercenaries, by which the country is oppressed and terrorized. The object is said to be to give the people an opportunity of expressing their own wishes and the re-establishment of civil order. The king promises to respect the seat of the chief of the church—Rome, we suppose, and it's immediate environs; but, while holding out this assurance, the manifesto speaks of the Pope and his advisers in terms of bitterness and acrimony unusual in the present age, even in a declaration of war. He will teach the people forgiveness of offenses, and Christian tolerance to the Pope and his general. He denounces the misguided advisors of the pontiff, and the fanaticism of the wicked sect which conspires against his authority and the liberties of the nation. This is harsh language, and is not inconsistently seconded by the advance into the States of the Church of an army of 50,000 men."It was the old fable of the Wolf and the Lamb.][End footnote 172]
This too, I conceive, is what is meant by praying for the Holy See. "The duty of every true child of Holy Church," says the bishop, "is to offer continuous and humble prayer for the Father of Christendom, and for the protection of the Holy See." By the Holy See we may understand Rome, considered as the seat of pontifical government. We are to pray for Rome, the see, or seat, or metropolis of St. Peter and his successors. Further, we are to pray for Rome as the seat, not only of his spiritual government, but of his temporal. We are to pray that he may continue king of Rome; that his subjects may come to a better mind; that instead of threatening and assailing him, or being too cowardly to withstand those who do, they may defend and obey him; that, instead of being the heartless tormentors of an old and venerable man, they may pay a willing homage to the apostle of God; that instead of needing to be kept down year after year by troops from afar, as has been the case for so long a time, they may, "with a great heart and a willing mind," form themselves into the glorious bodyguard of a glorious master; that they may obliterate and expiate what is so great a scandal to the world, so great an indignity to themselves, so great a grief to their father and king, that foreigners are kinder to him than his own flesh and blood; that now at least, though in the end of days, they may reverse the past, and, after the ingratitude of centuries, may unlearn the pattern of that rebellious people, who began by rejecting their God and ended by crucifying their Redeemer.
2. So much for theobjectof our prayers; secondly, as to thespiritin which we should pray. As we ever say in prayer, "Thy will be done," so{590}we must say now. We do not absolutely know God's will in this matter; we know indeed it is his will that we should ask; we are not absolutely sure that it is his will that he should grant. The very fact of our praying shows that we are uncertain about the event. We pray when we are uncertain, not when we are certain. If we were quite sure what God intended to do, whether to continue the temporal power of the Pope or to end it, we should not pray. It is quite true indeed that the event maydepend upon our prayer, but by such prayer is meant perseverance in prayer and union of prayers; and we never can be certain that this condition of numbers and of fervor has been sufficiently secured. We shall indeed gain our prayer if we pray enough; but, since it is ever uncertain what is enough, it is ever uncertain what will be the event. There are Eastern superstitions, in which it is taught that, by means of a certain number of religious acts, by sacrifices, prayers, penances, a man of necessity extorts from God what he wishes to gain, so that he may rise to supernatural greatness even against the will of God. Far be from us such blasphemous thoughts! We pray to God, we address the Blessed Virgin and the holy apostles, and the other guardians of Rome, to defend the holy city; but we know the event lies absolutely in the hands of the All wise, whose ways are not as our ways, whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and, unless we had been furnished with a special revelation on the matter, to be simply confident or to predict would be presumption. Such is Christian prayer; it implies hope and fear. We are not certain we shall gain our petition, we are not certain we shall not gain it. Were we certain that we should not, we should give ourselves to resignation, not to prayer; were we certain we should, we should employ ourselves, not in prayer, but in praise and thanksgiving. While we pray, then, in behalf of the Pope's temporal power, we contemplate both sides of the alternative his retaining it and his losing it; and we prepare ourselves both for thanksgiving and resignation as the event may B. I conclude by considering each of these issues of his present difficulty.
(I.) First, as to the event of his retaining his temporal power. I think this side of the alternative (humanly speaking) to be highly probable. I should be very much surprised if in the event he did not keep it. I think the Romans will not be able to do without him; it is only a minority even now which is against him; the majority of his subjects are not wicked, so much as cowardly and incapable. Even if they renounced him now for awhile, they will change their minds and wish for him again. They will find out that he is their real greatness. Their city is a place of ruins, except so far as it is a place shrines. It is the tomb and charnel-house of pagan impiety, except so far as it is sanctified and quickened by the blood of martyrs and the relics of saints. To inhabit it would be a penance, were it not for the presence of religion. Babylon is gone, Memphis is gone, Persepolis is gone; Rome would go, if the Pope went. Its very life is the light of the sanctuary. It never could be a suitable capital of a modern kingdom without a sweeping away of all that makes it beautiful and venerable to the world at large. And then, when its new rulers had made of it a trim and brilliant city, they would find themselves on an healthy soil and a defenceless plain. But, in truth, the tradition of ages and inveteracy of associations make such a vast change in Rome impossible. All mankind are parties to the inviolable union of the Pope and his city. His autonomy is a first principle in European politics, whether among Catholics or Protestants; and where can it be secured so well as in that city which has so long been the seat of its exercise? Moreover, the desolateness of Rome is as befitting to a kingdom which is not of this world as it is{591}incompatible with a creation of modern political theories. It is the religious centre of millions all over the earth, who care nothing for the Romans who happen to live there, and much for the martyred apostles who so long have lain buried there; and its claim to have an integral place in the very idea of Catholicity is recognized not only by Catholics, but by the whole world.
It is cheering to begin our prayers with these signs of God's providence in our favor. He expressly encourages us to pray, for before we have begun our petition, he has begun to fulfil it. And at the same time, by beginning the work of mercy without us, he seems to remind us of that usual course of his providence, namely, that he means to finish it with us. Let us fear to be the cause of a triumph being lost to the church, because we would not pray for it.
(2.) And now, lastly, to take the other side of the alternative. Let us suppose that the Pope loses his temporal power, and returns to the conation of St. Sylvester, St. Julius, St. Innocent, and other great Popes of early times. Are we, therefore, to suppose that he and the church will come to naught? God forbid! To say that the church can fail, or the see of St. Peter can fail, is to deny the faithfulness of Almighty God to his word. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." To say that the church cannot live except in a particular way, is to make it "subject to elements of the earth." The church is not the creature of times and places, of temporal politics or popular caprice. Our Lord maintains her by means of this world, but these means are necessary to her only while he gives them; when he takes them away, they are no longer necessary. He works by means, but he is not bound to means. He has a thousand ways of maintaining her; he can support her life, not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of his mouth. If he takes away one defence, he will give another instead. We know nothing of the future: our duty is to direct our course according to our day; not to give up of our own act the means which God has given us to maintain his church withal, but not to lament over their loss, when he has taken them away. Temporal power has been the means of the church's independence for a very long period; but, as her bishops have lost it a long while, and are not the less bishops still, so would it be as regards her head, if he also lost his. The eternal God is her refuge, and as he has delivered her out of so many perils hitherto, so will he deliver her still. The glorious chapters of her past history are but anticipations of other glorious chapters still to come. See how it has been with her from the very beginning down to this day. First, the heathen populations persecuted her children for three centuries, but she did not come to an end. Then a flood of heresies was poured out upon her, but still she did not come to an end. Then the savage tribes of the north and east came down upon her and overran her territory, but she did not come to an end. Next, darkness of mind, ignorance, torpor, stupidity, reckless corruption, fell upon the holy place, still she did not come to an end. Then the craft and violence of her own strong and haughty children did their worst against her, but still she did not come to an end. Then came a time when the riches of the world flowed in upon her, and the pride of life, and the refinements and the luxuries of human reason; and lulled her rulers into an unfaithful security, till they thought their high position in the world would never be lost to them, and almost fancied that it was good to enjoy themselves here below; but still she did not come to an end. And then came the so-called reformation, and the rise of Protestantism, and men said that the church had disappeared and they could not find her place. Yet, now three centuries after that even,has,{592}my brethren, the Holy Church come to an end? has Protestantism weakened her powers, terrible enemy as it seemed to be when it arose? has Protestantism, that bitter, energetic enemy of the Holy See, harmed the Holy See? Why, there never has been a time, since the first age of the church when there has been such a succession of holy Popes, as since the reformation. Protestantism had been a great infliction on such as have succumbed to it; but it has even wrought benefits for those whom it has failed to seduce. By the mercy of God it has been turned into a spiritual gain to the members of Holy Church.
Take again Italy, into which Protestantism has not entered, and England, of which it has gained possession. Now I know well that, when Catholics are good in Italy, they are very good; I would not deny that they attain there to a height and a force of saintliness of which we seem to have no specimens here. This, however, is the case of souls whom neither the presence nor the absence of religious enemies would affect for the better or the worse. Nor will I attempt the impossible task of determining the amount of faith and obedience among Catholics respectively in two countries so different from each other. But, looking at Italian and English Catholics externally and in their length and breadth, I may leave any Protestant to decide, in which of the two there is at this moment a more demonstrative faith, a more impressive religiousness, a more generous piety, a more steady adherence to the cause of the Holy Father. The English are multiplying religious buildings, decorating churches, endowing monasteries, educating, preaching, and converting, and carrying off in the current of their enthusiasm numbers even of those who are external to the church; the Italian statesman, on the contrary, in all our bishop's words, "imprison and exile the bishops and clergy, leave the flocks without shepherds, confiscate the church's revenues, suppress the monasteries and convents, incorporate ecclesiastics and religious in the army, plunder the churches and monastic libraries, and exposed religion herself, stripped in bleeding in every limb, the Catholic religion in the person of her ministers, her sacraments, or most devoted members, to be objects of profane and blasphemous ridiculed." In so brave, intelligent, vigorous-minded a race as the Italians, and in the nineteenth century not the sixteenth, and in the absence of any formal protest of classes or places, the act of the rulers is the act of the people. At the end of three centuries Protestant England contains more Catholics who are loyal and energetic in word and deed then Catholic Italy. So harmless has been the violence of the reformation; it professed to eliminate from the church doctrinal corruptions, and it has failed both in what it has done and in what it has not done; it has bred infidels, to its confusion; and, to which dismay, it has succeeded in purifying and strengthening catholic communities.
It is with these thoughts then that, my brethern, with these feelings of solemn expectation, of joyful confidence, that we now come for our God and pray him to have mercy on his chosen servant, his own vicar, in this hour of trial. We come to him, like the prophet Daniel, in humiliation for our own sins and the sins of our kings, our princes, our fathers, and our people in all parts of the church; and therefore we say theMiserereand the Litany of the Saints, as in the time of fast. And we come before him in the right and glad spirit of soldiers who know they are under the leading of an invincible king, and wait with beating hearts to see what he is about to do; and therefore it is that we adorn our sanctuary, bringing out our hangings and multiplying our lights, as on a day of festival. We know well we are on the winning side, and that the prayers of the poor and the weak and despised can do more, when offered in a true spirit, then all the wisdom and all the resources of the world. This seventh of October is the very{593}anniversary of that day on which the prayers of St. Pius, and the Holy Rosary said by thousands of the faithful at his bidding, broke forever the domination of the Turks in the great battle of Lepanto. God will give us what we ask, or he will give us something better. In this spirit let us proceed with the holy rites which we have begun—in the presence of innumerable witnesses, of God the judge of all, of Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, of his mother Mary our immaculate protectress, of all the angels of holy church, of all the blessed saints, of apostles and evangelists, martyrs and confessors, holy preachers, holy recluses, holy virgins, of holy innocents taken away before actual sin, and of all other holy souls who have been purified by suffering, and have already reached their heavenly home.
Science has taught us that the processes going on around us are but changes, not annihilations and creations. With the eye of knowledge we see the candle slowly turning into invisible gases, nor doubt for an instant that the matter of which the candle was composed is still existing, ready to reappear in other forms. But this fact is true not only of matter itself, but also of all the influences that work on matter. We wind up the spring of a clock, and, for a whole week, the labor thus stored up is slowly expended in keeping the clock going. Or, again, we spend five minutes of hard labor in raising the hammer of a pile-driver, which, in its fall, exerts all that accumulated labor in a single instant. In these instances, we easily see that we store up labor. Now, if we pat a dozen sovereigns in a purse, and none of them be lost, we can take a dozen sovereigns out again. So in labor, if no labor be lost, as science asserts—for the inertia of matter, its very deadness, so to speak, which renders it incapable of spontaneously producing work, also prevents its destroying work when involved in it—we should be able to obtain back without deduction all our invested labor when we please.
Imagine a mountain stream turning an overshot wheel. It thus falls from a higher to a lower level. A certain amount of labor would be required to raise the water from the lower level to the higher; just this amount of labor the water gives out in its fall, and invests, as it were, in the wheel. If, however, when arrived at the lower level, the water were to demand of the wheel to be pumped up again, the slightest trial would show that it would ask more than it could obtain, though not more than it had given. The wheel, if questioned as to the cause of its inability, must reply as others have done, that it has shut up part of the labor in investments which it cannot realize. The reason, as commonly stated, is, that friction has destroyed part of the labor. The labor is not, however, destroyed. Science has shown that heat and labor are connected; labor may be turned into heat, and heat into labor. The labor absorbed by friction is but turned into heat. If, however, we try to extract labor from the heat thus diffused through the different parts of the water-wheel, and make it available, we find ourselves quite at a loss. The heat gradually diffuses itself through surrounding bodies, and, so far as we{594}are concerned, the labor is wasted, though it still exist, like Cleopatra's pearl dissolved in the cup of vinegar.
If no labor is lost, so neither is any created. The labor we exert is but the expenditure of labor stored up in our frames, just as the labor invested in the wound-up spring keeps the clock going. Whence, then, does all this labor originally come? We see the waste—how is compensation made? The answer is simple and easy to give. All the labor done under the sun is really done by it. The light and heat which the sun supplies are turned into labor by the organizations which exist upon the earth. These organizations may be roughly divided into two classes—the collectors and the expenders of the sun's labor. The first merely collect the sun's labor, so as to make it available for the other class; while, just as the steam-engine is the medium by which the steam gives motion, so this second class is the medium by which the sun's heat is turned into actual labor.
Still, the sun does not work only through organized labor: his mere mechanical influence is very great. With the moon—the only second post he deigns as to fill—he produces the tides by his attraction on the sea. But for the friction of the earth and the sea, the tides, once set in motion, would rise and fall without any further effort; but the work done in overcoming the friction is, though due to the sun and moon, not extracted from them, but by them from the earth. For it would make a vast effort to cause the earth to cease rotating. All this effort is, as it were, stored up in the revolving earth. as the tidal waters, then, rub along the bed of the sea, or the waters on which they rest and the adjacent coasts, this friction tends to make the earth move faster or slower, according to the direction in which the tidal flow is. The general effect is, however, that the friction of the tides makes the earth revolve more slowly; in other words, that part of the energy of rotation of the earth, so to speak, is consumed in rubbing against the title waters. All the work, therefore, that the tides do in undermining our cliffs and washing away our beaches, is extracted by the sea and moon from the work stored up in the rotation of the earth. The diminution of rotation, indeed, is so small as scarcely to be perceived by the most refined observation, but the reality of it is now generally recognized; and this process, too, will apparently go on till the earth ceases to rotate on its axis, and presents one face constantly to the sun.
Thus we see that the destruction of the land by the sea, so interesting in a geological point of view, is partly due to the sun's action. Not only is he the source of the light and the heat we enjoy, but he aids in forming the vast sedimentary beds that form so large a part of the crust of the earth, mixing the ingredients of our fields and moulding our globe.
By heating the air, the sun produces winds, and some of the labor costs expended is made use of by man in turning his windmills and carrying his wares across the sea. But there is another expedient of the sun's heat more immediately useful to man. By evaporating the sea and other bodies of water, he loads the air with moisture, which, then in contact with cold mountain-peaks or cold masses of air, loses its heat, and, being condensed, falls as rain or snow. Thus the rivers are replenished, which for a long time supplied the greater part of the labor employed in manufacturers, though the invention of the steam-engine is fast reducing relatively the value of this supply of labor.
But vast as the sun's power thus exerted is, and useful as it is to man, is surpassed in importance by his his labor exerted through organized beings. The above named agents have one defect; on the whole, they are incapable of being stored up to any great degree; we must employ them as nature gives them to us. Organized existence, however, possesses the power of storing up labor to a very high degree.{595}The means it adopts are not mechanical, but chemical. The formation of chemical compounds is attended with the giving out of heat, which, as we have said before, is equivalent to labor, and if of sufficient intensity, can by us be made available as labor, as in the steam-engine. Now we take iron ore, consisting of iron in combination with other substances. By means of great heat the iron is set free in the smelting-furnace. The iron, then, in its change of form has, as it were, taken in all this heat. If, now, we take this iron, and keeping it from the influence of the air, reduce it to a very fine powder, and then suddenly expose it to the air, by the force of natural affinity it will absorb the oxygen of the air, and in so doing give out the heat before required to set it free from the oxygen; and if the iron be in small enough portions, so that the process is sufficiently rapid, we may see the iron grow red hot with the heat thus disengaged.
Now, plants and trees, by the aid of the solar light and heat, remove various substances, carbon especially, from what seem to be their more natural combinations, and in other combinations store them up in their structures. Take a young oak-tree with its first tender leaves; if deprived of the sun's light and heat, its growth would be stayed, and its life die out. But with the aid of the sun's rays, it absorbs carbon from the gases in the air, each particle of carbon absorbed being absorbed by the power of the sun, through the agency of the plant; and with each particle of carbon stored up is also, as it were, stored up the labor of the sun by which that particle was set free from its former fetters. The sap of the plant thus enriched returns in its course, and by some mysterious process is curdled into cells and hardened into would. But the work by which all this was accomplished lies hid in the wood, and not only is it there, but it is there in a greatly condensed state. To form a little ring of wood round the tree, not an eighth of an inch across it, took the sunshine of a long summer, falling on the myriad leaves of the oak.
Lemuel Gulliver, at Laputa, was astonished by seeing a philosopher aiming at extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Had he but rightly considered the thing he would have wondered at any one's troubling to make a science of it. The thing has always been done. From Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden eating sweet fruits, through the onion-eating builders of the pyramids, down to the flesh-eating myriads of our land, this process has always been going on. The active life of reasoning man, and his limitless powers of invention, need for their full development a vast supply of labor. By means of the vegetable kingdom, the sun's work is stored up in a number of organic substances. Man takes these into his system, and in the vessels and fibres of his body they resume their original combinations, and the labor of the sun is given out as muscular action and animal heat. To allow a larger supply of labor for man's intellect to work with, Providence created the herbivorous races. Some of these further condense the work of the sun involved in plants, by taking these plants into their systems, and storing up the work in them in their flesh and fat, which, after some preparation, are fit to be received into the frame of man, there, as the simpler vegetable substances, to supply heat and labor. Others, extracting work from the vegetable kingdom, just as man does, and mostly from parts of the vegetable kingdom that are not suited to the organs of man, are valuable to man as sources of labor, since they have no power to invent modes of employing this labor to their own advantage. Man might have been gifted with a vaster frame, and so with greater power of labor in himself, but such a plan had been destitute of elasticity; and while the savage would have basked in the sun in a more extended idleness, the civilized man had still lacked means to execute his plans.{596}So that good providence which formed man devised a further means for supplying his wants. Instead of placing him at once on a new-formed planet, it first let the sun spend its labor for countless ages upon our world. Age by age, much of this labor was stored up in vast vegetable growths. Accumulated in the abysses of the sea, or sunk to a great depth by the collapse of supporting strata, the formations of a later age pressed and compacted this mass of organic matter. The beds thus formed were purified by water, and even by heat, and at last raised to within the reach of man by subterranean movements. From this reservoir of labor man now draws rapidly, driving away the frost of today with the sunshine of a million years ago, and thrashing this year's harvest with the power that came to our earth before corn grew upon it.
Such are the processes by which the sun's power is collected and stored up by the vegetable kingdom in a form sufficiently condensed to be available for working the machinery of the bodies of men and beasts, and also to assist man in vaster expenditures of labor. It is most interesting to trace such processes, and not only interesting, but also instructive, for it shows us in what direction we are to look for our sources of labor, and will at once expose many common delusions. One hears, perhaps, that something will be found to supplant steam. Galvanism may be named; yet galvanism is generated by certain decompositions—of metal, for instance—and this metal had first to be prepared by the agency of coal, and in its decomposition can give out no more labor than the coal before invested in it. It is as if one should buy a steam-engine to pump up water to keep his mill-wheel going. The source of all labor is the sun. We cannot immediately make much use of his rays for the purposes of work; they are not intense enough; they must be condensed. The vegetable world alone at present seems capable of doing this; and its past results of coal, peat, petroleum, etc., and present results of wood and food, are ultimately all we have to look two.
To say that man will ever be dependent upon the vegetable world for all his work may be considered bold, but there is certainly great reason to believe it. The sun's labor being supplied in such a diluted form, each small quantity continually supplied must be packed in a very small space. Now, man can only subject matter to influences in the mass. The little particle of carbon that the plant frees each instant is beyond his ken. The machinery he could make would not be fine enough; it would be like trying to tie an artery with the biggest cable on board the Great Eastern. Organized existence possesses machinery fine enough to effect these small results, and to avail itself of these little installments of labor. At present, this machinery is beyond our comprehension, and possibly will ever remain so. Nature prefers that her children should keep out of the kitchen, and not pry into her pots and pans, but eat in thankfulness the meal she provides.
Some interesting results follow from what has been stated above. One is, that we are consuming not only our present allowance of the sun's labor, but also a great deal more, unless the formation of coal in our age equals its consumption, which is not probable. Mother earth will certainly, so far as we can see, some day be bankrupt. Such a consummation is pointed to, however, in other quarters. The sun's heat, unless miraculously replenished, must gradually be dissipated through space. There are reasons for thinking that the planets must ultimately fall into the sun. These things, however, possess to us no practical physical interest. Such countless ages must elapse ere they affect man's material condition upon the earth that we hardly can gravely consider them as impending. The chief interest they excite is moral. Like the man's hand that appeared to the revelling king, they write, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" (weighed, measured, limited, doomed) on our material world, and dimly point to some power that stands, as it were, hidden from our view behind the screen of matter, that shall make things new.