Such are the different paths which the Roman and Anglican Church have followed since the deplorable schism of Henry VIII., renewed and aggravated under Elizabeth. If before his death Henry VIII. had repented of his wicked attack upon the church, what would he have been obliged to do to reconcile himself with Rome? He would have needed only to return to that profession of faith which he made in his book against Luther. Since the beginning of the Anglican schism, and at any point of its successive variations, any Englishman, to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, would have nothing to do but to return to that same profession, conformable in every point to the profession of faith of Pius IV. This is what has been done in our own day by Father Spencer, Archbishop Manning, Fathers Newman and Faber, Palmer and Wilberforce, and a host of others, eminent for their virtues, their knowledge, their public and private character, whom no Englishman capable of appreciating the merit of sacrifices made for God and in fidelity to conscience can name without respect and pride.
But possibly some of our readers may be astonished that we insist so strongly upon the book written by Henry VIII., for it might seem that the shameful life of the author reflects discredit upon the work. Let us not be mistaken. In the first place, when Henry VIII. wrote against Luther, he was very far from being the monster of iniquity which he became afterward, and whose history I leave to the severe judgment of a Christian Tacitus. Again, it is important to understand that Henry VIII. was not the sole author of this monument of his former faith reared by his hand fourteen years before his apostasy. The universal judgment of critics has always attributed the more solid part of the work, at least, to John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who assumed ostensibly all the responsibility of it in the public defence he made of it.
Thus we see, on the one hand, Henry VIII., who, after putting forth his work with so much ostentation, belied it without shame and strove to mutilate it; and, on the other, John Fisher, who plants it upon the immovable rock where he had taken his place, and with glorious magnanimity sacrifices his life to defend it This is the choice offered. He who returns to the ancient faith of Henry VIII. separates himself from the tyrant and the murderer, and joins himself to the company of his victim. He ranks himself beside the glorious martyr who, during the second half of King Henry's reign, was, of all the episcopate of England, the only guardian left of English honor, and the last champion of the liberty of conscience.
An unwelcome truth, but a hard fact. In 1521, at the time of the publication of the king's book against Luther, the whole English episcopate most undoubtedly believed in the primacy of the pope with Fisher, with Henry VIII., with all the Catholic Church, and in no sense believed in the spiritual supremacy of the king. Then there was unity and unanimity, and the present and past of England were in harmony. But in 1534 the king changes his doctrine, and with him the whole episcopate and parliament. One English bishop only was found to display the firmness of a Basil, a Hilary, an Athanasius, an Ambrose, a Chrysostom, a Lanfranc, an Anselm, an Edward, a Thomas of Canterbury. The number of the cowards does but make the immortal beauty of the contrast shine out with the greater splendor. How many rough stones are not thrown together pell-mell in their shapelessness and obscurity, to form the foundation of the pedestal of one chosen stone, carved with the sublime inspiration of genius by the chisel of a Michael Angelo, to become the statue of a great man!
If John Fisher, like the heroic Thomas More, had not the support of his own nation, he had that of all Christendom. Yes, the monument of John Fisher is worthy to become the rallying point of every generous-hearted Christian Englishman, who ardently looks for the realization of the promise and dearest wish of our common Redeemer and Saviour, Jesus Christ—There shall be one flock and one Shepherd.
With what indescribable emotion the heart of an Englishman must beat when, after a long interior combat with so many prejudices in which he has been nurtured, he at last breaks the chains of his slavery, and when, feeling himself free with that liberty which only a Catholic can feel, he cries out: "I'll do it: I abjure the schism of Henry VIII., the creed of Cranmer and Parker; I will go back to the faith of John Fisher!"
Such, doubtless, were the sentiments of the pious and learned Robert Wilberforce when he returned to the bosom of the holy Catholic Church. His words, so serious, so marked by the ardent love of truth, so touching in their tone of respect and fraternal charity for his adversaries, fall upon our ears in accents of majestic solemnity as they echo back to us from the depths of the tomb. This is what his hand has written whose memory is enshrined in the noblest hearts:
"When national distinctions cease to exist, and mankind, small and great, are assembled before God, it will be seen whether it was wiser, like Henry VIII. and his minion Cromwell, to break up the Church Catholic for the sake of ruling it, or, like More and Fisher, to die for its unity."
Be merry as May,If you want to beAs merry and gay,At seventy-three.To be merry and gayThough, at seventy-three,Argues Life's primal MaySpent virtuously.T. K.
Be merry as May,If you want to beAs merry and gay,At seventy-three.To be merry and gayThough, at seventy-three,Argues Life's primal MaySpent virtuously.T. K.
"O power of life and deathIn the tongue! as the preacher saith."
"O power of life and deathIn the tongue! as the preacher saith."
Mr. Basil Andrew paused in writing and held his pen suspended, his breath also slightly in suspense, as he contemplated his subject anew. He had been reviewing a theological work just published; but his thoughts had developed as he dwelt on them, and were no longer a plan, but the torso of a plan.
He sat like one in a trance while the new idea grew; grew slowly, almost painfully, seeming to find scant room in his brain, albeit his brows were wide. Touches from the utmost limits of his nature and his experience shaped and modified it: the swell of feeling with the ray of intellect that ruled its tide; vague emotions and vaguer speculations, in whose mists sparks of truth were dissipated, from whose sudden meeting had sometimes sprung the electric flash of intelligence; aspirations that had climbed their Jacob's ladder, reason fixing the rounds till the climbers took wings, and dazzled her with their transfigured faces; fragments of knowledge hard and sharp-edged; stray conclusions finding their premises, and stray premises their conclusions—mallet and handle for blows—all working the shape till there it stood in his brain, the perfect form of a truth.
One instant he contemplated it with rapture, while it glowed alive under his gaze; the next, he looked outward and perceived its relations with the world. As he did so, a wave of color swept over his face; and, heart failing, that form was no longer to him a living truth, but the statue of a truth.
"I might have known," he muttered, flinging his pen aside, "for me, at least, 'all roads lead to Rome.' I believe I am bewitched."
With that flush still upon his face, he rolled up the unfinished manuscript, and deliberately laid it on the coals that burned redly in the grate, where it quivered like a sentient thing. One might fancy that the thoughts just warm from his brain still retained some clinging sensation, telling where their rest had been, as, stepping ashore, for a while we continue to feel the motion of the sea on which we have been tossing. Then the edges of the leaves blackened, slender fingers of flame stole over them, opened them out, drew rustling leaf from leaf, scorching them, till one sentence started out vivid as lightning on a cloud, that sentence on which he had paused, finding it not a conclusion, but an indication. Then a strong draught caught the yet quivering cinders and carried them up the chimney.
"There they go in a swirl, like Dante's ghosts," he thought; and turned away to look out into the north-eastern storm that, having brushed the bloom from a crimson sunrising, was now, at afternoon, rushing in power over the city. The air was thick with snow, through which, far aloft, dark objects occasionally sailed with the wind-witches, probably. Passers struggled in wind and drift, and the houses seemed not sure of their footing, and had a forlorn and smothered aspect. But Mr. Andrew perceived with satisfaction that the mansion in which he dwelt maintained its dignified dowager port, and that, if ever a feathery drift presumed to alight on the doorsteps, an obsequious little flirt of wind darted round a corner of the house and whisked it off.
While the gentleman stood there, the door of the room opened for the first time in three hours, and Miss Madeleine, Mrs. Hayward's niece, came in with a book in her hand. He watched her as she crossed the room without noticing him, and, when she had seated herself at another window, he breathed out, "How sweet is solitude!" speaking in one of those cloudy, golden voices, such a voice as might have swept over the chords of David's harp when David sang.
The lady looked up, brightening for an instant as though shone upon. Then she opened her book, and Mr. Andrew returned to his table and read also. And there was silence for another hour.
Mr. Basil Andrew was in person rather superb, tall till he bent slightly with a languid grace, which also hung about his motions and his speech. But when he was excited, these mists were scorched up. Then he grew erect as a palm-tree, the not large but beautifully shaped eyes flashed out their crystalline blue, and delicate lines trembled or hardened in mouth and nostril. Then, too, it appeared that those tones of his could ring as well as melt. If it be true that "soul is the form, and doth the body make," the philosophical reader may be able to guess the shape of his nose and chin. Lavater would have pronounced favorably concerning his intellect from seeing only that significant inch across the brows. In color he was white and flaxen-haired, but had some indefinable glow about him, like a pale object seen in a warm light.
Mr. Andrew at thirty-five years of age found himself in that pause of life which, in natures too well poised for violent reaction, comes between the disgust of unsatisfying pursuit and the adoption of higher aims, or the disdainful and half-despairing resumption of the former life. He awaited the inspiring circumstance which should waft him hither or thither, or perhaps for his soul to gather itself and make its own will the wind's will, whichever might be more potential. Pending this afflatus, interior or exterior, he rested upon life
"As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean."
"As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean."
Miss Madeleine was a well enough young woman, baptized into the church, but from an early age subjected to Protestant influences; oscillating between the two, never very conspicuously Catholic except when the faith was assailed, thenplus Arabe que l'Arabie;at other times following out Protestantism to its ultimate pantheism. She had a dimly remembered father and mother somewhere in church suffering or triumphant, and occasionally, when life seemed to her unstable, she sent out a little prayer for or to them, a prayer too weak to find olive-leaves. This young woman was not without power, but it escaped in reverie and dreaming; what she meant to do so vividly imagined that she rested there as on accomplished work. Too impetuous and flimsily ambitious to think with profit, her mind was encumbered with fragments of thought, often with a sparkle in them, like the broken snow-crystals she now dropped her book to watch. In fine, her outer life was a purposeless stupor, her inner life one of Carlyle's "enchanted nightmares" in miniature.
As the clock struck four, Mr. Andrew closed his book and approached his companion.
"I have been reading Thoreau's description of autumn woods," she said, "and I feel all colored. I am steeped in crimson, and purple, and amber, and rich tawny browns. My eyes are violet, and my hair is golden."
"Your hair is brown, and your eyes are gray," was the matter-of-fact reply, it being Mr. Andrew's opinion that the girl's mind needed ballast.
"What book have you there?" she asked, settling into place.
"Oh!" just aware he still held it, "it is Father de Ravignan'sSociety and Institute of the Jesuits—very good if one desires information on the subject. Moreover, one is charmed to learn that Père de Ravignan, though himself a Jesuit, has been a magistrate and a man of his time; also that he is still a man, and,par excellence, a Frenchman. The good father becomes a little Hugoish and staccato when he refers to himself."
Since she still waited, watching him with eager, imperative eyes, he went on. "You know the story of the Florentine and Genoese who wished to compliment each other: 'If I were not a Genoese, I should wish to be a Florentine,' said one. 'And I,' said the other, 'if I were not a Florentine, should wish to be—' 'A Genoese!' suggested the other. 'No, a Florentine!' So I, if I were not a free-thinker, would wish to be—"
"A Catholic!" the girl broke in. "Don't deny. You already tire of your Theodore Parker, whose intellect was to him what astronomers call a crown of aberration. You have but to look at the church, and faith is easy! How beautiful are thy steps, O prince's daughter!"
"Very pretty, but not very conclusive," was the cool comment. "You once said to me, 'Epithets are not arguments.' Allow me to retort that apostrophes are not arguments. By the way, how impossible it is to calculate on where you may be found, except that it is sure to be 'inissimo.' The arc of your motion takes in both poles."
Miss Madeleine relapsed again immediately, and with a somewhat weary expression.
At the same moment the door opened wide, and Mrs. Hayward entered, producing the effect of being preceded by a band of music. This lady of fifty was ample, rustling, and complacent, and, being lymphatic, was called dignified. If, on being left a widow in straitened circumstances, and finding herself obliged to take a few boarders, Mrs. Hayward had felt any sense of diminished social lustre, no one had perceived it. "They pay my housekeeping expenses," she said serenely; and immediately that seemed the end of their being.
There is something imposing in the suave conceit of such persons. Possessing themselves so completely, they also possess those who approach them, abashing larger and more slowly ripening natures. Names respectfully pronounced by them become at once names of consequence, and trivial incidents by them related swell into significant events. If they are something, then I am nothing, is the thought with which we approach them; and the fact that they are something seems so clear that the mortifying conclusion is inevitable.
After this lady followed Mrs. Blake, obviously the wife of Mr. Blake, also the mother of an uproarious boy of six years who accompanied her, and who was at this moment quieted by the possession of an enormous cake which he was devouring.
"O the cherub!" cried Miss Madeleine wickedly. "That child has genius. See, he eats his cake in the epical manner, beginning in the middle. Little pocket edition of his papa! Only," in an aside to her aunt, "I hope they haven't stereotyped him. And here comes his papa now."
A bang of the street-door, and enter Mr. Blake, rubbing his hands, and quoting,
'It is not that my lot is low,That bids the silent tear to flow;'
'It is not that my lot is low,That bids the silent tear to flow;'
it is the cold. No, my son; no kiss now. Sydney Smith says that there is no affection beyond seventy or below twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Wait till I rise to the paternal temperature."
Mr. Blake was assistant editor of a second-class magazine, considered himself literary, and had a way of saying "we scribblers" to Mr. Andrew, which made that gentleman stiffen slightly. While the one entertained the ladies with an account of the immense amount of literary labor performed by him since breakfast, the other looked from the window and absently watched the wild wind curl itself to edge off the crest of a drift, curling it over like the petal of a tuberose, but more thinly, hanging, wavering, flake to flake, daintily and airily touching the frail crystals.
"Oh! there's to be a great Christmas at your cathedral to-morrow," Mr. Blake said to Madeleine, as they went out to dinner. "Bassoon's going to sing, and Kohn's orchestra to play. It will be worth seeing and hearing, especially at five o'clock. I mean to go if I can wake. And you?"
"Yes," Madeleine said, glancing at Mr. Andrews, who flushed a little as he nodded acquiescence.
"'Similia similibus curantur,'" he thought. "I'll go and get cured."
"They really do things of that sort well at the cathedral," said Mrs. Hayward patronizingly, seeming to pat a personified cathedral on the head as she softly touched the table with her plump white hand.
Madeleine groaned inwardly.
"Mr. Andrew," she said, "what should put me in mind of the frog that tried to swell to the size of an ox?"
Mr. Andrew found himself unable to guess.
"But wouldn't it have been odd," she pursued, with the air of a philosophical child, "if the frog had succeeded, and had swelled to the size of an ox?"
Mr. Andrew admitted that it would have been a phenomenon.
"But," she concluded, with an air of infantilenaiveté, "it wouldn't have been anything but a great frog, would it?"
"My dear, what are you talking about?" said her aunt. "Pray eat your dinner."
"Christmas-eve is a fast-day of obligation," says Madeleine.
A little raising of three pairs of eyebrows fanned the flame. This young woman had a tongue of her own, and while the others dined she entertained them with a theological discourse, which, if not always logical, had some telling points, and which certainly did not assist the digestion of her hearers. They sat with very red faces, choking a little, but trying to appear indifferent.
"Do people take bitters with their dinner?" asked Mr. Andrew, at length. "I should think it would spoil the taste."
"I must say, Madeleine," Mrs. Hayward interposed, "that, considering you address Protestants, and that we are all friends of yours, you show very little regard for our feelings."
The best thing that could have been said. Madeleine melted at once.
"O auntie!" she cried penitently, "'it is not that I love Caesar less, but Rome more.' I own that it is you who have shown the Christian spirit, and reminded me that centuries ago to-night the angels sang 'Peace on earth.' I'm going to banish myself in disgrace to the parlor. Rest you merry."
Going, into the parlor, she saw all out-doors suffused with a soft rose-color, a blush so tender and evanescent that it seemed everywhere but where the eye rested. "The sky side of this storm is all a sea of fire," she thought, throwing up the window, and drawing in a delicious breath of mingled sunshine, west wind, and frost. "How the clouds melt! And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, build up the blue dome of the air."
Coming in later, the others found her sitting at the piano in the amethystine twilight, and singing a faint and far-away sounding Gloria.
"Hush!" said Mr. Blake, pausing on the threshold, "the evening stars have begun, that the morning stars may know. See them all of a tremor on that sky!"
Listening to those strains of threaded silver, Mr. Andrew sat looking into the twilight through which the grander constellations burned with outlines unblurred by the lesser stars. There was Orion, erect, with his girdle of worlds; Taurus, with starred horns lowered; the Dogs, witnessed to by the liquid brilliance of Sirius, matchless in shifting hues; the Lion, just coming out of the East, his great paw resting on the ecliptic; all those hieroglyphs of fire in which God has written his autograph upon the heavens.
"What a pretty myth it was," he thought, "that of the morning-stars singing together. And that other of the star of Bethlehem!" He half-wished he could believe those things, they saved so much weary thought, so much maddening speculation. Sometimes, while straining to grasp at extraordinary knowledge, he had felt as though falling from a giddy height into an outer darkness, and had drawn back shuddering, eager to catch at some homely fact for support. He smiled now mockingly to himself. "Perhaps the stars did sing. Like a child, I'm going to make believe they did, and that one 'handmaid lamp' did attend the birth of Jesus." It was easier to believe anything while he listened to that Gloria. For, disregarded as Miss Madeleine might be at other times, when she sang she was regnant. Her voice was magnetic enough to draw the links from any man's logic.
Ceasing, she called Mr. and Mrs. Blake to the piano, and the three voices sang Milton's Hymn on the Nativity.
It is astonishing how magnificently some small-souled persons do contrive to sing, expressing sentiments which they must be totally incapable of experiencing. Mrs. Blake sang a superb contralto, and the three perfect voices struck fire from one listener's heart as they beat the emphatic rhythm of that majestical measure.
All but Miss Madeleine went to bed early. She kept vigil, and was to call them. They seemed scarcely to have slept when they heard her voice ring up the stairs in the muezzin which she christianized for the occasion, being in no mood to call Mohammed a prophet:
"Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord!I bear witness that there is no God but the Lord!I bear witness that Jesus is the Son of God!Come unto prayer—come unto happiness—Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord!There is no God but the Lord!Prayer is better than sleep—prayer is better than sleep!"
"Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord!I bear witness that there is no God but the Lord!I bear witness that Jesus is the Son of God!Come unto prayer—come unto happiness—Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord!There is no God but the Lord!Prayer is better than sleep—prayer is better than sleep!"
As the last word died upon the air, every foot touched the floor, and in half an hour the party had gathered as wild as witches.
Mr. Andrew came down late and grumbling. "Cannot we hear music and see candles without getting out of bed for the purpose at such unearthly hours? I had just gone to sleep, and was in Elysium. Miss Madeleine, why should you say that prayer is better than sleep? We are not going to pray; we are going to hear demi-semi-quavers, and Mr. Bassoon's C in the deeps. I'll go to bed again."
"Possibly we may pray, Mr. Andrew," she said in a low tone. "I have been thinking to-night, and it seems to me that God had a Son, and that he will come down this morning and stand in the midst of the candles."
A Catholic, unless a convert, can scarcely understand the emotions of a stranger who enters a church for the first time on one of our great festivals. That "cool, silver shock" must be taken from another element. Our party stepped from the dim and frosty starlight into an illumination more dazzling than daylight, into a warmth that was fragrant with flowers, into a crowd where every face had a smile dissolved in it. And over all waved a sparkling tissue of violin music from the orchestra.
"By George!" was Mr. Blake's only audible comment.
"It is like the Arabian Nights!" exclaimed his wife.
"Turns up the mastodon strata in them," whispered Mr. Andrew to the lady on his arm.
They were shown to seats, and sat watching the steadily increasing crowd, and the altar that was a pyramid of fire. The worshippers were, of course, various: ragged Irish women, whose faith invested them with better than cloth of gold; rich ladies, sweeping in velvets and sables, but with thoughts of better things in their faces; ambitious working-girls, finer than their mistresses. A pretty young woman came into the slip in front of our party, her face beautifully arranged to represent modesty and sweetness. She cast a glance behind at her audience, then sank upon her knees and beat her breast with one hand, while she arranged her bonnet-strings with the other. This performance at an end, she faced about and closely scanned the gallery, turning again and again till those behind her began to feel annoyed.
"I do wish he'd come!" said Madeleine impatiently.
"He has come," whispered Mr. Andrew, as the young woman suddenly returned toward the altar, and began a series of languishing attitudes and prostrations, all herrepertoireof theatrical devotion.
A grand-looking man next attracted their attention, walking past with the unmistakable sailor roll. His head was erect, and his massive shoulders looked fit for Atlas burdens; but the clear, blue eyes were gentle, and his face was full of a beautiful solemnity and reverence. As he walked, the long, tawny beard flowing down his breast waved slightly.
Madeleine gave Mr. Andrew's arm a delighted squeeze, and whispered,
'With many a tempest had his beard been shaken.'
Fancy him on the ship's deck, in mid-ocean, in darkness and storm, beaten by the wind, drenched with spray, the lightnings blazing and the thunders crashing about him, shouting to the men to cut the mast away!"
Here the organ and choir broke forth in glad acclaim, and the procession came winding in from the sacristy. Cloth of gold and cloth of silver, lace and fine linen, and crimson and purple, all combined, gave the effect of a many-jewelled band coiled about the sanctuary.
Attending alternately to the altar and the choir, Mr. Andrew tried to believe it all a vain pageant; but thoughts will enter, though the doors be shut. What a stupendous thing, he thought, if the Real Presence were true; if, as this girl said, God had a Son, and he should come down this morning and stand in the midst of the candles!
For one instant he was dazzled and confounded by the possibility; the next, he recoiled from it.
"Gloria in excelsis" sang the choir with organ and orchestra in many an involved and thrilling strain, a pure melody springing up here and there from the midst, voice and instrument meeting and parting, catching the tone from each other, swelling till the vaulted roof of the cathedral rang, fading again, dropping away one after another, till there was left but a many-toned sigh of instruments, and one voice hanging far aloft, with a silvery flutter, upon a trill, like a humming-bird sucking the sweetness from that flower of sound. A pause of palpitating silence, then an amen that set swinging the myrtle vines hanging over the St. Cecilia in front of the organ, and made the pennons of blue and scarlet that hung about the altar wave on their standards.
Contrary to custom, there was to be a sermon at that Mass, and, as the preacher ascended the pulpit, Mr. Andrew said to himself: "If Christ was the Son of God, he is on that altar; and if there, I wish he would speak to me by this man."
He hoped to hear an argument to prove the divinity of Christ, not aware that his reason had already been pampered with such until it had grown insolent. The speaker, however, handled his subject quite otherwise. Assuming that divinity, he took for his theme, "what thoughts should fill the mind, what sentiments dilate the heart," on the feast of the Nativity. Calling up before them then, in a few words, a picture of that scene at once so humble and so marvellous, and pointing to the mysterious babe, he boldly announced on the threshold of his discourse the difficulties connected with the dogma for which he demanded their homage:
"This babe is a creature as you and I: this babe is the Creator of all contingent being. This babe is just born; this babe is from all eternity. This babe is contained in the manger; this babe pervades all space. It suffers: hear its cries! It enjoys bliss beyond power of augmentation. It is poor: see the swaddling-clothes! To it belong the treasures of the universe. Here present are husband and wife; yet I am required to believe that her the Holy Spirit overshadowed, a virgin conceived, a virgin bore a Son."
Not Ulysses' arrow flew through the rings with surer, swifter aim than these words through the winding doubts that had bound that listener's heart. It was too sublime not to be true! Almost the triumphant paradox—I believe, because it is impossible—broke from his lips. The human mind was incapable of inventing a falsity so glorious.
In that tumult of feeling he lost what came next; but, listening again, heard: "If I must bow down and worship, I elect him as the object of my adoration whose dwelling is in light inaccessible, who is inscrutable in his nature, and incomprehensible in his works."
"Amen!" said Basil Andrew.
"A virgin conceived, a virgin bore a Son," repeated itself again and again in his thought. All the singing of voices and the playing of instruments were because of that; all the splendor of the festival, the gathering of the crowd in the midst of the winter night, were for that. "O sweetest and most glorious mother in all the universe!" he thought, bowing where it is, perhaps, most difficult for a convert to render homage.
Clouds are unsubstantial things for anything but rainbows to stand on, and even they find but vanishing foothold. Had that delight in Basil Andrews's heart warmed only his imagination, it would have faded with the moment; but thought and study had done their part, and that uprising of the heart was Pygmalion's kiss to his statue. The feeling with which he turned to leave the cathedral was one of thankful content with perfected work.
Pausing in the vestibule for the crowd to pass, he looked back with a tender fear toward the altar.
Poor Madeleine's religion was iris and the cloud. She had known well what was going on in her companion's mind, and, as she stood waiting with him, a text went sighing through her memory like a sighing wind. "I say unto you that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof." While she, a child of the church, had given it a fitful obedience more insulting than a consistent disregard, this man had toiled every step of the way from a far-off heresy, and, passing by her as she loitered outside, had walked into the very penetralia.
She stood looking gloomily out into the morning that was one cloudless glow of pale gold.
"The air has crystallized since we came in," she said, "and we are shut inside a great gem, like flies in amber. We will have to stay here for ever."
He bent a smiling face toward her as they went out into the morning, and said softly: "How beautiful are thy steps, O Prince's daughter! You were right, Madeleine!"
A fortnight from that day Madeleine Hayward stood on the steps of her aunt's house, saying good-by to its inmates. A Southern girl, the cold skies of the North froze her. She wanted to get into a warmer sunshine, and, being prompt and determined, obstacles vanished before her.
"Mr. Andrew," she said, as he gave her his arm to the carriage, "I am sorry I can't stay to be your god-mother."
"I wouldn't have you," he said. "I'm going to have my old nurse."
Madeleine took her seat in the carriage, gave a smiling nod toward the group in the door, then held a cold hand out to her companion.
"When you are a priest, and when you hear that I am dead, say a Mass for me," she said faintly, then turned her face resolutely away.
The violent color that had risen to the gentleman's face at her words faded into a paleness as he went up the steps. By what power did that girl sometimes divine the thoughts which he had not yet owned to himself?
But she was a prophetess.
Some time ago M. Guizot published the second series of hisMeditations on the Christian Religion. He is now prosecuting right valiantly, and will ere long have completed, the noble task that won for him two years since so novel a triumph among his many victories, and crowned his illustrious life with what may be considered its brightest glory. That calmest and most serene of creeds, a lucid definition and summary of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, viewed from the highest stand-point, in all their native simplicity and grandeur, was greeted, it will be remembered, with gratitude by some who looked upon it as furnishing most timely aid, and with respect and partial embarrassment by others; and so marked was its effect that the most exciting religious polemics were for the time being quieted. The first series referred to the very essence of the Christian religion; what is the subject of the second?
The author, in his preface, had thus drawn the general plan of the work: First, the essence of Christianity, next its history, then its present condition, and, finally, its future. Thus a complete history of Christianity was really promised us. The plan determined upon had, perhaps, some advantages. The history of Christianity is nowadays the point that anti-christian critics would show to be vulnerable, and the portion of the armor they seek to penetrate. The public, however, after a moment's surprise, has of itself meted out partial justice to this manner of attack; or at all events, new attempts, as skilfully devised as the first, have been received with a coolness of good augury that weakens vastly the importance of previously achieved successes. Was it not most opportune, then, to enlighten still more and at once a public whosefurorehad but just died away? was it not most important not to adjourn, even by a brief delay, a decisive refutation? As for ourselves, we yearned to behold, striving with the new-comers of criticism and history—who claim to be their masters and almost their inventors—him who, nearly half a century since, founded in our land modern historical criticism. By setting face to face with their rash assertions the true and severe laws of historic certainty; by taking down, piece by piece, their most cleverly contrived scaffolding; by reducing to naught their credit, was not the writer rendering to Christianity a most great and needed service?
M. Guizot has thought that there was something still more urgent to be accomplished; without abandoning his original idea, involving the four series, he has inverted their order of sequence; he now dwells upon the present state of Christian beliefs. At a later day he proposes to resume the discussion of historical questions, dilate upon the authority of holy books, continue his commentary on the concord of the Scriptures, and his arguments concerning technicalities and minor details; subsequently he will try to look into the future.At present, he has but one care, one thought: he wishes to know what is occurring, or rather what men are believing, around him. To place in the strongest light the present state of Christianity; to enumerate its armies and those of its opponents, and establish a comparison between the strength of both; thus to summon all Christians to awaken to a sense of the events concerning the common safety; to teach them not to be deceived either as to their might or as to the magnitude of the perils besetting them, and to guard against a feeling of treacherous security as against cowardly discouragement; this it is that engrosses his attention, and, forming the subject of all his thoughts, indicates to him that which he is to consider his first duty. As he says himself, he supplies the most pressing emergency, and, hurrying to the spot where the struggle is commencing, rushes into the thick of the fight.
We can readily understand his impatience. All other questions become unimportant when compared with such a problem. No eagerness can be more legitimate than that of M. Guizot, and the investigation which it is necessary to make is surely the most serious and interesting that could be prosecuted. Let us add that few inquiries are as intricate and as difficult.
It is not, in fact, the mere exterior and apparent state of Christianity that it is necessary to depict; but its life, its action, its power, which simple statistics can by no means describe. Figures may set forth how many churches there are in France; how many priests, congregations, and convents; how many children are baptized, and couples married; how many dying mortals receive spiritual succor; but after these computations are completed, are they of any genuine value? Though the civil code is not compulsory as to the choice of a religion, and though each one be free to elect his own belief, does it follow that the conclusion arrived at is always the result of proper reflection? Are all those who, either from early childhood, through the medium of their parents, or in after life and by their own free will, on certain solemn days, publicly proclaim their adherence to Christianity, real and true Christians? How many can you designate who knew what they were doing, who did not simply conform with a custom, and for whom the sacred contract did not become at once a dead letter? To arrive at a correct estimate as to the actual strength of Christianity, we must not consult registers, but make researches in the bosoms of families, and descend into the depths of consciences. Thus should we make our soundings to ascertain the state of Christian belief. We admit that such a mode of investigation would be impracticable; we must be content, therefore, with less precise data, and pass judgment upon apparent events. Draw a parallel, then, between Christianity as it was in the early part of the century and Christianity as it is, criticise the two periods in accordance with the same rules, make allowances for deceptive appearances on both sides, and exclude from your calculation the apocryphal believers who are only Christians in name; however numerous the false men and things at present, you will, nevertheless, be compelled to concede that in our country, during the past sixty years, Christianity has at least taken root again in the soil, that it has recovered its life, and that its progress has been undeniable.
M. Guizot describes the phases of the resurrection or rather the awakening of Christianity; the comprehensiveness of his views and the choiceness of his expressions render this largely developed portion of his work of absorbing interest. We have, however, no intention to attempt its analysis. In these later meditations, as in those that precede them, one would in vain seek to follow the author step by step. His work alone can speak for its contents; a person must peruse it, or abandon the idea of becoming acquainted with it. Let us only point out the plan the writer has drawn, and notice the succession of his thoughts. From its commencement, by a natural division, the volume to which we allude forms two parts: one relates to Christianity, the other to its adversaries. What do we see in the first? The narrative of the Christian awakening, or rather anexposéof the religious beliefs in France since the year 1800. This is a composition in which the incidents follow each other in natural sequence, an historical painting as well as a picture-gallery, comprising none but portraits from nature, such as M. Guizot, with that firmness and concision that characterize in few words ideas as well as men, can produce; portraits full of expression and life, though always of a sober coloring and subdued effect. M. Guizot had abundant opportunities for word-painting, for sitters were not scarce. Evidently Providence was resolved, from the beginning of the century, to repair by almost perceptible progress the effects of the great disaster of Christianity, and the damage caused by the cataclysm into which it seemed to have sunken. How numerous the men who suddenly came into existence, each worthy of the mission to be entrusted to him! How marked the contrast with the days gone by, when there was none to shiver a lance for that ancient religion still replete with honors, wealth, and apparent life, but without credit, without influence upon souls, without new adepts, and gradually forsaken, like unto those tottering edifices whose abandonment ere their fall is decreed by a prophetic instinct! The scaffold was needed to restore it to life. The first symptom of regeneration was observed when humble priests and monks, who, a day previous, were heedless of their duty, arose as intrepid and as ready for martyrdom as if theirs had been austere lives, passed in the desert or in the darkness of the catacombs. Then a brighter signal and one more easily understood was to be given by two men, who, each in his sphere and within the limits of his power, were really the earliest promoters of the Christian awakening. We refer to a great politician and to a great writer—to the First Consul and to M. de Chateaubriand, to the Concordat and to theGenius of Christianity. There is nothing artificial nor strained in this connection; for these two men and these two works, at the commencement of this century, played the most important part in the work of resurrecting the traditions of Christianity. M. Guizot speaks of Bonaparte and Chateaubriand in a rare spirit of justice and impartiality. Though possessed of little sympathy for them, and aware that their works have become antiquated and, so to say, somewhat out of fashion, he asserts quite warmly that theGenius of Christianity, despite its imperfections, is a great and powerful work, such as only appears at long intervals—one of those productions that, having deeply moved men's souls, leave behind them traces never to be effaced. And as for the Concordat, albeit the sincerest friends of Christian beliefs point out nowadays with sadness, if not with bitterness, its defects and dangers, M. Guizot concedes that, in 1802, its promulgation was, on the part of the First Consul, an act of superior intelligence rather than of despotism, and, for the sake of religion, the most opportune and necessary of events, thesine qua noncondition of the existence of Christianity.He thinks that, after ten years of revolutionary orgies, a solemn recognition of religion by the state was needed to endow it with that influence, dignity, and stability which it had totally lost.
In this respect, we share M. Guizot's opinion, certain reservations, however, being made. The Concordat was a welcome gift; neither its timely advent nor the necessity for it can be disputed. Why? Because two years previous the national movement of 1789 was suddenly transformed into an abdication, by which one man benefited. If, instead of submitting to this saviour, half out of lassitude and half out of enthusiasm, France had had the energy, by making a supreme effort, and, perhaps, at the cost of new calamities, to see to her own safety and remain mistress of her fate, the Concordat would have been an unneeded blessing. Christianity would have had more labor and expended more time in regaining the lost ground; it would not have obtained possession at once, by the scratch of a pen, and between sunrise and sunset, of all its presbyteries and churches; it would have recovered them little by little, after having conquered men's souls. Had it had no other staff of support but its flock, it would have neglected nothing to strengthen it and increase its numbers; it would have won the confidence of the people and obtained their acceptance of it as a counsellor, a father, a friend, and would not have been looked upon as an emigrant, amnestied and recalled by tolerance, favor, and an act of authority, and thus placed under obligations to one man, and made the vassal of his power. It is not sufficient that one should be cured of a fatal disease; the remedy, in destroying the evil, must not leave the patient with an altered constitution or impaired vitality. The Concordat undoubtedly delivered us from a great affliction for a nation, and saved us from a complete divorce from God; it restored Christianity to France, but restored it less robust and less prepared for the strife, less life-like and less popular, and in a less fit condition to face the danger than if the old beliefs had been compelled, when born anew, to clear their own pathways. In religion, as in politics, France still feels, and will probably ever experience, the effects of having been saved by the events of the 18th ofBrumaire.
That which we must admit with M. Guizot is that, when, in these later days, we criticise the work of our fathers, written upward of sixty years ago, we can speak of them with wondrous facility. Their doubts are at hand to enlighten us. But we must carry ourselves back to 1802, and behold flocks without shepherds, tombs without prayers, and cradles without baptismal fonts! Where is the proud and far-seeing Christian who would then have refused, as a destructive present, in the name of his belief and for the sake of his faith, arégimethat did the work of Christian restoration, and by the touch of a magic wand repaired all the evils that bore it down? No one then would have even dreamed of such a paradox. Let us, therefore, blame with indulgence, and to a certain degree only, the men who invented the compromise, although the consequential events subsist, and when we examine the present state of Christian belief, we cannot avoid meeting at every step the still evident traces of defective origin, and its resurrection by process of law.Even as the government of the Restoration, despite its sincerest efforts and never-failing good-will, was never absolved by France from the reproach that attached to its self-commitment by friendship with the Emperor Alexander and Lord Wellington, even so Christianity in this land, during the past sixty years, is partly indebted for its weakness, and for the prejudices that maintain it in a state of excitement, to the honor of having had for a godfather the Emperor Napoleon. Sheltered and warmed under the purple, and having become an imperial pensioner, Christianity acquired, against its will, a certain need of protection and certain habits of submission and almost of complaisance, which having rendered it under somerégimesa party to the acts of the government, has caused it to be called upon to share the responsibility of many errors, and exposed it to the perils of unpopularity.
Within the sixty years gone by, have we not seen by a transient example how much religion would have gained by remaining on less compromising terms with the heads of the nation and boldly dispensing with their favors? There was once a government whose members were imbued with profound respect for the religious interests of the country, and who were always ready to render unto its ministers the most kindly offices; this same government, however, from its earliest days, was viewed with coldness and hostility by a certain number of Catholics and a great portion of the clergy; is it not known how favorable that attitude proved to Catholicism itself? For eighteen years it was looked upon as possessed of no credit, and, for that very reason, each day acquired more and more power, not, indeed, in public places and in ante-chambers, but in men's consciences. It may be boldly asserted that the greatest and most definite progress which the Christian religion can justly claim for itself since the commencement of the present century was made during that period. We do not deduce from this fact that systematic hostility to the ruling powers is necessary for the propagation of religious ideas, for intestine strifes are evils and not to be fomented; but that the sacred ministry, to have influence upon rulers, must possess a degree of independence carried even to the extent of pride, and bringing into prominence its abandonment of all things earthly, and its absolute indifference to worldly interests.
From 1830 to 1851, whatever may have been the true motives of its estrangement and indifference, the Catholic clergy was benefited by the situation. It had prospered and increased in numbers, it had won for itself, to the great advantage of Christian belief, the esteem, the respect, and even the minds of persons who, until then, had been rebellious and inclined to disparage it. Was it aware of the cause of this unusual kindliness of feeling? Did it comprehend how much this was to be preferred, for the cause of religion and for its own sake, to former courtly favors? Has it since guarded against the temptations which have surrounded it? Has it persevered in burning incense before God only, in adoring none but him? Have not more earthly and apparently less disinterested bursts of enthusiasm caused it to lose a goodly portion of the conquered ground? These are questions which it may be well not to look into too deeply; but enough is known concerning them to enable us to understand how it came that, during the fifteen years that have just elapsed, the radical vice of the Concordat, the spirit in which it was framed, the danger of establishing between Christianity and the absolute power a so-called natural alliance, a kind of necessary complicity, have awakened in the hearts of some Christians objections, fears, and antipathies now more active and potent than ever.